Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Manhattan Muffdiver

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A new novel hits the bookshelves in Vienna, and the Austrian television network ORF interviews the author on the news. Try getting a novelist interviewed on the evening news in America. Never happen. Besides, we’re talking about a book called Manhattan Muffdiver, not exactly a title that U.S. network censors would approve. It’s not altogether […]

Cue ‘Ah POOK,’ ‘THE UNSPEAKABLE MR HART’

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“Watchmen,” the movie, caused a stir at the box office when its opening weekend nabbed $55 million, the highest opening gross of the year and third-highest March opening ever. It’s a shame that none of the money will trickle down to the artist Malcolm Mc Neill, whose image of the Mayan Death God (right) in […]

Boris Lurie, R.I.P.

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The epigraph on “NO!art MAN,” a major 2001 documentary about Boris Lurie, who died earlier this month, says it all: “In a time of wars and extermination, aesthetic exercises and decorative patterns are not enough.” Those are Lurie’s words, and now they might as well serve as his epitaph. obit by Colin Moynihan in The […]

Before I Forget

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Here’s a tale you won’t find in It was the winter of 1970, probably in February. I’m not sure of the exact date. It must have been around the time that Tom Hayden and four others of the Chicago Seven were convicted of inciting a riot in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic Convention. The place […]

Mad Magazine + Tom Hayden = SDS

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“Students for a Democratic Society, A Graphic History,” a new book due out in January from Hill and Wang. “My own radical journey began with Harvey Pekar and comics and politics at The Graduate Center, CUNY, on Monday — Dec. 10 — which also marks International Amnesty International Global Write-a-Thon. Pekar is best known for […]

Playwright Sends a Letter: Tenenbom vs. The Times

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First he took on the Polish government, which claims he’s he denies. Now he’s taking on a bigger fish — The New York Times, which has declined to review his play. open letter to news media, Tuvia Tenenbom accuses The Times of doing “the Polish government’s bidding … by refusing to allow Times critics to […]

John Bryan, RIP

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They left 12 roses on his doorstep along with half of their kidnap victim’s California driver’s license. He was grateful for the roses. “They could have been 12 bullets,” he said. The kidnappers were the Symbionese Liberation Army. The license belonged to Patty Hearst. The year was 1974. The roses were both a warning and […]

2007: Time for Him to Go

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It’s the new year, so nu? What’s the point of leaving Bullshitter-in-Chief and his aaaeulc. reported this morning in The New York Times, make it doubtful. “What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win, not how we’re going to leave,” he is quoted as warning the military’s top brass. He […]

VPo + America – Blacks = (Classical Music x Cultural Racism)²

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Having taken William Osborne Given the many European press reports about the Vienna Philharmonic’s sexism and racism — see articles in Profil magazine for two recent examples — one might ask why the orchestra continues to be euphorically received in the United States. How can we explain that the Philharmonic’s sexist and racist employment practices are […]

MOCKING THE VICTIMS

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Slate “Orphaned,” about children victimized by Hurricane Katrina. On the right is the opposite page, the first of four luxurious pages advertising Eileen Fisher “Alive in the World” clothing that were sandwiched inside DeParle’s piece. “New Orleans was always a place of unsettling juxtapositions,” DeParle writes. So, apparently, is the print edition of the magazine. […]

MASTER OF THE COSMODEMONIC

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Somehow in all the reports I’ve seen about Western Union’s last telegram (sent on Jan. 27) and the end of an era, there was the usual chronicle of Samuel Morse and the invention of the telegraph, and Henry Miller. “The Tropic of Capricorn.” Describing his experience as employment manager for New York’s messenger department, he […]

YEAH, THE HOLOCAUST REALLY HAPPENED

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The hidebound circle jerks of the Vienna Philharmonic, whose long-buried historical relationship with the Holocaust still has contemporary echoes. For instance, at Bruckner-Konservatorium) in Linz (Hitler’s hometown), not far from Vienna, the big concert hall is named for Wilhelm Jerger, who was director of the conservatory until 1973. Jerger, right — a contrabassist in the […]

NASTY BUT NECESSARY

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We hesitate to use the infamous Goering remark about deceitful leaders and the ease with which they’re able to mislead a nation into war while denouncing their critics as unpatriotic, not only because it’s already been seen many times but because it draws a very nasty comparison between 21st-century America and the Nazi Germany of […]

ANTHEM FOR AMERICA

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Wrapping up the week’s nervous breakdown, we bring you TwinPak. With Tom Delay coming to a head as Libby face possible indictment, a Harriet Miers debacle and her Congressional protection for the gun industry now achieved by the NRA, FEMA’s negligence and incompetence “some background noise here,” we think of Mustill’s score as a fitting […]

MILTON GLASER ♥ DISSENT

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To keep Independence Day from becoming a more empty patriotic ritual than usual, let’s celebrate the hearty dissenter Milton Glaser, designer of many famous logos and symbols such as interviewed on PBS’s “NOW” about the “Design of Dissent Exhibit” at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and his and Mirko Ilic’s new book, […]

NOSTALGIA BUG: ‘UNCLE BILL’ BURROUGHS

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When I was looking at my old Bob Woodward interview, some of which I posted because it seemed, uh, timely, I saw another old interview I did — this one with Bill Burroughs. I thought you’d find it interesting. Here’s part of it: Your books are filled with gun lore. What spurred your interest in […]

FRYING LYNNE STEWART

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By Jan Herman Americans less brave than Lynne Stewart — which, frankly, means the rest of us — are easily cowed. It doesn’t take much to scare the shit out of people. As William Burroughs once wrote, “anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death,” and Dear Leader owns the biggest frying pan […]

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