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At the dawn of a new millennium, The Idler takes a look homeward with publication of the first chapter from Charlie Clark's coming-of-age novel, "Finish High School At Home."

A study from Columbia University's National Arts Journalism Project declares there is a problem with arts reporting in America. It misses the point. The problem is not with newspaper reporting -- it's with the art...

 Calm and unflappable on camera, the offstage Alistair Cooke has led a life of burning passion and white-hot intensity. Nick Clarke relates his discovery of the man behind the image...

 Once cold as the cod in their fish and chips, the English discovered central heating and now seem as "shagadelic" as Austin Powers...

 Watch out Robert Hughes! Matthew Collings has a new British television series called This Is Modern Art where he tries to explain why Jeff Koons' giant puppies and Tracy Emin's unmade bed really are are art...

Continuing his political coverage of the Y2K election year, Charlie Clark speculates how modern political consultants might have changed the Lincoln-Douglas debates into an argument about buggy-whips...

 Norman Rockwell is "hot" again, with a travelling exhibition in Atlanta and a rave review in the New York Times. But is something being left out of the story?...

 Could a basketball player for the San Antonio Spurs possess the secret of enlightened arts patronage for America? Alice Goldfarb Marquis looks at paying for the arts from a new perspective... 

 The Poet-In-Residence for the City of London, the square mile financial capital of Great Britain, is descended from a line of chartered accountants. John Mole explains why Poetry is as solid a calling as Finance...

 As the Y2K Election approaches, Charlie Clark asks campaign finance reformers to take a look at the most widespread technique used to manipulate voters...

 Actress Halle Berry, who played Dorothy Dandridge in a recent HBO movie, is a consummate diva--talented, brilliant, determined, and elegantly beautiful....

How to make sense of the sensation over the Sensation exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art? Try reading Matthew Collings' new book, IT HURTS, for a start...

Art critic Roger Kimball explains what the "Sensation" at the Brooklyn Museum of Art is all about...

It's New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (born in Brooklyn) vs. the Art Mafia in the current fight over the "Sensation" show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art...

 A new web service offers the chance for alumni to rate their schools. Charlie Clark gave it a try and has this report...

 Once upon a time, before "The Terminator" and "The Godfather," scores in the movies were settled by less destructive means...

These days Cuba appears to be a favorite vacation spot for American writers and artists, but a Cuban painter, writer, and documentary filmmaker sees it differently...

 The National Museum of American Art and National Portrait Gallery have announced that they will close to the public for three years. But they are not alone...

 Coming back to Santa Monica, California twenty-some years after first moving there, the author finds much has changed...

 When a Washington NPR station dropped classical music for news, thousands of listeners protested. One of them tells why...

America's greatest artistic achievements might be found in an unexpected place...

 America's laws are now being made by aging Bruce Springsteen fans. Kind of makes you think...

 How the opera world manages to pay millions for bureaucracy, but not one cent for new talent...

 American classical music is in a crisis, but don't blame the usual suspects. The villains are elsewhere to be found...

 In a remote town on an island off the coast of British Columbia, an American expatriate documents Nazi atrocities...

What the Boer war was for the Forsyte family, the Kosovo conflict might become for America...

 Believe it or not, ancient Athens was an awful lot like Washington, DC today...

 Cricket is far, far more than a game to millions of former British Colonial subjects...

Or, why Norman Podhoretz is no Count Tolstoy...

The British Empire had its fatal flaws, but its legacy is formidable...

 What people experience in their daily lives is far more powerful than what they see on TV...

 TV's human sleep medication isn't always an insomniac's best friend. Sometimes, he can be vicious...

 What happened at Columbine High School was not as unpredictable as it seemed at first...

 If he permits himself to be labelled a "traditionalist," he knows he's finished -- but if he doesn't, he must pose as something he is not...

 How does one decide between two competing values? Jane Jacobs' philosophical framework provides some guidance...

 America should be generous with refugees from Balkan wars...

 Being Stephen Spielberg apparently means never having to say you're sorry, even when you produce a documentary that gets things about the Holocaust wrong...

 If "bad" writing is good, and "good" writing bad, what kind of rhetoric is at work for Professor Judith Butler...

 Is the love for British Classic Serials featured on "Masterpiece Theatre"...