Later today, ArtsJournal editor Doug McLennan will post a commentary on American and European cultural funding by William Osborne, the composer-social activist-musicologist whose “downtown” music will be performed Tuesday at REDCAT in Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Hall complex in Los Angeles. The commentary is typical of Osborne — probing, thorough, scholarly and provocative. Get a preview of it now: “Marketplace […]

Reflecting on Ernest Hemingway’s “fierce and foul-mouthed tirade” against his literary rivals in a 1925 letter going on the auction block, a reader who calls himself Clark Kent writes: Hemingway’s letters — 900 pages or so, and a hell of a lot left out — are great fun. He’s relaxed, funny, mean-spirited, paranoid, vicious when […]

The inaugural season at the Walt Disney Concert Hall is not all Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic or, for example, Alfred Brendal and Midori giving separate Beethoven recitals. Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins get into act. Even Arlo Guthrie and the Klezmatics made it onto the hall’s eclectic schedule.But for cutting-edge music, dance […]

Our famously disengaged Maximum Leader may be a know-nothing statesman, but when it comes to getting elected, Elisabeth Bumiller reports, “Friends who have talked with the president in recent weeks say he is consumed by the campaign, the polls and Mr. Kerry.” With all due respect for the office Bush holds but none for the office-holder and […]

Urban legends and similar inventions have to start somewhere. But tracing how they began is usually guess work and finding the identity of their authors generally leads to a dead end. So it was a pleasure to hear from George Hunka, who nailed down the origin and source of the anonymously written list in Newspaper Wit […]

Terry Teachout blogged about Wednesday night’s ArtsJournal.com gathering at the Landmark Tavern in Manhattan. It would be nice if the site’s future turns out as predicted in his report.Here’s what The New York Sun reported Friday in The Knickerbocker column.

A reader writes: “I don’t know where this is from, but I thought you’d enjoy it.” Pentagon officials now believe they have been unable to locate Osama Bin Laden because he has been hiding in a place where: 1. It’s easy to get in if you have the money;2. No one will recognize or remember […]

We know there’s nothing new under the sun. Ditto on the Internet. < FONT color=#003399>Newspaper Wit and Wisdom turns out to have been around for years with minor variations and some additions, i.e.: “The Seattle Times is read by people who spill coffee all over it.” But the basic list was posted on Sept. 17, 2000, […]

This “reader-response criticism” of the daily press just arrived in an e-mail message, and it’s too good not to share: 1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should […]

by Jan Herman To extol the virtues of the Internet is to report the obvious: It’s old news. But every day brings a fresh reminder of its value. Have a look at Newsweek.com’s slide show of an exhibition at the AXA Gallery in New York called “They Still Draw Pictures: Children’s Art in Wartime from the […]

It’s good to see The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg back in top form. He’s not the first to argue that Ralph Nader shouldn’t run for president — it’s hard to be first in a weekly magazine — but he marshals his reasons, while still heaping praise on Nader, with a cogency I haven’t read elsewhere. … […]

Speaking of the Times … it ain’t easy reporting the Oscar show, as Sharon Waxman proved with her deadline coverage. She got Peter Jackson’s nationality wrong, calling him an Australian — all those New Zealand jokes notwithstanding. She got the number of Sean Penn’s Oscar nominations wrong. It’s four, not three. Trivial errors to be sure. […]

A friend of mine just took a drive from New York’s Adirondacks to South Carolina and back. He says one thing he noticed is that conversation in America boils down to the three “g”s — God, Gays and Guns. “Wherever I went that’s all people were talking about.” He also noticed that Americans are wearing […]

What everybody is saying about Sunday night’s Oscar show is true. Have you ever seen a duller one? We knew we were in for a long evening when the opening number was a never-ending showcase for Billy Crystal’s mediocre song-and-dance talent instead of a stand-up spritz of fabulous zingers. When the most interesting guy on […]

The New York Times Book Review ought to get an editor — fast. Somebody’s not minding the store. What’s wrong in this sentence? “She is equally ferocious when she expresses her disgust with consolidated radio empires and the ludicrosities of the F.C.C itself.” The noun, as far as I know, is ludicrousness. It’s not a […]

Apropos last Tuesday’s item, Blood Money, which claimed that Mel Gibson’s “Passion” and the call for a Constitution amendment banning gay marriage signaled “a perverse cultural moment,” a reader from Florida writes: “I just don’t see the connection between Gibson and anti-gay marriage movement, aside of the fact they fall under the ‘things Jan Herman […]