Colbert features “pro-lynching” song. While country music star Toby Keith belted out “Beer For My Horses,” Colbert’s studio audience clapped to the beat, blithely unaware that they were swaying to a racially tinged, explicitly pro-lynching anthem that calls for the vigilante-style hanging of car thieves, “gangsters doing dirty deeds…crime in the streets,” and other assorted evildoers. — Huffington Post

Filesharing: A suicide note from the music industry. Cory Doctorow writes the deal between record companies and ISPs will drive music-swapping underground and erode their profits still further. — The Guardian [via The Open Road]

Why Islam is unfunny for a cartoonist. On a sunny May morning, six plainclothes police officers, two uniformed policemen and a trio of functionaries from the state prosecutor’s office closed in on a small apartment in Amsterdam. Their quarry: a skinny Dutch cartoonist with a rude sense of humor. Informed that he was suspected of sketching offensive drawings of Muslims and other minorities, the Dutchman surrendered without a struggle. — Wall Street Journal [via Neil Gaiman]

Let’s step outside. The evolution of the fight scene, from the Duke to the Dark Knight. The fight scene as it usually turns up in today’s action spectacles—smeared, destabilized, fixated on chaos at the expense of clarity and precision—reflects the changing syntax, the all-around acceleration, of movies in general and Hollywood blockbusters in particular. — Slate