Category: Culture
Chanson Du Jour: Tilted
Christine & The Queens – “Tilted” from Top Of The Pops, Christmas 2016
Héloïse Letissier – my God, is she not wonderful?
[Mike Stevenson / Pas de Merde]
Are the French rude? Wherever you go, there you are
This ridiculous article from the New York Daily News really ticked me off, for several reasons. Firstly, if there are any people who should be sensitive to an underserved reputation for rudeness, it should be New Yorkers. I’ve dined in Paris and New York, chatted with waiters, and asked for help from strangers in both cities. My own experience is that Parisians and New Yorkers are for the most part friendly and accommodating to visitors, mainly because they are so proud of their city, I think. Secondly, if this NY Daily News reporter had a bad experience in a Paris restaurant, how unfair is it to label “the French” as rude? I once received a smart-ass remark from a waitress at the Carnegie Deli, but I didn’t blame every New Yorker from Times Square to the Catskills. Worse, what if I blamed “the Americans” because Sophie the waitress was having a bad hair day? I’ve always liked the saying, “Wherever you go, there you are!”
Read this story below from the New York Daily News, and please comment. I’d like to know what you think!
[ Mike Stevenson / Pas De Merde]
The French were so rude to me in Paris that I had to seek out American eateries | NY Daily News
I went to Paris, but ate like a New Yorker.
Blame the French. My first experience in the City of Light was met with a wave of rudeness — particularly in restaurants — despite how reluctant I was to believe the stereotype that the French are cold.
It’s tough being an American in Paris. Especially when the only French words you know are “Bonjour,” “Merci” and “Au Revoir.”
My sister and I made an effort to greet everyone we met with the proper pleasantry in French, but despite our attempts at speaking the language, we weren’t exactly treated hospitably. [ . . . ]
Read more of this nonsense at:http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/french-rude-paris-opted-american-food-article-1.2928043
Dubuffet Drawings at the Morgan Library
If you live in or near New York’s Madison Avenue, there’s only a few days remaining to see this exhibit at the Morgan Library (closes January 2) I love the drawing below – Jean Dubuffet’s L’Arnaque (The Swindle), 1962.
[ Mike Stevenson / Pas De Merde]
A leading French artist of the twentieth century, Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) eschewed traditional notions of beauty in art in favor of what he perceived as more authentic forms of expression, inspired by graffiti, children’s drawings, and the creations of psychiatric patients. Drawing played a major role in his development as he explored on paper new subjects and techniques and experimented with non-traditional tools and modes of application.
Source: Dubuffet Drawings, 1935–1962 at the Morgan Library | French Culture
Historians Imagine What Paris Sounded Like in the 18th Century
Imagine the sounds coming out of a busy blacksmith shop in an alleyway in Paris sometime back in the 18th century: the hammering of wrought iron, the rhythmic whoosh of air as the blacksmith uses a bellows to stoke a fire.
We have no recordings of the actual sounds of Paris in those early days, so to try and make those 18th-century streets and alleys of Paris come to life takes a bit of careful historical research and a little imagination. Continue reading “Historians Imagine What Paris Sounded Like in the 18th Century”
Fake News Is Not the Real Media Threat We’re Facing
From all the recent hand-wringing about “fake news,” you would think that the hand-wringers had never stood in a supermarket checkout line, surrounded by 72-point headlines about alien abductions and miracle cures.
Fake news has been around as long as real news, as any historian of early modern Europe can tell you (Renaissance readers gobbled up stories about women giving birth to rabbits, and men from Africa with faces in their chests). Social media has certainly transformed how fake news circulates, speeding up its circulation and extending its reach and impact. The temptation to blame many of our current ills on it—and by extension, on Mark Zuckerberg—is understandable. But the hand-wringing has in fact distracted attention from a much more important problem involving the American media. That problem is not fake news but the continuing delegitimization of real news by American conservatives. This delegitimization has been taking place for a long time (as The Nation’s Eric Alterman has meticulously reported, and as even some conservative media figures have admitted), but during the past year it has taken a frightening new turn. If the mainstream American news media are to have any hope of avoiding potentially catastrophic results—both for themselves and for American democracy—they need to change how they report on American politics, and on the ideological apparatchiks they continue to describe, misleadingly, as “journalists.” [ . . . ]
Read Full Story at: Fake News Is Not the Real Media Threat We’re Facing | The Nation
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