“For every yin, there’s a yang, and in this case, the yang involves snobbery, asinine arguments about everything from marriage to Brooklyn DIY, another page for the ‘Gavin McInnes is the worst’ annual, and the ongoing misogynist temper tantrum of #Gamergate.”
Category: issues
“One Of The Most Bizarre Cultural-Political Episodes Of Recent History”
Andrew O’Hehir: “Let me see if I have this right, because the whole thing stretches credulity: North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has apparently managed to kill a major Hollywood movie. … We had a choice – ‘we’ being a term of art that does not actually include you and me – of whether to stand tall for the supposed principles of free expression and free enterprise or ‘let the terrorists win.’ We let them win, with barely a moment’s hesitation. … It’s a breathtaking and total victory by a despised, isolated and impoverished nation (or by those acting on its behalf), over one of the biggest media corporations in the world.”
North Korea Is Not Funny, And “The Interview” Is Not Brave
Adrian Hong, co-founder of the refugee rescue organization Liberty in North Korea: “It takes no valor and costs precious little to joke about these things safely oceans away from North Korea’s reach. … To pretend that punchlines from afar, even in the face of hollow North Korean threats, are righteous acts is nonsense.”
U.S. Gov’t Should Pay Costs Of Releasing “The Interview” (Argues Pundit)
Jonathan Chait: “We don’t entrust for-profit entities with the common defense. And recognizing that the threat to a Sony picture is actually a threat to the freedom of American culture ought to lead us to a public rather than a private solution. … Either Washington should guarantee Sony’s financial liability in the event of an attack, or it should directly reimburse the studio’s projected losses so it can release the movie online for free.”
‘Tis The Season For Kitsch (So Here’s Why Kitsch Is Bad – And Good)
“Kitsch, in other words, is not about the thing observed but about the observer. It does not invite you to feel moved by the doll you are dressing so tenderly, but by yourself dressing the doll. All sentimentality is like this – it redirects emotion from the object to the subject, so as to create a fantasy of emotion without the real cost of feeling it.”
Arts Council England’s New CEO: Boss Of UK’s Classic FM
“Arts Council England has appointed the managing director of Classic FM, the music radio station, to be its next chief executive. Darren Henley will take over at the country’s main arts funding body in 2015, replacing Alan Davey, who leaves after seven years in the role” to become controller of the BBC’s classical network, Radio 3.
Have We Been Trying To Understand Race In The Wrong Way?
The authors argue that “quantitative researchers should acknowledge that any one person’s racial identity is more like a collection of many different factors — from skin color, to neighborhood, to language, to socioeconomic status. With this insight, it becomes possible to study race not as a single, unchanging variable, but rather as a “a bundle of sticks” that can be pulled apart and carefully examined one by one.”
Romancing The Audience (More Than Putting On A Good Show)
“In my experience as a reviewer, one of the biggest mistakes that performers and presenters can make is not respecting their audience. They make it a show all about themselves instead of seeing themselves as a vehicle of interpretation.”
Software Glitch Drops Amazon UK Marketplace Prices To One Penny; Sellers Panic
“There were Christmas shopping bargains galore on Amazon’s website over the weekend … for about an hour. Because of a technical glitch, the prices of thousands of items crashed to 1p – giving eagle-eyed customers a pre-Christmas treat while leaving scores of small family-owned businesses nursing heavy losses, with some warning they could enter the new year facing closure.”
Atlanta’s Woodruff Arts Center Receives Largest-Ever Gift, $38 Million
The grant from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation includes $25 million for the endowment (pledged as matching funds) and $13 million for capital improvements, in particular at the Alliance Theatre. (The Woodruff also includes the Atlanta Symphony, which locked out its musicians for the first nine weeks of this season, and the High Museum of Art .)