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☆ There’s a Reason Most People Aren’t Following the New York Trump Trial - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-29 | by ( Matthew Walther | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Christopher Hitchens once described participation in the absurd debate over who actually wrote Shakespeare’s plays as “an unfailing sign of advanced intellectual and mental prostration.” It would be unsporting to apply this characterization of literary conspiracy theorists to the enthusiastic followers of Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York, but only, I think, because the verdict in the latter case is still an open question. For the uninitiated (a category to which a great majority of voters belong), the most immediately striking feature of both Shakespeare denialism and the Trump trial is impenetrability: endless rolls of decontextualized names and dates; speculative chronologies; inconsequential or irrelevant details invested with a lurid significance; complex, novel theories of evidence that are somehow applicable only to one individual. How many people, even those who purport to be following the case against Mr. Trump, can summarize the premise on which the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has based his claim that various alleged low-level bookkeeping offenses somehow congeal into a felony, much less explain why Mr. Trump is the only person of note whose ostensible accounting errors are treated like this? People recognize, at least implicitly, that the trial is in effect an attempt to settle an issue that courts are poorly suited to decide: namely, whether Mr. Trump should again be elected president of the United States. That, as they say, is a question for another day, specifically Nov. 5.

Persons: Christopher Hitchens, Donald Trump’s, Shakespeare denialism, Trump, Alvin Bragg, Shakespeare, Francis Bacon Locations: New York, Manhattan, United States

☆ 3 entertainment jobs that don't require artistic skill—one pays more than $130,000 a year
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-11 | by ( Gili Malinsky | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

In fact, the arts are packed with jobs that people might not know about, and many don't require any specific artistic talent. Here are three jobs in the arts that don't necessarily require an artistic flair, including their requirements and median annual salaries according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Arts organizations raise money to put on various events like galas and festivals and to provide resources for artists, like spaces to work and perform in. There are arts organizations based all over the country, especially ones focused on local performance. "I'm an arts fundraiser."

Persons: Oppenheimer, Bill Kramer, Adam Sharp, we're, Heather A, Hitchens, Kramer Organizations: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Sports, American Theatre Wing, Arts

☆ The ABCs of Modern Life, According to Sheila Heti
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-29 | by ( Dwight Garner | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

ALPHABETICAL DIARIES, by Sheila Heti“No one at this point in history knows how to live, so we read biographies and memoirs, hoping to get some clues,” Sheila Heti writes in “Alphabetical Diaries,” her powerful and intimate new book. In “Alphabetical Diaries” Heti comes at this question slant, as Emily Dickinson advised truth tellers to do — so slant that you may feel you are in a ship that has been thrown sideways. The reader of “Alphabetical Diaries” will not be disappointed in this regard. Heti has done the really hard thinking about submission and its opposite. One four-letter word is zealously deployed in this book, and that word is not “love.”

Persons: Sheila Heti “, ” Sheila Heti, “ Don Quixote ”, ” Heti, Emily Dickinson, Rae Armantrout, ”, Christopher Hitchens, Martis Amis, Heti

☆ Obie Awards, Sans Ceremony, Honor ‘Dark Disabled Stories’
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-28 | by ( Michael Paulson | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Obie Awards, a scrappy but venerable annual competition honoring the best theater staged Off and Off Off Broadway, has chosen “Dark Disabled Stories,” Ryan J. Haddad’s autobiographical work inspired by his experiences navigating the city with cerebral palsy, as the best new American play. The prize was announced on Saturday night, both by news release and on Spectrum News NY1, as the American Theater Wing, which presents the Obies, decided to forgo a costly ceremony — in most nonpandemic years, the Obies have been handed out at a boozy and often boisterous party — and instead to give grants of $1,000 to $5,000 directly to the winning artists and arts institutions. “These are unprecedented times, and it’s extremely challenging for theater right now, so we absolutely want to celebrate the achievements of Off and Off Off Broadway, but in doing so we want to have the most impact by putting money directly in the pockets of the artists and the companies making the work,” said Heather A. Hitchens, the Wing’s president and chief executive. “Everybody likes a party, and maybe some day it will make sense to do that again, but we’re not made of money — we’re a nonprofit, so how can we use our resources to be the greatest force for good right now?”The Obies, created by the Village Voice in the mid 1950s, have been in flux for years as the Voice foundered and the pandemic battered the theater industry. The Wing, with a board led by artists, has kept the Obies afloat with a combination of in-person and streaming ceremonies.

