Entertainment Media

The new Natalie Maines record is continuing to spur music writers to slam the "cowardice" of the country-music industry and the stuffiness of the country-music audience in the aftermath of Maines trashing President Bush at a London concert on the eve of the Iraq war. 

On the NPR show "Fresh Air" on Wednesday, music critic Ken Tucker insisted Maines was just ahead of where the majority would arrive on Bush's wrong-headedness:

Tonight’s episode of NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit will showcase failed Republican Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin’s infamous remark that “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down” so the woman would not get pregnant.

NBC’s promo for the March 27 episode touts a storyline “ripped from the headlines” with “words that set off a national controversy.” In the promo run at the end of last week’s show, a man on a witness stand, who is sporting a flag lapel pin, declares: “It’s nearly impossible for a victim of legitimate rape to become pregnant.” [UPDATED with a summary of what aired]

Another episode airs tonight of FX’s The Americans. Last week, the historic drama set in 1981, portrayed a successful KGB effort to discredit a Polish priest, who is leading an anti-Soviet liberation movement, by smearing him as a rapist during his visit to New York City. (“The Reagan administration doesn’t want a rapist leading the movement to push the Soviets out of Poland.”)

The March 13 installment of the series also featured an actual real-life clip of President Ronald Reagan hailing the people of Poland: “We, the people of the free world, stand as one with our Polish brothers and sisters.”

ESPN Pardon the Interruption co-host  Michael Wilbon is no fan of comedian Seth MacFarlane's performance as emcee of Sunday night's Oscar awards. But rather than leave his criticisms confined to the merits of MacFarlane's performance, the liberal former Washington Post sports columnist whipped out the race card on Washington, D.C.'s ESPN 980, reports WTOP.com:

"They got tired of famous black people, so they've got to go get a white guy? Affirmative action Academy Awards host?" Wilbon said. "Is that what this is about? Really?"

HBO’s Sunday night dramady, Enlightened, is delivering something very rare: A true to life depiction of a journalist – specifically identified as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times – as a very obvious left-winger, one who cavorts with and reads books by far-left authors and goes to the newspaper newsroom wearing a “John Kerry for President” shirt. (video after the jump)

The Obama administration's assault on the Second Amendment in reaction to Newtown is not a serious solution. It's a Band-Aid on cancer. The NRA's call for armed guards in every school also misses the point. When is anyone going to get serious? The problem is violence, a violence of monstrous and horrific proportions that has infected America's popular culture.

The Hartford Courant reported on Sunday that during a search of Newtown grade-school killer Adam Lanza’s home after the shootings, “police found thousands of dollars worth of graphically violent video games.” Detectives are exploring whether Adam Lanza might have been emulating the shooting range or a video-game scenario as he moved from room to room at Sandy Hook Elementary.

KGB operatives infiltrated conservative media? Wednesday night’s episode of FX’s The Americans imagines that in 1981 a conservative magazine employed a journalist who was really a mole for the KGB. On the day of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, “Charles Duluth” of the “Conservative Statesman” magazine, proclaims to a KGB operative who he is helping: “Frankly, I hope the bastard bleeds to death on the operating table.”

The Americans is centered around husband and wife KGB sleeper agents (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell as “Philip and Elizabeth Jennings”) who live with their kids as ordinary Americans in suburban Washington, DC when Reagan becomes President.

Last week’s second episode of The Americans (the third episode will run tonight, February 13, on FX), dramatically ended with a scene showing the horror realized by KGB operatives at the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC when they learn President Ronald Reagan intends to build “a ballistic missile shield” – aka the Strategic Defense Initiative. (video below)

The Americans is centered around husband and wife KGB sleeper agents (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell as “Philip and Elizabeth Jennings”) who live with their kids as ordinary Americans in suburban Washington, DC when Ronald Reagan becomes President.

FX’s new series which debuted Wednesday night, The Americans, is centered around husband and wife KGB sleeper agents who live with their kids as ordinary Americans in suburban Washington, DC when Ronald Reagan becomes President. Joe Weisberg, the creator and executive producer conceded to TV Guide that “this series, to a large extent, is told from the perspective of the KGB and the Soviets. We’re making them the sympathetic characters. I’d go so far as to say they’re the heroes.”

Yet, in the 95-minute pilot aired January 30, there were scenes which should hearten conservatives who believe in Reagan’s righteousness and the superiority of the United States.

Rapper Lupe Fiasco was told to leave the stage at a Washington, DC concert after playing a single anti-war song for 30 minutes and informing the audience that he did not vote for President Obama.

Organizers insisted he was not forced out due to his political speech but rather because of his “bizarrely repetitive, jarring performance.”

On January 23 the Style channel will premiere a new reality series, Big Rich Atlanta. It’s a take off of Big Rich Texas, which is take off of the various Real Housewives series, none of which I’ve watched more than a few minutes, because everything about them makes me sad – the plasticity, the exploitation, the shallowness – everything. I just keep thinking to myself, “These poor people so need Jesus.”

But I digress. At least one of the two stars of Big Rich Atlanta merits attention, Meagan McBrayer. Meagan is the daughter of abortionist Daniel McBrayer, who has a chop shop in the Atlanta, Georgia, suburb of Marietta.

