"Do you recognize this as the international sign for 'maybe I'll have another sandwich'?"

One of 38 questions to tell whether you had a great childhood.

Joe Lieberman on censoring pop culture and reporting "troublesome" young people.

On "Fox News Sunday," Chris Wallace got Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman talking about the Sandy Hook massacre, specifically the question of violence in video games, movies and TV. Lieberman said violence in popular culture "does cause vulnerable young men, particularly, to be more violent," and "We’ve got to ask the entertainment industry, what are you going to do to try to tone that down."

Wallace asked whether this would be voluntary, and Lieberman said:

In our society we try to do it voluntarily. But I think we’ve come to a point where we have to say, if not, maybe there are some things we can do to tone it down.

So, in other words, not voluntary! Having let his authoritarian side show, Lieberman shifts to talking about "the mental health system" and says:

I think we really have got to ask ourselves, first, off, this is like the slogan that we use in Homeland Security -- see something, say something.

See something... like what?

We’ve got to ask parents, friends, school officials, if you see a child, a young person, that really looks like they are potentially... real troublesome, get them mental health help and we have to ask ourselves, as a society, is there enough mental health help available for these kids?

Troublesome! He should have said troubled, if he meant to talk about mental illness, and he paused before he said the word. A fascinating slip. Troubling!

"Even though it’s my job to be an actor, I have given my life to God."

"I am very comfortable and firm in that, but I still have to be on this show. It’s the No. 1 comedy, but it’s very inappropriate and the themes are very inappropriate. I have to be this person I am not."

The continuing struggles of 19-year-old Angus T. Jones, of "Two and a Half Men," the show he called "filth" and urged people not to watch, remarks he now apologizes for if they "reflect me showing indifference to and disrespect of my colleagues and a lack of appreciation of the extraordinary opportunity of which I have been blessed."

"Irving Berlin said, 'Popular music is popular because a lot of people like it.'"

"That doesn't mean it's good or bad – that's the equivalent of arguing the merits of hot dogs versus hamburgers. What the hell difference does it make?"

(Via Throwing Things.)

The misguided attack on Sandra Fluke continues, displaying irritating ignorance about women law students.

Robert Stacy McCain, I'm looking at you. Rush Limbaugh has apologized, but McCain bullies on:

Rather belatedly, we are becoming aware that this supposedly typical Georgetown coed is not very typical at all...

McCain links to a blog post from The College Politico, which begins:

Sandra Fluke is being sold by the left as something she’s not. Namely a random co-ed from Georgetown law who found herself mixed up in the latest front of the culture war who was simply looking to make sure needy women had access to birth control. That, of course, is not the case.

As many have already uncovered Sandra Fluke she is, in reality, a 30 year old long time liberal activist who enrolled at Georgetown with the express purpose of fighting for the school to pay for students’ birth control. She has been pushing for mandated coverage of contraceptives at Georgetown for at least three years...

Random co-ed?! She's a law student! I've been in law schools since 1978, and I've never heard female law students called "co-eds." What the hell is a co-ed? Even as a word for female undergraduates, it's like you're from 1931. Here's the original teenage heartthrob, Rudy Vallée, singing his great old college song, "Betty Co-ed":

Betty Co-ed has lips of red for Harvard,
Betty Co-ed has eyes of Yale's deep blue,
Betty Co-ed's a golden head for Princeton,
Her dress I guess is black for old Purdue!

I first learned the names of famous universities hearing that song on an LP of college songs that my parents had. The cover photo had rows of pretty girls each holding up a pennant with the name of a college on it.

Betty Co-ed's a smile for Pennsylvania,
Her heart is Dartmouth's treasure, so 'tis said,
Betty Co-ed is loved by every college boy,
But I'm the one who's loved by Betty Co-ed!

Here's the 1931 Max Fleischer film, featuring a Betty Boop prototype and Rudy Vallée saying "hi ho!" and starting a bouncing-ball singalong:



Now, Betty has a lot of boyfriends. Some may even call her a "slut." That was back in the day when a girl on campus caused quite a hubbub. Did Betty put out? What birth-control did Betty use? How much did it cost? Who paid? I don't know, but how many voters of today remember what college was like back when Rudy Vallée was making women swoon?

