PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected] and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
PJ Grisar
By PJ Grisar
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Culture After Whitney row and Minneapolis outrage, Warren Kanders will stop making tear gas
Warren B. Kanders, the embattled former trustee of the Whitney Museum, will divest his company from divisions that produce tear gas, crowd-control munitions and riot equipment. Kanders, who stepped down as vice chair of the Whitney board following protests alleging that his company Safariland provided tear gas used at the U.S.-Mexico border and sponge munitions…
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Culture MAD Magazine legend Al Jaffee folds it in at 99 — check out his last Fold-In
When it comes to comics, Fold-In king Al Jaffee has had a record-setting run. Now, the veteran cartoonist is retiring just shy of his 100th year. Jaffee, who holds the title for the longest-working comic artist of all time, worked for MAD Magazine for 65 years. In that time, he was something of a waggish…
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Culture Mark Cuban: Being Jewish ‘allowed me to be more empathetic’
On June 1, Mark Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner and “Shark Tank” staple made a direct appeal to white people on Twitter, asking them to change their ways to improve the world for people of color. Dear White People: We are the ones that need to change. This is not one man’s story. This is…
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Culture Why Jews loved Charles Dickens — and even Fagin
When Sholem Aleichem’s stories were translated into Russian, renowned critic Alexander Amfiteatrov likened him to Charles Dickens. The great Yiddish writer balked at the comparison. “He imagines that our literature has the amplitude of English literature and can produce a Dickens!” Sholem Aleichem wrote to his son-in-law, Y.D. Berkowitz. “Were Amfiteatrov to spend even a…
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Culture A 90-year-old Minneapolis artist lost it all in a protest fire — he’s ready to start over
On May 30, Aribert Munzner’s art studio in South Minneapolis caught fire and was doused with 1,000 gallons of water. Protesters responding to the death of George Floyd burned a bar across the street and the wind picked up embers that landed on the Civil War-era Ivy Arts Building’s wooden roof. The fire department quickly…
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Culture In ‘Chained’ a power-mad cop loses control of his family
Love can be tough, and tougher still to watch. In Yaron Shani’s “Chained,” we witness, from suffocating angles, how one man’s intense brand of caring and need for control destroys his world. The film, which is streaming online as part of the Manhattan JCC’s virtual Israel Film Center Festival June 10 and 11, is the…
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Culture Should we really keep comparing Trump to Hitler?
Yesterday, a few hundred feet from the White House Rose Garden, Donald Trump’s Justice Department stage-managed a show of force against his own citizens. Today, the president is being compared to Adolf Hitler — again. Before curfew went into effect at 7 p.m. on Monday, peaceful protesters at Lafayette Square were met with police in…
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Culture Played a cop? Donate to bail funds, urges actor Griffin Newman
With film and TV production shut down for the foreseeable future, many actors are relying on royalties from reruns and syndication to get by. But self-proclaimed “out-of-work actor” Griffin Newman is using his own to help protestors raise bail. Late Monday night, Newman, best known for playing moth-themed superhero Arthur on Amazon’s “The Tick” and…
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