An article you may have missed in The New York Times for 30 January made me think of the headline for your BlogRiley entry of 23 December, “All Newspapers Make Mistakes.”

The article is about an e-book reprinting of Abe Rosenthal’s 1965 Thirty-Eight Witnesses: The Kitty Genovese Case. The case was a murder in Forest Hills, NY. It became, now seemingly in part because of Rosenthal’s writings, godsend to a couple of generations of sociologists examining conditions of American urbanites, their isolation & anomie – “callousness” is the word used in this article. It was too good to be untrue. The ghost of K. G. haunted me and surely many others; fifteen years later, I still felt more comfortable walking Sara down Austin Street in daylight (well, it’s also true that Son of Sam murders had occurred nearby, two summers before…).

The e-book is appearing with an introduction that makes no mention of Rosenthal’s – what to call them, distortions? inventions? At any event, I thought that this Paper of Record’s look at its younger self might interest you. I found it very contortionistic & dizzily non-judgmental. It may not make you read the Times and weep, but it may make you shake your head – and shake your head about shaking your head. What a group of journalism folks at Emerson College would make of it, I can only wonder.

Best wishes,

Jonathan

For just one example, America only has 3 cities in the top 100 for opera performances per year, and the tickets usually cost 4 to 5 times more than in Europe.

This abysmal situation will not be changed regardless of who is elected. All of our Presidential candidates are bankrolled by the wealthy and answer to their interests. No candidate will begin movement toward establishing a comprehensive public funding system for the arts like every other developed country has long had. We are not given a choice. And of course, we will hear virtually nothing about this even on NPR.