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Amos Gelb • January 16, 2015

# JesuisCharlie, or to be more precise, # NoussommesCharlie.

In the aftermath of the tragic and horrific attack on the French version of the Onion satirical magazine (could we imagine that happening here?) there are two things that stand out.

First: Charlie Hedo-deniers – those like Hofstra University Professor Hussein Rashid’s recent column in the Washington Post that describe the French magazine content as racist.

Perhaps it was, but considering how small the magazine’s readership was in France isn’t it a bit ironic that critics like Rashid, who may never heard of the magazine until the shooting and almost certainly do not have a subscription, propound with such absolute confidence in characterizing its contents? Easy to snipe at a dead editor!

Charlie Hebdo might have been inappropriate at times, but it is time for arm chair commentators like Rashid to stop this blame-transferring and get back to the simple fact – the problem was not Hebdo or its content – it was the guys with the guns.

That sort of logic echoes the misplaced commentary after 9-11 of headlines like “why do they hate us?” as if those attacks were somehow justified.

Second: we all want to know whether these murderous thugs were talking to like-minded nuts in the U.S. – and, if so, who are they? The obvious question: are they setting the stage for similar attacks in the U.S.?

But how can we find that out? How can our national security apparatus protect us, because if an attack like this should happen the fingers will inevitably start pointing?

The answer includes checking the telephone records and using them to catch would-be attackers before they get started. But hang on. Haven’t we just had a gut-wrenching national debate over just that kind of bulk telephony metadata collection? Patriot Act Section 215 ring any bells?

“End it!” “Violation of civil rights!” “Police state!” The general charge – that sort of thing is un-American.

Section 215 expires in June and privacy advocates are screaming not to renew it. It is a new world, an unfriendly world, and Hebdo frightening points out – a world that is coming. Might All Things Media suggest that the idea of gathering this kind of data – without safeguards about personal identification until actions like #JesuisCharlie triggers more investigation — is not such a bad idea.

This is so that we don’t have to read columns that suggest somehow we were somehow asking for it, when Hebdo barbarism happens here.

Robert Devaney •

Mayor Vincent Gray, D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, other local politicians and school officials formally broke ground Dec. 19 for the Duke Ellington School for the Arts Modernization Project.

Ellington students have moved to Eugene Meyer Elementary School on 11th Street, NW. The 35th Street school is closed until September 2016 for redesign, renovation and additions.

The $82-million project will expand the historic school — built in 1898 and originally known as Western High School — to 294,900 square feet. The interior of the school will contain an atrium and a new 850-seat theater. The rooftop will have a classroom along with limited-use space. The school’s main portico will be preserved. Construction has already begun.

Among the speeches by Gray, Brian Hanlon of the Department of General Services and others, Father John Payne was remembered. Payne had become school principal this year and died suddenly Oct. 9.

Gary Tischler •

Actor Rod Taylor and Actress Anita Ekberg died within days of each other, in their eighties.

Taylor, a rugged Australian-born actor who moved to Hollywood to try his luck, racked up a large number of credits, had strong-chinned, blondish sex appeal, proved to have a flair for romantic comedy. He died just short of his 85th birthday.

Ekberg was a physically impressive, blonde Swedish semi-star around the same time—she had roles in everything from Jerry and Lewis comedies to a Chinese peasant woman in a John Wayne action flick called “Blood Alley.” She died at age 83.

Both Taylor and Ekberg starred in two films that were cinema classics in one way or another.

In 1963, Taylor was the heroic figure in the Alfred Hitchcock classic about nature run amok for no particularly good reason called “The Birds.” We all remember that one: for a long time, you cast suspicious, nervous glances at any gathering of more than two ravens or seagulls.

The movie, built to terrific levels of suspense and fright, featured Taylor as a local bringing new love interest Tippi Hedren to his fishing town home in Northern California. Hedren, cool and icy blond (and the mother of Melanie Griffith), right up Hitchcock’s blonde obsession alley (Kim Novak, Grace Kelly), traveled with a set of love birds, which may have, may not have, been some kind of clue for birds descending on the town, wrecking a diner and a gas station, attacking school children and killing several people, including the delightful Suzanne Pleshette.

