Blog
June 18, 2008 –
I never thought I‘d hear those words, certainly not at the Council on Foreign Relations. Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico spoke at a Council lunch today. The subject was immigration. Before the talk, several people, including this reporter, stopped at the speaker’s table to chat. 
I was standing there when Maurice Tempelsman approached Richardson. The Governor greeted him and said, “Where‘s Mobutu!”
Well, that was a conversation stopper! Tempelsman, a very very rich man, and a generous donor, frequently gets a place of honor at the Council head table, though not today. Nobody raises the question of how he got his money.
Theater & the Arts
Inter Press Service (IPS), June 18, 2008
The Adding Machine (1923) and Top Girls (1983) are separated by 60 years, but both used stylised techniques to portray workers as willing slaves of capitalism. That system has destroyed them, but they haven’t the consciousness to know it. And they absorb attitudes that are racist and sexist.
Both productions are currently on stage in New York. The earlier work, written by U.S. playwright Elmer Rice, has been turned into a chamber opera by Jason Loewith and Joshua Schmidt, and given a stunning, haunting production at an off-Broadway house. The British playwright Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, in a Broadway revival by James MacDonald, features compelling performances by major stage actors.
