Subscribe now

Trump will win a second term, CNN projects, in historic comeback after losing four years ago, CNN.com, 2024

Pete Buttigieg ‘04 Calls Local Government ‘Salvation’ for Dems Under Trump, The Harvard Crimson, 2024

‘Parks and Recreation’ ‘The Wire’ and the Politics of Pawnee, Huffpost, 2015

Barack Obama says you should embrace ‘relentless optimism’ to be successful, CNBC.com, 2017

Is 2008 the ‘Year of the Woman’?, NPR, 2008

An Interview with Michael Schur, The Believer, 2015

A Conversation with David Foster Wallace by Larry McCaffrey, Dalkey Archive Press, 2013

‘Parks and Recreation’ Gets Political: Amy Poehler and Mike Schur Talk Pawnee Debate Night, Huffpost, 2012

Pawnee, World History Encyclopedia, 2024

The Evolution of Aziz Ansari, Vulture, 2015

Retta Has a Story to Tell, Vulture, 2018

Nick Offerman: Amy Poehler is a ‘legend of comedy,’ Big Issue, 2019

Obsessed: Woodworking, Huffpost, 2013

Nick Offerman Talks Woodworking, the Value of Craftsmanship, and Americana, Sotheby’s, 2017

Already Great, Dissent, 2019

A-List: Amy Poehler, Advocate, 2009

Problems with NBC’s ‘Parks and Recreation,’ Deadline, 2009

CBS Wins 2008-2009 TV Ratings Race, While NBC Places Fourth, Vulture, 2009

Ben Silverman, the Consummate TV Executive, Observer, 2009

It’s Ten O’Clock. Do You Know Where Your Network President Is?, Esquire, 2009

Misguided, She Yearns to Guide, The New York Times, 2009

The Poehler Effect, New York, 2009

Top NBC Primetime Shows, May 11-17, 2009, TV by the Numbers via Internet Archive

Parks and Recreation, “Rock Show”: Mouse-Rat! Mouse-Rat!, What’s Alan Watching?, 2009

Parks and Recreation’s Aziz Ansari Is 30 Years Old and Writing a Book About Modern Love, Daily Beast, 2013

‘Parks and Rec’ Boss Mike Schur Pens Tribute to Harris Wittels: ‘He Was Basically a Human Teddy Bear,’ The Hollywood Reporter, 2015

Final 2009-10 Broadcast Primetime Show Average Viewership, TV by the Numbers via Internet Archive, 2010

Wealthier People Watch ‘Parks and Rec,’ ‘Modern Family,’ Huffpost, 2013

A Sitcom Grows Up and Finds Its Identity, The New York Times, 2011

Rashida Jones: “I’m the town slut,” Salon, 2012

Parks and Recreation—TV Review, The Hollywood Reporter, 2011

After a Year of Ruin, Some Hope, The New York Times, 2009

Official from Pawnee, Ind., Buttonholes Senators, The New York Times, 2012

Ron Swanson: The man and the mustache, IndyStar, 2015

Patton Oswalt’s ‘Parks and Recreation’ Rant Was Copied by Disney’s ‘Book of Boba Fett,’ Deadline, 2024

Spending, Ron Swanson-style, Politico, 2010

Joe Wilson: Right-wing folk hero, Politico, 2009

Polarization, Democracy, and Political Violence in the United States: What the Research Says, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2023

Political Polarization in the American Public, Pew Research Center, 2014

As Partisan Hostility Grows, Signs of Frustration with the Two-Party System, Pew Research Center, 2022

How to Be a Better Person: The Ethics of Now with Michael Schur, Duke.edu, 2022

I’m a Type-A Know-It-All. Leslie Knope Showed Me That’s a Good Thing., The New York Times, 2020

Obama angers midwest voters with guns and religion remark, The Guardian, 2008

Full 2012-2013 TV Season Series Rankings, Deadline, 2013

Parks and Recreation: “Swing Vote,” AV Club, 2013

Newt Gingrich Calls ‘Parks and Rec’ Cameo ‘Great Fun,’ ABC News, 2012

Big Four Nets Embrace Changes in Skedding Patterns This Fall, Variety, 2013

Rob Lowe and Rashida Jones Will Be Leaving “Parks and Recreation,” BuzzFeed, 2013

The Laws of Dunshire, Cephalofair, 2014

WGN America Nabs ‘Parks and Recreation’ Reruns, The Hollywood Reporter, 2013

‘Office’ swings into syndication, Variety, 2009

Inside the final season of ‘Parks and Recreation,’ Entertainment Weekly, 2015

NBC Announces Plans to Burn Off Final Parks and Recreation Season, Time, 2014

The Brilliant, Utterly Depressing ‘Parks and Rec’ Premiere—and the End of a Comedy Era, Daily Beast, 2015

Werner Herzog to Cameo in ‘Parks and Rec,’ Which He’s Never Seen Before, Vulture, 2014

‘Parks and Recreation’: Amy Poehler announces that she wants Bill Murray to play the mayor of Pawnee, Entertainment Weekly, 2011

‘Parks and Recreation’ got Bill Murray to play Mayor Gunderson!? How they did it, Entertainment Weekly, 2015

‘Parks and Rec’ Writer Harris Wittels’ Death at 30: Humblebrags and the Specter of Heroin, The Hollywood Reporter, 2015

Knope and Change, Time, 2015

Do Liberals Want ‘Parks and Rec’ or ‘House of Cards’?, US News, 2015

And Now You May Laugh, National Review, 2014

All the Presidents’ TV Shows: Series That Defined Each Era, Rolling Stone, 2021

How ‘Parks and Rec’’s Ron Swanson Became the Unlikely Libertarian Hero of the Obama Era, Daily Beast, 2015

A letter to America from Leslie Knope, regarding Donald Trump, Vox, 2016

If You Haven’t Heard of “Hopepunk,” Allow Me to Gently Introduce You, Repeller via Internet Archive, 2019

Hopepunk, the latest storytelling trend, is all about weaponized optimism, Vox, 2018

Parks and Relocation: Streaming’s Musical Chairs Problem, Vulture, 2020

Netflix Users Are Spending More Time Streaming ‘The Office’ Than Any Other Show—Report, IndieWire, 2019

Aziz Ansari Addresses Sexual Misconduct Allegation in Netflix Special: “I Just Felt Terrible,” The Hollywood Reporter, 2019

Aubrey Plaza and Nick Offerman Have a Parks and Rec Reunion Riding Dragons in Mountain Dew Super Bowl Commercial, People, 2024

People left stunned after only just realizing ‘Galentine’s Day’ was invented by a popular sitcom character, Daily Mail, 2024

@amypoehler8

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

Parks and Recreation creator Mike Schur breaks down the uplifting reunion special, Entertainment Weekly, 2020

TV Ratings: ‘Parks and Recreation’ Special Scores for NBC, The Hollywood Reporter, 2020

‘Parks and Recreation’: 5 questions about NBC’s coronavirus-themed special, answered, USA Today, 2020

The 100 best TV shows of the 21st century, The Guardian, 2019

The 100 greatest TV series of the 21st Century, BBC, 2021

Hollywood Reporter Critics Pick the 50 Best TV Shows of the 21st Century (So Far), The Hollywood Reporter, 2023

Watching Out for Democracy, Center for Media and Social Impact, 2022

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

It seems nearly everyone in America has seen Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, and thus has received this version of the Homer epic’s plaintive and clear message: It’s about the collapse of civilization brought on by the widespread abandonment of civility, tolerance for outsiders and the poor, and use of the written word.

It’s about the end of the Bronze Age, technically. But, you guys, I think he’s talking to us. We’re the ones abandoning civility, we’re the ones on the brink of collapse.

It’s no exaggeration to say that at least the more liberal-minded among us have been experiencing a level of political malaise of late. And by “of late,” I mean the last ten years or so, a decade that by some great coincidence has matched up with the time that we have been dealing with Donald Trump as a national political figure. All of us have felt, at one time or another in the last decade, a profound sense of discouragement and distrust when it comes to our American project.

It can feel as if things are falling apart more and more every day. Wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran. Mass shootings. A president literally taking a wrecking ball to the White House and slapping his name on everything in D.C. The ridiculous Reflecting Pool debacle (which would have been kind-of funny if it hadn’t resulted in actual people being falsely charged with vandalism; thank goodness sense finally prevailed, in the surprising form of Jeanine Pirro). The barrage of bad news often feels unbearable.

But what if there is hope in the fact that it has always been so? I have been interested in the ways that optimism wins out in difficult political times because of the subject of my most recent book, Parks and Rec, which argues just that. To give in to cynicism is to do nothing, and Leslie Knope believes, more than anything else, in doing something.

I also recently found hope in an unlikely place: the Billy Joel song “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”

I have loved and hated this song throughout my life. It is exactly the kind of song that seems deep to a 15-year-old, which is what I was when it came out in 1989. Whoa, it references a barrage of historical events, some of which I was familiar with from history class and some of which I wasn’t! “South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio … Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television … North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe …” I was a nerd, so the chance to look up “Walter Winchell” in an encyclopedia was a thrill for me. As an adult, however, I came to hate this song: It felt like lazy songwriting in which Joel got out that same encyclopedia and just found rhyming words and called those lyrics. On top of all of that, I read it as a screed of Boomer apologism. We aren’t responsible for any of the bad things! They’ve always been there! We’re off the hook! (To his credit, Joel doesn’t much like it either in retrospect.)

But I recently heard the song in a café, a few days after my partner Jesse and I saw The Odyssey, and began to turn around on it. When I started reflexively complaining about it, we joked that Odysseus would disagree. At the end of the film, he’s basically admitting—insisting—that he started the fire. As critic Amy Nicholson wrote in her LA Times review, Nolan casts his Odysseus in a similar mold to that of his last hero, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer: “Not only does he steal, slaughter and pillage while expecting to be treated with kindness, but he’s also brainstormed the atomic bomb of his day: the Trojan horse, a deceitful invention planted into the sandy beaches of Troy that marks the decline of civilization like the Statue of Liberty in ‘Planet of the Apes.’”

Jesse insisted, despite his general distaste for Joel, that maybe the guy had a point. Maybe Odysseus was taking too much responsibility. Hell, now that I think about it, maybe Nolan’s Odysseus is a bit narcissistic, whereas Oppenheimer really did start a pretty significant fire.

Jesse is always arguing that things are not as bad as people say they are. Overall, the world has made great progress over the course of modern times. Global life expectancy is increasing, and poverty is shrinking (though some of these trends are, admittedly, slowing). He gave a whole talk about this to our Zen community, citing the attitude of the Buddhist being Kanzeon: “What I want you to notice is, even though Kanzeon hears the cries of all the suffering beings of the world, she’s smiling. Or at least, she looks peaceful.”

As I began to think more about “We Didn’t Start the Fire” in this context, it seemed perhaps even a bit prophetic. It is mimicking what social media would eventually feel like: a barrage of stuff, both good and bad, trivial and important, endlessly entwining. “Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron … Dien Bien Phu falls, ‘Rock Around the Clock’ …" Joel’s relentless recitation shows that it has long been so, whether or not we experienced it quite like the firehose we endure now. There’s a great new Olivia Rodrigo album and a president experimenting with fascism, some of which he’s gotten away with and some of which he hasn’t. Both can be true, and one doesn’t have to blot out the other. This struck me when doing research for the novel I’m writing, which takes place in 1967 and 1968. They didn’t have social media feeds then, but the firehose was on: anti-Vietnam War protests, peak Summer of Love, the first successful heart transplant, a treaty banning nuclear weapons in space, the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” Loving vs. Virginia. Hell, go back to World War II: the war starts, Batman comics debut, Gone with the Wind is released, the New York World’s Fair happens … Churchill becomes prime minister, FDR is elected to third term, Disney’s Fantasia is released, the first commercial television broadcast airs, the first McDonald’s opens.

You get the idea.

I liked Nolan’s The Odyssey, and I appreciated his big swing at tying it to our current times. And even though it’s hardly historical fact, I agree that we should watch ourselves, as Odysseus warns, lest we lose the beautiful, imperfect civilization humans have built over the last millennia. It’s not a given that America will remain relatively free or safe or literate or artistic, and our current loss of civility and literacy are ominous signs.