Artistically, it wasn’t a great movie, but you can’t forget the damn thing. Taylor was a steady, stoic, presence of sanity throughout the film.

Ekberg had a large, impressive role in the 1960 Federico Fellini black-and-white epic about a jaded journalist (the unforgettable Marcello Mastrioanni) making his way drunkenly through the sophisticated world of celebrities , aristocrats and long-staring bon vivants tired of it all in Rome.

Ekberg played a movie star, bigger than life, in many ways, plagued by paparazzi. At one point, she jumps into the Trevi Fountain in Rome and prances, splashes and dances in it with the besotten Mastrioanni in tow. It’s an impressionistic moment in a film that was about a lot of things—religion, politics, sex, boredom, anarchy.

If you were a boy growing up around that time into late teenhood, that movie was disturbing, mainly because you hadn’t a clue what was going on, but it sort of made you sweat. That was Ekberg. She could do that.

One other thing: in the Washington Post obituary about her, Ekberg was said to be famous for her numerous romances. Her conquests, the Post stated, “were said to have included Frank Sinatra, Tyrone Power, Yul Brynner and . . . Rod Taylor.”

Gary Tischler •

Every year we commemorate and remember. It’s our human nature, especially at newspapers, to take stock, to look back and to remember the lives and presences we lost during the course of the year.

The losses add up in different ways in different years. In our world in Washington, where local news is national news and vice versa, some losses loom larger than others, and they seem to be both anticipating and evaluating history.

That was certainly the case in the passing of Marion Barry and his long goodbye recently, and in the loss of the stylish and classy, fearless Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, who reigned over a history-making national, international and local newspaper at its zenith, even as the digital age began to whittle away at the important role of newspapers and anticipated its decline.

Barry’s death was still a shock. He had the kind of personal charisma and size, and a potent place in the city’s political and electoral history that was outsized, so that his death seemed sudden, implausible. After all, he was a four-term, media-dubbed and self-proclaimed “mayor for life” of the District of Columbia. His efforts to open the city’s job markets and government to include more African Americans radically changed the city. He was scandal-steeped, to be sure, and he was an often divisive figure in the city’s cultural, economic and racial divide. If his political fiefdom had shrunk to “East of the River” in his later years on the council, it remained a citywide phenomena in the public imagination—black and white– for better or worse.

Barry was of a generation, which had held sway since the beginning of home rule. His death signaled the end of something—the District Council is gaining some brand new members, and the new mayor Muriel Bowser is of a different generation.

Bradlee’s death marked the end of something, too—the beginning of the end of the critical importance of newspapers—major and minor—in how Americans get their news and digest it. While the Washington Post and the New York Times still maintain a posture of seriousness and importance, they are thinning like an old man’s hair, and, especially in the Post’s case, which was bought by Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, geared toward younger audiences and readers. Social media, bloggers, Twitter and the huge, very full spaces of the Internet, make a hashtag of confusion in how information is digested and rob newspapers of their capacity to deliver news that hasn’t already been broken.

Bradlee presided over a newspaper that toppled a presidency, braved government reprisal over the publication of the Pentagon Papers. With Bradlee, charismatic and profane, Wasp and buccaneer, the paper also gained a lot of Style (Section) flash and dash.

Barry’s passing shared the news here with the arrival of a kind of permanent demonstration in Washington, the presence on a daily basis of young activists—black and white—protesting and demanding action in the wake of three police killings of three black men by police. The deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner in New York, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland have sparked the kind of disruptive but peaceful protest for social and government action that a young man named Marion Barry once led as a civil rights activist in the South. They seem today not only like portents of future change but echoes of the past.

