As a journalism major and an idealist, I prefer a certain level of professionalism and class in my news coverage. I like a person like Anderson Cooper, who covers important issues well and actually cares about those issues and confronts the responsible (or irresponsible) parties – see his coverage of Hurricane Katrina for an example.

This is also the reason why I cannot stand the television existence of Glenn Beck or Nancy Grace.

In case you are not aware, Beck and Grace exist as an unholy four-hour block on CNN Headline News. Beck is evidently a conservative talk-radio host as well, though I’ve never really made it far enough into his TV show to know his views on anything other than yelling. He’s in favor of it. He covers the most pressing issues, like how evidently Chuck Norris is endorsing Mike Huckabee for president.

Grace, on the other hand, should, in theory, be a bit more legitimate. She’s a former prosecutor, though it seems she wasn’t even good at that. She broke into television via CourtTV and moved on to her current show on Headline News, where she takes a self-described victims’-rights standpoint.

I, on the other hand, would describe her standpoint as sensationalist and annoying. The show is sensationalist because its primary focus is not a rational and weighted commentary on the legal news of the day, but stories on crazy, unusual crimes which usually involve children, some kind of sexual predation or unusual murder. It’s annoying because, among other reasons, the headlines used on the screen during the show have exclamation marks – and if there’s one thing that just screams “journalistic integrity,” it’s an exclamation mark.

There’s a lot wrong with journalism in the United States today. The free press is supposed to act as a check on the government by keeping the people informed and investigating things that those in charge may not want us to know. Instead, the press has lost its focus to a certain extent. It’s no fun to have to go back to this again, but if in 2003 the press had been paying attention, there wouldn’t have been nearly as much popular support for the Iraq War. If the press had done its job, the war may not have happened.

However, the media is fixated on trivialities, and Beck and Grace represent everything wrong with it. Their yelling and exclamation marks are representative of the sensationalism that has gripped the press so much recently that it reminds one of Hearst and Pulitzer. Of course things like the war and global warming get coverage, but it hurts to see that same space also occupied by my favorite examples of irresponsible journalism – Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears. Even when the right topics get covered, it seems like it’s done with a sensationalist’s eye.

The next time I want to hear about a baby on cocaine, I’ll look to Ms. Grace. But to find legitimate news, I guess I’ll have to work a bit harder.

TV Guide scooper (and total toolbag) Mike Ausiello is reporting that NBC is developing a second helping of “The Office” to premiere later this year. Thankfully, it won’t be like “Grey’s” spin-off “Private Practice” and will see no members of the Scranton branch leave. Completely new characters, new office.

Not sure how I feel about this, because NBC is desperate for anything that remotely looks like a success, but Office 1 isn’t even that big of a ratings hit.

More as this story develops.

I, like many other Americans, grew up eating meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, hamburgers and other “comfort food.”

But America is rebelling against its food culture.

In the past decade or so, America has quite possibly undergone a food revolution. My house – a middle-class, Midwestern-rooted home with access to the Food Network – has changed its culinary habits in the extreme, and I have a feeling we are not alone.

Now it’s risotto Milanese for dinner, or maybe some herbed chicken with couscous and apricots.

This change in tastes is cosmopolitan, introducing international cuisines to the American kitchen, as well as bourgeois and expensive, costing more than white bread and a slab of meat.

Why this change in taste?

First I call attention to the Food Network. Regardless of whether or not they are a cause for this new culinary identity, they certainly reinforce it. Glamorous Giada de Laurentiis makes Italian food with working urban sophisticates in mind; she shops at Whole Foods for some of her ingredients, and brings together classic Italian recipes with new American tastes. Ina Garten makes deceptively simple food, often influenced by rural French cuisine, with fresh, beautiful ingredients she buys in the Hamptons, then tosses in the back of her BMW.

These chefs and others have the luxury of buying their ingredients at upscale grocers. They have introduced the fine life to middle class Americans, regardless of whether or not we have access to it.

Today this food revolution also goes hand in hand with the “green movement.” People have become more conscious about the environmental and health ramifications of eating foods contaminated with growth hormones, insecticides and other harmful chemicals. So people buy organic. Or, people buy local produce and animal products to help the local farming economy and offset the vast amounts of energy it takes to ship produce and meat from California or Florida up to Indiana.

On the one hand, the expanding market for new foods shows that America is getting fed up with gigantic chain grocers with foreign produce and processed foods. During our grandparents’ lives, Americans could walk to the local butcher, baker and market for their needs. By rejecting certain old kitchen habits, we yearn for a less anonymous, less corporate past in favor of a local, friendly one.

On the other hand, who the hell can afford this stuff? An expanding market in luxury foods makes no sense at a time when oil prices are more than $90 a barrel, or as tuition prices rise out of proportion to our incomes.

The food revolution further illustrates the class stratification in this country. The rich can afford to be sophisticated and ethical, and the middle class struggles to do the same. But the poor will be condemned to the same old white bread.

My hope is that this is just a beginning of the food revolution, and that eventually the demand for these foods will cause their supply to rise and, some time in the future, for prices to go down.

Then we can all eat richly.

The Pop Culture Register

Barker is a sophomore majoring in journalism and business.

After listening to new releases from Say Anything, Cobra Starship and Coheed and Cambria this week, I couldn’t help but revel in the sheer awesomeness of new music that October has brought for punk/emo/not-quite-indie fans. October has brought even more great new albums to the absolutepunk.net sort than chubby girls in sexy cop/nurse/pirate costumes. Aside from the above, new records by Thrice, Jimmy Eat World, Saves The Day and Thursday will be released before Thursday.

I started to contemplate the origins of my love for these genres. I’ve spent the last few days thinking and decided the best way for anyone to retrace his musical-affection lineage is “gateway records” – those that created such an awe-inspiring experience that led to someone’s genre of choice.

Here are my top three:

Blink 182, “Enema of the State” – For any “emo kid” in my demographic, this has to be one of the albums that started it all. This was Blink’s first big mainstream success, and to a sixth-grade me who had listened solely to the radio, it was the greatest thing ever. The chords are simple, the lyrics are relatable and the videos are hilarious. I’ve listened to this album so much that I believe I’ve had at least three copies of it, and many of its tracks still make it onto my play lists. “Enema” was the first time I had really heard the words pop-punk, and little did I know that it would become my favorite type of music.

Brand New, “Deja Entendu” – If “Enema” birthed millions of emo kids, then Brand New’s masterpiece was the catalyst for our maturity. “Deja” saw BN revolutionize their sound, as they went from pop-punk to indie. The lyrics are clever and witty, yet just relatable enough for the growing intellect of a high school sophomore. Each time I listen now, I can still remember exactly what I was doing when I first listened; every song leads to a special story. By the time “Deja” was released, I was still just listening to pop-punk like The Starting Line or Midtown. But after this, I sought more mature, diverse music that I could now relate to as well.

Fall Out Boy, “Take This To Your Grave” – Even though “Deja” extended my tastes in 2003, I was still interested in pop-punk when I stumbled upon a band from Chicago on purevolume.com, and for some reason, Fall Out Boy’s simple emo just stuck with me. “Grave” was like the new “Enema,” only with more bite. But I think I’ll remember it more for what it did for my interest in music, because after finding FOB online, I spent more time searching the Internet to find new bands, something I’ve continued to do. “Grave” made FOB my favorite band and made me want to be a music journalist. It really was a gateway drug. Now I’m addicted to music.

This is my musical lineage. Ever thought about yours? If not, take some time, figure out what music changed your life and maybe revisit the albums again if you’ve lost touch.

Television comedian and fake pundit Stephen Colbert is running for president.

No, seriously.

He announced his candidacy on his show “The Colbert Report” last week, though until he clarified on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” it was hard to tell whether or not he was joking. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I’m still not sure if he’s serious, considering the fact that he’s entering both as a Republican and as a Democrat, and that he says he’s only running in his home state of South Carolina.

It would be pretty interesting to see what would happen if Colbert – by some twist of fate – actually becomes the president of the United States. I’m sure “The Wørd” could be extended into a State of the Union Address. Maybe he could use “Better Know a District” to convince members of Congress to back his policies.

In all seriousness, there’s no real reason why Colbert shouldn’t run for President. He wouldn’t be the first entertainer to jump headlong into the world of federal politics. Hall of Fame major league pitcher Jim Bunning is a Senator representing Kentucky. Former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota. Arnold Schwarzenegger quit his career as an action film star and bad actor to become governor of California. Even the greatest American ever, Ronald Reagan, was the star of terrible movies before governing California and becoming president.

It’s not as if any of these people had any prior experience or anything, or they were in unimportant positions. California would have the world’s fifth largest economy if it stood alone. I don’t really think that “Junior” or “Kindergarten Cop” prepared the Governator for his current vocation.

If anything, Colbert would be more prepared than the rest of these entertainers-turned-politicians. As a correspondent for “The Daily Show” and host of his own show, he has been highly involved in coverage and satire of the government and the political system in general. He already knows how it works: President of the United States is a bigger first job than any of the others, but governor of California is high up there too, and Reagan and Schwarzenegger didn’t run California into the ground.

This just goes to show the power of television. Since Colbert’s announcement, support (mostly among younger people) has started to spring up. What does that say about us as a country, that we’re actually willing to consider somebody as a possible president just because we like his TV show – especially since he’s playing a bizarro version of himself on that show?

Aside from that, this possible candidacy speaks to the state of the American political system today. There are people who would legitimately vote for Colbert for president over significantly more qualified candidates. If that’s the case, people must have really lost faith in those who are running the country. Perhaps this will serve as a wake-up call to our leaders: Shape up, or the comedians will get your jobs.

Yesterday, the IDS published an editorial about Islamofascism week, a nationwide campus event organized by that humbly named institution, the “David Horowitz Freedom Center.” I think the board was right on when they said that the week of events misfires because it targets liberals (or more likely, all enemies of the right wing) instead of plans to ‘educate’ about jihadi extremists. After all, Horowitz is the guy who wrote “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America.” The event is thinly veiled propoganda meant to rally against Horowitz’s favorite enemy, the academic left.

But Christopher Hitchens, the infamous commentator and outspoken critic of religion, defends the term “Islamofascist” in his Slate.com column today.

He says of the similarities between radical Islam and Fascism:

The most obvious points of comparison would be these: Both movements are based on a cult of murderous violence that exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind. (”Death to the intellect! Long live death!” as Gen. Francisco Franco’s sidekick Gonzalo Queipo de Llano so pithily phrased it.) Both are hostile to modernity (except when it comes to the pursuit of weapons), and both are bitterly nostalgic for past empires and lost glories. Both are obsessed with real and imagined “humiliations” and thirsty for revenge. Both are chronically infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia (interestingly, also, with its milder cousin, anti-Freemason paranoia). Both are inclined to leader worship and to the exclusive stress on the power of one great book. Both have a strong commitment to sexual repression—especially to the repression of any sexual “deviance”—and to its counterparts the subordination of the female and contempt for the feminine. Both despise art and literature as symptoms of degeneracy and decadence; both burn books and destroy museums and treasures.

My problem with Hitchens’ analysis is that he is unclear about exactly who his fascists are in a historical sense. He conflates Nazism with other fascist governments, like Franco’s Spain and Croatia’s Ustase. Plus, Nazis did not universally abhor the life of the mind; they only condemned deviant art, and held other art, such as Heidegger or Wagner’s works, in high esteem.

But my biggest fear here is that by calling radical Islamists fascists, we eclipse important differences between the two. Fascism is a very loaded term from our historical memory which has come to mean little more than “evil.”

In the end, I think calling radical Islamists fascists just employs another political buzzword that conjures up fear and loathing without any new understanding.

What do you think?

Stephen Colbert – comedian, faux right wing pundit, egomaniac – is running for president.

