Category: today’s top story

“Over the next week, four New York Times critics – Roberta Smith, Ben Brantley, A. O. Scott and Alastair Macaulay – will chat about the role of shock in art: how it works, how it has changed and why it’s still necessary. Jennifer Schuessler moderates.”

“The past 10 years have been about discovering new ways to work together and offer services on the web. The next 10 years will, I believe, be about applying those lessons to the real world. It means that the future doesn’t just belong to internet businesses founded on virtual principles. but to ones that are firmly rooted in the physical world.”

“With the orchestra’s finances ‘on life support right now’ because of ongoing budget deficits, the Jacksonville Symphony Association board declared an impasse Tuesday in its negotiations with its musicians. As a result, it will implement its last offer to the musicians, an offer that includes a salary reduction of almost 20 percent for orchestra’s 53 core positions. That’s if there is a season.”

Just in time for the release of Rushdie’s memoir of his time in hiding, an Islamist foundation in Iran has increased its reward for the author’s murder to $3.3 million, arguing that if Rushdie had been killed for writing The Satanic Verses, the anti-Muhammad video Innocence of Muslims would never have been made.

A virulently anti-Semitic play has been canceled in Budapest – but how it got scheduled in the first place “is part of a larger drama involving this country’s leadership and its assault on culture. And that drama has a few more acts to go.”

The only actual footage of the slanderous anti-Muhammad “biopic” Innocence of Muslims anyone can find is a 14-minute online video of clips. The action is awkwardly shot against a green screen; all references to Muhammad and Islam are clumsily dubbed in; the actors involved maintain they were working from a script titled Desert Warriors about a figure called “Master George.”

“The protests in both countries were sparked by outrage over a film ridiculing Muhammad produced by an American in California and being promoted by an extreme anti-Muslim Egyptian Christian campaigner in the United States. Excerpts from the film dubbed into Arabic were posted on YouTube.”

The latest proposal includes a 36-week annual contract and a base salary reduction of 15% from the expired contract. Management’s previous offer, made public last week, guaranteed a season of only 15 to 20 weeks, with a total salary redction of close to 50% from current levels.

The Symphony spurned an offer from union officials, who “proposed a two-month extension of the previous contract–along with a 17-percent salary concession–to keep the season intact. Symphony leaders said an extension ‘would only exacerbate the ISO’s already difficult financial challenges.'”