Quotes from James Wolcott

Popular culture no longer craves archangels and new dawns. Pop culture traffics in vampires and deads of night.

The advent of DVD/Blu-ray reissues of classic Hollywood and foreign films has been a boon to film buffs, who can now study their favorites in all their glistening detail and restored palettes.

Today a celebrity sex video isn't a stigma that requires penance and smarm removal; it's a branding device, a platform enhancer, a show reel.

Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian would have left little more than lipstick stains in their passing had it not been for the sex videos that lofted them into reality-TV notoriety. Once notoriety has warmed into familiarity, celebrity itself becomes one big 'Brady Bunch' reunion, or a therapy session with Dr. Drew.

Who elected Larry King America's grief counselor? We, the viewing public, did, by driving up his ratings whenever somebody famous passes.

At 'The Village Voice,' there were all these fevers inside the offices, that would break out into full-scale rumbles between writers.

It was with 9/11 that I came to fully appreciate and embrace NPR's irreplaceability as a sanity preserver, its unique virtues as first responder on the burning scene.

Used to be, conservatives revered the Average American, that Norman Rockwell oil painting of diner food, humble faith, honest toil, and Capraesque virtue.