TEACH YOUR CHILDREN SWELL: ‘Twas amusing a couple weeks back to find the Times discovering the danger of school textbooks so simplified and “dumbed down” that they’re fatally boring, losing more students by blandness than older texts might have lost by difficulty. I can believe it. I was certainly bored by most of the textbooks I had to read, and the Times report says they’ve gotten even easier/ dumber since then. From my two tenures working with public-school students (in 1983 and 1992-93), I’ve seen ’em to be, on the whole, much smarter and more naturally curious than most adults give ’em credit for. (Of course, I could say the same thing about readers of redesigned, simplified afternoon newspapers.) Speaking of textual achievements or lack of same…

POACHED POLITICS: Thanks to reader Bill Abelson, I’ve been re-introduced to egg, the 1990-91 fashion/ entertainment mag published by the country-club nerd known then as “Malcolm S. Forbes Jr.” and now as ex-presidential candidate Steve Forbes. He didn’t write or directly edit much of it, and Malcolm Sr. apparently had a bigger say than Steve in developing its concept; but it was Steve’s name atop the masthead and his money it lost. It was part of a rash of coffee table mags that appeared and disappeared almost in unison (remember Wigwag?). The page shape is a perfect square, giving a hint about the attitudes inside. The thing reeks of rich brats “slumming” in downtown NYC, laughing at the proles in dive bars and thrift stores when they’re not worshipping celebrities and ogling designer cleavage. It exemplifies Baffler editor Tom Frank‘s notion that “counterculture” or “avant garde” attitudes bear little significant difference from the “bold,” “rule-breaking” aggression of modern Global Business, that there’s nothing inherently “radical” about “hipness.”

Still, it’s vaguely encouraging to have seen a Republican candidate with evidenced knowledge of, and some level of fondness for, the contemporary arts and entertainment world. No major presidential prospect of either party since JFK has been allowed by his handlers to reveal awareness of any but the blandest current artists or performers. Speaking of politics & culture…

THE ART OF SANCTIMONY: So construction magnate/financier/Seattle Weekly co-owner Bagley Wright‘s giving a mess o’ money to this town’s “major arts institutions,” plus smaller annual gifts to individual painters or sculptors. In a town whose rich people mostly try to keep their names out of the papers, Wright’s largesse prompted editorial writers to pull out, as if from a word-processing program’s glossary file, every leftover piece of hype from the last govt.-arts-funding squabble about how the symphony and opera and museum benefit everyone, not just the institutions’ attendees, due to the uplifting air of culturedness provided just by having these institutions around.

I believe there really are positive impacts of a cultural scene on surrounding community; but they come only with the leap from cultural consumption to production. Any town with a few affluent residents and/or tourists can have an orchestra mounting all-Brahms nights and summer Pops Concerts, a theater performing the classics or last year’s NYC hits, a museum welcoming whatever touring exhibits it can pay the insurance for, and a dance troupe with an annual Nutcracker. Maybe it’s my writer bias, but I really believe a town becomes a community of higher-level discourse only when its “arts” priorities grow from film festivals to filmmakers, from symphonic “cover bands” to composers and improvisors, from performing theaters to producing theaters to creating theaters. Seattle’s getting there, thanks mostly to folks working apart from, or on the periphery of, the major arts institutions. Speaking of local cultural production…

CATHODE CORNER: Spud Goodman is on the road back to televisual presence, if not fame, over six months after being ceremoniously dropped by KTZZ. Goodman, his cast of fictional relatives, and a stripped-down crew are shooting 13 half-hour talk-spoof episodes for The Set, a Fox-owned cable channel seen nowhere in western Washington. Goodman’s new producer, Scott Piel, sez they’ll try to get Goodman’s brand of deadpan anti-schtick schtick picked up by a local broadcast station, at least for monthly specials. If that doesn’t pan out, they’ll at least try to hold public episode-screening parties somewhere.