Death is personal to all of us—to those left behind, to ourselves who are chroniclers, it leaves behind not only loss but larger meanings or personal memories to define. Here at the Georgetowner we lost friends who meant more than stories to us—the recent death of Michele Conley, the founder of Living in Pink, who lost her last battle with cancer, and Georgia Shallcross, a friend, writer and supporter of our newspaper for years. Food and restaurant writer Walter Nicholls, beloved by many, succumbed to cancer. We—and our village—also lost Suzi Gookin, a sparkling social writer for our publication, and an outspoken citizen of our town. And we mourned the loss of Richard McCooey, talented restaurant owner and designer, and raconteur.

Over the course of time, one finds oneself writing many stories, meeting many people, and remembering the meetings. The Washington theater community lost two of its gifted actors—the redoubtable, graceful Tana Hicken who had the gift of being unforgettable in her roles, and in her life and Tom Quinn, ex-Marine, boxer and coach, Wall Streeter, Irishman, New Yorker and finally Georgetowner. He became a memorable actor late in life, a performer of red-faced intensity at local theaters like Arena, Studio and Woolly Mammoth and in films, including “The Pelican File.”

There is a whole category of death as indiscriminate robber of life which results in flowers by the side of the road, balloons in a field, and the shock of sudden violence—the torments of horrible storms, earthquakes, floods and tornadoes, two Malaysian Airlines crash with a loss more than 400 persons, one downed by a missile over Ukraine, another lost without a trace over the Indian Ocean (supposedly). There were school shootings, mass shootings, the thousands of victims of Ebola in Western Africa, the gruesome victims of Isis, and the thousands dead in the Syrian civil wars.

Closer to home, we will miss the kind presence of St. John’s Episcopal Church’s secretary Kimberly Durham Bates, a bright and beautiful presence in her Adams Morgan and Lanier Heights neighborhood, who leaves behind two children Naomi and Theo Bates.

We mourn and note the passing of 54 persons who died homeless in the District of Columbia in 2014. Their names were read aloud Dec. 19 on Homeless Memorial Day, following a candlelight vigil organized by the People for Fairness Coalition at Freedom Plaza.

Here are additional losses from 2014:

Pete Seeger—The giant of folk music, inspiring, redoubtable: “If I Had a Hammer,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” singing songs of freedom.

Mike Nichols—Astonishingly versatile stage and film director, adept with Neil Simon and Arthur Miller, directed “The Graduate” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”.

Phil Seymour Hoffman—The man of many characters, the movie star as character actor, “Capote”, lost to an overdose.

Maya Angelou—The stirring national poet, who became hugely popular while never losing her cache as inspired Nobel Prize-winning articulator of the yearning for freedom.

Richard Attenborough—The British director with epic visions in “A Bridge Too Far” and “Gandhi,” and not a bad actor, either.

Lauren Bacall—One of the last of the old big movie star, she was Bogey’s baby first, and his best love in “The Big Sleep,” “To Have and Have Not,” “Key Largo.” She knew how to whistle, too, and became late in life a Broadway star.

Thomas Hale Boggs—Otherwise known in D.C. and at his law firm as Tommy, a lobbyist with high-class qualities

James Brady—Suffered grievous wounds in the attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s life, inspired gun control laws and kept a warm sense of humor.

Sid Caesar—Maybe the funniest and most eccentric of early television comedy, a giant on “Your Show of Shows,” who should have gotten more applause.

Oscar de la Renta—The fashion designer as red-carpet superstar.

Thomas Duncan—The first Ebola victim in the United States.

Phil Everly—As in Phil and Don Everly, the Everly Brothers, the chart-busting rock and roll and country singers who had a string of major hits, including “Wake Up Little Suzy” and “All I Have to Do is Dream.”

Al Feldstein—Founded Mad Magazine, the most unusual comedy and humor magazine ever.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez—Nobel Prize-winning Colombian Novelist and guiding light of magical realism in “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” and “Love in the Time of Cholera” among many great novels.

James Garner—Major Hollywood and All-American star on television “The Rockford Files” and “Maverick” and in films “Sayanora”, “Murphy’s Romance”, “Duel at Diablo and others.

