Lots of people are talking about Lady Gaga's new video for her song "Judas," including the creative director who worked on the project and the Catholic League, which is up in arms like usual. They disagree on the video's message, but there's one thing everyone will soon be able to agree on: Lady Gaga is ripping off Madonna again.
You know that prayer that begins "God grant me the serenity" etc. etc. (surely it rings a bell among the alkies in our audience)? It was composed in the 1940s by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Everyone knows this! Except some Yale librarian has found records of people (all ladies!) quoting the prayer back in the 1930s! So now there's this argument about it, because Niebuhr's daughter has apparently been eating out on this Serenity Prayer thing for years (she wrote a memoir and everything). That daughter is editor and publisher Elisabeth Sifton, as today's Times story on the controversy notes. What the Times story does not note is that Elisabeth is the mother of New York Times culture editor Sam Sifton. [NYT via Doree]
