It was a wildly unexpected and incongruous rant, head-snapping from its bizarre perspective. The host of a primetime show on the left-leaning U.S television news network, MSNBC, publicly excoriating a film by an African-American director and boasting a primarily black cast, Selma—a film that presented the story of one of the pivotal chapters in the American struggle for civil rights. [1] Continue reading Selma
A Confession
By Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is regarded as one of the world’s greatest writers, and his most famous works, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877) are considered two of the greatest novels ever written, [1]. Authors as diverse as Anton Chekov, William Faulkner, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky have acknowledged his literary contributions. James Joyce has called his story ‘How Much Land Does a Man Need’ the greatest story in world literature, [2] and Virginia Woolf regarded him as the greatest of all novelists, [1] Continue reading Tolstoy’s Confession
Heaven is for Real is a motion picture released in 2014 based on the book, Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back, published in 2010. It’s billed as the true life story of the Burpo family living in the small town of Imperial, Nebraska. Continue reading To Heaven and Back
935 Lies
The Future of Truth and the Decline of America’s Moral Integrity
By Charles Lewis
364 pages
Published by PublicAffairs, 2014
‘[I]n the two years after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials made at least 935 false statements about the national security threat posed by Iraq.’ This statement, taken from a report published by a team of reporters and other contributors headed by Charles Lewis, the author of this book, is the starting point of this thought-provoking, meticulously researched examination of the lack of truth and integrity in the corridors of power: in government, private industry and in the commercial media.
Mr. Lewis structures his thesis in three major sections. First, significant lies in the recent past, including deceptions about the Vietnam War, the American Civil Rights Movement, and the business community are explored. The second is an examination of commercial journalism today, and how changes in that arena have affected the ‘quality and quantity’ of news coverage. The third is his vision of the ‘future of truth’, how the telling of truth through the vehicle of investigative journalism–to the masses of readers, listeners and viewers–can be preserved, given the tremendous pressures to the contrary.
The Mountaintop
By Katori Hall
Presented by the Shaw Festival
In association with the Obsidian Theatre
July 16 — September 7, 2014
Katori Hall was born in 1981 and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. As a child her mother related stories of the Civil Rights Movement and of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr in particular. She is a graduate of The Julliard School, with an MFA in playwrighting. Before she turned 30 The Mountaintop had been performed in London, England, and in several cities in the United States.
The Mountaintop is a one-act play set in Martin Luther King’s room at the Lorraine motel, in Memphis, Tennessee, the night before he was assassinated. He had just delivered the speech in support of the city’s sanitation workers, the speech where he famously and presciently spoke of the ‘mountaintop’, where he said he ‘might not get there with you’, but he is not afraid of ‘any man’, because ‘mine eyes have seen the glory of the promised land’.
Continue reading The Mountaintop