Ashton Kutcher To (Hopefully) Go To Federal Prison

Feel free to photoshop a giant black man with no pants on in the background of this one

    I am sure we are in agreement, America, that everything Ashton Kutcher is, does, and believes in totally sucks. As far as I am concerned, nothing he has ever done was newsworthy, until now. Apparently he edited the latest issue of Details magazine (har) and wrote a bunch of articles endorsing investments in companies that he owns, co-founded, or is heavily invested in without disclosing his interest in the aforementioned corporations. Highly illegal and unethical. Now the SEC and FTC is all up in his shit. Well, not really, but maybe (hopehopehope) they could be soon. Via Gawker:

Ashton Kutcher's editorship of Details was, as we noted yesterday, a brazenly self interested and highly misleading act of journalism. But it may have been a federal crime, too, judging from what the New York Times is reporting.

"It's certainly a possibility that a case like this could be investigated," assistant Federal Trade Commission director Richard Cleland tells the Times of Kutcher's Details special online issue, in which eight of 12 recommended products in one article were Kutcher investments. "If you're out there promoting individual products that you have a specific investment in, it needs to be disclosed... If you have a significant economic investment that is not otherwise apparent, that may potentially affect the credibility of your endorsement, and I see that as a potential problem." The FTC has made a priority out of online conflicts of interest.

 It's also possible Kutcher violated SEC rules. You're not supposed to promote a company you partly own — say, in a magazine — if you know it's soon to go public. And if a company's shares trade on private secondary markets you must abide federal rules on deceptive marketing, which a former SEC lawyer told the Times were "very broad... These rules apply any time there is a securities transaction."

     Maybe he will get the chair. Ok, ok, I don't wish him dead, per se, just disappeared permanently, like if we lived in V for Vendetta and he was a homosexual, which we do, and he is. In case you were wondering here are Kutcher's responses to these ethics charges: