A pre-emptive radio strike on this hollow opinion. If I were his editor, I'd sit Sorkin down to take notes on this stuff: smart sports anchors, now there's a twist worthy of a progressive economics President from New Hampshire. (Silly wag [Richard Sandomir], West Wing WAS a comedy, Studio 360 was the drama!) And now that the Times has adopted yet more RNC talking point jargon by incorporating "center-right" governance into the official lexicon, will that paper (in the person of Keller) ever stop breaking my bloodied heart? Official Shout! … [Read more...]

Print wimps gather to celebrate 40th anniversary of the Beatles' White Album symposium, at Skidmore College, hosted by Gordon Thompson, author of Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out (Oxford). Panel: Allan Kozinn, New York Times critic and author of The Beatles; Walter Everett, University of Michigan, and author of The Beatles as Musicians; Tim Riley, National Public Radio commentator and author of Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary; and Jonathan Gould, author of Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America. Local coverage: … [Read more...]

The oral rendition of the selected bibliography, in conversation with Scott Woods (mp3). … [Read more...]

blip: (verb) a mashup of pandora and twitter, blindingly addictive, killerapp, non-sequiturs woven through instant classic playlists, ricoched through various anonymous ears of abundance, the flash fantastic, in blissful stereo where available. … [Read more...]

This would be quote of the week but it's too juicy, too venal, too outrageously narcissistic, even after watching the Boogie Man (Frontline's Lee Atwater) profile on Friday night. From Karl Rove in the Sunday Times Magazine: "Our new president-elect won one and a half points more than George W. Bush won in 2004, and he did so, in great respect, by adopting the methods of the Bush campaign and conducting a vast army of persuasion to identify and get out the vote..." That's quack-talk, vastly entertaining, deliberately misleading and gaseous as … [Read more...]

Obama: The First Motown President (podcast riley), a discussion of the Vanity Fair oral history by Lisa Robinson, with Suzanne de Passe and Raphael Saadiq On Point (Thursday, November 13, 2008). (Download mp3, or iTunes) … [Read more...]

Tune in to On Point tomorrow morning at 11 am (Thursday, Nov. 13) for a discussion of Lisa Robinson's oral history of Motown (Vanity Fair). And when Levi Stubbs died last month, nobody mentioned that 1986 Billy Bragg song, "Levi Stubbs' Tears," a eulogy in search of a death. … [Read more...]

AD LINE OF THE MONTH: Urinal wallboard, Rennaissance Hotel Convention Center: King of Country Picks the King of Chrome: George Jones for Hunters Custom Automotive, Nashville (Society for Music Theorists conference, Plenary session on "Popular Music and the Canon") … [Read more...]