Editorials
536 results
Page 40
The final showdown: People vs. ants
The good news about the population explosion
A 1971 film called The Hellstrom Chronicle made a believer of me: Insects will be here long after we humans have destroyed ourselves. Since then, the population explosion and biotechnology have given me new hope. But we humans still have our work cut out for us.
Editorials
4 minute read
David Brooks contemplates the great chasm
The unbearable lightness of being David Brooks
In which an esteemed New York Times op-ed page columnist discovers that rich people have more money than poor people.
Editorials
4 minute read
The Barnes vs. Chartres Cathedral
Albert Barnes, Chartres Cathedral and the limits of orthodoxy
Albert Barnes's acolytes contend that he did for Modernism what Chartres Cathedral did for Christianity. Which raises an interesting question: Have you been to Chartres lately?
Editorials
5 minute read
The Welcomat's unsung heroine
Let us now praise gutsy publishers
I appreciate Philadelphia Magazine's recent recognition of my role in transforming the Welcomat in the 1980s from a pedestrian Center City neighborhood weekly into a unique experiment in free speech. But the article overlooked the real heroine of Philadelphia's alternative media saga of the past 45 years: the Welcomat's feisty publisher.
Editorials
4 minute read
The angst of Buzz Bissinger
You too can play this game: The Bissinger-Malcolm sweepstakes
With his new introspective book, Father's Day, Buzz Bissinger has entered the Janet Malcolm sweepstakes for sweeping generalizations. But why should he have all the fun?
Editorials
4 minute read
How to deal with historical injustice
Who invented the telegraph? Reflections on historical injustice
If someone takes credit that you deserve, how should you respond? With help from a few obscure historical heroes, let me offer some suggestions.
Editorials
4 minute read
Of Jets, Sharks, Jews and "Niggers'
Of ‘Jews' and ‘Niggers' (Do I have your attention yet?)
The use of word “Niggers” in the original Show Boat was deemed so harsh that it had to be softened. Ditto now for “Jews” in Bach's St. John Passion. Yet sometimes a slap in the face makes you sit up and pay attention.
Editorials
3 minute read
The Pulitzer Prize, and other delusions
What the Pulitzer Prize didn't do for Hemingway (or any other writer)
Authors and publishers are distraught because the Pulitzer board declined to bestow an award for “Best Fiction” in 2011. It's bad for their business, surely. But how, exactly, does winning a prize improve anyone's creativity?
Editorials
4 minute read
Titanic: Death of a fantasy
The Titanic's last survivor (and other childhood fantasies)
Of all my ridiculous fantasies from the ‘50s, the most ludicrous was this: that the sunken hull of the Titanic still harbored a living passenger, and that some day I would meet him.
Editorials
6 minute read
Edghill v. Philadelphia Magazine, revisited
Legal truth and real truth: The libel suit that refuses to die
When publisher Herb Lipson settled a libel suit for millions and issued a retraction in 1989, he thought he was ending a personal nightmare. But he seems to have been paying a price ever since— not legal or financial, but psychological.
Editorials
8 minute read