Salon.com > Charly Wilder

Salon’s guide to summer music festivals

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:42:00 +0000

"Peace, love, and music" was the rallying cry of 400,000 hippies who converged on Yasgur's farm in Bethel, N.Y., nearly two generations ago. Despite the overdosing and overcrowding (not to mention that odd moment when Pete Townshend smashed Abbie Hoffman over the head with his guitar), it remains the holy grail of summer music festivals. So great is our continued reverence for Woodstock that there is now a museum dedicated to its memory.

While this summer's festivals and tours aren't likely to make Woodstock-size footprints on pop-culture history, they may well reveal as much about youth culture as their forerunner did. Spanning such genres as punk, country, world music, folk and hip-hop, the 2008 lineup is nothing if not diverse, reflecting the broad and eclectic tastes of young music fans for whom a new favorite band is never more than a mouse-click away.

Did humor save the left at its darkest hour?

Fri, 30 May 2008 10:09:00 +0000

When future historians write of the long months between the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, there will most likely be a chapter about the overwhelming failure of the mainstream political media to properly question the Bush administration during the buildup to a failed war. Journalists who should have acted as government watchdogs instead acted largely as yes men, spuriously debating what should be done about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

In that recriminatory chapter, there will likely be a section about the exceptions: left-leaning, often satirical media outlets like "The Daily Show" and the Onion, whose headlines in the run-up to the invasion included "Bush Won't Stop Asking Cheney if We Can Invade Yet" and "Bush Seeks U.N. Support for 'U.S. Does Whatever It Wants Plan.'" These exceptions are the focus of
"The New Blue Media: How Michael Moore, MoveOn.org, Jon Stewart and Company Are Transforming Progressive Politics" by Theodore Hamm, the founding editor of the arts and politics journal the Brooklyn Rail. The book is what Hamm calls a "critical tribute" to a group of liberal commentators and outlets -- Stephen Colbert, Air America and blogs like Daily Kos and MyDD -- that have emerged in the last decade. In chronicling their rise and influence, Hamm suggests that some of the most meaningful and independent political discourse has come from the least "serious" of sources. If the book sometimes reads as a bit credulous -- there is perhaps more tribute than criticism here -- it may be because Hamm cannot conceal his gratitude for what was for him an invaluable source of relief in a bleak time.

Click here to read more about our annoying love

Mon, 12 May 2008 18:45:00 +0000

The fantastically reprobate teen drama "Gossip Girl" has not been lacking for praise of late. Nevertheless, after seeing this Web site for Lily and Bart's upcoming nuptials (via Gawker), I must join the pile-on. "Gossip Girl" has found the perfect way to satirize one of the more repugnant cultural trends of the Tnternet era: the overblown wedding Web site.

Perhaps some of you are lucky enough to be unfamiliar with this phenomenon. I happen to be at the age where each season brings with it a flurry of invites. Remove unnecessary piece of tissue paper. Glance past fancy fake calligraphy, and there it is -- a URL at the bottom of the eggshell-colored square. That's when the ickiness begins. Sure, there are practical and appropriate links, like the RSVP and the gift registries. But then there are the other site links. There is probably one titled "Our Story," in which the bride and groom offer cloying accounts of their first meeting and courtship, and there is the always embarrassing "Proposal" section. (Proposals are like dreams: only interesting for the participant.)

What’s behind the women’s blog boom?

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:10:00 +0000

Last month the Internet received an estrogen injection with the launch of three high-profile Web sites aimed at women. First, Leslie Stahl and Liz Smith's incomprehensively titled Wowowow (covered previously in Broadsheet) gave us the online equivalent of the Oxygen Network. More recently, Yahoo's women's site, Shine, launched, as well as SheZoom, billed as the first video Web site for women.

This latest flurry of lady-centric start-ups seems to be part of a wider trend. Along with political sites, women's Web sites experienced the largest growth last year -- 35 percent -- according to a ComScore Media Metrix study of 100 major U.S. Internet destinations. So what's behind the growth? An article in the Guardian suggests that the women's Web site boom is a response to the needs of a growing number of female Web users who feel alienated by the fluffy, often brainless coverage of the glossies. Like Jezebel, which now claims to receive over 12 million visits a month, many of the sites vying for female visitors try to cast themselves as brainier, spunkier cousins of traditional women's magazines. Meanwhile the glossies are rushing to win back readers who may have abandoned them for the Web. Glamour.com has blogs and online polls, Self.com has a forum function that allows readers to start their own blogs, and anyone visiting Cosmopolitan.com is invited to join the "Cosmo Community." (Anna Wintour, meanwhile, apparently banned the word "blog" during Vogue's Web site relaunch last year.)