Nolan’s Odyssey is so big that it naturally invited backlash. Some of that reaction started before the movie even came out, extremely boring nonsense about its color-blind casting. More recently and interestingly, Emily Wilson, the foremost modern Odyssey translator—and first woman to do so—eviscerated Nolan’s interpretation in a very fun to read, if at times unfair, screed about how, among her other complaints, the film didn’t have enough sex or scrumptious-looking food. (Metrics that should be included in all film reviews from now on, in my opinion.) My interpretation of her interpretation: She knows too much to tolerate Nolan’s broad take, the same way it has always been hard for me to fully enjoy the very enjoyable journalism-based films Never Been Kissed and 13 Going on 30.

Hey, look at us, engaging in very literate discourse about an ancient text in a time when we are supposedly losing our literacy. Talk about hope. “Our mistakes will again be forgotten,” Odysseus intones at the end of the film, leaving open the question of whether this is a good or bad thing.

Ukraine, too much rain, Donald Trump is insane … Rodrigo’s “Stupid Song” and Nolan’s Odyssey … Strait of Hormuz, arrests at the Reflecting Pool, Zendaya and Tom Holland are in everything …

Subscribe now

Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love (published 2018)

Hadley Freeman: rereading Sex and the City by Candace Bushnell, The Guardian, 2013

Weddings: Vows; Candace Bushnell, Charles Askegard, The New York Times, 2002

Goodbye, Mr. Big, New York, 2004

A Soap Opera Ends: Let the Comedies Begin, The New York Times, 1996

Jamie Tarses’ Fall, as Scheduled, The New York Times, 1997

View; Dear Diary: Get Real, The New York Times, 1998

Television: Darren Does Gotham, Vogue, 1995

When Women Invented Television: The Untold Story of the Female Powerhouses Who Pioneered the Way We Watch Today (published 2021)

Looking Back 60 Years on the ‘CBS TV News,’ CBS News, 2008

WTVR-TV, South’s First Television Station, Celebrates 70 Years, 6News, 2018

Women Reach Historic Highs in On-Screen, Behind the Scenes TV Roles, Variety, 2019

Anything But Average, Tablet, 2008

Remembering the Emmys’ First Best Actress Winner, Tablet, 2018

American broadcasting has always been closely intertwined with American politics, The Conversation, 2018

Ernest Kinoy, Television Academy Foundation, 1998

Bye Society, Vanity Fair, 1988

William Paley, Who Built CBS Into a Communications Empire, Dies at 89, The New York Times, 1990

The Power and the Profits, The Atlantic, 1976

Irna Phillips, 72, Serials Writer, The New York Times, 1973

Soapland-I: O Pioneers!, The New Yorker, 1948

Arthur Peterson; TV and Stage Character Actor, LA Times, 1996

Remembering Agnes Nixon: ‘Queen of Soaps,’ Northwestern, 2016

Agnes Nixon, Television Academy Foundation, 1997

Law and Order Revisited: Irna Phillips vs. Emmons Carlson, SoapHub, 2019

Betty White, Television Academy Foundation, 1997

15 Amazing Facts About Betty White, Mental Floss, 2024

Kathryn Anne Fiscus, FindaGrave.com, 2017

Monty M. McDonald; Early TV Show Host, LA Times, 1997

This Piano Prodigy Was the First African-American Woman to Host Her Own TV Show, Time, 2016

Hazel Scott on Piano Jazz, NPR, 1980

Music: Hot Classicist, Time, 1942

Barney Josephson, Owner of Cafe Society Jazz Club, Is Dead at 86, The New York Times, 1988

Atomic War or Peace, The Atlantic, 1947

Counterattack publishes ‘Red Channels,’ June 22, 1950, Politico, 2012

Blacklisting, AdAge, 2003

16 Black Hollywood Firsts, Essence, 2017

Testimony of Hazel Scott Powell: hearing before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-first Congress, second session, September 22, 1950, HathiTrust

10 Super-Weird Things You Didn’t Know About the Emmys, HuffPost, 2014

The Search for Madame Liu-Tsong, Vulture

Originals to Be Heard, Not Seen, The Pittsburgh Press, 1950

Reflections on Black Image in ‘Amos and Andy,’ Abernathy, 2017

Longtime thesp Eddie Albert dies, Variety, 2005

Famous Veteran: Eddie Albert, Military.com, 2023

How ‘I Love Lucy’ Dominated Ratings from Its Start, The Hollywood Reporter, 2011

Filming the I Love Lucy Show, American Cinematographer, 2020

60 Years Ago in News History: America Meets the Press, Newseum, 2007

MTP at 70: Martha Rountree Blazes a Trail, NBC News, 2017

Guest Post: When a Woman Called the Shots at the Screen Writers Guild, Women and Hollywood, 2017

Hazel Bishop, 92, an Innovator Who Made Lipstick Kissproof, The New York Times, 1998

CBS Sells Iconic Television City Property for $750 Million, The Hollywood Reporter, 2018

Billie Holliday: The wild lady of jazz who adored England, The Independent, 2019

William Bell, Television Academy Foundation, 1998

Douglas S. Cramer, Television Academy Foundation, 2008

Living Test Patterns: The Models Who Calibrated Color TV, The Atlantic, 2015

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed for espionage, History.com, 2009

Rosenbergs convicted of espionage, History.com, 2009

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: Their Case, Trial and Death, Biography, 2020

How Eisenhower Secretly Pushed Back Against McCarthyism, History.com, 2020

McCarthy-Army hearings begin, History.com, 2009

Joseph McCarthy condemned by Senate, History.com, 2010

‘The Jackie Robinson of Television’: The Nat King Cole Show, Indiana Public Media, 2019

Betty White and Lucille Ball Had Quite the Special Friendship: ‘They Considered Each Other Family,’ Closer Weekly, 2017

So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls and Why We’re Still So Obsessed with It (published 2024)

Bad Girl Next Door—Hollywood Cheers as Lohan Puts Worst Foot Forward, New York Post, 2004

Lindsay Lohan Was Bullied in High School for Movie Roles, Troubled Home Life, E News, 2012

10 Things You May Not Know About Tina Fey, Biography, 2021

Ice Queen, GQ, 2004

Tina Fey, AV Club, 2006

‘Awards Chatter’ Podcast—Tina Fey (‘Girls 5eva’ & ‘Mr. Mayor), The Hollywood Reporter, 2021

Tina Fey headlines fundraiser for summer stage where she got her start, WHYY, 2014

U.S. Teen Girls Experiencing Increased Sadness and Violence, CDC, 2023

Girls Just Want to Be Mean, The New York Times, 2002

Anchor Woman, The New Yorker, 2003

Mean Girls: An Interview with Tina Fey, BlackFilm.com, 2004

IGN Interviews Tina Fey, IGN, 2012

EW’s ‘Mean Girls’ reunion: The cast looks back on the 2004 hit, Entertainment Weekly, 2014

Tina Fey Opens Up About the Inspiration Behind Mean Girls: It ‘Was About This Period of My Life When I Felt Like I Was an Outsider,’ Parade, 2019

Revisiting ‘Mean Girls’ with Rosalind Wiseman, The Atlantic, 2014

Tina Fey speaks at Hamilton College, WSYR, 2019

Girl Most Likely, Virginia, 2013

What Tina Wants, Vanity Fair, 2009

The unsexy way Tina Fey seduced her husband, New York Post, 2018

Tina Fey Tells Oprah She Lost 30 Pounds While on ‘SNL,’ People, 2020

Tina Fey: The EW interview, Entertainment Weekly, 2012

Meet Four-Eyed New Sex Symbol, ‘Weekend Update’ Anchor Tina Fey, Observer, 2001

Tina Fey on the Lasting Legacy of ‘Mean Girls,’ Its Road to Broadway, and Time’s Up, Variety, 2018

Troubles at Paramount: Is It Just the Money?, The New York Times, 2003

Becoming … Lindsay Lohan, People, 2004

Sweet Home, Long Island, Vanity Fair, 2010

Check out Lindsay Lohan growing up as a teenager in New York, AOL, 2019

Lindsay Lohan, Biography, 2022

Freaky Friday, RogerEbert.com, 2003

Lindsay Lohan Relives Her Life in Looks, from The Parent Trap to Mean Girls, Vogue, 2022

10 Lessons We’ve Learned from Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s Almost 30-Year Friendship, AARP, 2022

Rachel McAdams, Biography, 2020

‘Mean Girls’ star Daniel Franzese Reveals Tina Fey drove nearly 500 miles to the film’s Toronto set because she ‘didn’t fly’ and other secrets from the teen movie, Business Inisder, 2021

Mean Girls: The inside story of the hit movie, told by the non-plastic cast, Cosmopolitan, 2019

Amanda Seyfried: Onscreen, Then and Now!, Self, 2010

Everyone in the Early 2000s Drove a Lexus SC 430, The News Wheel, 2022

Lindsay Lohan and Amanda Seyfried Have a Mean Girls Reunion, Interview, 2022

11 Facts Every Fan of The Princess Diaries Movies Needs to Know, D23, 2019

‘Clueless’ costume designer is still giving Alicia Silverstone advice, Page Six, 2020

Adrift …, Vanity Fair, 2010

The History of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s Best Friendship, Vulture, 2021

‘Mean Girls’ director reveals ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ dance was originally more naughty than nice, Entertainment Weekly, 2020

Bijou Phillips Accused of Body-Shaming, Homophobic Harassment by ‘Bully’ Co-Star, The Hollywood Reporter, 2017

The A-List Interview: Tina Fey, Advocate, 2015

‘Mean Girls’ Surprisingly Nice $24.4M weekend, Box Office Mojo, 2004

Mean Girls, RogerEbert.com, 2004

Mean Girls, Rolling Stone, 2004

The Queen of Teen, Vanity Fair, 2004

Little Girls Dressing Like Britney Spears, ABC News, 2001

Paris Hilton’s sex tape was revenge porn. The world gleefully watched., Vox, 2021

No More Little Miss Nice Girl, The New York Times, 2004

A First for Fake News, The New York Times, 2004

WB spreading ‘Gossip,’ Variety, 2004

Remember When Lindsay Lohan Was a Pop Star?, E! News, 2019

Lindsay Lohan Gets ‘Bossy’ on New Track, Billboard, 2008

Lindsay Lohan, Wilmer Valderrama Split, People, 2004

Trump on Lindsay Lohan in 2004: “Deeply Troubled Women … Always the Best in Bed,” The Hollywood Reporter, 2016

Paris Hilton vs. Lindsay Lohan: How They Went from Frenemies to Enemies in 11 Years, E! News, 2017

With ‘Luck,’ Lohan Tries to Justify a $7.5 million Payday, ABC News, 2006

Lindsay on the Bubble, New York Post, 2006

A hard day’s plight, RogerEbert.com, 2006

Lindsay Lohan: Portrait of the Party Girl as a Young Artist, The New York Times, 2006

Lindsay Lohan and Rehab: A Look at Their Long-Term Relationship, Daily Beast, 2013

Lindsay Lohan talks drugs, booze, rehab, sex, CNN.com, 2013

Lindsay Lohan Reveals Her Parents’ Divorce Made It ‘Easier’ to Play Twins in The Parent Trap, People, 2020

Lindsay Lohan’s estranged father reaches out, NBC News, 2007

Lindsay’s crash, CBS News, 2007

Lohan checks into rehab after DUI arrest, The Hollywood Reporter, 2007

Lindsay Lohan’s troubled timeline, CNN, 2012

Photo: Lindsay Lohan Shows Off Alcohol-Monitoring Bracelet, People, 2010

The Bling Ring: Where Are Alexis Neiers, Rachel Lee and the Rest of the Group Now?, Us Weekly, 2026 [found after publication]

Now THAT’S model behaviour! Lindsay Lohan returns to form in Vanity Fair Italy shoot … and says she never should have gone to jail, Daily Mail, 2011

SXSW follows Sundance in rejecting Lindsay Lohan’s The Canyons, The Guardian, 2013

Lindsay Lohan’s The Canyons a career-killing dive: review, Toronto Star, 2013

‘Canyons’ Director Paul Schrader ‘Mystified’ by Lindsay Lohan’s ‘Refusal to Support’ Film, The Hollywood Reporter, 2013

Tox Report

18. A definitive ranking of every Lindsay Lohan movie up to 2013 (apart from Liz & Dick)

Early on in the process of writing my book about women and fame in the noughties, I realised that I wasn’t going to fit my subject neatly into the confines of the decade. The same way historians talk about “the long nineteenth century”, I’ve settled on a “long noughties” — a period that begins, roughly, with “… Baby One More Time” (1998) and ends with …

