(no subject)

I only get the New York Times on Sunday--it's all I can do to finish it in a week. So articles from other days of the week have to get to me by other means. For example, these two, from the Times to TMFTML to me to you:

A profile of Jordan Levin, president of WB Entertainment, who is young for a network executive and thinks even younger.

She then turned to a stranger and added, "Other network presidents, they're suits. Jordan gets down. He's most definitely the coolest network president!"

Jon Pareles's take on Dylan's supposed plagiarism (he adapted a bunch of lines from a Japanese book) is roughly mine, but better researched. He didn't "steal" anything. He fashioned his work using, among other things, bits and pieces of the cultural atmosphere he lives in. Which, that year, included Confessions of a Yakuza.

Mr. Dylan's music does the same thing, drawing on the blues, Appalachian songs, Tin Pan Alley, rockabilly, gospel, ragtime and more. "Blowin' in the Wind," his breakthrough song, took its melody from an antislavery spiritual, "No More Auction Block," just as Woody Guthrie had drawn on tunes recorded by the Carter Family. They thought of themselves as part of a folk process, dipping into a shared cultural heritage in ways that speak to the moment.

This is how creative people have always worked. It's only in the current climate of "intellectual property" and ever-expanding copyright that anybody thinks it's wrong.