Two Corrections

I kind of like The Guardian's blog's "Noises Off" feature. It always signals to me the moment a debate has been over for a little bit and it's time to summarize it. Journalism is supposed to be the first draft of history, but the "Noises Off" feature is basically the second draft: rarely is The Guardian's blog a primary source of discussion, but it's a nice way to round up everything that went on. At any rate, if I want to link to a complex discussion (like the one we had about Quality/Diversity or the one we had about Thomas Garvey -- good times!), it's a lot easier to link to their index-of-important-moments than to try and hit all the original posts myself.

That being said, they don't always get it exactly right (as is always the case with the second draft of history. And I thought it would be worthwhile to correct two quick points, both in reference to myself.

Firstly, in this post, I'm described as an "actor-turned-playwright." That makes it sound like I don't perform anymore... contrary to popular belief, I do still act! In fact, if you want to see me act, my show is still running this week:

Thursday at 9:30 PM

Friday at 7:30 PM

Saturday at 2:00 PM and 8:30 PM

All at 721 Broadway's 2nd floor Shop Theater. I'd love to see you there, and you can see for yourself that I still perform. Granted, I also wrote the play, but I am a performer!

Secondly, in this post, my brief response to Nick Clegg's liking Samuel Beckett is summed up in the sentence, "Clegg did come in for criticism from some quarters." Actually, when I said that "As usual, liking theatre is apparently on par with the worst opinions of bigots towards black community members," I was not criticizing Clegg, I was criticizing the horrible cultural atmosphere we have that makes Clegg's statement so rare.

I'd much prefer if Clegg's statement was the norm, just one of many intellectual acknowledgments that politicians made. Instead, it landed in the cultural sphere like a bombshell -- Somebody cares about us! The implication behind all of the glowing praise of Clegg was, "How politically risky it is to approve of the arts!" That's what I meant. That's the problem. Certainly I didn't criticize Clegg for not playing into it.

Also, I do have to say that this mischaracterization of my meaning (which I will accept some responsibility for, because that was kind of a throwaway post) does come at least in some part because of the common journalistic formula that gets applied often, not only here but in many media. The formula goes something like:

Token Liberal said: XXXXX

Token Liberal 2 agreed, saying YYYYY. Token Liberal 3 explained further, ZZZZZZ.

Not everyone agreed with Token Liberal, however. Token Conservative said AAAAAAA. Another Token Conservative said BBBBBBB.

Obviously that's almost insultingly reductive, (and I'm using Liberal/Conservative in place of any reductive "with-us-or-against-us" mentality) but when I saw how I was quoted in the Noises Off it seemed to me that I was suffered by being shoehorned into the wrong paragraph.

Just setting the record straight.

MSM Tackles Theater

Thank God for Nick Clegg, if only for making the non-theater blogosphere talk about theater for a hot second. Here's Matt Yglesias on Clegg on Beckett:

I think people used to think that you couldn’t win a presidential election while being a black man named “Barack Hussein Obama” whose autobiography admits to cocaine use and who used to represent Hyde Park in the State Senate while attending a black nationalist church. It just turns out that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our narrow conventional wisdom. So I wish someone would say the person he admires most is an avant-garde writer, if only to break the taboo which might, in turn, help us build a less relentlessly anti-intellectual public culture.

As usual, liking theater is apparently on par with the worst opinions of bigots towards black community members. Here's Stephen Fry on the anti-elitism that was uncovered by criticisms of Clegg:

When I was growing up ‘elitism’ was a word sneered from the lips of the Left, now it is sneered from the lips of the Right. The sneering was ugly then and it is ugly now. Knowledge, science, understanding, literacy and curiosity are absolute goods and to hell with anyone who tries to follow that American habit here and attempts to construct a discourse in which only a despised liberal elite are interested in science, the arts, history and ideas. Such wickedness reminds one of those who opposed Education For All at the end of the nineteenth century. All knowledge should be free and available and all people should be encouraged to acquire it. It will not necessarily lead to liberalism, but it will lead to understanding and a desire for openness and decent, non-tribalist exchanges of the kind that can only enrich our democracy.

It's worthwhile to note that apparently that most uncouth of audiences, the Twitter mass, seemed fairly positive.

My Mind 4/17 - 4/23

How I was keeping my mind clean this week:

• Imagining playing with toy cars.
• Feeling guilty about how funny I find news of a priest falling asleep during a suicide hotline call. Spoiler alert: nobody dies.
• Scummy celebrities versus their critics: Baio v. Jezebel and LaBute v. Chicago.

How I was keeping my mind fit this week:

• Wondering with Matt Freeman about raising children in the arts. If the 93% Childless rate amongst NY's Independent Theater as collected by the New York Innovative Theatre Foundation is any indication, the question is not being answered.
• Weighing Tycho of Penny Arcade's response to Roger Ebert saying that video games aren't art. Shorter Tycho: Don't waste your time, Ebert can't take anything away from you.

Important facts:

• A handy chart of where your tax dollars go: 20% to defense, 20% to Social Security, 14% to the safety net, 6% to debt, and then other smaller things. If those are the accurate numbers... it actually seems to me to be about right.
• Another handy chart of sleep schedules. Bottom line: your 20s are an aberration, sleep-wise.
• As polls go, Rasmussen leans furthest to the right, and not for easily-explainable reasons.
• There are 1.1 Million virgins between the ages of 25 and 40. I'm finally part of a minority!
• Voting Yes on Health Care was a big fundraising bump if you were a Democrat. If you were a Republican? Well, we'll never know.
• California's state constitution is the third oldest in the world, after Alabama and India. All three fail to provide political stability or equal access to public services.
• The Double Down is not as bad as many of its fast-food contemporaries. Thanks again, Nate Silver!

Things to watch in the future:

• Will Nick Clegg win -- or at least, break through?
• Will Harry Reid win his financial regulation game of chicken?
• Will Governor Charlie Crist run as an independent?
• Will AIG get in on the action and sue Goldman Sachs?
• Will Viacom back down on censoring South Park?