Read more

4 years ago · 5 likes · 1 comment · Sarah Ditum

You Have to See What ‘Mean Girls’ Mathlete Caroline Kraft Looks Like IRL, Self, 2016

Mean Girls’ Caroline Krafft star looks unrecognisable 18 years after hit film, Mirror, 2022

Caroline Kraft from Mean Girls Is Gorgeous in Real Life, The List, 2023

When You Tell Me I’m Pretty I Shave My Head, Spider Web Show Performance, 2016

Can You Guess Which Mean Girls Actor Is on Tinder?, Refinery29, 2016

Would YOU swipe right? Coach Carr from Mean Girls is looking for ‘a good cuddler’ on Tinder—and he’s got a man-bun and a cat, Daily Mail, 2016

Wait, Mean Girls’ Coach Carr is on Tinder, Metro, 2016

Attention Single People: Coach Carr from Mean Girls Is on Tinder, E! News, 2016

Nicole Crimi, Aka Regina’s Little Sister in “Mean Girls,” Is Now an Amazing Artist and Using Her Talents to Save Elephants, BuzzFeed, 2018

“Mean Girls” TikTok Helps Student Win Club Election, Teen Vogue, 2022

BuzzFeed Wants to Build Up Its Business News, Vox, 2014

How BuzzFeed Gives Business News Millennial Appeal, Worth, 2013

Short Selling a Stock Is a Lot Like “Mean Girls,” BuzzFeed.News, 2013

How Mean Girls’ October 3rd Meme Became an Enduring Obsession, E! News, 2019

Why “Mean Girls” Is a Classic, The New Yorker, 2014

Hillary Clinton subtweeted Trump with a ‘Mean Girls’ reference and we are screaming, Mashable, 2019

Donald Trump Is a Mean Girl (He Literally Has a Page in the Burn Book), Allure, 2016

EXCLUSIVE: Actor Daniel Franzese Writes a Touching Coming Out Letter to His Iconic ‘Mean Girls’ Character Damian, IndieWire, 2014

Gay Best Friend: Damian in “Mean Girls” (2004), The Film Experience, 2021

‘Mean Girls’ star Daniel Franzese details forcing himself into conversion therapy, Page Six, 2022

How the 2010s Killed the Celebrity Gossip Machine, BuzzFeed.News, 2019

Fetch Is Actually Happening: How We Traded the ‘90s for 2000s Nostalgia, Billboard, 2019

@oldgaysDo our jingle bells rock or what?! 🎅 #meangirls #dance #transformation

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

@nicolecrimiiI look the same… right? #octoberthird #meangirls #meangirlsday

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

Meta’s New AI Chatbot Loves Anti-Racism and Mean Girls, Gizmodo, 2022

Mean Girls Sings, Dances, Insults, and Backstabs Its Way to Broadway, Vogue, 2018

How college students inspired Tina Fey to write a ‘Mean Girls’ musical, GMA, 2018

Tina Fey on the Lasting Legacy of ‘Mean Girls,’ Its Road to Broadway and Time’s Up, Variety, 2018

How Broadway Has Changed for Women—and the Work That Still Needs to Be Done, Backstage, 2020

Mean Girls musical first look: Tina Fey introduces the Plastics, Entertainment Weekly, 2017

How Ashley Park Made ‘Fetch’ Happen—and Got Cast in ‘Mean Girls,’ Backstage, 2020

Tina Fey, Jeff Richmond on Casting Broadway’s ‘Mean Girls’ and Ariana Grande’s Video, The Hollywood Reporter, 2019

7 Things You Need to Know About the Mean Girls Musical’s Cady Heron, Playbill, 2017

Q&A: ‘Mean Girls: The Musical’ fetches world premiere at National Theatre, WTOP News, 2017

The scene-stealer: Ashley Park, Interview, 2018

Broadway Review: ‘Mean Girls’ the Musical, Variety, 2018

‘Mean Girl’ Tina Fey paid me nothing for hit franchise: author, New York Post, 2023

Dylan’s Candy Bar is celebrating ‘Mean Girls’ with themed candy, Entertainment Weekly, 2015

Pillsbury Toaster Strudel Introduces Limited-Edition Mean Girls Toaster Strudel with Movie-Inspired Pink Icing, BusinessWire, 2020

So fetch: Mean Girls-themed beer to be released at Virginia Beach brewery Saturday, News3, 2020

Taylor Swift: ‘I want to believe in pretty lies,’ The Guardian, 2012

Katy Perry comments on her infamous ‘Mean Girls’ Tweet, Billboard, 2015

Lacey Chabert talks ‘Mean Girls’ and the catchphrase that won’t die, Entertainment Weekly, 2014

The Era of Amanda Seyfried, Marie Claire, 2022

Lacey Chabert Signs Multi-Picture Deal with Crown Media Family Networks, Deadline, 2022

Jonathan Bennett wanted to create a gay Uncle Buck for The Holiday Sitter, Entertainment Weekly, 2022

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 Launches to International Space Station, NASA, 2022

Why? Because We Still Like You?: A History of The Mickey Mouse Club (published 2010)

John Hughes’ view from the top, Entertainment Weekly, 1994

Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: And All the Brilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic (published 2013)

The queen of comedy, Independent, 2005

President Truman makes first transcontinental television broadcast, History.com, 2009

Mary Tyler Moore, Television Academy Foundation, 1997

Carl Reiner, Television Academy Foundation, 1998

David Merrick, 88, Showman Who Ruled Broadway, Dies, The New York Times, 2000

Rhoda and Mary—Love and Laughs, Time, 1974

N.D. TV Tower No Longer World’s Tallest, NPR, 2010

Television: Dann v. Klein: The Best Game in Town, Time, 1970

Time Essay: Goodbye to ‘OUR MARY’, Time, 1977

Noted Director Reza Badiyi Dies at 81, Television Academy Foundation, 2011

Love Is All Around, Oprah.com, 2008

John Rich, Television Academy Foundation, 1999

Marilyn Monroe Slept Here, CNN.com, 2011

A Brief History of Women’s Protests, Time, 2011

Nation: Nixon: The Pursuit of Peace and Politics, Time, 1970

Television: The New Season: Perspiring with Relevance, Time, 1970

Fred Silverman, Television Academy Foundation, 2001

CBS Reported Ready to Drop Sullivan Show After 23 Years, The New York Times, 1971

James L. Brooks: What I’ve Learned, Esquire, 2010

Show Business: Victorious Loser, Time, 1973

April 7, 1967 Time Cover

Bea Arthur, Star of Two TV Comedies, Dies at 86, The New York Times, 2009

TV’s Women Are Dingbats, The New York Times, 1973

Report on the Broadcast of Violent, Indecent, and Obscene Material, Federal Communications Commission, 1975

Inside TV’s ‘Family Hour’ Feud, The New York Times, 1975

David Lloyd, 75, Dies; Wrote ‘Chuckles’ Episode, The New York Times, 2009

In memory of David Lloyd, by Ken Levine, 2009

Screen: Burt Reynolds as Unmarried Husband: Post-Divorce Blues, The New York Times, 1979

TV: Comedy of Divorce, The New York Times, 1983

Comedy Buoys ‘Terms of Endearment,’ The New York Times, 1983

‘Mary Tyler Moore Show’ Newscaster: Actor Ted Knight Dies of Cancer, Los Angeles Times, 1986

Mary Tyler Moore: ‘I’m Not an Innately Funny Person,’ The New York Times, 1985

Mary Tyler Moore: A Career Retrospective, ABC News, 2009

Recreating History, Oprah.com, 2008

Is Feminism Dead?, Time, 1998

She Turned the World on With Her Smile. But Where Will the Hat Land?, The New York Times, 2025 [I found this one post-book.]

Television: Doing Less with Moore, Time, 2000

Mary and Rhoda, Variety, 2000

‘30 Rock’ Lives, and Tina Fey Laughs, The New York Times, 2007

Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything (published 2016)

Jerry Seinfeld: Making Something Out of Nothing, New York, 1998

Angry Middle-Aged Man, The New Yorker, 2004

Korean Deli Where ‘Seinfeld’ Was Conceived Has Closed, Observer, 2014

Jerry Seinfeld, AMA Transcripts, 2014

Judd Apatow’s Family Values, The New York Times, 2007

‘Fridays’: The ‘SNL’ Ripoff That Nearly Surpassed the Original, Vulture, 2012

George Shapiro, Television Academy Foundation, 2007

Comedy Review: Laughing on Empty, Los Angeles Times, 1989

With the Help of ‘Seinfeld,’ Legend in His Own Time; The Real Kramer Tries to Capitalize, The New York Times, 1996

The Lost Roles of Seinfeld, Vulture, 2011

Jason Alexander, Television Academy Foundation, 2013

Seinfeld’s Michael Richards Says Racist Laugh Factory Rant Made Him Face His Insecurities: ‘The Damage Was Inside of Me,’ People, 2024 [I found this after the book]

The Biz: The Research Memo That Almost Killed Seinfeld, TV Guide, 2014

Jerry Seinfeld Things “Friends” Was Inspired by “Seinfeld,” Says It’s the “Same Thing with Good-Looking People,” AOL, 2026 [I found this after the book]

A Visit With: Julia Louis-Dreyfus; She Who Gives ‘Seinfeld’ Estrogen, The New York Times, 1993

Saturday Night’s Children: Julia Louis-Dreyfus (1982-1985), Vulture, 2012

Julia Louis-Dreyfus: From ‘Seinfeld’ to ‘Veep,’ NPR, 2012

Julia Louis-Dreyfus Talks ‘Tangles,’ ‘Seinfeld,’ ‘SNL,’ and Toll Alzheimer’s Disease Is Taking on Her Family, The Hollywood Reporter, 2026 [I found this after the book]

Julia Louis-Dreyfus: bucking the Seinfeld ‘curse,’ The Guardian, 2012

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Queen of Frazzled Single Women, on Taking Her Act to the Big Screen, The Hollywood Reporter, 2013

How Does Seinfeld Define Comedy? Reluctantly, The New York Times, 1991

Seinfeld’s Finale Episode Aired on This Day in 1998: See Behind-the-Scenes Photos, NBC, 2026 [I found this after the book]

The End of ‘Seinfeld,’ Rolling Stone, 2012

The Gibson Girl Analyzed by Her Originator; Artist Whose Delineation of the Young American Woman Made Him Famous Tells How the Type Came Into Existence and What Her Mission Is, The New York Times, 1910

Otherwise Engaged, The New York Times, 2000

Recognition Humor: Seinfeld Shows Why Television Is Today’s Best Medium for Comedy, The Atlantic, 1992

Jerry & George & Kramer & Elaine, Rolling Stone, 1993

‘Seinfeld’ Star John O’Hurley Shares 5 Surprises That Came with Being Elaine’s Boss, ABC News, 2014

Company Killer or Retail Guru? An Executive’s Often Painful Path Through 4 Businesses, The New York Times, 1999

Giuliani Zeroing in on Crime Issue; New Commercials Are Focusing on Fears of New Yorkers, The New York Times, 1993

On the Set With/The ‘Seinfeld Steinbrenner; The Head Yankee, Deconstructed, The New York Times, 1996

On Saving the Soul of New York City and Yourself, Off the Grid Village Preservation Blog, 2014

Who Needs America Online?, The New York Times, 1995

Keyword: Context, Wired, 1996

Another Boss, Another Revolution, Fortune, 2004

My Trip to San Diego with Larry David, 920spot, 2013

Kubrick, Vanity Fair, 1999

Hillary packs ‘em in at BevHills appearances, Variety, 1994

Andy Ackerman, Television Academy Foundation, 2007

Jerry Stiller, Television Academy Foundation, 2005

‘Seinfeld’ TV Father Dead at 82, CBS News, 2005

Emmys: Jerry Seinfeld on Why He May Never Go Back to TV, The Hollywood Reporter, 2013

Yada Yada Yuppies, The New York Times, 1997

‘Seinfeld’ finale touches some, bothers others, CNN.com, 1998

Masturbation on TV: Yet Another Lasting ‘Seinfeld’ Innovation, The Atlantic, 2012

