I wrote last week about the religious alternatives to watching yesterday’s Super Bowl halftime show. For those who were not thrilled by the prospect of hearing testimonies by athletes or lessons from the Torah or dislike football entirely, I just heard that Animal Planet channel has for some years been counter-programing the Super Bowl with something called the Puppy Bowl that is apparently quite popular. [Read more…]
The US Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on some same-sex marriage cases in late March with its rulings expected to come towards the end of its term in the summer. The constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that defines marriage as between a man and a woman is one of the cases pending before them. [Read more…]
In a lighter vein, That Mitchell and Webb Look struggles with some of the same issues of racism that this blog has been grappling with in the last few days. [Read more…]
The discussions between Jon Stewart and Larry Wilmore about race issues are almost always both amusing and thoughtful. This one from 2011 concerns the controversy I wrote about earlier today about the removal of the n-word from a recent edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. [Read more…]
Since I complimented Beyonce on her rendition of the national anthem at the inauguration, I feel let down by the news that she may have lip-synced her performance. Although it can hardly be considered a scandal, if true it does signify a lack of professionalism on her part, especially if the other charge that she did not devote enough time for rehearsals also holds up. [Read more…]
Here’s the trailer for the greatest film never made. [Read more…]
I was surprised to see this clip from The Colbert Report in which media personalities casually spoke about their ‘porn names’ as if it was the most commonplace thing in the world to have one. [Read more…]
I was worried for a while about Pat Robertson. As far as I knew he had not uttered a statement on the Newtown shootings, and that was so unlike him. He had also recently been expressing some strangely sensible sentiments on subjects like marijuana and science, and I wondered whether he had seen the light of reason or whether those were momentary brain lapses and that he had since gone back to his old ways of seeing a smiting god everywhere, similar to what he said about the events of 9/11 and hurricane Katrina. [Read more…]
On Thursday’s show, Stephen Colbert discussed the meaning of the second amendment of the US constitution, raising many of the issues that were discussed on this blog earlier that day. [Read more…]