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Who Shall Live And Who Shall Die?
Masterpiece Theatre and the Politics of Quality
PBS: Behind the Screen
After the NEA

Was Russia better off under Communism? Leon Aron analyzes the emergence of a new middle class, and finds the answer to the question is: "Nyet!" . . .

Opening his Christmas cards, Charlie Clark discovered he might have won a fortune -- or maybe not . . .

"Ours were the signatures that should have appeared on those works. But never mind. We modestly stayed in the background so long as the Baron lived up to the promises his grandfather made when we resurrected his dead collection. But when we learned that Baritsch was going to scrap the deal; that you, of all people, were about to market these goods; we had to act." Till's bony shoulders sagged. He realized at once that his grand plan for curing the museum's finances had collapsed Chapter Thirteen: Perspective . . .

Charles C. Ruff's memorial service was more than a remembrance of the late White House Counsel who had defended President Clinton against impeachment. No novelist could have invented the spectacle which unfolded on that cold, gray, and rainy Saturday morning...

With Ramadan, Hanukkah and Christmas overlapping this year, even Iraq's Saddam Hussein is in the holiday spirit. He is handing out $10,000 to each family of a Palestinian "martyr" against Israel. The wounded get only $1,000 . . .

"What is the biggest difference between 1900 and 2000? A hundred years ago Western artists were straining to break free of 'stale' traditional values; today we yearn to renew them. '1900' offers a tantalizing glimpse of the passionate beauty and spirituality of the conservative tradition, which mirrors our own longings today for cultural renewal in the twenty-first century. . ."

As a Christmas treat, Alistair Cooke's personal portrait of the The New Yorker's founding spirit, from his latest book. Chapter Ten: Harold Ross . . .

"The typed message said: 'Your children are in a safe place ... for now. Their environment is temperature and humidity controlled and they enjoy extremely competent nannies. Don't do anything rash. We'll be in touch.'" Chapter Twelve: The Black Ship . . .

Exhibitionism raises serious questions about its author's background in art historiography. The subtitle refers to "an era of intolerance," but every recent era has been intolerant: the Fauves were "wild beasts," and Picasso and Braque's seminal works were minimized as "des petites cubes." And who was more intolerant than Clement Greenberg in the 40s and 50s as he lauded the Abstract statementists and deplored some other "kitsch?"

Frank Rich's powerful and moving memoir reveals a hidden truth about Broadway musicals from the 1950s and 1960s -- that they were not happy stories, rather cautionary tales of unhappy families coping with divorce and personal loss . . .

"We were there to spend two hours with Abdurrahman Wahid, watching the American election returns. My anonymous friend managed the monitor, lowering the volume when we needed to converse, while I told the President when something significant happened. 'Gus Dur, they've just switched Florida from Gore to Undecided.' As I write one month later, the U.S. is still undecided..."

The Democratic winner of the 1876 election lost his Presidency when Florida sent two competing slates of Electors to Washington -- and a congressional commission awarded the victory to Rutherford B. Hayes. Yet today it is the memory of Samuel J. Tilden that inspires artists, writers, and the public . . .

" Typically, the art world lived on rumors and innuendo; many other pictures or whole collections had been questioned in the past, with raised eyebrows, nods, winks, shrugged shoulders, wry smiles. But to publish such a sensational article in a respectable art magazine was another thing entirely. It was against the code and Levin was sure he would pay dearly for transgressing that. On the other hand, the art world had become a stuffy, overheated room and he felt desperate to let in fresh air. As Rachel had emphasized, there had never been a Pulitzer Prize awarded for investigative reporting in art. Maybe this year that barrier would be broken."Chapter Eleven: Sfmuato . . .

Our insomniac columnist, waking at 3 a.m., tried to find TV news about the Florida election. But Charlie Clark's cable company had mysteriously pre-empted his favorite channel...

One day, Desmond Nicholson was taking his yacht charter guests for a swim, and while waiting for them he saw some Amerindian pottery in a building sandpit by the sea. So he investigated -- and it was not long before he became president of the International Association for Caribbean Archeology . . .

"This is the Balkan - a florilegium of contradictions within contraventions, the mawkish and the jaded, the charitable and the deleterious, the feckless and the bumptious, evanescent and exotic, a mystery wrapped in an enigma..."

Don't know what books to buy for Christmas (or Hannukah, Kwanzaa or Ramadan)? Don't despair, Alice Goldfarb Marquis has holiday recommendations . . .

BACK ISSUES

(At the request of readers, in order to speed up the home page connection, older stories from The Idler are moved into this section at the end of each month. Stories may also be found by using the search box in the left-hand column).

Table of Contents for 2000, Volume II The Idler, v.II, January - November 2000.

Table of Contents for 1999, Volume I The Idler, v.I, 1999.