{"id":427,"date":"2003-10-27T07:46:32","date_gmt":"2003-10-27T15:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2003\/10\/once_around_the_block\/"},"modified":"2003-10-27T07:46:32","modified_gmt":"2003-10-27T15:46:32","slug":"once_around_the_block","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2003\/10\/once_around_the_block.html","title":{"rendered":"ONCE AROUND THE BLOCK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nice to see one of our strongest political columnists continuing to appear in the arts and
\nculture pages. I’m talking of course about Frank Rich, of The New York Times, who excoriated
\nthe Bush administration Sunday for its sublimely misguided efforts to manage the news, “Why Are We Back in Vietnam?”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A><\/P>
\n

Loved it all, but especially his point that “the first place to look” for the news “is any TV
\nnews show on which [Condoleezza] Rice<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>, [Andrew] Card<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>, Dick Cheney<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>, Colin
\nPowell<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> and Donald Rumsfeld<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> are not appearing.” They get
\ntrotted out for Oprah or Letterman, while real journalists who might ask real questions, like Ted
\nKoppel or the producers of “Frontline,” get stiffed. It’s an obvious point, but somebody needed to
\nsay it — and Rich said it beautifully.<\/P>
\n

Speaking of political columnists, I’d say that David Brooks is still trying to find his rhythm as
\nthe latest addition to The New York Times’s op-ed page. He’s best when his political bias comes
\nwrapped in clever social commentary. Otherwise he tends to go flat. Compare Saturday’s column,
\n“Living in the Age of Edge,”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> about Helmut Newton
\nas the personification of meaningless style, with a recent one about the three faces of the
\nDemocratic Party, “The Good, The
\nBad, The Ugly.”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>
\n<\/FONT><\/EM><\/P>
\n

Just by using that movie clich\u00e9 for a headline (even copy editors on the feature desk know to
\navoid it), he lowers expectations and fills up on conventional wisdom. The column on
\nNewton, though not sterling either, at least draws the interesting conclusion “that of all the human
\ntraits that shape culture and history, the most underappreciated is the power of
\nvacuousness.”<\/P>
\n

Here’s an example of strong writing by Martin Bernheimer on an entirely different subject: the
\nBoston Symphony Orchestra’s concert performance of “Pell\u00e9as et M\u00e9lisande” under principal
\nguest-conductor Bernard Haitink. It’s music
\ncriticism that speaks in real language<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>, conveying real impressions
\nwithout resorting to either the academic jargon of the specialist or the technospeak of overdone
\nscholarship.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nice to see one of our strongest political columnists continuing to appear in the arts and culture pages. I’m talking of course about Frank Rich, of The New York Times, who excoriated the Bush administration Sunday for its sublimely misguided efforts to manage the news, “Why Are We Back in Vietnam?” Loved it all, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-427","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-6T","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}