Baring her soul?
“Earlier this month, Jessica Simpson’s new single ’With You’ reached the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Mainstream Top 40 chart. … What is intriguing, though, is Simpson’s touting this exceedingly forgettable radio confection as her own, having apparently co-written the single with the prolific lyricists Billy Mann and Andy Marvel.
“Pop singers used to be mere entertainers; songwriting was largely the domain of professionals who rarely performed. Today, they want us to believe they’re auteurs — singers who are also capable of writing their own songs. Britney Spears is credited with writing/co-writing seven of the 13 songs on 2003’s ’In the Zone.’ …
“Marketing yourself as a singer who bares her soul is much easier than marketing a singer baring a songwriter’s soul.”
—Kevin Canfield, writing on “Simply Simpson,” March 30 in Slate at www.slate.com
Everything they hate
“Hating George W. Bush has become its own wildly popular sport, throughout Europe especially. …
“Among the more startling aspects of this anti-Bush hatred is the extent to which it is fed by religion. Whenever George W. Bush refers to his religion, God, Jesus, faith or prayer, he is characterized by the dons of Europe as frightening, appalling, out of bounds, a crusader, a fundamentalist on the order of Osama bin Laden. …
“Just as Europeans hate the death penalty, guns and antiabortion politicians, they are deeply contemptuous of public figures who display their religious beliefs in the open. George W. Bush, the former Texas governor, is pro-death penalty, pro-gun ownership and antiabortion; he is also pro-tax cuts, anti-big government and emphatically Christian. He is everything they scorn, disapprove and hate.”
—John Gibson, from his new book, “Hating America: The New World Sport”
Still discriminating
“The California electorate voted to stop racial preference in college admissions in 1996. Since then, UC administrators have been manipulating the admissions system and, I believe, thwarting the law. …
“Prompted by many complaints from parents whose high-scoring children were rejected by Berkeley, I started probing admissions records. I learned that 359 students with combined SAT scores of 1,000 or less were admitted to Berkeley in 2002. … Only 19 of the low scorers were white. Some 1,421 Californians with SAT scores above 1,400 applying to the same departments at Berkeley were not admitted. Of those, 662 were Asian-American, while 62 were from the underrepresented minorities.
“How did the university get away with discriminating so blatantly against Asians? Through an admissions policy with the vague term ’comprehensive review.’ …
“Nobody believes that the SAT is a perfect predictor of academic success, but it’s silly to pretend that very low-scoring applicants should be admitted to one of America’s premier universities with the expectation that somehow these students will learn material that they missed in K-12.”
—John Moores, chairman of the University of California Board of Regents, writing on “UC Discriminates Against Asians,” in the March 24 issue of Forbes
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