Is it legal for a company to take out Internet ads on your name after you’ve filed a complaint against it? Apparently so.
Television
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
All the President’s Frenemies
In publicly attacking Obama are Tavis Smiley and Cornel West upholding the tradition of MLK or acting out of personal pique—or both?
Posted inCivil Rights in America
More on the Playboy Club
Here’s a follow-up to my mini-review last week of NBC’s The Playboy Club: a Daily Beast article, “My Mom’s Life as a Playboy Bunny,” by Susanna Spier. Spier interviews her mother about what things were really like. Was Hugh Hefner’s comment — that bunnies could be anything they wanted to be — accurate? Ha. We […]
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
A Liberal’s Guide to Middle Earth
HBO’s new show Game of Thrones goes beyond the black and white of good versus evil and delves into the gray.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Consuming Passions
How the successors to Love Connection and The Dating Game reduce love to a consumer choice.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Do Ask, Do Tell: Freak Talk on TV
Daytime television has become a “freak show,” but it’s also an opportunity (and not an entirely bad one) for gays and others with nonconforming lives to talk directly with the public.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
The Trouble With Teletubbies
Jerry Falwell was right: the Teletubbies are insidious, but not because they’re insinuating dubious ideas into the minds of one-year olds. The program is the culmination of PBS’s long drift toward commercialization.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Essay: Look at Me! Leave Me Alone!
Which is stronger, the craving for publicity or the desire for privacy? The Truman Show demonstrates how tightly married these impulses are.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Imagesbusters, the Sequel
Can’t we fight televised mayhem and the real thing too?