Salon.com > Dipayan Gupta

“The Sopranos” prediction pool

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 16:14:00 +0000

Heather Havrilesky is Salon's television critic.

A.J. puts himself in harm's way out of a misguided attempt to right the world's wrongs and gets killed, Sil dies, and Tony decides to rat out New York, sending Phil Leotardo to jail forever and ever, which he so richly deserves. Tony, meanwhile, lands in his personal version of hell: a mediocre suburban existence, somewhere in the Midwest, under an assumed name. Carmela, lost without a steady flow of luxury gifts, drives her Porsche Cayenne into the side of the local Chili's, then takes to hanging out at the mall in a drunken stupor. Meadow stays behind and marries Parisi Jr., becoming the old Carmela. Last shot: Dr. Melfi, being served roasted duck while learning from Elliot that Tony has disappeared. Her face tells us that she blames herself, but we all know that she'll double up on therapy until those irrational feelings of blame subside. We'll always blame her, though.

Berkeley Breathed is a best-selling children's author, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and the man behind "Opus," on Salon. His latest book is "Mars Needs Moms!"

Safe speech

Tue, 01 May 2007 18:00:00 +0000

Last week hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons said that broadcasters should ban "bitch," "ho" and the N-word from the airwaves. Just a week earlier -- a day after Don Imus' landmark epithet -- the same Russell Simmons told the press that offensive references in hip-hop "may be uncomfortable for some to hear," but that his job wasn't to censor expression.

Why the turnaround? Perhaps because in the weeks since Imus-gate, freedom of speech has come under renewed scrutiny. CBS just suspended the hosts of WFNY's "The Dog House With JV and Elvis" for a racially charged prank call and Rush Limbaugh was upbraided for calling Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui a liberal.

Still, networks hired shock jocks for a reason: to test the limits of acceptable behavior. Now they're second-guessing themselves.

So we asked some of our most knowledgeable sources: In two sentences or less, what's your guideline for acceptable speech on the public radio?

Their responses follow.

Floyd Abrams, attorney and constitutional law expert.

“I don’t care how much my accent may bother you”

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 01:00:00 +0000

Mary Ann Casavant compressed a two-hour lecture by Werner Herzog into a minute and 50 seconds. Reflecting on the production of "Grizzly Man," the filmmaker intones: "You should be grateful that the universe knows no smile." For the rest of the three-part series, check StrangeDuckFilms.com.