Editorials
525 results
Page 23
Candidates as performers
What Kasich should have said to Trump
Presidential debates make great theater, but great performers don’t necessarily make great administrators. Consider a recent exchange between the glib Donald Trump and the earnest John Kasich.
Editorials
4 minute read
The Inquirer‘s ‘Lenfest solution’
The education of Gerry Lenfest
The civic savior Gerry Lenfest has implemented an ingenious plan to preserve Philadelphia’s leading news organization. What could possibly go wrong? Just one or two little things. . . .
Editorials
6 minute read
When writers get angry
How I handled Ernest Hemingway
BSR's writers are up in arms over our arbitrary payment policies. But things were even worse when I was editor, as a glimpse at my private emails will attest.
Editorials
5 minute read
A ‘Messiah’ for Philadelphians
Handel without hyperbole
Just in time for Christmas: A libretto for Handel’s Messiah that self-deprecating Philadelphians can sing without embarrassment.
Editorials
3 minute read
The age of the antihero
Trump and Cruz: Stranger than fiction
The two most abrasive Republican presidential candidates now rank first and second in the polls. The only two grown-ups in the group are struggling in the rear. Welcome to the age of the antihero.
Editorials
4 minute read
Theater critics and H.L. Mencken
The past is a foreign country (thank God)
Do you remember the Golden Age of Arts Journalism? Neither do I. As H.L. Mencken’s memoir reminds us, back in the supposed good old days, most newspaper arts critics were drunk most of the time, and with good reason.
Editorials
5 minute read
Woodrow Wilson — scapegoat?
Wilson and Princeton: Perfect together
Princeton University’s current Woodrow Wilson controversy provides a convenient distraction from the larger issue, which is not Wilson’s racial bigotry but the exclusionary culture that until recently characterized Princeton University itself.
Editorials
6 minute read
An open letter to ISIS
Dear ISIS: Don’t shoot— I give up!
To ISIS I say: We Americans are just as angry as you are. So why not reach out to us? The results may surprise you!
Editorials
5 minute read
Tony Lyle: The Don Quixote of academia
Penn’s unreasonable man, R.I.P.
As editor of Penn’s alumni magazine, the late Tony Lyle was a difficult boss who often fired staffers for failing to live up to his impossibly high standards. He also produced a superb magazine for 24 years before he himself was fired.
Editorials
6 minute read
Presidential debates as improv theater
If 12 candidates were stranded on a desert island…
The trouble with the Republican presidential debates so far is that they haven’t really been debates — more like multiple press conferences. If the moderators would get out of the way and just let the candidates argue among themselves, we’d get much more useful insight.
Editorials
5 minute read