Vice President of Business and Culture Dan Gainor appeared on the January 24 broadcast of Headline News' “The Joy Behar Show" to discuss the raunchy new teen drama from MTV “Skins.” Gainor, who appeared on a panel with Tina Wells, CEO of Buzz Marketing Group and Rachel Sklar, editor at large for Mediaite.com, highlighted MTV’s blatant push for ratings and lack of consequences on “Skins.”

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It seems that every year, American pop culture continues to push the envelope of what is acceptable in society, and 2010 was no different. From Cee-Lo Green’s hit “F**k You” to Enrique Iglesias’ new song set to release next year titled, “I’m F**king You” the “F” word is going mainstream. One has to wonder if the media will ask the question: Is there anything attention-seekers won’t include in a song?

Iglesias is an internationally recognized artist famous for his fairly tame, catchy romantic pop tunes, such as the smashing single “Hero” which topped the UK charts in 2001. But just ten years later, Iglesias has decided to seek more fame with a raunchy new song, set to debut in 2011 called “Tonight (I’m F**king You).” The boundary-pushing lyrics include:

Vanity Fair’s attacked conservative men with its latest political satire: a soft-core pornographic, borderline homosexual and obviously photoshopped “Official 2010-2011 Republican Beefcake Calendar.”  Humorous perhaps, but also an attack on those candidates and certainly not the magazine’sfirst jab at Republicans and conservatives.

In an effort to possibly shift “GOP tidal-wave” dialogue or to simply make depressed Democrats laugh, Vanity Fair has showcased a racy, crotch-shot-laden calendar of headline-making GOP men just one week prior to the important 2010 midterm elections. While only a few of the photographs actually improve the image of the Republican men, by making them look extremely masculine with rippling muscles, most of the photos mock the men by photo-shopping their heads onto men in arguably “gay” poses.

Liberals are never so alive as when they’re speaking out against anachronistic straw men. That’s why, in their estimation, the Tea Parties are racist lynch mobs and conservatives who wonder about President Obama’s ties to anti-American radicals are sinister McCarthyites.

So it’s not surprising that The Huffington Post is making a big deal of “Banned Books Week.” The house organ for the self-important Hollywood left – you know, all those “artists” constantly threatened by censorship – featured a string of articles on various aspects of the banned book topic. The week, according to contributor Jonathon Kim, “celebrates the wonderful freedom of being able to read whatever one likes, and reminding us that it's a freedom that must be fought for constantly.” Kim’s article had to do with a new movie about the 1950s obscenity trial of beat poet Allen Ginsburg’s work, “Howl.” (To their sorrow, an awful lot of English majors know first-hand that Ginsburg won.) Elsewhere, HuffPo linked to a New York Times article that suggested “Ten Ways to Celebrate Banned Books Week.” These are for readers to do “with your students, your children and anyone who believes in having ‘the freedom to read.’”Readers can adopt a “challenged” book (one that parents or civic groups have demanded be removed from school or public libraries). They can “create a map of challenges to demonstrate that book bans and challenges are not isolated phenomena, even in the United States.” (In other words, even parents who don’t live in jerkwater conservative areas care what their kids read.)

The popular classifieds website Craigslist may not have a legal liability when it comes to use of its services for sex trafficking and prostitution, but they have a social responsibility to address the issue, Culture and Media Institute Assistant Editor Nathan Burchfiel told CBN's "Newswatch" Sept. 9.

The site recently shut down its "Adult Services" section after 17 state attorneys general sent a letter to the company outlining its role in illegal activities including child prostitution and sex trafficking. The section is no longer available to U.S. users, but Burchfiel pointed out that the change doesn't seem to have had much effect.

"What they've done is blocked off this one section of the site in the United States only, it's still available internationally, and these companies, these businesses that have been advertising essentially prostitution, some of them underage prostitution, illegal sex trafficking, have just moved those ads to different parts of the site," he told anchor Wendy Griffith. "They're still getting up there. They're still really easy to find, frankly."

A Sept. 8 Culture and Media Institute report noted that while Craigslist appears to have addressed the issue, ads for brothels and other "adult services" are still readily available across the site. Dozens of listings appeared in other sections of the Washington, D.C., Craigslist, including numerous ads for business under investigation by local authorities.