In Renaissance Europe, and in the ancient and medieval Hindu and Mughal societies, the young courtesans were much in news and played a vital role. Even in this computer age the tradition continues as exemplified by a Romanian teenager who auctioned off her virginity for $20,000. Alina Percea, 18, has spoken for the first time about her night with the highest bidder, reports LiveNews. Percea (photo above) auctioned...

David Neiwert has a really, really good response at Crooks and Liars to Rep. Peter King’s unhinged rant against Michael Jackson.

by Walter Brasch Sarah Palin said she had a “higher calling” that required her to resign 17 months before her term ended as governor of Alaska, and not to seek a second term. I have no idea where this “higher calling” came from, but I suspect it could only have come from two sources. The first one is God. I don’t know what God said to Sarah Palin, but I suspect it might have been...

About three weeks ago, I had the pleasure of reading a book that was just hitting the bookstores. As a matter of fact, I had to wait a couple of days before my bookstore got its order in. I was so impressed by the book that I did a “book review” for The Moderate Voice and a couple of other web sites and publications—I am not a professional “book reviewer,” this was only my second...

If you buy a DVD set of a TV series, here is a hint: start with the first year. It’s the first year of a television series where it had to be good enough to survive or to develop as the season went on. Law & Order: Criminal Intent is perhaps the most intriguing of Dick Wolfe’s L&O mega-franchise. His inspiration for it was reportedly Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Watson....

So yesterday was America’s birthday — and what better way to celebrate it by showing you two versions of that classic American song…Cuban Pete? Jim Carrey popularized it with new generations in the 1994 movie “The Mask.” But first, here’s the originator of the song — Desi Arnaz doing the song his way in the 1950s — in the number Jim Carrey emulated: Five years...

A montage of Chinese newspaper front pages on June 27, the day after Michael Jackson’s death. As has already been well-established, huge portions of the world are in mourning over the death of Michael Jackson. This news item from the state-controlled SC News, a Web site of the Chung Shan Daily News Newspaper Group, recounts Michael Jackson’s first and only visit to Mainland China, which took...

Born on the Fourth of July:

Laugh in Tune! Listen to the Capitol Steps’ 4th of July Show on your local NPR station or online! Tune in to hear Mark Sanford, Joe Biden, Arlen Spector, and several Somali pirates as we perform our July 4th radio special in front of a large audience in a confined space. Get local broadcast info now. Hear what’s in store on this promo clip. Find a Station or LISTEN ONLINE.

Is Michael Jackson – and along with him U2 and Madonna – the last vestige of a music industry in its death throes? For Switzerland’s Nachrichten newspaper, Patrik Etschmayer writes in part: “Ever since Michael Jackson, King of Pop, extra-terrestrial, and whatever else he was dubbed, shuffled off this mortal coil, commentators around the world have absolutely flipped. “What’s...

THE LITTLEST LAZARUS How can you have died? No, no. ‘Tooo young, tooo young,’ hoot the owls in the night pines… How can you have died with your wings spread out so beautifully, two little silver-gray fans with vanes perfectly aligned, literally zipped shut so as to make your feathers air-tight, impervious to being split by wind… All so you could fly. So you could sing. And fly. Weren’t...

The planetary Rorschach test that is Michael Jackson’s death continues with this article from Brazil’s Folha newspaper. For Folha, Joao Pereira Coutinho delves into the inevitable conspiracy theories surrounding Jackson’s death – and how the singer failed to grasp the myths he himself adopted and altered for his own purposes. Joao Pereira Coutinho writes in part: “Poor Michael...

His death, at the age of 97, won’t get nearly the attention that Michael Jackson’s got, or perhaps even that Farrah Fawcett’s got, but Karl Malden was truly one of the great American artists of the last century, an exceptional film actor who starred in over 50 movies, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1951 — for which he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor), On the Waterfront...

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Could this ultimately end in charges of criminal manslaughter?

John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

The remarkable global outpouring of emotion and opinion about Michael Jackson’s death shows no sign of abating. Questions about his relationships with children, his decades-long attempt to whiten his skin, and his tendency to do everything most people do in reverse, are all touched upon by Le Figaro’s Yann Moix, in this thought-provoking defense of Michael Jackson and the way he was compelled...

RJ Matson, The New York Observer This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

As in North America, Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe and Oceania are united in at least one way: shock over the death of Michael Jackson. As part of our coverage of this cultural border-shattering event, we present this editorial by Sebastien Le Fol of France’s Le Figaro newspaper, which investigates why Michael Jackson’s demise has had the incredible impact reverberating around the world today. For...

1969 was the year I began my career as a journalist with a leading Indian daily. That was also the year when a memorable event called The Woodstock Festival took place in a far-away rural town of Bethel, New York, and caught my fancy. As The Independent recalls: “Performers flying in on helicopters – a portentous sight in the Vietnam era – food and drinks spiked with LSD, acts going on 14 hours or...

Here is a roundup of media and blogger reaction to the death of Michael Jackson on Thursday.

Today (or, rather, she died on Saturday, but I just saw the notice today), it’s Gale Storm, sitcom pioneer and, arguably most famously, the star of the long-running 1950s show, My Little Margie (which I remember watching, so there you go).

Michael Jackson died on Thursday, June 25. The online entertainment tabloid, TMZ.com, was the first to report the news, although the reports of his death had not been officially confirmed at the time. You will notice in the brief story TMZ filed, the word “confirm” or “confirmed” did not appear: