LA Times institutional bias shows up in opera review

LAObserved ^ | 3/3/04 | Kevin Roderick

[Lyford]

Last week, the L.A. Times' Mark Swed filed a review of the opera "Die Frau Ohne Schatten" at the Music Center. He wrote that the Richard Strauss epic is "an incomparably glorious and goofy pro-life paean..." But when it ran in the paper, pro-life had been changed to anti-abortion.

[Lyford]

It seems to be that I remember a headline years ago, to the effect of "African-americans riot in Johannesburg", though that may be urban legend. But it's amazing what can happen when the liberal style-book takes hold...

[atomicpossum]

So, the LA Times style book is so silly that they automatically censor pro-Life to anti-Abortion, even when it isn't used in that context? The loony Left looks ludicrous once again....

[monkey]

It may be built into the copy editor's word processor to automatically make the substitution.

At least it wasn't an "anti-choice" opera. I'd laugh at this story if it didn't hurt so much.

[Charles Henrickson]

I couldn't access the Los Angeles Times article directly without "signing up," which I didn't want to do. But here's a brief excerpt (not the full-text article), as it was carried on a German review site:

Under Strauss' spell; The Los Angeles Opera stages a whimsical, powerful and strongly cast production of "Die Frau Ohne Schatten."

LOS ANGELES TIMES; by Mark Swed, Times Staff Writer
Richard Strauss' epic opera "Die Frau Ohne Schatten" (The Woman Without a Shadow) is an incomparably glorious and goofy anti-abortion paean that has not been taken up by any political group I know of. It's hard to imagine as evidence for a Supreme Court case five little fishes who fly into a frying pan, the flames gleefully leaping up to greet them, the oil merrily bubbling to cook them, while their pathetic small voices wail in the background. They are the souls of unborn children pleading for admission into life. Evil forces have convinced their heartless mother to exchange her fertility for riches. No opera in the repertory is so "relentlessly polyphiloprogenitive," Mitchell Morris writes in the Los Angeles Opera program book. That's the perfect long word for a long and symbolically long-winded opera. There is a lot under the surface in Hugo von Hofmannsthal's libretto, but many who love this crazy opera, who fall under the spell of Strauss' most elaborate score, couldn't care less what it means.

[Tribune7]

this is funny.

[Don Joe]

It seems to be that I remember a headline years ago, to the effect of "African-americans riot in Johannesburg", though that may be urban legend.

About ten or twelve years ago, the MSU student newspaper ran an article about race relations in South africa. It made reference to "South African Whites" and "South African African-Americans".

I gotta cut this short, I need to get ready for an African-American tie dinner.

What madness that has overtaken this country...

[Don Joe]

I could not resist leaving a comment at that http://www.laobserved.com/archive/001504.html weblog.