You may have forgotten that U2 frontman Bono was a very occasional guest columnist for The New York Times—after all, it’s been nine months since his Gray Lady debut, and the missive published in yesterday’s Week In Review section was only his fourth under this arrangement. It’s about Barack Obama’s recently bestowed Nobel Peace Prize! And it opens with a reference to Bono getting in hot water with the FCC earlier this decade. MORE »
Posts Tagged ‘Barack Obama’
cunning stunts
Cox Flips The Athens Dial To “Obama Radio”: Well, It’s Better Than “The Pole”
So a station in Athens, Ga., has celebrated “April Fool Plus Six Months Day” by switching from its classic-rock format to “Obama 100.1 Athens Government Controlled Radio,” in a bit of jokey-not-funny programming that’s reminiscent of that awful “Stripper Radio” switch that took place in Denver a few months ago. As you can tell by the picture taken from the site at left, which refers to Obama as Keith Urban, this little prank was not very well-thought-out, and as such is probably temporary. Which is kind of a shame, because the playlist—which they’re mixing with speeches by President Barack Obama and segments that are allegedly simulcast from the Cox-owned Hawaiian station KCCN—is pretty awesome, even if it was probably concocted by a bunch of snickering frat boys who think “Disco sucks” is still a good comedy line. MORE »
listening station
will.i.am Auto-Tunes The Most Important News Item Of The Week
Can you remember a world before Kanye West’s Video Music Awards run-in? Clearly, his interruption of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech on Sunday night was a watershed moment not just for our country’s celebrity-industrial complex, but for our budding media ethicists and underemployed Photoshop aficionados. In a move that reminds one of his holographic appearance on CNN during last year’s election season, Black Eyed Peas leader will.i.am has decided to put his own spin on the incident, mashing together Barack Obama’s declaration that West was a “jackass,” the music from West’s megahit “Heartless,” his personal feelings on how people are kind of ridiculous for making this a big deal, and a lot of Autotune. And, well… let’s just say that the phrase “diminishing returns” could be applied to this track, which at first sounds kind of like it’ll be OK but is then overtaken by Will’s “let’s get together” lyrics that could just as easily be applied to political skirmishes as they could fights between fans of Coke and his paymasters at Pepsi. Clip after the jump. MORE »
International Relations
Barack Obama Gives Queen Elizabeth The Gift Of Jerry Orbach
The late Law & Order star’s version of “Try To Remember” from The Fantasticks was one of 40 songs from American musicals that were pre-loaded onto the iPod given to Queen Elizabeth by President Barack Obama on the occasion of his visit to Buckingham Palace yesterday. The playlist also included Ethel Merman’s “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “One” from A Chorus Line, and Judy Collins’ performance of “Send In The Clowns.” I have to say, though, that putting that song about 525,600 minutes being in a year from Rent instead of something from Bye Bye Birdie? A very major gaffe. Full playlist after the jump. MORE »
show business for ugly people
Anderson Cooper Thinks 50 Cent And The Republicans Are Losers
After last night’s State Of The Union stand-in, the anchors on CNN got into a little discussion of the hip-hop horseraces of 18 months ago, and how they paralleled the bickering between the Democrats and the Republicans over Barack Obama’s various initiatives. Yes, that’s right: The 50 Cent/Kanye West beef made it to Anderson Cooper 360, with Kanye taking on the role of Barack Obama and 50 Cent serving as a stand-in for the Republicans. While Curtis has claimed allegiance with the GOP in the past, he may not be too happy with the reason Cooper gave for lumping the two parties together. (Hint: It’s not because of their shared affinity for Vitamin Water and/or unfettered capitalism.) The excerpted transcript after the jump. MORE »
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No, Presidents Do Not Have Any Sway Over The Pop Charts
MSNBC entertainment correspondent Tony Sclafani has proven himself to be hacktastic in the past, so it’s not surprising that his latest salvo for the cable channel’s Web operation, which tries to make the case that “young Democrat presidents” result in pop music going bad, is full of by-the-numbers rock snobbery and cherry-picked examples that elevate the solo work of Don Henley and declare that the work of Max Martin is neither brilliant nor innovative. (Few pieces of music, after all, can match the never-seen-before genius of “The End Of The Innocence.”) But I wonder if Sclafani himself realized that he was kind of full of crap midway through writing the piece—because beyond a brief mention of a Guardian rundown of artists who wrote anti-Bush songs and some head-shaking about Lady GaGa’s “Just Dance” hitting No. 1 coinciding with Barack Obama’s inauguration (complete with misuse of the term “begs the question”), he tries to make his shaky thesis stick using a bunch of dubious examples that are straight out of a moldy issue of Rolling Stone, thus eliding any mention of “meaningful music” that actually charted between 2001 and 2009. MORE »
videodrone
Etta James: Cool With Beyoncé, Still Trying To Warm Up To The Man In The White House
Etta James‘ tirade about Beyoncé at a Seattle show last month? It wasn’t a dis so much as it was a joke that none of us got because the audio making its way around the Internet didn’t have the audience’s laughter properly amplified, she told the New York Daily News: “I didn’t really mean anything. Even as a little child, I’ve always had that comedian kind of attitude. … That’s probably what went into it.” Although she did think that B could have maybe given a better-than-B-grade performance! MORE »
Is The White House Just An Awesome Clubhouse Designed By An Eight-Year-Old Boy?
For an edifice designed to house and represent the seat of national and international power, it sure seems like the White House could have been diagrammed in crayon on college-ruled notebook paper during third period. We know there’s a bowling alley, of course—which Barack Obama is going to replace with a basketball court, as any modern eight-year-old would. There’s a private chef who can make you mac and cheese or pizza rolls, even after midnight!!! There’s a pool, a dog, a helicopter, spy equipment, secret rooms for ordering missile strikes, and lots of long hallways to skateboard down. There’s no moat (that we know of), but as it turns out, there is one more key feature: an awesome secret record collection! MORE »
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This Week’s Top 12: You Can Probably Ballpark No. 1
This week’s top 12, from Tuesday’s Obamarama to the prospect of Lil Wayne throwing a turkey to the idea that maybe music writing can be saved through the power of Britney Spears’ philanthropy, after the jump. MORE »
