“I’ve been on Conan O’Brien like 47 times, and you don’t know who I am, right?”

Marc Maron says this to his veterinarian the opening moments of the first episode of Maron—premiering on IFC tonight at 10 p.m.—in an attempt to impress her as she takes a look at his cat. However, this statement isn’t a fictionalized or even exaggerated part of his new scripted show; Maron has been on O’Brien’s shows more than any other comedian. A veteran in the comedy game, he’s performed stand-up around the country and has recorded specials for HBO and Comedy Central Presents. With a strong cult following backing his popular podcast, a new TV show based on his life, and a memoir, Attempting Normal, released earlier this week, it’s safe to say Maron isn’t an unknown.

“WHAT HAPPENS when a man turns 40?” asks Matthew McConaughey, rocking back and forth in his chair at a hotel suite in downtown Manhattan.

The megawatt Texan grin and good ol’ boy twinkle in his eye—A-list ammo that landed him a string of himbo roles in cookie-cutter romantic comedies like The Wedding Planner, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Failure to Launch, and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past—has metastasized into a penetrating stare. McConaughey is getting existential, y’all. The rocking stops. He leans in.

After a week like this, one gets nostalgic for the days of a cheesy jingle, a dancing cartoon, and a slogan with a smile.

A jarring amount of advertisements in recent days have either been pulled by the companies that commissioned them or incited controversy for offensive content—including glaringly racist lyrics, mockery of suicide, and attempts to make violence against women funny. Here’s a quick tour through the hall of shame.

Gwyneth Paltrow has a movie coming out this weekend, the sure-to-be blockbuster Iron Man 3. Naturally, that means it’s time for the media to obsess over how much they hate her.

There’s a veritable encyclopedia of quotes those who are annoyed by her can cite to prove what they perceive as her unconscionable lack of self-awareness and apparently unstomachable pretentiousness. Perhaps, as Star magazine quoted when naming the Oscar winner the year’s Most Hated Celebrity, it’s when she said, “I’m really fucking good at my job. People who are interesting and good know that, and that’s all that matters,” that irks these malcontents the most. Maybe it was when she proudly asserted, “I am who I am; I can’t pretend to be somebody who makes $25,000 a year,” or “I would rather die than let my kid eat Cup-a-Soup,” that this exceptionally passionate faction of people decided that they just can’t with Gwyneth anymore.

When The Americans debuted on FX earlier this year, the Cold War–set espionage drama, which became as much about the arranged marriage between its main characters Elizabeth (Kerri Russell) and Phillip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) as about their undercover activities, felt like a welcome replacement for Homeland, Showtime’s war-on-terror drama, which started off strong and spun into implausibility in its second season. The Americans could suffer the same fate in its own second season, falling prey to sappy and unconvincing romances and escalating and improbable spy plots. But for now, The Americans’s strong first season offers some potent lessons for how Homeland can recover its footing in its third year.

Most television shows about geopolitics depend on the idea that someone really is trying to destroy the world, and the hero is the only person who recognizes the threat, and who knows how to stop it. It’s a recipe that makes for excellent television drama, but a rather paranoid approach to the world at large, and one that generally makes the case for giving the government more power rather than less to fight the enemies that are all around us. Homeland juiced that equation by making its main character, CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), bipolar so that the people around her saw her erratic behavior and then her mental illness rather than her insight, and doubled her—and our—sense of vindication when her suspicions about Marine turned terrorist Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) were proved right.

Last summer Twitter took a vicious turn with comments on the state of Olympic Gold medal winner Gabby Douglas's hair. The first African-American woman to take home the gold for gymnastics could barely bask in the glory of her win as she dodged focus on the look of her tresses. 

Now Twitter is at again, and this time victim is much younger and even less equipped to fight back against the mean-spirited attacks against her physical appearance. Blue Ivy, the daughter of superstars Jay-Z and Beyoncé made a rare, very public appearance this past weekend at lunch with her parents. While the child is perfectly adorable, she’d clearly spent the day out and about playing. As a result, her massive head of curls were scattered all over her head. The child instantly became the butt of Internet jokes and tweets.

It’s strange that a second-tier superhero like Iron Man—the billionaire playboy, industrialist, super-genius engineer, and all-around über-mensch based on Howard Hughes and conceived at the height of the Cold War—has emerged as Marvel’s cash cow, helping the Iron Man film franchise gross a massive $1.2 billion over two films (along with an additional $1.5 billion worldwide haul for The Avengers, an Iron Man–centric enterprise). Is it because, like his blockbuster compadre Bruce Wayne/Batman, he’s the preeminent technocrat in an increasingly tech-reliant world? Grand patron of individualism? Or an overblown manifestation of the American Dream?

Sure, it’s some of those things. But the main reason why Tony Stark—and his metallic alter ego, Iron Man—has become the most popular superhero property in the game can be chalked up to one thing: the quippy brilliance of Robert Downey Jr.

In a perfect world our first lady would be free to choose her own friends and to define the perfect role models for herself and children, with no one daring to challenge her choices. But it isn’t a perfect world for Michelle Obama, and so her choice of Beyoncé as a friend for herself and a role model for her daughters—and, thus, for young girls around the world--hasn’t been universally applauded.

Unfortunately Beyoncé isn’t exactly helping matters. When Mrs. Carter belted out the classic  “At Last’’ for the first couple at an inaugural ball in 2008, it was clear a strong alliance was on the horizon. The first lady and the popular singing superstar soon formed an unlikely bond that continued to grow through work with the first lady’s fitness program “Let’s Move.’’ The press regularly noted the two trading adoring sentiments, with first lady even taking her daughters to see her friend perform on a few occasions.