Free Republic

LAWEEKLY entertainment columnist Nikki Finke: ABC/TOUCHSTONE's COMMANDER IN CHIEF series creator Rod Lurie replaced as showrunner by Steve Bochco today because of what sources say was Lurie's wanting to show a 'rough sex' scene between the President's daughter and a Secret Service agent in the back of a limo... Developing...

It was a typical American teen scene: high schoolers watching music videos on a computer, bobbing their heads to the beat. Soon, Thaddeus McDaniels and his San Jose buddies were break dancing -- pops, jackhammers, head spins -- on the living room floor. But their choice of music was anything but American: Drunken Tiger, Rhyme Shark and BoA -- musical missionaries from East Asia who are riding a wave of Korean pop culture that's crossed the Pacific. Buoyed by the popularity of Japanese culture, such as anime and pop music, Korea has emerged as the new cool. Americans young and...

The TV show Dallas helped overthrow Ceausescu. Now gangsta rap and pop culture are driving out corrupt post-Soviet thugs.Mr. Benea, regrettably, is not in. Yes, our 12 p.m. interview was on the calendar, and certainly he appreciates that it was a hot three-hour train trip from the Romanian capital city of Bucharest to Slobozia, a forgettable little transit town halfway to the Black Sea. But Mr. Benea is, um, at an important meeting. Very busy man. The lobby of the Hermes Land Hotel is as deserted as the set of a long-canceled television show. The parking lot outside does not...

Despite high-profile events such as terrorist bombings, the war in Iraq, record high gasoline prices and others, figures recently released by The Audit Bureau of Circulation for the first half of 2005 show a drop in readership of news magazines, while celebrity magazines’ circulations are booming. The statistics are revealing. Circulation of “Time” remained stagnant at 4.5 million with newsstand sales falling 3.4 percent. Sales of “Newsweek” at newsstands plunged 14 percent, although total circulation went up slightly to 3.2 million. But “People” magazine’s circulation rose to 3.8 million and it was the number one magazine seller on newsstands, averaging...

Pop culture heroes help recruit priests By Julia Duin THE WASHINGTON TIMES August 11, 2005 An edgy poster showing a somber Catholic priest in full black cassock and sunglasses posed like "The Matrix" star Keanu Reeves is proving so popular that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has snapped up 5,000 of them. They'll be distributed starting Monday to the thousands of young people attending World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, not only as guests of Pope Benedict XVI, but as targets for some gentle recruiting. The poster's creator, the Rev. Jonathan Meyer, 28, associate director of youth ministries for...

What an Independence Day holiday. I attended three free concerts on three different days that – if I had to pay to listen to these performers - would have cost thousands of dollars. On Saturday, July 2, my wife, my youngest daughter and I were among the approximately one million people on Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway listening to Black Eyed Peas, Bon Jovi, Destiny’s Child, Will Smith, Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys, and others perform for the Live 8 concert. On Monday July 4, I returned to that same location – along with about a half a million people - to...

Burger King has yanked some sexually suggestive material from one of its chicken-hawking websites, but denies its actions were prompted by any public outrage. In order to promote its chicken fries, the fast-food chain created "CoqRoq.com," which features a fictitious rock band wearing chicken heads. In the photo gallery section of its site, Polaroid-style pictures of young women appeared with captions that read, "Groupies Love the Coq" and "groupies love Coq." "Just the name Coq Roq in general is offensive to families," Aliza Pilar Sherman, an author on women and the Internet, told Advertising Age. "I can't imagine if...

The innocuous carton of eggs, the milk, and bread moved along the black conveyer belt as my daughters surveyed the candy on the rack behind me in the checkout line at the grocery store. As they excitedly begged peanut M&Ms, my eyes drifted up and went wide as my jaw dropped at the sight of the licentious magazine cover before me. Public Shock and Private Failure I hastily flipped the magazine over and embarked on a quest to find the store manager, groceries in hand and daughters in tow. “Have you seen this?” I queried, showing him the magazine cover....

The Popularity of Black Culture Among White Adolescents Brent Staples in his article, “The Politics of Gangsta Rap” explains, “Tom Wolfe’s essay “Radical Chic”, published in 1970, is still the best window into the notion that magical nobility is somehow conferred upon the dispossessed. The essay lampoons the party thrown by conductor Leonard Bernstein for a group of Black Panthers at which the Panthers were fawned over by New York’s elite” (79). The idea of ennobling the dispossessed has a distinctly American ring to it. America, a country that is steeped in the lore of bootstrap ascents and rags to...

RECESSIONAL On June 22,1897 - 108 years ago - the great Rudyard Kipling wrote: " The tumult and the shouting dies- The captains and the kings depart-" My mind flashes back to the very recent television news coverage of the Michael Jackson trial. The verdict is in : " Not Guilty !" The watching crowds outside the courthouse scowl with disappointment - or exchange "high fives" and shouts of joy. Behold ! The Great One - now acquitted - rushes from the courthouse, surrounded by his entourage ! He waves, and enters a black SUV ,which drives away ...followed by...

