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Matt Yglesias says he’s having trouble seeing how he and I disagree about copyright. Fortuitously, then, I bring not peace but a sword.
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When CBS launched Rob, a new Rob Schneider sitcom about a clueless gringo who marries into a Mexican-American family, in January, the critical response was scathingly unfavorable. The Denver Post’s TV critic called it “genuinely offensive”; the New York Times said “the entire show is predicated on cheap ethnic humor”; and TV Guide’s Matt Roush declared Rob’s new family to be “a sprawling brood of shockingly stereotypical clichés.”
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When I gave birth to my first son in 2001, the labor pains were nothing compared with the trauma that we both experienced because of the hospital environment. The half-dozen yelling strangers, random people wandering in and out, the fluorescent lights, the 12 unnecessary blood draws from my healthy, full-term son’s heel: All of it left my husband, our newborn son, and me disoriented and upset. The two days in the hospital and the hospital-acquired infection I contracted interfered with my breast-feeding and made it hard for both my husband and me to bond with our firstborn.
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When it comes to giving fashion advice, I am always revolting. Anarchy is my comfort zone. As a result, I spend my waking hours encouraging people to ditch convention and approach their personal style with a sense of amused recklessness: Strike an unconventional pose! Creativity is your mot du jour! Buy yourself an electric-blue stripper wig! These are typical of my style exhortations.
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Pfizer announced the recall of approximately 1 million packets of birth control pills on Tuesday, because some of the packages may not contain the right number of active pills. If you get pregnant because of faulty pills, do you have a case against the manufacturer?
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The most-expensive 30-second slot during this weekend’s Super Bowl cost a shocking $4 million. That’s a hundred-fold increase in the inflation-adjusted average price of a spot since Super Bowl I in 1967. Even at the recent 2010 low point, ads sold for $2.65 million, up more than 20 percent from where they stood in 2000. What drives increases of this scale, and how can it possibly make sense for companies to pay such sky-high prices?
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What do symphony orchestras and cigarette companies have in common? It’s the age problem. How do you stay in business when your customers keep dying?
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Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 176 with Stephen Metcalf, Jody Rosen, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio player below or opening this player in another tab:
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ORLANDO, Fla.—“We cannot survive four more years of this!” moaned Kelly Clem-Rickon. She was one of Newt Gingrich’s Hillsborough County co-chairs, assigned to keep a Tampa crowd cheering and cheerful while the candidate made his delayed way over to give a speech. “We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into 1,000 years of darkness!”
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