Ramin Setoodeh

Newsweek’s Ramin Setoodeh apparently really likes controversial pop star Lady Gaga, enough to praise her for revolutionizing music vidoes while ignoring her controversial "artistic" decisions.

In a July 15 article, “I Want My Music Video,” Setoodeh gushed over Lady Gaga, as well as YouTube, for helping revitalize the dying art of the music video. But not once did Setoodeh point out how inappropriate her music videos truly are.

Setoodeh labeled Lady Gaga’s music videos as “theatrical.” He hyped the music videos as having, “the production values of an action movie with special effects, elaborate costumes, background dancers, and more bling than the Oscars.”

There is absolutely no shock in stating much of the Hollywood media tend to lean slightly more to the left than a fuel gauge pointing to empty. This week I read the upcoming Oscar season seems to focus on movies trending towards morose and dark subjects, and therefore it was with little surprise, and a great deal of mirth, that I learned from an entertainment writer that the reason behind this somber subject matter was not the film makers themselves but a rather well-aimed target for the Hollywood left.

These are the sage words from Newsweek writer, Ramin Setoodeh:  “You can blame Hollywood's gloom and doom on the Oscars, but I'm not going to. Instead, I think it's George W. Bush's fault. Most liberal directors felt restless under his presidency, and they pushed the envelope with over-the-top, operatic tragedies”.

For Hank Stuever of the Washington Post, Sacha Baron Cohen's latest movie, "Bruno," is a reflection of America's "giant case of sex phobia."

Cohen's movie tells the tale of Bruno, a gay Austrian fashionista who embarks on a quest for fame (to become "the most famous Austrian since Hitler"). Its depictions of gay sex and a gay man flamboyantly flaunting his sexuality caused worry among gay activists about an increase of homophobia, despite a statement from Universal Pictures that the film aimed to "shed light on the absurdity of many kinds of intolerance and ignorance, including homophobia."   

Stuever offered Post readers an inside look on July 9 at what it felt like to be a gay man watching "Bruno" and concluded that the movie didn't teach anything "other than sex is basically a total gross out."

He outlined his argument:

According to Newsweek's Ramin Setoodeh, "American Idol's" Adam Lambert could "be heading home" due to those homophobic Christians that watch every week.

Lambert, Setoodeh wrote in a May 12 blog post, "has been called the best ‘Idol' singer in the history of the show, thanks to his Celine Dion-like pipes. But he's also one of the most controversial, thanks to his Marilyn Manson-like wardrobe and his (not-so) ambiguous sexuality."

Despite the fact that Randy, Simon and Paula all like Lambert, and he's garnered enough votes to compete in the semi-finals of "Idol," Setoodeh warned of a "possible roadblock" to a Lambert victory:

Newsweek is so enamored with Out With Bush, In With Obama that it even bleeds into its movie reviews. See Ramin Setoodeh’s latest web dispatch on the newest romantic comedy: "'He's Just Not That Into You' was dating advice born in the Bush era. But now that we have a new president, isn't it time we adopted a new strategy for love?"

Setoodeh’s not seriously suggesting that President Bush offered dating advice in his public pronouncements at the White House. He’s stretching from Bush’s immediate post-9/11 theory of geopolitics:

The appeal of the franchise is its cold-blooded simplicity: if a guy doesn't seem interested in you immediately when you meet him—if he doesn't call you, pursue you, sleep with you or slobber like a dog at your heels—then he's not worth your time. This was romantic advice for the Bush generation: a guy, like a foreign country, is either with you or against you. But we're in a new age, "the new era of responsibility," according to Obama, of hardship and hard work. Isn't it time we dumped "He's Just Not That Into You" like a lame date?

Paragraphs later, he offered the Obama contrast: