Slate's Culture Gabfest on the VMAs, Machete and adult ads on Craigslist.

Slate's Culture Gabfest on the VMAs, Machete and adult ads on Craigslist.

Slate's Culture Gabfest on the VMAs, Machete and adult ads on Craigslist.

Slate's weekly roundtable.
Sept. 15 2010 11:08 AM

The Culture Gabfest, "Toast to the Douchebags" Edition

Listen to Slate's show about the VMAs, Machete, and the rest of week in culture.

1_123125_2187915_080423_cgf_header

The Culture Gabfest has moved! Find new episodes here.

Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 104 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

You can also download the program  here, or you can subscribe to the weekly Culture Gabfest podcast feed  via iTunes or directly with our   RSS feed. Find the Culturefest Facebook page   here. Leave us a note and see what other listeners have to say about the latest podcast.

This episode is brought to you by Carbonite, the leader in online backup. Carbonite backs up your files automatically, whenever you connect to the Internet. Try Carbonite for free. Go to  Carbonite.com, and enter offer code SLATE. If you decide to buy the service (after the trial), you'll get two months free with offer code SLATE.

In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner are joined by Slate's Jody Rosen to discuss Kanye West's VMA face-off with Taylor Swift. They also assess the new Robert Rodriguez film Machete and Craigslist's decision to pull its adult services ads.

Here are some links to the things we discussed this week:

Watch Kanye's and Taylor Swift's performances at this year's Video Music Awards here.
Kanye apologizes to Taylor Swift on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.
Kanye's Twitter feed.
The official Web site for Robert Rodriguez's latest film, Machete.
Zombie film star extraordinaire and makeup artist Tom Savini's Wikipedia page.
Thoughts from a former Craigslist sex worker in the Huffington Post.

The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:

Dana's pick: The Room by Tommy Wiseau and the Harper's article "Cinema Crudite" by Tom Bissell.
Julia's pick: Taylor Swift's new single "Mine."
Steve's pick: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl and read by Eric Idle.

Watch June and Dana's video endorsement:

Outro: Taylor Swift's "Mine"

You can e-mail us at culturefest@slate.com.

Posted on Sept. 15 by Jesse Baker at 11:09 a.m.

Like Slate on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

Stephen Metcalf is Slate’s critic at large. He is working on a book about the 1980s.

Jody Rosen is critic at large for T: The New York Times Style Magazine.

Dana Stevens is Slate’s movie critic.

Julia Turner, the former editor in chief of Slate, is a regular on Slate’s Culture Gabfest podcast.