Gerry Goffin—With Carole King, wrote super hits like “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”

Bo Hoskins—British character actor, famous for being a private eye in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”

Tony Gwyn—One of the best hitters ever, Hall of Famer, San Diego Padre.

Martha Hyer—High-class dame in 1950s films, including “Some Came Running With Frank Sinatra.

Dick Jones—For television western fans of the 1950s, he was “Buffalo Bill, Jr.,” and the Range Rider’s sidekick. He was the voice of “Pinochio.”

Casey Kasem—The big national deejay.

Lorin Maazel—Music director or the Cleveland Orchestra and New York Philharmonic; founded the Castleteon Festival.

James MacGregor Burns—Political historian of great American eras.

Brittany Maynard—The young woman dying of cancer who chose to end her life in a cause-building public manner.

Tommy Ramone—The last of the Ramones.

Paul Revere—As in Paul Revere and the Raiders, 1960s rock group.

Johnny Rivers—Texan blues guitarist supreme.

Jane Mondale—The wife of former Vice President Walter Mondale.

Maximillian Schell—Oscar winner (for “Julia”) and star “Judgement at Nuremberg” and chronicler of Marlene Dietrich.

Elayne Stritch—Eccentric, magnetic Broadway star.

Eli Wallach—Of Brando’s generation, starred in “Baby Doll” and was the bad guy in “The Magnificent Seven” (You came back. Why?, the dying words).

James Schlesinger—Former defense secretary, exemplary Georgetown citizen and presence.

Ralph Waite—The good father on television to John John Walton and Leroy Jethro Gibbs on “NCIS.”

Shirley Temple—The first super child star in the Depression, ingénue in “Fort Apache” and UN Ambassador.

Ralph Kiner—Detroit Tigers supreme slugger.

Robin Williams–The zaniest, wildest, most profane and faster-than-the-speed-of-laughter creative comic, to suicide.

Joan Rivers — Always in your face, always on your mind, the female comic as outsized performer.

Joe Cocker — Rock and blues singer, best known for his rendition “With a Little Help From My Friends.”

Gary Tischler • January 5, 2015

Let’s hear it for Francesca Zambello.

If she has done or does nothing else, the Washington National Opera’s artistic director has just about managed in a very short time to institutionalize her cherished goal of involving children in opera as performers and audience members by programming children’s and family fare.

It’s a successful effort to which families and children stream to happy effect, as illustrated by the WNO staging of “The Little Prince,” based on the famed fable and book by French writer Antoine de Saint Exupery and on the original production staged at the Houston Opera and directed by Zambello.

To be sure, “The Little Prince” is not your usual fable, fairy tale or children’s book—it’s wispy, philosophical, and not easily digested as a story. But it is full of magical creatures and beings, as well as the little prince himself, who is a denizen of a tiny planet, where a rose is its most important apparition. He joins a human pilot whose plane has crashed in the desert on earth.

The narrative is not quick and fast, but the music—by film composer Rachel Portman—is accessible to children and adults alike, melodic and digestible.

“The Little Prince” is a kind of survivor’s fable which offers, instead of real adventures, nuggets of hope, tools not only to use to get by but to forge ahead and enlarge heart and soul.

It’s full of characters that are a performer’s (and costume designer’s) delight—a breathy, oily snake, a rose, the warm lamplighter, a king, a hunter and a warm, exquisite fox, played and sung in dazzling style by Aleksandra Romano.

This is the third children’s opera staged under Zambello—preceded by “Hansel and Gretel” and the lovely Christmas tale, “The Lion, the Unicorn and Me,” last season. “Cinderella” is coming up in the WNO spring season.

Precisely because it’s an opera (with non-traditional opera components) that doesn’t go down like your favorite ice cream but leaves room for food for thought, the reaction is all the more remarkable. I think the way it’s staged, the production fills up the heart and prods the imagination of adults and children alike.

Twelve-year-old Henry Wager, who played the angel last year in “The Lion, the Unicorn and Me,” sings movingly as a boy soprano, but it’s his stage presence that is undeniable. Slight, often somewhat bewildered but always open and curious, he’s the true heart of the production.

