I've rarely seen a fictional character on a TV show engender such fierce debate and disagreement. Following the third season finale of "Mad Men" last week, Betty Draper (played by actress January Jones) has been vilified, condemned, and denounced by journalists, bloggers, and countless viewers. Others, including me, have defended...

I can't believe it's been 15 months since Ted Kennedy announced that he had inoperable brain cancer. Like so many Americans, I feel that my life has been inextricably linked to the Kennedys since childhood. My very first memory is of JFK's assassination when I was only four years old....

I was very sad to hear yesterday that Bea Arthur died here in Los Angeles. I knew the actress was 86 years old and wasn't going to live forever, but it still seems unreal that she's gone. She was such a strong presence on TV for so many years she...

Eartha Kitt, self-described "sex kitten" and singer of the yuletide classic "Santa Baby" died this week on Christmas Day. My wife and I had one memorable encounter with Kitt last year at LAX. We were waiting for my sister and her family to arrive from Chicago on an American Airlines...

I attended a funeral the other day, in the very same chapel where Cyd Charisse's service was held last June. Cyd's was an odd funeral for a Jewish cemetery but this one, for writer Irving Brecher who died last week at the age of 94, was wildly appropriate....

Seventy years ago yesterday, hundreds of groups of marauding Germans were tearing through Berlin and other cities in Germany vandalizing, looting, and in many cases burning to the ground Jewish synagogues, businesses, and private homes. Later, this horrible night of terror would be called Kristallnacht, or the "Night of Broken...

I've been reading the accolades coming in about Paul Newman, who died on Friday. What a great life he had. Beloved by his family, his peers, and the world at large. A true mensch.

A few days ago I saw a moving documentary by Nanette Burstein called "American Teen." It follows the lives of a bunch of kids during their senior year of high school in the small Midwestern town of Warsaw, Indiana. The weird thing about the film is that it's...

With apologies to my wife and the rest of the female population, can we all agree that actress Cyd Charisse simply had the best legs that ever walked the earth? If you don't believe me, just look at that amazing dance number in "Singin' in the Rain" when Cyd's...

As I write this, gay and lesbian couples all over California are only minutes away from being able to receive legal marriage licenses for the first time. That seems like a true miracle, especially when you remember that the way was cleared for them by the mostly Republican-appointed...

I think it's safe to say that John McCain is the last presidential candidate I'll ever see who is old enough to be my father. Born in 1936, he is the end of the line for pre-Baby Boomer candidates--members of my parents' generation who grew up during World War...

Have you heard that Brigitte Bardot was convicted this week in France for "inciting racial hatred?" Here's what the 73-year-old former sex goddess wrote about the Muslim population in France that landed her in hot water:

"I am fed up...

I was on my way to meet my wife at the movies the other night for a sold-out screening of "Sex in the City" when I ran into a couple I know from our neighborhood. When I told them where I was going, they looked at me with pity...

I see dead people. Or to put it more accurately, I often think about famous people just before their deaths, even though I have no idea they are ill. Although Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In hasn't crossed my mind in years, I found myself talking about one of my...

I was lucky enough to know Charles Nelson Reilly, one of the funniest people on the planet. Reilly died this weekend after a very long illness, and today is being mourned by his showbiz colleagues, the public at large, and his legions of former acting students. Charles' oft-stated concern that...

That insanely anachronistic bit of dialogue was uttered by Anne Baxter's Nefretiri to Charlton Heston in the 1956 version of The Ten Commandments. Cecil B. DeMille's second retelling of the Passover story (he first filmed the Biblical tale in 1923) is the campy benchmark against which all other cinematic depictions...

Dear Hank and Annie,

Hey, check it out! Showtime has been overhyping this hot new series about you two crazy kids that starts tonight. Shit man, if you added up all the commercials they've shown for The Tudors, it would last longer than your marriage, you know what I'm sayin'?...

What baby boomer wasn't obsessed with the space program? As a kid growing up in the 1960s I followed every Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo launch with enthusiasm and wonder and created scrapbooks of the missions. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were cultural icons in my childhood the same way Elvis...

Had she lived, today would've been Janet Joplin's 64th birthday. Joplin died in 1970, three weeks after Jimi Hendrix and nine months before Jim Morrison. All three of these rock icons were 27 when they left the planet. What a waste.

I've recently been watching some of the old "Dick...

I was going into my junior year of high school the summer that Gerald Ford became President. I remember calling everyone I knew on that hot August day to gloat over Nixon's resignation. I was a few weeks away from turning 15 but I knew that it was a terribly...