No

• The past few years have seen many notable contributions to this genre.
• 9 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in 1995 and has since generated more than 257 million streams on Spotify.
• “Dear Mama,” the documentary series, narrates the ins and outs of the relationship he had with his mother.
• “Dear Mama,” the song, was released in 1995, the year before the rapper was murdered in Las Vegas.

Sounds across generations

• Tupac’s autobiographic ode to his mother showcases the rapper’s storytelling ability with vivid and vulnerable details of their shared struggles and battles.
• He intones to his “Black Queen, Mama,” and offers variations of “There’s no way I can pay you back / but my plan is to show you that I understand.
• Below are some of my other favorite rap songs with lyrics devoted to mothers, grandmothers, aunts and other mother figures who raised the artists through the struggles they faced.
• In most cases, they narrate their activities as a way to achieve a version of the American Dream, which in many cases includes securing a better standard of living for their mothers.
• Tupac himself did this in “Dear Mama” when he wrote: “I ain’t guilty, ‘cause even though I sell rocks / it feels good putting money in your mailbox.
• / Exaggerating a little bit so she’d get the point / Trying to get her to stop smoking.
• / See her in the kitchen cooking fish or chicken depending / on what day it is.

• “I am happy to know someone like him no longer has the platform he had built,” she exclaimed.
• Similarly, CNN anchor Don Lemon’s ouster on April 23, 2023 – the same day as Carlson’s – generated an equal amount of celebration from conservatives.
• In this age of hyperpartisan news programming, both Carlson and Lemon proved talented at providing perspectives that confirmed their audience’s view of the world.

Hyperpartisan news media

• The internet, smartphones and social media further fragmented audiences.
• As journalists and media scholars have noted, the solution for many media companies in the 1990s was to target their programming to a single demographic instead of trying to attract a larger, general audience.
• Scholars and journalists note that in order to attract a targeted demographic, cable news media relied on hyperpartisan reporting that framed news stories as liberal versus conservative.

Carlson’s duplicity

• Whether it was accurate or not, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” provided far-right ideological content that drew an average of 3 million nightly viewers, and Carlson became the highest-rated personality in cable news media.
• Whether he actually believed any of those falsehoods remains unknown.
• At the time, nearly 70% of Tucker’s target audience believed that the election was stolen.
• As a result, despite knowing the 2020 election was not stolen, Carlson continued to report the exact opposite of what he knew to be false.

A boorish Lemon

• In stark contrast to Carlson, Lemon positioned himself as CNN’s chief liberal scolder of the Trump era.
• An April 2023 report from Variety appeared to spell the end for Lemon on CNN.
• According to the report, Lemon was accused of threatening several female co-workers because they were hired for positions he felt he deserved.

Credibility gap

• At CNN, audience size for the show on which Lemon was co-host was shrinking for quite some time -– much like that for the network in general.
• Furthermore, since 2021, major companies such as Disney, Papa John’s, Poshmark and T-Mobile had refused to advertise on Carlson’s program.
• For cable news personalities, partisanship – not journalism – can be a job requirement.

• It follows two L.A. strangers, courageously played by Ali Wong and Steven Yeun, who get into a road rage incident — and end up in an escalating feud.
• Critics have praised Beef for its performances and also for its revolutionary representation of Asian Americans.
• But over the weekend, a Twitter storm erupted after a podcast episode featuring supporting actor David Choe resurfaced.
• In the 2014 podcast, Choe vividly relays a sexual assault story where he is the perpetrator.

• With these opening words, Ian Fleming (1908-64) introduced us to the gritty, glamorous world of James Bond.
• Fleming’s first novel, Casino Royale, was published 70 years ago on April 13 1953.
• British readers, still living with rationing and shortages after the war, eagerly devoured the first James Bond story.
• It had expensive liquor and cars, exotic destinations, and high-stakes gambling – luxurious things beyond the reach of most people.

Ian Fleming, Agent 17F

• He only lasted a year at military college (where he contracted gonorrhoea), then missed out on a job with the Foreign Office.
• The director of British Naval Intelligence, Admiral John Henry Godfrey, recruited Fleming as his assistant.
• Fleming excelled, under the codename 17F.
• They would obtain a German bomber, dress British men in German uniforms, and deliberately crash the plane into the channel.
• Fleming claimed he played against a German agent at the tables, an experience that supposedly inspired Bond’s gambling battles with Le Chiffre in Casino Royale.
• Fleming also pointed to Sidney Reilly, a Russian-born British agent during the First World War.

The changing world of Bond

• Bond novels still sold well, especially after John F. Kennedy listed one among his top ten books.
• From Casino Royale to For Your Eyes Only (1960), Bond battled SMERSH, a real Soviet counter-espionage organisation.
• The early Bond novels were Cold War stories.
• In the novels, Bond drove Bentleys – the Aston Martin was introduced in the 1964 film Goldfinger.
• Their female characters do more than just spend a night with Bond before their untimely deaths.
• But the revised Bond novels will include a disclaimer noting the removals.

Spies After Bond

• Le Carré introduced his readers to a more mundane, morally grey world of espionage.
• He thought Bond was a gangster rather than a spy.
• There’s a little more Bond in Mathews’ books than in those of le Carré or Rimington.
• The more tedious and banal aspects of spycraft – brush passes, broken transmitters, and dead drops – accompany the glamour and romance.

The wilderness of mirrors

• The real world of espionage is so secret that most of us only ever encounter it on pages or screens.
• We don’t usually look to Bond films for accurate representations of espionage.
• But the influence of Fleming’s spy and the general aura of secrecy surrounding intelligence work lend some glamour and excitement to the work of real spies.
• This is why the CIA invests time and money into fictionalisations dealing with its work.