State of California,

I am writing this on behalf of the entire filmmaking and artistic community worldwide.

We have just learned the astonishing news of the sentencing of Roger Avary, Oscar-winning co-writer of Pulp Fiction and director of Killing Zoe, to one full year in prison resulting from...

Roman Polanski needs to come back to the United States and face his conviction for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977. Period.

Why? Because he intentionally ran out on the justice system in the country where he committed his crime and has never been held accountable for what...

Well, here's the least surprising media-centric news item ever: John Stossel is leaving ABC for Fox News Channel.

For the uninitiated few, Stossel is a multi-Emmy-winning investigative reporter with an amusing Harry Reems moustache. He calls himself a libertarian -- a designation which these days, unfortunately, is...

As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education -- it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality. This is something you'd expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

-- Oklahoma Republican State Senator Steve Russell, on President Obama's plan to address...

Oh the sheer volume of e-mail I've been getting over the past 48 hours from outraged Boomers and Woodstock-philes. I thought those guys were supposed to be all about peace and love.

I'm not going to bother addressing every single complaint I've received or every issue taken with

I'll never forget it: On July 13th, 1985, folk legend Joan Baez walked onto the stage at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium -- site of the U.S. half of that day's massive Live Aid concert -- looked out over the crowd of rowdy kids, lifted up her voice as if she were...

Dear Kate,

You don't know me, but I felt like I just had to reach out to you after watching your appearance on Larry King Live a few nights ago. I know you've been through a lot over the past several months: the cruel tabloid headlines, the negative assumptions about...

"So progressives are now in revolt. Mr. Obama took their trust for granted, and in the process lost it. And now he needs to win it back."

-- Paul Krugman in an editorial in today's New York Times

I'm not one of those people who listens to right-wing radio, even...

There's been quite a bit of controversy throughout the liberal blogosphere pegged off a couple of comments made recently by Rolling Stone columnist and avowed prick Matt Taibbi. As a writer Taibbi's always had strong opinions, and despite being regularly left-leaning, he's never shied away from taking those who typically...

I've spent the past couple of days "collating" -- as Ash from Alien might say -- my thoughts on the unfortunate death of Walter Cronkite. It would be easy to go into detail about the man himself: his dignity and dedication, his irreproachable level of professionalism, his enduring legacy in...

I'm going to write a book called How to Hunt for a Wife.

It's going to tell men that they should seek out women who are average looking (less likely to cheat), younger than them (more likely to idolize), and are willing to cook and do the dishes (a matter...

I'm living proof that if there's one thing TV networks don't like, it's honesty.

When precious ad revenue is at stake, especially in a flatlining economy, a self-deprecating sense of humor isn't simply something that's sure to go unappreciated; it's the kind of thing that can get you shown the...

When it comes to back-room political intrigue, it takes quite a bit to raise the collective eyebrow of the public; we're just about desensitized at this point to even the most underhanded of machinations.

That said, a story that broke over the weekend concerning John Edwards's mercifully ill-fated presidential campaign...

So Supreme Court Justice David Souter has announced that he'll be retiring, putting President Obama in the position of making yet another decision, in just his first few months in office, that will have consequences for this country that reach far beyond his presidency. Unfortunately, whomever he picks won't tip...

Exactly how far is too far?

Several times over the past month or so, I've dismissed Glenn Beck, the new clown prince of Fox News, as being not much more than a guy doing Kaufman-esque stand-up -- an opportunistic little turd who's playing his audience of paranoid conspiracists...

I was waiting for something like this to happen.

When NBC first announced that it would be keeping Jay Leno on its payroll and, astonishingly, giving him a show five nights a week at 10pm, I figured it was only a matter of time before the network's nationwide affiliates...

Swallowed as a single, sour dose, the average episode of Glenn Beck's nightly cable show goes down like liquid acid and produces just about the same result. To the uninitiated viewer, watching an hour of Beck's psychotic ravings, crackpot conspiracy theories, maudlin tales of personal tragedy, and generally demented sky-is-falling...

For obvious reasons, I don't pay much attention to anything Bill O'Reilly says.

He's little more than a puffy buffoon doing a nightly Vaudeville routine and I've always sort of felt that to rage against his silly shtick would be to give his opinions validation they don't deserve. O'Reilly's a...

Gotta thank Bob Cesca for leading me to this little gem: the National Review Online's compilation of the supposed "25 Best Conservative Movies of the Last 25 Years."

What exactly makes a movie "conservative" is apparently known only to the brain trust at NRO, which includes the decidedly...

A couple of months ago, I wrote a piece for this site that took the form of an open letter complaining to the American media about their continued glorification of the Duggar clan.

For those lucky enough to have no idea who I'm talking about, the Duggars -- Jim...