Louis Wittig is a writer and cultural commentator who contributed to The Weekly Standard in 2006 and 2007. His articles for the magazine covered media criticism, pop culture, and political figures, with pieces on subjects ranging from Al Jazeera's English-language launch to documentaries about Al Franken and Michael Moore.
MICHAEL MOORE IS AT the top of his game. Audiences have made his latest project, Sicko, the fourth most successful documentary ever released. Critics are calling it his most impressive work yet. And he's basking in the life-giving glow of TV lights while calling his interviewers tools of Big…
IMAGINE WHAT A WOLF in sheep's clothing would actually look like: a six-foot long, 170-pound killing machine prancing on the tips of its paws and choking out a guttural "baa" while the mottled-wool hide slips off its back. The image is a little more farcical than menacing.
Angelo Falcón, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy, is exactly the type of spokesman you'd want for your grassroots campaign: He returns reporters' call promptly and answers questions honestly and fully. But he wasn't who I really wanted to talk to.
IT'S A GLOWING Mediterranean late-afternoon and Richard Gere is ambling up the red carpet at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is up for the Festival's top prize. A reporter in the crowd asks Gere what he thinks of the man from Flint.
"HOLLYWOOD is out of touch with mainstream America."
TUNE IN around 4 o'clock Eastern and the news is feeding from the London anchor desk. The ticker is crawling: DR Congo Loser to Challenge Results . . . Netherlands Moves to Ban Burqa. Co-anchors Nick Clarke and Barbara Serra, in an urbane British accent that osmoses credibility, lead into the…
LIBERAL CELEBRITY (or celebrity liberal) Al Franken is not the sort of guy who leaves you with a lot of questions about who he is or what he's all about. Except for the simple one: What moved the Saturday Night Live quipster to transform himself into an ardent liberal crusader?
FORMER NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR Jim McGreevey might have sensed that something was wrong. Sitting in front of the cameras on The Oprah Winfrey Show, he did not look at ease.
THERE'S ALMOST NOTHING you need to know about the movie Snakes on a Plane that you didn't get from the title. Samuel L. Jackson gets on a trans-Pacific flight. A few hundred poisonous snakes get loose in the cabin. Samuel L. Jackson handles it in a way that Richard Gere probably wouldn't have. The…
SOON the Supreme Court may be forced to consider a thorny question it has hidden from for too long: Does the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment protect shellfish?
IF YOU CAN STILL TELL the difference between any of the reality shows on television, you have noticed that they are invariably about one of three things: (1) good-looking people melodramatically debasing themselves in contrived contests for a sum of money between $50,000 and $1,000,000 (or the…