| POP CULTURE IS HUGE THREAT
This column will return to the hardcore sports world soon. We'll get back to the Royals, Trent Green, Will Shields, the draft and Brandon Rush's stay-or-go decision (he should stay) in just a few days. But I still have a couple of things I need to say about Don Imus and the very necessary discussions his ignorant attempt at humor has spawned. Today I want to talk about pop culture in general and hip-hop/prison culture in particular and why we need to rethink old ideas about their ability to influence us. Pop culture is on steroids now. It's bigger and badder than it's ever been. It's pervasive, inescapable and powerful enough to override good parenting. Read that again: It's pervasive, inescapable and powerful enough to override good parenting.
New Spielberg interview in Rolling Stone
Steven Spielberg is featured in a new interview with Rolling Stone on the event of the magazine's 40th anniversary. Founded in 1967, the periodical is celebrating its four decades in rock and pop culture journalism through chats with baby boomer luminaries and notables including Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Jack Nicholson, Jane Fonda, and many more musicians, writers, and artists.The Spielberg interview is a terrific read, as he touches on his life in the late 1960s (making films, avoiding the Vietnam draft), the influence of music and Rolling Stone in his life and work, his generation's influence on cinema (in which Spielberg respectfully puts the late Pauline Kael in her place for accusing Spielberg and George Lucas for infantilizing American film), politics in the 1960s and today, and the future of film production and presentation.The 40th anniversary issue of Rolling Stone is now available at local booksellers everywhere.
Phil Harrison Answers Your Questions
Right around this time last month, we asked for your questions to pass on to President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios Phil Harrison. With the launch of the PlayStation 3 console in Europe, Mr. Harrison has had kind of a full month. He still found us the time to answer your questions, and today we have them to read. Below are his very thorough responses to the questions you posed, ranging in subject from the European delay to the public perception of SCEA. Make sure to give them a look, and many thanks again to Mr. Harrison for his time. .
O'Reilly claimed WI paper tried to "hurt" Thompson for his ...
During an April 18 interview on his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly asked former Wisconsin governor and Republican presidential candidate Tommy Thompson about an April 17 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial condemning remarks Thompson made during an April 16 speech, in which he said "earning money" is "sort of part of the Jewish tradition." O'Reilly asked: "Why would the Milwaukee paper take a shot at you like this?" Thompson claimed in response: "[T]he Milwaukee paper has never supported me in anything ... and I feel bad." On the April 18 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly again brought up the Journal Sentinel editorial. He suggested that they were "try[ing] to hurt the governor" and repeated Thompson's claim regarding the newspaper: "I know they don't like him.
A different view of immigration
An afternoon storm sends an energetic wind through the Front Range Community College campus, which has become damp after a short rain with big drops. The campus is not yet deserted this early Wednesday afternoon, and students loaded with backpacks and stacks of thick textbooks beeline for the parking lot or into buildings for their evening classes. The students in BP 115 meander into class quietly, slowly and shyly. They take their places in the brightly-lit classroom, which has been decorated with posters of foreign cities and beautiful locales. They sit in pairs or threesomes around the outside of several tables arranged in a large U-shape, conversing softly among each other. The voices are all in English but each one is obscured by a different, thick accent. Teacher John Loughran stands in the middle of the U.
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