Things I Thought Were Cool Last Week – 6/29/2015

It was an interesting week, last week, so much so that Bob Goldshaw was not able to devote his usual time and effort into developing the quality content we have all come to expect. Instead, you folks will have to settle for my lame, alternate column.

1. Same-sex marriage was declared legal by the Supreme Court. The importance of this on pop culture is fairly significant as it means that we are, even more rapidly, moving to a more accepting and open-minded society. This means we are another step towards ensuring that performers who have been fearful of being true to themselves have the opportunity to stand up and declare who they really are. Nothing bad can come from open-mindedness, from an entertainment standpoint and happier people produce better content to be consumed which means that more people consume it which means that more money is made. At the end of the day, supporting one another can only end up helping ourselves.

2. The sitting President of the United States was on a comedian’s podcast. If you haven’t listened to Barack Obama on Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast, you are missing something. In fact, you should download it right now and listen for the first time. The significance of this is massive. While the president has been on podcasts, prior, the fact that Maron’s is the sort of conversational, non-political podcast that is becoming more-and-more prevalent lands this as a significant change in the zeitgeist. When the sitting POTUS addresses the nation by way of a form of media that had been considered fringe until very recently, it is clear that the landscape of entertainment has dramatically altered. Radio and television can, officially, be considered to be ‘old technology’ when the most engaging form of conversation the President has ignores broadcast media.

And that’s it! That’s all I thought was cool, last week! Well, there was the announcement that Miles Morales, a half-black, half-Latino teenager, will be the official Spider-Man of the Marvel Universe, but I did a whole thing on that and you can go read through that.

Thanks for reading! I always tell people that this site has the best-looking audience of any entertainment blog site and you have definitely proven that to be true.

 

– Jess