Popular Culture

31 March 2003


Charles Barkley Makes Intelligent Comment
Charles Barkley was a fair basketball player, and is a pretty lame broadcaster. However, "Sir Charles" (according to the basketball media and no one else) did make an interesting point this week, to wit, "You know the world is off tilt when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest basketball player is Chinese, and Germany doesn't want to go to war." As the comedians say, it is funny because it is true. For more, click here.

Talk Show Oasis in TV's Daytime Desert
If TV is a vast wasteland (and it largely is), there are no words to describe how truly awful daytime TV is. It is a parade of dysfunctional twits who, in any decent society, would be a source of shame rather than entertainment, locked away for treatment instead of placed on exhibit. In the midst of all that, ABC has a man named Wayne Brady doing a talk show that is too small for his great and numerous talents, and one can only hope it launches a bigger and better venue for him. Click here to read on.

This is the Golden Age of Cartoons
While the pretentious will call it animation, they really are just cartoons. However, this is one of the world's bright spots. Whether one has noticed or not, one is living in a golden age, not of philosophy, nor science, nor art, well, perhaps art, if cartooning (forgive the invention of a gerund) is an art. The cartoons made now surpass the Warner Brothers and Disney of old in both writing and drawing. Click here to read more.