Washington Post sacks critic
NewsThe paper, owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, has laid off a dozen employees.
Prominent among them is the dance critic Sarah L. Kaufman, a Pulitzer Prize winner who has kept the flame burning for ballet in DC for half a century. She says: ‘By eliminating the dance critic position and all that dance coverage can be, The Washington Post is narrowing its arts journalism and its scope. I can’t fathom why this institution is shutting itself off to what dancers and choreographers have to say about our lives and the world we live in.’
So true.
It is all rather sad. During the Cold War President Eisenhower was keen to promote the arts, e.g.he sent the Boston Symphony Orchestra a congratulatory letter after a tour of Europe.
The CIA paid the BSO to tour the world according to the digboston.com website to promote America’s ability in the arts.
These cultural art forms are no longer valued so highly so it seems.
Enterprising researchers in San Juan and Washington DC have dug up evidence that the Festival Casals de Puerto Rico, headlined by Pau Casals himself late in the 1950s, was actively supported by the CIA in an attempt to make Puerto Rico a cultural hedge, in the Caribbean basin and Latin America, against the Castro regime in Cuba. It was, by all accounts, a bit of history close in intensity and colorfulness to the cloak-and-dagger tales of the Missile Crisis of 1962.
Nixon was a big fan of Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra and sent them to China as part of his outreach to that country.
That was only one tiny part of the CIA’s covert operation called the “Congress for Cultural Freedom” to manipulate the arts toward a more right wing stance. Through front organizations they ran major arts journals, music festivals, and galleries. They even covertly infilitrated the boards of major arts institutions like MOMA, and the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. Historian Frances Stonor Saunder has written an excellent history of this insidious operation that went on for years until it was finally exposed. It is astounding how few people know about it.
https://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Cold-War-World-Letters/dp/1595589147/ref=sr_1_fkmr3_1?crid=1WXAXQ2WOXD8V&keywords=Historian+Frances+Stonor+Saunder+CIA+congress+for+cultural+freedom&qid=1670148951&sprefix=historian+frances+stonor+saunder+cia+congress+for+cultural+freedom%2Caps%2C151&sr=8-1-fkmr3
The US 7th Army Symphony based in Stuttgart/Vaihingen toured Western Europe for ten years between approx. 1950-1960 as another propaganda unit promoting American players’ abilities. The programs featured a mix of European masters and American composers.
Does DC have a ballet company? How many companies visit the Kennedy Center each year? Does a music critic remain on staff? More info please.
In the first decade of the 21st century when Charles Kaiser ran Kennedy Center and when Vilar was still ‘persona grata’ the Kirov had a season every year, NY City Ballet, Suzanne Farrell’s young and excellent company those were the ones I enjoyed
The Washington Ballet to start with, the visiting ones at Kennedy Center mentioned below, and many small independent companies which deserve at least an occasional nod.
Yes, to both. Local ballet company and (a fine) music critic at the Post.
Blame Elon Musk!
As if the deep state gives a sh*t about the arts…
Where do you think the audiences come from?
No. 45 does !
The guy is worth gobs of money and he doesn’t appreciate the great things in life.
No wonder his wife dumped him.
We need arts reviewers, we need artists, we need performers, we need dancers.
As Churchill said when someone told him to stop performances during WWII in London, “Then what are we fighting for?”
I’d love to agree with you, but unfortunately it’s not so. Germany was far more cultured than Britain. Auberon Waugh has described the musical landscape in Berlin in 1939, including dozens of amateur orchestras. In the Stalingrad pocket, the chaplain played Bach recordings to the officers.
As for your quote – Churchill never said it. He didn’t give a damn about arts performances. He was fighting for national survival.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/apr/02/viral-image/no-winston-churchill-didnt-say-what-are-we-fightin/
At least Amazon Prime is a decent service. Facebook, Instagram…worthless. But I agree, the dot com business world is a bunch of rich, uncultured people.
Nothing new here. This has been happening in so-called “newspapers” in the USA for a long time now. The only music to get attention is rap, hip hop and has-been rock groups. The fine arts are being shoved off the pages and newsroom management couldn’t care less. They equate classical music , balllet and opera with conservatism and therefore bad, bad, bad.
Today’s culture and politics: “The beatings will continue until the morale improves.”
Not to mention that daily newspapers are not exactly a business model poised to take off like a rocket. I suspect other worthy areas of reporting were also axed by the WaPo.
The Washington ComPost is a third rate newspaper that has pretty much dispensed with coverage of western art music. Not even the National symphony receives regular concert reviews. The paper is almost solely devoted to woke topics. It must literally have a quota on the number of articles in each section which cover a favored group. All freelance music reviewer have been purged and the one music reviewer although quite good is given little real estate. The only really fine critic the Post had was Tim Page who was fired for mocking the now late drug addicted addled brain former mayor Marion Barry
Jeff Bezos is going broke from giving away hundreds of millions of dollars to other rich people instead of paying taxes. Poor Bezos.
He can’t afford to pay his employees.
In the meantime, culture gets the short shrif it always seems to get when bottom lines are discussed.
For what shall it profit Jeff Bezos, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? That’s if Bezos ever had a soul to lose…
Coverage of the arts in newspapers has decreased for several years, including the Washington Post and New York Times. Digital newspapers are becoming more popular and companies look for ways to reduce costs. Many lovers of the arts seek specialized media such as Opera Wire for reviews and news.Also Slipped Disc if you prefer news mixed with opinion, controversy, humor and an entertaining comments section. SD recently added a podcast which features delightful British commentary.
I’m surprised Bezos wanted the WAPO at all. The media landscape has changed irrevocably thanks to social media and people take less and less notice of once-formidable mainstream media. And, to be fair, those organizations have rendered themselves untrustworthy because of political activism.
Nothing new about this sad, long term development. And yet criticism can thrive on blogs, like https://www.classical-scene.com/, where critics can write without space limitations. There are other examples, probably also in ballet. Blogs look like the future.
The most powerful capital in history that doesn’t even rank in the top 100 cities for opera performances per year. The arts are too leftist. If only Americans knew how deeply manipulated they are.
Mr. Osborne,
You are correct about the CIA’s influence in the US. They are their own government and they own the media. Please don’t think for a second this doesn’t also affect the European media. Udo Ulfkotte, former editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung admitted the he and many others of the press in Europe were bribed by the CIA to print what they were told. His book “Journalists for hire: How the CIA Buys the News” is excellent. It’s not just Americans who are manipulated.
=== That was only one tiny part of the CIA’s covert operation called the “Congress for Cultural Freedom” to manipulate the arts toward a more right wing stance. ===
Now the CIA is promoting a more leftwing stance, so the arts of the past in today’s era are increasingly taking on a “diversity above all else!” stance.
Just following the lead of the New York Times, no doubt.
Well, colluding with the corrupt Biden administration doesn’t come cheap.