Tag: 08.15.19

Is English In Decline? Please! Worrying About That Is Dumb

Linguistic decline is the cultural equivalent of the boy who cried wolf, except the wolf never turns up. Perhaps this is why, even though the idea that language is going to the dogs is widespread, nothing much has been done to mitigate it: it’s a powerful intuition, but the evidence of its effects has simply never materialised. That is because it is unscientific nonsense. – The Guardian

The Squares Who Saved Woodstock

A big part of the 1969 festival’s legend is that no one involved had any idea how big it was going to get and how many people would show up, and the organizers were utterly unprepared. “Woodstock was saved at every step of the way by decidedly non-groovy regular people” — from Max Yasgur, the law-and-order Republican who rented his farm to the festival at the last minute, to the citizens of Bethel, NY who hard-boiled hundreds of thousands of eggs and sent canned goods when organizers ran out of food on the second day. – The Washington Post

The Poem On The Statue Of Liberty Has A Rather Complicated History

“The New Colossus” (“Give me your tired, your poor, …”) was not mainstream American sentiment when Emma Lazarus wrote it in 1883 (one year after the Immigrant Act and the Chinese Exclusion Act). Indeed, it was somewhat radical, and she was inspired by the work she did with the despised refugees who were flooding the U.S. in her day (Jews from the Russian Empire). Slate history maven Rebecca Onion talks with Lazarus biographer Esther Schor about the poem and how its reception has changed over the decades. – Slate

Latinos Aren’t Visible Enough In American Popular Culture. Trump And El Paso Show Why That Matters

Carolina Miranda: “If ever there were an urgent moment for the various culture industries — film studios, theater companies, art museums and TV production companies — to act on issues of diversity and inclusion, that moment is now. And not because diversity is some feel-good thing that makes for a nice talking point during Hispanic Heritage Month, but because rendering an entire segment of the population invisible makes the cultural arena complicit in a marginalization that is entering increasingly dangerous” — literally dangerous — “territory.” – Los Angeles Times

Kennicott: How Seeing Video At The Barnes Foundation Made Me Reconsider The Whole Place

“It took seeing the museum’s powerful survey of Bill Viola’s rich, deep and deeply moving video work to fully understand what is so hollow and dispiriting about the main galleries of the collection, which hold an invaluable collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art assembled in the first half of the previous century.” – Washington Post

Prejudging The Movies – When The “Buzz” Gangs Up

“Today, the forces of entertainment marketing, social media and grievance culture are increasingly colliding, with the casualty being the movies themselves. Why wait to actually see “The Irishman,” Martin Scorsese’s long-gestating project about Jimmy Hoffa and the mob, when you can start fact-checking it months before it opens?” – Washington Post