America’s colleges and universities have long been thought of as bastions of liberalism in an increasingly right-wing nation, and students with conservative leanings claim that their views are often repressed in campus settings. A new seminar at the Jesse Helms Center in North Carolina is teaching students “how to start their own conservative newspapers and opinion journals. And how to pick fights with lefty bogeymen on the faculty and in student government.”
Tag: 05.07.03
Who Stays And Who Goes In Canadian TV?
“There was good news and bad news in the Canadian TV industry yesterday as the Canadian Television Fund announced the recipients of $64.5-million from its Equity Investment Program. The bad news was that dozens of comedies, dramas, specials, children’s shows and movies-of-the-week still won’t make it on air this fall. The good news was that some popular or critically acclaimed shows such as The Red Green Show, The Eleventh Hour and An American in Canada received adequate funding to go to air for the 2003-2004 season.”
Opera For Prudes
An Opera Colorado production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni has been ordered ‘toned down’ after a group of home-schooled students viewed a dress rehearsal, and complained about the overtly sexual nature of a scene in which “a woman – dressed in a one-piece bustier, fishnet stockings, garter belt and high heels – [cavorted] with a sometimes shirtless Don Giovanni.” Since the entire plot of this particular opera is based on the sexual exploits of its title character, one might have expected the company to tell the complainants to get bent. But the president of the company was apparently similarly shocked to discover that there is sex in opera, and ordered that the show be sanitized for audience protection.
Sell Three, Buy One, Everybody’s Happy
Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts took a major step yesterday towards fulfilling its goal of purchasing an 1876 Degas masterpiece entitled Duchessa di Montejasi With Her Daughters Elena and Camilla. The painting is expected to cost between $20 million and $40 million. To raise the money for the purchase, MFA auctioned off three valuable paintings from its permanent collection. “It took just five minutes for the works – two Degas pastels and a Renoir painting – to go, with the pieces approaching Sotheby’s top estimate of $17 million.”
Who Cares If It’s True? It’s Fascinating!
“‘On March 2, 2003, at 4:12 p.m., I disappeared,’ the journal begins. ‘My name is Isabella V. I’m twenty-something, and I am an international fugitive.'” Sound scintillating? It’s the first entry in a fascinating weblog purportedly written by a European heiress fleeing her wealthy and (apparently) powerful family. At this point, the blog is looking an awful lot like a hoax, but that’s really not the point. In an era when news, fiction, entertainment, ‘reality TV,’ and advertising all blur together in disturbing fashion, Isabella’s story is a sign of the synergistic times.
Looters Going After iraq’s Archaeological Sites
The Iraq war has been over for a month, but looters are targeting archaeological sites and carrying off whatever they can find. “This isn’t about museums anymore. This is about the last resource of our history: what’s underneath our soil.”
Unfair Practices or Critical Lack of Cash?
“The Louisville Orchestra’s musicians have asked the National Labor Relations Board to cite the orchestra’s board for unfair labor practices. They allege that — by not paying them or giving them immediate permission to seek other jobs — orchestra management is illegally locking them out… Meanwhile, the orchestra’s cash position is becoming ever more desperate. As of yesterday afternoon, only $3,240 remained in its bank account.”
Crooked Manhattan Dealer Held in Brazil
“An art dealer has been arrested in Brazil on suspicion of selling a stolen Picasso painting for $4.5 million and trying to sell a Monet painting that belonged to a Holocaust victim. French-born Michel Cohen, 49, who owned a gallery on Manhattan’s Madison Avenue before fleeing the US in 2001, was held while the US began extradition proceedings.” The Picasso in question had been loaned to Cohen by a Manhattan gallery in order for him to show it to a prospective buyer, but before the gallery knew what had happened, Cohen had sold the painting in a secret transaction at a Newark airport. He fled the country shortly thereafter.
Elton John To Write Vampire Musical
Elton John has been hired by Warner Bros to write a Broadway musical based on “three of Anne Rice’s best-selling novels about a sauve vampire named Lestat.” John’s longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin will write lyrics.
The All-Female Shakespeare
London’s Globe Theatre is producing Shakespeare with an all-woman cast. “The Globe’s audiences have proved ready to accept all-male productions. Will they feel the same about all-female casts? In our modern culture, one might as well ask whether it is more difficult to accept a woman as chief executive or as wooing partner. Statistics might suggest that it is, but many men and women do accept, and indeed flourish within, these reversals of traditional roleplay.”