Word: show-biz
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After much rehearsal, he and the master hit the show-biz circuit, breaking in the act at rural fairs and carnivals. Walt steadily improves, and so do his bookings: "We stunned them in Worcester. We wowed them in Springfield. They dropped their drawers in Bridgeport." His self-regard soars as well: "I was Walt the Wonder Boy, the diminutive daredevil who defied the laws of gravity, the one and only ace of the air." He is struck by the fact that his triumphs take wing in the same year, 1927, that Lindbergh flies across the Atlantic: "I didn't know...
...movie business. The list of acknowledgments at the end of Playland names Otto Preminger, Natalie Wood, Billy Wilder and a cast of thousands. This explains part of the problem. What is supposed to be a novel is really the author's Hollywood valedictory, and he has included every good show-biz anecdote he ever heard. Unfortunately, the glut of marvelous gossip has stopped his story cold...
...would make a great script for a movie or TV mini-series: company founder's teenage grandson rebels against going into family liquor business and vows instead to carve out his own career as a show-biz tycoon. But the movies and plays he produces, partly with his share of the family wealth, all bomb; he returns, chastened, to the place being held for him in the family firm. There he unexpectedly shows a fair executive talent and succeeds in keeping an already giant company growing, largely by diversifying beyond whiskeymaking. But he remains screenstruck, and as he approaches...
Reflecting on Prof. Shelby Steele's performance as a scholar last month at the Kennedy school of Government's ARCO Forum, prompts my protest against the sorry state of political discourse. There is plenty of toleration for error in an entertaining, "show-biz" format, but little tolerance or patience with truth. Steele, famous for one, thin, bestseller, "The Content of Our Character," said the difficulties of Blacks today result from "a failure to adjust to freedom" and repeatedly denounced policies like affirmative action as "preferences...
...Raytheon announces big layoffs in Massachusetts. In these times the insinuation by anyone, however "notorious" or "respectable", that Jews, Blacks, immigrants, gays or any demonized "Other" enjoys "preferences" is irresponsible, reckless demagoguery. Whatever happened to old-fashioned debates? When Malcolm X came to Harvard he debated. Drop the "show-biz" format. Why not real debates? Let two sides argue, rebut, present evidence, and question witnesses. Let the world know that if you come to Harvard mouthing cliches you'll get hammered and demagogues will censor themselves...