"No matter what happens in the future, rock and roll will save the world," said The Who guitarist Pete Townshend. The Live 8 concert may not quite put his forecast to the test, but it once again raises the question of whether microphone diplomacy and a pair of wraparound sunglasses cuts any ice with world leaders. The first Live Aid centred on fundraising in the wake of television pictures of African famine. Twenty years on, the rock campaigners are more political. Geldof's "just give us your f-ing money" cry is aimed not at the public but at the leaders of...

If ol' Barney Fife, Andy Griffith's deputy, were critiquing contemporary popular culture, he'd pop out his eyes, get that tremor in his voice and warble, "This is big! I mean, this is really big!" The vast breadth of what we call pop culture is astounding. From Tony Hawk to Tony Soprano, 50 Cent to Nickelodeon, Harry Potter to Paris Hilton, "World Series of Poker" to "Grand Theft Auto," there's so much of interest to talk about that no wonder we sometimes end up yelling about it. For some, the culture wars are an even bigger tent that covers political issues...

Everybody has done it: Put on their best deep Darth Vader voice and said, "Psssggssttt, Luke, I am your father." But Ron Purvis, a Frankfort father of two, wanted to be able to do it for real. So, 10 years ago, little Luke Purvis came into the world, shouldering his father's hopes that he would embody all the fundamentally good qualities of his celluloid namesake -- Star Wars hero Luke Skywalker. Luke Purvis even tried to wield The Force when another Purvis boy was born. Anakin, he told his parents, we need to call him Anakin. Fearing that Anakin would...

After listening to caller feedback on the scores of radio interviews I’ve done so far on my new book, Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture That’s Gone Stark Raving Mad, I’ve got a renewed passion for my heartfelt message: Parents can fight the culture -- and win. Caller opinion is astoundingly consistent. Today’s parents feel overwhelmed by the negative messages inundating our kids, and the vast majority of them are ready to fight back -- but, sadly, many have never learned how. A recent poll, outlined in a piece by Linda Feldmann in The Christian Science Monitor reveals...

Most mothers, regardless of whether they work or stay at home, are dedicated to their children but fear popular culture is undermining their efforts to raise children with "positive values," according to a new study of more than 2,000 mothers. Among mothers' top goals: reduce family violence, promote healthy marriages and find ways to help mothers spend more time with their families. Mothers' voices need to be heard, said Martha Farrell Erickson, lead researcher of the study, which was released yesterday by the Institute for American Values (IAV) in New York.

American TV host Oprah Winfrey is ditching the high life to star in a poverty striken TV reality series.The 51 year old media mogul, with an estimated net worth of 300 million, has agreed to live a life of poverty in the hard hitting documentary.Winfrey will reside in a high rise apartment in a notoriously tough Chicago, Illinois, neighborhood for one month. The series plans to highlight America's inner city housing 'crisis.' A spokeswoman for Harpo Productions says that Oprah has ' Interviewed just about every major celebrity and done shows on almost every topic imaginable. But now she intends...

She walks down the street on the Upper East Side, thin and stylish, another well-heeled beauty chatting away on her cellphone. Except that she isn't — she's Osama bin Laden's niece. Wafah Binladin left the city in the months before her uncle's ghastly attack, but she's back now, living at a friend's posh pad off Park Avenue, pursuing her career as a pop star and living it up on the social scene at swanky Soho House. A former Columbia student who grew up in Geneva, she takes the subway around town, Elton John sheet music under her arm, trading on...

Baghdad (APUPI) For the second time in less than three months, a popular media campaign designed to influence voting patterns has proven impotent, as millions of Iraqis refused to heed heart-felt calls to avoid exercising their franchise this past weekend. Roughly modeled after the "Vote Or Die!" campaign of hip-hop empresario P. Diddy last fall, like that effort, Musab al "DeCapitan" Zarqawi's campaign to suppress the vote in Iraq seems to have had little effect on voter turnout. With the thrilling and enervating slogan "Vote And Die!," "DeCapitan" hoped that he could arouse the incipient Iraqi voters, most of whom...

This summer I had an intern researcher drone named "Lyle." But I tended to call him things like "meat sack," "you," and "the kid-whose-head-someone-used-as-a-toilet-but-forgot-to-flush." It pained me to call him these things because he was generally a very sharp kid and I was glad to have him skulking around, eating my old pizza crusts and rifling through my garbage when he wasn't "working." Anyway, if you want to put a face to him, here he is. The reason I bring up young Lyle is that he was the one who started to make me feel old. One time while we...

Essence, the black women's magazine, has a daring New Year's resolution: It's embarking on a 12-month campaign to challenge the prevalence of misogyny and sexism in hip-hop lyrics and videos. Many rappers and MCs coolly objectify women with vulgar song lyrics and hard-hitting, raunchy images on MTV. It's common, for instance, to see videos in which hip-hop artists lounge poolside as a harem of women gyrate around them in bikinis. The video for Nelly's "Tip-Drill" goes so far as to portray scantily clad women as sexual appliances. The publication's crusade, dubbed Take Back the Music, seeks to inspire public dialogue...