I know Tyra Banks wants to be the next Oprah Winfrey, but unless she stops pulling her ignorant on-air stunts, she’s never going to come close to having the credibility of Oprah*.
I’m talking about last night’s America’s Next Top Model, which goes with this season’s “conscious” theme: The aspiring models did a photo shoot where they were supposed to be homeless.
One of the contestants, who used to be homeless herself, captured the irony pretty well—she stated that it was strange to be pretending to be homeless while wearing such nice, expensive clothes.
The whole thing was sick, and ignorant, and actually made a mockery of the plight of the 3.5 million people who experience homelessness in the U.S. in a given year. Before the judging began, the required shot of Tyra imitating the photo shoot showed her on her back, legs splayed at awkward angles, with a cardboard sign that said “Will Pose for Change.”
Congrats to Kay and Jesse for getting linked to by Matt Yglesias in writing about The Wire. Yet, since I felt compelled to complain about negligence of The Wire when it was not on, I think I should throw in my two cents now that it's back. The backlash that's starting to build should come as no surprise to anyone who's listened to music: it's the classic stock market beahvior of hype. The Wire has just peaked in hype terms during its fourth season, and, now, by the law of hype, it has to have a downturn. There's always some factor, and in this case, the reason is simple: now journalists are the target, and they don't want their world to be portrayed this way. More in extended. Read More »
If you’re not watching Adult Swim’s late-night cartoon Frisky Dingo (12 am on Saturday nights/Sunday mornings), you’re missing out.
Why watch news about an ever more protracted primary race, when you can get into the ‘real’ race for the White House: Killface (D) vs. Cruise Zander (R).
Killface, a maniacal monster once bent on world destruction, offers the Democratic ticket a unique bounce: He saved the world from global warming. Sure, he was trying to blow the planet up—only inadvertently shoving it a smidge away from the sun—but it’s results that matter, right?
Warning: this post is simply something I have to get off of my chest. It's mostly not political, nor is it original, but since we're posting (funny) Thiller videos now, I think I can write this.
As I watched the promising premiere of Mad Men last night on AMC (it repeats tonight at 7, and I'm sure several more times throughout the week; I highly recommend it), I saw that it was created by Matthew Wiener, one of the writers on The Sopranos, which led the primetime series Emmy nominations with 15. The Sopranos deserves to win one more Best Drama award, having unfortunately come along when the West Wing was rightly sweeping the category early in the decade. Now The Sopranos deserves to win, if only because a show that great deserves more than one Best Series win.
But I support it only because it's the best of the five remaining. I can live with Scrubs and Studio 60 basically not being recognized, because their quality this year was only very good, not great. But once again, The Wire, the best drama in the history of television, was not nominated. 0 nominations.
Before anyone calls me a snob, let me quickly point out that I thought Casino Royale should've been a strong contender for best picture at the last Oscars. But this lack of nominations, let alone any wins for 4 seasons, is unbelievable. One can understand leaving off Lost (early season letdown), 24 (by far its worst season), or Battlestar Galactica (the name, plus nothing really happened in its worst season so far). But The Wire has become better and better, with the 4th season being its best yet. As I said, this isn't an original post: TV critics from the AP to the Chicago Tribune to the San Francisco Chronicle brought this up. I'll leave you to choose your reason (the show has too many minorities, the voters don't have time to watch the whole season, and/or it's just not popular enough), but something about the system needs to be fixed, and I needed to say that too. Just rent the first disc of Season 1, and you almost certainly won't go back.
A current plot line on ABC's hit "Ugly Betty" (the most progressive show on network television) involves the travails of Ignacio Suarez, a Queens retiree with heart problems and no health insurance who is at risk of deportation even though his two daughters and grandson are all American citizens. Pegged to the recent up tick in workplace raids, today The Washington Postreports on some of the real-life families facing this dilemma. A few dozen brave kids are even lobbying on Capitol Hill for their parents' rights to remain in the country in which they've worked, paid taxes, bought real estate, and raised children.
But it's curious that reporter N.C. Aizenman writes, "Until recently, their parents' illegal status had limited impact on these children's lives." Although a number of private companies are willing to provide more financially secure illegal immigrants with services ranging from mortgages to health insurance, non-pregnant illegal immigrants and undocumented children over the age of 1 year are generally barred from Medicaid coverage -- just like Ignacio on "Ugly Betty." And children certainly are affected when their parents' health suffers.
With the risk of deportation for settled immigrant parents increasing, we're facing a moment of public reckoning. We learned from the Elián González fiasco that Americans generally oppose separating children from their parents. But that's exactly what will happen if we don't provide undocumented workers with a path toward citizenship.
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