Now, Vallée's a fascinating character in the history of pop culture:

Vallée... was perhaps the first complete example of the 20th century mass media pop star. Flappers mobbed him wherever he went. His live appearances were usually sold out, and even if his singing could hardly be heard in those venues not yet equipped with the new electronic microphones, his screaming female fans went home happy if they had caught sight of his lips through the opening of the trademark megaphone he sang through.

Vallee had a gentle voice:

Vallée became the most prominent and, arguably, the first of a new style of popular singer, the crooner. Previously, popular singers needed strong projecting voices to fill theaters in the days before the electric microphone. Crooners had soft voices that were well suited to the intimacy of the new medium of the radio.

Ah, the radio! You can't sound too harsh on the radio, especially when you're pouring your sounds into the ears of women. I know one older woman who, finding Rush too harsh, has moved on Bill Bennett, who seems caring.

But back to my point: co-ed.  This is an old-fashioned label to stick on a woman, and it shouldn't be used anymore even to apply to undergraduates. But you just sound ignorant to call a female law student a "co-ed." And that ignorance continues with this talk of Sandra Fluke not being "a random co-ed." None of the students at an elite law school like Georgetown are "random." There's an elaborate, multi-factored admissions process, and it specifically looks for applicants who aren't coming straight from college but have taken time and shown engagement with social and political issues.

A "30 year old long time liberal activist" sounds exactly like the kind of person who would apply to law school and get accepted with enthusiasm, because the schools want students who will contribute to the classroom discussions about the things we talk about in law school, like sex discrimination. This is what classroom diversity means. And we want students who will take their law school education and use it different ways, especially in political activism. So what if Fluke "enrolled at Georgetown with the express purpose of fighting for the school to pay for students’ birth control"? I have no idea if that's why she selected Georgetown, but it's not a bad thing, it's not something law schools don't like, and it's not an unusual orientation for a law student to have.

McCain also tells us that Fluke has argued that it's sex discrimination for insurance not to cover "gender-reassignment" surgery. Sorry, this is typical law-journal material. Of course, an advocate in the category she belongs to would make arguments like this. Argue with these arguments all you want. But it doesn't make Sandra Fluke some nefarious pseudo law student. She sounds like a typical excellent law student at an elite law school.

Which is to say: the personal put-downs sound old-fashioned and sexist.

The right wing stepped in it with Fluke. Having stepped in it, they keep smushing around in it.

As a woman, as a law professor, as a woman law professor, I don't want to be seen anywhere near these guys. Could you start acting normal about women participating in public debate?

Now let's have a serious debate about insurance. Yeah. It's not much fun at all. But you've got to quit having your fun with women and sex — in this context! — or you are going to alienate more and more women voters — and men voters — every day. Good lord! It's super Tuesday. We should be talking about Mitt Romney, not Sandra Fluke. Yeah: Mitt Romney and insurance. Boring. Too bad.

The Houdini shop...

... outside of the "Houdini: Art and Magic" show.

Why did Mitch Daniels in Indiana get away with doing something more drastic than what Scott Walker did that set off the huge protests in Wisconsin?

Leon Fink (in Salon) wonders:

In Wisconsin, the union presence seemed wedded to a deep sense of civic identity, including connection to a long-standing state tradition of “progressive” innovation and peaceful reconciliation of differences among competing social and economic interests.

In Indiana, despite the fact that Indianapolis had once hosted more union headquarters than any other city in America, legislated reduction of the union presence triggered no visible sign of larger public hurt. That the union leaders themselves viewed the issue as “mere politics” betrays their own skepticism that worker rights can truly appeal to the public conscience...

That is, love/support/respect for unions needs to be firmly embedded in the culture of the place or you don't get the Wisconsin Effect. Noted. That means you can't suddenly whip up a political frenzy in response to one political move on the other side, no matter how drastic the move is.

Fink drifts off into a reverie. Here's his last paragraph before the one-liner "I’m dreaming, of course. This is Indiana.":

I could only think of how different was the determination of the 1968 Olympic athletes who raised a black-power salute at their official Olympic awards ceremony. If a similar sense of solidarity had been on display in Indianapolis, players from each team might have unfurled a “union” banner — Norma Rae-like — at halftime and carried it aloft to their respective locker rooms. Better yet, they would have handed off the emblems to Madonna, a long-established member of both the Screen Actors Guild and Directors Guild of America.

