Of all the powers in which I have placed my faith, my deepest and most lasting allegiance is to the power of speech. I eat, breathe, and sleep words. When I am lucky enough to happen on it, the delicious taste of le mot juste fills my mouth like melting chocolate. If words had volume, …
“Dinosaurs” was a hilarious and unique TV series that ran for four seasons in the early nineties. (You can get it on Netflix if you missed it the first time around.) It’s a classic family-centered sitcom, very much on the model of the original “Honeymooners,” except that Mom, Dad, the kids and pets are all …
A long time ago, when I was a young artist-organizer obsessed with questions of artists’ rights and livelihood, I used to give talks to groups of artists. I often began with the archetypal tale of Sleeping Beauty, in which Beauty must slumber hopefully, entirely passive until kissed into life by the prince. That was the …
Sometimes life delivers moments of irrefutable insight, shattering fragile illusions like so many soap-bubbles. Remember that post-Katrina telethon where Kanye West said, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people”? There was a great commotion, the President’s compassionate conservatism was vigorously asserted, West was condemned for incivility. Now, five years later, take a look at New …
The gulf between practice and preaching is vast enough to swallow almost anything, but I am beginning to think we have something caught in our collective throat. Despite all our claims for the higher virtues of compassion, truth, and altruism, our common culture has persisted in attaching a positive presumption to material success. Those who …
Back in 1996, Tikkun published my essay, “Let Them Eat Pie: Philanthropy à la Mode.” Fourteen years later, I still get messages from people thanking me for it. I’d like to think that’s because my analysis of philanthropic power relations and their discontents wowed readers with its brilliance. But I’m pretty sure the essay’s biggest …
At times like this spring, when I’ve been on the move and meeting deadlines pretty much non-stop, my policy of blogging only when the spirit sparks me tends to bog down. Life takes on a hamster-wheel quality, and the poor pooped hamster has few insights worth sharing. My favorite philosopher, Isaiah Berlin, is famous for …
Be forewarned: if you don’t feel like a rant today, save this for later. For the last few days I’ve had the strangest sensation. It’s as if I’ve been struggling to emerge from some intensely sticky substance—a vat of rubber cement, perhaps, or a freshly spun spider web as it might appear to a hapless …
“Life is a mistake that only art can correct.” Stew, Passing Strange I discovered this week that I have become a member of a religion I used to reject: the Church of Art. (I’m guessing you clocked this before I did.) I discovered it during the swooning spiritual experience of watching the DVD of Passing …
When I was a kid, Thanksgiving meant tracing your spread-out fingers on construction paper to make a colorful turkey cut-out, and listening to prepackaged accounts of harmony among the early European settlers and the Native Americans who took pity on them, teaching them to grow corn, hunt deer and catch fish. At home, we cooked …