The production is aided by members of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program and the Washington National Opera’s Children Chorus.

In fact, the latter stir up the audience beautifully at the end of the first act, when they form double rows of lamplighters in the aisled of the Terrace Theater.

But “The Little Prince” is a little about education—the prince’s view of earth and adults and humans, the pilot’s education about the prince. Two notable lines remain in the mind: “What is essential is invisible to the eye” and the prince’s insight that “Grownups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.”

Mostly, “The Little Prince” was an exemplary example of the growth of WNO’s opera for children and the rest of the family, a production that left a rose-like imprint on the holidays.

Erin Schaff • December 29, 2014

The D.C. Ferguson protest movement again marched through Georgetown Nov. 29, stopping traffic, to protest the grand jury’s decision not to indict a Ferguson, Mo., police officer for killing 18-year-old Michael Brown on Aug. 9.

About 200 marchers met at the Foggy Bottom Metro stop around noon and proceeded west to Georgetown to make shoppers, visitors and residents aware that “black lives matter,” seeing Brown’s death as “police brutality” and asking observers to condemn racial profiling and racial bias by police departments across America.

The peaceful protesters blocked the intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street — the center of Georgetown’s retail district — for more than 20 minutes. Driving south, car were blocked on Wisconsin Avenue. On M Street, cars traveling from Virginia idled on Key Bridge. The protestors then backtracked along M Street sidewalks to return to the Foggy Bottom Metro Station to head to Arlington, Va.

A light force of Metropolitan Police Department officers and cruisers closed and protected intersections, helping to coordinate the marchers’ flow along M Street. Some on-lookers took in the protestors’ arguments with sympathy; others asked why they would disrupt the start of the Christmas shopping season on Small Business Saturday. Marchers made the point: “No Justice. No Profits. . . . No Justice. No Peace.”

The protesters later met at Pentagon City Mall in Arlington, Va., with a demonstration that included a “die-in.” The Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson — on administrative leave since the shooting — officially resigned from the city’s police department today, according to his attorney.
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Gary Tischler • December 22, 2014

Now, we contemplate with some wry rue the Christmas holiday offering by the Woolly Mammoth Theater Company.

It’s called “Famous Puppet Death Scenes.” In it, many, many marionettes and puppets die, often in gruesome, ridiculous or astounding fashion. They die, and they do.

Merry Christmas.

You were expecting, “God bless us everyone”?

This is Woolly Mammoth’s kind of Christmas, or to be more accurate, the Old Trout Puppet Workshop, a group of long-time pals and puppeteers from our friends up north in Canada. Like comic book heroes, they have an origin legend, about a large fish that lives in a swimming hole on a ranch in Alberta, Canada. Legend has it that if you swam deep enough into the water and find the trout, he will answer any question.

The Old Trout Puppet Workshop came to being on that ranch under the aegis of founders Peter Balkwill, Steve Kenderes and Judd Palmer. They did not jump in to find the trout but did get their name from the legend.

This was back in 1999, and the group of men have been exploring the arts and art of puppetry, marionettes, strings attached or not, in all of its forms ever since.

Often, their work elicits laughter as it is meant to do, from children and adults, and in this case, most likely cruel-minded adolescents as well.

“Famous Puppet Death Scenes” is a production that defies expectations. You expect to laugh, and people, myself included, do, and often, but what you don’t expect is that twinge almost from the outside that gets your head to moving toward the metaphysics of dead puppets or the death of puppets. Can puppets die? Are they alive?

In “Famous Puppet Death Scenes” they do (die) and are (alive … for a very short while.)

The title itself presumes a puppet history every bit as rich as say the backstage lore of theatre itself going back to the Globe, and terrible tricks played by Tallulah Bankhead, or what the horses in the ill-fated musical version of “Gone With the Wind” did on stage, or every treacherous story about the terrors of the Scottish play.

But puppets and puppetry does have an illustrious lore and in contemporary theatrics, they have become an increasingly large part of many plays—think “War Horse”, and the magnificent members of the masque in the Shakespeare Theater Company production of “The Tempest.”

