Monday, November 29, 2010

Culture Creep

Blame Rolling Stone.

One of the attractive selling points of the iconic publication back when it was still a bi-folded newspaper based in San Francisco was that it "spoke to us" by combining contemporary popular music and cultural issues related to many young people and others who were exploring "alternatives."

That made a lot of sense when the non-musical issues were things like the way the FBI was targeting the Black Panther Party through its COINTELPRO program or the way actors like Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson were helping to subvert the dominant, conservative culture of Hollywood.

Now-- at least judging by Flip Music, the iPad-friendly music magazine included in Flipboard -- what we've come to is news of the stars of so-called reality TV shows like Real Atlanta Housewives and the obituaries of secondary actors like Leslie Nielsen. It's not like there aren't dozens of gossip publications -- print and digital -- where that kind of "news" can be found. Why put them in a vehicle that is designed to be about music?

Curse you, Jann Wenner.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow - what a d--k thing to say about Leslie Nielsen. A good comedic actor is just as talented as a good dramatic actor.

Stop complaining about what you hate and pay attention to what you like - people will care more about what you have to say.

James Hale said...

The post has nothing to do with Leslie Nielsen's ability as a comic actor.

The question is, What the hell does he have to do with music?