Earlier this year we took a look at the "Epic Beard Man" meme , which the Internet sold to us as "elderly white war vet stands up to young black thug" instead of the more accurate "mentally disturbed old man has yet another in a long line of violent outbursts on a confused victim." It turns out that's not exactly an isolated incident. If we wrote an article every time something went viral based purely on a lack of context, that's all we'd write about. So we've narrowed it down to the biggest stories that the media and the Internet got the most wrong in 2010.

9 Conan vs. Leno

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The way we heard it:

In 2010, smart, creative, genuinely funny comedy lost out to hackneyed 90s stand-up bullshit once and for all. And it was all Jay Leno's fault.

It went like this: In 2009 The Tonight Show was finally taken away from Leno and given to Conan O'Brien -- the voice of a new generation. We didn't think Leno was funny, but we had to admit it was pretty cool of him to make way for the new guy. He stepped down with grace and class ... only to turn right back around a few months later, when his stupid new show couldn't get its own ratings, and steal the The Tonight Show back. We'd call him an Indian giver, but that's a pretty offensive term, so we'll just call him a giant gaping asshole instead.



Also, his hair is stupid.

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Across the internet the story and outrage spread like wildfire as NBC inexplicably folded before the juggernaut assault of Leno's evil team of Hollywood lawyers, morally bankrupt agents, powerful connections and possibly shadow assassins. The network offered to move Conan's Tonight Show to a much later time slot to make way for Leno in the 11 o'clock hour. After trying valiantly to defend himself with elegance, wit and dignity, Conan was ultimately fired, Jay was moved back, and the only people left happy by the whole thing were some ... some old people probably, like in fucking Kansas somewhere, who wouldn't know good comedy if it farted in their mouths.

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But the truth is ...

Leno had nearly nothing to do with Conan getting fired. The popular phrasing is that Leno "took back The Tonight Show" after "giving it to Conan." But Leno doesn't "own" The Tonight Show -- NBC does. It was never Leno's choice to make. The sad reality is that Conan signed a tragically shitty contract with NBC -- a contract that held no specifications for his timeslot -- and it came back to bite him. And he should have seen it coming: Both Leno and Letterman have timeslot clauses built into their contracts to avoid this very thing. As Matthew Belloni, an entertainment lawyer and journalist, explains:

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"Any talent lawyer worth his five percent fee is probably calling to ask for timeslot guarantees."