At the time I am writing this, no one knows how serious his bid for the presidency actually is.

But his plans are apparently serious enough that he has researched how to get on the South Carolina primary ballot, running as both a Republican and Democrat.

And when you stop and think about it, a Colbert presidential campaign makes perfect sense.

Colbert’s comedic breed is based on bloated self-congratulation and exploitation of empty political jargon. He has effectively established a cult of personality, reinforced by his followers in the “Colbert Nation.” And he never wavers from his finely crafted stage persona.

In other words, he does the politicians’ job better than they do.

Politics, like acting, is a type of performance. Presidential candidates become national characters during the campaign season, and we analyze how effectively they present themselves and how well they seem to fit the part.

Colbert makes us aware of this similarity between himself and the candidates in several ways. Sure, it’s a publicity stunt; he wants to sell his new book. But, being frighteningly arrogant, he also wants to go to lengths to which no other political satirist has gone. And finally, Colbert is pointing out the kind of soul-sacrificing artifice involved in running for president.

Colbert’s unapologetically fake image is all in stark opposition to the image of Barack Obama. Obama’s campaign revolves around his openness and ingenuity. He has tapped into the hopelessness of the American left, and tells us we can believe in him as a man not made by machine politics. He points to the rampant corruption and lawlessness of our current administration and claims he will be different. Those who worship in the cult of Obama claim he is in politics for the right reasons. (To my mind, “politics” and “right reasons” just don’t mix.)

Obama’s campaign has done a fine job of painting him to be the most fresh-faced and trustworthy of all the candidates. And when I see his smiling face or hear his charismatic speech, I too am tempted to fall for the cult of Obama.

But the pragmatist in me kicks in, reminding me that no person running for president could possibly be anything but a product of machine politics. There’s no doubt about it; Obama is almost as good an actor as Colbert.

Why pick on Obama? He isn’t exploiting the tragedy of 9/11 to win favor of Americans, like sleazy Rudy Giuliani. He isn’t as dull-witted and Bush-like as Fred Thompson. He’s not a ‘flip-flopper’ on social issues like Mitt Romney. And he is certainly less machine than Hillary Clinton.

I pick on Obama because he is parading around in a banner of truth. Colbert, on the other hand, embraces and revels in the lies and manipulations of politics.

At the end of the day, it is Obama who deceives us most of all by pretending to live in truth.

So my vote goes to the honest liar, Stephen Colbert.

With a female frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination and female enrollment outpacing males at universities, one wonders how much our depiction of women has changed with the shifting reality? Taking off from Anna’s post about the depiction of strong women at the box office, I wonder just how our perception of women has had to adapt to various changes and whether those adaptations are for the better?

For example, take a TV show like “Bionic Woman.” While the 1967 version had a vivacious, if slightly stereotypical, schoolteacher spy with kooky sound effects and even kookier plots (“Fembots!”), the 2007 version has a darker, more masculinized, ass-whoopin’ bartender Bionic Woman. This Bionic Woman doesn’t need any Six Million Dollar Man to keep around, but all these attempts at toughness are really just attempts at appropriating male forms of dominance: jump kicks and attitude.

What are we to make of these kinds of changes? Not to mention hilariously bad shows like this. And with Halloween just around the corner, it bears wondering, in addition to our cultural depiction, is the post-post-feminist “dress-like-a-sexy-referee” phenomenon good for women?

I am very attentive to the portrayal of women in Hollywood and other mainstream film outlets–and it is one of my great peeves that heroines rarely exist without being propped up by a stronger, more impressive hero.

That is why I was disappointed yesterday when I saw “Elizabeth: The Golden Age.” I confess, I love period dramas, preferably period dramas concerning royalty or rich people in general; but most of all I love Cate Blanchett. She is an actor singular to big-budget American and British films; eerily charming, she possesses the rare quality of a striking appearance alongside a powerful voice and emotive face.

And yet Blanchett’s character, Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen of England during the latter half of the 16th century, crumples into jealous hysterics over a man.

