It's as if we learned that Mr. Rogers was a pedophile, or Marcus Welby had sexually assaulted patients in his exam room. This week we learned that Bill Cosby, the apogee of middle class respectability both in character (as Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show) and in person (universally honored, including locally a few years ago by …
Category: Culture
Globe food editor Gail Perrin and her link to Peter Frates
Two trumpets, a horn, a euphonium and a tuba, a brass quintet performing the music for Saturday’s memorial for the late Boston Globe food writer and editor Gail Perrin. The music was loud, bold, brassy and confident: how very Gail Perrin. Gail was remembered for her warmth, her whimsy, her hospitality, her lust for international …
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Lessons from Red Sox racist history
The best baseball book of 2002 was Boston Herald reporter Howard Bryant's Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston. Even growing up with the Red Sox, until reading the book years ago at the insistence of my non-Red-Sox-fan husband, I was never fully aware of the deep-rooted racial intolerance of the team …
New solutions for NFL Neanderthals
I'm with Karl Rove, at least on this: Condoleezza Rice should replace Roger Goodell as head of the National Football League. Goodell has been a toady for the owners, who get fat profits from leaving the game just where it is. Despite lip service to the contrary, they have accepted barbaric behavior from the players …
Andris Nelsons brings new electricity to Boston Symphony
Who would have thought that so much of Boston would be abuzz about the new music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra? The arrival of director (designate until September) Andris Nelsons at the BSO's Tanglewood Music Center (TMC), the world's leading summer classical musical festival, in Lenox, MA this past weekend has generated enough electricity to …
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Books to escape from Benghazi, Boko Haram, Boehner, biz cycle etc, pt. 2
For real escape through summer reading, there's no substitute for fiction. Here are a few books worth sharing. My top read this past year was The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. A 13-year-old boy in Manhattan survives a terrorist bomb in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His mother is killed. They had been visiting her favorite painting, a goldfinch …
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Books to escape from Benghazi, Boko Haram, Boehner, biz cycle etc, pt. 1
Every summer I offer up some of the books I've read in the past year and happily invite readers' recommendations to me. I'm always on the prowl for a good read. This summer's book review will be in two parts. First, the non-fiction. If you're looking for light summer reading, do not try to read …
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Ann Coulter on soccer: a real head case
Ann Coulter must have been hit on the head by a soccer ball, and it was no planned header. Her recent column , a screed against the sport and America's growing interest in it, seems unhinged. She asserts that this is a sign of our nation's moral decay, that the only reason we are interested …
Smart People, smart play
Smart People, Lydia Diamond's new play at the Huntington Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts, is a smart, funny, profound and highly polished play that I don't hesitate to recommend. Diamond, whose award-winning play Stick Fly played at the Huntington four years ago before going on to Broadway, writes a lot about race and …
Senator Whoever: a candidate for The Daily Show!
I haven't written much about Citizens United and the lethal impact that infamous Supreme Court decision has had on our already tainted political process. Nothing I could have written would have driven the point home as colorfully as this music video by Los Angeles-based music writer, singer and producer Eric Schwartz. Please take a few minutes …
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Marjorie Arons-Barron 