Category: issues

Laureano Marquez — one of Venezuela’s leading humorists — has been fined for a funny column he wrote about the country’s president Hugo Chavez. He “denies any wrongdoing and argues the $18,600 (U.S.) fine imposed on the Mosca Analfabeta publisher is part of a government initiative in which pro-Chavez prosecutors and judges are being used to silence critics. Mr. Marquez must separately pay a fine of a yet-to-be-determined amount.”

Many have studied and thought about how to rebuild the torn city. “Their collected opinions became part of a $14 billion proposal, rolled out by planners and New Orleans officials on Jan. 29, to avert abandonment of their hurricane-shrunken home. But this long-anticipated Unified New Orleans Plan (UNOP), like others before it, lacks the vision — and teeth — to save the city.”

The Dixie Chicks “beat back the campaign by conglomerate radio chains to obliterate them and did it with little support from fellow artists, who apparently feared getting Dixie-Chicked themselves. The band reinvented itself, taking on a pop style, reclaiming some old fans and finding new ones — a lot of them. Meanwhile, Mr. Bush’s polls plummeted to Nixonian levels. Suddenly, the industry found the courage to really, really like them again.”

A well-known San Francisco street performer quits the city, saying it’s changed. “When the $460 million expansion of the Westfield San Francisco Centre is positioned as a major cultural event, and the downtown landscape is redefined by a Four Seasons Hotel and the Apple store and other high-end establishments, it’s inevitable that a lot of hand-to-mouth artists like Edward Jackson get forced out.”

Researchers estimate that the average city dweller is exposed to 5,000 ads per day, up from 2,000 per day three decades ago. So what exactly do advertisers expect to get for all this messaging?

It’s a cliche, it is: “That’s right: ‘Americans don’t do irony.’ This isn’t strictly true. Although it is true that we British do use irony a little more often than our special friends in the US. It’s like the kettle to us: it’s always on, whistling slyly in the corner of our daily interactions. To Americans, however, it’s more like a nice teapot, something to be used when the occasion demands it. This is why an ironic comment will sometimes be met with a perplexed smile by an unwary American.”

Italy has upped arts funding 17% to a total Euros 441 million ($573 million) for 2007 in the first tangible sign of the center-left government’s more pro-arts stance compared with the days when Silvio Berlusconi ran the country.

Iran is, as the Iranian anthropologist Ziba Mir-Hosseini puts it, ‘a state at war with itself.’ Inside Iran there is astruggle for cultural progressive values. So why has the American progressive Left been so quiet in taking sides? “An unwillingness to extend support to the Iranian opposition puts into question any claim to internationalism, solidarity against oppression, or defense of intellectual freedom.”

“It’s disappointing to see the Administration propose zeroing out funding for the seventh consecutive year to the Department of Education’s arts education programs,” said Americans for the Arts President and CEO Robert Lynch. “One of the best ways to nurture creativity, a necessity to prepare for a 21st Century workforce, is to have children learn and actively participate in the arts.”

The chairman of the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s board is standing behind the center’s president, one day after published reports quoted former OCPAC staffers criticizing his leadership and blaming him for a series of high-level departures. “Many of those who have left were fundraisers; besides needing more than $10 million in yearly donations to balance its operating budget, the center is in a difficult campaign, still $75 million short of its goal, to fund the $237.5-million expansion.”