It's actually pretty pathetic when your dreams of deep embeddedness in the culture consist of showy gestures by sports/music/movie celebrities. Madonna, the union member? Why would organizations that boost Madonna resonate with Hoosiers and seem wedded to a deep sense of civic identity?

Face it, Fink: There's a price to be paid for locating liberalism in pop culture. It's not going to be deep. It's inherently shallow. Deeply shallow.

Fads.

We're talking about fads. It was my observation that the best fads were in the 1960s, but you might think that's a subjective perception caused by the fact that I was a teenager in the 60s. Correcting for that, the 1960s still wins in the competition among decades for best fads. Or so I assert, listing a bunch of great fads from the 60s off the top of my head: hula hoops, the twist, mini skirts, The Beatles, surfing, Afros, ironing your hair, long hair for males, love beads, happy faces.... surely there's more. I found this list of 60s fads on line. Bell-bottoms! Wide, paisley-patterned ties! Love-ins!

If you think some other decade can best the 60s in the fad category, make your case. But more generally, what do we think about fads? I was thinking that a certain type of fad — hula hoops — is a nice pop culture pastime. And then there is the labeling question: When does something stop being a fad? People use the word "fad" to put down something someone else thinks is important. Is blogging a fad? You might irritate some people by calling their pet concern a "fad": Worrying about the debt ceiling is a fad. Is there a time limit? Some new religion — Scientology — might be called a fad, but if you say "Christianity is a fad," people will know you are trying too hard to be provocative and — if they're smart — yawn.

Where did the word "fad" come from?

1834, "hobby, pet project;" 1881 as "fashion, craze," perhaps shortened from fiddle-faddle. Or perhaps from Fr. fadaise "trifle, nonsense," ultimately from L. fatuus "stupid."

Which reminds me: Fiddle Faddle is... a 60s fad! An even bigger popcorn-based 60s fad was Screaming Yellow Zonkers:

While the front of the package was simple and understated, the rest of the Zonkers box was completely covered with absurdist copy, accompanied by illustrations, informing the reader everything from “how to wash Zonkers” to “how to mate them”. The bottom of the box explained how to determine if it were indeed the bottom: “Open the top, and turn the box upside down. If the Zonkers fall out, this is the bottom. If they fall up, this is the top. If nothing happens, this box is empty.”

That was hilarious in the 60s, when smoking marijuana was also a fad.

I "toast or roast" Andrew Sullivan.

At Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Daily Dish.

I'm one of a bunch of bloggers invited to "toast or roast" Sullivan's blog. As he explained yesterday, today is his blog's 10th anniversary. He reflects on the occasion:

I'm a Catholic, so let me start with the things I am sorry for and even, in some cases, ashamed of. When you blog in real time, day by day, hour by hour, emotions can get the better of you. The blogosphere is awash in examples of invective, abuse, cruelty, accusations of bad faith, or just bluster - in part because blogging is so much more like speaking than writing and also because it addresses people in the abstract, not face to face. I am not innocent in this, and wish I could take back a few barbs, especially in the early days, when we were all discovering what this medium could do....

His greatest failure, he says "was giving in to my legitimate but far-too-powerful emotions after 9/11 and cheer-leading for a war in Iraq that remains one of the most disgraceful, disastrous and murderous episodes in the history of American foreign policy." He reaffirms that he is a conservative:

I remain deeply skeptical of government's ability to solve most human problems, but have never denied its necessity or importance in tackling the profound questions of the common good no other institution can replace. I'm a Whiggish Tory, not a pure libertarian....

I remain very proud of a few things: of my early recognition of the anti-conservative nature of the Bush administration in almost every respect - fiscal, constitutional, social...

And he reaffirms the value of unseriousness:

From '80s music video contests to our now constant Mental Health Breaks; from mischief and blasphemy and black humor, from Road Runner videos to ghetto mashups, the Dish has always had an anarchic streak, what Bodenner calls "Dishness". The sardonic awards; the reader threads that became riveting - the "cannabis closet" which will soon be a book; the wonder of that simple idea - The View From Your Window - that then became a weekly puzzle; the dialogue with Sam Harris on faith and reason; the countless faces of the day that can convey things no words ever can; the Poseur Alerts; the randomness of bear culture, beard disasters, straight anal sex, South Park out-takes, Hathos Red Alerts, baby panda sneezes ... we've created an institution here that remains alive because we really don't know what the fuck we are going to do next. And yes, I used the word "fuck". Because I fucking well can, if I want to.

