“A new noise reduction law that took effect New Year’s Day prohibits amplifiers and requires buskers to move along every two hours and stay 75 yards away from the next crooner. Musicians also must now pass an audition to be granted a free, one-year renewable permit to perform outdoors. Those who don’t pass muster could face fines for disturbing the peace.”
Category: issues
French Interior Minister OKs Banning Comic for Antisemitism
“Interior Minister Manuel Valls said he had advised local prefects of police that Dieudonné’s shows could be banned if they are deemed to present a threat to public order” – and one mayor has already done so. “But a ban is complicated legally in light of France’s powerful constitutional provisions on the freedom of speech.”
Having Been Banned for Alleged Antisemitism, French Comedian Threatens To Sue
“The French comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, who has become notorious for vitriolic outbursts against Jews and use of the controversial quenelle – allegedly a quasi-Nazi salute – threatened legal action on Monday after officials banned his show.”
California’s Incubator For Tech Innovators Discovers The Arts
“California’s famous innovation factory, which counts Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Reed Hastings of Netflix, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger of Instagram, and Peter Thiel of PayPal among its alumni, has discovered that arts are the future.”
Baby Boomer Culture – Defined By Narcissism?
” I read the other day that a “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids” lunch box from 1973 now sells for $1,200—and that the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History owns one. I’m not quite sure which of those facts makes me sadder.”
Censorship Takes Away The Gay In Egyptian Film
“When Hany Fawzy finished editing ‘Family Secrets’, he thought he had made one of the first Egyptian films to focus primarily on homosexuality. Then Egypt’s censors watched it.”
Star Trek Pioneered A Lot Of Things On TV, Including Sex With Aliens
These episodes of the original Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation “may have allowed viewers to reconsider knee-jerk and intolerant positions on sexual difference; as we see the pain caused by intolerance, we have a chance to rethink our positions.”
South Africa Shrugs as Performance Artists Try to Turn It Avant-Garde
“Performance artists confront an extra dose of bewilderment in South Africa, a nation less accustomed to the whimsical world of public and performance art than the U.S. or Europe.”
South Africa Shrugs as Performance Artists Try to Turn It Avant-Garde
“Performance artists confront an extra dose of bewilderment in South Africa, a nation less accustomed to the whimsical world of public and performance art than the U.S. or Europe.”
Coughing As Performance Vandalism
“In this anything-goes age, it seems as if coughing in concerts is fast becoming one of the last universally reviled forms of high-culture hooliganism.”