Observers of the business and ongoing theater of a Trump candidacy are bound to be struck by the passive role played by the candidate’s wife, one seeming to predate gender equality, in an embrace of values from an era when a potential first lady might be less likely to have served as her husband’s former law firm mentor (as Michelle Obama once was) than his carpet ornament.
Category: Vanities
The Financial Times And The Future Of Journalism
John Cassidy interviews John Ridding, the F.T.’s chief executive :
With my time almost up, I asked Ridding if he believed that the existential threat to serious journalism had now passed. “Well, I never believed in the existential threat to journalism,” he said. “I believed in some major challenges to the business model that supported journalism. But we were very confident—it was almost an instinctive belief within the F.T.—that quality journalism has a value, and that there is a business model … if you have the confidence to charge for it. Remember, when we did start charging online, we were regarded as sort of freakish, particularly in the U.S., particularly on the West Coast of the U.S. But we fundamentally believed that if it’s quality journalism, people will pay for it. That’s been vindicated.”
Michel Houellebecq : It’s Not My Role To Be Responsible
Some intellectuals said Houellebecq had been “irresponsible”. The media pressed him to apologise. Where once he was a bolshy rebel outsider, he now has a godlike status as France’s biggest literary export and, some say, greatest living writer – so what he says counts. But he denies any “responsibility”.
“It’s not my role to be responsible. I don’t feel responsible,” he says. “The role of a novel is to entertain readers, and fear is one of the most entertaining things there is.” To him, the fear in Submission comes in the dark violence at the novel’s start, before the moderate Islamist party comes to power. Was he deliberately playing on a mood of fear in France? “Yes, I plead guilty,” he says. For Houellebecq, the job of a novelist is foremost to hold a mirror up to contemporary society.
Remembering Eric Wright
Could N.W.A have existed without him?
N.W.A would have not existed without Eazy-E. No doubt in my mind. He was bold and not scared of anything. He was 21, 22, I was 16 — to me he was fearless. That’s what he brought. “I don’t want to do no corny ass records that try to get on the radio. I want to do hardcore records about what the hell is going on around here.”
Credit : Timothy White
How To Survive A Mass Shooting
“Think of a herd of gazelles in the wild,” adds Chris, our law enforcement expert. “They’ll get attacked by one or two or three lions and what is their immediate response? They run away. A lion may get one of them, but the herd escapes. Every second that you’re moving away from a shooter you’re making it harder for him to shoot you. Anything you can do to get away and increase that distance will help. Also consider the effect a crowd of fleeing people has on an attacker: confusion and bewilderment. Running away is your best defense.”
