‘The Tension Between Taylor Swift’s Legs and the Arctic Melt Is Not Just a Journalistic Problem, It’s a Problem for Our Society’

IDEAS Posted: March 6, 2014 12:59 am

So said Alain de Botton in a talk at the Brooklyn Academy of Music about the way we consume news today.

Facebook

Twitter

Weekend Listening With Jim Wilke
Now and then, Rifftides alerts readers to Jim Wilke’s Jazz Northwest, the program in which the veteran broadcaster presents his recordings of the region’s jazz artists. Jim’s long-running Sunday series has become ... read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2018-06-22
BlogBacks: Cultural Property Lawyer Rick St. Hilaire & Getty Spokesperson Ron Hartwig on the Getty Bronze
Cultural property lawyer (and blogger) Ricardo St. Hilaire responds to Antiquities Ambiguities: Parsing the Legal Arguments in the Battle of the Getty Bronze. Ricardo St. Hilaire I’m glad you are covering this case. Cases in ... read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrlPublished 2018-06-22
The Mint quarries another gem
In today’s Wall Street Journal, I review the U.S. premiere of Miles Malleson’s Conflict, first staged in London in 1925 and never performed since then. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Forty-nine years after his ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-06-22
Replay: Richard Wilbur and Robert Lowell read and talk about their work
Richard Wilbur and Robert Lowell read and talk about their work on an undated episode of USA: Poetry, originally telecast by NET, the predecessor of PBS, in 1966: (This is the latest in a ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-06-22
Replay: Terence Rattigan’s French Without Tears
Anthony Asquith’s 1940 film version of Terence Rattigan’s French Without Tears, adapted by Anatole de Grunewald and Ian Dalrymple from Rattigan’s play and starring Ray Milland and Ellen Drew: (This is the latest in ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-06-22
Almanac: William Haggard on well-made plays
“He liked a play to have a beginning and a middle and an end; he liked to spot the crises, to recognize a craftsman at his business of constructing craftily; he like a firm ending, ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-06-22
When Grant Green Got Funky
Grant Green, From Paris To Antibes (1969-1970) (Resonance) Grant Green, Slick! Live At Oil Can Harry’s, (Resonance) Two previously unissued Grant Green albums are giving the guitarist’s music something of a comeback. Green, ... read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2018-06-21
Antiquities Ambiguities: Parsing the Legal Arguments in the Battle of the Getty Bronze
Italian Judge Giacomo Gasparini‘s June 8 decision giving the laurel wreath to Team Italy in the Olympian legal contest over the Getty Bronze seems to me persuasively well-reasoned (although awkwardly worded in the Getty’s 46-page ... read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrlPublished 2018-06-21
Martin Amis on Poetry and Posterity
AS smart and funny as his novels are, Martin Amis is a devastatingly good essayist as well. I spoke to him recently about his latest collection, The Rub of Time, which assembles several decades ... read more
AJBlog: CultureCrashPublished 2018-06-21
On the front lines of Culture War II
In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I report on an on-stage culture clash that I witnessed last week in St. Louis. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Culture War II, in which “woke” progressives ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-06-21
So you want to see a show?
Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-06-21
Almanac: Dr. Johnson on cant
“My dear friend, clear your mind of cant. You may talk as other people do. You may say to a man, ‘Sir, I am your most humble servant.’ You are not his most humble servant. ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-06-21
Snapshot: Stan Freberg’s “Little Blue Riding Hood”
Stan Freberg, Daws Butler and June Foray perform “Little Blue Riding Hood,” Freberg’s parody of Jack Webb’s Dragnet, on an unidentified 1953 telecast: (These are the latest in a series of arts- and history-related ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-06-20
Almanac: William Haggard on shoptalk
“Shop fascinated her, for she knew that most men were interesting only when they were talking it. As long as one hadn’t heard it all that fatal time too often. And behind the technicalities were ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-06-20
Two-Phase Engagement
Community engagement practitioners are frequently asked to justify their work using traditional arts marketing/development metrics: ticket sales and donations. Don’t get ahead of me. This is not a touchy-feely objection to practical outcomes. Ticket sales ... read more
AJBlog: Engaging MattersPublished 2018-06-19
The Crossing’s Month of Moderns : A masterwork is born by Benjamin C.S. Boyle
Poet Hart Crane, 1899-1932 The great but tragic American poet Hart Crane (1899-1932) can’t help but exert a magnetic attraction to composers with his fusion of lyricism, modernism and mad, extravagant fantasy. Of course, no ... read more
AJBlog: Condemned to MusicPublished 2018-06-19
Verdi v Shakespeare? Falstaff’s no contest
Garsington Opera, Bucks. Verdi’s Falstaff seems a modern piece to me; despite its première being 1893, it feels as musically up-to-date as say, Puccini’s 1926 Turandot. Verdi knew what was up in music. Before ... read more
AJBlog: Plain EnglishPublished 2018-06-19
El Paso, Kurt Weill, and Tornillo’s Tent City
Readers of this blog may remember my last filing from El Paso – a “Kurt Weill’s America” festival, part of the NEH-supported “Music Unwound” consortium I direct, that ignited a week of discussion and ... read more
AJBlog: Unanswered QuestionPublished 2018-06-19
Celebrating Carl Weissner, Buk, and Burroughs
They say Berlin is the place to be. Since I can’t be there myself, here’s the next best thing . . . This is the Maher-Mahler film about Carl that will be screened ... read more
AJBlog: Straight|UpPublished 2018-06-19
Lookback: on fact checking and fact checkers
From 2003: As anyone knows who’s been in journalism for more than the past 20 minutes or so, fact checking is an increasingly lost art. Time was when many magazines—if not most—rigorously checked every factual ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-06-19

Older posts