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 . '/' . substr('9780140231199',-6,3) . '/' . '9780140231199' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Gore Vidal
$17.00
By Eric Hazan
$19.77
$24
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Wikimedia Commons
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The actor, who is mostly known for comedic roles, took on a serious tone when he used Twitter to focus on the gun debate that has emerged in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shootings.
Posted on Feb 6, 2013
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Illustration by Mr. Fish
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By Chris Hedges — The multifaceted Ishmael Reed has spent half a century destroying myths of the American empire, especially those that cement racism in place.
Posted on Dec 30, 2012
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Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer CC BY-SA 2.0
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By delivering a servile apology for singing lyrics that violently denounced the American military in 2004 at the height of its invasion of Iraq, South Korean rapper Psy has shown that, like many who enjoy fame and fortune, he has no backbone when it comes to criticizing American imperialism.
Posted on Dec 8, 2012
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Screenshot via MotherJones.com
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The popular HBO series “Game of Thrones” is often considered nerd porn, and yet it is more than just about war, sex, dragons and other mythical creatures. At its core, the game alluded to is entirely based on politics and, in some ways, mimics our modern political system. So what would happen in the Seven Kingdoms if super PACs existed?
Posted on Jun 21, 2012
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AP / Cliff Owen
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Can’t say the guy doesn’t have range. On Friday, George Clooney put his actor/director/good-time-guy persona aside to get serious about what he warned could become a catastrophe of global proportions, the crisis in Sudan, and he went so far as to get arrested in front of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, D.C., to make his point.
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Wikimedia Commons/The Boss~Live!
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Matt Damon has spoken of his disappointment with Barack Obama, his favorite candidate from 2008, and other famous Obama boosters from the last election cycle are also less willing to lend their names to the president’s cause this time around.
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Wikimedia Commons / Angela George (CC-BY-SA)
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There may be untold millions of onetime Obama boosters whose feelings of hope have significantly diminished since, say, November 2008—and with good reason. But on Tuesday night, one of the president’s celebrity supporters, Scarlett Johansson, showed she’s still willing to stump for Obama at a gathering in New York that brought fashionistas and politicos together.
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AP / Tony Gutierrez
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Conservative power ranger Chuck Norris has come out swinging for the GOP once again—this time, he’s willing to lend his unique celebrity brand to give Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign a boost with a memorably worded endorsement only he could compose.
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Wikimedia Commons / Seher Sikandar for rehes creative (CC-BY-SA)
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He’s certainly been rehearsing for this role for years (remember his post-Katrina floating photo op?), and now Sean Penn has an honest-to-goodness new post as the ambassador at large to Haiti, as of a special ceremony held in his honor last weekend.
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Wikimedia Commons / dodge challenger1 (CC-BY-SA)
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Snoop Dogg would like to speak to President Obama on behalf of a friend of his, and her name is Mary Jane. The pot-friendly rapper, né Calvin Broadus, also has visualized how this meeting would ideally take place at the White House.
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It takes master documentarian Adam Curtis only five minutes to explain what Rupert Murdoch’s war on elitism (and taste) has to do with Google.
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Victoria Jackson, “SNL” throwback and low-rent Lady Gaga, took another big misstep in her troubling transition from comedy to punditry with this Shariah-themed episode of “PolitiChicks,” which would play like self-parody if Jackson had the capacity for critical self-reflection.
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AP / Suzanne Plunkett
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By Deanne Stillman — On the day the towers fell, furies flew out of the hole in the ground and like all restless spirits, they headed west. I did not realize it at the time, of course, but did have the sense a few days after the dust began to settle at Ground Zero that things had shifted, a feeling that we all had, as if the world itself had gone off its axis.
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newsoftheworld.co.uk
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There might have been a changing of the guard among the top editors at the News of the World in recent months, but the British tabloid, part of the Murdoch family media dynasty, is going off the presses for good this weekend after a hacking scandal ... (more)
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Wikimedia Commons
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Another icon of the small screen has died, and with him goes a memorable role and a famous, if slightly bedraggled, khaki raincoat. On Friday, the news broke that “Columbo” star Peter Falk had died the day before at his home in Beverly Hills. He was 83.
