"Liberal nostalgia cozies up to power in the form of a zombified Ronald Reagan"

Review of Trainwreck by Sady Doyle

"The "Meet the Press" and Creation Museum appearances are part of a broader cultural renaissance for the former host of "Bill Nye, the Science Guy," a popular PBS Kids show for much of the 1990s, and the fawning doesn’t end with the press. Policymakers sing his praises as liberally as liberal pundits, with one White House official even telling Mother Jones that President Barack Obama himself “lights up when he sees Bill.”"

by Ted Gioia

"Gang Leader for a Day succeeded in large part because of Sudhir, the narrative contrivance that helps a general audience engage Venkatesh’s subjects without preconceptions and at the same time understand the rarified project of ethnography. Just as Venkatesh needed J. T., we middle-class readers need Sudhir to guide us through this foreign world. But in Floating City Venkatesh doesn’t seem to know where to leave Sudhir behind, and where to rely on the assuredness of his remarkable and approachable scholarly work, which makes clear how (for example) sex work can be a “career” or a part-time job rather than a tragic fate. And uncommonly, Venkatesh is a better writer in an academic voice than in the stilted, dumbed-down prose of his trade books. Having spent a memorable day with him in person, I wanted to hear again from this aspiring public intellectual, confidently navigating the terra incognita between academic credibility and mainstream influence. Instead, in Floating City we get a cardboard cutout, a rehash, a trade editor’s idea of how to make a scholar “relatable” to a general audience."

"Branson: Behind the Mask by Tom Bower Faber, 368 pp, £20.00, February, ISBN 978 0 571 29710 8"

"I chatted with Liberman about his post and his concerns, which were aimed mostly at the journal Science for publishing the study. He did wonder why certain papers get worldwide coverage – Sometimes it happens with studies that re-enforce prejudices and other times it’s those counter-intuitive ones. In my experience, anything with a self-help angle gets editors excited, and reporters are less likely to question studies that seem to re-enforce those prejudices they’re proud of. A preference for “literary fiction” sits well – a preference for Ivy League students, perhaps not so much."

"This paper assesses the impact of theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking’s warning about the possibly malicious intent of extraterrestrial visitors on the public opinion of the search for life in the universe, which is the domain of the interdisciplinary science of astrobiology. Using Web content analysis and sentiment analysis methods, 13 distinct categories of opinion are proposed, suggesting the role of Web comments as both public forums and naturalistic data sources. The results suggest that a significant percentage of those studied agreed with Hawking purely on the merits of his reputation, but those who disagreed tended to claim that Hawking’s argument failed logically or scientifically. How cross–domain authority manifests on the Web, and the influence of celebrity scientists on the public perception of astrobiology, are discussed."

"Lovelock, who introduced the Gaia Hypothesis describing life on Earth as a vast self-regulating organism some 40 years ago, also stated that since 2000, warming had not happened as expected.

"The climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now," Lovelock told MSNBC.com in an interview.

While warming may not have reached Lovelock's expectations, it is clearly happening"

"Ashley Judd’s 'puffy' appearance sparked a viral media frenzy. But, the actress writes, the conversation is really a misogynistic assault on all women. P"

When most people hear “NPR,” they think Cokie Roberts, Nina Totenberg, Robert Siegel, and for some on the far right, all that is wrong with the mainstream liberal media. But beneath the veneer of the "Minnesota nice," a simmering battle has been waged, and in the balance hangs NPR’s future and perhaps even its soul—as either a nonpartisan defender of in-depth journalism or a target of the partisan sniping of the sound-bite era. David Margolick explores how NPR’s management managed to squander the advantages of the national dole, deep-pocketed donors, a roster of top-notch reporters, and the loyalty of legions of devoted Click and Clack fans—and whether it can recover from the annus horribilis of 2011.

What motivates young adults to start using the popular microblogging site Twitter? Can we identify any systematic patterns of adoption or is use of the service randomly distributed among internet users of this demographic? Drawing on unique longitudinal data surveying 505 diverse young American adults about their internet uses at two points in time (2009, 2010), this article looks at what explains the uptake of Twitter during the year when the site saw considerable increase in use. We find that African Americans are more likely to use the service as are those with higher internet skills. Results also suggest that interest in celebrity and entertainment news is a significant predictor of Twitter use mediating the effect of race among a diverse group of young adults. In contrast, interest in local and national news, international news, and politics shows no relationship to Twitter adoption in this population segment.

Book forum on Oprah:The Gospel of an Icon

"What do people want from Sheen? I’m not denying he has drug and alcohol problems—or even that he might struggle with mental illness. But so do a lot of people in Hollywood who hide it much better—or who the celebrity press just doesn’t care enough about. What fascinates us is the hedonism he enjoys and that remains the envy of every man—if only women weren’t around to keep them liars. (His supposed propensity for violence against women hasn’t hurt his popularity with female fans either.) Do we really want manners? Civility? Empire courtesy? Hell, no. We want reality, no matter how crazy. And this is what drives the Empire to distraction: Sheen doesn’t care what you think of him anymore, and he scoffs at the idea of PR. “Hey, suits, I don’t give a shit.” That’s his only commandment. Sheen blows open the myth that if men try hard enough, they will outgrow the adolescent pursuit of pleasure and a life without rules or responsibilities."

