Dear Sinéad, Let me begin with a compliment. Your letter to Miley Cyrus the other day was spot on in its articulation of the corporate music machine dynamic and the way it uses people, especially, pretty women, to its own amoral ends. Your employ of words like “prostitute” and “pimp” was as accurate and appropriate as it was provocative.
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Adapted from a piece that originally ran in December 2011. _____ When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal. -Richard Nixon to David Frost British television journalist David Frost is dead at 74. While it isn’t necessarily clear that a man who spent time as a comedian and game show host ought to have his visage
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The original plan when we began this project was to offer the amendments individually, invite discussion, then produce a final document. The course of the process, though, has made a couple things clear. First, there needs to be a period to discuss the entire document in context, and second, while the original “Bill of Rights” approach perhaps had a certain
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Over the past few days, the New Constitution series has generated some interesting discussion. Objections, defenses and counterpoints from myself and other readers, in some cases resulting in planned revisions to the document. One particular issue, which I predicted in the prologue, has centered around the appropriate level of specificity employed in articulating the various rights and responsibilities. One of
Read moreIf you haven’t see this video yet, strap in. Hilarity is a’fixin’ to ensue. SFGate has the gory details here. The key, it seems, is this part: KTVU Channel 2 News owned this breaking news story with a number of firsts! – First on-air. – First on-line. – First with alerts to mobile devices. – First on Twitter & Facebook.
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Sometimes I have no clue what the WWE Creative team is doing. Which is appropriate, because I don’t think they do, either. Case #1: Recently the WWE made a token donation to Chris Nowinski’s organization, which is dedicated to studying and preventing Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. The gift is being made to the Sports Legacy Institute, a Boston non-profit with a mission
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WWE currently has around 75-80 “superstars” on the roster, and the list ranges from top-tier main eventers to new names most fans haven’t heard of yet and performers they probably thought were gone. Some of these people are tremendously talented, while some have the in-ring ability and charisma of a cinder block. Every industry watcher with a Web site seems
Read moreJean Stapleton is dead at 90. She was most famous for her portrayal of the longsuffering Edith Bunker in All in the Family, one of the most important shows in television history. As the tragically underappreciated wife of arch-conservative, verbally abusive, racist blowhard Archie Bunker, Edith may well have been be the most patient woman in the history of TV. The show itself aged
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That crashing sound you just heard from the Upper Midwest was the Chicago Sun-Times throwing its photography staff out the window. All 28 of them. Pulitzers and everything. The paper explained thusly: The Sun-Times business is changing rapidly and our audiences are consistently seeking more video content with their news. We have made great progress in meeting this demand and
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Earlier today my colleague Otherwise uncorked on sports broadcaster Tim Brando for his reaction to the Jason Collins story. If you somehow missed it, NBA journeyman and free agent Collins publicly acknowledged on Monday that he is gay, making him the first active player in a US major sport to do so. Brando brought a good bit of heat down
Read moreRhetorical Question of the Day: In anticipation of the new song release from K-Pop star PSY, we anticipated that: a) he’d boldly break off to forge new and innovative artistic directions b) he’d pimp that “Gangnam Style” formula like a four-dollar whore at the Republican National Convention I thought so. For my part, I wondered how long it would take
Read moreWhen I first saw this story on NY artist Danny Evans’s Celebrities Make Under project, my first reaction was…well, let me quote my Facebook comment directly: Oh, this…I mean…gods, no. They…WTF?! To summarize, Evans has used the magic of Photoshop to “normalize” (my word, not his) some of our artificially beautiful celebrities. “It was a reaction to the insanely over-retouched photos
Read moreFirst off, if you were among the crazies at the Izod Center for Monday Night Raw last evening, we salute you. Sweet baby Jesus on a pogo stick, what were you people on? For those who missed the goings on in East Rutherford, this was the Raw on the night after WrestleMania, and what showed up may or may not have
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The American soccer sphere has been abuzz these last couple of days thanks to a question that first popped up on Alexi Lalas’s Twitter feed: Last night this was discussed: If you live in the U.S., can you call yourself a “soccer fan” even if you don’t support @MLS? The question gets a thorough working over in an article posted
Read moreThis is hardly the first time pro wrestling has come at the audience with a blatantly racist angle, and WWE has, through the years, perfected the arts of cheap stereotyping and jingoism. So their latest gimmick – the anti-immigration “real American” Jack Swagger and his mentor, thinly veiled Tea Partier Zeb Colter – are hardly news. Except for one thing
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lullaby pit 