Joe Morgenstern (Wall Street Journal) is the only good film critic in the country. Those at NY Times let alot of detritus slip through the cracks.

The good old humanities taking the usual hit these days. No one has made a good case for the profound economic impact the arts have in the cities here. Who would go to New York otherwise? To see tired Central Park or the dirty East River? Or Fifth Avenue which is like tacky Mainstreet USA. Oprah WInfrey should lead the effort since there is a crying need to divorce Humanities from its dreary husband, The Campus.

Paul Theroux recently gave a patronizing lecture at the Chicago Public Library and took continual pot shots at the audience and the whole universe of other travel writers including Graham Green and Bruce Chatwin. In his opinion no one can compare with him. Good Grief. He takes his own press seriously.

Nabokov's Speak, Memory may be the finest autobiography in existence but it is, like a dinner at the old Le Francais, so rich as to be indigestible. Symposia prefers the breezy 90 page Les Mots by old pal Sartre, the crazy boss eyed "existentialist" who during the war composed nihililstic nonsense in an orange fake fur coat at Magots.

Re-reading Vision and Design by Roger Fry, Symposia notes that its concerns and its language are so untouched by the 20th century technological revolution as to make it as curious as Byzantine art and aesthetics. Written for a verbal culture, with a snail's eye view of the universe, it is on a different evolutionary track and ultimately is incomprehensible.

The stimulus package has elicited Big Opinions from Academics hanging on to the last shreds of post-war ( as in WWII) anger and alienation, comfortable old slippers. Duds looking for the defeat of capitalism and the rise of the workers. Symposia is optimistic about America because greed will always be with us and right now there is plotting and scheming about how to earn More Money! Don't read the papers for a year.

Last night the absolute nadir of teevee journalism with that innane Katie Couric asking the pilot of the plane that ditched in the Hudson how it felt going down? If she designed those childish questions she should be sacked. The poor pilot looked bemused and was endearingly condescending.

We went to the Lyric last night for a performance of Tristan and Isolde a preposterous anachronism "appreciated" by an audience that looked like it was collectively going to the gymnasium and that could not wait for intermission to tear into salami sandwiches. The juxtaposition of these events made Symposia more than normally annoyed.

You have to admit it -- the President is Da Best! He wants to get on with business and was swift in dispatching the creeps who think they are above the law. Tom Daschle or whatever his name is - Obama threw the bum out and now we implore him to get rid of all the careerist bums.