BOSTON PHOENIX: In his bestselling autobiography, Dreams From My Father, President Obama introduces us to his high school friend, “Ray,” who, like him, is bi-racial. Who, also like him, is casting about to find his place in the world. But, who, unlike him, has a potty mouth that would make a sailor blush. Best of all? When reading the audiobook version of his bio, Obama does impressions of Ray’s manner of speech. Swear words and all. It’s fucking awesome. And it’s a way of talking we probably won’t be hearing from him now that he’s POTUS. Or will we? MORE […]
THE REVOLUTION WILL BE COMMERCIALIZED: Q&A With NYT’s Consumed Columnist Rob Walker
BY ELIZABETH FLYNN Rob Walker wants you to think before you sink your money into another superficial purchase. Walker — who writes the Consumed column for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and author of Buying In, a highly-readable dissection of the dark art of branding — began his career focusing on advertising and media campaigns in 2000, writing the Moneybox column and other contributions for the online magazine Slate. Through his research into corporate strategies to incite a buying frenzy in consumers, he started asking some questions: If consumers had become, as many studies proclaimed “hyperaware” and “immune” to […]
WEEKEND UPDATE: The Good News Flower Hour
The Good News Flower Hour #7 The latest edition of our five-minute week-in-review, wherein I’m a flower that reads the news. This is by far the best one yet. Hats off to our partners in crime at Collateral News and Woodshop Films.
BOOK EXCERPT: Tear Down This Myth
EDITOR’S NOTE: Phawker is proud to bring you this excerpt from Daily News scribe/Attytood blogger-in-chief Will Bunch’s soon-to-publish Tear Down This Myth: How The Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics And Haunts Our Future, a meaty, pointed dissection of the dream factory mythologizing of Ronald Reagan’s presidency — how this is being done, why, and the impact such historical revisionism has on our current political landscape. The short answer to all the above can be found the following quote from George Orwell, which kicks off the book: ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls […]
RABBIT AT REST: John Updike Dead At 76
NEW YORK TIMES: John Updike, the kaleidoscopically gifted writer whose quartet of Rabbit Angstrom novels highlighted so vast and protean a body of fiction, verse, essays and criticism as to earn him comparisons with Henry James and Edmund Wilson among American men of letters, died today at a hospice outside Boston. He was 76 and lived in Beverly Farms, Mass. The cause was cancer, according to a statement by Alfred A. Knopf, his publisher. Where James and Wilson focused largely on elite Americans in a European context, Mr. Updike wrote of ordinary citizens in small-town and urban settings. His best-known […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR In his new book, We Can Have Peace In The Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work, former President Jimmy Carter presents his strategy to end fighting between Israelis and Palestinians. The 39th president of the United States, Carter is the author of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid and the founder of The Carter Center, an organization that promotes conflict resolution and peace. ALSO, Ethan Bronner, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times, has written about the Arab-Israeli conflict for more than 25 years. Recently, he has been covering the conflict in Gaza. In a Jan. 24 […]
THEATER: Five Reasons To See Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire At The Walnut St. Theater
1. Blanche DuBois is the first lady of the American stage. Whereas the motion picture of Tennessee William’s A Street Car Named Desire draws attention to Brando’s gritty portrayal of Stanely Kolwalski, it seems as though Williams intended Blanche Dubois, played with gravitational pull by Susan Riley Stevens, to hold center stage for playhouse productions. The production was all of three hours long, which can be demanding even for the most ardent theater-lovers, but Stevens entertained, intrigued and beguiled effortlessly for the entire production, and could have done so longer. And this was no small feat. Stevens delivered more than […]
WEEKEND UPDATE: The Good News Flower Hour
The Good News Flower Hour #6 All the news that fits — in a five minute week-in-review read by a cartoon flower that sounds…wait for it…JUST LIKE ME. Enjoy.
WEEKEND UPDATE: The Good News Flower Hour
The Good News Flower Hour #5 After a holiday hiatus, The Good News Flower Hour returns with all the news of the week that fits — in a five minute cartoon narrated by a flower that sounds JUST LIKE ME! You’re welcome.
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper chronicles the rise of the record industry — and its subsequent digital-age collapse — in his new book, Appetite For Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash Of The Record Industry In The Digital Age. Knopper’s work has also appeared in Spin, Esquire, The Washington Post and Wired. RADIO TIMES WITH MARTY MOSS-COANE Hour 1 A look back at President George Bush’s eight years in office. How will he be judged? An analysis of the high and lowpoints with Vanderbilt University historian GARY GERSTLE and Bush biographer, ROBERT DRAPER. Listen to the mp3 Hour 2 […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR After 44 years as a newspaperman, former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. is making his debut as a fiction writer. His new novel, The Rules of The Game, features an investigative reporter on the beat of a hotly contested presidential election. Downie joined the Post as an summer intern in 1964, and retired in Sept. 2008 after serving 17 years as the paper’s executive editor. In his last year as editor, the paper won six Pulitzer Prizes for work done in 2007 — the most it had ever earned in one year. ALSO, John Yemma, the […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Although the Bush administration has stated that the interrogations techniques used at Guantanamo Bay came from the bottom up, British lawyer Philippe Sands disagrees. In his 2008 book, Torture Team, Sands argues that the harsh interrogation policy that emerged after Sept. 11 came from high-ranking government officials and top military figures. Sands warned in a June 2008 Fresh Air interview that the impact of the Bush administration’s conduct would be felt internationally: “The terrible tragedy of these memos and that dark period is that they have migrated into the hands of people who now say, ‘Well, Americans do […]
THIS JUST IN: Michael Jackson On The Verge Of Death
STUFF: Jackson’s biographer Ian Halperin told US gossip magazine In Touch Jackson is suffering from a rare genetic illness called Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, as well as emphysema and gastrointestinal bleeding. The 50-year-old former King of Pop is also reportedly 95 percent blind in his left eye and can barely speak. “He’s had it for years, but it’s gotten worse,” Halperin told In Touch. “He needs a lung transplant but may be too weak to go through with it.” Halperin said the gastrointestinal bleeding was Jackson’s most dangerous ailment: “It could kill him.” Jermaine Jackson has not denied reports of his […]