Category: issues

Why is there this sudden desire to reevaluate Moses? New York was at its nadir in the early ’70s when Caro wrote his book. It was almost as if people thought, ‘Who can we blame for this?’ Now that the city has made a remarkable turnaround, it’s as if people want to ask, ‘Who made this possible?’ The answer, again, is Robert Moses.”

What’s all this about Arts Council England soliciting policy help from the public? “Art can only do the thing politicians and arts wonks most dream about – bring people together – if it works. And the only art that really works has been created for its own sake, rather than to achieve some spooky form of social engineering. It’s all very well to deride art for art’s sake, but abandon the creative impulse altogether, and you’re lost.”

“Why is the all-American hyper-masculine ideal taken to such a laughable extreme in rap culture? Who is to blame for co-opting the African-American self-image, and what’s being done, in more recent hip-hop artistic trends, to stop the self-deprecation? Byron Hurt makes the case that hip-hop’s emphasis on hypermasculinity has roots in American pop culture in general.”

Many of the best and brightest who returned to the city after Katrina are giving up. “Their reasons include high crime, high rents, soaring insurance premiums and what many call a lack of leadership, competence, money and progress. In other words: yes, it is still bad down here. But more damning is what many of them describe as a dissipating sense of possibility, a dwindling chance at redemption for a great city that, even before the storm, cried out for great improvement.”

Contemporary philosophers, preoccupied with their small quarrels, have abandoned the discussion of beauty to the likes of Elaine Scarry and Denis Donoghue and their colleagues in art and English departments. It should come as little surprise, then, that beauty has been smuggled back into philosophy by Alexander Nehamas, a professor of philosophy at Princeton, whose previous books have made wideranging inquiries into what he calls “the art of living.”

Bootleg DVDs, CDs, prescription drugs and other merchandise such as handbags cost nine industries across Los Angeles County more than 100,000 jobs and about $5.2 billion in lost sales in 2005. The study lists the motion picture industry as accounting for about half the losses — $2.7 billion — followed by the recording industry, which sustained $850 million in losses.

“The proposal to increase arts and festival funding by $2.5 million over the next four years would bring municipal funding in Ottawa closer to what other Canadian cities spend. The plan passed easily, but it still needs final approval during budget deliberations at the end of the month.”

Why is the Bush administration making it it difficult for foreign scholars to get into the United States? “The administration, instead of instilling confidence that it knows what it is doing to stop foreign visitors from harming us, invites cynicism when it bars scholars who wish to enter this country for legitimate academic reasons. With these decisions, it hampers our ability to learn from those whose experiences and knowledge can enrich our understanding of vital issues.”

“Love in the 21st Century is a joke. It’s a scam. It’s a punch line in a sitcom. It’s an e-mail with a lame smiley face in place of an original phrase. It’s a hasty text message (LUV U) with a hieroglyph where your heart ought to be. When it comes to love, nobody knows what to say or to write anymore. Are we too busy? Too preoccupied? Yes, love is a many splendored thing, but these days that just sounds like more multitasking.”

The coalition of media companies says Canada has failed to update copyright and should be sanctioned by the Bush administration. “The time has come for the United States to send a stern warning to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, which has failed to deliver on a promised overhaul of copyright laws and a policing crackdown, said the Washington-based group that represents companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Paramount Pictures.”