Seven Things I Learned from Pop Culture in 2008
Belief:
Is Belief in God Hurting America?
David Villano
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
4 Myths About Taxes, Debunked
Paul Buchheit
DrugReporter:
The War on Weed: Marijuana Is Basically Harmless -- The Monumentally Stupid Drug War Is Not
Jim Hightower
Environment:
White House Garden Won't Make Up for Obama's Nomination of Pesticide Lobbyist for US Chief Agriculture Negotiator
Jill Richardson
Food:
Don't Be Scared of Food: Are We Being Needlessly Hysterical About Food Safety?
David E. Gumpert
Health and Wellness:
47,000 Women Could Die As a Result of the New Mammogram Guidelines
George Lakoff
Immigration:
Hate Group, FAIR, Is Looking for "Ethnically Ambiguous" Actors to Amplify Its Racism
Adam Luna
Media and Technology:
The Memory Scrub About Why Ft. Hood Happened Is Almost Complete ... If It Weren't for Archives
Mark Ames
Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler
Politics:
Just When You Thought It Was Safe: 3 Potential Obstacles to Health-Care Reform
Adele M. Stan
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Why Can't We Look Away From Sarah Palin?
Vanessa Richmond
Rights and Liberties:
Murder at Guantanamo? The Mysterious, Unsolved Death of Mohammad Saleh al Hanashi
Jeffrey S. Kaye
Sex and Relationships:
Hot Mormon Muffins and Models for Jesus: What's With All the Sexy Christians?
Liz Langley
Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders
Water:
Poseidon's Financial Shell Game: Why Is a Private Desalination Plant Asking for Public Money?
Peter Gleick
World:
Palestinian Children Face Daily Attacks While Going to School
Mel Frykberg
Ah, the joys of reading and learning. I hope you agree my hours spent reading the mainstream media, blogs and tabloids have paid off. Here, I'm sharing with you the life lessons I've picked up this year.
1. Sell your babies to improve your ethical cred
As a masterful rebranding move (in this case, from vial-of-blood wearing, brother-kissing oddball into charity-working, saintly, mother of six), just sell photos of your babies, then ostensibly donate the money ($15 million or so in Brangelina's case) to charity. Apparently, when you invite strangers into your home, and allow of people to see intimate pictures of your newborns; sign a deal that guarantees biased, positive coverage of you for ever; and demand so much money that the magazine has to lay off people making, you know, non-million-dollar wages, that's good. Yeah, that's pretty saintly. Who says celebrity culture's values are skewed?
2. Pretend to be a dead person if your career is dying
Actors are used to borrowing other people's identities for roles in movies. But it seems in real life, when your reputation is suffering due to an addiction problem, if you borrow someone else's identity (even if that someone died from an overdose of barbiturates), it can bring you back into public favour, and generate the greatest readership in a magazine's history along with massive revenues. And if you show your nipples, it works twice as well. Thanks for the tip, Lindsay!
3. Politics is hotter than porn
No doubt the greatest celebrity of the year was Barack Hussein Obama. He and the travelling roadshow that was the 2008 U.S. election dominated the airwaves, print, and interwebs. Any celebrity that associated him or herself with the political process (See Damon, Matt, will.i.am, etc.) saw their currency increase. At the same time, magazines and newspapers laid off sex writers (sorry). It appears readers have a limited amount of time, and are spending more of it reading about politics, so have less time to read about sex. (One friend said he managed to maintain an interest in both by masturbating over politics. Um, ew).
See more stories tagged with: pop culture, vanessa richmond
Vanessa Richmond is the former managing editor of The Tyee and writes the Schlock & Awe column weekly.
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