Are Americans sacrificing the possibility of a more tolerant humanity for a suffocating guarantee of fidelity, a frigid prospect that seemingly unites the commissars of the politically correct left as much as it does the thought police of the puritanical right?
Is it possible to pluck the Beatles’ psychedelic classic “Yellow Submarine” out of its original 1968 context, remake it and plunk it down somewhere around the year 2012 ... just in time for the London Olympics?
“Life and Fate” by Vasily Grossman is one of the greatest works of 20th century literature. A new theatrical adaptation is innovative, but ultimately loses the epic’s profound meditations on good and evil.
The American television industry is in crisis, according to Advertising Age critic Bob Garfield, who figures prominently in The Wrap’s two-part look into the future of the industry. In fact, says Garfield, we’re seeing early signs of “the total collapse of the network television model.”
This has to rank among the more embarrassing airport diplomacy blunders in post-9/11 America: U.S. immigration officials pulled Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh “King” Khan aside for questioning at the Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday, failing to recognize the “King of Bollywood,” thus causing an international stir of a decidedly undesirable sort.
Are we entering an age in which the electronic image, endowed with the ability to manufacture its own reality, is hurling us into a state of collective self-delusion? Welcome to a brave new post-literate world where we confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge.
With multiple gadgets and screens constantly running, and perhaps even a different sense of time than our forebears had, it’s no surprise that powering down long enough to curl up with a book is becoming an endangered activity—although, as David L. Ulin argues in the Los Angeles Times, it’s still a very vital contemplative practice to pursue.
Sarah Palin is facing several challenges these days, what with her pile of legal bills, self-reinvention campaign, the whole not-being-governor thing and her daughter Bristol’s pesky ex-boyfriend, Levi Johnston, who seems to want to bask in the limelight as long as possible. Most recently, Johnston, 19, made an appearance at Sunday’s Teen Choice Awards ... as the date of comedian Kathy Griffin, 48.
Now 90 years old, America’s exemplary troubadour continues his lifelong project to agitate and organize through song, fulfilling his father’s dictum that “Music, as any art, is not an end in itself, but is a means for achieving larger ends.”
Now, everyone knows that even the toniest of Ivy League institutions recently suffered substantial blows to their massive endowment funds, but Harvard University’s idea to launch a menswear line called Harvard Yard just seems like school branding gone horribly awry.
The economic downturn has been rough on countless industries, and arts organizations in New York City that rely on endowment money to survive have been hit hard—not just, as City Journal’s James Panero points out, by the immediate effects of the meltdown felt round the world, but also by the “indirect effects” of how some of their funds have been managed.
Amazon’s Kindle reader might still be a great device in the estimation of some literary aficionados, but the honeymoon is over for Michigan high school student (and potential member of Future Lawyers of America) Justin D. Gawronski, who’s getting litigious with the online superseller after his copy of George Orwell’s “1984” was yanked from his Kindle in July.
It’s no secret that Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly don’t get along, but the two TV personalities have drastically scaled back their attacks on one another ever since a private meeting between GE and News Corp. CEOs determined the feud was bad for the bottom line.
Was Socrates an atheist, a guru to a strange sect and an elitist corrupting the youth of a democratic Athens defeated in the Peloponnesian War, as his accusers successfully charged? A new book by Robin Waterfield seeks to dispel the myths about “Why Socrates Died.”
Read this brilliant and humorous chapter from Chris Hedges’ new book and marvel as the Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent makes sense of reality television.
Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges talks about his new book, “Empire of Illusion,” with the Philadelphia Inquirer. The book connects cultural decline with the transformation of America into a “corporate state run by and on behalf of corporations rather than citizens.”
Despite any illusions some of us may still harbor about our manual dexterity and multitasking prowess behind the wheel, a study conducted by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute has found that text messaging and driving really don’t mix. Surprise.
Why are New Orleanians—along with people from all over the world who continue to flock there—so devoted to a place that was, even before the storm, the most corrupt, impoverished and violent corner of America? “Nine Lives” by Dan Baum helps provide an answer.
In late June, French President Nicolas Sarkozy made it clear that he’s no fan of the burqa, calling the concealing garment worn by some Muslim women a symbol of “subservience.” But right around that same time, a fashion show consisting of only abayas, the requisite attire of Saudi women, hit the runway in Paris.
It’s not news that the planet is in trouble, that global food and energy supplies won’t last long at the current rate of consumption, and that we’ve basically got a big mess on our hands as the species most responsible for all of the above and more. What’s the human race to do? Why, the answer may lie in intelligence augmentation, according to The Atlantic’s Jamais Cascio.
Although the pope and other prominent Christians have registered their disapproval of the Harry Potter franchise in the past, the newest film in the series, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” is getting glowing reviews from fellow members of their fold. It’s not quite on the level of WWHPD? but some are noting the teenage wand-wielder’s similarities to a certain other powerful young man from a very popular book.
One of the news industry’s longest-living legends, Walter Cronkite, died of cerebrovascular disease Friday at the age of 92. Over the course of his storied career as the anchor of CBS News, Cronkite covered some of the biggest events of the 20th century. He himself coined his famous and often-quoted sign-off line: “And that’s the way it is. ... ”
The daunting problems Bush’s successor has inherited may prove all but insurmountable as he makes his way through a thicket of difficulties—the nuclear ambitions of authoritarian regimes, the quagmire of Mesopotamia and the persistent bloodletting in Pakistan and Afghanistan, to name only the most prominent. A recent book by David E. Sanger, a longtime foreign affairs correspondent for The New York Times, offers a close-up look at the world Obama confronts.
Vanity Fair’s Brett Berk has detected a mini-pattern playing out in the film world, starring (but certainly not limited to) “Brüno,” Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest attempt at biting social satire. It’s “Pinkface”—or the cinematic phenomenon in which straight guys play gay by way of trying to “lay claim to homosexuality as a ‘topic’” with less-than-stellar results, judging by Berk’s sum-up of the situation.
The time frame for projecting the success or failure of a newly released film has already been compressed to the point of asphyxiation, thanks to the Internet, but with the popularity of social networking services like Twitter, the window of box office opportunity has become even shorter, according to The Wrap’s Sharon Waxman.
India May Hold the Whip Hand in Dubai Power Game
