Like life, the presentation of entertainment awards is not always fair. I still bristle every time I think about the 1970 Academy Awards. Despite the fact Midnight Cowboy took home the Oscar for best picture, best director (John Schlesinger) and best adapted screenplay (Waldo Salt), Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal of Ratso Rizzo was deprived of the best … Read more
As some of you may already know, I co-host a monthly film series called “Cinema and Conversation” at our local book store. Last night, I screened the 1983 Martin Scorsese movie, “The King of Comedy.” It stars Robert De Niro as a wannabe stand-up comic Rupert Pupkin, who dreams of being on “The Jerry … Read more
Joe McGinniss showed America that politicians are sold like products. And we loved it. ~David Greenberg, Politico Magazine, 2014 In The Selling of the President 1968, McGinniss documents how a team of media advisers used television to convince America there was a NEW Richard Nixon. Among them was Harry Treleaven, a Madison Avenue guru who came … Read more
If you have either read Gabriel Sherman’s The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News-and Divided the Country or watched the Showtime mini-series based on the book, you know Ailes believed Donald Trump’s occupancy of the Oval Office was dependent on his network’s coverage of the 2016 … Read more
The signal is the truth. The noise is what distracts us from the truth. ~Nate Silver/FiveThirtyEight.COM Two totally unconnected news stories this week affirm how much we have been distracted by the noise when we should be focusing on the signal. The first started as a joke and ended up making national news. The second … Read more