Those of us who wished that Jeffrey Deitch, the art world’s LeBron James in his cruel defection from the city that made him, would fade from the canvas upon moving away, apparently have another thing coming. First there was James Franco’s globally buzzy performance-slash-publicity-stunt, and now another apparent L.A. success.
Deitch’s posthumous show of Dennis Read More
For years and years a minority of savvy people would ask themselves, “Just how long can this go on?” The “this” was lending people money that they were not earning enough to repay. Now we know. Now the question is not how long can this go on but how come it went on so long. Read More
While cam-paigning, Barack Obama is often heard to quote his wife, Michelle, saying, “We are not that far away from being normal.” He then goes on to explain that it was only five years ago that he and his wife were still struggling to pay off their student loans and were wondering how they could Read More
As the bromides and bunkum of primary season lurch into caucus-eve overdrive in Iowa, the rest of the world has upstaged the election-addled news cycle. A new Osama bin Laden video, a Colombian hostage crisis and—most of all—the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto have made weary onlookers newly aware that there will Read More
Gullible voters keen to treat the onset of the 2008 primary season as a hale sign of life in the American democratic system had best avert their gaze from Capitol Hill this week. For as Congress winds down the year’s business with earmark-laden appropriations bills and unsightly cave-ins to Bush prerogative after Bush prerogative, the Read More
This is no time for trade union idiocy, but we’ve got it anyway. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees are back at work, but employers succeeded in making the case that this union struck for what used to be called featherbedding. Featherbedding is a union contract that includes paying workers for not working. In Read More
It used to be such a simple thing for Republican candidates to position themselves as modern conservative leaders of the faith.
You’d make coy campaign overtures to religious denominations that couldn’t officially endorse you. Point at the lurid God-baiting work of a liberal pop culture, a liberal media and a liberal university scene. Hotly Read More
A couple of weeks ago, during a Democratic presidential debate on MSNBC, two men claiming to be journalists threw wilted lettuce and decomposed organic material at the candidates. Judging from the questions aimed at the candidate/victims, the purpose of the networks sponsoring these debates is to bait, bully and embarrass while giving the news celebrities Read More
The Democratic primary field seems to operate under a hidden dictum of reverse momentum, not unlike some new strain of antimatter: Anytime the battle for early advantage in the race tightens, the actual content of the struggle goes slack. The process seemed to veer dangerously toward a final decomposing event horizon with the recent report Read More
In business circles these days people speak of “the real economy” as contrasted to whatever the hell is happening downtown on Wall Street. Perhaps Wall Street is the name for a virtual or playland economy.
Evidently some kind of convergence of the real economy and the other one occurred recently when it was announced Read More
