Opinion: The song remains the same, and so does the news
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Over at the WashPost, Gene Weingarten is still polishing that Pulitzer they gave him for his widely discussed Joshua Bell busking story from last year, but he’s got an embarrassing revelation: Somebody at a long-dead Chicago paper did almost exactly the same story in 1930.
To his credit, Weingarten breaks the story himself, but some commenters are saying, ‘fiddlesticks!’ One demands he give back the prize, and commenter lhooq46 has a critique I can really agree with:
What was more unoriginal than the article was the selection of music that Joshua Bell played. I’m sorry, but I would not have stopped to listen for ‘Thais’ or ‘Ave Maria’ no matter how well they were performed - I’ve heard these pieces hundreds of times & I’m beyond sick and tired of them!!!
But for my money, the best analysis of the original busking stunt came in this vehement and contemptuous article by Richard Taruskin:
All concerned knew perfectly well that people at rush hour are preoccupied with other things than arts and leisure, and would not break their stride. But the fulfillment of the self- fulfilling prophecy gave Weingarten the pretext he sought, in an article titled ‘Pearls Before Breakfast,’ to cluck and tut, to quote Kant and Tocqueville, and to carry on as if now we knew what really happened at Abu Ghraib. Bloggers took up the refrain. Notice, wrote one, that ‘all the children wanted to stop and listen. They knew. But their parents kept them moving on. Sadly it reminds me of an occasion when children wanted to stop and listen to Christ but his disciples didn’t let them.’ Saddest for me was that the weblist of the American Musicological Society, my professional organization, added its meed of clucking and cackling. Scholars are supposed to be skeptical of spin and pose, but here we were piling on. My hat goes off to one Ben H., a netizen who saw through it all. ‘Perhaps the Post could do a whole series of articles about philistines ignoring Joshua Bell’s sublime music-making in different locations,’ he suggested: 1. Outside a burning building (not one fireman stopped to listen!) 2. At a car crash site (one paramedic actually pushed him aside!) 3. During a graduation exam (shushed by the invigilators!) 4. At a school play (thrown out by angry parents!) 5. On an airport runway (passing jet liners seemed oblivious!)