Drag Queens, Officially Approved By The Chinese Communist Party (But Only One Kind)

“Wang Zhi … says he can make a tidy 2m yuan ($290,000) a year from his cross-dressing routines. … He regularly appears on nationally televised variety shows. Officials often invite him to entertain people in poor areas.” And why does Xi Jinping’s increasingly conservative government tolerate this? Wang Zhi and his fellows do drag Beijing opera-style. – The Economist

‘Radical Hospitality’ — Why Seattle’s Intiman Theatre Has Made All Its Tickets Free

“The initiative, artistic director Jen Zeyl explained, is about more than the standard theater problem of getting ‘butts in seats.’ (Though, of course, there’s that.) It’s about getting the butts one wants in seats — not just the people who can afford to take the $25+ crap shoot known as a theater ticket, but the people who can’t: the woman at the corner store, high-school sophomore, the guy asking for spare change on the sidewalk.” – The Seattle Times

Former Yale Law School Dean: Universities Need To Treasure Their Elitism, Not Hide It

Anthony Kronman: “Our most elite universities are today running away from their elitism, denying it, doing their best to conceal or suppress it. In running away from it, they not only disown values and traditions that are an important part of their identity, but they also disserve the great democratic country in which they sit. These elite schools are national treasures. Their elitism is what makes them such. It’s not a problem, it’s an asset, a value, something to be cherished and cared for.” – Chronicle of Higher Education

The Algonquin Round Table Crew Was Famously Witty. But They Made Little Lasting Impact

“The Algonquin Hotel became a city landmark in 1987, in large part because of the vicious circle’s outsize fame. This is a fine way of acknowledging a tourist destination, but it shouldn’t be mistaken as an endorsement of the group’s larger intellectual significance — because in the end, there isn’t much of one.” – The New York Times