{"id":18,"date":"2017-01-22T19:53:20","date_gmt":"2017-01-22T19:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/?p=18"},"modified":"2017-01-22T19:53:20","modified_gmt":"2017-01-22T19:53:20","slug":"lousy-cultural-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/2017\/01\/22\/lousy-cultural-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Lousy cultural journalism!"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you missed this, the NYTimes ran a politically-motivated hatchet job story by Robin Pogrebin that deserves to be read as an example of a major Nothingburger!<\/a> \u00a0Here’s the letter I sent to Robin.<\/p>\n

Hi Robin:<\/p>\n

I kind of get what you were trying to do with the Mercer story, but the only valid issue \u2014 which you didn\u2019t even allege (and which Ellen Futter seems to refute) \u2014 is whether Mercer\u2019s board membership has any impact on the museum\u2019s intellectual and scientific positions. \u00a0Otherwise, it\u2019s just some rich person on a board. \u00a0What else is new? \u00a0You don\u2019t even suggest that the money comes from societally harmful investments (whatever they might be).<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We don\u2019t need to go back to scoundrels like Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Carnegie to remind us of how slippery these slopes are. \u00a0David Koch\u2019s name at Lincoln Center and the Met can be seen as problematic (and with potentially far more impact on what\u2019s happening in our country). \u00a0And the Sackler name \u2014 visible all over the place (the Met, Brooklyn Museum, Smithsonian, and endlessly in London) \u2014 could be especially worrisome for those of us worried about the current Oxycontin epidemic; the NYT has written a lot about the epidemic but not about the people who own Purdue Pharma (and about how they are now going after foreign markets to make up for the attacks on them in the USA). \u00a0Do we expect Judy Chicago to publicly disavow her central place in Brooklyn\u2019s feminist art center because of where Elizabeth Sackler got her money? \u00a0Should you be interviewing Arnold Lehman about this?<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Selective, gotcha, journalism may make self-righteous liberals feel good, but I expect more from you.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Cheers,<\/div>\n
Tom Freudenheim<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you missed this, the NYTimes ran a politically-motivated hatchet job story by Robin Pogrebin that deserves to be read as an example of a major Nothingburger! \u00a0Here’s the letter I sent to Robin. Hi Robin: I kind of get what you were trying to do with the Mercer story, but the only valid issue … Continue reading “Lousy cultural journalism!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19,"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/19"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}