TV’s Dr. Phil wants to hug it out with the Second District’s convicted sex offenders
Britney Spears: so yesterday! Dr. Phil McGraw–television’s Oprah-approved, magnolia-mouthed mother hen–has a new cause celebre: the convicted sex offenders who live in that vintage Streamline Moderne apartment complex in the 1100 block of East First Street.

Bill O’Reilly laid off of Ludacris a long time ago but CSULB is ready with new rage: Daily 49er reports that students will be protesting Ludacris’ performance this Saturday. Info plus illo ahead.

‘Great Debaters’ never seems remotely real
The Great Debaters has the ingredients for a great motion picture: starched collars, a sweaty speakeasy, a teacher who will become a serious poet, rousing rhetoric, dog-eared Bibles, ferocious battles of wits. But there are two influences at work on this story, weighing it down like damp laundry on a [...]

‘The Kite Runner’ is overshot, overscored, overdigitized and underthought
The Kite Runner cleaves to an age-old tradition, and I’m not talking about classical Asian folktales. Rather, this tradition entails exotic fiction being anointed by the mass media for middle-class consumption (in this case, by Oprah), the appropriation of its third world iconography by Hollywood hacks (fortunate [...]

Obama, Oprah and unions for one
This weekend, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is giving crowds in Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire, the biggest of big O’s– Oprah Winfrey. And even though she isn’t handing out cars, the crowds, so far, are swooning. Still, given that Democratic primaries are one of the arenas in which unions [...]