Free Beacon

Respect Beyoncé’s Hustle

BY: Robert Charette // May 15, 2013 4:48 pm

President Obama could learn a thing or two from his friend Beyoncé.

While the Beltway is circling around the White House’s bungled responses to multiple scandals, Beyoncé is embroiled in a controversy of her own.

Rumors are swirling that the pop mogul is touring Europe on her Mrs. Carter Tour pregnant with her second child with Jay-Z. The theory was bolstered when last night on doctor’s orders Bey canceled her first ever concert.

Unlike the Obama White House, which has been on roller skates during the IRS/DOJ/Benghazi triple threat, Beyoncé promptly used her website to release a handwritten note:

Ogom Chijindu Is a Bugatti

BY: Robert Charette // May 15, 2013 3:03 pm

The Legends Football League doesn’t need Tim Tebow to gain attention when it has Los Angeles Temptation Safety Ogom Chijindu dazzling furiously over the middle.

Chijindu blitzed over the Interwebs this weekend with her vicious hit over Seattle Mist wide receiver Riki Creger-Zier Bio in which, after the hit, Chijindu promptly twerked over Creger-Zier’s head:

The School for Moguls

BY: Robert Charette // May 15, 2013 12:37 pm

Three Moguls Who Never Graduated From College / AP

As much as I’m jealous of the first enrollees at the “Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation” at the University of Southern California, I remain skeptical that a college program can develop the next mogul.

But he and Mr. Iovine are betting that their instinct and keen ears — which helped Mr. Iovine find and sign Dr. Dre who, in turn, ferreted out Snoop Dogg and Eminem when they were budding musicians — will help them find future chief executives.

It doesn’t matter whether it is the next Gwen Stefani, Mr. Iovine said, whom he signed at 19, or recruiting and nurturing the next Marissa Mayer.

“Talent is talent,” he said.

Iovine is dead-on. Still, what birthed all of those artists-turnt-moguls was a lack of the very structure a traditional school provides. Neither Jimmy nor Dre went to college. They both admit the nuts and bolts of the program are “out of their depth.” An essential component of the lore we’ve built around such moguls as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, etc., is they all dropped out of school to get out on their grind. Moguls are born on the corners of their profession, putting in work.

A comprehensive Google Fact Check of the Times piece that bestowed celebrities the rank of “mogul” leads me to conclude that only one individual mentioned therein attended and graduated college.

Only apl.ed.ap finished with an undergraduate degree. And only Tyra Banks attempted to earn a graduate degree. But she dropped out of Harvard Business School.

Since I’m no mogul—yet—maybe my skepticism is misplaced. But will the guy or gal who creates the next Facebook really be able to stand USC professor Richard Dekmejian’s screeds against an artistic genius?

Southern Cal isn’t the Jedi Academy. It’s not designed solely to produce members of a certain profession, namely, ass-kicking. It still has required general education courses that accompany electives in record label development and fragrance marketing.

Peep Dekmejian’s Rate My Professor page:

Moguls Beware

Why would an aspiring mogul want to be bogged down by “classes” and “exams” taught by a garbage professor like Dekmejian?

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Chrissy Teigen and the Usefulness of Shame

BY: Sonny Bunch // May 15, 2013 11:23 am

Esquire

Last night, the delightful Chrissy Teigen pointed out something totally reasonable on Twitter: The Teen Mom Porn Star is terrible.

farrah abraham now thinks she is pregnant from her sex tape. in other news you’re a whore and everyone hates you whoops not other news sorry

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) May 14, 2013

Needless to say, the scolding scolds came out in full force.

Last night, the delightful Chrissy Teigen pointed out something totally reasonable on Twitter: The Teen Mom Porn Star is terrible.

farrah abraham now thinks she is pregnant from her sex tape. in other news you’re a whore and everyone hates you whoops not other news sorry

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) May 14, 2013

Needless to say, the scolding scolds came out in full force.

wow. amazed to see the outrage behind calling a staged leaked sex tape chick from teen mom exactly what she is. go on with your bad selves.

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) May 14, 2013

The feminists were not pleased.

ladies: you aren’t a super feminist for okaying super whores. you don’t need to defend EVERYone with a vagina. — christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) May 15, 2013

if you think i am “shaming” her for simply having sex, you are simply a fucking idiot. — christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) May 15, 2013

The real reason the scolds were so angry, however, is this tweet:

I believe in shame and having shame and being shamed.

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) May 14, 2013

So, I understand, if I don’t entirely agree with, the argument against “slut-shaming.” The feminists are angry that there is a double standard between men and women when it comes to sex. I get it. (I tend to think we’d be better off with everyone showing a little more restraint rather than everyone letting loose all the time, but I can’t get too worked up about people hooking up.)

