Monday, February 9, 2009
Architecture Up In Smoke
Posted by Charles Mudede on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 9:21 PM
Sign of the architectural times...
In 2009, one of the most eagerly anticipated buildings in the last 20 years was to be completed: The headquarters of CCTV in Beijing, designed by Rem Koolhaas and OMA. A striking, integral piece of that complex was the nearby Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Sadly, it looks like the hotel has almost completely burned down this morning.
As Reuters reports, the building caught on fire while locals were setting off fireworks for the Lantern Festival. (Slideshow of the fire here.) In addition to the hotel, the building was to include a theater, recording studios, and a movie theater, while the iconic building next door would include the TV station's main broadcasting units. The latter looks unaffected, but no word yet on whether the fire will affect its opening schedule.
Thanks, Peter.
Update: Watch the burning building here.
At Large University of Lethbridge
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 8:44 PM
Some of the questions asked by U of L students tonight...
What is the most common sexual problem with human females?
I recently connected w/a friend of my boyfriend's on Facebook. Through this conversation I found out that my boyfriend hadn't told this friend about me and that they had had two three ways together in Toronto last month while my boyfriend was visiting. I've dumped my boyfriend's ass but have started getting friendly with this friend who spilled the beans. Would it be stupid of me to explore this further?
What do you suggest for a single gay male in a small town with an almost hopelessly divided gay community split along lines of the trendy & stylish and the not-so-much?
How do you negotiate a long-term monogamous relationship when one partner is kinky the other is repulsed by kink?
I've never had drunken or otherwise inebriated sex. In your opinion, am I missing out on anything?
When Sue Johanson was here she spoke against trying anal sex, due to damages, etc. What would you tell people?
Some of my answers: human males; no; move to a bigger city with a larger gay community (it will still be hopelessly divided, of course, but in a big city it's easier for the trendy & stylish to ignore the not-so-much and vice-versa); you don't; yes; don't fuck Sue Johanson in the ass.
Teh Internets Kind of Awesome
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 5:29 PM
Some days, I'm just endlessly amused by YouTube. I think the best part is that he sounds like a Muppet.
(Via.)
Olympia Busy-Day City News Update
Posted by Erica C. Barnett on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 5:25 PM
Two (sort of) related news bits on this busy Monday:
1) If you have access to Facebook (I know, I know), there's an interesting discussion going on over at the Hugeasscity group's discussion board about a recent editorial by Seattle Displacement Coalition members Carolee Coulter and John Fox.
The editorial argues that a bill in the state legislature that would provide incentives for dense, affordable, walkable development around light-rail stops is bad for the environment (because of the loss of trees and emissions from construction), will force people to live in unaffordable housing too close together, will harm neighborhood business districts, and will cause people to move further away from where they work. On that last point, Fox and Coulter argue that because "An increasing portion of our region’s population and employment is going into Lynnwood, Renton, Bellevue and further out in the county," a better solution would be creating bus transit centers, which people could drive to from their far-flung houses, all over the Puget Sound region.
Leaving aside that tortured bit of logic (which is it, John? Do you want "an increasing portion" of our region's population to live in car-dependent exurbs? Or do you want to increase the supply of affordable housing in the city?), Hugeasscity readers have raised some smart objections to Fox's and Coulter's editorial. One, Seattle Great City Initiative founder Michael McGinn, notes that even if construction increases emissions and uproots a few in the short term, sprawling communities use "more asphalt, building materials, water, etc, which also raises emissions due to the ‘embodied energy’ in those materials. ... A new sprawling development also wipes out more trees and habitat than a compact development." Another reader notes that rents in Southeast Seattle (and, for that matter, Lynnwood, Bellevue, and Renton) are going up already; the only difference is that right now those areas lack the kind of dense development that actually makes sense near transit stations. If you don't have Facebook, a similar discussion took place on the Hugeasscity blog itself last month.
2) In somewhat related news, Seattle Displacement Coalition co-founder and former Greater Seattle Church Council associate director David Bloom announced today that he's raised more than $10,000
Film "Want something done? Call the women of Liberia."
