Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

According to Greg Wilson of NBC Southern California , a possible Colorado performance artist, allegedly drunk, “was arrested after scratching, punching and, well, rubbing her butt against Clyfford Still's ‘1957-J no.2’ and causing an estimated $10,000 damage to the artwork at the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver.” Mr. Still died in 1980. He was considered, according to the NMBC report, “one of the most influential of the American post-World War Two abstract expressionist artists, although he was not as well known as others such as Jackson Pollock” – until now. Four of Mr. Still’s paintings were auctioned last year by Sotheby’s and brought in $114 million, a sum that endowed the Denver museum, which opened in November. The performance artist, Ms. Carman Tisch, “dropped her pants at a museum and rubbed her rear end all over a painting valued at $30 million,” according the NBC report. Tragedy was averted when the lady attempted to urinate on the painting – and missed. Her aim app...

The announcement that appeared in the Hartford Courant was brief and modest, a little less than 150 words, five famished paragraphs: Michele Jacklin, former reporter, columnist and editorial board member had left the paper and joined the gubernatorial campaign of current Bridgeport Mayor John DeStefano as Director of Policy and Research. Other journalists have passed the bar dividing journalism and politics without damage to their careers. Pat Buchanan, initially connected with Richard Nixon, has passed over and under the bar several times; George Stephanopoulos moved effortlessly from Bill Clinton’s campaigns to become a television commentator; and closer to home, Charlie Morse, once the Courant’s chief political columnist, appropriately ended his career at the paper by joining the campaign of Lowell Weicker, an ideological soul mate. Some political watchers were mildly stunned by Jacklin’s move; not because she had passed through the revolving door that connects journalism and pol...