Jonathan Kesselman's "The Hebrew Hammer" is the manifesto for a hip, hype-driven "new Jewishness." But here's a news flash: American Jews aren't actually black, and anti-Semitic stereotypes aren't automatically funny...
Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | The "Jewsploitation" craze
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In an escalation of White House efforts to circumvent what President Bush calls the news media "filter," the Pentagon plans to launch a 24-hour satellite channel from Baghdad to make it easier for U.S. television stations to air government-authorized news about Iraq.
I watched Angels in America on HBO on the expectation that I would find it a moving drama with lousy politics. It turns out that while Tony Kushner has a facility with language and dialogue, his much vaunted epic (it's been called the "best play of the decade" for example) is long-winded, repetitious and very whiny cartoon. All the main characters are depressed and angry, and kvetching is the only voice they seem able to muster. Only two of are mildly interesting -- the central character dying of AIDS and his black flamboyant gay friend -- and this mainly because of their insight into the hypocrisy of the others, particularly the most irritating character on stage -- the lover who leaves his dying mate and who, like everybody else in this melodrama, is a one-dimensional stick figure. The Roy Cohn caricature has some perverse interest but the fact that he is a caricature makes his appearances increasingly monotonous...
In the heat of Campaign 2000, NBC's publicity department began an ad campaign trumpeting its own version of "a president we can all agree on." The man in question, of course, was Josiah Bartlet, the embattled chief executive played by Martin Sheen in the network's runaway nighttime-serial hit, The West Wing. At about the same time, cars in southern California reportedly began sporting bumper stickers that read BARTLET FOR PRESIDENT. When the Democratic National Committee scheduled a party on the set of the show, in Los Angeles, during the Democratic Convention, more than a few wags commented that the Democrats would be far better off with the charismatic, principled chief executive that television had produced to wide popular acclaim than with the unpersuasive populist crusader who was sopping up bucketloads of Hollywood's political largesse, to dangerously mounting popular indifference.
The Atlantic | Mar 2001 | The Feel-Good Presidency | Lehmann
Comedian Dennis Miller deadpanned at the audience who packed the WGAw Theater on September 17: "We're riffing here -- sometimes it gets ugly."
Calling it a night to explore "the story behind the story," Academy of Television Arts and Sciences CEO Bryce Zabel introduced WGAw President Victoria Riskin to kick-off Sublime Primetime, an absorbing evening for Emmy-nominated writers to share their writing experiences and discuss their acclaimed scripts.
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