Culture Briefs

Politics as rock

“The ways of the celebrity culture are not transparent enough for me to be able to say with any confidence whether the media grew disgusted with Bill [and Hillary] Clinton because they admired Senator Obama or whether they admired Senator Obama because they had grown disgusted with Bill [and Hillary] Clinton. The one thing does not preclude the other, I fancy.

“But so many voices so suddenly raised in anger against ’the Clinton attack machine’ — I had thought the Clintons themselves had taught us that ’Republican’ was the only possible adjective to describe that remarkable engine — suggests at the very least a certain amount of pent-up hostility in the media against the former rock stars from Arkansas.

“Perhaps, like the kings of Sir James Frazer’s ’Golden Bough,’ the old rock stars have to be ritually slaughtered before the new ones can be brought to birth.”

— James Bowman, writing on “Rock-Star Status” in the March issue of the New

Criterion

Governing tragedy

“In ’Governess,’ Ruth Brandon considers the case studies of six governesses — ’The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres,’ as the subtitle has it. Taken together, their lives span a generous century from 1750 to 1860 and suggest that, between the fiction and the reality, there are many alarming points of similarity and a few quietly tragic differences.

“Most of the melodrama in ’Jane Eyre,’ it turns out, mimics upper-middle-class social dynamics of the era. A reversal of fortune, such as the death of the male head of the family, could push a gently bred and moderately educated girl out of the lady-of-leisure class and into the mass of workers. …

“She would be a silent but suffering witness to the life she had lost: She was neither mother nor wife, neither servant nor mistress — although she took on some duties of all these. …

“It was this fundamental social ambiguity that made the figure of the governess so compelling to novelists, Ms. Brandon observes. Jane Austen … was characteristically unromantic about a governess’s fate. In ’Emma,’ the character Jane Fairfax, contemplating applying for a governess job, describes ’offices for the sale not quite of human flesh but of human intellect.’ ”

— Alexandra Mullen, writing on “The Real-Life Jane Eyres” on Saturday in the Wall Street Journal

It’s the song, stupid

“The one thing we’ve learned from American Idol this season is that the show isn’t about singing as much as it’s about songs. As in, choosing the one that’s edgy without being alienating, popular without being tired, inspirational without being cheesy.

“A mediocre contestant like Kristy Lee Cook scored with a syrupy ballad like ’God Bless the U.S.A.’ because it galvanized the patriotic vote. Early front-runner Carly Smithson was booted after singing a strong rendition of ’Jesus Christ Superstar,’ perhaps because the song offended some Christian voters.

” ’We talk about song choice because we’re trying to hammer into their heads that a good song tells the audience who you are,’ says judge Simon Cowell.”

— Jessica Shaw, writing on “American Idol: How the Top 5 Picked Their Songs” on Friday at the Entertainment Weekly site