Posted by Lindy West on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 5:18 PM
In case you missed it, buried in Friday's This Weekend at the Movies, I want to nudge you toward Jen Graves's great review of Pray the Devil Back to Hell, playing at the Varsity through Thursday:
Want something done? Call the women of Liberia. In the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, every few minutes brings a new chapter in their inspiring fight to end the civil war that ruined their lives for years: daughters raped, husbands' heads gradually sawed off before their eyes, children nearly starved every day of their lives. Chapters build like the rising rhetoric of a great preacher moving toward a redemptive climax.In 2002 the women join together, Muslims and Christians, and lobby their respective religious leaders against President Charles Taylor's regime and the equally abusive opposing faction of rebel warlords. That failing, they stage a peaceful protest with dancing and singing in a field that they know the president drives by every day.
At home, the women go on a sex strike. They present a statement to Parliament and the president, demanding peace talks. When the peace talks—held in Ghana—languish and war at home escalates, the women rise up in Ghana. They join arms around the site to lock in the negotiators and threaten to strip naked (it is a curse to see your mother naked in Liberia)—and then, with the whole world watching, the men accept the women's two-week deadline. Taylor goes into exile.
On the day the rebels' boy fighters are to be disarmed by UN forces, a riot breaks out. The women break it up and oversee the UN disarmament themselves. "They are our mothers," one boy says. The women stay vigilant: They oversee the runup to national democratic elections. In 2005, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is elected president of Liberia. She is the first woman to be elected head of state in Africa. The women of Liberia have rocked their entire continent.
Recommended. And possibly a good antidote to He's Just Not That Into You, in which women are incapable of doing anything beyond whining, internet stalking, and being complete idiots. (More on that coming up in this week's paper.)
News Obama's First Prime Time Press Conference as President
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 5:16 PM
Anyone else listening? When the host of All Things Considered said, "We're going live to the White House for the president's press conference," I had to suppress an urge to open iTunes and quickly click on Fiddler on the Roof or Avenue Q. When will that urge pass?
Best line in a response to GOP complaints about pork in the stimulus bill: "When I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt..."
Economy Notes from the Unemployment Line
Posted by Eli Sanders on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 5:15 PM
Why don't some of our state's unemployed people try to get work at Washington's beleaguered unemployment benefits call center? Here's one person who's trying to do just that...
I've been out of work since October. I used to have a nice contract job at a software firm testing games. I loved my job and while it wasn't the best paying job, I was able to pay rent and eat and was happy. That's slowly coming to an end. I've been applying to administrative jobs since the end of October with no luck. I used to be able to get an admin job within a week or two, but I've been sending out about 2-3 resumes a day since the first of the year (before then it was about 1-2 a week, not realizing how stiff the competition has gotten). I've gotten one response out of all that work. The response came last week, asking if I was still interested in a position I applied for on the 22nd of Jan—but no follow up after I said yes.I heard about all the problems at the Unemployment Office and decided to try my luck. I sent in an application on Friday, but their first round of hires won't be starting until March 1st. I'm worried I won't make rent for March.
I grew up poor and am used to getting by on very little, but I never thought I'd be worried about rent. I went to college and have experience in the Administrative and Technical fields, and can't make just $700 for rent. The past two months have been demoralizing and depressing and all I want to do is answer phones and file papers. It shouldn't be this hard.
Olympia Get Outta My Dreams. Get Into My… What?
Posted by Dominic Holden on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 5:14 PM
State senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-36) introduced a bill this morning that, if passed, would expand the rules for impounding vehicles used to pick up a prostitute. The existing law is too narrow, apparently, as it applies only to “vehicles” and “motor vehicles.” Senate Bill 5934 would replace those words with “conveyance,” a term that generally applies to aircraft, boats, and other forms of transportation. When asked about the impetus for the bill, a staffer for Kohl-Welles office said the bill is designed to broaden the language to include bicycles and boats.
The law would only apply in designated high-prostitution areas, marked with signs. How many of those areas include waterways could not be immediately confirmed. Nor could the number of Johns who pick up prostitutes using one of these:
Architecture London Lava
Posted by Charles Mudede on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 5:11 PM
Visual Art Currently Hanging
Posted by Jen Graves on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:45 PM
William Kentridge, History of the Main Complaint (1996), animation film based on 21 large-scale drawings in charcoal and pastel on paper
William Kentridge is a South African artist whose work can be absolutely amazing. In conjunction with his staging of a Monteverdi opera that's playing in Seattle next month, the Henry has a show of Kentridge's films, drawings, prints, sculpture, and stereoscopic photogravures.
