Wolfe goes on to note how Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Marilyn Monroe, Anna Nicole Smith and Princess Diana are the women who dominate the headlines.

What's most interesting here, though, is the way Wolfe traces this fascination far back into American history.

In fact, Wolfe claims, this sexist tendency to shift the focus away from strong, capable women began deep in the 19th Century.

In order to combat a burgeoning women's movement, the popularized female images were "those of women pale and weak with tuberculosis, those who died young and frail, who could barely raise themselves up from their languid sickbeds."   more »

Many have pointed out that The Sopranos was a significant departure from earlier mob classics in that themes of decline and decay were at its core.

Tony’s family was going down. The mafia was seen as petty, irrelevant, falling apart and under attack.

The rottenness and sense of alienation at the core of suburban life was exposed. And there were increasing references to the disaster in Iraq.

The Sopranos didn’t challenge us to do something about these contradictions, nor did it provide any answers to feelings of alienation of millions of Americans.

But it painted a stark and brilliant portrait of the rot in the fabric of American society.   more »

Épater le Bourgeois

This common French phrase meaning "to shock the middle class" is now naturalized into English. It describes breaches of conventional decorum which discomfort members of the middle class.

Such breaches can be unconscious or calculated, depending upon the person(s) performing them. In the latter case the shock is usually applied under the simplifying assumption that the middle class as a whole is unimaginative, convention-bound and self-satisfied.

Épater le Bourgeois attacks often hope to jar the ostensibly cozy, apathetic, monolithic middle class to some sort of introspection.   more »

It’s hard to imagine how Dick Cheney could get more dastardly, unless J. K. Rowling has him knock off Harry Potter next month.

Harry’s cloak of invisibility would be no match for Vice’s culture of invisibility.

I’ve always thought Cheney was way out there — the most Voldemort-like official I’ve run across. But even in my harshest musings about the vice president, I never imagined that he would declare himself not only above the law, not only above the president, but actually his own dark planet — a separate entity from the White House.

I guess a man who can wait 14 hours before he lets it dribble out that he shot his friend in the face has no limit on what he thinks he can keep secret.

Still, it’s quite a leap to go from hiding in a secure, undisclosed location in the capital to hiding in a secure, undisclosed location in the Constitution.   more »

The New York Times' primary mission

is to be the lead instrument of state propaganda

It's the closest thing we have in the country

to an official ministry of information and propaganda

Single handedly, the Times

encapsulates "the illiberal media"

   more »

Keywords: nyt, liberal, media, propaganda, manipulation