Frankly, I hope he rots in hell. There is no figure more odious than the man who supplants democracy with tyranny. Augusto Pinochet sailed into power on the crest of the military coup d�etat that threw democratic President Salvador Allende out of office and into a coffin.
“Sufferance is the badge of all our tribe,” plead Shylock to the barrister, and indeed what characterizes Jewish history in the main is calamity and tribulation of a scope and cruelty so reckless and undreamt they seem enjoined from another … Read More
I. “Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde” at the Met Investing Vollard with the almost statesmanlike title, “Patron of the Avant-Garde” is pretty generous for someone Paul Gauguin once called “the worst kind of crocodile.” Maecenas he … Read More
Jean Baudrillard was a poor philosopher and a poorer sociologist. As a writer, he was inconsistent and cracked-out – as much inclined to the output of turgid rivers of prose clotted with effluvial jargon as he was to effervescent plunges … Read More
The political history of South Carolina is full of funny stories. Yet amid a landscape scarred by utter military catastrophe, deep racial injustice, and still bitter historical tragedy, these stories seem sometimes not so funny. Or maybe they’re funnier. During the presidency of Franklin Pierce, Congressman Preston Brooks cudgeled Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner nearly to death with his cane.
A few years ago the song “Fortunate Son” was used in a commercial for Wrangler Jeans. To many this seemed yet another belated obituary for the 60’s, yet another testament to the casual victory of the Establishment. After all, here … Read More
Many works of art have emerged in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks as part of the collective struggle to commemorate, understand, and situate them within the rapidly coalescing frieze of our shared memory. Thanks to the plethora of novels sprung up in the ashes of disaster, we are now privy to such worthwhile phenomena of universal human interest as the tone-poetic hi-jinks of the chattering classes in the months preceding the big event, as in Claire Messud’s respectable novel The Emperor’s Children, and the annoyingly precious musings of the insufferably earnest, as in Jonathan Safran Foer’s not-so-respectable novella Extremely Loud and Incredible Close.
Come for the shouting and shattered glass, stay for the confessional outbursts, wry dialogue, and fascinating sexual politics. This superb production, directed by Whitney Mosery ’08, presents the tragic aftermath of a man’s inexplicable affair with a goat – the … Read More
All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.” -Walter Benjamin Nobody can accuse Jack Bauer of not having done enough for his country. He has killed more people than polio and saved more lives than Jonas Salk. … Read More
Before I launch into abstract, quasi-provable thoughts as to why the Vagina Monologues rocks my socks, I’ll put forth two concrete arguments for why this show, opening February 15th, is unique, funny,
and well worth seeing.
Inevitably and with curious necessity, the recitation of trivia turns to the subject of death-counts. This is because the death-count is the ne plus ultra of trivia: “how many people died there.”