Meghan McCain is, like, totally a genius

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:50:00 +0000

Remember when Meghan McCain was known only as the somewhat vapid, overbleached narrator of that disturbing McCain ranch barbecue video? Since then, various news outlets -- including GQ, the Associated Press and "yours truly -- have run profiles of John McCain's ever-un-Chelsea-like daughter and her Web site, mccainblogette.com, where she chronicles such newsworthy information as how to use concealer as lip gloss base and the fact that her mother has the amazing skill of determining whether a beer is fresh "depending on the taste."

The Washington Post is now the latest publication to write up the would-be first daughter in an article that manages to be both ingratiating and yet almost aggressive in its condescension. The reporter, Libby Copeland, seems to want McCain to come off as a bimbo. Copeland has no problem, for instance, leaving in all the extraneous "likes" and other bits of syntactic fat, which it is common journalistic practice to trim.

MoveOn launches celeb-studded competition for Obama ad

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:50:00 +0000

Who needs Samantha Power when you've got Eddie Vedder, Ben Affleck and Moby? Those three are just a few of the cast of celebrities the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org assembled as a panel of judges for its new "Obama in 30 Seconds" competition. The contest, reminiscent of MoveOn's 2004 anti-Bush ad contest, asks amateur and professional filmmakers to submit pro-Barack Obama campaign advertisements in the hopes of receiving a $20,000 gift certificate and having their ad aired nationally. MoveOn endorsed Obama in February.

I don’t believe in atheists

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:17:00 +0000

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Many charges have been leveled at foreign correspondent Chris Hedges over the years, but shrinking from conflict isn't one of them. Hedges spent nearly seven years as Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times, covered the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, and was part of the New York Times team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of global terrorism. He took on the American military-industrial complex with his books "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" and "What Every Person Should Know About War," and provoked the rage of the Christian right by likening them to Nazis in last year's "American Fascists." Hedges now cements his reputation as an intellectual provocateur with the charmingly titled "I Don't Believe in Atheists."

Views of the race from across the Atlantic

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 00:58:00 +0000

American voters are not the only ones taking a closer look at the field of contenders for the presidency. In the wake of Hillary Clinton's primary wins Tuesday night, the European press is alight with fresh speculation. Here's a brief look at what's being said about the Democratic candidates in some of Europe.

Germany

The torrid affair between Barack Obama and the Germans seems to have ended before it could develop into David Hasselhoff-esque proportions. Only a couple of weeks ago, the cover of Der Spiegel, Germany's best-read weekly newsmagazine, showed a princely Obama emerging out of darkness cloaked in what looked like stardust under a headline reading "The Messiah Factor: Barack Obama and the Yearning for a New America." Now, in an article called "The Other Side of Barack Obama," the paper is taking a second look. "Will the extraordinary love affair between the young Senator from Chicago and the Democratic voters last?" asks the article, "or was the spell broken on Tuesday night? Will the voters turn back to her? Or will his charm offensive once again display its power?"

Simone de Beauvoir celebrated for naked body, other stuff

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:09:00 +0000

What do Lindsay Lohan and Simone de Beauvoir have in common? Both the spray-tan party-girl princess and the mother of modern feminism recently raised eyebrows by appearing in racy magazine photos. The cover of last month's Le Nouvel Observateur, France's most-read newsmagazine, shows the Parisian philosopher from behind, fixing her hair and wearing nothing but heels.

Part of the wave of media coverage commemorating the 100th anniversary of de Beauvoir's birth, the accompanying article, titled "Simone de Beauvoir: A Scandalous Woman," concerns itself primarily with de Beauvoir's romantic past, most notably her tumultuous, lifelong relationship with the founder of existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre.

Sartre and de Beauvoir had a famously open relationship, and both were known to seduce their young students before passing them on to each other. Yet the recent commemoration of de Beauvoir has taken on a far more prurient tone than did the press that accompanied the centenary of Sartre's birth three years ago. In the tributes to Sartre, his best-known work, "Being and Nothingness," took center stage; de Beauvoir's seminal text of second-wave feminism, "The Second Sex," now is mentioned almost peripherally, like background information.