NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Your characters smoke crack, go “jihad,” crash abortion rallies? Was there ever a subject you wanted to tackle but decided was just too much? ROB MCELHENNY: Our feeling is that there’s a lighter side to everything. Looking at a baby being thrown in the trash is tragic and very, very sad, and yet when you read those newspaper reports or see it on the news, it’s so sad and so tragic that it becomes almost ludicrous. It’s almost to the point where it’s so unbelievable that this is the point that our culture has come to, there […]
MAILBAG: Why WHYY Needs To Unionize
Dear Phawker, It is shameful that the employees of WHYY are forced to anonymously submit their cry for fairness and justice. It’s clear that employees at WHYY need a voice. At New Jersey Network, employees — camerapeople, editors, graphic artists, IT folks, producer/directors, master control staff, reporters, professionals and engineering staff — all have a voice through our union. The Communications Workers of America which repesents employees at other public broadcasting stations throughout the US and Canada including WBGH and the CBC to mention a few. Certainly, no CWA represented public broadcast employees would fear for their job for speaking […]
PAPERBOY: CP’s Purple Reign
BY AMY Z. QUINN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right — these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. Hey, we know how it is — so many words to read, so little time to surf for free porn. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you, freeing up […]
Rendell’s Wife To Decide If Janet Jackson Superbowl Tit Flash Was Indecent, Tacky Or Just Plain Obnoxious
This morning, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia will consider whether the notorious “wardrobe malfunction” that bared singer Janet Jackson’s breast during a televised 2004 Super Bowl halftime show was indecent, or merely a fleeting and accidental glitch that shouldn’t be punished. Marjorie Rendell — also known as Midge, wife of Gov. Rendell — is one of the judges who serves on the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hearing the case. The court will hear arguments about the Feb. 1, 2004 halftime show when 90 million Americans watched singer Justin Timberlake pull off part of Janet Jackson’s bustier, briefly […]
VIET NOW: Local Heroes
INQUIRER: Interactive Map Of Local Iraq War Dead [click image to activate]
RAW TAPE: Osama Bin Laden
EDITORIAL: Setting aside for a moment his pre-Age Of Reason worldview and psychopathic capacity to kill-without-feeling anyone that contradicts it, it must be said that Osama Bin Laden is a razor-sharp observer of world affairs, and as such his comments are no more or less credible than the average Fox News talking head. To wit: he says that despite the U.S. being the mightiest military power on Earth, 19 men flying planes into buildings were able to entirely change America’s compass. Who does not agree with that? And who, in hindsight, does not agree that the over-reaction to 9/11 was […]
PAPERBOY:Keepin It ‘Gayngsta’ Edition
BY AMY Z. QUINN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right — these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. Hey, we know how it is — so many words to read, so little time to surf for free porn. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you, freeing up […]
MEDIA: Columbus Dispatch Runs Nazi-Esque Cartoon
The thought that apparently DID NOT occur to the Columbus Dispatch‘s Op-Ed page editor when he/she green-lighted this frickin’ piece of work would have sounded something like this: Hmmm…Comparing an entire nation of people to cockroaches scurrying out of a drain is a little too close for comfort to the Nazis depicting Jews as scurrying vermin in The Eternal Jew. And the whole thing is made doubly offensive given Ahmadinejad’s disgraceful Jew-baiting and Holocaust revisionism. Hmmm…maybe this is a bad idea. [image via CROOKS & LIARS] * LOCAL ANGLE: “There is only one way forward that might possibly build on […]
JFK: A View Of The Sun God
J.F.K.: A View of the Sun God From Inside the Television Set by John David Ebert John F. Kennedy was a man who spent his entire life, from first to last, living inside a television set. If we want to understand that life, then we must, like Alice through the looking glass, crawl up into the radiant, pixilated landscape of television ourselves, and learn to make our way about its contoured rows of ordered electrons, all carefully aligned on a grid and pulsing with life, like huge glowing radioactive eggs. We must tread carefully across this soft and spongy landscape, […]
PAPERBOY: “Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical” Edition
BY AMY Z. QUINN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right — these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. Hey, we know how it is — so many words to read, so little time to surf for free porn. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you, freeing up […]
GREETINGS FROM ASBURY PARK: ‘Baby This Town Rips The Bones From Your Back, It’s A Death Trap’
BY DAN DELUCA OF THE INQUIRER For me, growing up an hour down the Garden State Parkway in Ventnor, Asbury Park was a place to escape to, a destination where there was a music scene, unlike the rest of the culturally barren Jersey Shore. We made pilgrimages to the still-active Stone Pony in hopes of catching a Springsteen pop-in. Sometimes, we hit the jackpot. Others, all we got was Gary U.S. Bonds. But when I drove there on a hot Sunday afternoon in July — stopping on the way into town at what seemed like the loneliest Starbucks in the […]
EDITORIAL: Who Breaks A Butterfly Upon A Wheel*
EDITORIAL: This is a fool’s errand, we know, but in the name of decency, fairness and The Golden Rule, we are calling on the local media to exercise some measure of restraint in reporting on the drug and criminal justice problems of the brothers Reid. And no, we’re not just talking about the kind of restraint that keeps you from getting sued, but the kind of restraint that comes when editorial decision-making is attached to journalistic ethics — not just ratings aspirations. As we type this, Philly.com has just splashed a top story about the pills allegedly found in Brett […]