Armchair Sociology

Every once in awhile it’s nice to check in with the good folks at Time magazine and see what they think the American audience is capable of handling. The photo above shows the American version of Time versus its various worldwide incarnations. Bet you didn’t even have to read the captions to guess which one is for Americans.

That’s right, despite battles between Occupy Wall Street and police that have captured global attention, Time thinks we Americans would be better off learning how anxiety is good for us, rather than seeing what is actually happening in our country and around the world.

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After eight years in LA as an independent filmmaker and editor-in-chief of Andrew Breitbart‘s Big Hollywood, John Nolte (pictured) is thrilled to be heading back home to Boone, North Carolina. He has kind words for the people of LA, but says he will not miss the city itself, which he describes as “a dump with a 10% sales tax” and a “big, fascist, one-story ghetto.”

Nolte is also no fan of Paul Haggis, headlining and ending his farewell-to-LA piece with the wish that the Oscar winning filmmaker “go to hell.”  He writes that it was while attending mass last year as one of only two white guys in the pews that he finally came to realize just how “defamatory” an attack Haggis’ 2005 Best Picture is on the people of LA:

Crash would have you believe that the marvelous American melting pot known as Los Angeles is filled with racists and racial strife and racial tension and race, race race, race race. Well, that’s a damned lie. My hand to God, in eight years I have personally never seen, been involved in, or known anyone involved in any kind of racial incident.

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Rihanna‘s been taking plenty of heat for her new music video, in which the singer portrays a rape victim who kills her attacker. Outraged media watchdog groups have gone so far as to demand the video be banned. But media outlets remain largely unmoved by the hysteria.

BET premiered the video last week and has refused to stop airing it. The network issued a statement in response to the controversy:

BET Networks has a comprehensive set of standards and guidelines that are applied to all of our content. The Rihanna “Man Down” video complied with these guidelines and was approved for air.

MTV has not yet aired the video, but noted on the MTV.com blog that their “Facebook poll asking whether the video goes too far had the “no” votes leading the “yes” votes by a margin of three-to-one.”
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At this point, there’s really only one person who can properly decipher the motives of our shamed ex-Governor and one-time box office king – his fellow Austrian Sigmund Freud. Of course, the real Freud died in 1939, but this is Hollywood, so the good news is there are any number of other Freud’s to choose from for a candid, heartfelt low-budget sit-down in the vein of My Dinner with Andre.

Too bad Viggo Mortensen is already taken as Freud, via David Cronenberg‘s upcoming drama A Dangerous Method. He would have been perfect.

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The LA Times editorial board went ahead and shared some of the e-mail correspondence among its members that led to an opinion piece about the forthcoming memoir written by Jaycee Lee Dugard, the victim of 18 years of horrific sexual detainment. The internal debate about whether or not to publish a commentary about the tome, entitled A Stolen Life, turns out to be more interesting than the piece itself.

Wednesday’s Op Ed starts out by making the very valid points that Dugard does not need the money (she received a large settlement from the state of California) nor the attention. But it then weakly pivots to this contradictory conclusion:

We hope she makes a lot of money and puts it toward a life of the fulfillment and joy that she was denied for so long.

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Last night at a Los Angeles area synagogue, Jewish Journal parent company editor-in-chief Rob Eshman moderated a panel discussion featuring Noel Biderman, founder and CEO of the controversial matchmaking service AshleyMadison.com, and Rabbi Mark Borovitz of Beit T’Shuvah. The online dating website allows anonymous users to facilitate extra-marital affairs and bills itself as “the most recognized name in infidelity.”

Biderman came to the event at the behest of Journal reporter Ilana Angel, who today reports on what went down. She applauds the Toronto based executive for accepting the invitation, but condemns his service and notes that the fact that he is Jewish seemed to add an extra layer of judgment to the proceedings:

There was hate in the room last night. You could feel the daggers digging into Noel and it was intense. I do not like the word hate, do not like to use it, and will not allow my son to use it. I don’t hate Noel, or hate AshleyMadison, but I was angered by the conversation…

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In the old days, major Hollywood film stars such as Jack Nicholson and Sylvester Stallone made a point of attending the Kentucky Derby. But as this Saturday’s 137th running looms, the celebrity pickings are once again pretty slim, part of a recent trend towards celebs of a reality TV pedigree.

Rich Copley, columnist with the Lexington Herald-Leader, delves into the matter with a professor of pop culture at Syracuse University and Access Hollywood producer Rob Silverstein. In a sense, it’s kind of surprising that the cast of Jersey Shore will not be there Saturday:

“We just got back from the royal wedding, and I think of the Derby in the same sort of way, as a pageant of style and fashion,” Silverstein says. “That’s what we come for. I’m not expecting to see 20 to 30 major celebrities.”

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She didn’t invent it, that was Angelina Jolie. And she didn’t base a career on it, that was Tila Tequila. But Evan Rachel Wood has made good use of the bisexuality strategy to gain a bit of media attention. The following remarks in an interview with Esquire were all it took to land her a mention in damn near every publication in the country:

She says she’s feeling free and genuinely happy these days. “I’m up for anything. Meet a nice guy, meet a nice girl…”

This is the third such hint in the conversation, after that androgyny comment and saying she’d “marry” her Mildred Pierce costar Kate Winslet if she could.

You date women?

“Yes,” she says proudly, as if she was waiting to be asked.

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Last week, the National Book Critics Circle awarded “A Visit From the Goon Squad” by novelist Jennifer Egan its highly-touted prize for fiction. It was a huge honor for Egan’s work, but you really wouldn’t know it from glancing at the LA Times’ website. Alongside its writeup of the awards ceremony, the Times chose to run a shot of Jonathan Franzen–who’s novel “Freedom” was arguably the favorite to pick up the award–instead of Egan.

Times readers weren’t having it.

“Seriously? Seriously???,” one wrote. “The news is that literary darling Jonathan Franzen LOST an award, not that (talented but less well-known female) Jennifer Egan WON? Please spend a couple of minutes gazing into your editorial navels today and ask yourselves what happened.”

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Leave it to comedian-turned-radio-pundit Dennis Miller to fire back at Charlie Sheen with a reference as esoteric as many of those spewed by the embattled actor.

Appearing last night as he occasionally does on The O’Reilly Factor, the Santa Barbara resident revealed that he has been thoroughly enjoying the new king of going off on a rant, and compared Sheen to a deceased French playwright. “I find Sheen uproariously funny,” Miller raved. “I think he’s an absurdist supreme. I don’t think I’ve seen a farceur like this since Georges Feydeau at the turn of the 20th century with his plays…”

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