Miss Lena Horne's producers once complained that she opened her mouth too wide to sing. They meant it was a Negro thing.
If you want to get a message down into the soul of a God-fearing, native-to-the-earth, rural-thinking person, one of the surest ways is through traditional country music – anyone who wants to understand the world's most politically influential tribe – the people of Middle America, who pick most American presidents – should pay attention to country music. Country music has always been the best shrink that 15 bucks can buy.
You're not going to sit down and watch the BBC world news in 3-D.
A Hollywood executive is powerful and successful largely because he is viewed as being powerful and successful… A group of terrorists is planning to kill millions of Americans. Only one man can stop them: Jack Bauer. Unfortunately, he has been imprisoned in a secret facility. And tortured. Then decapitated and fed to boars. In a typical day, Agent Bauer is shot and stabbed more often than he takes bathroom breaks, but it never seems to slow him down. That was a spoof of "24" by Dave Barry, a comic writer. All this is harmless fantasy, of course. Or is it? A disconcerting number of Americans take "24" seriously.
Introducing Huck Finn, Mark Twain gave warning: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."
Michelangelo is a sculptor, a painter and an architect, he sees everything in three dimensions. It is as though he has put the human body on a spindle and is turning it back to front in one view.
More seasoned PR flacks might have done it differently. First, lunch the journalists concerned, ostensibly to discuss some other story. Then, over dessert, casually slip into the conversation the poison that their secret client wanted them to spread. With luck the reporters would follow up on the scuttlebutt without mentioning its source, assuring themselves that they had got the story through their "contacts".
Imagine, further, that every newspaper felt obliged to print such choice items as this: "The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, has sent a reply cable of thanks to Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, Deputy Premier, Minister of Defence and Aviation and Inspector-General, thanking the Crown Prince and all personnel of the armed forces for their congratulations to the King on the occasion of Eid al Fitr, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, in the cable sent earlier to the King by the Crown Prince."
It is too easy to pass the test that determines whether a film is sufficiently British to be worthy of state support. Because the criteria include where a film is set and the nationality of its main characters, actors and scriptwriters, film-makers can easily qualify by adding a few minor details, such as shoot-outs in Waterloo station and the assassination in the first few minutes of a British journalist (both features of "The Bourne Ultimatum"). Even these literary touches may be unnecessary: films such as "Dark Knight", a Batman movie set in mythical Gotham City, also qualify for subsidy because chunks are filmed in Britain and they employ local people in important positions.
He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals.
Virtually every day of the year sees another art biennial opening somewhere in the world.
In most German states, after just four years of primary school children are steamed into one of several types of secondary school: clever kids attend Gymnasien, middling ones Realschulen and the slowest learners Hauptschulen, which are supposed top prepare them for trades. Children at the bottom often face low-wage drudgery or the dole.
3-D movies add one more layer of reality to the unreality.
Paul Hendrickson's bibliography lists 76 biographical works about Ernest Hemingway, nine of them by wives, siblings and children, followed by memoirists, respected biographers and hangers on, pretenders and doctoral students.
The "Lula, Son of Brazil" film is very watchable.
Our media act as if American manufacturing is going to grind to a halt at around two o'clock this afternoon.
"Garbology" is a word popularized (and possibly coined) by A. J. Weberman, a writer and activist whose credo was "you are what you throw away".
He began his job with little respect from the media and ended up with zero.
His book is all preface and no body.
During his years as an insider he has acquired the typical habits of mind of veteran Washingtonians: an obsession with spin and gossip, including an over-inflated sense of the importance of newspaper articles; a hyper-sensitive nose for threats; and, it would appear, a determination to destroy his enemies by whatever means necessary.
Eagle-eyed publishers will have noticed a discernible trend in contemporary Christmas stockings: that the pot pourri of little bits of coal, tangerines, chocolate coins and other semi-useless items should also include a small book that fits neatly into one's handbag or above the cistern. Not only is this trend infinitely self-improving, but it has resulted in dramatic sales figures for items such as "Schott's Miscellany" and "Eats, Shoots and Leaves", both of which spent many pre- and post-Christmas weeks on the bestseller list in recent years.
America has been fabulously successful at providing its projectors with Grand Academies in the form of lavishly-funded think-tanks, well over 100 of them in Washington alone. And American projectors have been superb at getting their message across. America boasts a vast array of magazines, such as the American Interest and the New Republic, which like nothing better than picking up "hot" new ideas. And America's policy intellectuals have a talent for packaging their ideas in provocative ways – for declaring not just that the cold war is winding down but that history is ending, not just that regional tensions are rising but that the world is entering a clash of civilizations.
A picture gallery is a dull place for a blind man.
Rembrandt says things for which there are no words in any language.
Nietzsche: "We have art in order not to die from the truth."
“ Business, money, trade, economics, professions
America is a brand. Trash it, and the costs of every global transaction will rise. A dealmaker cannot want that.
Being born rich (or marrying well) becomes a surer route to success than working hard or starting a firm. It is a recipe for social stagnation, and perhaps crisis.
At an auction organised by Stack's Bowers on March 31st, 2017, an American cent from 1793 sold for $940,000, becoming the costliest penny ever.
Starbucks opens a new branch in China every 15 hours.
Those timorous chief executives serve longer than the average Roman emperor did: bosses departing in 2015 had an average of 11 years in office for S&P 500 firms, the highest figure for 13 years.
Making money yourself from investing other people's has been a good business for over a century.
Datang, China's "sock city" near Hangzhou in 2014 it made 26bn pairs of socks, some 70 % of China's production.
As Warren Buffett puts it, "What is smart at one price is dumb at another."
Foreign workers may make goods but American cashiers still sell them.
In private equity nowadays, it seems, what counts is less the depth of your pockets than speed on your feet.
If liking motorcycles turns out to predict a lower IQ, he asks, should employers be allowed to reject job applicants who admit to liking motorcycles?
Oil's well that ends well.
But if the history of gold is any guide, what goes up will come down – and then go up again.
Economists and psychologists talk about the "curse of knowledge": people who know something have a hard time imagining