The fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago is justly remembered as a turning point not just in European history but in world history. Viewed from these shores, of course, it was a victory. The Cold War was over. We won. Yes, yes, we had some help from our NATO allies. And pastors in […]
Richard Byrne
Richard Byrne is a journalist who lives in Washington, D.C. He blogs at Balkans via Bohemia.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Exit, Stage Left
A new collection of plays revisits a moment when the narrative power of organized labor was at its zenith.
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Dayton, Part II?
Thirteen years after Bosnia’s wars, the Dayton Peace Agreement is under attack as outmoded and unsustainable. But is there any better solution on offer?
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What’s Wrong With Theater?
Monologist Mike Daisey raises hell about how corporate attitudes broke the American stage — and why a simple application of government stimulus alone can’t fix it.
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Shadows and Fog
After a past denunciation is unearthed from the files, Milan Kundera faces his own trial by media. Is the jury rigged against him?
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Selling It Short
Joe McGinniss’ classic text on presidential campaign ads is almost 40 years old now. But it still has valuable lessons for candidates and the public alike.
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Bodymore, Murdaland
“It’s Baltimore, gentlemen. The gods will not save you.” — The police commissioner to his commanders on The Wire The Baltimore Police Department’s 2005 annual report is crammed with statistics that tell a story. Violent crime is down in every category measured by the department. The city witnessed 269 murders in 2005, or seven […]
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Follow The (Dear) Leader
In Team America: World Police, the puppet-film satire of the global war on terrorism made by Matt Stone and Trey Parker (of South Park fame), North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is gleefully depicted as an oddball Bond villain: outsized glasses, Elmer Fudd lisp, a streak of maudlin solipsism, and a team of lackeys including al-Qaeda […]
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Big Wind From Ohio
Back in the lo-fi bliss of mid-1980s, the Columbus, Ohio band Great Plains wrote a song called “Letter to a Fanzine.” It was a brilliantly Janus-faced take on indie rock’s navel gazing, neatly encompassing satire and self-satisfaction. (“Isn’t my haircut really intense / Isn’t Nick Cave a genius in a sense?”) Rock critics of that […]
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The Good Book
It has been almost 80 years since novelist Sinclair Lewis set his most iconic fictional creation, a hell-raiser turned hellfire preacher named Elmer Gantry, loose on an unsuspecting America. For a clergyman in his 70s, Gantry has proven to be remarkably hale and hearty. Op-ed writers and columnists lean continually on Lewis’ parson to represent […]