I’m strangely enthralled by the death of Michael Jackson. It’s an instructive moment in the history of celebrity; Jackson’s only notable achievement in the last 15 years is getting acquitted of child molestation charges, but his death is still the biggest news in the world. In an age where anyone can be a celebrity if they’re just willing to embarass themself, Jackson was the biggest celebrity on the planet because of music released 20 years ago. True, enduring celebrity is still based on greatness. May it always be the case.
A few stray thoughts
So this is what it takes for MTV to play music videos again. Jackson’s music is still good, and his dance moves still cool. I might watch MTV occaisionally if they’d occaisionally play his stuff. And not play mind-numbing ads geared toward moronic teenagers.
Speaking of MTV, the “MTVNews” “anchor,” in describing Jackson’s death, said that Jackson was driven to the hospital in an “AMM–byu–LANCE.” I’m not sure I’ve ever heard someone on tv speak with a truer black southern accent.
People are mentioning the recent deaths of Farah Fawcett and Ed McMahon in the same breath as Jackson. Inappropriate. McMahon was, at best, a D list celebrity, Fawcett a definite B-lister. Putting Michael Jackson on the A-list is like putting Michael Jordan on the All-Star team: I guess it’s the best you can do, but he’s bigger than anyone else there.
Today’s winner is Mark Sanford. Admittedly, it would have been better for him had he announced his affair today, but it’s hard to be luckier than to have the worst event of your life overshadowed by the death of the world’s biggest celebrity.
The hottest teacher I ever had was named Billie Jean Somethingorother. It was 8th grade. I’d let you imagine the number of “Billie Jean is not my lover” references there were in that class, except for the fact that you cannot possibly imagine it.
Apollo posted this at 7:43 PM EDT on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 as Pop Culture Is Filth
After the Palins’ over-the-top reaction to Letterman’s joke, Letterman apologizes. I’m no fan of canned outrage, but since canned outrage isn’t going away anytime soon, I’m pleased to see it work in favor of a conservative. One can hope that this is the beginning of the end of the utterly meritless and shameless treatment that Sarah Palin and her family have received.
But let me also say that Letterman’s apology is one of the most sincere sounding that I’ve read in a very long time. And it comes a full week after his bad joke, when he could have let the whole incident slide on into the oblivion of television’s memory.
In an age where “I’m-sorry-that-you-were-offended” apologies are par for the course, it’s pleasing to see someone apologize by actually admitting that he was at fault, and by stating that he will try to mend his ways. In an ideal world, this wouldn’t be noteworthy; people would routinely accept the blame for their wrongs, and say that they will try to do better in the future. In that ideal world, we wouldn’t congratulate people on apologizing correctly. Indeed, only in a world turned upside down would we congratulate Letterman on describing exactly how classless and bad his joke was. But we live in that world turned upside down, and we should applaud the better to help guide others toward the best, and, perhaps, to eventually right the place.
How do we do that without encouraging more bad behavior? It’s a difficult question; I wouldn’t have applauded as his audience did, but I suspect my standards of behavior are different from the average late night show audience member’s.
So by now we’ve all heard of the kerfuffle over David Letterman’s tasteless joke about Bristol Palin. I’m not going to link to it here because, besides behing a pretty bad joke, I also find it extremely slimly for him to go after a young woman who made a mistake.
As one might expect, an attack on Saint Sarah of Wasilla has caused much of the right-wing blogosphere to go completelybatshit insane. Now let me be clear, this was a terrible joke made in very poor taste and Letterman should not have made it.
But, rape? Are you kidding me? Anyone with any sense of humor would understand that this joke was a reference to Bristol Palin – still a joke in poor taste, but there is no way Letterman would joke about a 14 year old having sex with a 30 year old. Oh HEY he said so himself.
I’ve been seeing Kathryn Lopez link to this list of books that some people think “all” high schoolers should read before graduating. I’m definately with JohnDerbyshire on this. Back in high school I somehow got it into my head that I needed to read a bunch of Great Books in order to be smart. I read most of the stuff on that list (though I didn’t know of the list’s existence until a couple of days ago), as well as a few dozen books not on the list. I read a lot, honestly.
Then about half way through Anna Karenina, it dawned on me that virtually everything I was reading was a crashing bore. In the ten years since that reading spree, the only fiction I’ve read that wasn’t assigned to me in a class was Tolkien. Turning reading into something I had to do completely killed my desire to read. I think forcing any 16 year-old to read Virgil would have a similar effect; it’s simply more fun to watch television.
The negative consequences of forcing teenagers to read aside, I looked at the list, and I would actually advise against high schoolers reading most of what’s on there. Read the rest of this entry »
I tried watching the Daily Show last night. During the Bush years, I remember people defending Jon Stewart’s partisanship as a result of “oh, Republicans are in power, so they’re the people to attack.” Forget the fact that Republicans have only been partly in power since the 2006 elections, but whatever.
