Charity cases

First comes news that (Product)Red will be starting a new music subscription service—but with a twist: you pay $5 per month and half of that goes to AIDS-in-Africa charity, but they send you two MP3 files of their choice, not yours. One will be by a major, known act, the other by a breaking one.

Hmm. Most people are already discovering new music, and established tunes, by roaming the halls of the iTunes Store and Amazon's new MP3 service as well as the less-savory back alleys of Usenet, Gnutella, and music-sharing blogs. The main appeal of a (Product)Red service will likely be the feeling of charitable virtue, or maybe it's just part of a larger, strange trend toward unmarked packages along the lines of HotWheels Mystery Cars and Mystery Flavor Doritos.

And speaking of charity...

News sources everywhere are bzzzzing about the possibility of Britney Spears redeeming herself for her not-well-received (and, in our view, grossly overcriticized) appearance at the 2007 MTV Music Awards by... opening the 2008 MTV Music Awards. MTV's president asks, "Everyone deserves a second or third chance, right?"

Uh-oh. They're already getting ready for the 2009 redemption. This could end badly.

But WB does not blame Britney, no matter what happens, and we definitely weren't on the bandwagon of "OMG she's so fat" criticisms that set women's body image progress back several dress sizes, at least momentarily. We are, however, still highly annoyed that she enabled this guy's launch into the viral-video pantheon: