Editorials
521 results
Page 50
Freeloading critics
Are critics freeloaders who cause actors to starve by displacing paying customers? That question begs a larger one: Why do people become performers or critics in the first place?
Editorials
5 minute read
Cultural aptitude test
Just in time for the holidays, here’s my present: an up-to-date cultural aptitude quiz that should delight true sophisticates while simultaneously weeding out the imposters who persist in visiting our website even though it’s obviously over their heads.
Editorials
4 minute read
Is 'Bush hatred' irrational?
Liberals’ irrational hatred of George W. Bush, complains a conservative professor, has “made rational discussion of politics in Washington all but impossible.” He’s right, of course, but he overlooks the critical question.
Editorials
2 minute read
An unintended benefit of 'Atlas Shrugged'
Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged has inspired two generations of business executives, not to mention Alan Greenspan and Hugh Hefner, with its message that “Greed is good.” But its greatest value may be unintentional: It inadvertently provides a vivid demonstration of the mind of the true believer— of left or right.
Editorials
5 minute read
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Barrymore Awards reconsidered
Philadelphia’s Barrymore Awards, like all awards, are not works of art or substance. They’re a combination of popularity contest and promotional gimmick. Why is it the business of journalists or critics or the theaters’ paying customers to assist in this effort to manipulate us?
Editorials
4 minute read
The 'Inquirer's' killer bee
The Inquirer’s CEO wants to place a giant inflatable bee on the newspaper's landmark building. What will this marketing wizard think of next? Consider the possibilities.
Editorials
3 minute read
Dartmouth College trustee fight
Dartmouth College alumni are up in arms because the college has diluted their power to elect the school’s trustees. But where is it written that a school is best managed by its alumni, as opposed to, say, educators?
Editorials
4 minute read
Pavarotti and the magic of crowds
Pavarotti was often derided as a rock star, as an athlete rather than an artist, as the man who brought mass culture to opera and vice versa. I remember him as a man who made a miracle. I witnessed it myself.
Editorials
4 minute read
The media's manufactured controversies
A football upset, a restaurant's petty lawsuit against a dining critic— what do these contrived dramas share in common?
Editorials
4 minute read
Eschenbach in limbo
The Philadelphia Orchestra this year confronts the mother of all marketing challenges: How do you whip up enthusiasm for a music director who has already indicated he’d rather not be here?
Editorials
5 minute read