The traditional argument for subsidizing churches has been that they provide a public good. I expect many citizens today can provide examples of churches working against their good, and can make a reasonable objection to being forced to contribute to those churches.
Category Archive: Bits
Gorsuch will be confirmed. Trump is a puppet. Bannon (alt-right) and the religious right are both pulling strings, happy for all of Trump’s blunders and Tweets because they keep us distracted, looking in the wrong direction. Financial regulations are being dismantled. Yay.
At 4:58 PM most Sunday afternoons, my heart trips a quick panic, my feet go cold and my ears ring. Then I pick up the microphone, wondering if anybody sees my hand shaking. Every damn time.
Substitute the word “opinion” wherever you find the word “faith.” Think about that – it’s a powerful thought experiment.
As a performer being honored, essentially, for her empathy, it’s entirely appropriate for Streep to highlight a performance anathema to her life’s work. In context, she was saying “performers have great power and great responsibility.”
In which I make strained political analogies using food, along with a crystal ball prediction.
Theater is one of the few educational activities that’s measured by the enjoyment of the participants. I want to shift the bar.
The single best performance I watched in 2016 was Sarah’s, but don’t tell her. It wasn’t polished, for god’s sake, but it had an immediacy that knocked me, and lots of other people, off our feet.
The song is so catchy, it makes you root for the guy who won’t take no for an answer. Our cultural norm, constantly reinforced in music and movies, is that a little resistance is good, but real men are persistent and get what they want in the end; furthermore, women like it that way.
The Richard Rodgers Theatre is not The Cotton Club; its performers should not be similarly cowed. As Garrison Keillor sung in his definitive song about Newt Gingrich: “Artists always have the final say.”
