David Letterman is a very funny man, especially when he's being blackmailed. Anyone who watched his late-nite admission Thursday to being the victim of a blackmail scheme as a result of his sexual dalliances with former female staffers on his show had to marvel at the aplomb with which he brought that bombshell off.

Here's a guy making a pretty damaging admission of moral turpitude, but though obviously stricken with remorse he managed to hold his head up. His humiliating mea culpa of past dalliances was a rambling, tragicomic routine that left his stunned audience unsure whether to laugh or cry.

Naturally, the rush to judgment in the tabloids and on the blogs was swift, with calls for Letterman to resign or even face criminal prosecution for sexual harassment and creating a hostile workplace for female subordinates. One hopes it doesn't come to that. Letterman's sexual indiscretions, however hurtful to his family and disappointing to his fans, so far all appear to have been with consenting adults. And as Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales has pointed out, Letterman is a comedian, not a politician like South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford or Nevada Sen. John Ensign, who both came to grief after their illicit affairs were unmasked. Unlike them, Letterman doesn't lecture his listeners about family values or hold himself up as a model of moral rectitude. He can't be accused of their blatant hypocrisy.

Continue reading "David Letterman's humiliating mea culpa" »

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)
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The best-case scenario for Wednesday's auction of the Senator Theatre would have been to have someone buy the place and then stand out on the sidewalk, on top of all those panels dedicated to movie premieres, and lay out a vision for keeping the Art Deco palace alive and running movies, first-runs, classics, anything. Someone with the passion of long-time Senator owner Tom Kiefaber, only with deeper pockets, better luck, maybe more business accumen, whatever it would take to make a single-screen theater a success in the age of the multiplex.

What we got instead was one bid from an anonymous party, some hushed discussions and a bid from the city, which more or less decided to buy the place from itself. City officials say they want to quickly sell the place or contract out its operations to someone else, but that's a far cry from either a commitment to the Senator's future or a viable plan to make it work. We don't know whether the city will spring for the potentially expensive repairs and renovations the Senator needs (the roof leaks, and the seats aren't exactly comfortable) or if the terms the city would need from an operator would be remotely attractive to any of the people who have expressed theoretical interest in running the place.

The theater's new owner has a lot of questions to answer, and it had better do it fast. The theater is an important part of the community fabric of North Baltimore, but it's now also a potential money pit for a city that has no money to spare. Letting matters linger is no good for anybody.

(Sun photo)

Posted by Andy Green at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
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What is the meaning of Michael Jackson?

Since the pop singer's death on June 25, and especially after his memorial service Tuesday, this question has become inescapable. The answer seems to depend less on who Michael Jackson was than on who we are, and it apparently varies greatly by age and race, as well as musical taste.

Many of the reactions to Jackson's controversial life and untimely death have been extreme. The outpouring of grief and love has been an extraordinary sight; on the other side, some of the criticism has been fierce.

But I suspect that the reaction of the great majority of Americans is somewhat like mine: a mix of appreciation for his achievements, sadness for a troubled life cut short, and puzzlement over the adulation for a man who lived a less than heroic life.

[Associated Press photo]

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Posted by Michael Cross-Barnet at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Michael Jackson had it all as a pop star -- catchy beats, an unmistakable voice, inimitable dance moves and a distinctive look. But he also had it all when it came to celebrity dysfunction. In his 50 years, he managed to embody virtually all the tropes of weird celebrity that dominate the tabloids. To wit:

• Preternatural child star. You've got your demanding stage parents and a performer who is at once sweet and innocent and mature beyond his years. Think of him as an early Jon-Benet Ramsey.
• Sexual ambiguity. Before the accusations of child molestation turned the whole thing creepy, he was right up there with Prince.
• Inexplicable marriages and divorce. Britney has been trying to give him a run for his money on this score, but the man married Elvis' daughter for god's sake.
• Weird child issues. The dangling the baby over the balcony incident, the baby with an unnamed surrogate, the strange names, it all fed a tabloid fascination with celebrity children that carries through the Madonna/Angelina adoptions, the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes situation, etc.
• The mansion. Neverland Ranch is just a grander (and weirder) version of Graceland, something that enabled Jackson to be a recluse in the public eye, if such a thing is possible.
• Extravagant spending and debt/comeback concert tour. Jackson was apparently about $400 million in the hole and the 50-show tour he was headed out on was an effort to make some of that up. There are shades here of the Willie Nelson tax debt situation. 
• The radical change in appearance. Perhaps nobody tops his record here, what with the werid plastic surgery, but the Britney head-shaving incident is in the same genre.
• The celebrity trial. No one will ever outdo O.J., of course, but the Jackson child molestation trial was pretty good, particularly when he walked out of the courthouse carrying an umbrella on a sunny day and proceeded to climb on top of a car and perform dance moves for his fans.

