By Alyssa Rosenberg

Adam McKay, the man who gave us the satirical masterpiece Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and stealth financial meltdown rage comedy The Other Guys, has decided that in addition to movies about angry boy-men, what America really needs more of is protest songs, particularly ones in the public domain so lots of people can cover them. He’s even set up a website and written a song on the subject himself! McKay’s not the only person to jump on the idea that we need a new wave of iconic music to galvanize liberal dissent. The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle called for covers of protest songs on Twitter during the showdown in Wisconsin and contributed a cover of Billy Bragg’s “There Is Power In a Union” to the cause:

Power In A Union from JD on Vimeo.

And Audioslave’s Tom Morello played a concert in Wisconsin in February.

It’s not like there’s anything new about the attempt to link politics and music, or to find the perfect, galvanizing song for a campaign or cause. We will be cracking up over presidential contenders’ attempts to find pop middle ground in their theme songs as long as there are politicians. But I’m interested in the sense that there ought to be a musical movement to match the progressive political one, some school of people who are cranking out contemporary “Ay Carmela”s:

and “The Times They Are a-Changin”s:

I don’t know why we’re not getting those sort of immortal songs spontaneously. Maybe it’s the corporatization of our music industry, which doesn’t exactly make it easy for deeply engaged folk songs to bubble up the charts; or the fact that we don’t have a moment of musical innovation that’s motivated by and intertwined with politics; or the fact that if you deliberately go out and try to write a protest classic, you’re like to end up with something self-conscious and clunky. Or maybe it’s just that our popular music is in a sort of disposable moment, and it’s not clear if any songs (other than maybe ones by Kanye?) are going to be truly indelible. But I don’t know that we’re going to get great new politicized music either by chance or by dint of effort.

It’s so utterly predictable that Lady Gaga’s dropping her video for “Judas” on Easter Sunday this year that I sort of agree with Bill Donahue that it’s cliche as all hell. We’re reaching this level of silly stuntmongering. But let’s consider the song itself:

It’s kind of interestingly abrasive, and it doesn’t make a lot of use of her voice, which is something of a trend, and kind of too bad. But really, the bridge is where she’s trying far too hard: any time someone’s declaring that “in the Biblical sense” or “in the cultural sense,” they’ve gotten a little too publicly self-reflective, and that way lies well-earned humiliation. I thought the bridge in “Born This Way” was similarly lyrically awkward. It’s an odd little weakness, and while it’s not as key as a head-banging chorus, a skill I wonder if she’ll work on developing.

I am going to go ahead and admit that I teared up watching the trailer for The Help, and that I intend to go home tonight and read the hell out of the book, which has been on my list for months:

I adore Emma Stone, and am beyond thrilled that she’s gotten the kind of substantive, dramatic, warm role she deserves. But this also just looks like a terrific movie about a young female journalist, and more generally, about the fact that you have to be brave not just to be an excellent journalist, but particularly to be a source. Anonymity and off-the-record exist, of course, but the people who make a difference are often the ones who step forward with their names attached. And that’s particularly when it comes to domestic stories that are raw, and awkward, and treated as if they’re not that critical, as if they’re women’s issues rather than real ones.

I realized I haven’t been posting my stuff from The Atlantic for a while (I trust y’all to find that on your own if you’re interested), but now that I’m over at ThinkProgress and upping production elsewhere, I thought I’d do a bit of a periodic roundup. On Monday and Tuesday, I…

Wrote about Justin Bieber’s political adolescence in The Daily.

Defended sex and violence in HBO’s adaptation of Game of Thrones.

And bemoaned the fact that we don’t have a contemporary Get Smart.

Political prognosticators may be struggling to decide if Donald Trump’s bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination is serious, but many close observers of Trump think the campaign is a ratings stunt. The New York Times noted recently, “Trump has a history of simultaneously talking up his presidential ambitions while promoting various Trump-branded goods.” An anonymous executive from the NBC, the network where Trump has made his television home with his successful franchise, The Apprentice, since 2004, said as much to Entertainment Weekly yesterday:

We at the network have no idea whether Trump is serious about [running for president] or not. He won’t tell even us — and we haven’t pushed because we’ve just decided it is whatever it is. If he wants to spout off about things, we’re happy to let him. But our inclination is that he’s not serious about running for president. We think it’s a stunt.

However encouraging NBC may be in public about The Apprentice‘s ratings, the show certainly needs the ratings bump that Trump’s sudden surge in visibility has provided. The show’s ratings are down dramatically from the 20.7 million viewers per episode that The Apprentice pulled in its first season. The show’s numbers have ticked upwards when Trump has celebrities instead of ordinary people competing for a job with him (as they are right now, with 8.8 million people tuning in per episode). Industry insiders have concluded that the original version of the show, featuring those ordinary people, is likely finished after this season, and as the ratings trends show, even the celebrity editions aren’t enough to return the show to its former highs:

With that decline in ratings has come a corresponding decline in revenue. When the show debuted in 2004, NBC was asking $409,877 for a 30-second ad slot during it. Now, that number is down to $99,074. While The Apprentice costs NBC very little to produce, it’s still a precipitous decline in revenue. Trump is far from fired, but he hasn’t inked a new contract with NBC yet, and it’s certainly in his best interests to prove he can bump ratings before doing so.

That’s why Trump’s presidential bid is the perfect ploy for him. For all Trump’s spectacular delays of ego, The Apprentice is his one incontestable business success in recent years. The downturn in the real estate market embroiled him in a nasty dispute with financers over a Chicago apartment building, and his casino business filed for bankruptcy for the third time in 2009. His nascent presidential campaign both draws attention to The Apprentice (Trump plans to make some sort of announcement about the race on the May 22 finale), and gives Trump an opportunity to promote the leadership credentials that make him an uber-boss on the show.

And the campaign gives him an escape hatch, too. If The Apprentice is doomed to a downward ratings glide, a reasonably serious flirtation with a presidential run gives Trump the opportunity to jump to another industry. No matter how cynical his rightward shift — he only registered as a Republican voter in 2009, and there’s no clear precipitating event motivating his political conversion — a stint as a Republican frontrunner is probably enough to guarantee Trump some place in the right-wing media firmament. No matter how questionable Trump’s business acumen, he doesn’t really need a paycheck. He just wants a platform, and this campaign, however frivolous, guarantees him one now and for the foreseeable future.