Jeff Jacoby
Jeff Jacoby
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Pundicity: Informed Opinion and Review
 

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'Art is anything you can get away with'

September 25, 2023  •  The Boston Globe


"TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN" is the name of an early Woody Allen movie and a song by the Steve Miller Band. It is also the name of a contemporary artwork by the Danish artist Jens Haaning. Or at least art is what Haaning says it is. A court in Copenhagen says it's a scam. Who's right?

The background: In 2021, Haaning was commissioned by the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art to reproduce a pair of his earlier works, in which he attached paper money to large, framed canvases. The museum supplied the cash Haaning would need to make the new versions — it gave him 533,000 Danish kroner (equivalent to roughly $76,000) and he signed a contract agreeing to return the currency after the four-month exhibition.

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Live long and prosper

September 20, 2023  •  The Boston Globe

THE HEVOLUTION FOUNDATION, a lavishly funded organization created to promote research in the field of human longevity, opened a headquarters in Boston last week. The Saudi Arabia-based nonprofit, established in 2021, summarizes its mission as "supporting innovation in life sciences and medicine that focuses on the biology of aging" in order to extend "healthy lifespan for the benefit of all humanity." Hevolution — a portmanteau of health and evolution — will make grants to biotech firms, medical schools, and teaching hospitals working to slow aging and combat age-related disease.

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As the deficit soars, Biden boasts that he has cut the deficit

September 17, 2023  •  The Boston Globe


PRESIDENT BIDEN has a well-earned reputation as a fabulist. PolitiFact, the Poynter Institute's accuracy project, debunks his assertions so often that its releases are wearily headlined "Latest False Fact-Checks on Joe Biden." He was rebuked most recently for claiming that he had traveled to Ground Zero in New York on the day after the Twin Towers fell in 2001.

"I remember standing there the next day, and looking at the building," Biden said in a speech at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska, on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. "I felt like I was looking through the gates of hell."

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Conservatives should embrace 'Lift Every Voice'

September 13, 2023  •  The Boston Globe

THE 2023 NFL season opened Thursday night at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, where the visiting Detroit Lions upset the reigning Super Bowl champion Chiefs, 21-20.

As usual, "The Star-Spangled Banner" was sung immediately before kickoff. The performer was Natalie Grant, one of the most popular recording artists in contemporary Christian music — she has been named female vocalist of the year five times by the Gospel Music Association. Her rendition of the national anthem had the crowd cheering, especially when she pointed skyward while singing: "Gave proof through the night / that our flag was still there."

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The worst self-inflicted wound in Israel's history

September 12, 2023  •  Arguable

THIRTY YEARS ago this week — on Sept. 13, 1993 — the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization were signed on the South Lawn of the White House at a ceremony hosted by President Bill Clinton. The moment was captured in an iconic photo of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and a grinning PLO chairman Yasser Arafat shaking hands as the beaming American president looked on.

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