Persons: ” Ryan J, ”, Heather A, Hitchens, “, we’re, — Organizations: Spectrum News NY1, American Theater, Village

☆ Opinion: Taylor Swift has it. Elon Musk and George Santos don’t
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-03 | by ( Richard Galant | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +18 min

Exit George SantosVideo Ad Feedback SE Cupp: Trump didn't pave the way for George Santos. In the week that Americans said goodbye to Rosalynn Carter, Henry Kissinger and Sandra Day O’Connor, it was jarring that Santos occupied our minds. But as SE Cupp argued, in a more rational world, Santos would have resigned from Congress long ago. • Join us on Twitter and Facebook“Many Republicans just don’t care,” wrote Zelizer. Ron Edmonds/APAs a 12-year-old girl in 1981, Traci Lovitt was riveted by the appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor as the first woman on the Supreme Court.

Persons: William James, “, James, Webster, — Taylor Swift, Elon Musk, Taylor, Jeff Yang, aplomb, Swift, Ariana Grande, Tay, bestie, ”, ” Yang, Holly Thomas, ‘, Emma Chamberlain, we’re, we’ll, We’ll, Exit George Santos, George Santos, Rosalynn Carter, Henry Kissinger, Sandra Day O’Connor, Santos, New Jersey Sen, Bob Menendez, Cupp, Mercedes, ” Santos, Menendez “, Menendez, Donald Trump, Trump, Bill Clinton, ” Clay Jones Liz Cheney’s, Liz Cheney, ” Cheney, Julian Zelizer, Cheney, Kevin McCarthy, McCarthy, ” “, craven, — Cheney, Wade, Patrick T, Brown, ’ Trump, ” Brown, Sen, John McCain, ” Nick Anderson, Agency Nikki Haley’s, Nikki Haley, Koch, Haley, Geoff Duncan, ” Duncan, Joe Biden’s, Biden, Barack Obama, ” “ Haley, Nicole Hemmer, Bill Carter, Hannity, Newsom, Henry Kissinger’s, Henry “ Kissinger, Fareed Zakaria, Kissinger, Stalin, reread Spinoza, ” Kissinger, Zakaria, ” Jeremi Suri, ” “ Kissinger, Peter Bergen, Christopher Hitchens, Henry Kissinger David Andelman, Joe Biden, Phil Hands, Frida Ghitis, it’s, Netanyahu, Ghitis, Hani Almadhoun, Almadhoun, ” Elon, Jill Filipovic, X, Dean Obeidallah, Keith Magee, Lisa Benson, GoComics.com, Dominic Erdozain, Ronald Reagan, ’, Walt Handelsman, Will Leitch, William Faulkner, Robert Frost, John Steinbeck, Leitch, … I’d, ” Don’t, Dana Summers, Agency Amy Klein, Stuart E, Carter, Carmen Cusido, Sandra Day, Sandra Day O'Connor, Ron Edmonds, Traci Lovitt, O’Connor, Lovitt, Antonin Scalia, — Organizations: CNN, Oxford, Merriam, Exit, Trump, White House, Republican, Democrat, Independent, Mar, Twitter, Facebook, Republicans, Affordable, “, Tribune, Agency, New York Times, Biden, United Nations Relief, Works Agency, Musk’s, Islamic State, America “, National Commission, Illustrated, Sports, AP, Stanford Law, Potomac Locations: Merriam, New York, New Jersey, Roe, Georgia, Siena, optimists, European, Nazi Germany, Vietnam, Cambodia, Gaza, Israel, America, America “ America, United States, Arizona

☆ Henry Kissinger, the towering American diplomat, dies at age 100
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-29 | by ( Marty Steinberg | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +25 min

President Gerald Ford (left) and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger talk together in the Oval Office, February 19, 1975. In his 2001 book "The Trial of Henry Kissinger," social critic Christopher Hitchens called him a war criminal. North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho (left) and US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger at the Paris peace talks, January 1973. Chairman Zedong of the People's Republic of China meets U. S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on Nov. 12, 1973. On a helicopter during the period of shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East, Henry Kissinger talks to his wife, Nancy.

