Author: J T. Ramsay

  • And therein lies the difference, and therein…

    It seems vot­ers reject­ed anti-immi­grant vit­ri­ol when it spewed from the mouths of can­di­dates, but when that same rhetoric came in the face­less form of cit­i­zen’s ini­tia­tives that mixed fis­cal aus­ter­i­ty with xeno­pho­bia — vot­ers swal­lowed the bait. Why should your tax dol­lars go to ser­vices for ille­gal immi­grants? This was the mes­sage that anti-immi­grant…

  • There’s no culture, there’s no spies!

    For all the sixth bor­ough talk that’s gone on in the past year, there’s one thing that’s unde­ni­able: Philadel­phia is a city with­out film cul­ture. Apart from what’s curat­ed at Inter­na­tion­al House or appears hap­haz­ard­ly at local col­leges, there’s no inde­pen­dent or reper­to­ry cin­e­ma to speak of. The two Philadel­phia film fes­ti­vals are spot­ty at…

  • Yeah, all those stars drip down like butter, and promises are sweet.

    Meme alert! R.E.M. ver­sus U2 cropped up every­where last week. It’s not a new argu­ment, but the revival of this debate is apro­pos of, well, noth­ing. But last week there were arti­cles in Sty­lus and Slate, fol­lowed by com­men­tary at Rolling Stone. My per­son­al favorite is a head­scratch­er, but try­ing to choose between Achtung, Baby…

  • Here’s a house to put wolves out the door.

    Rums­feld’s res­ig­na­tion comes about two and a half years too late. But if per­cep­tion is greater than real­i­ty, by cre­at­ing a soft­er image of com­pro­mise and rea­son, Bush gives a sop to Democ­rats eager to feel as though they’ve influ­enced some­thing and gal­va­nizes a con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment thirst­ing for mar­tyr­dom. This is the stuff that helps…

  • I can see through your masks.

    Cel­e­bra­tion plays The Troc tomor­row night. How they end­ed up on a bill with Blood Broth­ers and And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead is beyond me.