Culture Briefs

Crass culture

“American culture grows more crass by the day. …

“The most successful American TV show is ’The Apprentice,’ starring Donald Trump — a man loaded with money, but bankrupt of class. … One can only grieve over a culture which promotes a coarse womanizer, who dumps wives in favor of young models, as its very symbol of professional success. …

“But perhaps the most disturbing examples of the culture of crassness is the growing trend of famous young women going through the rite of passage known as the nearly naked photo spread. …

“Why have millions of young American women abandoned the feminist dream of being taken seriously by men and instead decided to gain male attention with degrading spectacles of their bodies? I am convinced the principal cause is an increasingly weak link between fathers and daughters. …

“Pop tarts like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton … are often close to their mothers, who may even serve as their managers, while their dads are nowhere to be seen.”

—Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, writing on “Young women and the revealing celebrity photo spread,” April 2 in WorldNetDaily at ww.worldnetdaily.com

Rap aesthetic

“The history of all art tells us that no sooner do we grow accustomed to one form than we begin searching for another. …

“The predominance of rap can be attributed to its increasing acceptability and loss of shock value. Like all sensationalism, it is subject to the law of diminishing returns. Expletives … are overused and banal, while gangsterisms like the drive-by shooting are as hackneyed as the spaghetti-western quickdraw. Nowadays, parents dismiss such outrages with a ’tut.’ … Such profanity once drew attention to ghetto life, forcing conservatives, policy-makers and critics into sociological debate; now hip hop is more likely to suffer admission into the American literary canon. …

“Hip hop has never been short on irony, yet an unbounded display of wealth, an impossible dream of gold, diamonds, thrones, canes, [women] and mansions, is now permanently woven into the hip hop aesthetic. For those sick of wealth envy, this is good reason to turn off the radio.

—Nick Crowe, writing on “Rap’s last tape,” in the March issue of the American Prospect

Dead air

“It probably doesn’t bode well for a purportedly enjoyable radio show when its most entertaining segment is one featuring Al Gore. But that was the case on the maiden voyage of ’The O’Franken Factor,’ the much-ballyhooed liberal talk-radio show, hosted by Al Franken, which, along with the much-ballyhooed liberal talk-radio network Air America, debuted on [March 31].

“About two-and-a-half hours into the three-hour show, Franken was talking with his in-studio guest Michael Moore when the former vice president called in to congratulate Franken on his new radio career. …

“The other two hours and 55 minutes consisted of a lot of unenlightening back and forth about current events between Franken and his sidekick, Minnesota Public Radio veteran Katherine Lanpher; a long and desultory interview with 9/11 Commission member Bob Kerrey; and an initially funny but, after continuous flogging over the course of three hours, eventually tiresome skit about locking Ann Coulter in the radio network’s green room.

“If this doesn’t sound like great radio, that’s because it isn’t.”

—Jason Zengerle, writing on “All Talk,” April 1 in the New Republic Online at www.tnr.com