There are only a couple of classic elements that have been missing. A drugs/rehab phase would seem essential, though reports that he may have been taking prescription painkilllers could, upon autopsy, put him in Anna Nicole Smith range. And of course, he never appeared on reality television. But his record of inducing cultural rubbernecking may never be topped.

It's hard to reconcile all that with his genuine record as one of the all-time great performers. When the news broke, I was in a bar in Annapolis. The guy with a guitar who was the live music for the evening started off his set with a tribute to Michael Jackson that sounded sort of like an apology, like we have to justify appreciating his music without endorsing all the other stuff. I can remember conversations like this in elementary school in the early '80s, when even then it was crucial for reasons none of us could quite articulate to separate liking Jackson's music from liking him, per se. But in the end, when all the weirdness fades away, the music will certainly remain. Thursday night, when the guitarist finished his windup, he launched into Billie Jean, and the crowd hummed along, perhaps in spite of itself.

Posted by Andy Green at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
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I've got to hand it to the show producers: Making Virgin Fest free is a huge PR victory. With an incredibly late announcement in the traditional summer festival season, there was reason to believe that Virgin Fest would be panned no matter how stellar the acts.

But free tickets, which are sure to sell out quickly (so to speak) in the smaller Merriweather Post Pavillion will make this one-day festival a success, at least on paper.

Too bad the free tickets don't make up for the lackluster headliners, Blink-182 and Weezer -- who were at their peak a decade ago -- and the traffic-choked location, which is neither in Baltimore nor D.C.

There is plenty of evidence to illustrate that Baltimore can sponsor a major music festival. In a city that Rolling Stone named the best music scene last year, with a musical heritage including the David Byrne, Tupac Shakur, Cab Calloway, Tori Amos, Dru Hill, Animal Collective and countless others, that shouldn't be a question.

But it seems that Pimlico's owners declaring bankruptcy caused the Virgin Fest producers to shy away from the venue, and the lagging numbers at past festivals had them rejigger the ticket price.

While $100 a day was steep, there's got to be a middle ground between impressive, but too expensive; and cheap, but hardly worth the gas to get there. Let's hope Virgin Fest will be back in Baltimore next year, with a lineup to get excited about.

Posted by Nancy Knight at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
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Actor David Carradine, who was found dead Thursday in his hotel room in Bangkok, Thailand, where he was filming a movie, was proof that actors can't always choose the roles they become famous for. Although he appeared in more than 100 films and Broadway productions during his career, including the title character in Quentin Tarrantino's two Kill Bill movies, Mr. Carradine, who was 72, probably will be best remembered as the nomadic half-Chinese, half-American Shaolin monk Kwai Chang Caine in the 1970s television series Kung Fu. 

Based on the improbable story of a nomadic martial arts master in the American Wild West, the show delighted a generation of impressionable youngsters with what for many may have been their first taste of Asian culture and philosophy, served up in the trappings of a traditional Hollywood shoot-em-up. In its depiction of the era's anti-Chinese bigotry and senseless violence, it also managed to tap into older viewers' sense of both the moral urgency of the civil rights movement and the widespread weariness with the Vietnam War. 

Thai police described Mr. Carradine's death as an apparent suicide, though his family questioned that report, saying he had far too much to live for to kill himself. Certainly it's something the character Mr. Carradine played in Kung Fu -- who despite his deadly skills espoused a reverence for the holiness of all life -- would have instinctively recoiled from. That's also undoubtedly how the actor's millions of fans from those years will always prefer to remember him.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 6:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Ordinarily we'd leave commentary on American Idol up to our friends over at Z on TV or Reality Check, but given what Wednesday night's results may or may not say about the nation's sexual politics, it seems worth discussing.