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Flickr / Siebbi
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Matt Damon was apparently paying attention as he narrated “Inside Job,” Charles Ferguson’s Oscar-winning documentary about the architects of the ongoing global economic catastrophe, as he’s broken with the cohort of celebrities who ...
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AP / Jason DeCrow
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By Marcia Alesan Dawkins — We need to remember that beauty and race are both social constructions—concepts societies create that may not actually exist in nature. As a result, beauty and race are associated with and impacted by class, immigration, gender, sexuality and marketing.
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By Ruth Marcus — If there is a better illustration of the decline of American culture, the triumph of technology over privacy, and the end of shame as a motivating force, I can’t think of one.
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Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons —
Posted on Feb 25, 2011
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YouTube / Christine4Senate
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As if schlocky TV and American politics weren’t harrowingly similar enough already, this week brings the word that onetime tea party Senate hopeful Christine O’Donnell of Delaware got the invite to join the prancing cohort of celebs on the next “Dancing With the Stars.”
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AP / Koji Sasahara
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In the world of advertising, celebrity always equals money, and anything that these luminaries—whether from entertainment, sports or even politics—touch (even by accident) is tantamount to tangible, profitable product placement, right?
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Wikimedia Commons / Colin Chou (CC-BY-SA)
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Having lived through a scary air travel incident last weekend, Leonardo DiCaprio is giving some big cats a shot at survival in the form of $1 million, which the actor donated Tuesday at the first-ever international tiger summit, in Moscow.
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AP / Koji Sasahara
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Cast your mind back to a time before sex addiction qualified as a legitimate issue rather than a snarky euphemism (although for some that might still be the case). Hard to remember, what with the Bill Clintons and Tiger Woodses ... (continued)
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Adam Block / Mount Lemmon SkyCenter / University of Arizona
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By Deanne Stillman — A couple of days after I arrived in Tucson, there came a party invitation. The public was invited to the top of Mount Lemmon for a viewing of the annual Perseid showers, a breathtaking display of shooting stars. While I generally brake for sand, I also hit the road for star parties.
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AP / RIA-Novosti, Mikhail Klimentyev, Presidential Press Service
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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev took some time away from the Kremlin on Tuesday to chill at his resort home by the Black Sea, sip tea and talk saving the world and whatnot with U2’s do-gooder frontman Bono.
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Why President Obama’s gay marriage position has gotten completely absurd, why the DEA is after ebonics linguists and why Jane Austen just couldn’t hack it in today’s publishing world.
Posted on Aug 23, 2010
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Wikimedia Commons / Library of Congress
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What are we to make of the news that President Barack Obama swanned into Hollywood for a Democratic fundraiser this week and was not met by so-called event co-hosts Barbra Streisand and Jeffrey Katzenberg, although they ... (continued)
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tillmanstory.com
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By Richard Schickel — Thanks to the Establishment’s truly spectacular mishandling of this case—will they never learn, you can live with screw-ups, never coverups?—Pat Tillman left the country of celebrity and entered the land of myth, innocently, even perhaps tragically.
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Here we have one Kathleen Gustafson, miffed resident of Homer, Alaska, making her displeasure with former Gov. Sarah Palin clear by invoking the Bible, calling Palin a “celebrity”—no, that’s not a compliment—and hoisting ... (continued)
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AP / Seth Wenig
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She played a politician on TV, and now Geena Davis, who did a short stint as America’s first female president on “Commander in Chief,” is California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appointee for the Golden State’s Commission on the Status of Women.
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By Ruth Marcus — Sarah Palin’s failed candidacy and her ascendance to the ranks of political celebrity were, it turns out, the best thing that could have happened to Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston.
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Wikimedia Commons / Wiki edit Jonny
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It’s hard to imagine that many British citizens will be moved to cast their ballots in Thursday’s general election because Simon Cowell, the curmudgeonly mastermind behind such showbiz gems as “Britain’s Got Talent” and “American Idol,” thinks they should.
