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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The Schmooze Masha Gessen And Samantha Bee Channel Seinfeld — With Dire Warnings About Democracy
How do you give a discussion of immigration policy mass appeal? If you’re late-night host Samantha Bee: “Car-based comedy!” Last night, journalist Masha Gessen returned to Bee’s program, “Full Frontal” in a 1984 Russian Lada for a segment called “Comedians in Cars with Dissidents Getting Coffee,” a riff on Jerry Seinfeld’s popular web series. The…
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Culture What Should We Expect From Errol Morris’s Steve Bannon Documentary?
Details are salaciously short, but documentarian Errol Morris appears to have made a film with — of all people — Steve Bannon. We know the film, titled “American Dharma,” will debut at the Venice Film Festival and that it’s meant to be a “dialogue” — a broad description that applies many of Morris’ films —…
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Music Philip Glass, ‘Hamilton’ To Receive Kennedy Center Honors
The selections for this year’s Kennedy Center Honors were announced this morning and, as ever, they’re a who’s who of people it’s hard to imagine otherwise interacting. American Jewish composer Philip Glass is receiving the famous rainbow-banded medal, awarded annually to five artists whose talents have helped shape American culture. Glass is joined in the…
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Culture Why The Nazis Banned This Strauss Opera — Even Though He Collaborated
The composer Richard Strauss has a complicated legacy. Beginning in 1933, Strauss served as the President of the Reichsmusikkammer, the Nazi Reich’s Chamber of Music, a damning collaboration with the regime. But in 2014, prompted by celebrations of Strauss’s 150th birthday, many music scholars took to editorial pages, to reconsider the extent of the artist’s…
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Film & TV The Old Schtick Still Works For Mel Brooks
At 92, Mel Brooks is a lot of things: A Kennedy Center award recipient, a titan of both stage and screen even a vampire grandfather in the recently-released “Hotel Transylvania 3,” but for all these distinctions he reduces himself to one thing. “I’m just a Jew comic,” he tells David Denby in a new profile…
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Culture Does The New Exhibit At The U.S. Holocaust Museum Go Too Easy On FDR?
On April 23, 2018, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC opened “Americans and the Holocaust,” a new exhibit that places American public opinion in its crosshairs and hopes to buck the belief that many Americans were unaware of the full scale of Nazi Germany’s crimes. “Without offering excuses, the exhibit probes the…
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Culture How Jimmy Carter Lost The Vote Of New York’s Jews
How did President Jimmy Carter, an incumbent Democratic president, lose the 1980 Democratic Primary in New York — to a senator from Massachusetts, of all places? It looks like the Jews were behind it. In his new book, “President Carter: The White House Years,” former White House Domestic Affairs Advisor Stuart Eizenstat paints a picture…
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Culture Leonard Lopate Returns To Radio Amid Controversy
Radio host Leonard Lopate has found a new home—but not all of his neighbors are happy to have him. Lopate, who was suspended and later terminated by WNYC last December after allegations of “inappropriate conduct,” launched his maiden show on the Brooklyn-based station, WBAI on July 16th, 2018 the Columbia Journalism Review reports. The show,…
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