Editorials
533 results
Page 24
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
The Orchestra and the Eagles
It ain’t the talent— it’s the chemistry
What do the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Philadelphia Eagles have in common? Both are discovering that, in music as in sports, hiring talent is the easy part. The trick is getting great performers to play together.
Editorials
5 minute read
Blood, destiny, and ‘Disgraced’
You’ve got to be taught
Are Muslims (not to mention the rest of us) doomed to stew in the resentments of the past? In the process of contending that blood is destiny, Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced provokes us to prove him wrong.
Editorials
5 minute read