On October 22, 2008 a Californian man, Walter Bagdasarian, posted racist comments on a Yahoo! message board in which he called for Barack Obama to be killed.
Mr. Bagdasarian was reported to the Secret Service. After the investigation he was charged with and convicted of uttering criminal threats. A Californian federal appeals court has overturned this conviction in an opinion filed on Tuesday.
The plaintiff was drunk at the time of the comments and besides the court has concluded that any average person would have understood him to mean that he was for such an assassination in general but not intending to carry one out.
Comment: Based on the details I've read it would have been irresponsible not to investigate the defendant and I think his comments went too far. So I rather wish that he would have had to pay for the Secret Service investigation or given some form of community service around victims of shootings or (though this is less relevant to the actual criminal charges) around African-Americans so that he would have the opportunity to have more enlightened ideas about the advisability of gun crimes and about racism. As it is, he was originally ordered to serve two months at a halfway house.
Besides I wonder, looking at the Huffington Post article mentioned below, who posted his $100,000 bail (which is, after all, a lot of money) back in 2009 — whether his actions and views have the support of people with more money and more power than him.
***
"Urging Obama’s Assassination Is Lawful Online Speech, Divided Appeals Court Says" [Wired.com], by David Kravets (July 19, 2011)
(Decision) [United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit] (July 19, 2011)
"Walter Bagdasarian Convicted Of Making Racially-Charged Threats Against Then-Candidate Obama" [Huffington Post] by the Associated Press (July 28, 2009)
Wednesday 20 July 2011
Monday 11 July 2011
Roland Petit
The ballet dancer and choreographer Roland Petit has died at the age of 87 in Geneva.
"Roland Petit obituary" [Guardian], by Judith Cruickshank (July 11, 2011)
"Roland Petit, Choreographer, Dies at 87; Conquered Ballet Taboos and Hollywood" [New York Times] by Anna Kisselgoff (July 10, 2011)
The Guardian article in particular is excellently thorough. So I will leave it at that, but cite a passage from Margot Fonteyn's self-titled autobiography (Wyndham, 1976; pp. 114-5) which conveys something of his earlier career in Paris:
Lastly, the New York Times has a nearly bottomless archive of ballet reviews, etc., for Roland Petit. I didn't attempt to dip into it because of the 20-free-article limit. But if the link works, here it is:
Search results: "Roland Petit" [New York Times]
***
"French choreographer Roland Petit dies at 87" [BBC News] (July 10, 2011)
"Disparition de Roland Petit" [Opéra national de Paris] (July 11, 2011)
Ballets des Champs-Élysées [Wikipedia.fr] Read July 11, 2011
"Roland Petit obituary" [Guardian], by Judith Cruickshank (July 11, 2011)
"Roland Petit, Choreographer, Dies at 87; Conquered Ballet Taboos and Hollywood" [New York Times] by Anna Kisselgoff (July 10, 2011)
The Guardian article in particular is excellently thorough. So I will leave it at that, but cite a passage from Margot Fonteyn's self-titled autobiography (Wyndham, 1976; pp. 114-5) which conveys something of his earlier career in Paris:
Paris certainly gave me a much needed change of atmosphere in work and play. The dancers wanted to show me everything from the Bois de Boulogne in spring to the night clubs of the rue de Lappe, where my mother was not at all dismayed to see men dancing together, and the famous Mme Arthur's all-male cabaret. Wandering about the city in the warm night air we once dived into the Seine for a midnight swim, and we always got home in the small hours, only to get up a few short hours later to be at the class of Boris Kniasev, a teacher of oversized personality and enthusiasm [. . .]. A big man, with powerful voice and generous laugh, talkng, correcting, explaining throughout the class until everyone excelled themselves in effort and accomplishment, he was exactly the teacher I needed at that time.(He incidentally introduced Fonteyn to the fairly fledgling house of Dior, and she had met him previously while he was a roughly nineteen-year-old dancing student who had choreographed his first ballet (pp.106-7).)
It was de Valois's favourite, Roland Petit, with the black eyes like Massine, who thought up our various exploits. He was a veritable dynamo of energy and ideas — dancing, choreographing, seeing new designers, composers, writers, his mind everywhere at once.
[. . .] We were perfect opposites in temperament. [. . .] I told him he needed the stability of the Paris Opéra, from which he had broken away. Neither of us took the other's advice. I was not too swept off my feet to forget that my success was based on the position I held in Sadler's Wells, while Roland knew he wanted complete freedom to create ballets in his own way.
Lastly, the New York Times has a nearly bottomless archive of ballet reviews, etc., for Roland Petit. I didn't attempt to dip into it because of the 20-free-article limit. But if the link works, here it is:
Search results: "Roland Petit" [New York Times]
***
"French choreographer Roland Petit dies at 87" [BBC News] (July 10, 2011)
"Disparition de Roland Petit" [Opéra national de Paris] (July 11, 2011)
Ballets des Champs-Élysées [Wikipedia.fr] Read July 11, 2011
Tuesday 5 July 2011
Paris Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2011/2012: Giambattista Valli
On Monday, the haute couture shows opened in Paris. Intermittently the demise of haute couture is postulated, since only three hundred — maybe more or less; this writer heard or saw this figure once and never saw it again — women in the world have the finances, inclination and daring to wear it; this year there have been no ominous forebodings.
Excitement ran at a feverish pitch even among those who follow scandals rather than fashion closely, since the house of Dior showed its first haute couture collection not masterminded by the Briton John Galliano. (Dior announced that it was firing the designer on March 1st; he is still being prosecuted for racist insults.)
..................................
