Notes on Pop Culture/Politics: 'Grey's' Mixed Notes, Ferraro's Passing Ignored, Paging Mr. Darcy

Grey's Mixed Notes

So, about that Grey's Anatomy major music extravaganza . . . it received largely mixed reviews, like the mixed review I gave it the morning after it aired.

The scene above -- in which Callie was supposedly imagining all the Grey's couples gettin' flirty and sexy -- is an example of how this episode, which started out very powerfully (so much so that I was teary-eyed), went horribly awry. While Callie and her unborn baby were in life threatening situations and Meredith was severely depressed about her inability to have her own baby, she would NOT be singing gloriously about "running on sunshine" with a crazy-big smile on her face while kissing Derek I'm sorry. This scene was preposterous.

However my review wasn't all negative:

"Sara Ramirez, who plays Callie, sang the hell out of this episode. She has a lovely voice. She energetically emoted. She underplayed it when the song called for quiet grace. And that opening scene where Callie was having an out-of-body experience and singing as she was brought to Seattle Grace and wheeled into the OR for the first time, that was mighty powerful.

Chyler Leigh (Lexie) and Chandra Wilson (Bailey) also sang exceptionally well throughout."

Otherwise . . . too. Much. Singing.

Media Coverage: Ferraro vs Taylor

Following on the heels of last week’s post about the disparity of the media coverage allotted to the deaths of screen icon Elizabeth Taylor and political trailblazer Geraldine Ferraro, I wrote a column which contains some hard numbers to back up my assertion that Taylor received loads more news coverage than did the first woman vice presidential nominee for a major political party, someone who the likes of Hillary Clinton and Madeline Albright said was a role model for them.


The most dispiriting part of the piece was this quote that I found from a National Journal writer who, after comparing the  media attention these two women received after their deaths, surmised, “. . . [A]s the media space afforded Elizabeth Taylor’s and Ferraro’s obituaries attested . . . society still values female sex symbols more than female leaders.”

Paging Mr. Darcy

I have an embarrassing confession to make: I've never read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I know, shocking, isn't it?

But seeing as though I've been on a classics binge lately -- A Tale of Two Cities and Jane Eyre -- I started Pride and Prejudice over the weekend and am bringing with me high hopes that this classic will deeply impress me. I hope I won't be disappointed.

In the meantime, as far as my pet project of reading the entire, seven-book Harry Potter series aloud to my youngest son, I've started writing about the Harry Potter Reading Out Loud Project on my lifestyle/parenting blog. Thus far, between myself and my husband, we've read 2,750 pages to our now-9-year-old son and just concluded Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

To keep tabs on our reading progress, I made a special blog page where I list on what page we left off and what was going on when we closed the book. We've just started the beginning of the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and are still on the part where the U.K. Prime Minister is having a disturbing conversation with the Minister of Magic.

Image credit: Amazon.com.

Why Didn't Geraldine Ferraro's Passing Generate More Media Coverage?

Liz Taylor -- two-time Oscar winner, AIDS activist and philanthropist -- died last week and received a mountain of news coverage as she was considered one of the last great American movie stars from the 1950s/1960s era. And she deserved a great deal of coverage as she earned a special spot in American popular culture history. (I contributed to the coverage here on this blog in and in a column I wrote about Liz, the working mom.)

Then on Saturday, Geraldine Ferraro also died and of the three Sunday newspapers I receive in dead tree form at my house, only one newspaper – the New York Times -- ran a page one story (though it was below-the-fold) about the first female, major party candidate for the vice presidency. The Boston Globe had a page one news blurb mentioning Ferraro’s death and telling readers to turn to page B9 for the obituary, odd given that Ferraro passed away in Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. My local newspaper, the MetroWest Daily News, didn’t even mention Ferraro on page one and ran a modest Associated Press story about her passing on page two.

By contrast, the day after Taylor died, the New York Times ran a large photo and story, above-the-fold on page one, the Boston Globe ran a photo and story below-the-fold on page one and the MetroWest Daily News ran a teaser on the top of the page, with a folder, telling readers to turn to page two for an AP story.

This just didn’t seem right to me. Sure, Taylor was a major American icon, considered a screen siren with Oscar-winning acting chops and a fascinatingly exciting life so it makes sense that she would generate media attention. As for Ferraro, whether you were a fan of her politics or not, she was a major historical figure whose selection as the 1984 Democratic vice presidential running mate “broke” the males-only glass ceiling for a national office. Certainly she deserved more coverage and attention than she received, at least with the papers I read, and on web sites I frequent (which didn't cover Ferraro as much as they did Taylor). There were days and days worth of Taylor coverage but a small fraction, it seemed, devoted to Ferraro.

According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, Taylor's death was the third biggest news story last week, the week running from March 21-27, coming in behind the Middle East uprisings and the events in Japan. Taylor garnered 13 percent of newspaper coverage and 7 percent of overall media attention (cable/network TV, radio, online, newspapers). Ferraro died on March 26, within the period the think tank examined, and she didn't make it onto the list of top stories.
Do you think Ferraro’s death was downplayed, when you compare it to Taylor’s? Is it really all about sex appeal and the allure of the Hollywood celeb culture? 

Image credit: Time via Forbes.