Kris Allen, a married former Christian missionary from Conway, Ark., went up against Adam Lambert, an eye-makeup-wearing former musical theater prodigy from California. Pretty much everybody, including the judges on Idol and Kris himself, assumed Adam would win. But he didn't.

We do not actually know whether Adam is gay -- he hasn't said so -- but it was generally assumed to be the case, so much so that the New York Times wrote a cover story in its Sunday Styles section about it a few weeks ago. Given that, we're confronted with the question: Do the American Idol results reflect some sort of deep-seated homophobia?

I'd argue not. I tend to think there were other factors at work.

Much has changed in America since Ruben Studdard inexplicably beat then-ambigiously (now not-ambiguously) gay Clay Aiken back in Idol season two. That was back before the 2004 election, back when the Republican Party was able to stoke voter turnout with anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives.

Now, Iowa has gay marriage, for god's sake. On the very same day that Lambert lost the Idol crown, the New Hampshire legislature actually rejected a gay marriage bill because it didn't go far enough to protect gay rights. 

New York's legislature may be on the verge of legalizing gay marriage, too, cementing a pattern that the issue has moved beyond the province of civil rights-minded courts and to the realm of politicians who have to consider how their votes will play when they run for re-election.

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Posted by Andy Green at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
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Woman from Willendorf, the celebrated 'Venus' figurine found in Austria, may still be the most famous prehistoric figure in the world, but she's no longer the oldest. That distinction now goes to Venus of Hohle Fels, which at 35,000 years makes the statue 5,000 years older than her sisters.

The Willendorf figure has long been identified as a fertility symbol, celebrating those uniquely female attributes, such as the breasts and thighs, while skimping on the details of the face, arms and legs. After all, any old man can have those, as well.

Venus of Hohle Fels takes it one step further, as The New York Times explains:

"The short, squat torso is dominated by oversize breasts and broad buttocks. The split between the two halves of the buttocks is deep and continuous without interruption to the front of the figurine. A greatly enlarged vulva emphasizes the 'deliberate exaggeration' of the figurine’s sexual characteristics, Dr. Conard said."

And with a barely there head (or is that the ring from which to hang this beauty around your neck?), I guess we can now safely determine precisely how long men have been obsessed with women's breasts and other, ah, attributes.

As an anthropology student and archaeology enthusiast, I get a thrill from these prehistoric discoveries.

As a woman, I guess I should take comfort that at least those hated Barbie dolls had distinguishable faces and fingers to go with those impossible figures. See, there is progress!

(Associated Press photo)

Posted by Nancy Knight at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Last month, the Pratt library announced that Bill Ayers, with co-author and wife Bernardine Dohrn (both seen in this 1982 picture), will talk about their latest book, Race Course: Against White Supremacy Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.

But at this point, the couple and their Weather Underground past are drowning out the book's topic: Bigotry in education, elections and the criminal justice system.

The couple's publicist, Cathy Compton of Third World Press Inc., expressed frustration that people are protesting the memory of what Ayers and Dohrn did decades ago, and ignoring any message the couple brings to town now.

"People just caught a piece of something" during the election, she said. "And they don't really know what they're talking about now."

Roswell Encina, the library's communications officer, told me in a phone interview that they've had a "mixed bag" of responses to the event.

"Look, this is about freedom of speech," he said. "This is the role of libraries in a democratic society. We're not here to judge; we leave that to our patrons."

Ayers, who has since become an education professor at the University of Illinois and a political lightning rod during the presidential election because of his acquaintanceship with Barack Obama, has expressed regret for his actions as a founding member of the antiwar group. Of course, there are many who may never forgive him.

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Posted by Nancy Knight at 8:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)
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The changing face of East Baltimore has mirrored the history of the city as a whole, chronicling the waves of immigration and ethnic succession from earliest times. Now the ever-shifting image of the city's east side is the subject of a fascinating exhibition at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African-American History and Culture.

East-Side Stories presents more than 100 contemporary and vintage photographs of East Baltimore neighborhoods and the people who live there, from the Greeks, Italians, Poles, Germans and Eastern European Jews of the 19th and early 20th centuries to today's new immigrants from Central and South America, Russia, Africa and points beyond.