A second first was Giambattista Valli's inaugural haute couture collection, which was displayed in a small old-fashioned corridor in the Galerie de la Madeleine. The guests sitting in the two single rows of gilded chairs included Daphne Guinness, Bianca Brandolini, Olivia Palermo, Shala Monroque, Tatiana Santo-Domingo, and the editor of Vogue USA, Anna Wintour. (On July 1st Charlotte Casiraghi, the daughter of Monégasque Princess Caroline and frequenter of fashion shows, wore one of his designs during the wedding festivities for Prince Albert and Charlene Wittstock.)
Excitement ran at a feverish pitch even among those who follow scandals rather than fashion closely, since the house of Dior showed its first haute couture collection not masterminded by the Briton John Galliano. (Dior announced that it was firing the designer on March 1st; he is still being prosecuted for racist insults.)
..................................
A second first was Giambattista Valli's inaugural haute couture collection, which was displayed in a small old-fashioned corridor in the Galerie de la Madeleine. The guests sitting in the two single rows of gilded chairs included Daphne Guinness, Bianca Brandolini, Olivia Palermo, Shala Monroque, Tatiana Santo-Domingo, and the editor of Vogue USA, Anna Wintour. (On July 1st Charlotte Casiraghi, the daughter of Monégasque Princess Caroline and frequenter of fashion shows, wore one of his designs during the wedding festivities for Prince Albert and Charlene Wittstock.)
In Honour of Anna Massey
On Sunday the British actress and CBE Anna Massey died, and though I have admittedly only seen her in one role I wanted to pay tribute.
She was the daughter of Adrianne Allen and the actor Raymond Massey, who is familiar for instance for embodying the menacing Karloffian cousin in Arsenic and Old Lace (he was also in East of Eden with James Dean, in the black-and-white Scarlet Pimpernel adaptation as Chauvelin and in John Ford's How the West Was Won playing Abraham Lincoln), and was born in Thakeham, West Sussex in 1937. As a teenager she acted first on the stage, and in the course of time covered works from classic playwrights from Pinter through Shaw and Shakespeare to Ibsen, Beckett, O'Neill and Sheridan; in 1958 she began her film acting with a role in the crime drama Gideon's Day.
The minor film role in which I saw her is as Eudora, the maid to Helena Bonham Carter's heroine in Hazard of Hearts. Adapted from a Barbara Cartland novel, this kind of role seems a test at once of the seriousness and the humour of an actor, since you can either find the material beneath you and do a cynical work of it, or take pride in embellishing the material and enjoying the melodrama with a strain of critical wit. Since the script was slender the portrayers had to fall back on a rich vein of stock characters. Anna Massey's touch as a Cassandra-like croaker and affectionate elder servant was deftly convincing, dignified and individual at once.
In the 80s BBC filming of Mansfield Park, she was Mrs. Norris — still a busybody and a chatterbox, but sincere, which was not the case in the book but certainly makes her far more sympathetic. Besides her expressive face, diction, postures and gestures, and formal, old-fashioned air are the traits of a distinguished thespian tradition.
Her important roles, in controversial films from the 1960s and 70s and then a series of classic film adaptations, testify to her range. In recent years she was Miss Prism in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest with Reese Witherspoon and Rupert Everett, and Mrs. Shrike in The Machinist (2004) with Christian Bale. The CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) was awarded in 2005.
"Anna Massey dies aged 73" [Guardian], by Xan Brooks (July 4, 2011)
Anna Massey [IMDb] and Other works Accessed July 4, 2011
Raymond Massey [IMDb]
"Actress Anna Massey dies at the age of 73" [BBC] (July 4, 2011)
"Anna Massey" [Daily Telegraph] (July 4, 2011)
She was the daughter of Adrianne Allen and the actor Raymond Massey, who is familiar for instance for embodying the menacing Karloffian cousin in Arsenic and Old Lace (he was also in East of Eden with James Dean, in the black-and-white Scarlet Pimpernel adaptation as Chauvelin and in John Ford's How the West Was Won playing Abraham Lincoln), and was born in Thakeham, West Sussex in 1937. As a teenager she acted first on the stage, and in the course of time covered works from classic playwrights from Pinter through Shaw and Shakespeare to Ibsen, Beckett, O'Neill and Sheridan; in 1958 she began her film acting with a role in the crime drama Gideon's Day.
The minor film role in which I saw her is as Eudora, the maid to Helena Bonham Carter's heroine in Hazard of Hearts. Adapted from a Barbara Cartland novel, this kind of role seems a test at once of the seriousness and the humour of an actor, since you can either find the material beneath you and do a cynical work of it, or take pride in embellishing the material and enjoying the melodrama with a strain of critical wit. Since the script was slender the portrayers had to fall back on a rich vein of stock characters. Anna Massey's touch as a Cassandra-like croaker and affectionate elder servant was deftly convincing, dignified and individual at once.
In the 80s BBC filming of Mansfield Park, she was Mrs. Norris — still a busybody and a chatterbox, but sincere, which was not the case in the book but certainly makes her far more sympathetic. Besides her expressive face, diction, postures and gestures, and formal, old-fashioned air are the traits of a distinguished thespian tradition.
Her important roles, in controversial films from the 1960s and 70s and then a series of classic film adaptations, testify to her range. In recent years she was Miss Prism in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest with Reese Witherspoon and Rupert Everett, and Mrs. Shrike in The Machinist (2004) with Christian Bale. The CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) was awarded in 2005.
"Anna Massey dies aged 73" [Guardian], by Xan Brooks (July 4, 2011)
Anna Massey [IMDb] and Other works Accessed July 4, 2011
Raymond Massey [IMDb]
"Actress Anna Massey dies at the age of 73" [BBC] (July 4, 2011)
"Anna Massey" [Daily Telegraph] (July 4, 2011)
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