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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
tjwombat
Published Letters: 160 Editor's Choice: 6
As great as it is for Salon to have added the Video Dog feature, it's quite bewildering how many cute dancing kids and pictures of dogs you are posting. Sorry Mr. Happy Feet, but dancing kids on video are a dime a dozen - point a camera at a pre-schooler and there's yer video! Considering all of the pertinent (and available) stuff that's out there, what you so far have shown an interest in has a very, very low kitsch appeal. I honestly can't tell if you think this stuff is actually cute or ironic. Either one is lame.
Thanks for another wonderful piece by Cintra Wilson. I have to admit, though not quite as colorful as her family, what she describes is so much closer to my own experience every year that it makes me think that this (dare I say it, "multi-cultural" collision), is probably not that uncommon and is perhaps the unifying element in the paranoia that is the "War on Christmas" that we keep hearing about; the fact that Christmas is increasingly less about the christian religious aspects and more an excuse to hang with the "family" - the ever fractured, non-linear, extended-in-name only, bizarre entity that is the american family. It seems to me that the cultural wars are nothing more than taking a look in the mirror and seeing the edifice of every accepted cultural norm being turned on it's head and a shitload of people that are, like, "okay" with it.
I saw portions of this show late last night (it's been running repeatedly because comeuppance is such a popular spectator sport). I too found it a little creepy, and as much of a weasel as Frey may be, I felt more than a little sorry for him comming under the stern glare of the Queen of TV Literacy. So Oprah got Pnk'd when her latest cause celebre turned out to be white-trash fiction! Happens to every crusading TV star eventually. Should we be all that surprised that a book publisher sold an outrageous piece of semi-fiction as a courageous "memoir" so we could all vicariously experience his heroic struggle? I call that intellectual slumming. Good reading at the spa though....
I always thought that the populat genre of published memoirs to be about as "truthful" as reality TV - as soon as the camera comes out, the editing starts. In the end who really expects "truth" from THAT?!
What an odd pairing. I guess it makes sense seeing as how both are verbose pop culture critics. I just hope Cintra can get a word in edgewise what with Camille's speed-freak allocution. With Stewart at the helm this should make for an entertaining car wreck of an evening. I think it's a great idea!
This sounded like a good idea but I shoulda known better. Camille Paglia praises the love theme from Titanic but dismisses Wallace and Gromit as "crap"?! Jeesuz! Get someone with a clue! You know, I love Cintra and would read almost anything she has to say about celebrities and actors but this chatty dismissive shit is handled better by Kathy Griffin on "The D-List". But really, the Oscars are so worn-out as a cultural event that it doesn't really matter. I only watched for John Stewart and some of the bits were inspired but in the end even he couldn't save this from sagging under the weight of it's own inertia. Oh well....
It's odd how many people are falling all over themselves to state how unimportant and/or misguided (and therefore forgettable) Mr. Colbert's performance was. It's strange the amount of vehemance being leveled at such a tepid performance. The complainers seem to want it both ways; he was "airless" and "uninspired" but he was also too "biting" and "pointed". The idea of "speaking truth to power" is dismissed as only being appropriate when applied to situations in which apparently death is the outcome (how these right-wingers wish for just such a political landscape), but then they go on to prove it's aptness by piling on and lending their voices to the throng of great pontificators crying "foul" and worse yet, "unfunny!". If indeed his only crime was being unfunny then his performance would have been relegated to the dustbin of past performers who agreed to do "nice" and then forgotten. I'm sure Jay Leno would have been perfect.
So obviously it was some words that were said that has caused this great outcry, but worse than that, "ideas" that were inferred that were not agreeable to the Boy King and those who rush about trying to shelter him. This administration is allergic to words not scripted and approved well in advance so it's pretty rediculous for Cohen to demand that Mr. Colbert say things that were "needed to be heard". Colbert's whole routine is predicated on the fact that the press consistantly assumes that commenting on artificial constructs passed off as "policy" by the administration is real journalism. It's always surprising to me how many right-wingers don't "get it" and regularly appear on Colbert's show as if the fact that he plays a mock conservative mouthing garbled, distended versions of sanctioned talking points is "good enough". It's almost as if just hearing a proximation of what stands for "conservative" is just as acceptable as the "real thing" because they spend so much time spinning reality into a pretzel shape that they are unable to recognize irony when it bites 'em on the ass which, sorry to say, is what happened to all of the tender-minded members of the press and the administration who are now working really hard to ignore the sting.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
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