So now that Democrats are unquestionably in power, I thought I’d tune in to see if Stewert had become watchable. He hasn’t. A Democrat president with large Democrat majorties in Congress proposes a budget with World War II level deficit spending, and Stewert spends his section of the show making fun of those who criticize it? And not even making fun of them in a good way, but simply piecing together a dozen small clips from different people, each getting to say two or three words. Ha ha ha! We got Charles Krauthammer saying “Chinese numbers.” And then Stewert will say “Chinese numbers,” and then it will all be very funny because . . .
If your montage makes Charles Krauthammer look stupid, it’s a pretty good sign that you’ve made a dishonest montage. That’s forgivable for a comedian, except Stewert’s montage wasn’t funny. You’d think that if you were just going to piece together two or three random words from a dozen people you disliked, anyone could make a funny montage. But you’d be wrong.
Apollo posted this at 12:44 PM EST on Friday, March 6th, 2009 as Pop Culture Is Filth
Although entertainers can perform live, Minor insisted that Hudson and Faith Hill, who sang “America the Beautiful” before the national anthem, use the tracks the NFL requires them to submit a week before the game.
“That’s the right way to do it,” Minor said. “There’s too many variables to go live. I would never recommend any artist go live because the slightest glitch would devastate the performance.”
Yeah, someone should tell that to the Cardinals, whose slightest glitches devestated their performance tonight. Perhaps Minor would have advised that NBC just airing a recording of Pittsburgh v. Arizona as played on Madden 2009.
This fakery is getting ridiculous. If people wanted to listen to a cd, most homes and cars today can accommodate that. But when people watch musicians perform live, they want to see musicians perform live. Not hear somebody else play a cd.
Nobody deserves to call themselves an “artist” – whatever the hell that even means anymore – if they go out on a stage where a live performance is expected and give a fake performance. It’s a lie. Performing live is hard – that’s why performers get paid to perform. I’ve yet to meet a live music fan who expected the same sort of flawless performance from live music that you would demand from a studio track. But I’ve also yet to meet a live music fan who didn’t expect a performance.
If she had just walked out there, put a cd in a player, let it play, take the cd out, and walk away, she would have been booed till the stadium shook apart. Everyone knows that. But somehow it’s supposed to be a “performance” if she lies to us and pretends she’s singing.
I’m sorry Jennifer Hudson’s family got killed. It sounds like a real personal tragedy for her, and it would be perfectly acceptable for her to take off any amount of time she felt like to recover from that. But it is not acceptable to lie to the biggest television audience of the year just so she doesn’t have to deal with how hard it is to perform on cue.
P.S. If you think I’m overreacting, think of all the extremely talented but extremely unknown musicians in America who would be willing to commit felonies to have been in Hudson’s shoes tonight to sing live before the Super Bowl. Yet for the sake of getting some celebrity to do it, the NFL was willing to pass off that phony baloney.
Well that’s crap. Crap, crap, crappity crap.
P.P.S. And what’s Faith Hill’s excuse? I don’t remember hearing about her family getting killed. Is America so bereft of patriots and singers that we need a celebrity’s cd to know what America the Beautiful sounds like? What happened to classes of third graders, or whole stadiums singing as one? That’s patriotic singing. Or, hell, Ronan frickin’ Tynan, even though I think he over does everything, at least he does everything.
This commits the ultimate sin of political parody: it’s not funny. That’s aside from the obvious tone deafness, refusal to accept that opponents are sincere people with beliefs of their own, and reveling in religious ignorance that one expects from politically active celebrities. All that’s missing is a suggestion that anyone in favor of Prop. 8 is a closet case, though I’m obviously not as smart as these people so it may have been there and just went over my head.
It’s election season, so the leftwing blogosphere is demonstrating its class by smearing John McCain’s chief of staff. From the Puffington Host (No link to this garbage) (H/T):
Mark Buse is not just a Chief of Staff for a homophobic United States Senator, but he is helping that Senator get elected to the White House.
Does Mark Buse fit the Barney Frank rule? Without a doubt. While McCain voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment, he supports amending state constitutions defining marriage as between a man and a woman. McCain knows our country needs everyone who wants to serve in the military and he knows that DADT is wrong, yet he swings to the right on repealing it.
Worst of all, and a demonstration of his inability to act rationally and with the country’s best interests at heart, he picked someone who, if she becomes president (very likely), will be the most homophobic in American history.
With that in mind, and after confirming the information with two other sources, I decided it was time to present Buse the Roy Cohn Award for working against the interests of the lesbian and gay community while living as a gay man.
After dropping in some more smears, the Puffington Host says this about its source for the rumors:
My source, who did not know if Buse and his partner had an open relationship had a brief sexual encounter with Buse alone. The source, due to work considerations must remain anonymous.
A profile in courage, if ever there was one. The source should be named for this to be believable—and also so everyone knows that he makes Judas Iscariot look like St. Thomas More.
“Abstinence” means no masturbation? Admittedly, telling your friends that you can’t go out tonight because you’d rather sit around pleasuring yourself is several degrees of weird. But if the conservative answer to teen promiscuity is to gripe that too many teenage girls have taken up the banjo, we lose.