The work above is actually set to a Monteverdi madrigal. It is one in a series of films called Drawings for Projection, and it has as a protagonist one Soho Eckstein, the white man you see in the hospital bed. Scenes of his body being probed in the hospital are intercut with him driving past injured black bodies—he hits one, and wakes from his coma. But has he learned anything from his, and his country's, immediate past (apartheid)?
Books Tour of Duty
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:26 PM
On Friday, I wrote about two authors who were reading at the University Book Store that night. Kathleen Rooney, who has written a book titled Live Nude Girl, and Kyle Minor, author of the short story collection In the Devil's Territory, are doing 24 readings across country together in a tour called, cleverly and unimaginatively, "Live Nude Girl In the Devil's Territory."
At each stop in their tour, they're reading with a local author. Seattle's author was Jonathan Evison, who read a delightful new piece about a man putting a bandage on another man's dick at a party. Rooney was pleasant and laid-back (she thanked the audience for laughing at one point) and Minor was heavier and more atmospheric. After the reading, they invited everyone to a bar across the street. It was a really good time.
Rooney and Minor are blogging about their tour here, and it's a really interesting look into what book tours are like. Just before the tour kicked off, Minor was informed that his teaching job had dried up:
(What will I do for work now? How will I find a new job this late in the game? Will we have to move? Will we have health insurance? Will my children be angry with me for getting them into whatever mess is sure to follow?)
And he writes a compelling list of his touring experience thus far:
19. The trays of Twinkies and tiny hot dogs arranged like a kaleidoscope of candy cancer at the University Bookstore in Seattle;
But Rooney is doing most of the regular reporting, and it's quite a range of subjects—photos of the people and places they see on the tour, what Joan Didion packs when she travels, dog costumes. I heartily recommend this blog if you've ever been to a reading and wondered why the author is acting so weird: It's because he or she is committing the very un-authorial act of traveling around and meeting a lot of people.
Visual Art Two Good Links
Posted by Jen Graves on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:18 PM
The AP has no case against Shepard Fairey (especially with Lawrence Lessig on his side); and Adrian Searle gives heartfelt testimony to the work of pioneering 60s feminist artist Nancy Spero, who's still ferocious at 83. Here's a detail from her 1967 work Search and Destroy.
Film "People laugh when things are funny!"
Posted by Megan Seling on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:18 PM
When Christian Bale freaked out, it wasn't funny. Because Christian Bale could probably kick some ass. Dude's Batman, you know?
But when Michael Cera flips out? It's a lot less threatening. His voice cracks and everything.
Is it a joke, to hype the movie? If so, he doesn't say "motherfucker" enough. If not... it's sorta sad.
(ht Perez)
Economy Notes from the Unemployment Line
Posted by Eli Sanders on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:15 PM
Washington's Senate Majority Leader, Lisa Brown (D-Spokane), was here at The Stranger offices this afternoon for a brief interview, so I asked her about all the Slog complaints (including here and here) regarding insane wait times at the state's unemployment benefits call center.
Brown, like others, told me the center was under-staffed and is trying to remedy the situation. “I understand they’re trying to ramp it up," she said.
And why is it that six months after unemployment claims began spiking in Washington State, our unemployment benefits call center still cannot meet demand? Couldn't some of this state's unemployed citizens be put to work at the Employment Security Department's call center answering urgent phone calls from other unemployed citizens seeking help with their benefit claims? Brown:
I think it sounds like they screwed up. I think that’s pretty clear.
More on this in a story I'm writing for this week's Stranger.
At Large Welcome to Lethbridge
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:12 PM
Lethbridge's answer to the Space Needle: a decommissioned water tower on the outskirts of Lethbridge that's been converted into a restaurant with 360 degree views of... um... the traffic on the outskirts of Lethbridge. My escort—the lovely and talented Jenn—tells me that it's home to Ric's restaurant and points out the Jesus-died-for-your-sins billboard affixed to the tower. ("He Created... He Loved... He Died... The Ultimate True Life Drama. Now Playing... All Around You.") Something to think about before you tuck into your curly fries.
