In an editorial in the Sunday NYTimes of Dec. 15 Maureen Dowd expresses impatience with the be-nice culture of never saying anything critical about anything. She points out that such criticism is essentially dishonest; that it is really thinly disguised advertisement.
I found it remarkable because she is employed by a newspaper whose policy in arts coverage has been to a great degree to print criticism of that nice-whether-you-mean-it-or-not category. In at least two instances that come readily to mind the critic had decidedly critical things to say about the performance but ended up noticing how many people were in the audience, or how the audience reacted, or some such irrelevant nonsense.
The audience at last week's boring Baroque performance was large and clapped loudly. It merely indicated to me that they recognized same-old and appreciated not having to pay attention.