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AP / Matt Sayles
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George Lopez, Ricky Martin and Eva Longoria worked their Twitter platforms over the weekend to protest the passage of Arizona’s contested and detested new immigration law. For his part, comic Lopez cracked wise about racial profiling, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and Taco Bell ... (continued)
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Much like the biblical Job, the actor and official member of “the famous Baldwin brothers Hollywood clan” believes in God and has endured hardships. Now, although this particular Baldwin apparently hasn’t suffered from a plague of boils ... (continued)
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They’re rare, but there actually are a few Hollywood types out there who lean to the right, and even a couple who are willing to flex their conservatism in the public eye. Take Kelsey Grammer here, for example, who signals ... (continued)
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abcnews.go.com
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You know the drill: It all starts with the seductive glare of the klieg lights and the flashbulbs, followed by the ever-present entourage—stylists, publicists, various hangers-on—and the next thing you know, there’s a sex tape and someone’s career will never be the same ... as a politician, that is.
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When you’re in a movie about a countercultural figure as big as Allen Ginsberg, it’s going to be hard to avoid the political questions, and “Howl” stars Jon Hamm and James Franco, who plays the Beat-era poet in the film, were ready to hold forth at the Sundance Film Festival about one prominent political topic of our time: California’s Proposition 8.
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Wikimedia Commons / Efloch
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This is a time when celebrity can come in handy, and one star in particular, George Clooney, is lending his power to the cause of helping earthquake-ravaged Haiti. The actor-director is also rallying some of his famous friends to join him for a “mega-telethon” he’s planning, according to The Wrap.
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Never one to shrink from a strong debate, “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” author and Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges comes out swinging in this lecture recorded last month, giving his audience at the New School in New York City more than a few big ideas to grapple with about our current president, the state of our democracy and the cancer of celebrity culture in contemporary American society.
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Flickr / soylentgreen23
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Speculating and whispering about other people’s business is a time-honored (see: Ten Commandments), if tawdry, tradition, and gossip is also fueling quite a large international industry these days, in case you hadn’t noticed. But can its effects be deadly? A couple people quoted in this Wall Street Journal hearsay exposé seem to think it’s dangerous. But what’s to be done?
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By Ruth Marcus — Tiger Woods’ determined silence in the aftermath of his wee-hours encounter with a fire hydrant is a timely antidote to the too-much-information celebrity culture.
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Flickr / gdcgraphics
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The Church of Scientology counts several high-profile figures from the world of entertainment among its members—Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Kirstie Alley, to name a few—and they sometimes act as public advocates for their religion. However, one of their own, screenwriter and director Paul Haggis, has very publicly left the fold after taking issue with the church’s stance on Proposition 8.
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Flickr / Tony Shek
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There was a time when Hollywood studios kept their stables of stars on a short leash, keeping close watch over their public personas and even arranging their marriages. Actors at least appear to have more leeway these days, but some studios are requiring that they refrain from broadcasting the minutiae of their daily lives via social media like Facebook and Twitter.
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AP / Mark Duncan, File
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Not to speak ill of the dead, but really, Newseum? Is it necessary to further enshrine the late and already vigorously celebrated “Meet the Press” anchor Tim Russert by re-creating his NBC office as an exhibit?
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abc.go.com
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What’s up with erstwhile Republican congressional powerhouse Tom DeLay deciding to hoof it on “Dancing With the Stars” afore a national audience? Some of his GOP buds are perplexed by this unorthodox career maneuver, but as DeLay himself points out, politicians tend to love the spotlight.
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Is the unflagging popularity of reality television a sign of the entertainment industry’s relentless reliance on producing fodder for the lowest common denominator—or a symptom, as Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges argues in this clip from “GRITtv With Laura Flanders,” of a society in serious moral decline?
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hollywoodgrind.com
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After the likes of Ronald Reagan, Sonny Bono and Al Franken, Alec Baldwin’s (still tentative) musings about taking up the celebrity-politician mantle carry a certain sense of dramatic inevitability. The “30 Rock” star may play a Republican on TV but leans to the left in his offscreen life.
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Flickr/Derek Purdy
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Fresh off a fundraising stop in Las Vegas, where he made an appearance at Caesars Palace, President Barack Obama swung through Hollywood Wednesday evening to pitch woo to a star-studded crowd for the first time since taking office—but, as The Wrap’s Dominic Patten points out, it was a bit of a tough crowd this time around.
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