But nobody’s criticizing Teen Mom Porn Star for having sex. They’re criticizing her for being a fame-hungry idiot who capitalized on getting knocked up at an absurdly young age and is now selling her body while simultaneously expecting us to think she’s a victim of some sort.

The problem with the slut-shaming argument, at least as it applies to Teen Mom Porn Star, is that the goal is not necessarily to make Teen Mom Porn Star feel ashamed. Rather, her shame is to serve as a reminder to the rest of society that what she did was wrong and that there are social consequences for terrible behavior. Making fun of Teen Mom Porn Star isn’t the goal; the goal is to avoid the creation of future Teen Mom Porn Stars.

Shame is a powerful tool, one that society should wield more frequently and, frankly, more brutally. We might have nipped all of this in the bud if we had shamed, rather than rewarded with TV shows, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian. We, as a society, would be better off with fewer single, pregnant 16-year-olds who dabble in pornography to sate their unquenchable thirst for fame.

But it doesn’t make any sense for us to use the coercive powers of the state to avoid the creation of future Teen Mom Porn Stars—what are we going to do, imprison every knocked up moron teenager? What does make sense is to use the coercive powers of society. And society has few tools more powerful than shame. Pretending that an action is value-neutral to spare the feelings of a miscreant will only create more miscreants. I, for one, would prefer a society with fewer miscreants.

Anyway, Chrissy Teigen is a hero for pointing out that some people deserve to be shamed. Shine on, you crazy diamond!

(Photos from Chrissy Teigen’s Esquire photo shoot.)

Esquire

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BY: CAF Truth Monkey // May 15, 2013 7:07 am

Russian media in a tizzy as US and Russian governments stay cool to resolve ‘spy’ case.

CBO predicts that rising revenue will shrink the deficit through 2015.

France slips into recession, representing the overall struggle of the euro zone economy.

Taking a major step in unmanned technology, a drone was successfully launched off the deck of an aircraft carrier Tuesday.

Prince Harry to play polo match in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Marathon bombing suspect’s widow agrees to cooperate with police during investigation.

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Seinfeld: 15 Years Later

BY: Sonny Bunch // May 14, 2013 4:48 pm

Sigh.

Seinfeld ended 15 years ago today, apparently. In addition to sitting here and ruminating about how old we are now (or at least how old I’m feeling), it’s worth considering just how much—and how little—the television landscape has changed in the last 15 years.

There’s something pleasingly symmetrical about the fact that Seinfeld ended in May 1998 and The Sopranos debuted in January 1999. The finale of the last great network sitcom—and, make no mistake, it was the last great network sitcom*—coming just a few months before the flagship prestige drama debuted on pay cable. The end of one era, the beginning of another. You get the idea.

It’s pleasing, but it’s not really true. Or, at least, it’s not entirely true. It’s not the whole truth. Because the sad, whole truth is that the prestige dramas have no viewers and most of what’s left on the networks is heavily watched crap.

At the height of its popularity, The Sopranos averaged fewer than 11 million viewers over a whole season. That would’ve been good for the 15th highest-rated show during the 1997-1998 season, when Seinfeld left the air. Mad Men‘s season premiere this year drew a paltry 3.4 million people. Breaking Bad averages fewer than 3 million viewers an episode. The Walking Dead actually does surprisingly good numbers, pulling in 12.4 million viewers for the latest season finale, but critics are unimpressed (and for good reason, as the show is bizarrely, frustratingly uneven).

The sad fact of the matter is that the networks are not only alive and kicking, they’ve dumbed down their fare to capture market share headed to smarter climes. Reality shows like American Idol proliferate. Sitcoms like Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men thrive. Survivor, X-Factor, et cetera. The networks have a smaller market share than they used to but they’re still reaching tons and tons of people.

And it’s not as if everything’s golden on cable. Sure, we’ve got Walter White and Raylan Givens.** But we’ve also got Honey Boo Boo and Teen Mom Porn Stars and 300 channels of dreck drowning out FX and AMC and HBO. As I’ve said a number of times, we live in a golden age of great TV. But we also live in a golden age of awful TV, shows that somehow continue to discover an ever-lower common denominator. It’s hard to imagine a show like Seinfeld making it today on the networks—or finding an appropriately large audience on the cable channels.

*There are other network sitcoms that have reached similar creative highs (I’m looking your way, Arrested Development), but there are none that have combined creative energy with massive audiences (or even audiences needed to sustain the shows, sadly).

**FACT: Nine out of 10 Americans would have no idea what those names mean. Keep that in time the next time we’re discussing the zeitgeist. And I say this as a huge fan of both Breaking Bad and Justified.

