Tracking misses

The Sunday Times, in all its glory.

Carolina?
It may be a small world, but the Times seems intent on making it 1 country smaller by consistently referring to the non-existant entity of 'Korea'.

Imported Plays? Small World, Jason Zinoman: IN the last year I have seen shows in Off Broadway theaters from, among other places, Argentina, Canada, England, Ireland, Israel, Korea, Poland, Russia and Scotland. New York is as much a global theater capital as ever, so why doesn’t it always seem that way?

Small boy, big memory
Broadway, Before It Was Their Job, Erik Pippenberg: I wish newspapers did more 'biographical' features, where they ask a series of notable people the same question. The Times asked some theater people their memories of the first show they saw on Broadway; one made me laugh out loud.

Edward Albee
'Jumbo'
2005 — Lifetime Achievement
2002 — Best Play (“The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?”)
1963 — Best Play (“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”)

THE first Broadway show I ever saw was in 1935. I know I was about 6 years old, and I don’t think I’d even been the 26 miles it took to get from Larchmont to New York City by then.

The show I saw was at the old Hippodrome Theater — a wonderful space, as I recall it — and it was a musical starring a small elephant and Jimmy Durante. It had a score by Rodgers and Hart, and it was called “Jumbo.”

It had in it such songs as “My Romance” and “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.” It probably hooked me on theater, but I’m sure the hook was the small elephant.

Alexis was under 30
Sometimes you undermine what you thik you're doing with unwitting word choice. Jerome Gary, one of the executive producers of a new documentary that tracked four young Arabs on a journey to see the U.S., doesn't seem to realize his backhanded view of his subjects.

De Tocquevilles From the Middle East, Elizabeth Jensen: Even though Americans weren’t initially the intended audience, Mr. Gary called his subjects “our own little Arab de Tocquevilles,” referring to the 19th-century French author whose “Democracy in America” helped the fledgling United States understand itself.

If you repeat it enough...
There's a starry-eyed piece in the Times about Chinese Americans and earthquake relief for China that reads as if it were written by someone who read up on the state of Chinese-Taiwanese relations in Wikipedia; it also lumps in the problems in that very specific situation with the rest of the Chinese diaspora.

If nothing else, the piece could've benefited from some basic editing.

Setting Politics Aside to Help Victims of China Earthquake, Kirk Semple: The fund-raising by groups on both sides of the Taiwan-China political divide comes amid an apparent warming in relations between the two. Wu Poh-hsiung, chairman of Mr. Ma’s Nationalist Party, crossed the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait, which separates the island from the mainland, and met with President Hu Jintao. The sides agreed to end a nine-year freeze on formal talks about tourism and the start of regular direct charter flights between them.

China has sought to assert sovereignty over Taiwan since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, an effort that Taiwan’s leaders have rejected. But with Mr. Ma’s election in March as Taiwan’s president, relations between the two governments have warmed.

They're not puppets
There's an interesting article in the Times that could be a telling detail about the much more important and larger issue of American Jews thinking supporting Israel means supporting the conservative faction of Israeli politics.

I mean, if I ran a parade in NYC for a country and every year most people from that country living in NYC didn't show up, I'd start wondering what else I don't get about that country that doesn't involve floats and marching bands.

For Parade Celebrating Israel, an Effort to Include Those Closest to It, Paul Vitello: For years, organizers of the Salute to Israel Parade have puzzled over a little mystery. While the annual parade attracts tens or hundreds of thousands of marchers and spectators — most of them American Jews — one group that might be expected to show up and salute has almost never shown up: Israelis. ...

Mr. Miller has a couple of his own. “For a long time, we were an English-speaking group of people organizing a parade in support of a Hebrew-speaking country,” he said. “They may have felt unwelcome.”

“Or there may be cultural gaps between American Jews and Jews from other parts of the world,” he added.

Israelis interviewed last week — some of whom have attended the parade and others who have not — saw a multitude of factors in play: cultural, political, religious, existential and some too complicated to explain to anyone not Israeli.

“These are very big questions, and I don’t know if it is possible to answer without going into a very long, long conversation,” said David Borowich, 38, a Manhattan financial executive who holds dual citizenship and has served in the Israeli Army. But in one sense, he added, the answer is simple: Israelis do not hold parades.

“Israelis have rallies,” he said. “They have demonstrations. The idea of a parade is kind of an American thing.” ...

Some Israelis said that American Jews seemed less inclined than Israelis to criticize Israeli government policies, at least openly — a phenomenon they described as a kind of “guilt gap.” Other Israelis said the obverse was also true. “When you are in Israel, you can criticize all you want,” said Shimon Azulay, an Israeli filmmaker who has lived in Tenafly, N.J., for seven years. “But many of us feel that when we are away, we must never talk about the corruption and such, that we must close ranks.”