Morning Meme: Major "Idol" Changes, Alan Cumming Picks a New Cause, and Barney Stinson's Dad

Plus we get Tangled with Disney, Meryl Streep gives birth to Tina Fey, and Rev. Newlin brings the crazy back to Bon Temps.

The big news of the night, which you probably all know by now, is that Ellen DeGeneres has stepped down as a judge on American Idol. She had four years left on a rich contract, but never liked the work, or the schedule she had to keep to do both shows.

What the generally reliable Gossip Cop is reporting is that Ellen was able to announce her resignation because they had finished the contracts for the replacement judges for her and Simon. And those replacements are Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. I’d been hearing JLo for years, but Tyler is a new name. Can America really look at him five hours/week?

Here are Seven Amazing Animal Hybrids. I really want my own Wolphin.

At the Television Critics Association, the How I Met Your Mother producers told critics that How I Met Your Mother will not achieve the same level of suck it did last year. One of the components to achieving that is a plot line for Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris) to find his real father, and it’s not Bob Barker like he thinks. They swear if they can get the writing correct, NPH is guaranteed an Emmy Award. About time.

Charlaine Harris, author of the Southern Vampire Novels that True Blood is based on, made it to Comic-Con. And she says that the best thing that Alan Ball has done for the television show that deviates from the mythology of the books was letting Lafayette live. She think Nelsan Ellis has truly made that character his own, to which Lafayette said “Hookuh, please!”

When discussing how strange the nominees are in the Outstanding Reality Television show category for the Emmy Awards, The Wrap did not just call Kathy Griffin “a minor celebrity”. This is not going to end well for them.

GLAAD has a call to action against Clear Channel (people behind Rush Limbaugh) because they’re programming someone saying things more vile than Limbaugh. Jim Quinn has said things like "But I would give you that pedophilia is far more rampant among the gay community than it is among the straight community."

This is after he had already said "Gay marriage doesn't produce anything that the state has an interest in. Gay sex produces AIDS, which the state doesn't have – or should have an interest in. They should charge homosexuals more for their – for their health insurance than they charge the rest of us. When you get AIDS, pal, the door opens up to you. You have got all kinds of government goodies, including a maid to clean your house, transportation - I mean it's - there's just a wealth of wonders that come.”

Corey Stoll has joined the cast of Law & Order: L.A. opposite Skeet Ulrich. I didn’t know the actor, but I took a look, and I think I like. A lot.

Meryl Streep is going to play Tina Fey’s mother in Sony’s Mommy & Me. Forget The Avengers, this is the movie event I’m looking forward to.

Alan Cumming has a new cause – the preservation of American foreskins. I saw an open letter he wrote which was unfortunately not something I could link to. His personal blog touches on the subject as well.

Comcast has been sending out notices to some customers that they owe $0.00 and if they don’t pay immediately, their service will be disconnected. Charter Communications has supposedly even cut someone off, and charged him $25.00 to reconnect his service for owing $0.00.

The Fantastic Four reboot that’s being worked on will use a purely CGI Thing, not a rubber suit like the previous movies.

The Fag Hag: How a Girl’s Misguided Friendship Choices Can Lead to a Lifetime of Loneliness. (we love our flame dames here, that’s just the title of the piece at Christwire.org)