#t

The whole ecosystem of celebrity has broken down for writers. If you go back to the '50s, '60s, and '70s, writers were on TV a lot, and they were allowed to misbehave a lot. ↗

— James Wolcott

#back #broken #celebrity #down #ecosystem

There was a time when idealistic folksingers such as myself believed that Reality TV was a programming vogue that would peak and recede, leaving only its hardiest show-offs. Instead, it has metastasized like toxic mold, filling every nook and opening new crannies. ↗

— James Wolcott

#every #filling #idealistic #instead #leaving

Used to be, conservatives revered the Average American, that Norman Rockwell oil painting of diner food, humble faith, honest toil, and Capraesque virtue. ↗

— James Wolcott

#average #average american #conservatives #diner #faith

With 'Black Swan,' the ballerina saga flips its tiara and goes on a hallucinatory bender, a scary acid trip where transfiguration and disfiguration meet. ↗

— James Wolcott

#ballerina #black #flips #goes #meet

Everybody knows things are not the same. The people running the TV end of a major vertically integrated company know how much money a successful show can make. ↗

— Dick Wolf

#end #everybody #how #integrated #know

What's happening to movie critics is no different from what has been meted out to book, dance, theater, and fine-arts reviewers and reporters in the cultural deforestation that has driven refugees into the diffuse clatter of the Internet and Twitter, where some adapt and thrive - such as Roger Ebert - while others disappear without a twinkle. ↗

— James Wolcott

#been #book #critics #cultural #dance

Whenever I catch a chunk of an Adam Sandler comedy on cable, it looks as badly shot and goofily tossed off as a Jerry Lewis gag reel once he hit the late downslide with 'Hardly Working' and 'Cracking Up.' ↗

— James Wolcott

#adam sandler #badly #cable #catch #chunk

Who elected Larry King America's grief counselor? We, the viewing public, did, by driving up his ratings whenever somebody famous passes. ↗

— James Wolcott

#counselor #did #driving #elected #famous

With Barack Obama as president and the super-happening Michelle Obama as First Lady, you would think a new tone, a new tune, a kicky new jazzitude, would have entered Washington discourse, but it remains a landlocked island unto itself, held captive by its tribal fevers. ↗

— James Wolcott

#barack obama #captive #discourse #entered #fevers

I wish to express my hope that the efforts of our nations, nationalities and peoples in the direction of the development of our democratic order will be successful. ↗

— Girma Woldegiorgis

#development #direction #efforts #express #hope