Miss USA 2003 Susie Castillo had an experience passing through the airport in Dallas that adds her to the list of people who say TSA agents are going too far in their “intrusive” pat downs. According to an interview she gave moments after the incident–she’s clearly emotional in the video–the pageant winner says a female TSA agent touched her inappropriately “at least four times,” leading her to ask “what have I done to deserve this treatment as an upstanding, law-abiding American citizen?” Am I a threat to US security? I was Miss USA, for Pete’s sake!”

Castillo, who describes the pat down in clinical terms that some may find graphic, considers what happened to her to be an assault:

I guess it’s Things Not To Do In Front of Children Day here at Mediaite. This story, however, is even stranger. 21-year-old Evan Emory of Michigan has been sentenced to two months jail time after filming and posting a video featuring him singing a sexually explicit song to elementary school students. The only thing is, Emory never did that. He actually sang an appropriate (and apparently well-received) song to the kids and edited in the other song (which the kids never heard) later for a comedy video.

Nick Kosir, aka “The Rapping Weatherman,” is that uniquely 21st century breed of celebrity, the viral video superstar. In 2010, Nick’s fly forecasts propelled him on a meteoric career trajectory that saw him break onto the national radar, and garnered him a jump from the 141st TV market in the country to the 6th. Along the way, Nick encountered a fork in the road to fame and fortune, and he chose the off-ramp to Twin Falls, Idaho…and true love.

As 13-year-old singer Rebecca Black‘s “Friday” video racks up YouTube clicks – and Black reportedly earns loads of cash for her surprising hit song – we’re left to wonder about what Black’s story says about the music industry, the Internet, and us. Ark Music Factory, the company behind Black and other young stars, should be thrilled with all the attention, says Rhodri Marsden in The Independent, since their “whole business model is about reaction, not content.” But they have virtually “disappeared” from the spotlight faced with the inevitable backlash, which is “baffling – like pretty much everything connected to the ‘Friday’ phenomenon.”

And you laughed. Well okay, a lot of people have. And yet all that mockery has led to lots of buzz, millions of clicks, and all of that adds up to cash. About a million dollars’ worth. Forbes reports Rebecca Black, the 13 year old “singer” behind the viral sensation Friday, could see a windfall of about $1 million from the song.

Black’s family paid $2,000 to record two songs and the video for Friday, and that investment seems to have been–artistic merit notwithstanding–a good one:

The various egos that crowd the halls of Congress often make for wonderful, snippy cable news analysis. Case in point: last night’s Rachel Maddow Show, where fill-in host Chris Hayes took a look at Republican House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa‘s latest attempt at using social media, and took it upon himself to recreate the aesthetic of his latest online video. The music, at least, is relaxing.

As law enforcement officials and the media attempt to make sense of last week’s shootings in Arizona and its mentally troubled architect, Jared Loughner, more information has trickled out to paint a picture of the incoherent, seemingly deranged ramblings in Loughner’s head. The latest: a YouTube video Loughner made giving a tour of Pima Community College that got him suspended from that institution.

I never had the opportunity to invest in YouTube but I have to admit that if I did I probably would have passed (which of course would have been a huge mistake). I’d been around the web long enough to remember the dozens of companies before YouTube that tried to create crowdsourced video sites and failed. Based on “pattern recognition” (a dangerous thing to rely on), I was deeply skeptical of the space. What I failed to appreciate was that the prior crowdsourced video sites were ahead of their time.

Pity poor Adam Josephs, a constable with Toronto Police Department’s 52 Division, who is suing YouTube for defamation, based on the fallout from a video showing him tersely warning a non-violent anti-G20 protester she would be arrested for assault if the bubbles she was blowing came near him or his fellow officers. Later in the [...]

Bo Burnham is a young, musical comic, who gained fame on YouTube, where his videos have been seen millions of times.

His latest Comedy Central special, “Words Words Words,” premiered last night. It included one song that was more honest than funny, a brilliant self-critical look at celebrity culture, “Art Is Dead.”

Earlier today, Lady Gaga posted a video on YouTube in which she asked her fans to tell their senators to vote in favor of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” on Tuesday. Gaga then called both of New York state’s senators—Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer—as the camera continued to roll, intending to deliver her message directly to them.

Is this what Glenn Beck was talking about when he said that “a lot of universities are just as dangerous with indoctrination of our children as these terror groups are in Iran or North Korea”? Harvard undergrads woke up today to an inspiring alumni column from President Barack Obama emphasizing the importance of an undergraduate education– and, unfortunately for Beck, “public service.”

