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- Iron Maiden forced to cut Paris show short after power outage
Iron Maiden’s Paris concert was halted for over an hour by a power cut, with fans enduring a heatwave and no air conditioning before the band were able to resume their set [TheTopNews] Read More.11 hours ago - Alex James says Blur won’t reunite until Oasis are doneAlex James has suggested Blur will stay off the road until Oasis wrap up their plans, admitting he doesn’t want to “poke that hornet’s nest” again. [TheTopNews] Read More.11 hours ago
- When America’s Culture Wars Were Fought in Art Galleries
Conservatives were once obsessed with “Piss Christ.” The Andres Serrano photograph, actually titled Immersion, debuted in 1987, but I can attest that it soaked through the pores of the right-wing mind well into the Bill Clinton years. I was growing up in a small Chicago suburb, attending Lutheran grade school, and the phrase denoting some coupling of liquid waste and the Christian savior was in constant rotation in conversation. Teachers, relatives, and parents of friends would evoke the “blasphemy” of Serrano, without uttering the artist’s name, as proof that society was going to hell, literally. That an image of a crucifix in human urine had, indirectly, received funding from the federal government was proof that liberals, artists, feminists, gays—essentially anyone who did not conform to the Christian, two-parent family unit lifestyle—constituted extreme danger to all that was holy. As soon as the internet became publicly accessible—painfully slow dial-up connections and all—there was a Streisand effect in play. One of the first images that my friends and I found online was Immersion. We had imagined something horrific, a picture so evil that merely casting eyes upon it would cast our souls into the devil’s lair. Instead, we found a photograph with a mysterious, eerie, and disorienting beauty. A white crucifix is bathed in a red and yellowish light. We were too young to speak as critics, but our silence as we stared at the screen stemmed from the realization that we were looking at genuine art. It provoked thought through discomfort, reinvented the familiar, and subverted expectations. None of these effects would have occurred to us junior high boys. So, we grew bored, never to think of “Piss Christ” again, save for wondering whenever a pious parent or principal would bring it up, “What’s the big deal?” The Perfect Moment: God, Sex, Art, and the Birth of America’s Culture Wars by Isaac Butler. Bloomsbury, 384 pp. But as art critic, author, and podcast host Isaac Butler makes clear in his new book, The Perfect Moment: God, Sex, Art, and the Birth of America’s Culture Wars, “Piss Christ” and transgressive visual and performance art really were a big deal throughout the 1980s and ‘90s. With his deft and thoughtful study, he demonstrates that the inorganic, often orchestrated battles that edgy works of art provoked could operate as a parable about Middle America’s manipulation by the religious right—and the cowardice of… [TheTopNews] Read More.11 hours ago - Any Iran Deal Will Fail Without a Two-State Solution
The first paragraph of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Iranian government and the Donald Trump administration declares “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations” in Lebanon, foresees a “final deal” that confirms “the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon.” This was strange because the United States was not fighting a war in Lebanon. It is Israel that has been conducting military operations in Lebanon against Iran’s Shia Islamist proxy, Hezbollah. But Israel is not a party to the Memorandum of Understanding. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, upon its signing, coolly, “We have our own interests.” In fact, ever since April, when Trump first announced a ceasefire with Iran, Israel has continued attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Memorandum of Understanding, signed on June 17, was supposed to open the Strait of Hormuz; the fifth paragraph assures, “the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels, with no charge for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman, and vice versa.” But by June 20, Iran announced it had re-closed the Strait because of the “blatant breach of the first clause of the memorandum of understanding.” Instead of admitting the Memorandum of Understanding has failed to fulfill its limited objective—re-opening the Strait as talks regarding Iran’s nuclear program continue—President Donald Trump is telling everyone to join him in Fantasy Land. On Sunday, he claimed on his social media website, “While a trickle of ships has been getting through with U.S help close to Oman’s shoreline, that’s a far cry from the Strait truly being open. As Ian Ralby, a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Maritime Security, told CBC News, “‘Open’ to the U.S. seems to mean something different than it does the shipping industry, which, I think, largely feels that it remains closed.” Meanwhile, Trump is giving Iran more goodies—ending sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, which was supposed to be a reward for reopening the Strait. Trump, in his insatiable quest for a Nobel Peace Prize, is constantly looking for ribbon-cutting photo opportunities on the diplomatic stage. As we have learned, he’s even willing to start a war just to take credit for the peace. But what he is not willing to do is the painstaking diplomacy required to resolve decades-old disagreements to ensure any peace agreement endures beyond the handshakes. As anyone who has actually conducted Middle East diplomacy can tell you, bridging the gulfs between Israelis, Arabs, and Iranians has long been a high-risk, low-reward endeavor. Disputes run deep, and deals usually disintegrate. For example, Bill Clinton spent two terms working with Israelis and Palestinians to try to forge a two-state solution. He secured the preliminary Oslo Accords in his first term only to come up short for a final agreement at the Camp David Summit during the… [TheTopNews] Read More.11 hours ago - The Most Important Founder You’ve Never Heard Of
He wrote an influential pamphlet legally justifying the American Revolution, arguing that “all men are, by nature, free and equal.” He signed the Declaration of Independence and was a leading figure at the Constitutional Convention, where he was arguably as important as James Madison. (He is one of only six men to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.) His speech during the ratification debates was drawn on more often than The Federalist Papers. A Supreme Court justice appointed by President Washington, he promoted judicial review a decade before Marbury v. Madison. His lectures on law at the College of Philadelphia established him as the American Blackstone. No wonder Washington and Vice President John Adams attended his opening talk there. He’d die in penury on the run from the law. The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution. By Jesse Wegman. Celadon Books. 384 pp. To borrow a line from Hamilton: “Yo, who the f is this?” James Wilson is among the most important founders and—beyond scholarly circles—the least known. In the story of America’s birth, he is the figure in the carpet brought to life in Jesse Wegman’s splendid new book, The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution. One of seven children born to poor Presbyterian farmers in Scotland, Wilson attended the University of St. Andrews on a scholarship and was steeped in the Scottish Enlightenment. He immigrated to Philadelphia, where he became one of the most successful and wealthy lawyers of the founding generation. Like many of the framers, Wilson engaged in wild land speculation (his friend and fellow signer of the Declaration, Dr. Benjamin Rush, diagnosed it as “land mania”), squandering his wealth by taking on debt he could not repay, and ultimately sullying his reputation. As an associate justice, Wilson skipped an entire Supreme Court term to evade his creditors while lobbying President Washington to nominate him to the Court’s vacant chief justiceship. As a sitting Supreme Court justice, he died in poverty on the run from the law and debtor’s prison. His ignominious end is almost certainly behind his eclipse. James Wilson is one of only six men to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Wegman introduces Wilson to modern readers, delivering him from obscurity and returning him to his rightful place among the framers, the figures America perpetually turns… [TheTopNews] Read More.11 hours ago - All in the Mind
What does the evidence tell us? [TheTopNews] Read More.11 hours ago
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