Social Media and Mass Murder

Important conversation between Bob Mann and me on his Bob Mann Hot Media podcast about the role of social media in the mass murders that continue to erupt in the US.

 

Interviewed by Bob Mann on Inaugural Episode of Hot Media: We Talked about Donald Trump's Threat to a Free Press

I was interviewed 52 times on Bob Mann's Let's Consider the Source radio show on Sirius/XM Radio from 2007 through 2019 (see here for a list of all shows and topics), including his final show in January 2017.  I was thus especially pleased and honored to be his very first guest on his new podcast Hot Media earlier this week.  Our topic was the threat Donald Trump poses to freedom of expression.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Seasons 1 and 2: Triumph for Risks and Laughter

I don't usually watch comedy on television or streaming, and review it even less.  But our daughter Molly raved about The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel after the first season, and given that she'd recommended such winners as Alias and Sons of Anarchy, her praising of Maisel certainly put it on the possible list.  Sisters-in-laws and in-laws urged us to watch it, too.  But what put me over the top was the lunch I had with Bob Mann, a professor with inimitable tastes  (I was a guest on his late, lamented Sirius XM Radio show "Let's the Consider the Source" at least 50 times.  It should be coming back as a podcast soon.)

Maisel was everything Mann and the family said it was.  Hilarious and profound, and one of the best portrayals of Jewish life in 1950s New York City on any screen.   Further, Mrs. Maisel, mother of a baby girl and a young son whose husband Joel leaves her at the beginning of the story, provides a memorable tableau of late 50s Village cafe culture and extended media, as she tries to break into the stand-up comedy circuit.

She's enormously talented, and her riffing routines in themselves provide one of the real joys of this series.  Other highlights include

• a 2+ episode spot-on depiction of the Catskills in the summer, at least as good, and in some ways better, than what we saw in Dirty Dancing
• a portrayal by Luke Kirby (Rectify) of Lenny Bruce - who recognizes Maisel's talent, and does what he can to support her - that I actually liked better than Dustin Hoffman's in the 1974 Lenny, which, I don't know, was powerful, but too much Dustin
• and speaking of acting, Rachel Brosnahan (House of Cards) as Mrs. Maisel, Tony Shalhoub (Monk) as her father Abe Weissman, a professor of mathematics at Columbia University (though it looked like some of the exterior scenes were shot at Fordham), and Alex Borstein (never heard of her before) as Maisel's manager are just off-the-chart in their unique and fabulous performances.

But not everything has been perfect in this delightful, insightful series.

• Some of the details were anachronistic, i.e., incorrect for the time portrayed.  The Defenders debuted in 1961, and couldn't have been known to Maisel characters in 1959.   Same for Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," which was released in 1967.  Were the producers of Mrs. Maisel not allowed to look at IMDb and Wikipedia as part of their immersion in the time?
• The guy who played Steve Allen at the end of season 2 looked nothing like him.   Even Elvis Costello or someone I saw on Meet the Press would have been better.

But these are small quibbles for a series that has already taken its place along side of All in the Family and Curb Your Enthusiasm as laughing out loud, stoking your heart, and learning about life comedy.  And the second season was even better than the first - wilder and more clearly drawn story lines, always a good sign in a series.  Another triumph for risks and Amazon Prime Video.

The Interview: The Review

Well, I just saw The Interview - on Cablevision - for three reasons: 1. I said the movie was "moronic," based solely on seeing the trailer, in an interview of my own on Arise TV conducted by Francesca Maxime before Christmas (see below for video).   So I figured I had some kind of ethical obligation to see how much my trailer-based review was justified.  2.  I'll be interviewed about "The Interview" again, next week, by Bob Mann on his "Let's Consider the Source" radio show on XM/Sirius Radio, and I thought it would be good to at least know a little about what I'd be talking about.   3. I'm a Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University.  The movie will no doubt be discussed in some of my classes in the Spring term - see, again, my above point about it being a good idea to know at least something about what I'll be talking about, a credo I try to follow as much as possible as a professor.

That I felt obligated to write such a long, detailed paragraph about why I saw The Interview itself says a lot, or at least how little I thought of the movie before seeing it.  And what did I think of the movie after actually seeing it?

Though parts of it were moronic, a lot of it was not - indeed, it was funny in lots of places without slapstick - and, moreover, it has a political message, and, most important, a heart.   At its best, The Interview was like a long Saturday Night Live skit, replete with fingers bitten off and blood spurting, which were never the high points of SNL in any case.   But as geo-political humor writ large, as the CIA and potential world conflict both lampooned and taken seriously for important fleeting moments, The Interview was quite good.   I enjoyed it - much of it - and laughed out loud a bunch of times.

The worst parts of The Interview were the incessant "butt" and "poop" jokes - a little less of which would have gone a long way.   But the two wild and crazy guys banter between Skylark (James Franco) and Rapaport  (Seth Rogen) throughout the movie was funny, and the bit of caricatured James Bondian romance with Rapaport and a hot North Korean propaganda minister worked well too, with a nice political payoff for the story in the end.

In short, though The Interview is no great movie or comedy for the ages, it's much better than not half bad, and I'm glad I saw it.   Good that Sony finally did the right thing and made the movie available.