“Famous Puppet Death Scenes” is one of the company’s most beloved works. Love may be a strong word for audiences, unless they are so hip that they can giggle throughout. The total effect is somewhere between the legendary short cartoon “Bambi Meets Godzilla” and reading too much Kierkegaard.

It depends entirely how you react to the puppets—they can be balloons on a string, sculptures, strings and stringless wood or pieces of made up wood with clothes on (or not). Or they can look at you with a jerk of a head—just before losing it—with big eyes, sad eyes, bright eyes and break your heart and drive you mad.

Just look at the titles, or some of them if you dare, along with the names of the authors: “The Feverish Heart” by Nordo Frot; one of my favorites, “Das Bipsy and Mumu Puppenspiel” by Freulicher Friedrich, episode 43, “Bipsy’s Mistake,” a cross between an old cruel German children’s tale and a quiz show set in a disco; “Never Say It Again” by Linda Snuck; “How the Spirit Entered Me” by the Reverend George Foote: “The Ship of Faithlessness Flounders” “La Nature Au Naturel” and so on.

There is an ongoing love story in which troll-like figures try to find each other, while avoiding the hammering hand (and foot) of fate. There are suicides and murders—shriek—and the complete destruction of an entire toy village. There is death, again and again.

There is, oddly, a lot of life. Barely in the case of your host Nathanial Tweak, a fragile, white-haired puppet who appears to comment on life’s cruelty. He speaks often like Shylock, almost asking the question, “Does not a puppet bleed?”

The production is lovingly staged with regular puppet theaters, but also puppets and the three puppeteers who move about the stage and move things along as participants. You can tell them apart from the puppets by their beards and their height but not by their movements.

The last play—called “The Perfect Puppet Death,” by the way—is just that. More I cannot say, lest I choke up.

And the thing is—far from the giggles, the sudden ill-timed word, the appearance of tragedy like a winter house guest, all of that, and sometimes the plain silly stuff, something else happens.

I remembered the puppets from my childhood. I noted, as they attempt to escape fate or a deadly foot, or walk right into life’s trap, which is finally death, that you end up choking up.

They look just like us, only smaller.

Georgetowner •

CityVision Final Presentation

December 18th, 2014 at 06:30 PM | Free

Learn more about local middle school students’ exploration of Washington, D.C., as CityVision participants share their view for their city. After studying the basics of urban design and architecture, students from Takoma Education Campus and Raymond Education Campus present their innovative plans for Buzzard Point, the proposed area for a new soccer stadium.

Address

401 F Street NW

Candlelight Tours at Oatlands

December 19th, 2014 at 05:00 PM | $12 adults, $10 seniors & active duty military, $8 kids 6-16, Free to Friends of Oatlands and childr | jstiner@oatlands.org | Tel: 703-777-3174 | Event Website

December 13, 19, 20, & 21 5-8 pm. Join us after hours to see the mansion sparkling with Christmas lights and old-fashioned decorations. Candlelight tours are open-house style so you may enjoy at your own pace. Reservations not required. Final admission is at 8pm. $12 adults, $10 seniors & active duty military, $8 kids 6-16, FREE to Friends of Oatlands and children under age 6.

Address

20850 Oatlands Plantation Lane; Leesburg, Va. 20176

Christmas by the Letter

December 19th, 2014 at 08:00 PM | Tickets at the door are $25. Advance tickets at $20 | Tel: 202-271-6680 | Event Website

The National Broadway Chorus will present “Christmas By the Letter,” an original comedy featuring popular seasonal songs such as:

“We Need a Little Christmas,”

“Merry Christmas, Darling,”

“Last Christmas,”

“Chestnuts Roasting (on an Open Fire),”

and much more!

The show focuses on a family of five (mother, father, adult son, adult daughter, grandmother) as they prepare to host their Christmas party.

Luke Frazier directs the chorus.

