My own hometown newspaper, in 1980. It’s funny how much hasn’t changed: This basic idea–a syndicated UPI feature–is pretty similar to what AOL and Yahoo, etc. do with pop music right now. Even more seemingly prescient of our current kerfluffle is the Tom Petty blurb, which details his label/legal squabbles before capping with the gawky [...]

I long for the days when mainstream dramatic television made a point of lecturing its viewers. Owing much to the ideology of government-issued “educational” films of the previous two decades, producers and networks, mainly during the glut of dramas that appeared during the late 70’s/early 80’s, would often take a schoolteacher’s stance on a hot-button [...]