I stand by most of things I say here ...

has nothing to do with The Interview, but it does have an Asian theme

My "Let's Consider the Source" interviews

I was interviewed 52 times from 2007 to 2017 by Bob Mann on his Sirius and XM radio show, "Let's Consider the Source".  At some point in the future, I hope there will be an archive for these appearances.  But here, for the record, is a list of the dates and main topics of these 30-minute interviews (I say "main topics," because we often talked about half a dozen things).

Note added December 6, 2019:  My appearance on "Let's Consider the Source" on January 7, 2017 turned out to be the final episode of that show.  But I had the honor of being the first guest on Bob Mann's new podcast, "Hot Media," on December 4, 2019.  You can listen to that show here.

A complete list of my "Let's Consider the Source" interviews follows:

fake news, January 7, 2017

post election, November 19, 2016

Russian hacking, October 15, 2016

cyber security, June 18, 2016

Touching the Face of the Cosmos, April 30, 2016

Internet encryption, March 19, 2016

Netflix & Amazon streaming, February 13, 2016

ISIS and Internet, December 12, 2015

GOP debates, November 14, 2015

Emmys, September 26, 2015

new TV series, August 8, 2015

evolution of cable TV, May 16, 2015

McLuhan in current context, April 11, 2015

net neutrality, March 14, 2015

The Interview movie, January 17, 2015

Korean Sony hack, December 07, 2014

Ebola media coverage, November 16, 2014

Boardwalk Empire, November 9, 2014

summer television, August 10, 2014

Mad Men Season 7a finale, June 1, 2014

Aereo and the US Supreme Court, April 27, 2014

House of Cards, February 23, 2014

Obamacare web problems, November 24, 2013

The Fifth Estate movie, October 27, 2013

iPhone 5c and s, Breaking Bad, Dexter, September 22, 2013

Chesley (Bradley) Manning verdict, August 11, 2013

Edward Snowden and NSA spying, June 16, 2013

Internet sales tax, May 19, 2013

social media and the Boston bombing, April 28, 2013

impact of podcasting, March 24, 2013

Chinese hacking of New York Times, February 24, 2013

media coverage of gun violence, January 13, 2013

cyber-warfare, October 28, 2012

New New Media, 2nd edition, September 9, 2012

media in totalitarian countries, May 6, 2012

Rutgers webcam verdict, March 25, 2012

Fairness Doctrine - needed again?, February 26, 2012

indecent FCC indecency rules, January 22, 2012

Steve Jobs, October 23, 2011

McLuhan Centenary, September 11, 2011


future of Google, May 15, 2011

future of Facebook, YouTube, April 3, 2011

The Social Contract,  January 30, 2011

Facebook invasions of privacy, October 10, 2010

Wiki-leaks, August 15, 2010

Lost (television series) finale, May 30, 2010

Google v. China, January 26, 2010

science fiction on television, November 17, 2009

New New Media, September 15, 2009

politics and social media, January 17 and 20, 2009

Sopranos conference at Fordham University, May 27, 2008

increase of sexuality on television October 30, 2007

See also my KNX-1070 Sunday morning interviews, my YouTube channel, and New New Media interviews.

More about "Let's Consider the Source" here.

Countdown to Lost Finale Season

I had a good interview with Bob Mann this afternoon for his "Let's Consider the Source" show, which will be aired next Tuesday January 26th at 7:30PM Eastern on XM Radio, channel 133.  One of things he asked me about were my thoughts about the Lost finale season - both of us are avid fans.   Here are some of things I told him:

1.  I hope the last season of Lost at last addresses some of the fascinating, inexplicable coincidences that occurred when major characters who wound up on the plane and the island were revealed to have crossed paths long prior to the flight.  Jack and Desmond running into each other on the steps of the stadium at the beginning of Season Two - before the two later met in the hatch on the island - is a prime such example.   So is Libby being in the mental institution with Hurley, also well before they met on the island.   (See my Lost: Keys to What's Really Going On for further examples and analysis).  Lost needs to explain at least some of this.

2. I thought the time travel that ran through Season 5 - last year - was by and large excellent, intriguing, and very well reasoned.  I'd like to see more follow-through on that in the finale season, and I'm not sure if the Jacob story can do that.   It can, if the story stays within the realm of scientific plausibility - I'm taking time travel here to be scientifically plausible, though likely impossible, see The Enjoyable Trouble with Time Travel for more.   But if the story of Jacob and his nemesis resorts to some sort of mystical razzmatazz, I'll be disappointed.

3.  On the subject of Jacob's nemesis - I have a feeling he took over John Locke's body well before the events on the island in Season 5.  I'm thinking the nemesis took over Locke when he was recuperating in the hospital after his father pushed him out of the window and broke his back.  Possibly Locke's father was already taken over by Jacob's nemesis, or has some other significant connection to the nemesis.

4. I predict the final resolution will not entail parallel universes, with one group of our heroes never crashing in the first place,  and the other proceeding just as we have seen them for the past five seasons.    Instead, I think we'll have a uni-universe ending, with all the stories converging and resolving into one.

I'll likely have further thoughts on these and other Lost issues, and I'll certainly be reviewing every new episode starting on the evening of February 2, 2010.   Looking forward!




5-min podcast Countdown to Lost

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The Plot to Save Socrates





"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book