Category: issues

“Explaining all the way, my father introduced his children to Shakespeare, play by play, as well as to classic Westerns. He explained each and every joke in each and every Gilbert and Sullivan operetta (“You shall sit, if he sees reason, through the grouse and salmon season!”). He read aloud an astonishing number of the works of P.G. Wodehouse, explaining the jokes, however inappropriate.”

“In recent days, it was announced that a graduate program in theater at Harvard would suspend admissions for the next three years after receiving a so-called failing grade from the Department of Education that could result in a loss of access to federal student loans. The finding, which I first read about in the Boston Globe, should be a shot across the bow for elitist arts programs with high tuitions, programs that long have ignored the realistic economic prospects of their graduates.”

“In the non-profit sector, 75 percent of all workers and volunteers are women. Yet somehow only 45 percent of women will go on to secure a top position at any of these organizations, and only 21 percent of these CEOs will have access to budgets of $25 million or more. So what gives?”

“Around 2,000 people leave each year. If we go on this way, in a few years’ time Venice will only be populated by tourists. This would be a social, anthropological and historical disaster.” Whether irritated by selfie sticks, noisy wheelie suitcases or people snacking on one of the 391 bridges, Venetians’ contempt towards the 28 million visitors who flood the city each year has reached alarming levels.

Yikes: “The educational loophole has left Canada with the reputation of being lax on copyright; publishers as venerable as Oxford University Press have simply stopped publishing Canadian schoolbooks because they view this market as too risky.”

The problem isn’t necessarily The Big Sick or Master of None but that South Asian women don’t have enough representation on screens big or small. “The word ‘erasure’ comes up frequently in the criticism, and it’s neither new nor unfounded.”

This was “after a joke that dubbed Fox News ‘not racist, but No. 1 with racists,'” the creator of The Simpsons said. “‘Then Bill O’Reilly called us pinheads and look what happened,’ Groening added.”

Yes, another study found that it’s large, mostly white organizations. And whoa, the disparities: “The study found that organizations focused on communities of color make up 25 percent of all arts nonprofits but receive just 4 percent of all foundation giving.”

“Prop. 1 is the culmination of a decade-plus struggle to pass a state law allowing counties to tax themselves for arts and culture education, and asks voters to approve a sales tax of 0.1 percent — a penny for every $10 — to support arts, culture and science access and education. In the campaign’s projections, that means $30 a year for a household with an income of $80,000. That might sound like a small ask, but Prop. 1 is provoking a large debate about our state’s tax system and whether this measure asks voters to make an either/or choice about funding priorities: homelessness or culture education? Mental-health services or the Wing Luke Museum?”