Persons: Henry Kissinger, —, Richard Nixon's, Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Richard Corkery, Duc Tho, Gerald Ford, Benjamin E, Ford, Warren Burger, Kissinger's, Paula, Gene, Forte, Seymour M, Hersh bashed Kissinger, Walter Isaacson's, Christopher Hitchens, Greg Grandin, Niall Ferguson, Kant, Clausewitz, Bismarck, Barry Gewen, Gewen, Elizabeth Holmes, Nixon, George Shultz, Holmes, Heinz Alfred Kissinger, Louis, Walter, Hitler, Kissingers, Fritz Kraemer, William Yandell Elliott, Spengler, Toynbee, Metternich, Castlereagh, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Mike Wallace, Wallace, Kennedy, Johnson, Republican Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney, Hubert Humphrey, Democratic Sen, George McGovern, McGovern, Nguyen Van Thieu, Reg Lancaster, Tho, Thieu, Mao, Gen, Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan, Nicolae Ceausescu, Zhou Enlai, Leonid Brezhnev, Andrei Gromyko, Dirck, Sen, Henry Jackson, Charles Vanik, Brezhnev, Spiro Agnew, Archibald Cox, Cox, Robert Bork, White, Alexander Haig, Anwar Sadat, David Hume Kennerly, Marxist Salvador Allende Gossens, Fidel Castro's, Martin Bernetti, Allende, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, Pinochet, Ann Fleischer, Elizabeth, David, Nancy Maginnes, Rockefeller, Jill St, John, Candice Bergen, Shirley MacLaine, Liv Ullman, Diane Sawyer, , Napoleon, Nancy, David Rubinger, Maginnes, Moshe Dayan, Robert Dallek, Nixon's, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Paula Kissinger, Brooks Kraft Organizations: Gould, Kissinger Associates, National Security, Waldorf, Astoria, Richard Corkery | New York Daily, Forte, Soviets, State, Chief, New York, Theranos Inc, Economic, Nuremberg, George Washington High School, City College of New, Army, 84th Infantry Division, U.S ., Hesse . Harvard, Harvard, Confluence, Foreign, Eisenhower, Republican, Republican National Convention, Rockefeller and Michigan Gov, Democratic, District of Columbia, US National Security, Getty, Paris Peace, North, Nationalist, China, Bettmann, East Pakistan, of, U.S, Soviet Union ., Ballistic, Soviet, Washington, Egyptian Third Army, Department, West, Marxist, Museum, AFP, CIA, Israeli, Southern California Quaker, White, Partners, Power Locations: New York City, U.S, Connecticut, Richard Corkery | New, United States, Vietnam, Saigon, Viet, Soviet Union, Communist China, Israel, Egypt, Syria, Chile, Pakistan, Theranos, Ukraine, Russia, Davos, Switzerland, Fuerth, Germany, Bavarian, American, Nazi Germany, London, New York, City College of New York, Ahlem, Hanover, German, Krefeld, Hesse, Cambodia, Massachusetts, Haiphong, Paris, North, China, Washington, Taiwan, People's Republic of China, Beijing, Moscow, India, East, Bangladesh, Shanghai, USSR, Soviet, Kremlin, Dirck Halstead, Ohio, Saudi, Japan, Sinai, Alexandria, Cairo, Suez, Americas, Santiago, Cuba, Chilean, America, Europe, Virginia, Southern California

☆ How to Live a Happy Life, From a Leading Atheist
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-27 | by ( David Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

“I want people to see what a meaningful, happy life I’ve had with these beliefs,” says Dennett, who is 81. They’ve got trillions of motor proteins, and motor proteins are not alive. Motor proteins aren’t alive. Life couldn’t exist without these little molecular machines — by the trillions — that are working in your body right now. Human life and human consciousness are made possible by these incredibly brilliant consortia of little robots.

Persons: Daniel C, Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, “, ” Dennett, I’ve, ”, ” Daniel C, Beata Zawrzel, It’s, They’ve, She’s, That’s, Susan, David Marchese, Emma Chamberlain, Walter Mosley Organizations: Tufts University, Getty, Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, YouTube, Cal Newport Locations: Poland, what’s, America

☆ How Merve Emre became the hottest — and most reviled — name in literary criticism
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-24 | by ( Anna Silman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +40 min

Last winter, the 37-year-old literary critic and Wesleyan professor Merve Emre stood in front of a microphone in Rachel Comey's Soho boutique. While the others had largely opted to pull boldfaced names from the Review's archives — like a 1985 Gore Vidal piece about Tennessee Williams — Merve Emre would be reading Merve Emre. Emre has penned so many introductions for new anthologies and reissues that one fan joked on Twitter: "every new baby in 2024 comes with an introduction by merve emre." Courtesy of Merve Emre. Over her cocktail, Merve Emre told me what my profile on Merve Emre should be about.

