Free Republic

The Vagina Monologues is an episodic play written by Eve Ensler which ran at the Off-Broadway Westside Theatre after a limited run at HERE Arts Center in 1996. Charles Isherwood of The New York Times called the play "probably the most important piece of political theater of the last decade."

GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, who seems to grow stronger in the polls with every controversial remark that he makes, is crushing the competition in YouTube views. That is according to a recent analysis conducted by ZEFR, which bills itself as the video identification technology company for content owners and brands. ZEFR analyzed YouTube data for the top 10 Republican and Democratic candidates for the week of Nov. 30 to Dec. 6. Not only is Trump beating his Republican rivals by a nearly 8-to-1 margin, but he had more than double the views of likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and...

Art imitates Life, but sometimes(to paraphrase Oscar Wilde), Life outdoes the weirdest Art....In a key scene in the movie, the Joker's voice comes over the loudspeaker on two ferry boats that have lost power and are wallowing in the water. Both are loaded with explosives. He tells the people trapped aboard the two powder kegs that they are part of a "social experiment"-there being a detonator on each boat that will blow up the other boat. If one does not destroy the other by midnight, he will destroy both boats. And so a countdown begins, with scenes of chaos, soul-searching,...

...After “Sesame Street” was introduced, children living in places where its broadcast could be more readily received saw a 14 percent drop in their likelihood of being behind in school. Levine and Kearney note in their paper that a wide body of previous research has found that Head Start, the pre-kindergarten program for low-income Americans, delivers a similar benefit.The researchers also say those effects probably come from “Sesame Street’s” focus on presenting viewers with an academic curriculum, heavy on reading and math, that would appear to have helped prepare children for school.While it might seem implausible that a TV show...

You wouldn’t know it from the role he plays as kindly “mentor” to the promising young musical talent vying to be the next “American Idol,” but Jimmy Iovine has done as much to coarsen our popular culture as anyone on the planet. His biography boasts that the 59-year-old music producer has worked with such acclaimed acts as John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and U2. What it doesn’t say is that Iovine almost singlehandedly brought so-called “gangsta rap” from the outer fringes of the music industry – where it belonged – to right smack dab...

One of the wire services reported that the Oscars show Sunday night was aiming to be younger and hipper.  The producers succeeded - which was what made the Oscars stink.  Actually, "younger and hipper" has been arresting the Oscars for more than a few years - just as it's been retarding American popular culture since the 1960s. Watching last night's Oscars, one is reminded a bit of Anthony Burgess' classical novel, A Clockwork Orange.  It begs the question: "Where have all the adults gone?"         Viewers were treated to a long train of twenty-something and thirty-something actors and actresses making...

Anatomy and the Perfect (Undead) Headshot Does the creative team behind the hit TV show The Walking Dead take zombie anatomy as seriously as the legions of crazed fanboys? PM investigates. Horror aficionados judge onscreen zombie special effects by the quality of the cranial gunshots that kill the ghouls. The cameras of AMC's show The Walking Dead linger on the aftereffects of gunshots to the heads of their undead in a way that can only be described as lavish. The show's just-completed first season has been serious, emotional, well-written and epic. But for those kind of people who are obsessed...

Republicans Love 'Modern Family,' Democrats Favor 'Dexter,' New Study Shows by Chris Harnick, posted Nov 10th 2010 10:45AM 'Modern Family,' a seemingly liberal show about a blended family -- with a gay couple and adopted kids -- is among the favorites of Republicans. Say what? According to a new study by Experian Simmons, Republicans favor many of TV's biggest hits such as 'Modern Family,' 'American Idol' and 'Dancing With the Stars.' On the Democrat side, TV favorites include cable shows like 'Dexter' and 'Mad Men.' "The big shows with mass appeal tend to have above-average scores from Democrats and Republicans...

priest from Hungary is a good skater -- and is presenting the good news to the yout and You-tube users. Redics [kath.net] A Hungarian Priest puts on his skateboard-arts for the attention of children, youth and recently Youtube Users. Report from news.at.

Apparently someone tried to blackmail David Letterman by threatening to out several affairs he has had with female staffers on his show. Now, for the record I don’t support anyone trying to blackmail Letterman or anyone else. It’s creepy and wrong. The guy has a six year old and I feel very sorry for that kid who is about to have a rough couple years. I hope the guy who did this goes to jail for a decent stretch. That said, it also occurs to me that this is more than a bit…ironic. Letterman has made a career out of...