Granted, the man is Sir Walter Raleigh, played by the perenially suave Clive Owen.

But the problem here is that the film outlines the descent of a great woman: We first see her in a period of self-assured poise as a great leader, but she quickly devolves into a creature of self-doubt and frivolousness, brought on by the appearance of the charming Walter Raleigh.

The film does point out the limitations imposed on the fairer sex. Elizabeth longs to roam the high seas as an explorer like Raleigh (the same Raleigh of North Carolina), but she cannot because a.) she is a queen and b.) she is a woman. Instead, she settles for loving the adventuring man, instead of adventuring herself. Unfortunately for her, though, Raleigh loves the Queen’s more feminine, soft-spoken lady in waiting, Bess. Their forbidden romance culminates in a cat fight between Bess and Elizabeth. No joke.

Finally, one might think that in the end Elizabeth is reconciled with her man-less existence. She goes to bless the child of Raleigh and Bess, a forgiveness that originally seems inconceivable. But the final shot in the film is of Elizabeth holding their baby, babbling about how she has learned to bear her ‘unbearable freedom,’ and finally, declares, “I am myself.”

This film is knee-deep in sexual politics. Cate Blanchett is made to look androgynous, as opposed to her voluptuous maids. Plus, she inhabits the role as head of state, which is typically a man’s job. And yet she is defined by what she lacks, instead of what she has. Her virginity–this derth, this lack, this negativity–causes her to long for some unattainable state. She either wants to be a man, or wants a man. Either way, she isn’t ‘free,’ but always bound in relation to what she lacks.

Can you think of any heroines who are totally free? Do you disagree with my premise? Would this movie be worth making if it was about a man?

The Pop Culture Register

Barker is a sophomore majoring in journalism and business.

One of the most important moments of my childhood was when I saw “Terminator 2.” Many might have found it too graphic for someone my age to be watching, but I couldn’t have cared less. I had all the action figures, including a huge talking T-101, the character Arnold Schwarzenegger made famous. The character, in all its bloody, half-man half-machine glory, was on my 5th birthday cake.

The Terminator saga has been an obsession of mine for a long time. I use the word “saga” because I believe the films to be so epic that the word “series” doesn’t deliver them justice. So my eyes widened last week when it was announced that the fourth film that sets up a new trilogy of films dealing with the future war is set to being production. Then I read further to find that McG is in talks to direct and Vin Diesel is in talks to star.

After a short rage blackout, I calmed down, really thought about it and came to a shocking conclusion: I think it can work.

The diehards are going to have to get over the fact that Rick Pitino, Schwarzenegger or James Cameron “(are) not walking through that door.” The Governator is busy trying to amend the Constitution and J.C. is in preproduction on a movie about cats in the future. For many, even “T3” was a letdown, so how do the producers expect audiences to accept this?

I assume they’ve been working on a scenario without Arnie since the last film ended. “T3” did a marvelous job of getting to what people have been waiting for since 1984: the war between humans and machines. There doesn’t have to be a Terminator that looks like Arnold; the Terminators can be the endoskeletons seen previously. Save money in the budget for effects. The fans want to see two things: John Connor becoming a badass, and at least 65 minutes of Terminators blowing up the world.

Neither of the talents attached are inspiring, but this film doesn’t need them to be. McG works for “T4” because he’s a decent director – not Cameron-good by any means, but good enough. This film only needs someone to point and shoot the action. Diesel needs something to jump-start his career, so why shouldn’t he take that action-film throne of Arnie’s like everyone said he was going to a few years back? Diesel gets a lot of flack, but the man’s acting talents are underrated and he has a presence on screen.

The thing that will be most influential to the success of this film is the script. The guys who wrote “T3” are writing this one, and although it had some rough parts, they made up for it with the ending. They wrote John Connor really well, and if they continue to do that, as well as flesh out some new characters, they’ll be on their way. The action writes itself; it’s the quieter moments that made the first and second films so amazing.

If “T4” doesn’t deliver on the aforementioned, it will sadly confirm what many said after the third film: “Hasta la vista.”