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December 16, 2003
PURPLE PROSE ALERT #1
My staff of thousands finally came up with a bright idea: Issue a daily or, to make the job less demanding, sort of daily Purple Prose Alert. So here's today's, from the swiftly rising purplemeister David Brooks. He writes this morning that "Bush believes the U.S. has a unique role to play in [the] struggle to complete democracy's triumph over tyranny and so drain the swamp of terror." When the "triumph over tyranny" does "drain the swamp of terror," maybe it will also do a clean-up job on the purplemeister's prose.
POSTSCRIPT: Martin Bernheimer has issued a purple opera alert in his review today of "Benvenuto Cellini" at the Met. He writes that "the conductor James Levine tended to stress the ponderous. Meanwhile, the director Andrei Serban tended to err on the side of whimsy." The whimsy featured a constellation of "fugitives from a commedia dell'arte circus, a corps of angels and archangels plus looming figures of the inquisition. He [also] threw in a couple of nearly naked warrior-youths, flew symbolic commentators on wires, and made dancing, prancing and miming a hectic way of life."
Posted by at December 16, 2003 10:52 AM