It has been awhile, but having now finished a big project, I’m back to regular blogging. And what better topic for getting back into it than the current election stuff. I do have a lot to say. In particular, about this strange ascension of Hillary Clinton and the genuinely baffling coverage of the “race.” OK, that’s a cheap pun, but I had to. I’ll pass over the saucier stuff on, say, Vincent Foster, whose case would send lefties over the edge (rightly) if the name had been Bush or Cheney, not Clinton. There are other things to discuss. Read the rest of this entry »
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Yet again, we are treated to the distracting and delicious hypocrisy of the Right’s attack dogs. Yes, it again turns out that those self-appointed to watch over our morality have been doing the naughty stuff behind closed doors. Ted Haggard was an especially tortured case, and I felt conflicted about pouncing on his hypocrisy. But no such hesitation with David Vitter, conservative kook and prostitute lover from Louisiana. What more is there to say, really, than that Vitter is a big fake and pervert (defined with his terms alone)? Read the rest of this entry »
Let me add to the way-too-many posts around the internet concerning Cindy Sheehan. She’s such an odd player on the media-politics scene, really. Few real vocal sympathizers in the image-media scene – though, it is worth saying, her take on the War in Iraq has been pretty much mainstream for the past year: back that shit up and come home.
What has been so divisive, if not uniformly hostile, about Sheehan’s presence? I get the hostility from the Right. They want her to go away because she’s too public and too sensitive of a figure for blunt, mean-spirited critique. You could almost hear the Right’s sigh of relief when she met with Chavez. Read the rest of this entry »
Sean “Diddy” Combs is making another band. Last season he made this band, Danity Kane. Read the rest of this entry »
A recent episode of CSI: NY opened with a beautiful woman strutting her stuff at what appeared to be a strip club. Flash to the bathroom: she’s dead, head in the toilet, and the CSI crew is there to solve the crime. But who would kill this foxy Jane Doe in her prime? Read the rest of this entry »
In today’s Slate.com, Seth Stevenson writes up a soon-to-appear (as in tonight) miniseries on USA Network, entitled The Starter Wife. Fab write-up. One of my favorite lines, actually: “Having watched an advance DVD of the first three hours, I can offer a mini-review: two thumbs up. Up my own eye sockets.” That’s funny. The review, however, is about a whole lot more, namely, how this show might be pushing ahead a new trend in funding television and movies: single-sponsored work. That just icky. Read the rest of this entry »
I know it is probably a passing trend, but I find our concern, even obsession with exposed celebrity crotches both puzzling and fascinating. It is puzzling for obvious reasons. We have a fairly pornographic culture. What’s so shocking about a peek under a skirt? Shocking. For real. That’s what we’re supposedly thinking. Titillating? I can deal with that. But shocking is just odd – and I don’t buy that we’re a puritanical culture. Fascinating? Well, I think the fact that pantyless girl-junk has had “the best week ever” at some point signifies that such exposure is caught up in a wider national anxiety. Read the rest of this entry »
Slate.com recently ran a nice feature article about the promise and danger of new pill regimes that end monthly menstruation. William Saletan rightly notes that the worries about controlling women’s menstruation and messing with that nature are largely overblown. After all, in what sense could we call monthly periods “natural,” anyway? Read the rest of this entry »
Slate.com has an interesting write-up on a new technology, you know, the one making it possible to never menstruate again. Like the author, I’ll pass over the debate about the relation between womanhood, nature, and the body – not really my place to make a comment. Except this: I’m wary about the whole “keep technology off our bodies” rhetoric, not because of the politico-economic suspicions underlying the rhetoric (sound enough), but simply because technology is so deeply inside our bodies that we should talk more about boundaries than abolition. Rather, my main interest in this reflection is a familiar name: Jerry Falwell. What would Jerry think? Read the rest of this entry »
CMT 
has wrapped up round two of its Ultimate Coyote Ugly Search. The show goes like this: founder and original Coyote Lil picks five women from her franchise of bars to pair up with newcomers and vie–as a team–for $50,000 and the title “The Ultimate Coyote.” What does it take to be the ultimate coyote? It takes dancing, singing and entertaining. It takes teamwork as the “veterans” are expected to train the newbies from the ground up. But above all, it takes the ability to sell obscene amounts of liquor to a crowd thirsty for a lot more than booze. And these women are good at it.