American Popular Culture

BEBINGER: Few people who are following the roll out of the state's health care law are surprised that this sticky issue of defining "affordable" has become so divisive. The state's law says individuals will only be required to buy health insurance if it is affordable.

Stuart Altman, who specializes in national health policy at Brandeis University, says no one should have assumed that forcing people to buy insurance, at any price, would be easy.

STUART ALTMAN: I've been anticipating this day since the legislation was, even before it was passed, because I could see it coming. I think it was not given enough attention during the passage of the law, because I think this group is the least politically connected group in our system.

BEBINGER: Altman leans towards the argument that most uninsured residents can afford the coverage being offered...but adds that it would make sense for the state to be flexible in the first year or so of mandatory health insurance.

Microsoft and NAMCO BANDAI create video game history

18 Apr 2007 : Microsoft Corp. and NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc. today made video game history by announcing the first-ever Xbox 360™ “Pac-Man" World Championship, presented by Quiznos. From April 25 to May 9, fans of one of the world's most beloved video games of all time will compete on the classic arcade game via Xbox LIVE® Arcade on the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system, evolving “Pac-Man" gameplay from the local pizza parlors and arcades of the '80s to the Xbox 360 and its online gaming community with more than 6 million members. The top finalists from participating countries around the world will be flown to New York City for the finals on June 5, with the winner being crowned the Xbox 360 “Pac-Man" World Champion by Toru Iwatani, the creator of “Pac-Man."

Since launching in 1980 in Japan and in 1981 around the world, “Pac-Man," its host of ghosts and the famous “wakka wakka wakka" sound have become global pop culture icons.

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.

'Grindhouse' Reviewed by Nick Schager

In a pop culture landscape as hungrily cannibalistic as today's, cinematic nostalgia and homage has lost much of its once enticing luster. The indulgent fun of referencing and rehashing the past has worn so thin that even VH1's gaggle of third-rate Best Week Ever and I Love the [Insert Decade] talking heads seem barely capable of mustering enthusiasm for the latest derogatory smack-down on their own industry brethren. The cultural infatuation with retro navel-gazing is now pronounced to the point that it brings into question whether the practice hasn't seriously debilitated our collective imaginations, which have become so narrowly focused that it sometimes feels as if half of our mainstream entertainment takes as its primary influence mainstream entertainment. It's an inward circle that -- at least in the cinematic arena -- proceeds with no clear direction and even less of a meaningful destination, with deconstruction often taking a back seat to regurgitation as countless filmmakers prove themselves stunted adolescents whose worldview is primarily confined to the movies and TV shows of their youths.

Why we must address both economics and values

From the 1970s through the mid-1990s, poverty policy was among the nastiest battlefields in the national culture war. Left and right slugged it out over why people were poor and how (or whether) to help them. Conservatives generally enjoyed the upper hand in these debates by focusing on individual-level causes of poverty, like family breakdown, drug addiction, and poor work habits -- pathologies said to be enabled by government largesse. This story line struck a chord with the American public, helping ensure the demise of the federal welfare entitlement and the introduction of strict work requirements in 1996.

But since then, a structural understanding of poverty has come back in vogue, fueled by more awareness of globalization and dead-end jobs. Popular books like Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed and Beth Shulman's The Betrayal of Work have drawn a fresh picture of the poor -- as mostly hardworking Americans who can't make ends meet through no fault of their own.