Society & Culture

Linguist Geoff Nunberg on distinctions in grammar.

Actor, singer and drag queen Ru Paul. The six-foot seven entertainer is even taller in heels and has fashioned for himself a supermodel persona. He attributes his mainstream appeal to his non-threatening sexuality and his “non-bitchy” drag queen personality. Ru Paul is appearing out of drag in the new comedy “But I’m A Cheerleader.” He plays an ex-gay rehab counselor. Ru Paul’s other films include “Crooklyn,” “The Brady Bunch Movie,” and “Wigstock the Movie.” (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SHOW).

In light of the news that Republican V-P candidate Dick Cheney’s daughter is a lesbian, we speak to two people close to the issue. First, Reverend Louis Sheldon, Chairman and Founder of the Coalition for Traditional Values ( HYPERLINK "http://www.traditionalvalues.org" www.traditionalvalues.org). The Coalition for Traditional Values is the largest non-denominational grassroots church lobby in America, founded in 1980.

Husband and wife song writing team, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, the duo responsible for such songs as “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling,” “On Broadway,” “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” “Here You Come Again,” “Don’t Know Much,” and more. The two met when they were both working in the famous songwriting landmark, the Brill Building— Mann as a composer and Weil as a lyricist. The two have been writing ever since. In edition to their many pop hits, Mann and Weil have also written songs for films.

Earlier this week, Harold Nicolas, the younger member of the famous tap-dancing duo, The Nicholas Brothers, died in Manhattan. The Nicholas Brothers danced in vaudeville, on Broadway, in night clubs and on TV, but may be best known for their appearances in movie musicals of the 1930s and 40s. We’ll listen back to a 1985 interview with Nicolas.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg on the phrase “thought leader.”

Dr. Vjosa Dobruna (“Vee-YO-sa Doe-BRU-na”) is one of this year’s recipients of the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights. She’s being recognized for her work as founder of the Pristina Center for the Protection of Women and Children, which treats those victimized by rape, torture, or psychological trauma. Dobruna is a pediatrician neurologist. During the war, she fled to Macedonia and set up work in a Macedonian refugee camp. Dobruna narrowly escaped arrest last year. Her colleague, Dr. Flora Brovina, is the other recipient of the award.

Painter Jacob Lawrence died on June 9th at the age of 82. For six decades, Lawrence had been widely regarded as one of America's most important black artists. His work depicted the black American experience from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement. (REBROADCAST from 5/16/88)

Linguist Geoff Nunberg on the trend among corporate giants to change their names to create a new identity.

Assistant Managing Editor of The New York Times, Allan Siegal. He oversees usage and style at the Times. A revised and expanded edition of his “The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage” (Times Books) has just been published.

Authors Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor are the authors of American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley, His Battle for Chicago and the Nation” (Little, Brown & Co). In the book, the authors look at Daley’s legacy, how he transformed Chicago into a modern metropolis, but also turned it into the nation’s most segregated city.

Writer Keith Fleming talks about his first book, a memoir, The Boy with the Thorn in His Side (William Morrow.) When Fleming was a teenager, he was living in Chicago, depressed, and was committed to a string of mental institutions. Then his mother sent him to New York to live with his young, gay uncle, the critically acclaimed novelist and biographer Edmund White. The move and his uncle’s influence transformed his life. Keith Fleming is a freelance editor and writer living in Providence, RI (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SHOW).

Journalist Orville Schell talks about his new book Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood (Metropolitan Books). For centuries now, the mountainous and remote nation of Tibet has been the object of Western fascination. Today, Tibet is the subject of movies and Hollywood celebrities have taken on Tibetan Freedom as their cause. Schell talks about Tibet, real and imagined, and takes us through the history of the West’s infatuation. Schell has covered China and Tibet for many years.

These days, there’s a lot of public concern about objectionable content on the Web. Fresh Air’s Linguist Geoff Nunberg discusses the problems with so-called “censorware”, the software programs that claim to screen out pornography and other offensive material.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the language of the stock market.

Playwright and director George C. Wolfe. He wrote and directed the hit Broadway musical “Jelly's Last Jam,” about Jelly Roll Morton. Wolfe also wrote the play “The Colored Museum,” a satire about the black experience in America. His newest musical is “The Wild Party” based on the long-lost classic poem about the roaring twenties by Joseph Moncure March. (the book was republished in 1994 with drawings by Art Spiegelman). It’s currently playing at the Public Theatre on Broadway.

Andrew Ward is the author of “Dark Midnight When I Rise: The Story of the Jubilee Singers, Who Introduced the World to the Music of Black America” (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux). The Jubilee singers were nine former slaves who who set off from Nashville in 1871 to raise money to rescue their school, Fisk University, from bankruptcy. They toured the U.S., Britain, and Europe introducing audiences to African-American spirituals. The Jubilee singers are also the subject of an upcoming American Experience documentary on PBS. (Monday, May 1, 2000 at 9:00)

Contributing editor for Vanity Fair David Margolick. In his new book “Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights” (Running Press), Margolick traces the history and impact of the song “Strange Fruit,” a ballad about lynchings which became Billie Holiday’s signature song. It was written by a Jewish school teacher who was inspired to write the song after seeing a newspaper photograph of a lynching.

We talk about the Taliban with Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid. His new book is called Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Yale University Press). In the mid 1990s, the Taliban Movement gained power in Afghanistan, a country in the wake of a civil war. The Taliban declared they wanted to restore peace and enforce traditional Islamic law. Instead, The Taliban has shown itself to be a troubling development in Islamic radicalism. It has launched a genocidal campaign against Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan. It has sanctioned acts of international terrorism.