Bob Collins
What does it say about America that a guy can’t dress up like a bear and play some music without getting jumped?
It happened again to Keytar Bear, who is an iconic busker in Boston.
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MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Arts & Culture
Chrisopher Cline, of Buffalo, Minn., reports he was helping with a newborn calf on the farm when he was attacked by the calf’s mother.
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That assertion that Hennepin County roads were built so wide to accommodate the space shuttle in the event of emergencies? It’s satire, people. Really good satire. Read more →
The Savannah Bananas slogan is ‘We Make Baseball Fun’ and ‘Fans First. Entertainment Always.’
You know how it is for some minor league teams that don’t consider a baseball game to be a church service, right? Read more →
We like to think Batman — Adam West — gave Gotham one last boost last night when he reminded us that there’s more to America than its warring factions.
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‘I do not believe we send our young minds to be victimized to read such immoral drivel,’ Carrol Sarsland wrote in his formal request to ban ‘The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.’
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Andrea Pitzer, a writer for Slate, says Dylan lifting the work of others is nothing new and checking his work has sparked a cottage industry.
Dylan got $923,000 for his lecture as part of his Nobel Prize in literature. Pitzer says he should give some of it to the authors of the work he used. Read more →
School’s out! It’s a time to get inside and play! Read more →
Et tu, Delta?
The airline has become the latest underwriter of New York’s Shakespeare in the Park to pull its sponsorship over a production of Julius Caesar.
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Steve Ross, born in Poland, was in Dachau when it was liberated by American troops. He was 14 and near death when an Army lieutenant jumped from his tank, gave him a hug and some of his food.
It was a brief encounter that propelled Ross to become a social worker in Boston, helping troubled youth. Read more →
Howard Husock doesn’t have a lot of friends on the CPB board, especially after his March anti-public media op-ed in the Washington Post, which prompted another CPB member to call him ‘an embarrassment.’ Read more →
Over the last several years, General Mills’ Cheerios brand has carved out a nice reputation for itself with marketing that stresses, shall we say, more modern-day values.
Advertisements weren’t afraid of multi-cultural families, for example.
Now a new ad, debuting this week, is getting attention for take the theme deeper with rapid-fire multi-culturalism. Read more →
In the category of ‘out of touch with 2017’, few are so deserving of ridicule as the people who make their living in the advertising business, consistently cranking out material that offends people and then claiming they had no idea it would. Read more →
If art is occasionally meant to inflame, mission accomplished at the Walker Art Center where a new installation in the refurbished Sculpture Garden is the portrayal of gallows, one of which is inspired by the largest mass execution in U.S. history, the hanging of 38 Dakota Indians in 1862. Read more →
There’s a mistaken impression that today is the 50th anniversary of the first Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood on PBS. It’s not. That comes next February 19th (the first version of what would become Mr. Rogers Neighborhood actually was in 1953). But it’s never not a good day to hold on to the goodness of Fred Rogers. Read more →