Lobenthal.com

A leading arts editor told me that she couldn’t get press tickets for the Washington-Gyllenhaal Othello. Given the salaries that the two stars are probably making–not to mention their bank accounts– they should defray the press ticket expenses if the producers don’t want to.

The corporate media has so abandoned ballet–in addition to other non-profit art forms–that I can’t even find an obituary for Jonathan Watts, but apparently he died several years ago.

“I’m not in touch with anyone from New York City Ballet  and haven’t been for years,” he told me in 2014, when I interviewed him by phone three times over the course of a week. But after Violette Verdy died in 2016, he emailed me:   “With the passing of Violette Verdy comes the realization that I have lost the opportunity of staying in touch with others who have meant a great deal to me. ..Pat! Could you please let her know that I would like to give  her a call and ask if that would be welcome. I don’t have her phone number or address.” Subsequently Wilde and he had a 90-minute phone reconciliation.

Watts was his own worst enemy, a colleague recalled. In 2017 I suggested to the Balanchine Foundation that they solicit his participation in their coaching archive. I wrote him asking if I could forward his contact info to them.  “Certainly, it would be a great privilege to coach such marvelous dancers,” he emailed me, “but, at the same time, they should bear in mind the number of years that have elapsed since I last worked with Mr. B.” The Foundation did approach him, but the coaching session never happened. 

I emailed him a snapshot of him chatting with Le Clercq and Balanchine at Idlewild airport in NYC before they left for their 1955 European tour. “I  couldn’t be in better company,” he wrote when he thanked me. “Really it’s a thrill.” 

When NYCB was in Paris in 1956, Balanchine worked with 22-year-old Watts on the Opera stage for his debut in the lead of Divertimento No. 15. He recalled rehearsing his closing-movement entrance with Adams and Le Clercq.”It was a big thrill ‘cause I’d never worked so closely with such dancers at that level. That remains a memorable moment, doing that entrance with those two women on that great stage.”

is a shameless, pathological liar, as he insists that lacerating cuts to Medicaid are not lacerating cuts to Medicaid.

‘Federal employees do not deserve their jobs,” the harridan just said at her onanistic DOGE subcommittee meeting.

If you feel that way, Marge, why don’t you resign immediately?

Will Trump, once again, be an unindicted co-conspirator?

Now he’s hamstringing the editorial page further, demanding that no criticism of market fundamentalism be allowed there. 

Bezos has lost it. He has turned against America, and we must respond appropriately. 

Remember, no Amazon purchases on February 28. 

“Government workers have been asked to provide five bullet points that describe what they accomplished last week or they will be fired by Musk. If you were told that your job were at risk, would you not want to spend an hour crafting a well written, thoughtful response to such a request? If each employee takes an hour for the task it will cost the federal government  over a billion dollars, given the average hourly cost of feral workers’ labor. Assuming each one is read and compared to each worker’s job description hundreds of million dollars more will be spent analyzing the response,; or perhaps instead an A.I. will be used to analyze waste in which case perhaps the A.I. will fire Musk for this absurd, degrading, and wasteful use of labor.”

Musk’s questionnaires demanding to know what hard-working Federal employees are doing aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. 

Another appropriate answer might be, “Things a lot more worthwhile than what you are doing, Mr. Musk.”

AOC gave a good speech informing Federal workers how to respond when Musk and his ruffians try to violate their agencies. Ask for a warrant, for one thing.

which he calls “war pornography” in a new interview in the Daily Telegraph.

And don’t miss on youtube the 2011 short he directed, “Jesus Was a Commie,” a rebuke to all the performative Christians in the Republican Party who exploit Christianity even as they flout the teachings of Jesus Christ.

“Trumpism will not be defeated by politicians inside the D.C. Beltway,” he tells crowds on his anti-oligarchy nationwide tour.