It's likely President Obama will be in combat mode, ready to assume alpha male status on Tuesday evening when he faces Mitt Romney in the second presidential debate. But alas. The debate is town hall style, which demands folksy likability from the combatants, and conversation studded with talking points.
Fans of "The Book of Mormon," rejoice: You'll soon be able to sing along with the musical at home.
HBO has picked up a political satire series called "Veep" starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and is expected to shoot the show in Baltimore.
Russell Simmons, Ricky Martin and the HBO drama series "True Blood" are among this year's recipients of media awards from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
Conservatives love to hate Frank Rich, the New York Times columnist who wrote his last political column on Sunday, but they owe him an accolade or two for recognizing what the relentless production of opinion was doing to his writing. (Other pundits, please copy.) "That routine can push you to have stronger opinions than you actually have, or contrived opinions about subjects you may not care deeply about, or to run roughshod over nuance to reach an unambitious conclusion," he wrote in his farewell to rage and all that. He's moving to fresh adventures at New York magazine, where he hopes to rediscover nuance, which he displayed in thoughtful abundance in "Ghost Light," his memoir about growing up in Washington, D.C.
Frank Rich, an institution at The New York Times as a theater critic, essayist and columnist, is leaving to join New York magazine.
President Obama has made a fatal political mistake: He has shattered his progressive base - perhaps permanently. His liberal hour is over. This is the real meaning of the White House's tax deal with Republicans.
"[Sarah] Palin has 'star power,' the real thing, rather like Ronald Reagan or Princess Diana did (and Bill Clinton, on a good day, still does)," writes Tunku Varadarajan at the Daily Beast.
At the funeral of Iofemi Hightower, her classmate Mecca Ali wore a T-shirt with the slogan: "Tell Me Why They Had To Die." "They" are Miss Hightower, Dashon Harvey and Terrance Aeriel, three young citizens of Newark, N.J., lined up against a schoolyard wall, forced to kneel, and then shot in the head.