Persons: Merve Emre, Rachel Comey's, Emily Greenhouse, Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams — Merve Emre, Emre, Diane Williams, who's, Everyone's, Elena Ferrante, Jonathan Franzen, Rachel Cusk, Susan Sontag, Michael Roth, Reading Emre, merve emre, John Guillory, Dorothy Parker, Christopher Hitchens, Jon Fosse, Stephanie LaCava, Batuman, Lawrence, Alison Roman, Frank Gehry, Jason Stanley, someone's, they're, Anna Shechtman, Anne, Maggie Doherty, doesn't, Emre Emre, Roald Dahl's, Matilda, Myers, Briggs, you've, I've, Bain, Chris Bierly, I'd, Amy Lombard, Ferrante, She's, Christian Nakarado, Leo Carey, Jason, Nakarado, hasn't, Emre's, Altan, Emre lasered, Ara Osterweil, McGill, Beyoncé, Osterweil, Al Jazeera, sensitively, Ivy pricks, she's, Michael Berube, He'd, he'd, James Joyce, Simone de Beauvoir, Merve, Sarah Chihaya, —, Mary Butts, Leonora Carrington, Susan Taubes, Taubes, Durga Chew, Christian Lorentzen, Orhan Pamuk, Lena Dunham, Chew, Bose, Yale's, it's, she'd, Taylor Swift, Elif Batuman, Swift, Janet Malcolm, Charlie Kaufman, Roth, we're, What's, Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, It's, Elizabeth Morache, Rebecca Zisser, David Bergman Organizations: The New York, McGill, Times, New York Magazine, The, Yorker, Wesleyan University, Reading, Twitter, McGill ,, Wesleyan, Ivy League, Yale, Shapiro Center, Creative, NBA, Harvard, Bain & Company, Insider Yale, HBO, Congress, NPR, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, New York, Yahoo, Oxford, Oxford . McGill, University of Oxford, Penn State, Fordham University, Boston, Intelligence Squared, Yale Science, University, Whitney Museum, Netflix Locations: Rachel Comey's Soho, McGill , Oxford, Columbia, Norwegian, New Haven , Connecticut, New Haven, Adana, Turkey, New York, Cambridge, Montreal, United States, chiseling, Turkish

☆ How Merve Emre became the hottest — and most divisive — name in literary criticism
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-24 | by ( Anna Silman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +40 min

☆ Opinion | Go Ahead. Debate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-24 | by ( Ross Douthat | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The subject was God and religion, and I served as defender of faith against the prosecutorial efforts of Christopher Hitchens. The audience was there to hear Hitchens at the peak of his powers, and I was the New Jersey Generals. The lesson I took from that experience was simple: Trying to defeat charismatic men with facts and logic is a fool’s errand. Hitchens’s “religion poisons everything” account of human history was a mixture of balderdash, historical caricature and barely-veiled anti-religious bigotry. The lesson I actually took was, Ross, you blew it, do better next time.

Persons: Christopher Hitchens, Hitchens, Ross Organizations: New, New Jersey Generals Locations: Nantucket, New Jersey

☆ Joyce Carol Oates Examines a Dystopian Future
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-23 | by ( Antonia Hitchens | Photography Miranda Barnes For Wsj. Magazine | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

“Whenever you are writing, it seems like it’s the first time,” says Oates, whose forthcoming book ‘Zero-Sum’ attends to the sinister undercurrents of home life. “I have so many ideas, and I have so many notes here at my study. I just won’t live to write them all,” Joyce Carol Oates said recently. Her oeuvre spans novels, novellas, short stories, plays, poetry, nonfiction and, occasionally, viral tweets, not to mention a Substack. When it comes to her books, the 85-year-old author has often taken on the sinister and the tragic, as with 2022’s Babysitter, a novel about a serial killer in Detroit who chases children, and Blonde (2000), a fictionalized memoir of Marilyn Monroe, which last year was adapted into a film of the same name.

Persons: ”, Oates, ’, “, ” Joyce Carol Oates, Marilyn Monroe Locations: Detroit

☆ Opinion: A cerebral rock star is dead
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-21 | by ( Opinion John Avlon | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

He is the author of “Lincoln and the Fight for Peace.” The views expressed in this essay are his own. These celebrated writers were the subject of long-form profiles and occasional tabloid scandals, treated as cerebral rock stars and voices of their generation. They were a post-punk crew that migrated from the UK to the US, including Hitchens, Tina Brown and Salman Rushdie. In his final book, “Inside Story,” part memoir and part novel, Amis returned to his friendship with Hitchens in the 1970s, prior to their becoming famous. It chronicles a doomed affair, flashing forward at times to the decline of their friend Saul Bellows from dementia, as well as Hitchens’ death.

☆ Martin Amis, Acclaimed Author of Bleakly Comic Novels, Dies at 73
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-20 | by ( Dwight Garner | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

As he aged, he stopped playing tennis, a sport he once played daily and wrote about often. He mostly stopped writing criticism, too. “Insulting people in print is a vice of youth,” he said in an interview with The Independent. Mr. Amis was shortlisted for the award in 1991 for “Time’s Arrow,” and longlisted in 2003 for “Yellow Dog.”His final novel, “Inside Story,” published in 2020, was a “novelized autobiography” that considered his friendship with Mr. Hitchens and his relationship with his father. In “The Information,” he wrote: “Every morning we leave more in the bed: certainty, vigor, past loves.

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