Continuing in the path of his post-NBC life, Conan O’Brien picked a very new media way to announce the name of his new TBS show, premiering November 8: YouTube.

In a two-minute announcement, which he says was filmed in one take, he revealed the big news. The new show will be called…Conan.

Making a campaign video is a dicey process. First, there’s the inevitable low production value, and then there’s the tendency for candidates to fall victim to attention-grabbing gimmicks and questionable musical numbers. But nothing quite compares to the embarrassment of the dreaded spoof video, and unfortunately for Vermont Senate hopeful Daniel Freilich, no one filled him in on that.

A video has been going viral since yesterday evening of Basil Marceaux, a gubernatorial candidate from Tennessee, discussing his platform on Nashville’s WSMV 4 in a slightly less than lucid fashion. This was supposed to be a quick post for me (throw up the video, make a joke, get out), but I’ve been staring at my screen forever and I can’t do it. I just can’t make fun of this guy. Part of the reason is that Wonkette has already completely (and hilariously) eviscerated him, but the other part is because it just doesn’t feel right. So I’m going to take a different route and point out how this viral video works as proof of what is so great about our country.

Andrés Duque–known to his Twitter and blog followers as Blabbeando–knew he was probably tweeting too much about the gay marriage vote in Argentina when Twitter cut him after only about three hours of translating the debate in the Argentina Senate.

The horrors of the environmental devastation in the Gulf of Mexico are very real, but, fortunately, the assault is only coming from the ground– not the sky. YouTube video recently started making the rounds of what looked like “oil rain” falling in Louisiana, the sheen clearly visible on the ground. The problem? It’s not possible to rain oil– and Rachel Maddow explains why.

Today was not shaping out to be a great day for Republicans in the House. First, a video was released of Iowa Rep. Steve King making what sounds suspiciously like a birther joke. Then there was Rep. Louie Gohmert, who read out a column comparing the BP escrow account to, uh, Hitler, on the House floor. And then Democratic Rep. Paul Kanjorski noted that the people benefitting from the finance bill were not “minorities or defective people.”

An enterprising gentleman recently uploaded video that he shot of family frolic on the once-pristine shores of the Florida Panhandle (specifically Destin Beach.) Of course they are “once pristine” due to the BP oil disaster that has left what seems like an infinite amount of “tar balls” on the formally white sands. But that’s the not worst part of the following video – its the plaintive wail of what seems to be a four year-old girl asking her mommy to “get it off me.”

Remember the golden days when people watched Daily Show clips on YouTube (for that matter, remember when you could watch them on Hulu)? Well, those clips (and 100,000 others) led to a lawsuit between Viacom and YouTube owning Google that had its ruling today. In the end, the judge ruled in Google’s favor which means the company won’t have to pay Viacom the hefty $1 billion worth of damages that Viacom was asking for.

Rabbi David Nesenoff gained national name recognition when a general question on Israel got White House Press Corps legend Helen Thomas to demand that the Jewish population of Israel “go back to Poland.” In this weekend’s Washington Post, Rabbi Nesenoff reflects on those comments and their contribution to the mideast peace dialogue, and the best word to sum up his take on the matter is “oooh.”

You may remember last January when YouTube‘s interactive political vlog CitizenTube live-streemed President Obama’s State of the Union Address. Following the Address, the site helped coordinate the submission of text and video questions from users, the best of which it delivered to Obama during a live interview the following week. All in all, was a [...]

In recent years, AOL has faced some hard times. Ever since its merger with Time Warner Cable in 2001 (and its subsequent separation 8 years later), AOL has seen drastic reductions in company value and number of subscribers. But tomorrow, AOL will attempt to reassert itself in the online world with the launch of its new video project, Cambio.

A video parodying the passengers on the Gaza-bound flotilla attacked by Israeli military several weeks ago, entitled “We Con the World,” has been pulled from YouTube, allegedly for a copyright claim from Warner Music, who own the rights to the original Lionel Ritchie/Michael Jackson classic “We are the World.”

It seems that no matter how serious the topic, there’s always space for a comically inappropriate mistake. The Israeli Government Press Office, intending to send out to its employees a video parodying the humanitarians and/or activists on the flotilla the Israeli military seized a few weeks ago, sent it to their entire media rolodex, including some sources not entirely favorable to the Israeli government.