She’s a Skank!

I’m pleased to read that neither ABC nor NBC will be conducting a post-jail interview with professional trainwreck Paris Hilton. I had been dismayed initially upon hearing that NBC had supposedly offered a million damn dollars to talk to that wretched whore. Now I see in the New York Times that that is no longer the case:

After a flurry of accounts this week about financial offers to land the first postprison interview with Paris Hilton, both ABC and NBC said yesterday that they no longer had any interest in securing the interview.

NBC said that it had contacted representatives of the Hilton family yesterday afternoon and told them the network would no longer pursue the interview with Ms. Hilton, who has been in jail in Los Angeles since June 3 on charges related to traffic violations. She was sentenced to serve 45 days.

‘We have informed their representatives that we are not interested in this interview,’ said Allison Gollust, the spokeswoman for NBC News.

It’s clear that Barbara Walters had been approached to do the interview for ABC, but the network declined, to their credit. I am certain, however, that Walters would have done the interview had she been allowed. The only thing that could convince me that whatever journalistic integrity Walters ever had had not long since vanished would have been if the first question she asked Hilton was, “Why are you such a terrible human being?”

Filed under: Axis of Evil on June 23rd, 2007 | No Comments »

So Very Lazy

With an hour to fill before the opera broadcast today (Così fan tutte), I could have been creative. I had pulled out some English language canons and secular cantatas by Haydn. But in the end I lazied-out, and put on Mozart’s C Minor Mass, K. 427 (the Fricsay recording), with a running time of 57:03.

On the plus side, it was a superior choice on musical and performance grounds.  Maria Stader was truly outstanding, and its sad to think that her style of singing no longer exists.  That is the case, unfortunately, with many fine singers of the golden age.  Voice students are so protective now of their instruments, and their teachers direct them into such a lightweight style of performance.  Every young singer does Mozart these days, but who is doing Leoncavallo, Verdi, Giordano?

Filed under: Music, Work on June 23rd, 2007 | No Comments »