Presented in the interest of equal time and completism, since we started the morning with one. This time from McCain again: As Marc Ambinder (where I got the link) notes, it’s hard to know how widely McCain means web videos like this to be picked up, or whom it’s meant to persuade. But mocking the [...]

The ratings—and/or the highly speculative guesswork—are in, and it turns out a billion people watched the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, over 34 million of them in the U.S. (That’s a smaller percentage of our population, but to be fair, much of the rest of the world’s population doesn’t have Cartoon Network.) Beyond that, [...]

Isaac Hayes, who died over the weekend, was famous as an R&B singer/songwriter, but was most familiar to TV fans as the voice of Chef on South Park. When Chef was killed off the show—after a famous falling out between Hayes and Parker-Stone for the show’s making fun of Scientology, of which he was an [...]

After liveblogging Friday’s opening ceremonies, I took most of the weekend off from the Games, except for the occasional round of beach volleyball. (Actually, judging by the number of times it was on when I randomly turned NBC on this weekend, apparently beach volleyball is the most popular sport on Earth.) Any thoughts on NBC’s [...]

From Vesuvio to Lutece. / AMC SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, crack open a bag of Utz—may I recommend The Crab Chip—and watch Mad Men.

In an interview with ABC News to air tonight, former Presidential candidate John Edwards admits having had an affair with a filmmaker contracted to his campaign. This is his first public admission regarding a scandal that you’ve been reading and hearing about—or, more to the point, not reading and hearing about, in large media outlets [...]

Entertainment Weekly is a Time Inc. sibling, so this may seem like corporate whoring, but it is probably malpractice for a pop-culture/politics blog not to link to EW’s Q&As with John McCain and Barack Obama on their favorite TV, movies, music, etc. This may sound a little Maureen Dowd-y, but comparing the two, you have [...]

MTV In the current issue of TIME, I preview MTV’s The Hills, which returns for season 4 later this month and which, God help me, I like: It all sounds shallow, and, O.K., it is. The surfaces are precisely what make The Hills entrancing: it is possibly the best-looking series on television. It doesn’t just [...]

It’s 8:08 a.m. E.T. as I type, and I am watching what is apparently a live European webcast of the Olympic ceremonies, which will be aired tonight tape-delayed by NBC. Thanks, Macedonia! Any of our far-flung viewers catching the festivities live? [Update: OK, as of 8:13, the video on the above link has shifted over [...]

The election is over, and Paris Hilton has won. The background, in a nutshell: Last week, John McCain debuted an ad accusing Barack Obama of being “the biggest celebrity in the world,” which is supposedly a criticism. The ad juxtaposed Obama’s image with pictures of Britney Spears and Hilton. The Hilton family, which it turns [...]