The Daily Swarm

Frankly, we’re over it. We’ve been staring at these pictures for two weeks now. They’ve been around the world and back. People freaked. Someone got fired. Enough already.

But when you start something you’ve gotta finish it, so here goes a wrap-up of Heavensgate:

- This is the item that started it all.

- Idolator picks it up 4 days later.

- Boing Boing blows it up.

- The interweb goes crazy.

- Perez Hilton blames it on greedy Courtney Love.

- Courtney goes off on Dr. Martens to People magazine.

- Dr. Martens fires the ad agency. Thanks to a tip, we break the story.

- Dr. Martens CEO grovels at Courtney’s feet to People (nice Daily Swarm shout out too!). He also traps himself in a lie, contradicting his own written statement.

- The New York Post devotes a full page to the dust-up.

- The Guardian UK basically reprints our second post verbatim, with no credit of course.

- Mickey Leigh, brother of the late Joey Ramone, issues the following statement concerning the seeming endorsement of Doc Martens:

Obviously, we are in the same position as Courtney Love, as well as the Estates of the others depicted (in the ad). We were never consulted about this ad. We were never asked for permission to use Joey’s image, or paid for the use of it. As Executor of my brother’s estate I never would have approved this ad as Joey never wore these shoes. And, not that my brother was terribly religious, but the fact that he was Jewish, and this ad is not exactly Kosher, makes it that much more inappropriate, inconsiderate and contemptible.

Though we were about to formulate a statement to the above effect, Courtney certainly has a louder, more influential voice, and I am thrilled that she got through to the them.

- Saatchi and Saatchi’s creative director emails with LAist. Key quote: “Corbis appropriately licensed the images to run in Fact Magazine in the UK. UK law does not require publicity clearances from deceased celebrity estates.”

That’s it, really. Move along now.