Behind the Lost Episode of ‘Seinfeld,’ Screen Crush, 2014

Seinfeld Battles Actor Danny Hoch … Party of Jive … Ally McShut-Up-Already! … A Decadent S.A.G. Show, Observer, 1998

‘Blackout’ awakens at Miramax; Hammer hit, Variety, 1996

Seinfeld, Variety, 1997

How Jerry Seinfeld Has Spent Decades Nursing One Massive Single Regret Over How He Walked Away from ‘Seinfeld,’ OK!, 2026 [I found this after the book]

Seinfeld Says It’s All Over, and It’s No Joke for NBC, The New York Times, 1997

The Thursday-Night Massacre, The New York Times, 1998

Immortalized by ‘Seinfeld,’ the Soup Nazi returns to NYC, Mass Live, 2010

The Media Business; Commercial-time rates for last ‘Seinfeld’ should break records, The New York Times, 1998

NBC Apologizes for ‘Seinfeld’ Episode on the Puerto Rican Day Parade, The New York Times, 1998

The Final Seinfeld: I Told You So!, Observer, 1998

Television Review; ‘Seinfeld’ Goes Out in Self-Referential Style, The New York Times, 1998

His Latest Engagement—Seinfeld to Marry the Beauty Who Dumped Her Newlywed Hubby, New York Post, 1999

Fox Will Sign Up 12 New Stations; Takes 8 from CBS, The New York Times, 1994

Seinfeld: “The Statue”/”The Heart Attack”/”The Revenge,” AV Club, 2010

Seinfeld: “The Handicap Spot”/”The Junior Mint”/”The Smelly Car,” AV Club, 2011

Sony Pictures Television’s Seinfeld Earns and Unprecedented Fifth Cycle in Syndication,” PR Newswire, 2013

Seinfeld is laughing all the way to the bank: TV show generates $3.1bn in repeat fees since final episode, Independent, 2013

J. Peterman is back/This time the catalog king is writing the ‘adventures’ of his new furniture line, SFGate, 2004

“Seinfeld” Writer Takes on Conservative Outrage Over Holiday Festivus Pole Protests, Mother Jones, 2013

Breaking Down the Multi-Billion-Dollar Seinfeld Economy, Vulture, 2014

9 Wildly Successful Brands Born from TV Fame, Entrepreneur, 2013

Richards says anger, not racism, sparked tirade, Today.com, 2006

Jerry Seinfeld’s The Marriage Ref labelled ‘painful and pointless’ by critics, The Guardian, 2010

A Show About Something: Marriage, The New York Times, 2010

Still Riffing Over Coffee Cups, Seinfeld Renews a Web Series, The New York Times, 2013

I’ve been starting all of my events for my book Parks and Rec by playing a lengthy clip of my favorite sequence on the show: Leslie’s disastrous rally during her run for city council, the first major effort of her scrappy campaign team made up of her friends/colleagues. Every one of them has bungled some portion of it: They’ve accidentally ended up at an ice rink instead of a basketball court; the red carpet is too short for the distance from the entrance to the “stage”; they have only a fraction of the banner they ordered; and their guest of honor, local hero Pistol Pete, is in emotional crisis.

As they realize their mistakes in the locker room just before Leslie is scheduled to go on, they remain sure of one thing: They will all go out there together, as a team, including April and Andy’s three-legged dog, Champion.

The scene that follows as the entire group tries to scooch on the ice together from the end of the red carpet to the stage is such a masterwork of physical comedy—with the added bonus of Gloria Estefan’s “Get on Your Feet,” of all things, playing repeatedly—that it’s easy to miss what has happened here. They decided to go out there together … when it actually would have been a lot easier for Leslie to do it alone. She had a better chance of baby-stepping it out there without everyone. Even if she fell once, she wouldn’t be pulling a whole group and a dog down with her.

But, dammit, they insist on staying together, because that is what Parks and Rec is truly about.

Parks centers Leslie and her staff in the town of Pawnee, Indiana, from the show’s premiere, which originally aired in 2009. But throughout its run, which ended in 2015, it became a show about the power of group effort, and the importance of local government to make incremental, and eventually significant, change in constituents’ lives.

When I first watched Parks and Rec, during its initial run on NBC, I didn’t think much about its political implications beyond enjoying its references to gay marriage debates, gubernatorial sex scandals, and soda-size legislation.

But the reality is that Parks and Rec came out before we needed it. In its time, it felt like the water we fish were in. By the time it hit streaming in 2017, Donald Trump was president, and we needed its vision of optimism in government. By the time the pandemic hit, even more. And our need for it only seems to increase every day.

Now its purpose seems clear in its very contrast to our current times: Parks and Rec is about the power of democracy. It’s about the value of competent government officials helping everyone, not just those they deem deserving. It’s about making your community incrementally better, and about working with others to do so, even if their beliefs differ significantly from your own.

That’s why I’m hosting a study and action group, inspired by Parks and Rec, from now until the midterms. We’ll start with a larger event that I’m co-hosting with my friend and colleague , who has taught himself to be a bold and effective political organizer and wrote a book about it, How to Assemble an Activist. We’ll be looking at examples from the show and talking about how to apply them to our own work as we approach crucial midterm elections this fall. That will be at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on June 25 online via our Substack collective, .

After that, once a month, we’ll gather online to discuss an assigned episode of Parks and a reading selection from my book. Then we’ll take some civic actions and write or post about our desperately important midterm elections.

Who’s with me? If you’re interested, hit me back here and I’ll put you on the list. No cost at all, except political donations if you’re amenable and able. Let’s get on our feet and make some change.

Also from Ministry of Pop Culture …

A Songs of the Summer Playlist, as Chosen by Our Favorite Substackers: We’ve got picks from celeb DJ , NPR critic Eric Deggans, author , and more!

‘Dekonstructing the Kardashians’: I interview my friend, author MJ Corey, about her splashy new book analyzing the rise of the Kardashians using media theory.

Life According to Parks and Rec: I’m leading an online Parks and Rec study (and fun!) group over the summer and heading into the midterms. Once a month, we’ll meet online to discuss the philosophy and principles of living behind Parks and Rec, from July to November. We’ll read my book, watch an assigned episode, and have some suggested civic actions and optional writing assignments. If you’re interested, just hit me back here to let me know.

LA event: On June 2 at 7 p.m., I’ll be talking Parks and Rec at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, just a few blocks from “Pawnee City Hall,” with Alison Becker, who played reporter Shauna Malwae-Tweep.

If you enjoyed my book Parks and Rec … Could you consider leaving a review on the Amazon page? I don’t love sending folks to Amazon, but I’m battling algorithms here. You don’t have to buy it there, just say something nice! Thanks.

I just published my ninth book, Parks and Rec. It’s been 15 years since I published my first, a history of The Mickey Mouse Club called Why? Because We Still Like You, and 10 since my bestseller Seinfeldia. The publishing industry has changed enormously in that time, but the most change has happened since the pandemic as cutbacks everywhere have left even traditionally published authors mostly on their own when it comes to publicity and marketing, and it has gotten harder than ever to book events and get folks to them. Media barely exists, and the few legacy outlets left are overwhelmed with not only pitches but also a constant barrage of dire news that leaves little room for book coverage. Book sections are history beyond, say, The New York Times. We need to radically rethink how we sell books, but no one is sure what to do.

And so, inspired by my friend and colleague , who named her own novel, The Other Lata, “the best book of 2025,” I am doing a ranked list of books, all of them my own. Which means I’m #1 (and 2, 3, 4, and 9 …)

#9: Why? Because We Still Like You (2010)

My 2010 debut was a perfect storm of weird circumstances: Grand Central, a major publisher, had been looking for someone to write a book about the 1950s Mickey Mouse Club, and they found me, a writer at Entertainment Weekly who was writing a fair amount about current Disney stars at the time like Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus. I agreed to the project to get a book deal. Along the way, I interviewed a bunch of people who were among pop culture’s first child stars ever, which was fun, and tried to figure out how to write a narrative nonfiction book about a TV show, which was hard. I got conflicting advice and ended up with extremely long quotes, almost like an oral history but with paragraphs in between. Meanwhile, I didn’t see my cover or subtitle until they were already on Amazon, which is not how things should work. The subtitle called it an oral history, which it was not. Then the publisher, the man who’d come up with the idea for the book in the first place, died before it was published. The book got very little publisher support from then on, and it tanked. I think there are some fun stories in there, and it was a good practice run for me in terms of writing, but it is noticeably not my best work.

#8: Sexy Feminism (2013)

Look, I got to write a book with my best friend, Heather Wood Rudúlph, based on our blog, Sexy Feminist. That was cool. It is, alas, a frozen-in-time record of all of our baby feminist, late 2000s/early 2010s ideas, and these are not ideas I would personally advocate for today. The world has changed a lot, and I’m just not convinced that the feminist credentials of Brazilian waxes are worth spilling ink on today. That said, I also believe that people need to be allowed to evolve on issues of importance, so I stand by 2013 us and our right to work it all out, even in book form.

#7: Pop Star Goddesses (2020)

I still love the concept of this book, an illustrated guide to female pop stars and what they represent. (Adele is the Goddess of Wisdom Through Heartbreak, Kacey Musgraves is the Goddess of the Unconventional, Lady Gaga is the Goddess of Social Justice.) Somehow, though, I hadn’t counted on just how fast the pop star landscape changes, so this felt out of date even faster than I expected. Britney Spears underwent dramatic changes in the years after the book’s 2020 release, Billie Eilish (among others) ascended to goddesshood around this time, and Nicki Minaj is one I wouldn’t include now. This also came out in April of 2020, which was … a challenge.

#6: So Fetch (2024)

This is a good book about the movie Mean Girls. I particularly loved interviewing the director, Mark Waters, and the Canadian actors who played those small but crucial parts, like Chris Anton (as “Huge Guy”), Stefanie Drummond (Bethany Byrd), and Clare Preuss (Caroline Krafft). The second half of the book nails what I’m best at, which is analysis of the movie’s long-term cultural effects. But it was a real bummer that Tina Fey, whom I used to interview a lot when I was at Entertainment Weekly, wouldn’t talk to me for this, and thus neither would any of the other main cast.

#5: Seinfeldia (2016)

The next few on the list are all kind-of a toss-up when it comes to ranking, but Seinfeldia doesn’t need my help at this point, so it’s probably lower than it should be. It was an instant and lasting New York Times bestseller, and it continues to sell. It also deserves credit for the boom in TV books in the last ten years; because it sold well, it was used as a comp to sell many, many of the TV books to come. I’m grateful for what it has done for me and this industry.

#4: Sex and the City and Us (2018)

As the follow-up to Seinfeldia, this book improves on the formula and tackles a show that was formative in my own life, which infuses the storytelling. I got to talk to most of the key players and delve into the show’s massive economic, social, and cultural effects. The book came well before the horrific And Just Like That reboot, which allows you to get nostalgic about how good the original was, but boy, does that reboot taint it all just a little.

#3: Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted (2013)

I figured out how to write a book like this while writing Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, so it’s not as consistently confident as the others. But it was my first real passion project, which I pitched after Why? Because We Still Like You. It has a vital story behind it: The Mary Tyler Moore Show was not only a feminist milestone, but also the first show to have numerous female writers, specifically because creators James L. Brooks and Allan Burns wanted the realism that hiring women to write women would provide. It’s a show that I think remains relevant, and I believe more people should still be watching. (It holds up remarkably well, with very few whoa-we-wouldn’t-say-that-now moments, which is very impressive for a ‘70s sitcom.) While my mastery is not entirely present yet, it’s among the most important stories I’ve told.

#2: Parks and Rec (2026)

My numbers 1 and 2 here are close, and I was tempted to put this first since it’s my most recent. This book is definitely the apex of my “books about specific TV shows” work, the culmination since Seinfeldia. I got to talk to all of the major players, and found that showrunner Mike Schur and stars Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman made something so special because they are the most exceptional people I have ever encountered in 20-plus years of covering Hollywood. I got to include my own experiences early in my career as a local newspaper reporter. This was a spiritual experience that made me a better person, and I got to do everything I wanted in this book at a time when we desperately need its messages about community, friendship, and civic participation. You should buy it, read it, pass it on, and tell all of your friends to do the same. I am unequivocally proud of it.

