Okay, let’s get the obvious out of the way first: how could you not like a band with a name like Heartless Bastards? Well, maybe if you’re Tipper Gore you wouldn’t, but I give the Ohio quartet some points for their name alone. Then there’s their first th

POLITICO Slideshows require the Adobe Flash Player. Whether it’s a subtle good luck hand squeeze or full-on celebratory smooch, public displays of affection happen all the time on the campaign trail. Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul recently c

Get this: Led Zeppelin once played at Green Lake and the tickets were $4. Dozens of others listened from nearby areas or got rowboats and checked out the show from the water. The show was at the Aqua Theatre, which was built in 1950 as part of the first

How badly will Marianne Gingrich’s interviews hurt Newt? Go back to October 2004 and the third George W. Bush-John Kerry presidential debate — and the last question from moderator Bob Schieffer: “All three of us are surrounded by very strong women. We’re

There is always someone campaigning against the allegedly evil lyrics on hip-hop records. Back in the late 1980s, it was Tipper Gore, wife of Al, and her posse of perfectly manicured, perfectly white Washington wives who spent sleepless nights panicking

At the very moment that Rick Santorum was “publicly giv[ing] thanks to God” for his apparent victory in the Iowa caucuses, a cheer went up from the Hotel Fort Des Moines. On the big screen in the teeming, airless second-floor ballroom, where Mitt Romney’

People around the world have been trying to regulate music for centuries, but in the 1980s, Tipper Gore launched the first campaign to rate albums. Here’s the story of how a vice-president’s wife took on graphic lyrics in music and won …sort of. In 1984,

It's so easy to fall in love – and today, to get divorced. Look at the casualties. Al and Tipper Gore. Elizabeth Hurley and Arun Nayar. Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries. Your own good friends. Americans no longer feel so ashamed about untying the knot.

The arrival of amplified rock music performed by free-spirited longhairs was not, to put it mildly, greeted with enthusiasm by the Cold Warriors of the West. Nearly a decade after Elvis’s pelvis dislocated social mores and Frank Sinatra denounced rock as

When the Parents Music Resource Center —Tipper Gore and her host of "Washington Wives"— waged war on the perceived rampant bad language, sexual suggestiveness, and moral decadence of the recorded music industry, the battle-lines were clearly drawn along

Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman has frequently spoken out against pop culture that he finds offensive and believes is harmful to young audiences. Lieberman once called for sweeping censorship of the Internet, and he supported Tipper Gore’s mid-1980s cr

Anyone can tell you if a trailer "looks good" or not. But Drew Magary, who spent over a decade working in advertising, is here to tell you whether or not a trailer WORKS. This week's trailer? "Rock of Ages". Ever since we got that first official photo of

For me, the best part of the trailer for Adam Shankman ‘s Rock of Ages is the prominent display of the Motorhead logo in the first few seconds. After that it’s all downhill. The film adapts the stage ‘jukebox musical’ with Diego Boneta and Julianne Hough

The Tuesday edition of the Morning Jolt features more on Barney Frank’s surprise retirement, some explosive news out of Iran, and this discussion in the shift in the thinking of the Democratic Party: Over in the New York Times, Thomas Edsall says that Ob

Rep. Barney Frank's announcement on Monday that he was retiring from Congress on Monday, set off a barrage of Frank-related comments and clips on Twitter and the web. None caught our eye as much as this 1992 video of Frank singing about marriage on ABC —

Before there was Facebook, before there were iPhones, there was MTV. After an unprepossessing launch in 1981, the cable network became a powerful force in American popular culture, exerting a much-noted impact not only on the music and television industr