Arts and Culture | Truthdig

Steve Fraser on the Crisis of Capitalism

2009-11-06T08:01:43+00:00

Does the prospect of deepening economic meltdown and political disarray raise the specter of a social upheaval and, perhaps, the collapse of capitalism, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Great Depression?

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Ni Hao, Mickey Mouse: Disney Goes to Shanghai

2009-11-04T23:22:01+00:00

In a deal two decades in the making, China is opening its doors to the Walt Disney Co., having finally given the quintessentially Western enterprise the go-ahead to bring Mickey Mouse and his fellow characters to Shanghai with a new Disney theme park tailored to the Chinese megalopolis.

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Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, Father of Structuralism, Dies at 100

2009-11-03T20:23:05+00:00

French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, who wrote several seminal works during his six-decade career and is responsible for those seemingly inscrutable structuralist texts you may have grappled with in college, died last weekend at 100.

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Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times

2009-11-03T10:23:25+00:00

The Chandler family’s L.A. Times practically invented one of the great American cities. This is the story of the paper’s fall toward mediocrity.

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Ayn Rand Revisited

2009-11-02T23:05:07+00:00

Two new biographies about the irascible and idiosyncratic Ayn Rand, objectivist philosopher and ham-fisted mistress of the capitalist morality tale, show how her rocky Russian childhood and her subsequent self-reinvention campaign in America (partly conducted in Hollywood, of course) influenced her work, and how her ideas led to her own undoing.

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D.J. Waldie on the Cult of Baseball

2009-10-30T08:00:47+00:00

“The Opposite Field,” a memoir by Jesse Katz, is a moving meditation about baseball, politics, and the unease of negotiating a new kind of American place.

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Google Enters the Musical Fray

2009-10-30T04:41:14+00:00

Google expanded its sprawling multimedia empire this week by adding a music feature to its array of search options, which means that the average, law-abiding music buff won’t have to shell out 99 cents or settle for a 30-second snippet of a new song on iTunes, nor hope that the song will eventually queue up on a Pandora playlist, to hear the whole thing online.

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PR Guru Helps Stars Come Out

2009-10-28T22:02:20+00:00

Despite Hollywood’s reputation for being a liberal hotbed, some stubborn forms of prejudice persist, such as the lingering notion that it’s a potential career-killer for certain high-profile types to come out of the closet. Luckily, those who are willing to try have at least one industry expert ready to give them a hand with the press, the public and their risk-averse bosses.

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Top Writer-Director Breaks With Scientology Over Proposition 8

2009-10-26T18:45:56+00:00

The Church of Scientology counts several high-profile figures from the world of entertainment among its members—Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Kirstie Alley, to name a few—and they sometimes act as public advocates for their religion. However, one of their own, screenwriter and director Paul Haggis, has very publicly left the fold after taking issue with the church’s stance on Proposition 8.

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Disney Offers Refund for Baby Bupkis

2009-10-26T06:39:52+00:00

Somehow the Walt Disney Co. managed to convince the parents of one-third of America’s babies to spend $200 million a year on Baby Einstein videos. The tapes were supposed to smarten kids up, but watching TV from ages 1-3 could actually cause attention problems. Under pressure, Disney is now offering refunds. (continued)

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