Carbon and "The Good Life" Written By: Jack Hudson 2007-09-14 00:55:31 As a symbol of our cultural moment, the MTV Video Music Awards program Sunday September 10 was unexpectedly complex. I tuned in mid-Sarah Silverman, who was already deconstructing Britney 2.0, who had just gotten offstage. MTV (VIA), where the target demographic has drifted down to tween girls (largely because of the influence of Britney 1.0) now has the awkward problem of trying to recover buzz for a TV channel in a MySpace (NWS) world. And so the setting was the Palms in Las Vegas, America’s city of the future. Vegas is both a-historical and could be powered by the sun (WFC) (see also here and here), so it’s a place to watch (unlike the spent cultural dinosaurs of New York and LA).
It’s hard to tell if Stephen Colbert is being funny when a packed crowd of white people in flip-flops dies laughing at everything he says. Such was the scene at the 92nd Street Y last night where I heard him speak with New York Times columnist Frank Rich.