"Ellis, ever the Zeitgeist Whisperer, was right to catch wind of a backlash against the current prominence of recovery in pop culture, from Lindsay Lohan's neverending courtroom drama to Karl Lagerfeld's "quotation" of alcohol-detector ankle bracelets in a recent fashion show. The transformative storyline of recovery, so perfectly attuned to the rhythms of modern-day fame, not to mention the crash-and-burn arc of VH1's Behind the Music, has become the most prominent celebrity narrative, a myth of hubris and redemption, in which the modern-day Prometheus is struck down at the height of their acclaim, spirited down to the underworld to do battle with their demons, before emerging victorious and chastened, a new album clamped under their armpit, with liners notes that thank God and say things like "Here are the songs that mark my journey." "

"The most fascinating part of the Black story is that she’s actually famous now, which was exactly the reason her parents gave $2,000 to ARK Music Factory in the first place. From Black herself on her unlikely fame, “I think that’s an accomplishment you know, even a person who doesn’t like it, it’s going to be stuck in their head. So that’s the point of it, it’s a catchy song.” Exactly.

Get used to this kind of stuff. As society advances technologically, culture becomes a parody of itself, and we enjoy the parody, intentional or not, more than anything sincere. But what becomes of the Antoine Dobsons and the Rebecca Blacks, our Internet culture folk heroes?"

"On the contrary: Charlie Sheen is the tired face of the American dream, in ways that we don't often enough have the backbone, wisdom, or grace to (want to) admit, starting with a hilariously bankrupt definition of "success."

What's wrong with this stunted definition? It's simply, simplistically about zero-sum, near-term WINNING — in a way that chronically, systemically undervalues the future, nature, other people, society, and even our own selves."

"Long before "Survivor," the eccentric who created "The Gong Show" discovered that people will do anything to get on TV, and others will watch them."

"John Lennon was a hero, not just for his music but for his fearless activism against the Vietnam War," declares Bill Easterly. "Is there a celebrity activist today who matches Lennon's impact and appeal?"
Sample is way too small, more cute than accurate.

But despite our legitimate desire for transparency, diplomacy relies crucially on the existence of a backstage, especially when dealing with dispersed and murderous terrorist organizations. So count me as one progressive who is uneasy about this effort to indiscriminately tear down as many curtains as possible, and then to foreground and luxuriate in the most adolescent, gossipy elements of life in the backstage.

Using Twitter, Facebook, corporate-news punditry, readable memoirs and reality television, Palin has managed to subvert traditional media. Rather than pay for advertising, she is getting paid to advertise her politics. Rather than wait for kingmakers to declare her a contender, she smirks while predicting her victories. Her reality show is a pinnacle of this new media-saturation strategy. The show's producer, Mark Burnett of Survivor and The Apprentice, pioneered the infiltration of reality shows into network lineups. His ingenious use of product integration exploded the profitability and desirability of reality television. While highbrow critics mocked the lame, melodramatic obviousness of reality TV, the genre revolutionized American entertainment. Sarah Palin's Alaska is the ultimate test of this form. Will product placement of a candidate prove to be the flattest, fastest, newest route to the American presidency?

And then the answer occurred to me: The talk about Michael Jackson's death isn't about him, it's about us. Most of what is said about Jackson's significance isn't about him as an actual person, rather it is about an era of our history, or the trajectory of race relations in the United States, or the evolution of MTV, or people's memories of the eighties.

A simple test: If your fairy godmother appeared and offered to make you famous, can you honestly maintain you'd say "no thanks"? The reason you'd take her up on it is that you know that if you were famous you would have achieved what you, and all of us in this society, believe to be the very purpose of life: you would have fulfilled your destiny. Finally, that nagging feeling of being one step away from happiness would go away, because you would have taken that last step.

Does entertainment disguise something?

For all that has been written on individual pop icons and sitcoms and the liberating or oppressive power of popular culture, basic questions remain unanswered. What do we know about the overall effect of living in a society in which entertainment is so central?

re: Michael Jackson. Maybe in grieving so exorbitantly over this freak America is grieving for itself. All the loose talk about "love" from the media and the fans gives off the odor of self-love. America is "the man in the mirror," the gigantic, floundering Narcissus, sailing into the stormy seas of history.

...to the question, in my opinion, is because Obama effectively ate a huge chunk of the left. And really, Obama didn't eat a huge chunk of the left, celebrity did.

The two primary features of the post political age are a politics completely drained of all its contents and ability or willingness to be used as an agent of change in social or economic policy, and its full integrations into the world of American popular, consumer and entertainment culture. To such an extent that there exists today a seamless web between our political, economic, media and consumer cultures wherein the modes and values of one are completely integrated and compatible with the others.