#1: When Women Invented Television (2021)

The only thing that could beat my Parks and Rec experience was telling the stories of four female pioneers of early television: Gertrude Berg, who created, produced, and starred in TV’s first family sticom, The Goldbergs; Irna Phillips, who created the entire soap opera genre, including The Guiding Light, the longest-running soap in broadcast history; Hazel Scott, a jazz pianist, civil rights activist, and the first Black person to host a national, primetime show; and Betty White, who we all know for her later comedy work but was also crucial to the development of the daytime talk show. I loved doing archival research on these underappreciated women and I consider it a cause to talk about them whenever I can. It suffered a bit from proximity to the pandemic in terms of promotion, so I will say here that you should also buy this one, read it, pass it on, and tell all of your friends to do the same.

Other Stuff I’ve Written Lately

I finally nailed book events … on Book 9. Here’s how.: For my friend Andrea Bartz’s excellent Substack about being an author, a postmortem on my excellent Parks and Rec book tour and some lessons learned over my 15 years as an author. Bonus: a photo of me with Nick Offerman’s parents!

‘Heated Rivalry’ and the Rise of the Parody Musical: My on-the-scene reporting from Heated Rivalry: The Musical Parody.

Why ‘Parks and Rec’ Makes Us Feel So Good: My conversation with fellow author and superfan .

What Should Have Happened in ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’: Some thoughts on dying legacy media and the dystopian sequel that brings it to life.

Bruce Springsteen is currently traveling the country on his Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour, launching it in Minneapolis and ending in Washington, D.C., for a reason. “This tour is going to be political and very topical about what’s going on in the country,” he told the Minnesota Star Tribune. “Minneapolis and St. Paul, that was the place that I wanted to begin it, and I wanted to end it in Washington.”

He announced the tour not long after releasing the first major-artist protest song of the Trump 2 era, “Streets of Minneapolis,” referring to “King Trump” and his “federal thugs” in a straightforward screed.

Reviewing the tour’s opening night, Chris Willman wrote in Variety:

It’s a flex, and surely seems like an unnecessary one to Springsteen’s many detractors on the MAGA side, who are chagrined—after all that “go woke, go broke” talk—to learn that 20,000 people a night welcome the chance to hear their favorite artist be as disturbed about the downfall of civility and empathy as they are. They will say that everyone attending these shows is suffering from “TDS.” But looking around the Target Center, where I saw a lot of Minnesotans relieved to be in the company of others who have felt as sad or chagrined as they have, I thought: Somehow, Trump Derangement Syndrome feels good in a place like this.

This is where our political malaise has landed: At least we can feel bad together.

I have another suggestion: We can hearken back to a better time together, and gather hope for the future there. And we can do that by watching, or rewatching, Parks and Recreation, which originally aired from 2009-15 but feels more relevant than ever. That is exactly why I wrote a book about it that was recently published.

Parks and Recreation was a product of the 2008 election and the hopeful messaging of the era, highlighting not just the promise of women in politics but also the Obama-inspired idea of good, forward change. Now people turn to it during a very divided political time for a glimpse of when that seemed possible. It’s also a reflection of its setting: specifically, the Midwest. I’m from the Midwest, where we pride ourselves on niceness, authenticity, decency, and community. It’s rare, in television, for its focus on the local, but for many Americans, and certainly small-town Midwesterners, the local is the point, the level at which their lives take on meaning.

All of these ideas became infinitely more appealing—and, indeed, radical—with, first, the election of Donald Trump as president and, second, the inconceivable nightmare that was the covid pandemic of 2020. This is borne out in the show’s viewership: While it barely stayed on the air each of its seven seasons as it lagged in ratings behind contemporaries like The Office and 30 Rock, it became one of the most streamed series after Trump’s election, during the pandemic, and beyond, as viewers searched for comfort and hope.

It continues to be more relevant than ever, giving us a vision for a civic life that works, if imperfectly, at a time when it feels like most institutions are crumbling around us. In its world, people can disagree, but ultimately reach consensus to work together to make community life better. That work is often frustrating, but worthwhile. And community is the secret to change, growth, and life satisfaction.

Parks and Recreation, in fact, turns out to be the quintessential example of two terms I learned while researching the book: Obamacore and hopepunk.

The Obamacore part is obvious; Parks and Recreation and the musical Hamilton are two of the most distinctive pieces of culture to embody the Obama era. Obamacore has been deemed “cringe” by some, and I can appreciate the argument that these works’ overconfidence in the fact that the liberal experiment had, essentially, won contributed to some of our current horrific political moment.

I prefer the term hopepunk when it comes to Parks, and I think it applies, at least now. It was a term coined on Tumblr by fantasy author Alexandra Rowland in 2017, notably after Parks and Rec’s broadcast run conclu­­­ded. I’m applying it more broadly than it was originally intended, which was specifically for a subgenre of speculative fiction that’s the opposite of grimdark. But in hopepunk, kindness and hope are regarded as true acts of rebellion against the cynicism of the world—the real punk response to the evil and darkness. Hopepunk celebrates community and collectives rather than rugged individualism, and it believes that things can get better in the future.

Perhaps Parks’ lack of cultural saturation during its original run saved it from the cringe factor. Even as a Hamilton superfan, I agree that it plays with an undercurrent of embarrassment now, in the fact that so many of us were so proud of ourselves for becoming the tolerant and multicultural melting pot we were always meant to be. Hands washed, situation handled, racism, sexism and every -ism solved.

Parks, on the other hand, was a bit countercultural even in its time, peddling hope when its brethren were trafficking in irony. Other shows since, like Ted Lasso and Schitt’s Creek, have only recently caught up to its ultimately sunny outlook and focus on human connection. They all remind us that the only way out is to hold hands and have hope, a message very much at odds with the 2000s, but very much in tune with what we’re facing now.

We should heed its messages.

When I’m not writing books or , I’m working for the Peabody Awards, a prestigious and unique program honoring a mix of media—documentaries, children’s programming, entertainment, news, and podcasts. I write the newsletter and work on the podcast, but as part of that, I get to sit in on the annual deliberations, which are breathtakingly inspiring (not to mention just a media nerd’s dream). The 18 jurors—critics, media scholars, and people in the business—actually sit in a conference room together over several days to pick through the finalists (culled by screening committees), emerging with 60 nominees and 30 winners, all of which are chosen unanimously through discussion and negotiation. While other awards bodies vote from their own homes, the Peabody jurors literally hand-pick their winners, fighting with each other for their favorites.

It’s not just that they find ways to argue with each other, sometimes passionately, but then to come to consensus in the end. It’s also the way that this very process results in a touching bond among them all, so that by the final day when the list is chosen and everyone gets to say their thank yous and goodbyes, tears are flowing freely.

One of the jurors mentioned that a “no assholes policy” is clearly in play when our executive director, Jeffrey Jones, chooses jurors. I had been thinking the same thing, because this comes up in my book Parks and Rec, as perhaps the main secret to the show’s success. Co-creator Mike Schur had the same mindset when hiring actors, writers, and crew, and their love for working with each other shines onscreen. It feels like a good thing to be a part of, even when you’re watching at home.

At the same time, I was watching the new season of Jury Duty (that is, Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat) to prepare for an upcoming episode of the Peabody podcast, and once again, there it was: the power of being good, of connecting with others, of community. I was lucky enough to watch to the end with advance screeners, and I cannot recommend this season highly enough. It is the perfect combination of cringe comedy and heart-soaring heroism. Just beautiful. In my opinion, this season outdoes the previous one in terms of setting its “hero” up for a stellar moment. I cried.

Parks and Rec is out today, and nothing will give you an appreciation for the power of community like putting a book out into the world. Writing a book is a solitary endeavor, but it doesn’t mean much if no one reads it. As it heads toward publication, it amasses a team—agent, editors, designers, publicists, marketing folks—and as it goes out into the world it seeks the support of family, friends, and readers. I appreciate everyone who reads this newsletter as part of my community of support as I share this beautiful story of a good group of people working together to do good.

Here are a few things you can do to help me get the word out:

1. Buy the book, online or from your local bookstore.

2. Can’t afford a purchase? Get it from your library, and if it’s not there, request it. This helps authors, too!

3. Forward this to a friend who might enjoy the book.

4. Join me for one of my upcoming events, which are in New York City, Chicago, Upstate New York, and California, but a few of them have online options as well. Tonight, I’ll be at the 92nd Street Y with The New Yorker critic and Pulitzer Prize winner Emily Nussbaum. You can still get tickets here (there is also an online option).

5. Go around singing “5,000 Candles in the Wind,” and when anyone asks you why you’re doing that, tell them about the book.

Meanwhile, here are some other Parks and Rec-related things I’ve done recently:

• How ‘Parks and Rec’ Became the Perfect Comfort Rewatch, for the Peabody Awards newsletter.

• The Best TV Casts of the 21st Century, for Ministry of Pop Culture. Parks and Rec actually inspired this project when we noticed how successful the cast had been after the show, and wondered how they’d stack up against the likes of The Wire and Mad Men. Answer: pretty good.

• Why We’re Still Watching ‘Parks and Rec’ in 2026, an interview with Erin Carlson for You’ve Got Mail.

• Leslie Knope and a Forgotten Hope, an interview with WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Would love to see you all there!

Buy Tickets!

I can’t wait to see as many folks as possible on my upcoming book tour to discuss the very uplifting subject of Parks and Rec. (Order early and often here!) Though this is my ninth book, I take exceptional joy in this one, thanks to its subjects, who demonstrate the importance of community, empathy, understanding, citizenship, service, and uplift at a time when all of those are in short supply.

I would love to meet you at any of the following appearances. (There might be a few more to come soon in other cities.) Parks and Rec is about connection, and your support means everything.

New York City, April 7 @ 7 p.m., 92Y: In conversation with Emily Nussbaum, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker critic and longtime Parks and Rec fan.

Chicago, April 22 @ 6 p.m., American Writers Museum: Talking Pawnee local media and government in my hometown, which is also Nic Offerman’s hometown, and is where my own local newspaper career started (and ended).

Hudson Valley, April 25 @ 4:30 p.m., Starlite Motel in Kerhonkson: A special fireside chat with Kingston Mayor Steve Noble, featured in the book as the “real-life Leslie Knope” who started his career in the parks department. We will also have P&R-themed snacks and cocktails!

Los Angeles, June 2 @ 7 p.m., Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena: Less than a mile from "Pawnee City Hall" (played onscreen by Pasadena City Hall), we will be paying tribute to the local media of Pawnee, and specifically Shauna Malwae-Tweep, with the actress who played her, Alison Becker. (She's my favorite because I, too, was a local newspaper reporter.) We don't have a direct link for this event yet, but mark your calendars in LA!

Like many people, I’ve been watching the new season of The Pitt, which drops weekly on HBO Max. In between, I’m binge-rewatching Schitt’s Creek, also on HBO Max. Though they are tonally opposite—one an action-drama in an ER, the other a heartwarming small-town tale—I find them to be a nice, and even fitting, combination. In the end, both of them are about humans striving to do their best for other humans; they are about living in community, about, as The Good Place put it, “what we owe each other.”

This was the message of the joyous Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show, and the message of the Minnesotans who banded together to protest ICE off of their streets. The Olympics, too, have been a balm to me and so many others, I think because, while they are technically a competition, they show us humans striving to be their best, and, often, they also show us the tight-knit communities that form in these often-niche sports, across national borders.

I hope you’ve been finding some rays of light yourself this winter.

Some other news from my world …

Pop Culture v. Authoritarianism

Over at , we’re planning a series of online classes and in-depth group chats titled “Pop Culture v. Authoritarianism.” On four Sunday evenings this later this year—which we’ll schedule based on input from those participating—we’ll meet on Zoom for some historical lessons, discussion about the present and future, and suggested group actions. Guided by our ministers—who are pop culture historians and professional storytellers, as well as experienced teachers and political activists—we’ll tackle music, satire, fantasy, and organizing. Each lesson will include a syllabus with suggested viewing, listening and reading, as well as concrete ideas for activism.

Hit reply here or email us at ministryofpopculture24@gmail.com to let us know if you’re interested.

George Costanza and Me

I didn’t get to interview Jason Alexander for my book Seinfeldia—his people said he wouldn’t do it unless Jerry was participating, and it was a different time when no one really did books on TV shows yet. But ten years later, he invited me on his podcast! You can watch the interview here. It was a blast!

‘Parks and Rec’ Giveaway!

We’ve got a Goodreads giveaway going right now for my book Parks and Rec. You can enter here.

