Day: April 22, 2015

Monument to Tastelessness, anyone? Try the biggest apple in the whole wide world

If you thought biting cultural criticism was dead, just in case you thought so anyhow, consider this about a new pride of the prideful Manhattan island:

On a recent visit to New York City, I had the opportunity to walk around the exterior of the new Whitney Museum, built at a cost of $442 million. It is a monument of a kind: to the vanity, egotism, and aesthetic incompetence of celebrity architects such as Renzo Piano, and to the complete loss of judgment and taste of modern patrons.

It’s by Theodore Dalrymple, in City Journal for April 22, 2015

The Rauner-proposed budget cuts are trashed in a Harmon-Lilly town hall: Suffering is described by many people

Oak Park Chronicles

The town hall meeting about budget cuts called by Sen. Don Harmon in Elmwood Park on April 6, had words of defense for the cuts from just one person, among scores of complaints.

About an hour into the meeting, in the main meeting room of the public library just off Grand Avenue a half-mile west of Harlem, a man asked about “the elephant in the room,” meaning the state’s fiscal crisis. “Don’t blame it all on [Gov.] Rauner,” he said. The stories of being harmed by the cuts are important, he continued, but so are the state’s financial problems.

When the man finished, after a slight pause Harmon announced the availability of water bottles “up here, which some might like, since it’s rather warm in here.” Then he gave the floor to Rep. Camille Lilly, who stood next to him in front of 100 or so people packed into the…

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