Posts by Craig Ranapia
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ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulus will greet me. Stephanopoulus is a former aid to Bill Clinton (he was the inspiration for Sam Seaborn), and a relative newcomer to journalism, but This Week has a pedigree: on-air for more than 25 years. For those after a weekly interview and panel show in the lead-up to the November election, it will be hard to go past.
If George does gravitas, I guess I've missed it because from what I've seen he comes across as a badly over-caffeinated Sean Plunkett. (You know, the kind of crap he's not doing so much anymore, to __Morning Report's benefit). Even the partisan talking heads are easier to take on the PBS News Hour. I'd consider it an entirely appropriate use of charter funding if Triangle was handed a large wodge of cash to do a timeshare deal for the grown-up news.
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<blockquote>I would also take issue with the implication that classical musicians and those who love opera are not interested in any other type of music.</blockquote>
Hum... I wonder what the members of the Kronos Quartet -- who I understand still occasionally perform their arrangement of 'Purple Haze' as an encore -- would have to say about that? If anything their discography seems perversely ecclectic -- from Philip Glass and John Adams through to collaborating with Bollywood playback singer (and iconic legend) Asha Bhosle to record the filmi music of her husband, R.D. Burman. I'm not so sure the lines between high and low have ever been quite as clear as some folks would like to think -- and not only in music.
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I think the historical staying power of opera is more to do with its audience and patrons ... Europeans kings and queens, Masons, and polite, well educated billionnaires. That is, in earlier centuries orchetral music received the canonical status, funding and critical attention, while folk music just got on with it and looked after itself.
Um, James, it might be worth reminding folks that The Magic Flute premiered in a suburban theatre in Vienna. I do think there's a certain amount of ahistorical inverse snobbery at work when it comes to opera, and I find it tiresome - even if it's largely a self-inflicted wound.
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Ah, screw the pair of 'em. Give me Teddy Tahu Rhodes' abs of steel, and call it washday.
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Hayley thingummy comes across very girl next door: Dame K as being more than a little up herself.
Well, to paraphrase Winston Churchill on Clement Atlee, Westenra is a very modest person who has much to be modest about. :)
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Seriously, you think Julie Andrews is to be compared with John Coltrane because they both turned out a take of My Favourite Things?..strange logic.
Not exactly, Simon. I own several recordings of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, and I don't believe its musical and lyrical intelligence is any less significant because it opened on Broadway rather than the Met. If you want to set on the stage as Mrs Lovett and dial it in (because you're a diva and this is all sightly beneath you but lucrative), you're going to look like a fool.
For me Simon it's this simple: Don't condescend to your material or your audience. Coltrane and Miles Davis didn't when they "covered" Summertime; Dame K., in my view, did.
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But its not trying to be. It's a genre in its own right and shouldn't judged against either, which I think is Graham's point.
Oh, balls. The funny thing is that Kiri has one or two discs of standards and Christmas stocking fillers in her discography, and they're almost uniformly horrible. You do Gershwin -- arguably the master of the Great American Songbook -- you're begging to be compared to the pantheon of jazz and pop vocalists. Tut tut, Dame K.
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I'm interested to know more about these "evangelical atheists" you speak of, Craig. The atheists I know (and that's a lot) keep their views to themselves, except when someone - an individual, or the state - is trying to force religiosity on them, or invoke some religious power in their name.
*sigh* Let's just say I've had significantly different experiences, and leave it at that. I had one rather tiresome experience fairly recently at an otherwise delightful Christmas party, and as I said it was pretty offensive (and utterly unprovoked) but I didn't really want to get into a knock down, drag out argument. It's a good general rule that responding to the rude and obnoxious with an equal or greater level of rude obnoxiousness is not an appropriate response.
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Well duh. Editing Wikipedia well isn't easy -- we don't want everyone who uses it as a reference to be editing. The idea that this somehow invalidates the process is silly.
Indeed. Just as I'm reasonably certain Slate has a editorial hierarchy. If I want to quibble about something in an article, I can e-mail the author the author or post a comment on a relevant discussion board. And one of the great things about an on-line zine like Slate is that errors can be corrected, or stories updated very quickly. Doesn't mean that Slate is any less valuable because that process is mediated.
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And, yes, I do think Mike Huckabee is a fricking fool. I've no problem with the man being an ordained Baptist minister any more than I have issues with Mitt Romney being a Mormon. Barack Obama is a regular church-goer as well, but he seems to have a firm grip on the notion that if he becomes President he will swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. Not The Bible. Governors Huckabee and Romney? Not so sure.
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