Tag: a critic at large
Why Liberals Struggle to Defend Liberalism
“Don’t mention the word ‘liberalism,’ ” the talk-show host says to the guy who’s written a book on it. “Liberalism,” he explains, might mean Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to his suspicious audience, alienating more people than it invites. Talk instead about “liberal democracy,” a more expansive term that includes John McCain and Ronald Reagan. When you cross the border to Canada, you are allowed to say “liberalism” but are asked never to praise “liberals,” since that means implicitly endorsing
Academic Freedom Under Fire | The New Yorker
The congressional appearance last month by Nemat Shafik, the president of Columbia University, was a breathtaking “What was she thinking?” episode in the history of academic freedom. It was shocking to hear her negotiating with a member of Congress over disciplining two members of her own faculty, by name, for things they had written or said. The next day, in what appeared to be a signal to Congress, Shafik had more than a hundred students, many from Barnard, arrested by
Scooter Braun and the Twilight of the Music Manager
On any day of the week, you might find Scooter Braun working his magic in a pair of vintage Reeboks. He has a love of superior kicks, and was among the high-profile investors in StockX, the “stock market for sneakers.” He’s now forty-two, but some of us can still picture him in 2006, a college dropout riding around Atlanta with a writer from Creative Loafing, proclaiming his status as the guy who knows all the guys in the know.
The Hunt for John Wilkes Booth Goes On
If Abraham Lincoln had leaned back in his rocking chair that night at Ford’s Theatre and turned around—hearing a footfall or a rustle, or glimpsing, out of the corner of his eye, a stage light glinting off the mouth of the derringer—he would have recognized his murderer. Lincoln loved theatre; in his four years as President, he attended more than a hundred plays. “This is act vee one eye,” he’d whisper to his little son Tad, reading out the Roman
What Do We Want from Comedy?
In almost every TV comedy special, there’s a telling cutaway that the director felt obliged to insert. It shows spectators in the theatre rented for the occasion—usually a half row, half a dozen people—erupting in laughter at something outrageous that the comedian has just said while turning with quick, happy complicity to exchange a guilty glance for having done so. As often as not, someone in the row covers her face or offers an abashed look, before rocking back and
Betye Saar Reassembles the Lives of Black Women
The artist Betye Saar lives less than two miles from the bars, billboards, and bustle of Los Angeles’s Sunset Boulevard, but her home, in Laurel Canyon, seems far removed from Sunset’s gleaming capitalism and packaged sex. Saar’s studio and house, where she has lived for more than sixty years—she is now ninety-seven—are dedicated to history, especially American history as it relates to Black women. In her work, that history is often told through pop-culture artifacts, which, in Saar’s hands, take