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Listed below are comments made by tediouslybrief between Wednesday, 14th January 2009 and Monday, 23rd March 2009.

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Jade Goody's disarming honesty 5:25pm on 23 Mar 2009 "Her willingness to acknowledge she wasn't clever, in the conventional sense, disarmed people."

Did Jade really have an alternative? She really wasn't clever in the conventional sense - much the way that Danny de Vito isn't tall in the conventional sense.

Before she became ill with cervical cancer Jade was being reviled as an embarrassingly parochial and inarticulate bigot. Of course, it was easy for Jade to grow up with blinkers on - but her background was not much more disadvantaged than Peter Ackroyd's.

The enduring lesson of Jade Goody's celebrity is simply that one need not be clever, or pretty, or magnanimous, or cultured in order to become very very very rich.

Some of us already guessed that.
The power of poetry 5:18pm on 23 Mar 2009 I think 'universal saying lessons' is a rather elegant way of putting it. The idiom makes you think about what is being said - rather the way that GM Hopkins does at his best.

People are embarrassed to admit they know any poetry, but most take pride in the Beatles or Randy Newman lyrics they have loved for years.

Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,
Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
The people's plinth 05:42am on 02 Mar 2009 Gormley has got a lot of people thinking about conceptual art who don't normally think about art at all (Daily Mail readers, for example).

This is definitely a result.
Angel of the South 12:49pm on 11 Feb 2009 gee

gee
Poetry for the masses 10:07pm on 25 Jan 2009 I couldn't quite make out the special relevance of Elizabeth Alexander's poem on the day - but then I also enjoyed Bruce Springsteen's 'The Rising' without being able to understand why he picked *that* song.

I suspect the real message of having a poet involved was different.

President Obama is reminding us that it is OK to be an American President, but still read poetry. Since taking office he has further reminded us that American Presidents are not obliged to imprison foreigners illegally, authorise torture, or use US third-world aid as a vehicle for exporting Religious Right agendas.

President Obama is about choice and freedom - even the freedom to read poetry if one want to.
The power of language 9:56pm on 25 Jan 2009 I have noticed quite a few people complain that President Obama's inauguration speech lacked the big rhetoric and poetic resonance he has shown himself capable of on earlier occasions.

Rhetoric may have its uses, but what has been most lacking in American politics for the last two terms has been plainspeaking, honesty and relevance.

President Obama was right to give truth precedence over feelgood oratory.
But is it art? 6:46pm on 18 Jan 2009 white_lady #317 asks 'what is art?'

there are several feasible answers - some better than others.

but a piece which gets people thinking, and - even better - talking, will nearly always fit the bill.

czerny has done this with 'entropa' - as indeed he has done with dozens of other works over the last twenty years or so.
A lasting legacy? 6:25pm on 18 Jan 2009 cultural administrators - and cultural events - inevitably look at what was happening thirty or more years ago: the spider may or may not be something people will remember five years from now, but the beatles and simon rattle reflect what liverpool meant in the 1970s (or earlier).

the people likely to have been least touched by liverpool's capital of culture moment will be those who were too busy making living art to bother themselves with objets which have already aquired a patina and become tradable.

this isn't to say that liverpools highbrow junket was a bad thing - just that if it had happened when the beatles were still playing in hamburg - they wouldn't have attended.
Does the Nobel Prize overshadow its winner? 6:15pm on 18 Jan 2009 the nobel prize for literature is worth having - because it is a lot of money.

other than that, membership of a club which includes pearl s. buck, anatole france, henryk sienkiewicz (quo vadis), and elfriede jelinek - but not ezra pound, james joyce, yasunari kawabata, graham greene, saunders lewis - is no special accolade.
But is it art? 7:32pm on 14 Jan 2009 anyone who walks around prague with their eyes open is already familiar with david cerny's dark but hilarious sense of humour:- he produced the original pink tank, the giant metronome that stands where the stalin colossus used to be, and the giant babies who crawl up the mast of the old soviet radio blocking tower.

when cerny made fun of soviet po-facedness he was a czech hero, now he pokes fun at euroblandness and suddenly his government comes over all serious.

the greatest czech art is always rude and very funny:- cerny works in a tradition that comes through hasek and kundera.

but shouldn't his own government have known this?

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