Pretty much everyone I respect in media and politics recommended I not go on HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher." But on Friday night, I defied that wisdom and had the time of my life. I sparred with Mr. Maher, Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson and a MoveOn.org audience from hell that booed my sentences before they were completed. Unfortunately, my wife and in-laws, who watched from the green room, were not as enamored with the experience as I was. Since the salad days of ABC's "Politically Incorrect," which minted countless right-wing pundits and best-selling authors, conservatives have rightly assessed...

A Hemline Index, Updated By TAMAR LEWIN More suicides? Fewer male births? Less back pain? More laxative sales? Data points litter the landscape as economists, sociologists, psychologists and marketers examine the societal changes, big and small, trivial and traumatic, that accompany a bad economy. And with this particular version of a troubled economy — a stock market that goes into convulsions at 3 p.m., a looming global recession, a $700 billion bailout plan that may or may not work, and a jittery public wondering what is coming next — changes should flow as freely as profits in good times. It’s...

We are all rockers now. National Review publishes its own chart of the Fifty Greatest Conservative Rock Songs, notwithstanding that most of the honorees are horrified to find themselves on such a hit parade. The National Review countdown of the All-Time Hot 100 Conservative Gangsta Rap Tracks can’t be far away. Even right-wingers want to get with the beat and no-one wants to look like the wallflower who can’t get a chick to dance with him. To argue against rock and roll is now as quaintly irrelevant as arguing for the divine right of kings. It was twen- ty years...

Jack Bauer Doesn't Jump - More's the Pity Previously on "24' the show made sense. But Monday night's finale, when we sat through 90 minutes of set-up, waiting for the usual slam bang finish, only to have a touchy-feely episode of "Grey's Anatomy'' break out, was the end. The big finish, with Jack Bauer standing on coast, looking moodily out to sea, was some kind of weird Hallmark card for secret agents. I kept waiting for the cliff to blow up, or a black helicopter to appear on the horizon, but no, it was just our Jack, alone with his...

In todays world we routinely see people wear emblems of their favorite athlete or super hero on their shirts. Much of it is a fashion statement that taps into the trends of the day. Over the next few months we will see a propagation of Spider Man symbols on the chests of eight year olds everywhere. And today, the Michael Jordan ‘Jumpman’ is more about the iconic fashion statement than it is a statement of a person’s idolization of Jordan himself. But imagine a bizarro world where people actually began to wear the icons and images of the most reviled...

Where is Jerry Mathers when I need him most?http://www.greeleytrib.com/article/20070219/READERS/102190095 http://tinyurl.com/39td6s Guest Commentary by Jared Fiel February 19, 2007 I was 10 years old, and I was swinging high. My buddy, Sean, was pushing me on the two-seater swing on his front porch. I was stretched out on the seat pretending to be an astronaut ... or Tarzan ... or an Olympic bobsledder. And with one more big push, the swing rammed through the large front window of the house. Shattered it. We froze. Sean's parents weren't home (this was back in the day when parents were OK leaving 10-year-olds home...

Throughout history one of the main dynamics that has influenced relationships between men and women is what can be called the “vagina monopoly.” Men want them and only women have them. In fact, the world’s oldest profession was one that was originally only capable of being performed by women. That profession was the “renting” of women to men for sex. Most of the pathological aspects in male-female relationships revolve around the objectification of women as objects of sexual gratification. Originally, feminism was about changing attitudes, particularly that women are of equal dignity as men. Women can be just as capable...

Three quarters of Americans can correctly identify two of Snow White's seven dwarfs while only a quarter can name two Supreme Court Justices, according to a poll on pop culture released on Monday. According to the poll by Zogby International, commissioned by the makers of a new online game on pop culture called "Gold Rush," 57 percent of Americans could identify J.K. Rowling's fictional boy wizard as Harry Potter, while only 50 percent could name the British prime minister, Tony Blair. The pollsters spoke to 1,213 people across the United States. The results had a margin of error of 2.9...

Central Michigan University English professor Jeffrey Weinstock is taking Kyle, Kenny, Stan and Cartman into a new realm: academia. Not usually a topic of high-brow conversation, the "South Park" gang has caught the attention of Weinstock, who studies popular culture, along with other academic colleagues who have submitted 50 proposals for his forthcoming compilation, due out in 2008.

One of the many complaints about the ubiquity of cell phones is that they offer people little respite from the hurly-burly of daily life. If people can be summoned by gabby callers while in the privacy of their cars, or even in the confines of a bathroom stall, there are not many places left where we can retreat and let our minds contemplate the sounds of silence. Even more disturbing, however, is the current marketing push to surround people with music almost all the time. According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, toy maker Hasbro Inc. has developed...