Wednesday, May 24, 2006

THE PUBLIC EDITOR; There's No Business Like Tony Awards Business - New York Times:

UNLESS I acquire some unexpected clout around here in the next 48 hours, Times readers will wake up on Tuesday morning to read a prominent story announcing the nominees for an artistically meaningless, blatantly commercial, shamefully exclusionary and culturally corrosive award competition.

Let me put it another way: unless Times editors have overcome several decades of their own inertia, readers on Tuesday will find a prominent story serving the pecuniary interests of three privately controlled companies whose principals have earned the right to convene in what Damon Runyon once called ''the laughing room.'' That was Runyon's term for the sound-proofed chamber where he imagined that the proprietors of the ''21'' Club gathered to set the day's menu prices. Today's version would be the sanctum where the men who run the Shubert Organization, the Nederlander Organization and Jujamcyn Theaters gather to toast The Times and its generous support of their efforts.