Word: civics
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...memorials are not only education sites; they are also, at a primal level, burial places--"a communal site of memory," says Linenthal. The chairs at the Oklahoma City Memorial contain what is often called the presence of absence. To Linenthal, the new memorials are "places of civic transformation" as well; one should come away changed. And they are sites of public protest, "where one cries out in anguish against the event, to keep it in living memory...
Paul Berkeley, the president of the Allston Civic Association, says the perception of any action Harvard takes in the Allston community will surely be colored by the 1997 deal...
That said, these redemptive activities on the part of unattractive businesses and interest groups--however they may be inspired by lawsuits and public disapproval--do represent bona fide good deeds. Philip Morris, in fact, is nearly as diversified in civic work as it is in its profit centers. It has launched a $100 million-a-year campaign to reshape its image by backing the environment, the arts and summer camps for children with HIV or AIDS. Is it right, one asks, to discount such deeds because one condemns the source? What if the Ku Klux Klan were to institute...
...only genuinely disturbing aspect of the ubiquity of advertising--the real reason to get nervous--is that it has begun to supplant what was formerly civic and public. There's no Candlestick Park anymore, just 3Com Park, and now there's a PacBell Park to match. The venerable Boston Garden was replaced not too long ago by the Fleet Center: a city erased, its role played by a bank. A little town in the Pacific Northwest just renamed itself after a dotcom company in return for a generous donation. I won't mention the name here, since I figure advertising...
Sunday's announcement marks another step in the continuing civic rehabilitation of thalidomide, which was banned decades ago after its widespread use as an anti-morning sickness medication was linked to horrible birth defects. In spite of lingering public distaste for the drug, the FDA in 1998 approved it as a treatment for leprosy, and the ASCO findings could plant the seeds for future approvals. While its effectiveness as a weapon against various illnesses is no longer in question, the rigors of a clinical trial will pale in comparison to the public's vivisection of thalidomide's risks. "People harbor...