Anne Laurie

Sunday Evening Open Thread: Nancy Pelosi Is A Better Catholic Than Archbishop Cordileone

 

Assuming you’re the kind of Catholic who assumes the Pope is the God-anointed leader of His church:

 

Of course, there seems to be some questions about Archbishop Leone’s general fitness to make judgements about other peoples’ failings… Continue reading…

May 22, 2022 by Open Threads Politics

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Global News

Congratulations, Australians of the centre-left!

Victory belongs to Anthony Albanese, only the fourth Labor leader since World War Two to oust a Liberal prime minister, but the 2022 Australian election was primarily a rejection of Scott Morrison and the brand of politics he has come to personify.

A politics that denied, and sometimes even mocked, the seriousness of the climate crisis – as Treasurer, Morrison laughingly brandished a lump of coal in parliament.

A politics that many female voters especially found bloke-ish and boorish…

At a time when conservative politics down under has displayed some small-t Trumpian traits, historians may conclude that Australian voters evicted from office the country’s first post-truth prime minister…

Albanese is the son of a single mother who grew up in public housing in Sydney. His biography doubles as an Australian dream. But the 59-year-old has become better at sharing his backstory than outlining a compelling vision for Australia.

That said, his promise to make the country a renewable energy powerhouse, along with his pledge to adopt the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which is so important to First Nations people, has the potential to give his government a narrative that weaves together the unaddressed challenges of the future and the unfinished business of the past…

The federal election has made politics here greener, more feminine and, at a time of creeping Americanisation, more emphatically Australian.

Perhaps the overwhelming message from voters is that they want a different kind of politics. Certainly, 2022 will be remembered for its shock to the system result.

Continue reading…

May 22, 2022 by Open Threads Politics

Excellent Read: Carol Burnett Gets Her Sondheim Award

 

 

From the Washington Post, “For Carol Burnett, the Sondheim Award Is Personal”:

When Stephen Sondheim asked his friend Carol Burnett years ago if she would come to New York and sing “I’m Still Here” from “Follies,” she instantly agreed. Though somehow, Burnett had failed to absorb one crucial detail: She would be required to belt the number for, gulp, an audience of 2,700 Sondheim freaks in Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall…

That 1985 concert — with the likes of Barbara Cook, Mandy Patinkin, Elaine Stritch, George Hearn and Lee Remick — is a milestone in the Sondheim annals. Burnett could still chuckle at the memory of her misapprehension as she reminisced last Sunday in an elegant meeting room at the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons in Northern Virginia. The next day, Signature Theatre would bestow on her its Stephen Sondheim Award, whose past recipients have included Angela Lansbury, Harold Prince, Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald.

The pandemic delayed the honoring of Burnett for two years, and then in November the revered Broadway composer died, at 91. One poignant result is that Burnett — who met Sondheim six decades ago, when both had just begun to make their marks — is the last person handpicked by Sondheim to receive the award…

Continue reading…

May 21, 2022 by Popular Culture

Foreign Affairs Open Thread: Repubs, Scrambling to Get Back on the ‘Popular’ Side

 

 

(John Deering via GoComics.com)

Another noteworthy event that we didn’t get to discuss last weekend…

 

Continue reading…

May 21, 2022 by Open Threads Politics War in Ukraine
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