East Baltimore played a crucial role in the development of the city's African-American community and that history is sensitively documented in works by Ken Royster, Elizabeth Barbush of Art on Purpose, Ellis L. Marsalis, III and Michela Caudill. Together with vintage photos from the turn of the century to the 1930s, many taken by photographers for The Sun, they create a portrait of the city that is still changing, still adapting to an influx of new people and cultures, still a great American melting pot for the diverse ores of the world's humanity.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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The YouTube clip of Susan Boyle has been viewed by more than 13 million, and now I'm among them. So what's the big deal? Her moving performance on Britain's Got Talent is one of those dream-affirming moments of truth. Here she is a dowdy 47-year-old, single and unemployed, an unlikely show-stopper when she walks onto the stage. Her dream to be a professional singer raises more than a few eye brows in the audience and provokes an equal share of loud snickers.

But as soon as she sings the opening lyric of the song, "I Dreamed a Dream" from the show Les Miserables, Ms. Boyle becomes every man or woman with a wish, a prayer, a dream. Her voice is transforming, her performance a universal recognition of hopes fulfilled. The British audience felt it and responded with emphatic cheers. Their reaction was as spontaneous as any reflex because, despite Ms. Boyle's matronly looks, fumbling words and cheeky hip-swiveling, her unself-conscious, heart-felt performance offered a feel-good moment that should inspire even the pessimists among us.

Susan Boyle isn't the first surprising talent to emerge from this line-up and she won't be the last. But her newfound fame reinforces for all of us aspiring Ellas or Streisands or Beyonces why we should keep on singing. 

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
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Many Americans know that Kunta Kinte, the protagonist of Alex Haley's best-selling novel about an enslaved black family in pre-Civil War Maryland, arrived in this country through the port of Annapolis. But beyond that, many details of the slave-era economy in Maryland remain shrouded in mystery. Who, for example, covered the risk involved in transporting slave cargos across the Atlantic, and how were the complex financial transactions that made human trafficking so profitable recorded in the account books of the merchants who grew rich off the trade? Until now, the answers to such questions have been locked up in the records of the companies that made fortunes insuring slaveholders against loss.

But a bill that slipped under most people's radar during the recent Maryland General Assembly session will require insurance companies in Maryland to disclose any data they have about their involvment with the slave trade prior to 1865. Insuring slaveholders' property was a lucrative business and the records from those transactions open a revealing window on the everyday lives of slaves and their masters in Maryland.

The bill, which passed unanimously in both houses, aims to make those records available to scholars and historians. Sponsored by Baltimore City Sen. Lisa A. Gladden, it's patterned on similar laws in California and Pennsylvania aimed at throwing new light on the economic underpinnings of slavery, whose consequences are still felt today in the great disparity in wealth between blacks and whites. We remain inextricably connected to the injustices of that era, just as novelist William Faulkner insisted we would. "The past isn't dead and buried," he said. "In fact, it isn't even past."

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 4:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
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Arts groups were hit hard by this year's cuts in funding for the Maryland Arts Council, which supports museums, galleries, theaters and musical organizations across the state. Baltimore's Charles Street, which runs through the center of the Mount Vernon Cultural District and the new Station North Arts & Entertainment District recently has seen a number of exhibition spaces close or cut back. That's a pity because Charles Street has the potential to be a real magnet for arts tourism given that the area takes in such excellent smaller venues as An Die Musik record store, C. Grimaldis Gallery and the Contemporary Museum as well as big institutions like the Walters Art Museum and Center Stage. With its attractive brick sidewalks and variety of fine restaurants, the street ought to be the perfect setting for a re-flowering of the arts downtown. But the venues that have managed to stick it out so far through these tough times are learning that they can't continue to go it alone.

So in addition to participating in established group  efforts like First Thursdays, when many venues stay open late to encourage after-work visitors, they're also creating new events like Mount Vernon WOW, a sort of mini weekend street festival that begins April 24. The three-day affair will include concerts at Peabody Instsitute, a new play at Center Stage, the Peabody Opera Theater at Theatre Project and Shakespeare at the Baltimore School for the Arts. It's a way to help keep that stretch of downtown vibrant during the rough patch we're going through, and it's also something everyone can enjoy being part of. People have to pull together in hard times, and the Charles Street arts venues probably will need to invent many more events like Mount Vernon Wow! before things get better. That's OK if it helps revive a street where the arts scene should always be flourishing.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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