Ah, yes. There are so many blogs that are no fun at all. 

"Why do I want more haters? If someone had told me when I signed up I'd get half a million haters... It's all about the approval."

When do celebrities quit Twitting? When they don't get the love they sought. Aw. Poor celebrities!

"Wise Latina" junk for purchase and ego-boosting.

And condescending admiration from the New York Times.

"Warhol said art should be meaningful in the most shallow way."

"He was able to make commercial art that was taken seriously as fine art... that's what I'm doing too... I make soulless electronic pop... Everybody wants me to show my vagina to the world. And the truth is, I don't have to."

Says Lady Gaga.

Adam Lambert certainly played the gay card well.

In yesterday's post about Adam Lambert, Christopher Althouse Cohen wrote:

Well, he certainly played the gay card well. He didn't acknowledge it but put out plenty of hints on YouTube prior to the show, refused to answer questions about his sexuality after the show was over just long enough to be "in the closet" and therefore able to stage a big coming out thing, used coming out as a way to get the best magazine cover you could possibly get, and somehow managed to negotiate a deal where that very magazine cover would make no mention of his coming out in the article and would appear to just be about how "wild" he is as a performer. On the show, he got all the credit for being out without having to deal with any of the consequences, and now he gets the big cover but gets the appearance of it not being about his coming out. He is quite media savvy and played the game for maximum attention.

Oh, I do like that he acknowledges in the article that he's fat. Bad skin isn't quite as much of a revelation, and people can forgive bad skin, but people act like he's hot when he's quite out of shape and can't possibly look good naked. But props to him for admitting it.

Ouch!

Susan Boyle loses on "Britain's Got Talent."

Fame has a narrative arc.

In this case, it feels like the right story. A woman comes out of nowhere, is embraced by the world for her naive goodness, gets a bit of a swelled head and acts bitchy instead of sweet, and plummets back into the obscurity from which she emerged.

Or not obscurity, really. She will melt into an undreamy life of second-rate fame — with bad records, dull reality show stints, etc.

"In the third stage, acclaim soars right up to the Cat Calendar Tolerance Level...."

A graph of our feelings about Susan Boyle.

(Via Throwing Things.)

You voted. I saw 2 movies: "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Australia."

You could have sent me to "Rachel Getting Married," "Milk," "Synecdoche, New York," or "Let the Right One In," but you chose "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Australia." I'll say a few things comparing the 2 movies, and I'll keep this spoiler free.

1. Both movies have an in-your-face sense of place. "Slumdog Millionaire," showing us India, has us running all over the slums of Bombay and touring the Taj Mahal. I get it. It's India. "Australia" fills the screen with the map of Australia and giant red rocks and expanses of dry wasteland. Yeah, that's Australia.

2. Both movies tell an elaborately plotted story through the eyes of a little boy. In "Slumdog," the boy, Jamal, plunges into a pool of shit to get his story going, and in "Australia," the boy, Nullah, plunges into a water tank to advance the plot. Our hearts are, of course, supposed to mesh with the heart of the central child character. This is a time-worn method of emotional manipulation, but it works pretty well in both movies. Both boys, for all their troubles, are magically lucky.

3. Both movies have lovers who are torn apart and brought together repeatedly, and both have key scenes where there is a lot of violent chaos and the lovers are running around looking for each other as time is about to run out. Both movies have big close-up kisses that seem to be about the cinematic history of big close-up kisses. There's no real fire between the lovers in either movie. They are big, pretty movie-star heads, but I didn't for one second believe I was looking at 2 human beings who were passionately in love with each other.

4. Both movies weave in a very familiar work of American pop culture. The whole story of "Slumdog Millionaire" is framed by a single performance on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." This is the coolest thing about the movie and is extremely well done -- using flashbacks and quiz questions that relate to the past. "Australia" is strewn with references to the movie "The Wizard of Oz" that come and go and don't really pay off very well. Wishing, home... whatever. But it is pretty amusing when Nicole Kidman's character awkwardly and abysmally tries to tell the Oz story and sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to the boy and manages to inspire him in spite of her inadequacies.

