Alex Trebek, longtime and iconic Jeopardy! Host, announced his possible retirement on Sunday. At 78 years old and recently having had brain surgery, Trebek told Fox News that he is “50-50” for remaining host after his contract expires in 2020. Trebek’s departure, of course, wouldn’t be the end of the show, but it would leave […]
Television
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Recalling Pete Seeger’s Controversial Performance on the Smothers Brothers Show 50 Years Ago
Seeger had been blacklisted as a communist and this gutsy defiance of a corporate media giant marked his return to the mainstream cultural scene.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
New Documentary Challenges the Rhetoric of the So-Called War on Coal
Exactly one week after Trump’s announcement that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change, a new film from director Michael Bonfiglio premiered at National Geographic’s Washington, D.C.’s headquarters. From the Ashes closely examines the repercussions-environmental, health, economic-of something the Trump administration has not only denied, but has gone to great […]
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Ditching O’Reilly Is Not Enough
The real strike against a culture of sexual intimidation would be for British regulators to deny Fox’s bid for a satellite company.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Could Bill O’Reilly, the King of Cable News, Be Going Down?
Advertisers are fleeing his show and his future is in doubt. Here’s why it’s happening now, when he used to be invulnerable.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
How ‘Roots’ Reverberated in Africa
Roots revolutionized how Americans viewed and talked about black history. But its influence extended across the Atlantic, especially to West Africa and apartheid South Africa.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Winners and Losers in the Impending Ad Blitz
The presidential candidates and the outside groups backing them are opening up their wallets in a very big way leading up to the Iowa caucuses on February 1. The ad blitz means a windfall for some businesses and a financial loss for others. The big winners are local TV stations in the early primary states. […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Perpetually Outraged, Perpetually Outrageous
Donald Trump, a candidate with all the subtlety of talk radio, is the perfect expression of both the politics and media of our time.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Should We Relitigate the Iraq War in the 2016 Campaign? You Bet We Should
The question isn’t so much whether candidates will admit what a disaster Iraq was, but what they’ve learned from the experience.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Should We Relitigate the Iraq War in the 2016 Campaign? You Bet We Should
View image | gettyimages.com If all goes well, in the 2016 campaign we’ll be rehashing the arguments we had about the Iraq war in 2002 and 2003. You may be thinking, “Jeez, do we really have to go through that again?” But we do-in fact, we must. If we’re going to make sense of where […]
