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One hitch in the theory that the media are in cahoots to get Hillary out of the race—ratings numbers like these, from MSNBC:
MSNBC’s telecast of last night’s Democratic candidates debate drew 7.8 million viewers (9-10:36 p.m. ET), becoming the most watched broadcast in the eleven year history of the network, according to Nielsen Media
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The other day I got a DVD screener for The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom, a reality show (hosted by Growing Pains’ Tracey Gold) in which women who have put careers on hold or given them up to stay at home get a chance to spend a week working at their would-have-been careers.
It’s another in a line of reality shows that deal in some way …
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Anyone who believes that corporate synergy does not work in TV should watch last night’s Democratic debate in Ohio. There we saw Hillary Clinton using one NBC Universal property (Saturday Night Live) to attack another NBC Universal property (MSNBC, the debate host) for its treatment of her. Fielding a question about NAFTA, Hillary–whose …
Recently I finished Swimming in a Sea of Death, David Rieff’s memoir about the final illness of his mother, the writer Susan Sontag. She was 73 when she died late in 2004 of a virulent form of leukemia. Towards the end of his book Rieff wonders whether, instead of suffering …
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I’m divvying up this week’s American Idol semifinal coverage with time.com editor / music critic Josh Tyrangiel, and his reviews of Tuesday’s boys’ night ’70s sing-off should be up any… second… now. (Whoa! There it is already.)
If you ask me, Josh got the lucky half of the deal, because while the …
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There is a generational war going on in your living room. In the one corner, your computer, that hot new property, what with its multitasking and IM abbreviations and viral videos, basks in attention …
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Britain’s Radio Times (via the BBC), has performed a truly valuable service to mankind: chronicled the 25 greatest TV insults of all time. The list is understandably Brit-heavy–lots of references to knickers and such–but there are a few American shows represented. (How do you pick just one insult from Cheers’ Carla or Scrubs’ Dr. …
Over the months that I was working on Time‘s story this week about the antiquities wars, one thing that struck me was that last September’s “memo of understanding” between Yale University and Peru to return the Machu Picchu artifacts, which was supposed to be finalized within 60 days, never was. Now we’re getting a glimpse of how messy …
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I forgot to link earlier to my brief review of ABC’s A Raisin in the Sun, so i figured I’d open up this thread to any comments on it. I think P. Diddy (sorry, Sean Combs) has gotten a lot of credit for being better than you’d expect him to be, but it’s really the women around him, …
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A while ago, in a story about feminism and TV, I quoted the 30 Rock episode in which Liz Lemon says that, in the upcoming election, there’s an 80 percent chance that she will tell her friends she’s voting for Barack Obama but will secretly vote for John McCain. It turns out, though, that Tina Fey disagrees with Liz Lemon–or, at least, …
I caught an advance look at The Gates, a documentary about the 2005 Christo and Jeanne-Claude project in New York’s Central Park. It has its television premiere on HBO on Tuesday, Feb. 26, at 10 p.m. Then it’s repeated on various dates and times through March.
The …
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SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this edition of Wire Watch, rent a car at Enterprise, use the GPS to find your way home, and watch last night’s Wire.
In The Wire, individuals struggle valiantly against systems, but eventually the systems win. They grind you down, overpower you, …
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The writers’ strike is over, right? That’s what I’m reading in the papers, and Jon Stewart made his first joke of the night about it. But if you expected the Bruce-Vilanchists of Hollywood to storm back and prove their importance by whipping up a barnburner of an Academy Awards in the couple weeks since the end of the strike, you waited in vain.
