As the Black Lives Matter movement reaches a boiling point, artists face a difficult question: How should they respond?

Scribblings, musings and assorted published wisdom
As the Black Lives Matter movement reaches a boiling point, artists face a difficult question: How should they respond?


For years, the superstar rapper and his mentor formed one of hip-hop’s most inseparable teams. Then it all went terribly wrong.

One grand old house overlooking the Sunset Strip played host to a generation of comics — including Sam Kinison, Andrew Dice Clay, and Robin Williams — launching dozens of careers and about as many drug problems. The crash pad of a comedy revolution, remembered, kinda, by the people who survived it.

In 2011, at age 23, Ramy Essam, Egypt’s “singer for the revolution” was lionized for helping to overthrow a dictator. Four years later, a brutal military crackdown has all but destroyed the country’s youthful protest movement while its hero bides his time in a faraway country, trying to keep the fight — and himself — alive.

Shows like Dual Survival and Naked and Afraid have helped make real-life survival one of the TV’s hottest genres. But when participants get pushed to endure ever more dangerous situations, how far is too far?