From Darkmatter, a special issue on The Wire (in the Feb/Mar 2009 issue of Bookforum, Walter Benn Michaels wrote that The Wire is "the most serious and ambitious fictional narrative of the twenty-first century so far".) From The New Yorker, Michael Schulman on the ladies behind the new "Mad Men" ads. From The Philosophers' Magazine's "Pop Culture Week", Catherine Yu asks if it’s okay to laugh at South Park; David Kyle Johnson on what Family Guy tells us about religious toleration; and paraconsistent logic in The Office: Morgan Luck investigates the case of the missing Tim. Whatever happened to educational television? Scott McLemee revisits his alma mater. A review of Television Truths: Forms of Knowledge in Popular Culture by John Hartley. From EW, an article on the cult of "cult TV" (and part 2). In the ’50s, on the rare occasions black performers appeared on TV, African-American families gathered to watch and to judge. TV's insipid commercials, decoded: A semiotics professor explores the strange new world of subcomedy, from Progressive Auto Insurance to Omnaris nasal spray. TV commercials are becoming more overt in reflecting the "culture wars", particularly the fierce backlash against intellectualism. Must See TV: So television is bad, but letting the tube go dark would be even worse.