When I need a pick-me-up, I reach for shows about good people trying their best and working together to get through this thing we call life. I chose these specific shows because they’re not blindly optimistic, not like one of those happy people who you know are just in deep denial, but knowingly optimistic, showing us a world at its best that could conceivably come out of the reality we live in (yes, even this current reality). I’m assuming you know about Parks and Recreation and Ted Lasso—though they’re always worth a rewatch!—given how much I’ve written about them here.

Meanwhile, some other mood-lifters to check out:

Abbott Elementary

A few years ago, Abbott Elementary became a rare network sitcom hit with a straightforward formula. Using the mockumentary format popularized by The Office in the 2000s, it tackles another workplace—an elementary school. We follow Janine Teagues (creator Quinta Brunson), an idealistic second-grade teacher, and her coworkers as they try to make their school better despite meager budgets, encroaching charter schools, mismanagement from above, and, luckily, also just general hijinks. There’s also a very compelling/truly adorable simmering romance with fellow teacher Gregory Eddie (Tyler James Williams).

The Good Place

I admit I was a touch skeptical when I heard about this sitcom version of Dante’s Inferno-meets-philosophy class. But its cast is as winning as a sitcom cast can get—Kristen Bell! Ted Danson!—while the set design is candy-coated fun and the plot twists are at least as good as the best Lost episode. As our characters navigate the ups and downs of the afterlife together, they also happen to solve the meaning of life and give us a blueprint for living better. And yes, they totally stick the landing.

Reservation Dogs

Reservation Dogs is, at its heart, a teen show: a group of four scrappy kids with big dreams come of age on an Oklahoma reservation. It’s just like The O.C.—funny sometimes, serious other times, with generous helpings of adult drama from family and friends, and loads of hijinks—except, of course, that these kids are quite poor, and, in fact, are trying desperately to save enough money to go to California, which they imagine will solve all of their problems. The kids, crucially, are a great hang: Devery Jacobs as the take-charge Elora, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai as the emo Bear, Lane Factor as the laid-back Cheese, and Paulina Alexis as tomboy Willie-Jack. And the show, created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, takes viewers inside Native American life without playing to a white crowd, presenting references and traditions without explanation, making for an authentic experience unlike any seen on television before.

Schitt’s Creek

This got me through the early days of the pandemic, and I know I’m not the only one. It’s a premise that could come off mean, dark, and bitchy: a rich family is Madoffed into selling off nearly everything they own and moving to a small town named Schitt’s Creek, which dad Johnny Rose (Eugene Levy) bought for son David (Dan Levy). Instead, particularly as it goes on (it doesn’t get great until late in the second season), it becomes a show about how the quirky townspeople change the Roses—and vice versa. Johnny, David, daughter Alexis (Annie Murphy) and matriarch Moira (Catherine O’Hara) all recover their souls while retaining the essence of who they are, becoming crucial parts of the town along the way. And the finale wedding between David and the very grounded Patrick (Noah Reid) is one of the greatest ever committed to screen, the perfect mix of silly, hilarious, and heartwarming.

Shrinking

Shrinking is not a perfect television show, but if you can take your critic’s hat off and enjoy, it is a cozy one. It follows a therapist named Jimmy (Jason Segel) as he grieves the unexpected death of his wife in a drunk driving accident, and struggles to be present for their teenage daughter. But really, it’s mostly a hangout show about him and his fellow therapists, including a mentor played by Harrison Ford (doing his funniest version of cranky) and a coworker/sometime lover played by the underrated Jessica Williams, as well as his next-door neighbors, played by Christa Miller and the show’s slow-burn standout, Ted McGinley. Oh, also, there’s Jimmy’s best friend Brian, played by Michael Urie. There are too many people on this show, but you get the feeling that creators Bill Lawrence, Segel, and Brett Goldstein just can’t stop hiring affable actors to come be on the set. Just enjoy it.

Other Stuff

• Pop Culture v. Authoritarianism: Oscar Edition: This Wednesday, my friends at the Ministry of Pop Culture and I are holding a live online discussion about films in the Oscar conversation that address authoritarianism. Read here why I think KPop Demon Hunters fits that bill, and sign up to join us here.

• 2026 Pop Culture Predictions: My fellow ministers and I shared ours, and graded our prediction accuracy from last year. Mine involve AI, the culture wars, and Katy Perry.

• The Best Pop Music Podcasts: I live and breathe pop music podcasts, and they’re a particularly handy respite from the news when you need one. I recommend my faves here.

• Inside the Drama, Heartache—and Fun—of Local News: As a former local newspaper reporter, I absolutely love the recent shows The Lowdown and The Paper, which go inside local news reporting in very different ways. I wrote about them both for the Peabody Awards.

The songs I’m highlighting here span from the ‘70s to recent years, and, well, all of them except one are romantic stories. And even the one that isn’t is a … rather intense relationship. I guess romance is simply a surefire story engine. It’s actually a challenge to come up with a novel or a song that doesn’t have some element of relationship drama.

I’m a lyrics person, so I love everyone from Fountains of Wayne to Chappell Roan, Eminem to Taylor Swift. All of them have written their share of story songs, which by definition keep us listening to hear what happens next. Here are some of my favorites:

“Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” by Rupert Holmes

Okay, there are a lot of weird things here, most notably that this is a 1979 song, which means that I was 3 when it came out, and somehow it registers as one of the first/the actual first story songs that ever hit for me. I guess I was just hearing it when I was a little older, though I’m still fascinated by the fact that adultery and adult beverages rang so true for me so early. In any case, this tells the story of a guy (am I sure it’s a guy? anyway, it’a guy’s voice singing) who places a personal ad looking to cheat and ends up, O’Henry style, getting his ad answered by his own wife, or answering his own wife’s ad. Aww, I guess? The ‘70s were a weird time. I still fucking love this song, even though I am literally training to be a yoga teacher and one of the main lines is, “If you’re not into yoga, if you have half a brain …” I guess specifics get me every time. It’s also funny to me that I quoted this song in my online dating profile that led me to meet my partner of 15 years, Jesse.

“Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman

Chapman’s 1988 masterpiece re-emerged in mainstream culture a few years ago thanks to a loving 2023 cover by Luke Combs. We return to it for good reason. Three-act structure? You got it: “You got a fast car, I want a ticket to anywhere/Maybe we can make a deal, maybe together we can get somewhere.” Next: “You got a fast car, we go cruising to entertain ourselves/You still ain’t got a job, and I work in the market as a checkout girl.” And finally: “You got a fast car, I got a job that pays all our bills/
You stay out drinking late at the bar, see more of your friends than you do your kids.” So, she sings, “You can take your fast car and keep on driving.” Hetero-pessimism in full swing folks.

And yet, still, she returns to the refrain, remembering driving in the car when “I had a feeling that I belonged,” and “I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone.” Anyone else cry a little every time they think hard about that lyric?

“Good Luck, Babe!” by Chappell Roan

You just know when the opening lines are, “It’s fine, it’s cool,” that it is neither fine nor cool. I love an opening line that implies “things are not right here” without explaining everything. We soon have conflict, right in the build-up to the chorus: “I don’t wanna call it off, but you don’t wanna call it love.” And then we get to that soaring chorus, a.k.a. the thesis statement: You, whoever you might be, can kiss a hundred boys in bars—a lot of boys, a perfect image—but you, madam, “would have to stop the world just to stop the feeling.” This is high drama. The bridge, however, has the absolute showstopper of a scene: “When you wake up next to him in the middle of the night, with your head in your hands, you’re nothing more than his wife …” followed by the soft, then loud, “You know I hate to say, but I told you so!” I absolutely love a good dynamic delivery.

“All Too Well” by Taylor Swift

I won’t exactly say that I prefer the original five-plus-minute version to the epic 10-minute 2021 release as part of Swift’s re-recording of her album Red. What I will say is that a five-minute version has to be pretty great to excite folks about a twice-as-long version nearly a decade later. My god, the scarf in the first verse that she leaves at her lover’s sister’s house shows up again in the end: “But you keep my old scarf from that very first week/’Cause it reminds you of innocence/And it smells like me.” (Chekhov would be proud!) Indelible images accumulate like a freeway crash pileup: singing in the car getting lost upstate, he almost runs the red because he’s looking at her, the mom telling stories about him on the T-ball team, dancing ‘round the kitchen in the refrigerator light … all until “you call me up again just to break me like a promise.” It’s too real not to be about a specific somebody. A Google search will tell you the likely (famous) culprit if you don’t already know.

“Betty” by Taylor Swift

I could do an all-Swift list about storytelling, but I’m picking my two favorites here. “Betty” is part of a teen-love-triangle trilogy on the Folklore album, and while “August” is my favorite of those musically, “Betty” lays out the story the best. In it, a kid named James has wronged his love, Betty—”would you trust me if I told you it was just a summer thing?” Betty has found out from “the rumors from Inez, you can’t believe a word she says most times, but this time it was true … the worst thing that I ever did was what I did to you.” James builds all of this up through chorus repetitions: “But if I just showed up at your party, would you have me, would you want me? Would you tell me to go fuck myself or lead me to the garden?” What is going to happen at the party?

I never fail to get chills when Taylor-as-James brings her delivery down a bit quieter at, “So I showed up at your party … yeah, I showed up at your party,” then explodes into a key change: “Yeah I showed up at your party, will you have me, will you want me, will you kiss me on the porch in front of all your stupid friends?” OH MY GOD WE’LL NEVER REALLY KNOW, at least in my interpretation. He asks a lot of questions that aren’t really answered, except with what I see as a memory, or a hope: “Standin’ in your cardigan, kissing in my car again, stopped at a streetlight, you know I miss you.” He still misses her at the end! Was it all a reverie? Did he show up and did it go poorly? It’s all very Before Sunrise. The song “Cardigan” may or may not answer these questions, and I love that we can all have our own theories. But really, don’t miss out on “August,” which tells the story from Ms. Summer Fling’s devastating perspective. “Cancelled my plans just in case you’d call, back when I was living for the hope of it all … meet me behind the mall.”

“Hackensack” by Fountains of Wayne

One of this excellent band’s strong points was always storytelling. Their most famous song is “Stacy’s Mom,” a compact little narrative you don’t forget once you’ve heard it. But I prefer this dreamy ode to a former classmate who got famous. Can you beat this first verse?:

I used to know you when we were young
You were in all my dreams
We sat together in Period One
Fridays at 8:15
Now I see your face in the strangest places
Movies and magazines
I saw you talking to Christopher Walken
On my TV screen

Perfect details, I am fully seated and waiting to hear what comes next. R.I.P. to one of the great songwriters, Adam Schlesinger.

“Stan” by Eminem

Jesse and I recently re-listened to this song on a long car ride, and the new Apple Music update had defaulted my playlists to crossfade from one song to the next like a DJ. This if fairly dumb and annoying to me, but the point in this particular post is that it means that the ends of songs often fade out and get usurped by the next song before they really finish. Even though we’ve both heard this song countless times, we gasped when it cut off before the big reveal: “Come to think about it, his name was … it was you. Damn.” That’s some storytelling. Eminem builds it up in epistolary form, reading from a series of letters from a fan named Stan as his messages grow increasingly disturbed, possessive, agitated, threatening, and, finally, violent. Showing and not telling to the greatest effect.

Maybe you’ve written something. Or your kid has. Or your friend’s kid has. And now you’re like, “What should I do? Is it good? Maybe a professional author will know!” Or you just kind-of think being an author would be fun, because Carrie Bradshaw made it seem fun, and you find yourself wanting to commit the violence known as “picking someone’s brain” about it, that someone being an author. Maybe you’d like a publishing contact or you’d like to publicize the book that you have already written and published. Congratulations, if so!

In all of these cases and more, you may find yourself wanting to reach out to an author you know because you’ve read them or heard of them or heard that someone you know went to high school with them. You will often find—oh, joy!—that they’re pretty accessible, because they are always trying to be available for interviews about their work or other such opportunities. It’s quite likely you’ll find an email address or a “contact” page on a website that serves as a direct portal to their very in-box. Barring this, you can always DM them, right?

