Essays
1093 results
Page 77
Priestly sex abuse: Blaming the hippies
When the shepherd blames the sheep
A report on priestly sex abuse prepared for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops pins the blame not on celibacy but on the sexual revolution that began in the '60s. Take it from one who was victimized by a priest even before that era began: The 1960s were the best thing that ever happened to victims of clerical sex abuse.
Essays
5 minute read
Bin Laden and Petraeus: Two birds with one stone
Hit man in the White House
Barack Obama neutralized his two great enemies in one week, the elusive Osama bin Laden and the excessively visible General David Petraeus. Each operation depended on the other; both succeeded. But what is the moral cost of a targeted assassination?
Essays
5 minute read
Symbols, from bin Laden to the royal wedding
Let them eat symbols!
Osama bin Laden's death. The royal wedding. It seems there's been so much to celebrate lately. Yet what did these symbolic feel-good events actually accomplish?
Essays
2 minute read
"Slam Nation's' night of story telling
In search of that ‘Aha!' moment
It's harder to tell a good story than you might think, especially without a script, as I discovered during a recent night of storytelling at the Kimmel.
Essays
4 minute read
Secrets of Cecily Tynan, weather queen
My kind of meteorologist
What explains the success of TV weather lady Cecily Tynan? Better ask: Why does my barometric pressure rise whenever she smiles at me?
Essays
2 minute read
School budget cuts: A view from the front lines
Suffer, little children: A Philadelphia teacher's tale
Philadelphia's School District must slash its budget again. In abstract terms, that sounds onerous. But how does it actually affect children and teachers? As one of the latter, allow me to provide a firsthand illustration.
Essays
5 minute read
Patti Smith, "Just Kids' and the '60s
The way we were
When Patti Smith and Just Kids get rolling, it's absorbing as both a double rags-to-riches tale and the documenting of a seminal time in American life and culture, told by a woman who was in the thick of much of it and who has been blessed with the sensibility and literary talent to bring it to high-definition life.
Essays
5 minute read
Paris, Philadelphia and the Barnes
A landmark cultural event, or a charity ball that got way out of hand?
First Philadelphia's philistines created a faux Barnes museum on the Parkway. Now, with their current Festival, they've put up a phony Eiffel Tower, too. Is this the mark of a great cultural center?
Essays
3 minute read
Basketball: Reflections on the Final Four
March Madness or April Fool: NCAA basketball as a commodity
What is college basketball these days, this way station between high school basketball and the bizarre circus of player movement and high finance that has become the National Basketball Association?
Essays
8 minute read
Paris in Philadelphia? OK, but why?
On recreating Paris in Philadelphia: Sound and fury, signifying… what, exactly?
With all Philadelphia's current cultural riches, the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts is preoccupied with Paris in the second decade of the last century. That was then; this is now. Let's lose Paris.
Essays
4 minute read