In a recent blog post, I railed against popular culture as being an unhealthy force in our lives . In response, Dr. Lawrence Rubin, a fellow blogger who studies popular culture, commented that "If we simply consider popular culture as banality, it certainly seems meaningless...even potentially destructive. However, if instead we recognize that it is [...]
Let me apologize in advance; I just can't help myself. The more I read about reality TV, the more it just gets under my skin and the less control I have over writing about it. Reality TV is my whipping boy. It is, for me, the final indication of the end of civilization as we [...]
I already wrote a post about Elizabeth Lambert, the newest? member of the Sports Hall of Shame, for her unsportspersonlike behavior during a recent college soccer game. But I had another perspective I wanted to share because of all the attention she has gotten in the media. I actually feel sorry for Ms. Lambert. Don?t [...]
Elizabeth Lambert has become an overnight sensation?but not in a good way. Thanks to the viral power of youtube, her decidedly unsportspersonlike (we can?t say unsportsmanlike any longer) behavior during a recent college soccer game has landed her in the Deplorable Behavior Hall of Fame along side such luminaries as Kermit Washington, Bill Romanowski, Mike [...]
You read a lot lately about how busy we Americans are. That we don?t have time to do anything important, like paying the bills, spending time with family and friends, and taking care of our health. But I think much of America has the opposite problem; we seem to have too much time on our [...]
Talk about hitting a man when he's down, literally and figuratively. Did you read the New York Times article on Friday about the surge in attacks on the homeless, many by so-called thrill offenders? There's even a genre of on line entertainment called "bum fight" videos that get posted on the Internet. In other words, [...]
A hundred years ago, Sigmund Freud developed the notion of the projective test, like the Rorschach, as a means of indirectly assessing people's psyches and identifying their deepest needs and emotions. Though the value of projective tests has been questioned, I would suggest that such formal tests aren't necessary anymore. We need look no further [...]
When I was growing up, my world was filled with heroes. There were John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Carl Yastrzemski. These icons represented everything good about America: strong, principled, humble, and decent. They led exemplary lives, worked hard, and cared about the world in which they lived. As an impressionable boy, I [...]
What attracts millions of Americans each week to this cultural phenomenon known as "reality TV?" Where did the purveyors of shows such as Survivor, The Apprentice, and American Idol, get the idea, and why do we buy into the idea that reality TV resembles reality in any way, shape, or form? Only in George Orwell's [...]