With Lauren Thompson

The Newtown massacre spurred another round of calls for gun control, with a bill banning “assault weapons” emerging in the senate and the president threatening to take as yet unspecified executive action.

To be sure, Vice President Biden is meeting with entertainment industry representatives to discuss the violence ubiquitous on film and in video games. Given the cozy relationship between Democrats and Hollywood, those talks should produce nothing but photo-ops.

How can someone who garnered nearly 60 million votes in a recent presidential election not be considered the least bit influential? As inexplicable as it sounds, that's what GQ Magazine declared when it selected Mitt Romney to headline its annual list of the 25 most uninspiring and insignificant people of the year. According to the author however, they were ranked in no particular order, "because all zeros are created equal."

Seeing a perfect opportunity to have a little fun at the expense of others, the hosts of MSNBC's The Cycle compiled their own list on Thursday. Token conservative S.E. Cupp appeared to have taken the assignment literally with a clip that introduced the world to a mild-mannered man from Indiana. Krystal Ball and Touré Neblett followed, and having some inkling of where their heads were at -- Cupp pleaded with them not to pick her. Instead they chose Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh respectively, gloating about how wrong they both were about Romney's legitimate chance to emerge victorious. [video below the page break]

You may recall when CBS fired Charlie Sheen early last year from the popular Two and a Half Men series for a string of "felony offenses involving moral turpitude." In the weeks and months that preceded this decision, an increasingly erratic Sheen received an inordinate amount of media attention for his drug-induced rants. To this day however, Sheen's bad boy persona is received warmly by the media, and he's been rewarded for it with ad spots for Fiat and DirecTV and even another show on the FX network that jokingly plays off his history of reckless hedonism.

By contrast, Sheen's former co-star, Angus T. Jones, the titular "half man" on the sitcom, has been castigated by the media for his recent religious conversion and subsequent YouTube testimonial in which he urged folks to avoid his popular TV series. Perhaps pressured by producers, Jones has since apologized for coming across as indifferent and unappreciative for the lucrative opportunity, but that hasn't stopped the media for characterizing Jones's video as another celebrity meltdown. [ video below the page break ]

A fresh insertion of leftist politics into prime time entertainment television. On Sunday night’s The Good Wife on CBS, which is set in Chicago, a judge strode into court and observed: “I hope you’re staying cool today on this unusually hot November day.” He then declared, “I hope you don’t mind me saying: Global warming 1, skeptics 0.”

He next insisted, in a case of a contractor who supposedly assaulted a soldier in Afghanistan, “I have great respect for all those in uniform, no matter how our government sees fit to employ them.”

Chuck Lorre, executive producer of three sit-coms on CBS (The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, Mike & Molly), used the ends of two of his shows Thursday night to tease an online diatribe ridiculing Mitt Romney’s “magical underwear” as part of a series of questions mocking right of center policies, such as: “What does it say about us when we export democracy with Hellfire missiles, then restrict the right to vote here?”

His more vulgar language after the jump.

National Geographic Channel’s decision to air SEAL Team Six two days before the election, along with Harvey Weinstein’s insistence Barack Obama be more prominently featured, is raising reasonable concerns. We don’t want to pass judgement on the content, because we haven’t watched the film. But timing is what matters.

If the National Geographic Channel puts off airing this documentary by just three days, and there’s absolutely no reason why they can’t, it shows they have no agenda. If they don’t postpone it by just 72 hours, it will clearly show that they do. We want to believe that they don’t have an agenda. We’re asking the National Geographic Channel to delay the airing of this documentary until after Election Day. [For the full press release, click here.]

A gratuitous shot at Rush Limbaugh is coming in tonight’s (Wednesday) episode of ABC’s Modern Family sit-com.

In a promo clip played during the network’s post-debate coverage Tuesday evening, “Jay,” played by actor Ed O’Neill, tells a female character: “You’re huge and you’re loud. It’s like sleeping with Rush Limbaugh.”

Traditional media weren’t the biggest fans of the movie “Atlas Shrugged: Part I” when it was released in April 2011. With “Atlas Shrugged Part II: The Strike” set to hit theaters on Oct. 12, it’ll be hard to top the derision of the last movie. Most reviews of the first film were short and to the point – this movie was terrible because conservatives, more specifically the Tea Party, will like it.

National Geographic's cable television channel is defending its decision to air a new live-action movie entitled "Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden," which focuses on the May 2011 operation that led to the death of the world's most wanted terrorist right before the November election. And if you miss the first showing, you'll be able to catch it on Netflix starting on Monday, still with plenty of time to vote the following day.

"This is a story people have been waiting to witness for themselves, and we feel the combined force of the National Geographic Channel and Netflix will ensure that everyone has the chance at a glimpse inside the heroic efforts of that courageous team of SEALs," according to a press release from the network.

It’s surprising that Hollywood would make a film that sympathetically argues for school choice, the movie Won’t Back Down, starring accomplished actresses Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal. It’s not surprising that liberal Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday would then offer a withering one-star review that seemed more like a political judgment than an artistic estimate.

Hornaday huffed: “More than a portrait of spontaneous motherly outrage, it becomes clear that the movie has been designed as an anti-union, pro-charter screed, the fictional counterpart to the 2010 documentary Waiting for Superman.”