There was a distinct, er, scent in the air when I got off the airplane. The airport must be next to a sewage treatment plant, I figured. But when we got to the hotel, um, the same weird stench in the air. I asked Jenn about it and she explained that there are a lot of farms in the area and they're pretty liberal with the ol' manure and there's a pig manure lagoon here and there. "You mean it always smells like this?" I asked Jenn. "Yes, a lot of the time," she said.
"Wow," I marveled, "Lethbridge smells like ass."
"Well," Jenn replied, "I guess you would know."
Snap.
Crime "Ciao, Amanda. What's happened?"
Posted by Charles Mudede on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 3:58 PM
The place where Amanda Knox used to work has gone out of business...
It's now a space for a dance that has its roots in the slums of Buenos Aires...
Next to the to the dead cafe/tango space is the Continental Store European Delicatessen, a business that specializes in German food. In the middle of last week, I visited the delicatessen and initiated a conversation about Amanda with a woman working behind the counter. The meat of that conversation: "Yes, Amanda used to come here all of the time. But to me, she was no angel. She was a ragamuffin." The woman behind the counter believed what I believed: Amanda is as guilty as sin. Indeed, I have no idea how anyone, including the members of her family, could have confidence in her innocence after reading/hearing a testimony like this:
The former flatmate of Amanda Knox yesterday told a court trying the American student for murder that she was bewildered by the woman's behaviour on the morning that the crime was discovered.Blonde, bespectacled Filomena Romanelli also posed a string of problems for the defence. She said that when she returned to the house they shared on 2 November 2007 the washing machine was warm. She later identified most of the clothes inside as those of the victim, Meredith Kercher, a student at Leeds University.
Romanelli also raised an important question mark over a defence claim - that there was a break-in on the night of the killing. And she contradicted Knox on whether Kercher was in the habit of locking herself in her room.
The legal assistant, who spent the night of 1-2 November with her boyfriend, said she and a friend had decided to go to a market in the morning. They were about to arrive there when she received a call from Knox. "There's something strange at the house," she quoted the young American as saying. "I go, 'Ciao, Amanda. What's happened? In what sense?' [She said,] 'I arrived and the door was open.' "
Knox explained to Romanelli that she was going back to the flat of her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito. She quoted Knox as saying: "I've taken a shower. Then at Raffaele's place I'll get him to come over. There's blood there, I think."
Romanelli replied: "But Amanda. I don't understand. Explain to me, because there's something odd. The door's open. You take a shower. There's blood. But where's Meredith?"
"Eh, I don't know," she recalled Knox as saying. Romanelli told her to check the house again and call her back. Then she rang her boyfriend, who could get to the house quickly, and he and a friend went round.
Replying to the judge later in her testimony, Romanelli said: "The door's open. I go in. There's blood. I take a shower. I don't know about you, but I really don't think that that's normal."
It's important to note that Romanelli is not a suspect. Why? Why is she not stuck in jail like her former roommate? Because a fit exists between Romanelli's story and reality; with Amanda, such a fit has yet to exist.
Chow Foie Gras Protest at Lark: NARN Reponds to Sundstrom’s Response
Posted by Bethany Jean Clement on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 3:54 PM
Jenn Kaplan, Northwest Animal Rights Network board officer, is questioning the veracity of Lark chef/owner John Sundstrom’s claim that foie gras sales at his Capitol Hill restaurant have increased during NARN’s sidewalk protests.
The organization has protested outside Lark every Friday for the past month and has pledged to keep doing so until the restaurant stops serving foie gras. “We see foie gras sales go up on Friday nights,” Sundstrom said on Saturday. Some people order it to "spite the protesters" chanting outside, he said, while others want to see “what the fuss is about.”
“We wouldn’t be surprised if that was something he was just saying so as to dissuade us from protesting against him,” Kaplan said today. “Obviously, that’s difficult for us to falsify, because we don’t have access to his business records,” she said.
