It’s been several months since Rosie O’Donnell took over The View and the vanishing form of Star Jones headed for the hills, and it appears we can stop worrying. Despite the danger posed by getting a competent, funny, well-loved talk-show host to join the panel, The View continues to be the out-of-control celebrity train-wreck gala [...]

One more post about the racist who keeps on giving: in my column this week I discussed how, after Michael Richards’ onstage meltdown, one of the first pressing questions was, How will this affect the DVD sales? Well, according to the good folks at TMZ.com, who first posted the Richards video, we have our answer. [...]

Only tangentially TV-related, but in the spirit of yesterday’s post, about how homophobia is more pop-culturally acceptable than various forms of racism: The LA Times reports that Universal’s $42.5 million deal to make Sascha Baron Cohen’s followup to Borat is threatened by many factors, among them that since Borat was so successful, Cohen may be [...]

In my Culture Complex column in Time this week, what will hopefully be–but don’t bet on it–my last word on Michael Richardsgate. Namely, with so many figures exploding into racism lately (George Allen, Mel Gibson, Richards, etc.) maybe the question is not what it says about them but what it says about us. If politicians [...]

This one’s just for the other people who have to work today. The rest of you, go off somewhere and stuff yourselves with turkey-cranberry sandwiches or buy one of those 12-packs of Xbox 360s that Sam’s Club has on sale or whatnot. For my working people, whiling away the time on Tuned In on your [...]

[EPITHET ALERT: The following post uses a racial slur, in quotes, because I believe (1) a quote is a quote, (2) "bleeping" slurs or using cutesy locutions like "the n word" fetishize the term and make it more powerful and (3) conversely, they make the quote easier to take, which it should not be. That [...]

Pop-cultural train wreck averted: News Corp. announced that it is canceling the publication of If I Did It–O. J. Simpson’s book describing how he would have, um, hypothetically murdered the mother of his children and her friend in 1994–and the Fox special, connected with the book, planned for next week. In a statement issued today, [...]

It’s been a silent week at Tuned In (speaking of which, what gives, people? I turn my back for a week and you give O. J. Simpson a freaking TV show?), but in the print edition of Time magazine, Tuned In Enterprises continued churning out product: this week, on the immigration wars (or lack thereof) [...]

Like those teases at Lost, Tuned In will be away this week. Unlike Lost, I’ll be returning next week. (I could not talk my editors into a three-month hiatus, returning in February. Nor, for some reason, are they willing to base me in Hawaii.) Posting will be sporadic, but keep checking your bookmark anyway, because, [...]

60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley died of leukemia today at age 65. His condition was not widely publicized–he was still doing big pieces for the newsmagazine this fall, in his 26th season–so his death would have struck a chord regardless, but he will also be missed for who he was. It’s common for a famous [...]

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched last night’s Lost yet… well, you’ve got a mere three months to get around to it. Last night, for the first time, I wished that I were not watching Lost. Not because I don’t still love the show (I do) or because the episode had problems (though it did). [...]

Here at Tuned In, we tend to focus on midseason ratings more than midterm returns, but tonight, for you our dear friends, something different: at the Time Midterm Blog (bookmark it now!), I’ll be liveblogging the midterm coverage and election returns with columnist Joe Klein and Time.com Washington editor Ana Marie Cox. That’s right: one [...]

You feel as if your life is being influenced, unbeknownst to you, by the actions of strangers thousands of miles away. Are you: (a) paranoid, (b) a typical anxious citizen of the globalization era, or (c) a character in a watercooler-buzzed movie or TV series? In this week’s print edition of TIME, the latest installment [...]

SPOILER ALERT: Do not read this post before watching last night’s Lost, or you’ll learn that… that… sniff… excuse me… Almost since Lost began, fans have whined and complained that the deaths on the series have been convenient and wussified–targeting less-popular, peripheral characters (Boone, Shannon, Ana Lucia, Libby) or threatening, then stepping away from, first-tier [...]