The ease of reaching authors like me seems to sometimes—nay, often—result in what I deem not-very-thoughtful enquiries. I say that given the evidence in my own email and DMs, as well as the “can you believe this?” messages shared with me by many of my author friends. I hate to tell you this, but I actually have a text chain that is largely dedicated to us complaining about the vague, entitled, and otherwise baffling messages we receive from strangers. How do you avoid ending up in our OH NO NOT AGAIN file? Is it possible to do one better and even end up on the receiving end of the exact favor you’d hoped for, and maybe even more? YES! And I am here to tell you exactly how, by sharing with you the two best favor emails I’ve ever received and pointing out their strengths.

The first is one I got recently, and, in fact, inspired this post. I copied and pasted it in my text chain and said, Behold! The Platonic ideal of a request email! Here it is, from Blair Glaser, an acquaintance (via Facebook) who has a fantastic sounding memoir coming out called Incredible Longing. (I’m sharing this with her permission, and I think you should pre-order her book.)

Dear Jennifer,

I hope this email finds you well.

I just spent some time on your website and am so impressed with your body of work, and how you teach us about living and culture through sitcoms (and pop stars and Mean Girls). Congrats on the upcoming Parks and Rec pub!

I’m coming out with my first book (Heliotrope) just a few months before your launch. It’s a memoir called This Incredible Longing: Finding My Self in a Near Cult Experience, about my time leading up to and living in the Siddha Yoga Catskills ashram in the 90s.

I am looking for spiritual or Buddhist writers who would be interested in reviewing it for Tricycle or Lion’s Roar. I know you’re going to be insanely busy, but do you know anyone who would be a potential fit?

Thanks for any thoughts or leads on my behalf.

Warmly,

Blair

No offense to Blair, but you may be like, “This isn’t even that complicated.” Correct! It is not! And yet it is extraordinary in that I get so few that nail it like this.

Here’s what I love about it, in order:

1. She indicates that she knows specifically who I am, what I write about, and that she has invested time in understanding my current status. She knows I have a book coming out and what it’s about. She has taken time to congratulate me on it. In short, she understands that I am not only an author with information she wants, but also a fellow human with a life and an ego.

2. She has explained in the right amount of detail that she has a book coming out, when it’s coming out, and (briefly!) what it’s about. She linked it so that I can learn more if I choose.

3. She has a specific ask. She knows from our previous interactions that I have done a significant amount of writing for the Buddhist magazines she mentions, so this is a sensible ask.

4. Nice detail: She acknowledges my busyness. Love it. This says, “Don’t knock yourself out, but also this might be an easy and direct question for you to answer.” In this case, she was right, and I answered her right away.

5. A parting thank you! Important!

Again, this all seems just basically human, but I think people start freaking out and being weird when they have to ask for something. Also, often, they kind-of know they’re asking too much or fishing, which puts a massive burden on the askee. Don’t do this. Only send the email when you’re clear on your request, 75 percent sure the person is in a position to deliver it, and, I want to say, pretty much 100 percent sure this is not a massive boundary breach.

For instance, I love and admire Nick Hornby and have been a fan for decades. I’m fairly certain he would like me a lot if he knew me. But he doesn’t know me, so I will not ask him to lunch, even if I stumble across his email. You start with something reasonable, and if it goes well, after several interactions, perhaps it will feel right to get more personal. But think very, very hard before trying this. Go too far and you will lose the correspondence forever.

I so wish I could show you some bad examples, but that would be mean. So I will tell you I have gotten requests to: meet in person when we have never met at all, have no personal ties, and have not even interacted much/at all with each other’s social posts; “connect as writers,” with no explanation of what we have in common or what this person wants; read someone’s kid’s college essay when we have never met in person or electronically; read someone’s manuscript to tell them if it is good (again, with little to no personal connection); and to share my agent’s contact information with someone because they said they wanted to write a book about Larry David, who co-created Seinfeld. While I did write a book about Seinfeld, I did not feel comfortable throwing my agent to a stranger. (This person actually messaged me several times via multiple social platforms and then chastised me when I did not answer.)

Anyway, back to the good ones! Here’s a slightly longer and more complicated one, but afterwards I’ll tell you why it worked. It’s from ten years ago, after my book about The Mary Tyler Moore Show; I received it while working on my follow-up Seinfeldia.(I’ve written about this before with Kathryn’s permission.)

Dear Jennifer,

First of all, I wanted to say that I love your book! I just read Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted and adored it. I laughed, I cried (mostly on the subway, which was embarrassing). And that Grant Tinker—what a classy guy!

Second of all, I’m taking your Book Proposal class on Skillshare right now and am almost finished with my proposal. I was wondering if I could hire you to review it? I probably won’t be done until the end of February—I’m not sure if that timing is ok for you.

My book is actually very similar to yours. It’s my dream project that I’ve been thinking about for the past ten years or so but only just got serious about. It’s the story behind the making of The Golden Girls (I was really excited to see that you mentioned Susan Harris a few times in your book, mostly in reference to Fay—awesome!). It’s a little sad to say, but I feel The Golden Girls show has been one of the biggest “constants” in my life for as long as I can remember, since it’s really never been out of syndication. I love everything Susan Harris did, particularly the abortion episode of Maude (classic!) and Soap. I’m also obsessed with Mitch Hurwitz, and GG was his first job out of college. And thanks to your book, I learned that Gail Parent also worked on GG! I just ordered her Sheila Levine book on ebay. I can’t wait to read it.

I live here in NYC, and I was wondering if you possibly wanted to barter assistant work for some guidance on my book? I’m totally prepared to pay you for the critique, but I was wondering if you’re working on anything now and wanted some free administrative labor (transcribing interviews, research, filing, getting your coffee!), in exchange for some occasional guidance on my project. Did I see somewhere that you’re working on a Seinfeld book? I might have made that up, but I hope not. Seinfeld, and really anything involving Larry David, will always have a very special place in my heart.

But no worries if you aren’t interested in the bartering—I still want to pay for your services!

Just a little about me… I currently work on the Media team at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) and write pop culture-y things on the side for websites like The Hairpin and This Recording. I’m working on expanding my platform, with a website and bigger national clips.

I guess that’s it. Hope to speak to you soon!

Thanks,

Kathryn

1. Wow. The opening is complimentary, which makes me want to read more (it works on all of us!); and she offers such minute specifics that I believed she really read and loved my book.

2. With the Skillshare bit, she’s basically telling me, “I already paid a nominal fee for your expertise through your online class, and I’m willing to pay more if necessary.” Offering money for professional services is a huge plus. I realize this sounds obvious, but with services like editing and writing, people often forget this. They think they are just “reading,” something many of us do for fun, but they are not. Several students have asked me to read their work or meet with them to go over what they missed in class without offering compensation. But this is my job; I expect to get paid for it. I’ll let you know if I’d like to offer it for free to you instead, like if you’re my lifelong best friend or my mom or something.

3. She waits a long time to mention the barter idea, and she does it after offering to pay. Great. Turns out I desperately needed someone to start transcribing for me, and I was broke at the time until Seinfeldia came out. She ended up working as my assistant on the barter system. We spent tons of time together while I reported it, and we even entered a Seinfeld trivia contest together. (We came in second, because I am not good at trivia.)

4. Before she ends, she tells me who she is. Cool! I like to know I’m not possibly arranging to bring a lunatic—or even an unprofessional person—into my life and writing process.

This second one in particular might not work on every author all the time. More famous and established authors are likely to have the assistance they need, or to simply not have the time to invest in an up-and-comer long-term. But even if we hadn’t been a match in terms of needs, I would have answered her and offered her some leads and resources, because she put so much time and attention into her message to me.

Or maybe I’m just a sucker for people who seem to have actually purchased and read my books. I can tell you that among authors, I’m not alone, and this will go a long way. Another thing we like: If you know we’ve got a new one coming, pre-order it, and make sure to tell us that in your message, too! Or request it from your local library and drop that mention in the note. Be sure to re-share our promotional posts or share news of our book in your own posts and tag us.

Help us help you. (Also, an addendum: I seem to have found a third good way to get a response from your favorite author. Scroll down to the comments to see.)

The July 26, 2012, headline in The New York Times treated Parks and Rec’s Leslie Knope like a real person, cheekily declaring: “Official From Pawnee, Ind., Buttonholes Senators.” Bill Carter’s piece reported from the scene as the series shot on location in Washington, D.C., from the Hay-Adams Hotel. There, Leslie attended a party full of political heavyweights, with cameos from senators Barbara Boxer, Olympia Snowe, and John McCain.

There was an underlying truth to this set-up: Leslie had, indeed, become something of a political force by then, the show’s fifth season.

So had Ron Swanson.

Rep. Joe Wilson wrote for Politico in May 2010:

America has a new champion of limited government and spending restraint. For six years straight, Ron Swanson, director of the City of Pawnee’s Parks and Recreation Department, brought his agency in under budget. He set citywide records by spending only 60 cents of his department’s discretionary fund.

Regrettably, Swanson is not running for Congress. Instead, he is leading the limited government fight as a fictional character on NBC’s primetime show “Parks and Recreation.”

Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, wasn’t just praising Ron as if he were a real political figure. He was quoting deep cuts from Ron’s backstory.

Less than a year earlier, Wilson had become famous for his breach of decorum when he shouted, “You lie!” at President Barack Obama when Obama spoke to Congress. Now, that barely registers as a faux pas. But at the time, it portended a much more raucous time to come in American politics. Politico deemed him a “right-wing folk hero.”

Americans were already growing more politically polarized during the run of Parks and Rec, from 2009 to 2015. But that polarization wouldn’t take its more dramatic turn toward violence until 2016, according to a 2023 Carnegie study. The series sought to stop the trajectory before it turned tragic, by showing two very politically different people, Leslie and Ron, working together and loving each other as an antidote to the growing divide. But as a demonstration of what scholars call “intergroup contact theory”—folks talking out their differences—it could only do so much. It turns out, as the Carnegie researchers found, that even real-life intergroup contact can’t solve the crisis alone. “Pluralism programs to bridge differences are not enough to improve democracy,” the paper says. “Instead, interventions to change individuals’ emotions must be paired with efforts that alter how politicians are incentivized to instrumentalize or amplify affective polarization as a strategy.”

This is intriguing: The problem lies with the politicians and the electoral system. Suffice to say we have improved neither since the time of Parks and Rec or this study.

By contrast, polarization had reached an all-time low among politicians in the mid-20^th century. In the 1950s, some scholars even argued that politicians needed to be more polarized, to give voters a marked difference in policy positions to choose from. In other words, systems had pushed politicians toward the middle before that. In the ensuing decades, elites first began to polarize as a tactic for grabbing power. The Carnegie report says:

One book-length study suggested the problem was that as the personal and financial costs of running for office increased and the benefits of holding office decreased, moderate candidates were disproportionately less likely to run, leaving the field to ideological extremes. The study, looking at all candidates who had run for House seats and not just the winners, found that all candidates had polarized significantly since the 1980s—so that whoever won would be more polarized, regardless of voter preferences.

Soon the polarization spread to mainstream voters themselves, the main target audience of Parks and Rec. By 2004, cultural critic Simon Schama had dubbed the country “the Divided States of America,” calling Red States and Blue States “Godly America” and “Worldly America.” Ten years after that, as Parks and Rec was nearing the end of its run, the sides had grown still further apart, according to a 2014 Pew Research report. Democrats had shifted farther to the left, Republicans farther to the right. More than a quarter of Democrats and a third of Republicans saw the other side as “a threat to the nation’s well-being.”

The 2020s have brought widespread acknowledgement of—and frustration with—this deep partisanship. In 2022, more than a quarter of Americans were dissatisfied with both parties. Nearly half of young adults told Pew they “wish there were more parties to choose from.” But this shows no signs of happening in a meaningful manner, and right now, the divide grows deeper by the day with apparent political assassinations, inflammatory rhetoric from the White House, and a government shutdown with Congress at an impasse.

Perhaps this all explains why Parks and Rec would become far more popular after its run, when it hit streaming services during the first Trump presidency—it offered a utopian vision of an America we weren’t sure we’d see again, and seems farther away than ever.

Pre-order my book Parks and Rec now!

No single political force was more prevalent in Parks and Rec’s creation than Barack Obama’s historic victory in the presidential race of 2008. This was a man who would espouse “relentless optimism” as the path to success. “Not blind optimism,” he said, “not one that ignores the scale and scope of our challenges, but that hard-earned optimism, that’s rooted in the stories of very real progress that have occurred throughout human history.”