Is NARN calling Sundstrom a liar? “I’m not going to call him a liar absent evidence that he’s a liar,” said Kaplan. But: “I think it’s unlikely that his claims are true. Even if they are true, it won’t remain the case that sales increase in the long term.” Kaplan said that in other cities “it has not been the case that there have been increases in foie gras sales after protests.”
Kaplan said that the selection of Lark for protests was somewhat “arbitrary.” (The group’s website also lists Crush and 35th Street Bistro as foie-gras sellers; the former lists foie gras on its current menu online, the latter does not.) “Lark purports to be an ethical restaurant, one that takes the issues of sustainability and local very seriously,” she said. “Foie gras from a factory farm in California is not local and not sustainable, and making claims that it is is deceptive and disingenuous.” Lark’s menu lists the source of its foie gras (seared, with caramelized pear and pain d’epice) as Sonoma; the company, Sonoma Artisan Foie Gras, says it is “committed to the highest standards of animal welfare.”
NARN has “chosen to protest [foie gras] because the cruelty of the product is inherent in the design,” but the group is vegan and is opposed to all meat-eating. Regarding NARN’s overall purpose, Kaplan said, “NARN’s belief is that raising and killing of animals for food is inherently cruel, and while we would love to see Seattle become a vegan city, we realize that that’s probably not going to happen anytime soon, and we’re going to take pragmatic steps along the road to decrease cruelty as much as possible.”
To those that take issue with the group targeting a small, locally owned business for protests, Kaplan offered a challenge of logic: “I would ask whether they would apply that principle consistently. If you’re against targeting a small, locally owned business for cruelty to animals, would you be against targeting a small, locally owned business selling child pornography or discriminating against gays and lesbians?”
Kaplan said that NARN will be protesting at other local restaurants.
Sundstrom said Saturday he would not stop serving foie gras: “They say they’re not giving up, and we’re not going to cave in to them.”
Photo from cornichon.org, which also weighs in on the controversy.
Crime Because It's Just So Damned Hard to Get a Loan
Posted by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 3:50 PM
With our economy solidly in the shitter, lenders are being stingy. But that hasn't stopped a growing number of people are turning to an old method for acquiring an interest-free loan.
According to statistics from the FBI, bank robberies are up from this time last year. Last January, there were 14 bank robberies in Washington. This year, there were 22.
It'd be fairly easy to assume that the spike is the result of our economy's freefall, but FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs says the jump in January robberies isn't necessarily indicative of an upward trend. "I think one month is too short a period of time to draw any conclusions," she says. "In any given year there are high months and low months."
While the FBI may not be ready to call this spike the beginning of a trend, one SPD employee familiar with bank robberies in the region believes heists are happening "way more than normal" and thinks he knows why it's happening. "People are pissed off at the damn banks," the SPD employee says. "I know that’s what it is."
I know we've already had two robberies in Seattle this month—in the same day. I'll check the stats at the end of February and report back.
Visual Art Thanks, Patty! Thanks, Maria!
Posted by Jen Graves on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 3:42 PM
Bank CEOs and executives: you get our money. Museums, theaters, performing arts centers: forget it. You get nothing from our national economic stimulus bill. You, arts, are "wasteful and non-stimulative."
That's the message the U.S. Senate sent—including, among others, Dianne Feinstein (??), and Washington Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell—by voting Friday on an amendment to Obama's economic stimulus bill intended "To ensure that taxpayer money is not lost on wasteful and non-stimulative projects."
The amendment was written by a classic Republican arts-hater who once tried to revoke federal funding for the Olympic Sculpture Park, conservative Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn. Meanwhile, Patty Murray is too busy fighting for the widely criticized F-22 to think about much else.
LAT critic Christopher Knight thinks he knows why Congress hates the arts. Hint: It's partly because of secks.
This amendment could still be struck from the bill, when it goes to a joint Senate-House committee, even if the Senate passes the bill with it first (the Senate is widely expected to vote tomorrow). So write your Congresspeople.
Media More On The Printed Blog
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 3:30 PM
I wrote about the Printed Blog, which is intended to be a twice-daily newspaper aggregating blog posts from user-generated votes, a little while back. I even questioned whether it was real.
Here is an interview with Printed Blog founder Joshua Karp. He seems dead serious to me.
