Monthly Archives: September 2009

Welcome to the "Dollhouse"

Dollhouse starts its second season, and for those frustrated by the show's one-step-forward-two steps-back approach to currency and complexity, hope abides. Unfortunately, much of that hope is vested in the never-aired but straight-to-video episode 13. Like most of today's best … Continue reading

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Pitching the Woo-Woo

I don't have any scientific data to back this up, but it's a safe bet that most Americans are far more interested in the occult than in Methodism, Episcopalianism and Presbyterianism all rolled into one. Think of it like this: … Continue reading

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Taking it on the Chin

Mary Travers' obit, in the New York Times and other newspapers nationwide, features a black-and-white photo of a lissome young blonde flanked by two handsome hipsters. Peter, Paul and Mary were an early '60s sensation—affixing  the nascent counterculture's political edge … Continue reading

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Change/No Change

Just hours after George Mitchell, the U.S. Middle East envoy, expressed a “sense of urgency” about the Middle East peace process, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu let slip that he would not freeze West Bank settlements—thus defying a key U.S. … Continue reading

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Friendly Faces

Jerry Falwell never betrayed an iota of irony, reflexivity or doubt. In the decade I spent covering the Religious Right, Pat Robertson once admitted that he didn't really hear God's voice and Jimmy Swaggart would plaintively ask if I still … Continue reading

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Compromising Positions

Last week, with the advent of new semester, I inadvertently (or not) waded into THE J-school issue of the day: whither journalism? But rather than whither, my gaze focused on why—which is how I came to recommend an exemplary story … Continue reading

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Consumed in Flames

If you read nothing else this Labor Day weekend, dig into “Trial By Fire” in the current issue of the New Yorker. (Yes, that's for all of you planning to pounce on Levi Johnston's Vanity Fair tell-all.)  David Grann's story … Continue reading

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