5. Both movies have bathtubs. I'm slightly obsessed with the prominence of bathtubs in the movies. You'd think the most interesting thing in the world was a woman in a damned bath. "Australia" has the conventional lead actress taking a bath for no good reason. Hmm... 2 characters have to have a conversation. Let's put the woman in the bathtub. Depending on what rating you want, it will either be a bubble bath or it won't. It's embarrassing. "Slumdog Millionaire" has a memorably unusual use of the bathtub, so that was fine.

6. Things "Australia" has more of: cattle, horses, spears, bombs, airplanes, ships, sentimentality, pectoral muscles, drunk guys, fistfights, aborigines, contracts. Things "Slumdog Millionaire" has more of: shit, TV, doing laundry, guns, beggars, torture.

7. "Slumdog Millionaire" was a lot shorter and a lot better. "Australia" was a big epic that was completely old-fashioned except to the extent that there was supposed to be something hip about being intentionally old-fashioned. I'd rather watch "The African Queen" again, and if I need some hipness, let me watch it with hip people and we'll say hip things.

"I have come to view hotness as the enemy of everything about pop culture that I enjoy."

Linda Holms hates hotness.

Because hotness is a vapid, ill-considered cheat so you don't have to discuss, think about, or take a position regarding the quality of anything. "You know what's hot? Twilight!" "Okay, but...is it good?" "Not the point! Not the point! Read these 1000 words on why it's hot!"

Consider the Rolling Stone ["hot"] list. Barack Obama is hot; so is Leighton Meester from Gossip Girl. The sport of winching is hot; so is genuinely brilliant musician Bon Iver.

The closest I can come to explaining what "hot" is supposed to mean in this context is something like: "Things you have already heard of, or things that everyone else has heard of except for you, and if anyone finds out you haven't heard of them, they'll make fun of you, so listen carefully."...

If you wander through the recent news listings looking for the word "Hottest," you will see exactly what I mean. As of this writing, the results include Lonely Planet's possible endangering of the Bay Of Fires by naming it the "Hottest Travel Destination" of the year; a discussion of the continuing hotness of the Wii; and plenty of coverage of the aforementioned Suri Cruise being named the Forbes "Hottest Tot."

That's right: Hottest Baby.

Hottest Baby? Is hottest baby thirsty? I've got just the thing.

I think Holmes should simmer down. There's a benefit to labeling things hot. It tells you to move on to something else, something newer and hipper or -- if you hate hipness even more than hotness -- to whatever it is you actually like as a matter of personal taste -- if you still have any. If you don't. Get some. It's hot.

Worst pop culture curses.

Campbell's Chunky Soup?

ADDED: I've fixed the link. And I'm still laughing at the complete wrongness of the accidental link, which was something I'd copied when I was going to so something more on this post. The struggle to understand this post in the comments is really funny — especially the effort to "kozinski."

Compare New York graffiti.

These are all from SoHo, photographed last spring.







Let's talk about the difference between New York graffiti and the California graffiti in the previous post. Does it say a lot about the difference between New York City and Los Angeles? Or are we only comparing beach hucksters and art poseurs?

Hillary is smiling and Chelsea is such a good person.

The Daily News makes an article out of the fact that Hillary Clinton in smiling. At least it's a short article.

The Washington Post makes an immense article out of the way we don't know too much about Chelsea Clinton. When she's out campaigning doesn't reflect the "ironic, sarcastic and self-deprecating" attitude of "the pop culture and politics that played out while [people in her generation] grew up in the 1980s, 1990s and onward."

The quest for authenticity frames several of the anxieties surrounding today's young people, and even though she could be more open, Chelsea may embody our generation's professional ideals: she is a well-paid do-gooder. Many in our generation were bred on the optimism of the 1990s economic boom; we cultivated a certain sense of entitlement after seeing so many college graduates strike it rich with quirky, massively influential ideas in Silicon Valley. But the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks made many of us pivot to think about the world and public service, and the Iraq war only hardened many young people's cynicism about newsmakers and reporters.

Maybe Chelsea reached this workplace ideal of neatly combining altruism with affluence at her first job at McKinsey, an elite consulting firm, where she specialized in health care, or possibly now, at her hedge fund.

What? How is Chelsea a do-gooder? What is all this blather about?