Hey, had to get this in: Remember the LeBron James / Gisele Bundchen controversy, back in March? Well, when the numbers came in some months later, it turned out that the issue sold like vomit.
Entries Tagged 'Controversy' ↓
People Just Ain’t Buyin’ This Crap.
September 22nd, 2008 — Controversy, Media, Race
Solange Knowles Best.
August 28th, 2008 — Black Music, Controversy, Media, TV
Unless I’m wrong, Solange Knowles’ tempest-in-a-thimble with KVVU-TV’s Monica Jackson wasn’t the most interesting note to come out of the 2:28 clip.
The most odd detail is that she, perhaps inadvertantly, confirmed Jay-Z’s marriage to her older sister, Beyoncé, by making mention of her “brother-in-law’s establishment,” and thus affirming she has a legal, familial relationship with him through marriage.
African Zombie Virus Rampant.
Forget Medicines. Bring Guns.
August 20th, 2008 — Controversy, Gaming, Pop Culture, Race
Long before its scheduled March 2009 release, Resident Evil 5 (RE5), the next installment in the immensely popular and influential survival-horror videogame series, started coughing up blood…and controversy: In the narrative, a white protagonist, Chris Redfield, sets down in what appears to be an African or Caribbean country decimated by a mutant “supervirus.” Suddenly, freshly dead villagers start to revive as bloodthirsty zombies, and Redfield must slaughter them in hordes to stay alive, a la this scene, below, from the game trailer.
Perhaps Newsweek‘s gaming critic, N’Gai Croal, giving pointed regard to the clip’s images, with their precedents in racist visual history, said it most succinctly in an excellent MTV Online interview: “Clearly no one Black worked on this game.”
GAP Band Redux, or Weird Moments in Wikipedia Disambiguation
August 18th, 2008 — Black Music, Controversy, Education, Pop Culture, Science
Look up “GAP Band” on Wikipedia, and you’ll see “Not to be confused with band gap,” beneath the headline.
“Band gap”?? I took the bait:
In solid state physics and related applied fields, the band gap, also called an energy gap or stop band, is a region where a particle or quasiparticle is forbidden from propagating. For insulators and semiconductors, the band gap generally refers to the energy difference between the top of the valence band and the bottom of the conduction band.
Or:
Thank you for your time!
Screaming Alleged Bloody Murder.
August 15th, 2008 — Art, Comics, Controversy, Gaming, NONFICTION, Pop Culture
Few Americans, perhaps, understand how massive a medium comic books became after World War II. At their peak, retailers were moving $80-100 million worth of them per week. Plus, they were hugely influential: With a typical issue passed around between six to ten readers, comics were consumed by more people than the number of adults taking in movies, magazines, radio, or TV.
However, fewer of us, even more, understand how frantic the nation became when the medium went completely pulp, highlighting tales of noir crime and horror, like the infamous EC comic cover, above. With the enormous popularity of these criminal, murderous tales, comics were blamed for everything from truancy to homicide.
So argues David Hadju, in his new book, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. Hadju is my guest today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, August 15, 2 pm ET.
You can hear his ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, you can check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, check out our archive for up to two weeks after broadcast.
Pursuing the Elixir of Perfection
August 6th, 2008 — Controversy, Sports
Float on: Swimmer Dara Torres (Photo for TIME by Justin Stephens)
Dara Torres’s record-breaking return to Olympic-level swimming at age 41 has not only stunned sports officials but unintentionally made the American a worldwide poster girl for middle-aged vitality and strength. The nine-time Olympic medalist and mother of a two-year-old daughter is the oldest woman to ever contend at this level in her sport. Her recent qualification to battle in Beijing means that this will be her fifth Olympics. No American swimmer has ever competed in so many.
An Unwilling Suspension of Disbelief.
August 4th, 2008 — Controversy, Politics, Race
Sign me up: Obama protesters in St. Petersburg FL
“WHAT ABOUT THE BLACK COMMUNITY, OBAMA?” So asked members of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, or InPDUM, above, via a large white banner, identical to that in the photo, this past Friday, August 1, during an Obama campaign town hall meeting at the Gibbs High School gym in St Petersburg FL.
The group, according to CNN, consisted of “three young African-American protestors, and two white women.” (“White women,” not protesters? Why not “good white women of our fair city”? What is this: The Scottsboro Boys?)
Is Incest the New Black?
July 31st, 2008 — Controversy, Culture, Sex
All in the family: The Deaves and their offspring, Celeste
I was prepared to walk away from posting about this London Times piece, “I had sex with my brother but I don’t feel guilty,” on mere ick factor alone:
On New Year’s Eve Daniel went to a party and by the time he got home I was already asleep. I was extremely sleepy when he crept into my room and curled up on my bed, which was something we’d both done for years, especially if we wanted to share some snippet of gossip. When he started stroking my hair and face it was a surprise, but I could feel myself drifting pleasurably back to sleep as he caressed me gently. Then I became aware of his hand drifting lower and suddenly I was wide awake as he stroked my neck and started sliding his hand down my vest top. I wasn’t scared but I was surprised as he started stroking me, though my overriding sensation was one of sheer pleasure. I instinctively lifted my mouth to his as he kissed me and then he hugged me very tightly and left.
Then I saw the article had generated 347 comments, but, even more, many actually approved of the arrangement, or at least were tolerant of it.
But even that was before I watched an Australian 60 Minutes video (via Jezebel) of John, 61, and Jenny, 39, Deaves, a father-daughter / common-law husband-wife couple from that country, and their granddaughter / daughter / half-sister, Celeste, 8 months of age, above.
The piece also profiled a Scottish couple of half-siblings, though it doesn’t mention the Germans ones of which I’d heard first. Thinking about the Deaves, of course, reminded me of Kathryn Harrison’s controversial 1997 memoir, The Kiss, which details an adult sexual relationship with the author’s father. The title of that 1994 movie I’ve never seen, Spanking the Monkey, was still floating around in my head, too.
I was starting to drown. Is incest, somehow, becoming hip? How did so many otherwise sane, normal, adults come to agree that the hottest sex is with one’s next-of-kin?
Scientific Proof That a Real British Accent Keeps You Looking Young.
July 30th, 2008 — Controversy, Film, Music, Photography, Pop Culture
Madonna, 49, left; Dame Helen Mirren, 62, right.
Airplane Fool
July 28th, 2008 — Aviation, Controversy, Culture, Food, Money
Please pee in this cup: Food service at its nadir. Photo by Lena West
Airline service is at a depressing low. As the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index recently noted, Americans are more disastisfied with today’s carriers than they are with the IRS.
But the weight of this didn’t hit me until last week, when I flew round-trip, New York-to-Austin, on Oprah’s favorite carrier, American Airlines (“Something special in the air!”).
During my sojourn, I was charged $15 each way to check a duffle bag; nasally assaulted upon entering Flight 732 to New York—a plane that when boarded smelled like a combination of lavatory sewage, stale cigarette smoke, and moldy jockstraps (something special in the air, indeed); and, with a great deal of fanfare, served the drink in the above photo.