"I think there are principles in the online world that work really well and can be applied to the offline world," he said. "If we look at a newspaper from the early 20th century compared to one published yesterday they look largely the same. One size fits all, quarter page ads, the half page ads are really expensive. The content is selected by a bunch of editors and journalists that cover beats. Their model hasn't changed, and my position is that the print newspaper doesn't need to go away simply because it's on paper. The problem with the print newspaper business...[is] that nobody has taken a hard look [at] how newspapers are pulled together and laid out and published, and how the power of community tools that we have now can enhance this."
Basically, by removing editors, Karp believes he can change the face of newspaper publishing. I've seen dumber things work.
Drunk Starfish Hitler vs. Asshole Playing His Beard… WHO YA GOT?!?
Posted by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 3:18 PM
Usually, I'm a person who likes people. But right now I'm in a craptastic, people-despising mood because I just witnessed two videos featuring my newest archnemeses, STARFISH HITLER and ASSHOLE PLAYING HIS BEARD. Now, instead of being happy and enjoying life, I have to decide who I hate more: Starfish Hitler or Asshole Playing His Beard. Maybe you can help.
Here's Starfish Hitler. He's a starfish that explodes and turns into Starfish Hitler. I was never a big fan of starfish, and I really don't like Hitler—so I can't say I'm pleased that science has genetically married the two. At least he's getting his Nazi echinoderm ass kicked.
Then there's Asshole Playing His Beard. You know… I'm done thinking about this. I hate this guy infinitely more than any permutation of Hitler. Please don't watch the entire video, just skip around, and let the rage build inside of you until the perfect fantasy of shoving this asshole's head (beard and all) into a wood chipper emerges.
Drugs Someone Had To Post It
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 3:13 PM
Joel Connelly's column in today's P-I is, um, totally righteous. Preach it, JC.
Visual Art Joseph Beuys Has A Scary Smile, But Much Enthusiasm
Posted by Jen Graves on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 3:09 PM
This is his protest song against Reagan's arms policy. (Reagan sounds like "Regen," or "rain," in German.)
(Thank you, Artforum.)
Arts / Theater What He Said
Posted by Brendan Kiley on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 2:40 PM
Chris Jones, theater critic for the Chicago Tribune, on last week's vote to keep federal stimulus money away from arts businesses:
"The National Endowment for the Arts," wrote sarcastic editorialists at the National Review last week, "is in line for $50 million, increasing its total budget by a third. The unemployed can fill their days attending abstract-film festivals and sitar concerts."In the Senate, an amendment sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) lumped museums, theaters and arts centers (a terrifyingly vague term) with such frippery as casinos, golf courses and swimming pools as recipients who must be stopped from getting any of this funding. The amendment passed 73-24 on Friday, with many Democrats voting in the majority.
... In less than 75 years, the arts have gone from the single largest priority in a government stimulus package to a toxic joke. It is a stunning turnaround.
What happened in those 75 years? America moved on but its arts organizations didn't—they never got over their WPA mentality, never learned to speak the language of business. They point to Europe and stick their hands out and alternate moralistic arguments with petulant bitching about how they're owed more.
The thing is, I agree with them. Cultural infrastructure demands care and feeding like any infrastructure, and it's in a city's (and country's) best interests to keep it up. But arts lobbyists—if there are such things—have totally failed to convince the people who matter: the people holding the purse.
To convince them, you'll need a study—a thorough, no-bullshit study on the economic effect arts organizations have on their neighborhoods and cities. Pick Chicago (Theater District, one other neighborhood) and Seattle (Capitol Hill and Lower Queen Anne).
Once you can demonstrate that arts business is good for all business (and gets people out of their homes and spending money, which is good for liquidity, which is good for our gummed-up economy), you can tell those smug jokers at the National Review that arts money is not about edifying the unemployed. It's about giving them jobs.
(And to the disingenuous jokers at the National Review: Don't like the NEA? You only have yourselves to blame. Because of people like you and the tantrums you threw in the 1980s, NEA money goes to Shakespeare-in-the-heartland programs and other retrograde, not particularly interesting stuff. You're the people who pulled the teeth out of the NEA—if you don't like what it looks like, you should at least be honest about the fact that you made it boring.)
Nerd Musky, With The Barest Hint of Transporter
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 2:28 PM
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