From my sometime nemeses at the Parents Television Council comes word that NBC, like Saul on the road to Damascus, may have had a change of heart in its dealings with the Bible-oriented cartoon VeggieTales. As I wrote earlier, NBC had been editing out overtly religious messages from the cartoon when broadcasting it as part of its

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In my Culture Complex column this week, Matt Lauer puts on his Cronkite costume. What NBC’s declaration of civil war vis-a-vis the fighting in Iraq means (that the momentum is against the White House in its Long War of Semantics) and doesn’t mean (that the media has suddenly decided to brave up and call ’em like it sees ’em, even if that

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The Big Red Car will, sadly, be toot-toot-chugga-chugging without Greg Page. The 34-year-old lead singer for the Australian kids’-music supergroup The Wiggles (anyone who refers to them as "the children’s Beatles" underestimates The Wiggles’ popularity) announced that he would quit performing with the group because of illness. The

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Last night, the godfathers of the American sitcom The Office babysat the kid, as Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, creators and writers of the British version, guest-wrote an episode of the remake. We owe them a thank-you–not for showing us Americans how it’s done, but for demonstrating that, in its third season, the American version

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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 that

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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. The site–in turn citing

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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, …

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 and

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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 boss’s dime, a Leftover Day TV Tip: HBO

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[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 said, if you’re offended by such

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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,

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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) in primetime TV. In which we ask, if

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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, well, I need the

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