LADY GAGA: THE END OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION?

Camille Paglia, Sunday Times UK - Although [Lady Gaga] presents herself as the clarion voice of all the freaks and misfits of life, there is little evidence that she ever was one. Her upbringing was comfortable and eventually affluent, and she attended the same upscale Manhattan private school as Paris and Nicky Hilton. There is a monumental disconnect between Gaga's melodramatic self-portrayal as a lonely, rebellious, marginalised artist and the powerful corporate apparatus that bankrolled her makeover and has steamrollered her songs into heavy rotation on radio stations everywhere.

Photos of Stefani Germanotta just a few years ago show a bubbly brunette with a glowing complexion. The Gaga of world fame, however, with her heavy wigs and giant sunglasses (rudely worn during interviews) looks either simperingly doll-like or ghoulish, without a trace of spontaneity. Every public appearance, even absurdly at airports where most celebrities want to pass incognito, has been lavishly scripted in advance with a flamboyant outfit and bizarre hairdo assembled by an invisible company of elves.

Furthermore, despite showing acres of pallid flesh in the fetish-bondage garb of urban prostitution, Gaga isn't sexy at all – she's like a gangly marionette or plasticised android. How could a figure so calculated and artificial, so clinical and strangely antiseptic, so stripped of genuine eroticism have become the icon of her generation? Can it be that Gaga represents the exhausted end of the sexual revolution? In Gaga's manic miming of persona after persona, over-conceptualised and claustrophobic, we may have reached the limit of an era. . .More

ANOTHER REASON TO BOYCOTT THE RECORDING INDUSTRY

WIRED

A federal appeals court is ordering a university student to pay the
Recording Industry Association of America $27,750 - $750 a track - for
file sharing 37 songs when she was a high school cheerleader.

The decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a Texas
federal judge who had ordered defendant Whitney Harper to pay $7,400, or
$200 per song. The lower court had granted her an "innocent infringer's"
exemption to the Copyright Act’s minimum of $750 per track because she
said she didn't know she was violating copyrights and thought file sharing
was akin to internet radio streaming.

The appeals court, however, said the woman was not eligible for such a
defense even if it was true she was between 14 and 16 years old when the
infringing activity occurred on Limewire. The reason, the court concluded,
is that the Copyright Act precludes such a defense if the legitimate CDs
of the music in question provide copyright notices.

Harper, now 22 and a Texas Tech senior, said in 2008 interview that she
didn't know what she did was wrong when she file shared Eminem, the
Police, Mariah Carey and others as a teen.

"I knew I was listening to music. I didn't have an understanding of file
sharing," she said.

Scott Mackenzie, the woman's attorney, said Friday that "She's going to
graduate with a federal judgment against her." The RIAA, which has sued
thousands of people for infringement, labeled Harper as "vexatious" when
she refused to settle the case.

Only two RIAA cases against individuals have gone to trial, both of which
earned the RIAA whopping verdicts.

--

Kate Miller-Heidke 'The Last Day On Earth' Official Video

I heard "Are You Fucking Kidding Me (Facebook Song)?" and wanted to hear more. Found this...