Combine Obama’s win with what was called the “Year of the Woman,” and you had an election cycle that could be credited as a co-creator on Parks and Rec. To be sure, the “Year of the Woman” had been declared a few times before this, basically any time three or more women won seats in Congress or one even came close to a major party presidential candidacy: when Geraldine Ferraro became the first female major-party candidate for vice president, and when five women were elected to the senate in 1992, including future Parks and Rec guest star Barbara Boxer. In 2008, Hillary Clinton was an early favorite to win the Democratic nomination for president that ultimately went to Obama, while Sarah Palin became the running mate of Republican nominee John McCain.

As wrote in New York magazine by the time the show premiered and Obama was president:

It is fitting, in an age when our banks, automobile manufacturers, and insurance companies are owned primarily by Barack Obama and Uncle Sam, that our newest sitcom locale is not a bar, or a law firm, or the revolving-door apartment of upwardly mobile and fabulous twentysomethings. Our hero (or, in this case, heroine) is not an advertising executive, crass agent, or morally compromised lawyer. Instead, Leslie Knope, as played by Amy Poehler in Parks and Recreation, which premieres this Thursday night on NBC, works for the government.

Perhaps also fittingly, or perhaps because nearly everything at the time felt like it had something to do with that election, Poehler had come to the show straight off a seven-year run at Saturday Night Live that she topped off by playing Clinton, as well as delivering a rap written from the perspective of Palin while visibly pregnant. Then she gave birth, took a few months for maternity leave, and started playing Leslie.

And so it was that an election cycle delivered our first Black president—and a sitcom that made politics not only funny, but heartfelt and sweet.

Don’t forget to pre-order my book, Parks and Rec, which will be out April 7, 2026!

Next up: A Polarized Nation’s Views of Ron Swanson and Leslie Knope

David Foster Wallace took television seriously. He may not have always had kind things to say about it, but the author of Infinite Jest understood the medium’s power. In his 1993 Review of Contemporary Fiction piece “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” he worries that watching TV conditions us to a belief that life is like television, and not the opposite, that “we receive unconscious reinforcement of the deep thesis that the most significant feature of truly alive persons is watchableness.” Which seems pretty spot-on, and this was before the reality boom. He adds: “Weighty existential predicaments aside, there’s no denying that people in the U.S.A. watch so much television because it’s fun. I know I watch for fun, most of the time, and that at least 51 percent of the time I do have fun when I watch.”

Wallace is particularly important to Parks and Rec not only because he took TV seriously as a force shaping America, but also because the show’s co-creator and visionary, Michael Schur, was obsessed with Wallace, starting when Schur read Infinite Jest in college. And Wallace, in turn, informed Schur’s philosophy about the TV he would make. “I want to convince you that irony, poker-faced silence, and fear of ridicule are distinctive of those features of contemporary U.S. culture (of which cutting-edge fiction is a part) that enjoy any significant relation to the television whose weird pretty hand has my generation by the throat. I’m going to argue that irony and ridicule are entertaining and effective, and that at the same time they are agents of a great despair and stasis in U.S. culture, and that for aspiring fictionists they pose terrifically vexing problems.”

Schur agreed, and in response he made television that largely resisted the irony, sarcasm, and ridicule that had defined much of American television from the ‘90s through the 2000s. He showed that you could embrace optimism and still be funny.

So Schur created Parks and Rec’s hard-working, mid-level, small-government bureaucrat, Leslie Knope. Particularly as the series went on, she came to embody what German sociologist Max Weber called “politik als beruf”—politics as a vocation—in a 1919 lecture at the University of Munich.

Leslie’s dedication to her craft makes her the antithesis of the Trump era, even though the series ended in 2015, just before Trump declared his first candidacy. And how you see Leslie may depend on your political leanings. She is exactly the kind of lifelong government worker being slashed from budgets in Trump’s second term. She’s also the kind of ultra-competent expert who makes liberals cheer. Then again, you might like Leslie no matter which side you’re on, because she’s a great TV character; that’s the power of TV in general, and specifically of Parks and Rec, which strove to be at least a little bipartisan.

When Trump won the 2024 presidential election, CNN called it “the most momentous comeback in political history that will hand him massive, disruptive power at home and will send shockwaves around the world.” His authoritarian rhetoric and tactics contradict what Parks and Rec stands for—government, it tells us, is imperfect but essential, and community is what strengthens democracy, even when you don’t like all of your neighbors. Trump, a former reality TV star who once shared a network with Parks and Rec, has become, in the years since the series ended, “one of the most significant political figures in the history of the United States,” as CNN said.

After Trump’s 2024 victory, outgoing Transportation Secretary Pete Buttegieg—like Leslie, a former local politician from Indiana—said that local government would be Democrats’ “salvation” in the next Trump era. “I think that universal virtues that are particularly prized in the Midwest would be humility, decency, and honesty,” he said. “Obviously the incoming leadership could not more extravagantly be different in terms of style from those Midwestern qualities.” He wasn’t talking about Parks and Rec, but he may as well have been.

Next up: Barack Obama, The Office, Judd Apatow, and the “Year of the Woman.”

It’s out in April, but you can pre-order it now, which is a huge help to me and a great way to support your favorite authors!

First off, sorry that you got an erroneous message that I’d be hosting a live video chat here tomorrow about the return of And Just Like That. I am hosting a live video chat/group therapy session, but it will be via the Ministry of Pop Culture. (It’s my first time using the Live feature on Substack, so there was a bit of a learning curve.) I’ll be with , a.k.a. Drinks With Broads/Go Fug Yourself, which means we can dissect the insane fashion as well as the insane plot and script choices. It will be very fun and therapeutic, so I think you should join us if you, too, have unprocessed feelings after you watch tonight’s season premiere. It’ll be at 2 p.m. PT/5 p.m. ET here; if you subscribe to MOPC, you’ll get a reminder when we’re live.

Meanwhile, you can read my review of the new season over at The Wrap. The TL;DR is that the first episode back is one of the most boring episodes of TV I’ve ever seen. (No lie: I was on a bus stuck in traffic trying to get into New York City, and I often found myself more interested in the slowly crawling vehicles surrounding me.) However! It unexpectedly gets much better in the second episode through the sixth, which is what I’ve seen so far.

Hope to see you tomorrow!

Having assiduously avoided performing music in front of live audiences for about seven years, having said that I wanted to do so but then dawdling over rehearsal and song selection and research of local open mics, having put open mics on my calendar every week and then deleting them … I finally got up on a stage in front of a few dozen musicians, many of them very good, at a Bluegrass jam weekend. I had four women up there with me, a few of them professional-level musicians, but I was the lead singer, lead guitarist, and mastermind of this performance. They were following me.

I suddenly felt calm. My brain searched for reasons to be scared but found few. I played the opening riff to Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time,” a song I had played hundreds of times alone in my living room. I knew it so well I’d probably have to work to screw it up, but you never know what can happen in front of a crowd.

As soon as the audience got it—we were doing a Bluegrass version of a Britney song—they cheered. I played, and stepped aside for solos from the fiddler and banjo player who were kind enough to play with me. We were an official hit, one of the performances posted online to represent the weekend. (You can see it in my Instagram post above.)

I have often struggled when people asked me about how to get over impostor syndrome in writing. I just never had enough impostor syndrome to stop me from getting my writing out there, and I don’t really know why. Just the deranged confidence of a first-born, I suppose. I started writing plays when I was about 8 and made my friends perform them in the garage, charging adults admission for watching. I actually pitched articles to Readers’ Digest starting at about 12, and didn’t much mind when I got form rejection letters. I worked for professional local newspapers as a teen, and then I was a daily newspaper reporter for the first five years of my career. I didn’t have time to worry about whether I was good enough while I cranked out multiple stories each day.

I’m convinced the key to a successful writing career is to just keep writing, keep pitching, without letting rejections weigh you down, and these early experiences helped me to survive once I got to New York City’s national magazines and major publishers. I am on my way to publishing my ninth book; I also have a lot of rejected book proposals and even a few novels on my computer. I just always kept going.

It wasn’t until I became an amateur musician venturing into performing that I understood the fear that many aspiring writers experience when it comes to sharing or trying to publish their work. I’m a competent rhythm guitarist and decent vocalist with enthusiasm, pretty good stage presence, and a binder full of pop music covers. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about me as a musician, so it’s hard for me to believe that sharing my music is worth something—nonetheless, I do have the urge to do so, to share it with others instead of staying in my living room playing through my repertoire over and over.

So I’ve tried to get out there. Here are a few lessons I’ve learned from playing in public that might apply to anxious writers wondering whether to share their words.

1. Set expectations low.

I started a band called No Ambition with two girlfriends when we were in our 30s. We were all beginners on our instruments—me on bass (and as the lead singer), and my bandmates on (a child-sized set of) drums and lead guitar. We called ourselves No Ambition to be clear about our intentions. We felt that 30-something women had just as much a right to being in a sucky band as teenage boys do. So we did very basic, very imperfect ‘90s covers. Dozens of friends came to our first show and cheered us on even though I shudder to think at how … unpolished we were. But we hadn’t promised anything more.

For writers, this could mean sharing a piece with a few friends with the explicit caveat that at this time, you’re only looking for encouragement—and practicing putting your imperfect work into the world.

2. Make a pact with others at your level.

Having a band gave me a huge shot of courage. In fact, I don’t remember second-guessing our decisions to perform, which we went on to do at open mics and occasional gigs we set up for ourselves at small dive bars. I felt bolder when I had friends with me, and we pushed each other to keep going.

You could, similarly, start a Substack with a few friends and hold each other accountable. In fact, I also have a Substack collective with four fellow professional pop culture writers, Ministry of Pop Culture, and it really does have a momentum that’s hard to maintain with solo projects. I’ve more than once compared it to being in a band.

3. Start your own thing.

The band eventually broke up, because, while we had no ambition as musicians, we had lots of ambition in our careers and we couldn’t sustain a practice schedule. So I went “solo,” which meant I needed a go-to outlet for performances on my own. After investigating some open mics in New York City, which were usually full of hungry, young singer-songwriters looking to get signed, I realized I’d do better starting my own open mic, where I set the tone and made the rules. I played first at every one, because playing first can suck for newcomers but also because that sent the message that mediocre versions of Britney Spears and Taylor Swift songs were welcome here. Later, I interviewed a former record producer-turned-neuroscientist for this newsletter, and she said one of the most encouraging things I’ve ever heard: “Many, many people are satisfied and happy being sung to and being played to. It may not be the Taylor Swift version of that song, but these guys are feeling like, it's a version just for me, just for me in this room right now. No one else has this version.”

The equivalent in writing could be starting your own solo Substack, which won’t have the bonus of the accountability of others but will be your showcase where you can do whatever you want.

Here I am in full pandemic chic: bright pink leggings!

4. Give yourself a challenge.

During the pandemic, I began posting videos of myself online playing songs. It began as a way to promote my book Pop Star Goddesses; every weekday during its release month, I would post a song by one of my goddesses. I got great feedback on social media, probably because everyone was bored at home all the time, but that’s fine. It encouraged me to keep up the consistency at a lesser rate after that month, posting one song per week every Monday until I basically ran out of songs. Even though it’s unlikely anyone would have noticed if I missed a week, I began to feel the weight of my accomplishment pushing me to continue. People even claimed to be sad when I posted my final Music Monday! Which was very nice of them!

You could do a similar thing with writing, posting a short piece every week on social media or on Substack. I kept up my schedule by putting it in my calendar and refusing to move it or skip it. I hadn’t thought it through much when I named it Music Monday, but putting the day of the week in the name stopped me from pushing it off throughout the week.

5. Make it a party.

I’ve recently been trying to ease back into public performance, and I’ve had a really hard time with it, as evidenced by my nerves at Bluegrass camp. Since then, I’ve started doing something that I love: hosting singalong jams at my house. I invite a bunch of friends, they bring instruments or just their voices, and we play and sing songs together. That’s it. Very low stakes, very high fun.

The writing equivalent might be to throw a reading party for writer friends, where everyone brings a short piece and reads it aloud.

What have you done to get yourself out there? Let me know!

Though I will not be playing any music, I am co-hosting an event on May 15 in New York’s Hudson Valley, with my writing “band,” Ministry of Pop Culture! We’ll be sharing behind-the-scenes secrets from our many collective decades writing about entertainment at The Common Good bookstore in Ellenville, New York. Join us for our panel discussion, Turn Your Fandom Into a Writing Career.