Once upon a time, parents rebuking children for immature behavior would admonish them, "Act your age!" In today's crazed world of moral relativism it is the last thing some adults are allowing youngsters to do. Seemingly everywhere you turn you find evidence of our culture prodding the young into adopting the trappings of adulthood. The November 27 issue of Advertising Age reports that "makeup manufacturers...are selling products to an increasingly younger audience. Wary of controversy, they are walking a fine line in targeting consumers as young as age eight with cosmetics marketing and advertising." I'm glad the manufacturers realize that... continue reading
That incredible echo you hear on network TV news these days is the sound of network anchors deep in the tank for Al Gore. It was one of the most instructive lessons of media bias in modern times. Florida's duly elected Secretary of State Katherine Harris officially certified Florida's election on Sunday night, stating that George W. Bush won the state's 25 electors. That, coupled with Bush's other 246 electoral votes, means Bush won the presidency, right? Well, if you're a network anchorman in the Age of Is Is, it means next to nothing until the Gore lawyers have climbed... continue reading
California's Supreme Court Justice Rose Bird became a national symbol in the 1970s and '80s as the quintessential outrageous liberal activist judge, putting aside all legal precedents in the service of ideology. The Florida Supreme Court is making Rose Bird look like Big Bird. On the night of November 21, the seven justices sent out an incredibly harsh unanimous decision excoriating Florida's duly elected Secretary of State, who they claimed attempted "to summarily disenfranchise innocent electors in an effort to punish dilatory board members" filing late recounts," and the right to endless recounts supersedes "a hypertechnical reliance upon statutory provision."... continue reading
Some conservatives tend to overstate when arguing the case against modern culture. No one movie, television show, novel, song, or painting, no matter how corrosive, hastens more than infinitesimally the demise of Western civilization, and most works of art don't do even that. Much more common - and problematic - than such conservatives, however, are the complacent liberals who badly underestimate art's potential to negatively influence persons and, eventually, whole societies. One of those liberals is Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times, who, in a long analytical piece published in the November 5 edition of his newspaper, wrote, "The... continue reading
Give credit to Michael Kinsley and his staff at the liberal Web site Slate.com. The day before the election, almost the entire staff declared which presidential candidate they would be voting for and why. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority (including 12 of 13 top editors) voted for Al Gore. But it would be tremendously refreshing if all journalists were this honest around election time, to let us know their voting behaviors and rationales. What they do instead - pretend that they're utterly nonpartisan, and so is their work product - is maddening in its perpetual dishonesty. After all, wouldn't their actual... continue reading
In forging a well-deserved reputation as perhaps the most sex-driven broadcast network, Fox has been subjected to frequent whackings from television critics and cold shoulders from the industry elite. The ribald "Married...With Children" and the steamy "Melrose Place" drew plenty of viewers, but little favorable press attention and few award nominations. Now Fox is trying something a little different. It has put together a Monday-night lineup of what might be called "smart smut." That term is plausible because the programs in question, the new drama "Boston Public" and the long-running "Ally McBeal," are the brainchildren of David Kelley, who two... continue reading
When rock 'n' roll took a young generation by storm in the mid-1950s, it was routinely denounced on both musical and social grounds. In time, it was accepted by most: Elvis was a threat to himself, not to America. In the late 1980s, a remarkably violent, vituperative form of rap music, "gangsta rap," emerged. Its most successful practitioners included N.W.A., best known for "F-- tha Police"; Ice-T, best known for "Cop Killer"; and Tupac Shakur, best known for dying as a result of a drive-by shooting. But no one then seemed to care very much about this, and today that... continue reading
The TV pundits talked themselves hoarse into the wee hours of the morning playing Monday morning quarterback to see what variables might have altered the election results for each candidate. What if Bush had not wasted time and resources in California, but applied them to Florida instead? Should Gore have used Bill Clinton more, and what if he hadn't grunted throughout the first debate? What about the Nader factor? With all that air time to fill, the network news experts could have held another fascinating discussion. What about the media factor? Let's rewind just through October, and ask how a... continue reading
If a bio sheet is meant to be a human productivity report, skeptics might question Steve Allen's molecular structure. He created and hosted the "Tonight" show, created and starred in the critically-acclaimed "Steve Allen Comedy Hour," and created and hosted the PBS series, "Meeting of Minds." He starred on Broadway, wrote the drama "The Wake," and composed the score for several musicals. He spent years on the concert circuit with his wife, Jayne Meadows. The honors he collected for his work in the entertainment industry are endless. Away from the camera he was even more prolific. He recorded 52 albums... continue reading
When Republicans win the White House, it's never the force of their ideas. It has to be some kind of dirty trick. Think back to 1988, and the endless barrage of news stories condemning the independent pro-Bush ads focusing on Willie Horton, the convicted murderer who was released on a weekend furlough and traveled to Maryland and raped a woman. It didn't matter that the Bush campaign didn't produce the ad. Throughout the entire Bush presidency (and even beyond), the major media vented their collective spleen at Republican race-baiting, the exploitation of white fears of black crime. The National Association... continue reading