Paintbox out Cupid’s willy 
Today’s Financial Times has an article that leaves me absolutely dumbstruck:
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US distributors of the film Merchant of Venice, which premiered in London this week, have asked the director to cut out a background fresco by a Venetian old master so it is fit for American television viewers… |
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According to [director Michael] Radford, there was “a very curious request which said ‘Could you please paint-box out the wallpaper?’. I said wallpaper, what wallpaper? This is the 16th century, people didn’t have wall-paper.” |
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When he examined the scenes, he realised the letter was referring to frescoes by Paolo Veronese, the acclaimed Venetian 16th-century artist, which, when examined closely, showed a naked cupid. |
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“A billion dollars worth of Veronese great master’s frescoes they want paint-boxed out because of this cupid’s willy. It is absolutely absurd,” he said.
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Garton Ash on Ukraine
Tim Garton Ash has an excellent piece about Ukraine in today’s Guardian. He addresses the handful of people, sadly mostly on the left, who seem to be opposed to the agitation to overturn the rigged presidential election:
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For 25 years, I have heard these same old arguments against supporting the democratic oppositions in eastern Europe. Those oppositions, we are told, threaten European “stability”. Behind or beside them are nasty nationalists and/or the CIA. We must respect the legitimate security interests of Moscow (an argument originally used to justify the continued existence of the Berlin Wall). A ghastly Pandora’s box will be opened by ……. (fill this space with: Poland’s Solidarnosc, Charter 77, the Leipzig demonstrators – sorry, mob – in 1989, anti-Milosevic students in Belgrade, Georgian rose revolutionaries, or now Ukrainians).
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I quoted one of the seemingly offending Guardian articles last week. Quite a few right-wing commentators have raised a hullabaloo about Ian Traynor’s article about US backing for the Ukrainian opposition, and other oppositions in central and eastern Europe. The reason I quoted it was because it was the first time in a long time that I thought the US was doing the right thing, not because I was horrified by State Department meddling.
Journalists’ right of privilege
Eugene Volokh in The New York Times:
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Because of the Internet, anyone can be a journalist. Some so-called Weblogs — Internet-based opinion columns published by ordinary people — have hundreds of thousands of readers. I run a blog with more than 10,000 daily readers. We often publish news tips from friends or readers, some of which come with a condition of confidentiality. |
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The First Amendment can’t give special rights to the established news media and not to upstart outlets like ours. Freedom of the press should apply to people equally, regardless of who they are, why they write or how popular they are.
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He wrestles with an important question and comes up with a helpful solution:
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Maybe a journalist’s privilege should likewise be limited. Lawmakers could pass legislation that protects leakers who lawfully reveal information, like those who blow the whistle on governmental or corporate misconduct. But if a leaker tries to use a journalist as part of an illegal act – for example, by disclosing a tax return or the name of a C.I.A. agent so that it can be published – then the journalist may be ordered to testify.
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Incidentally, even the stuffy old New York Times could do better on a definition of weblogs (and why so-called and the capital W?). I know plenty of weblogs that are something far removed from opinion columns. You might as well call the whole New York Times a series of opinion columns on that definition.
Sack me or sack me
Boris Johnson:
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I’d recommend getting ignominiously sacked – and I want you to know that I insisted on my right to be sacked: “Sack me,” I said, by way of an ultimatum, “or sack me!” — because it is only by being sacked that you can truly engender sympathy. Nothing excites compassion, in friend and foe alike, as much as the sight of you ker-splonked on the Tarmac with your propeller buried six feet under.
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