After I posted “Black Like @KirstieAlley: Twittering About Race with the Fat Actress” yesterday, I manually sent out one tweet, at 5:55 pm ET, announcing the posting. (My blog automatically sent out another one 45 minutes later.) I then left the house to take care of some business, getting back a little over two hours later. I went to my computer, and logged on to Twitter.
Two-and-half weeks ago, actor Kirstie Alley, famed of ’80s TV sitcom Cheers, Jenny Craig weight loss ads, and sashaying in her hosiery on Oprah, told me, on Twitter, that African-Americans and Italians are “more free and fun and light hearted” than, I guess, people who aren’t African-American or Italian.
When she said this, I was actually dumbfounded. Twice, it turned out. Figuring out what to say, however, became my own mini-education in talking about race.
Al Sharpton, dropping the bomb, and the morning’s most compelling statement, at Michael Jackson’s memorial service, the Staples Center, Los Angeles CA, July 7, 2009.
An anonymous collector has decided to part with his certainly much-beloved, actual-size B-9, as the Lost In Space robot’s model number is well known to aficionados of the 1960s sci-fi series. He’s selling it on Ebay, and the retailer managing the sale describes the toy this way:
Remember that rash of NBA player home invasions that was making the news two years ago? I’ve been wondering all this week: Did MTV Cribs play a role in any of the crimes at all?
Dos Equis (Spanish for “two X’s”) wins again with their wildly tongue-in-cheek advertising. In the brewer’s latest campaign, their spokesman is “the most interesting man in the world”: A nameless, bearded, ultra-virile, ultra-Latin quasi-composite, above, who counsels us to “Stay thirsty, my friends,” as he proffers the brew. Though the copy for this spot, like all of them, is spot-on absurd (“He’s a lover, not a fighter…but he’s also a fighter, so don’t get any ideas”), my favorite piece may be Mr. Dos Equis’—can we call him that?—take on rollerblading.
It’s no secret that Katie Couric, above, had some serious problems with the ratings when she took over the CBS Evening News in 2006. For a couple of years, there, her future didn’t look good, and management reportedly started speaking in low tones about pulling the plug on her broadcast.
But that was until she triumphantly body-slammed Republican VP hopeful Sarah Palin in September 2008, with a series of interviews that almost certainly helped nominee John McCain lose the November election, that boosted Couric’s viewers by millions, and that proved she was not to be messed with.
So: Where do you go from there? You go where Hillary Clinton, FOX’s Sean Hannity, CNN’s Kiran Chetry, and The Washington Post‘s Ruth Marcus have all gone: With Auto-Tune, the so-called “T-Pain/Cher-style” vocal processing technology that’s sweeping the nation.
Beloved as the Emmy Award-winning Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood has been for decades—my sis couldn’t get enough of the show when we were kids—and rightly honored as creator Fred Rogers, above, was in his lifetime—he died in 2003—ya gotta admit that there’s something just a little…odd about his persona.
I mean, think about it: Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is a show where, ostensibly, kids, unaccompanied by adults, go to the house of a single, middle-aged man, who is there, alone, on his lunch hour.
A guy whose middle name is McFeely.
That Rogers’ intentions were, of course, so honorable only makes writer/scholar/media critic/co-sponsor of my recent Iowa lecture Kembrew McLeod‘s disassembly of the TV host’s airy monologues just that more wicked. By isolating Rogers’ trademark, singsong platitudes (“I’m glad you’re my friend…I like you very much”), and adhering them to droning drum tracks, a kind of loopy hypnosis takes over…certainly Rogers’ nefarious intent. It’s long (9:15), but worth staying with to the final utterance.