Editorials

536 results
Page 44
Gilda Radner: Included in the price of admission.

Gentiles and the new American Jewish History Museum

But is it good for the gentiles?

What is a museum of American Jewish history doing on Independence Mall, when there's no museum there for Brits, Irish, Germans or African-Americans? There's actually a good answer to that question.
Dan Rottenberg

Dan Rottenberg

Editorials 5 minute read
A dowager taught the young Stokowski (above) something about contractual relationships.

The Orchestra's bankruptcy and the Pew connection

The Orchestra's failure and the elephant in the room

What's more dismaying— a Philadelphia Orchestra board that abdicates its responsibility to its creditors, or a major arts funder that shrinks from making artistic judgments?
Dan Rottenberg

Dan Rottenberg

Editorials 8 minute read
Is this woman strangling, or was that just a metaphor?

"Strangled' by government regulation

Ayn Rand lives!

The Philadelphia entrepreneur Joan Carter, recently inducted as the first woman president of the Union League, is a remarkable business success story. But she insists that she and her husband are “choking” on government regulation. Where have I heard this complaint before?
Dan Rottenberg

Dan Rottenberg

Editorials 5 minute read
Ted Leisenring stood up to John L. Lewis but couldn't say no to his ancestors.

The coal baron who wouldn't sell out

Requiem for a coal baron

Most coal barons sell out after a generation or so and retire to Fifth Avenue or Palm Beach, where they'll never have to think about coal again. Ted Leisenring, who died this month, refused to quit. Instead he spent half a century manning the front lines of a titanic human struggle to extract coal from the ground and deliver it to a relentlessly capricious and ungrateful market.
Dan Rottenberg

Dan Rottenberg

Editorials 7 minute read
David Mackay (foreground), Ian Bedford in 'Superior Donuts': Did the critic speak too soon?

The theatergoer who reviewed a "preview'

Crime and punishment

Marshall Ledger was a great editor for many years. But this month he pushed the envelope too far— forcing Philadelphia's no-nonsense theater community to take prompt and decisive action.
Dan Rottenberg

Dan Rottenberg

Editorials 4 minute read
Mandy Patinkin as Levin, with the 'ghost' of Anne Frank: A human or a symbol?

Meyer Levin's Anne Frank obsession

Who owns Anne Frank?

Meyer Levin's long struggle to stage his own idiosyncratic vision of The Diary of Anne Frank is often portrayed as a fanatical obsession. But to my mind the aggrieved party is not merely Levin but anyone who's curious to sample his take on the Holocaust heroine.
Dan Rottenberg

Dan Rottenberg

Editorials 8 minute read
Libyan protester: Who knew poor Arab kids could be so astute?

Optimists of the world, unite!

The West's debt to the Arabs

At the very least, the events of the past month in the Middle East remind us of a lesson we too often forget: that the past need not dictate the future.
Dan Rottenberg

Dan Rottenberg

Editorials 4 minute read
Smoke and mirrors time, again.

Tina Brown, pro and con

Tina Brown and the limits of hype

Tina Brown, who recently took charge of the moribund Newsweek magazine, has been acclaimed as one of the world's most successful magazine editors. But that depends on how you define success.
Dan Rottenberg

Dan Rottenberg

Editorials 3 minute read
Geoffrey Rush as Logue (left), overshadowed by the king (Colin Firth) and queen (Helena Bonham Carter): An aristocracy of merit.

Why "The King's Speech' worked for me

Commoners, kings and the moment of truth

Anne Fabbri argues that The King's Speech glorifies boring and useless hereditary aristocrats who don't really matter. Oh, but they did, at a critical moment. And it's the sort of moment that could have happened to any of us, commoner or king.

Editorials 5 minute read
Rendell on '60 Minutes': Stop the presses!

The 'Inquirer' contemplates Rendell's TV tantrum

Calling all simpletons, or: The Inquirer discovers Rendell's temper

What would old-timers who remember Mayor Dick Dilworth— both of us— make of the Inquirer's coverage of Ed Rendell's TV temper tantrum? And who at the Inquirer remembers the greatest moment in Philadelphia sports history?
Dan Rottenberg

Dan Rottenberg

Editorials 4 minute read