Roman Polanski and his victim, Samantha Geimer, as she looked as a thirteen-year-old in 1977. One of the interesting side effects of the arrest of film director Roman Polanski is the soul-searching it has set off in the other countries that claim him as one of their own – in this case, Poland. Why are people defending a man who committed, in the eyes of most civilized people, one of the worst crimes imaginable...

When we were growing up, teenagers, especially girls in our extended family, were mostly Archie fans. These comic books, to be found scattered around in many teenage bedrooms, invited my occasional curiosity. Interestingly, the nearly 70-year-old Archie is still evergreen and his romantic pursuits still invite media spotlight. “That perennially teenage redhead from Riverdale made headlines around the...

One of those too bizarre to believe stories. A man sleeps through his house burning down and is awakened by the fireman doing the post fire walk through. Amazing

Filmed for a reported $11,000 over 7 days, Paranormal Activity broke box office records over the weekend. How? Social media: The film is about a young couple who become convinced that a demonic presence lurks in their bedroom at night, so they decide to set up a video camera to catch it. The movie…opened at the end of September with midnight screenings in just 13 small college towns. From there, it has...

On the momentous issue of whether or not the Mouth That Roared should be allowed to become an owner of a professional football team, as cogently debated in one of the posts below, let me add another view that may excite debate in another direction: Al Sharpton has his knickers in a twist over news that Rush Limbaugh is trying to acquire the National Football League franchise in St. Louis, but with all due respect,...

The New Yorker has an intersting poem “Thought Problem” by Vijay Seshadri, and here it is… How strange would it be if you met yourself on the street? How strange if you liked yourself, took yourself in your arms, married your own self, propagated by techniques known only to you, and then populated the world? Replicas of you are everywhere. Some are Arabs. Some are Jews. Some live in yurts....

Osama bin Laden has all but vanished from the radar of the American media/public. Even president Barack Obama seems no longer interested in bin Laden, while the world had thought that the “war against terror” was all about capturing bin Laden! The present chase to capture al Qaeda looks like fighting with the severed tail of a lizard. Meanwhile Osama, dead or alive, manages to come back into spotlight....

This will sway the world.

John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

When I was a kid in the 50s and 60s, the Miss America Pageant was a broadcasting national unifying event — earning whopping ratings, even though viewers had to endure host Bert Parks warbling “There She Is Miss America” (when I lived in India in the mid 70s I would play a tape of that to get back at the teenage son of a family with whom I lived and he’d beg me to stop. Parks also sang...

US president Barack Obama’s predicament (on hearing about Nobel Peace Prize) seems similar to that of a dashing man who comes face-to-face with a fawning socialite in public who gushes: “Darling I love you from the bottom of my heart.” The media is having a field day revelling in this hot/sexy topic that has landed in their lap. This element of surprise (after the award’s announcement)...

Let me make it clear that I do not think this skit represents even a tiny bit of the Australian people. But I am stunned by the blatant racist nature of the skit, and even more shocked at some of the comments which either defend the act or use it to attack the US. WARNING: The skit is quite offensive.

It was announced today that NBC has canceled the police drama Southland two weeks before its scheduled Season Two premiere. The show was well received by critics and did reasonably well in the ratings for a mid season replacement during its shortened first season earlier this year. The program was seen by many as offering a very realistic view of police work as seen through the eyes of rookie cop Ben Sherman...

In 1965 comedy great Groucho Marx hosted “The Hollywood Palace” variety show on ABC and reunited with his comedy foil of his great films of the 30s, Margaret Dumont. It was a performance as good as in the films — and Dumont died two days after the taping:

Alas, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and his dancing feet and shaking you-know-what will no longer be featured on “Dancing with the Stars.” And now the Washington Post frames the question: did he bail or was he shoved? Did the producers of “Dancing With the Stars” drop a brick on Tom DeLay’s feet when he became the show’s main story line and they saw where the ratings...

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

Like when you might possibly be deciding whether to drop one or more 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs on Iranian nuclear facilities:

Gore Vidal, 83, described as America’s greatest essayist and one of its best-selling novelists, says he has in his life “crashed many barriers.” Vidal’s brutal manner of criticism hasn’t waned. The United States of America, he says, is a “madhouse” and its President is “overwhelmed” and “incompetent”. Last year he famously switched allegiance from Hillary...

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Anne Leary, a blogger unknown to me before today, has hit her 15 minutes of fame with her post today about spotting Bill Ayers at D.C.’s Reagan International Airport and — after bravely approaching him despite the possibility that the “unrepentant domestic terrorist” might have a bomb hidden in his pocket — obtaining from him the startling, unsolicited admission that he did, indeed,...

For those interested in the public debate over the Iraq war and looking for a great film experience, I would suggest that you check out Andrew Lawton’s beautifully crafted film, “Wake.” (IMDB data on the film may be found here.) Technically a short, the movie comes in at around thirty minutes, but fills the screen in such a vibrant fashion that the movie seems much larger. Rather than taking...

Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857-1919, aka Rusty Lionhorse) was an Italian composer who wrote the libretto and music for the opera “I Pagliacci” (The Clowns) in 1892. It was a huge overnight success and it remains today one of the 20 most performed operas in the World. Even if you rarely listen to classical music or opera, you’ve probably heard and would recognize some of the great music and arias. Leoncavallo...

I must confess that I have not been a huge fan of Dancing With The Stars, my viewing is usually limited to catching highlights if they happen to have a contestant I find interesting. I’m also not particularly a fan of former Congressman Tom Delay, I found him to be arrogant in his attitude towards his peers and his rivals. However when I heard he was going to be on DWTS this season I was interested enough...

John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

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