Saturday Video Roundup: beauty queens, history and current events
This morning, a pop quiz. One question. Compare and contrast the following two videos. First video (the money shot begins around 0:13).
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Gays and professional sports: Sir Charles stands up for what’s right. Again.
A few days ago, Phoenix Suns president Rick Welts revealed that he is gay. And the whole sporting world exploded yawned. Okay, that’s not precisely true. There has been a bit of comment and analysis. But so far, no controversy. No homophobic ranting, no athletes stepping up to say that Jesus doesn’t approve, none of that. This is a wonderful
Read moreMore than marketing: The Blueflowers and the New Wave of Americana
I’ve never much cared for the musical genre broadly known as Americana, and lately I’ve been thinking about why this is. I suppose it’s acceptable to say hey, I’ve listened to a lot of these artists and most of them just kinda bore me, but that seems unsatisfactory for a guy who thinks about music like I do. After some
Read more30-Day Song Challenge, day 18: a song that I wish I heard on the radio
I could go a lot of different directions here, but I decided to be straight-up about my self-interest. I’d like to hear Fiction 8‘s “Hegemony” on the radio, partly because I just love the song, partly because I’m good friends with front man Mike Smith, and oh yeah, partly because I co-wrote it. (More on that process here and here.)
Read more30-Day Song Challenge, day 11: a song by my favorite band
I know that there’s no such thing as a band that everybody likes, and I’m fine with the idea that some people can’t stand my favorite band, U2. I don’t always understand the objections, but so what. I am puzzled when people flat-out misunderstand fairly obvious poses, like Bono’s Macphisto or The Fly characters, which were explicit Pop Star parodies
Read moreHard times for the pure of heart: is it possible to live ethically in modern society?
I think we’d all love to live every phase of our lives in happy accord with high moral and ethical principles. We’d love it if we were never confronted by logical contradictions and cognitive dissonance, by cases where our walk was at odds with our talk. But the truth is that we live in a society that’s complex, at best,
Read moreArianna Antoinette: “Let the motherfuckers eat cake”
A few weeks ago I asked a question: is the Huffington Post a force for good or a liberal sweatshop? In the wake of HuffPo‘s megamillion-dollar sale to AOL, it struck me as appropriate to question the ethics behind an allegedly progressive business operating in a fashion that was indistinguishable from the greedmongering corporate entities it professed to oppose. I
Read moreThe Huffington Post: force for good or liberal sweatshop?
I promised myself that I’d hold fire for a few days when the AOL/Huffington Post deal was announced. My initial reaction was that the sale shone a bright light on some dysfunctional dynamics within the “progressive” media sphere (and this was even before I read Dr. Denny’s outstanding take the other day on how we’re all just serfs in the
Read moreDo we really need journalism programs in order to have great journalists?
Back in August, the University of Colorado proposed the discontinuance of its School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Since I hold a doctoral degree from the SJMC, I was more than a little bit interested. The move stood to affect people I know and regard highly, and I couldn’t help wondering how badly shutting the doors would devalue my degree.
Read moreTime for America’s Freddie Mercury moment: there are more than 100 gay pro athletes in the US, and the sooner they get out of the equipment closet the better
In a recent discussion on one of my political lists Sara Robinson (easily one of the brightest folks in the blogosphere) made an important point about what often causes people to migrate from socially conservative perspectives to more progressive points of view. In describing her experiences with a particular activist group that helped people leaving fundamentalist religions (something that can
Read moreWhat would a progressive society look like? The Tricentennial Manifesto
One of my lists is currently engaged in a fairly dynamic discussion about “what is a progressive?” In thinking about the issue, I realized that it might help to ask the question a slightly different way: what would a progressive society look like? Maybe I can better understand what it means to be progressive in 2010 if I reverse-engineer the
Read moreCivility and truth: Keith Olbermann lays the boots to Ted Koppel and the myth of objective journalism
A few days ago Ted Koppel uncorked on the “partisanship” of today’s broadcasting news in an op-ed at the once-proud, once-respectable, but now utterly reprehensible Washington Post. In doing so, he attracted a great deal of praise from all kinds of people, including at least one or two of my highly respected colleagues. As I argued in a perhaps ill-tempered
Read moreIt’s time for progressives to forget about winning the battle and start concentrating on winning the war
It was Sun Tzu, I believe, who first suggested that in order to win the war, you sometimes have to lose the battle. This precept has been on my mind quite a bit since the results of the recent election began rolling in. For instance… Earlier today one of my political lists was discussing the aftermath of the elections and
Read moreAmerica vs. the Terrorists, 9/11/10: a status report, nine years on…
In September 11, 2001, al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger jets. They flew three of them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The fourth was retaken by the passengers and crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. These things we know. Since then, much has transpired. For example: The US invaded Afghanistan, the nation that had harbored the terrorists
Read moreAmusing ourselves to death, circa 2010
This is the future – people, translated as data. – Bryce, Network 23 The future has always interested me, even when it scares me to death. I wrote a doctoral dissertation that spent a good deal of time examining our culture’s ideologies of technology and development, for instance (and built some discussion of William Gibson and cyberpunk into the mix).
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lullaby pit 