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Pop Goes the Times
13 July 2005Press critic Michael Massing turns his eye on The New York Times' pop culture coverage in the latest Columbia Journalism Review. Only, he's not very critical. Sure, the piece poses as a hard-hitting analysis of the Times' failure to take seriously the Volk's frustration with pop cult's luridness, but the sum of Massing's investigation -- which includes lengthy ruminations from the Times' Frank Rich, the Orlando Sentinel's Mark Pinsky, and Kansan Tom Frank -- falls short of the punch of any of these individual critiques. Massing's premise is fundamentally prudish. It's the opposite of Adorno: Massing seems to think that the masses are in possession of essential truths that, were they to be listened to, would remake culture coverage in a more family friendly fashion. Here's another approach: What if the problem with the Times' culture coverage is that it doesn't include enough sex and violence? What if the Times decided that the best response to the concerns of religious conservatives was to take them seriously -- by focusing more on the sex and violence of cultural production? Let's look at the eroticism of the Christian men's movement. The fetishization of violence in wholesome sports movies. Let's examine porn as culture, for better or worse. Instead of handwringing about Desperate Housewives, how about writing on the relationship of television to real-world sex lives? Pinsky, author of a forthcoming memoir of his years as a Jewish religion reporter in evangelical Orlando, points us in the right direction. "I have no problem with my son watching [Deadwood]," he says, referring to the most brutal, foul-mouthed, and brilliant show on TV. "But I won’t let him watch a dumb-ass sitcom." Why? NYT, start with that question. "Quality" is not an adequate answer. Report culture.
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