Address

Georgetown Lutheran Church; 1556 Wisconsin Ave. NW

The Gingerbread Chase — Christmas Theater at Oatlands

December 19th, 2014 at 06:30 PM | Adults $12, Children 2-12 $10 | jstiner@oatlands.org | Tel: 7037773174 | Event Website

At a bakery known for its beautifully decorated Christmas cookies, the newly baked Ginger cookie feels plain and simple. Ginger runs away, leading to a chase of family and friends in an effort to return the cookie to the bakery. Will fancy decorations bring happiness, or will Santa help everyone see that being special is about what is on the inside, not the outside? See http://stagecoachtc.com/ for tickets and more information.

Address

20850 Oatlands Plantation Lane; Leesburg, VA 20175

Christmas Illuminations at Mount Vernon

December 20th, 2014 at 05:30 PM | $30/adult, $20/youth | info@mountvernon.org | Tel: 7037802000 | Event Website

Ring in the holiday season with sparkling fireworks overlooking the Potomac River at George Washington’s Mount Vernon on Saturday, December 20! For the first time ever, Mount Vernon will open its doors for an evening of holiday-themed fireworks and special programs.

Address

3200 Mount Vernon Memorial Highway; Mount Vernon, VA 22121

Christmas in Fairfax With the City of Fairfax Band

December 20th, 2014 at 07:00 PM | Free (secure tickets online) | Tel: 703.642.3277 | Event Website

Make our tradition your tradition. Join the Fairfax Choral Society and the City of Fairfax Band in a glorious selection of seasonal favorites in this free, annual concert.

Address

Fairfax High School; 3501 Rebel Run, Fairfax, VA 22030

Chanukah Celebration

December 21st, 2014 at 03:00 PM | FREE | rabbi@amhatorah.org | Tel: 301-229-2751 | Event Website

Live Music: Featuring The Sinai Mountain Boys- A talented foursome of Jewish musicians combining Bluegrass and Jewish melodies!

Kid’s activities- Arts & crafts, games and a juggling and magic show at 3:30 and at 4:15.

Chanukah raffle and refreshments

This activity is not sponsored by, associated with, or endorsed by Montgomery County Public Schools or Montgomery County Government.

Address

Bethesda Elementary School 7600 Arlington Drive Bethesda MD

Amos Gelb • December 19, 2014

What a way to end the year: Bill Cosby and the University of Virginia.

If you have been in media detox since the election, let me bring up to speed. The media has been swarmed by allegations that the avuncular and legendary comedian was less uncle and more molester. They have turned from a trickle to legacy-ending torrent with evidence apparently mounting as quickly as it is receding from the blockbuster and now infamous Rolling Stone magazine expose of on-campus rape at the hallowed halls of the college Thomas Jefferson established.

But this is less about the stories themselves and more the significance that “All Things Media” believes these two stories has for the state of American journalism and our society as a whole.

The news is “We still care!” It may seem an obvious, trite comment. While traditional journalists are bemoaning the end of journalism and Colbert is more influential than the network anchors combined, it is worth noting.

In the age of Facebook and social media where what goes for news is now curated by anarchy rather than self-appointed newsrooms, as depressing as these two stories are, there is good news. The good news is that for all the media turmoil, we as a society still want, need, value and expect what traditional journalism has always been about: factual, reliable information.

In the case of Cosby, the media has played the role of ensuring, even belatedly, that Dr. Huxtable does not escape at least some culpability – even if it is yet to play out.

However, in the case of Rolling Stone’s reportage, the key is not of calling to account of the magazine but rather that fact that we are all so outraged that this article could have been so shoddily mismanaged. In an age, when the Washington Post says that only a third of its online audience comes through its webpage and rely as much on the referral of our friends as to what we read and watch, this outrage is good.

It is good because we care. We want people to uncover stuff, and we demand that what is uncovered is accurate. It may not be in the form that traditional journalists want to see it, and it certainly won’t be from the organizations they would prefer.

As we end the year, it is nice to know that for all the dislocation of the changing media world one things hold constant: we want to know, we expect to know — and accuracy still matters.