There's a raw tabloid poetry to the opening of Cops, the long-running Fox TV reality show: handheld shots of criminals sprinting down alleyways, brawling with policemen, and squirming from taser-shocks, all counterpointed to the thumping reggae-groove of Inner Circle's anthemic "Bad Boys." It's a genius hook, and it's hard to...

Friday afternoon, I'm ducking work for an hour and taking a rare trip over to CNN, a station I avoid for a multitude of reasons, including what they do to the English language -- they always seem to be "efforting" to bring us more on a story because they think...

To me, the horrific part of Christina Aguilera's rendition of the National Anthem -- and "rendition" is an apt term for it, because she kidnapped the song and shipped it out to be tortured -- was not her mangling of the words, but her mangling of the tune itself: to...

In recent days, such keen-eyed observers as Glenn Beck, Sharon Angle, and your morbidly obese Uncle Bob have declared that a sinister conspiracy of Communists and Islamic fundamentalists has subverted the Obama administration and the judicial system, and that we are about to witness the coming of Sharia law to...

In a way, you have already seen it.

It's called The Million Dollar Money Drop, and it takes the studio-game-show-as-Roman-spectacle to a fresh extreme: though it features the same old tired stagecraft of twenty other shows -- those same endless, milk-the-fake-tension pauses between question and answer, the same...

Thirty years ago, Scott Spencer's Endless Love pulled off that rarest of parlays in modern-day fiction: a "literary" novel that crossed over and became a pop success -- a best-seller that spawned a terrible Brooke Shields movie and a saccharine Diana Ross/Lionel Richie theme-song. Since then, he has written...

It was extremely strange to hear President Obama specify $100 million as America's pledge to the suffering people of Haiti. My first thought was: $100 million is roughly one-quarter of the budget for Avatar. So were we really pledging about forty-five minutes' worth of a 3D sci-fi movie to aid...

Let's take a measured step back and check out the off-the-charts Insanity Quotient in just one recent episode of the nightly news.

• A morbidly obese white entertainer with a palpable terror of black men seeks partial ownership of thirty-five virile, ultra-powerful black men who loathe him.
• Amid epic battles over...

I woke up this morning enchanted by the first rain in Los Angeles in more than three months, and lay awake for a while to savor the sound of it.

Then I went to the computer and found out my old friend, the truly larger-than-life producer Danny Melnick, had died...

I called Senator Al Franken last night to discuss a matter of crucial national importance: his beloved Minnesota Twins had just defeated the Detroit Tigers in an epic one-game playoff. Senator Franken (D-Minn)'s position was clear, eloquent, and unequivocal: second-baseman Nick Punto's game-saving throw to home plate to nip...

Seeking beauty, he disfigured himself.

Seeking omnipotence he became weak.

Seeking riches he went broke.

"The pure products of America go crazy." -- William Carlos Williams.

Now that the television rituals are over -- the theatrically somber voices of the network anchormen; the poetically-framed, stock-footage shots of Arlington Cemetary, and the cracked-bugle versions of "Taps;" maybe a cutesy interview with the Oldest Surviving Veteran of some forgotten battle -- the American media, having done its faux-patriotic...

Though Mickey Rourke's work in The Wrestler was nearly as deep and rich as vintage Brando, and Sean Penn was extraordinary in Milk, the most amazing "performance" of 2008 was that of Benicio del Toro as Che -- which, for my dough, was also the movie of the year.

I...

So, OK, John McCain did a credible job of reading some nifty one-liners ghost-written for him on Thursday night. But for true aficionados of his Komedy Kapers, there's nothing like watching the Senator's satirical genius set loose in a smoky back-room Republican club -- "McCain being McCain," as they say,...

Question: What's the difference between a demagogue like Joe McCarthy and one particular Hockey Mom?

Answer: Lipstick.

Senator Joe (Tailgunner Joe) McCarthy was, in many ways, a pioneer of modern Republicanism--i.e. a hateful, small-minded gay-bashing legislator who was also a closet homosexual. But, sadly...

First of all, John, you weren't in New Orleans.

You were in Kenner, Louisiana. I have spent a fair amount of time in both Kenner and New Orleans, and believe me, the people who live there are acutely aware of the difference. (And, should they forget, they can always check...

In a medium full of revolting displays of hypocrisy and self-importance, Tom Brokaw gave a performance last night that was so hypocritical and so self-important that I wanted to make like Elvis watching Robert Goulet and shoot out the screen with a .38. Fortunately, I was unarmed, and the TV...

The Fat Lady has not only sung; she has showered, changed from her sequined gown into jeans, air-kissed the conductor, and already gone back to the hotel, where she's lying in a bathtub, drinking wine and daydreaming about her next gig. Back at the opera-house, one lone janitor is sweeping...

"Words matter," as Hillary Clinton so often reminded us; and like all campaigns, hers lived and died by the spoken word. Of the millions of dollars she poured into her own campaign, much of it no doubt went into paying speechwriters.

She has grounds to sue them for incompetence, and...

I've been thinking a lot about George Bush lately. About those strange tics and contortions he makes with his face, like a Neanderthal Man playing Grand Theft Auto. About the fact that you and I still pay his salary. And about what, exactly, his real job is. He's not "president"...