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Hermit Kingdom Emissary Meets Kendall Jenner

BY: Robert Charette // May 14, 2013 4:14 pm

U.S.-North Korea emissary Dennis Rodman continued his diplomatic tour Saturday afternoon when the basketball diplomat held a summit at the Brea Mall with petulant and spoiled despots Kendall and Kyrie Jenner.

At the time, Kendall (the Siren) and Kyrie (the Mormo) of the Kardashian horde were busy promoting the latest schlock served up by their mother Kris Jenner (the Empusa). Mr. Rodman, who is known to sample women’s clothing on occasion, consulted with the ladies on their “Kendall & Kylie” collection. Kendall is already an authority on swimwear:

Grizzlies Whoop Those Tricks

BY: Robert Charette // May 14, 2013 2:40 pm

No team has better embodied America’s obsession with glitz than the Miami Heat.

It’s fitting, then, that the grit-and-grind Memphis Grizzlies seem destined to collide with the Heat in the NBA Finals. Especially now that the Grizz, thanks to Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph, took a 3-1 series lead over the West’s best Oklahoma City Thunder.

Here’s Randolph on his teammate, in what has to be the quote of the playoffs:

HIMYM’s Universe Is Unfair and Pretends That It Isn’t

BY: Robert Charette // May 14, 2013 11:30 am

How I Met Your Mother’s eight-season long death march finally ended last night, and the remaining fans of the once-proud show were sorta-kinda rewarded last night with the first shot of the titular character.

How I Met Your Mother’s eight-season long death march finally ended last night, and the remaining fans of the once-proud show were sorta-kinda rewarded last night with the first shot of the titular character.

Throughout its run, HIMYM has stressed the importance of accepting signs from the universe. But the universe that Ted worships has a cruel sense of irony. At HIMYM’s outset, Ted was the most eager of the show’s five friends to marry and begin a family. Eight years later, Ted is the fifth wheel amongst two married couples. He has been locked in emotional cryogenic stasis since Barney and Robin announced their plan to marry, floundering as he sees the cad become an honest man and his college friends start a family.

It’s typical HIMYM-melodrama that Ted would finally meet the One in a scene out of Brief Encounter as he’s scurrying away from Barney and Robin’s wedding a discouraged and lonely man, a far cry from the wide-eyed dreamer we met in the show’s premiere. HIMYM expects the audience and Ted to remain obedient to love’s divine plan as the universe emotionally ravages him.

As relieved as I was to finally catch a glimpse of the person we’ve been told for the past eight years is the greatest woman ever, because HIMYM champions spontaneity despite contriving every major life event I’m prepared for rocky sailing before we reach Happily Ever After.

HIMYM has transformed Ted from a Hopeless Romantic to Love’s Bitch, all with a smile on its face. The Ted who stole a blue trumpet or engineered an evening’s date to fit in a two-minute lunch break is not the Ted waiting on the platform in Farhampton. HIMYM castrated Ted by removing all of his likable qualities, rendering him into an utter sad sack.

Robin’s specter has relentlessly haunted Ted for eight years. Now, in a sneaky sleight of hand, HIMYM fast-forwards 56 hours—from Ted despondently selling his dream home because Robin’s marriage is so depressing to running into the Mother on the train platform.

But HIMYM‘s creators haven’t given us any reason to believe they won’t simply create more ridiculous or frustrating obstacles to beat Ted over the head with. In a just world, HIMYM would allow Ted to actually have an adult relationship for the first time since season four.

Ted’s universe has been pretty damn cruel to him and dishonest to us. At least acknowledge Ted’s journey will be difficult and don’t just expect us to lap up every trinket of info about the mother. Eight years of these shenanigans are four too many.

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Hillary Clinton, Benghazi, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma

BY: Sonny Bunch // May 14, 2013 10:29 am

The prisoner’s dilemma is a pretty classic part of game theory. Two prisoners being questioned by the police about a crime are offered a deal: snitch on the other guy and you go free while he gets three years. If neither of them says anything, each gets one year. If both snitch, each gets two years. I couldn’t help but think of the prisoner’s dilemma when considering how Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are going to handle the fallout from Benghazi.

Washington Free Beacon

Editor’s Blog

Respect Beyoncé’s Hustle

Ogom Chijindu Is a Bugatti

The School for Moguls

Chrissy Teigen and the Usefulness of Shame

Seinfeld: 15 Years Later

Hermit Kingdom Emissary Meets Kendall Jenner

Grizzlies Whoop Those Tricks

HIMYM’s Universe Is Unfair and Pretends That It Isn’t

Hillary Clinton, Benghazi, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma