tuesday, april 27, 2010
REVIEWS Theater Three
shows in repertory at Capital Fringe « C5
Recordings Albums by Gogol Bordello, Daddy Yankee and B.o.B. C3
Theater The solo musical “Son of a Stand Up Comedian” at MetroStage C10
Style
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THE RELIABLE SOURCE
For singer John Legend, no love in Virginia
Looking for an address in Fredericksburg, he was told to vacate the area by “two old guys who must’ve been celebrating confederate history month.” C2
BOOK WORLD
‘The Slap’
In Christos Tsiolkas’s powerful novel, a furor results when a boy throws a tantrum, kicks a man, and is slapped in return. C2
3LIVE TODAY @ washingtonpost.com/discussions Tom Shales on TV Noon • Fashion Fix with Janet Bennett Kelly and Holly Thomas Noon • Paul Farhi on pop culture 1 p.m.
“He’s got more wisdom and discernment and insight than most people two or three times his age.” — Tim Pawlenty, governor of Minnesota, on Nick Ayers
TOM SHALES
On TV
A reprise for good old song and dance
governess in “The Sound of Music.” This is precisely how I feel about Fox’s “American Idol” and ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars,” two terrifically engaging shows that are winding up their annual runs in the next few weeks. These programs brought music back into the American TV-watching home and also brought it back into prime-time television, from which it had been largely absent since the 1970s. Where there had once been singing and dancing and the playing of instruments, prime time now was dominated by autopsies, forensic investigators, ghosts, killers, open wounds and something capriciously if not preposterously known as “reality.” Many of the crime-fighting shows were, and still are, extremely good ones, with production values that make them look more like motion pictures than episodic television. Some of the reality shows have been entertaining, too, but usually in the same way that nasty gossip about the neighbors is entertaining. “American Idol” is sometimes lumped with reality shows and it has that element — folks-next-door battling it out in a contest. But instead of fighting leeches, bugs, parasites and each other, as on CBS’s “Survivor” and other shows that imitate it, the “American Idol” contestants, of course, sing. They sing their little hearts out, maybe even their little brains out, and eventually as all the world knows, a winner is chosen and becomes a star, and runners-up often become stars, too.
“Y
While some viewers tune in to root for favorites and to see who’ll win, some of us just like the idea of having people sing on television, with the competitive part being a mere detail. Making music on TV used to be as common as
shales continued on C6
ou brought music back into this house,” Capt. Von Trapp tells Maria the
KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST
AT THE HELM:Nick Ayers, in his Republican Governors Association office, has transformed the committee, attracting donors disillusioned by the RNC.
young gun
The GOP’s
ADAM LARKEY/ABC VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
D.C. Agenda sets a memorable date: The return of the Washington Blade
by Dan Zak
The District’s long-running gay weekly will resume publishing under its original name, the Washington Blade, at the end of this week, after the acquisition of the Blade’s assets in bankruptcy court in At- lanta. In late February, staffers bought the
ASSOCIATED PRESS
REALLY BIG SHOWS:Andrews
and Chmerkovskiy on “Dancing With the Stars,” and the Beatles with Ed Sullivan in the golden era of musical entertainment on TV.
newspaper’s name, copyright, trade- mark, archives, computers and office fur- niture for $15,000. Twenty-five thousand copies of the first edition of a redesigned Blade will hit the streets Friday. The 40-year-old newspaper — founded as a one-sheet newsletter in October 1969 just months after the Stonewall riots in New York incited the modern gay
rights movement — has published week- ly editions under the name D.C. Agenda since Nov. 20, four days after parent com- pany Window Media declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy and ceased operations. Working with half the staff of the Blade (which last year had 24 full-timers) and an array of freelancers, D.C. Agenda also relied on the generosity of lawyers, ac- countants, advertisers and readers from around the world, many of whom con- tributed pro bono or financial support, according to editor Kevin Naff. “A lot of people really have an emo- tional connection to the Blade, and the outpouring since it closed was over- whelming and was really what led us to
blade continued on C10
COURTNEY LOVE PHOTO BY DANIEL JACKSON
No love here: On
her new album, few signs of the Hole we
adored.
Page C3
by joe heim
Nick Ayers has full-grown plans for a Republican return to the White House
by Jason Horowitz
To call Nick Ayers the bright young future of the Re- publican Party is to ignore that the future has already arrived. “We’re the largest political committee in town,” says
Ayers, the 27-year-old executive director of the Repub- lican Governors Association. Ensconced a block from the White House, Ayers is a leading player in the GOP’s plan to use the momentum of statewide victories in 2010 to knock President Oba- ma out of office in 2012. The Georgia native, who left college as a 19-year-old freshman to help elect Gov. Sonny Perdue,the first Republican governor of Georgia since Reconstruction, is now a veteran Washington hand, bantering with Obama during East Wing recep- tions and serving as a confidant and strategist to a spate of governors, including the committee’s chair- man, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. Since taking the helm in January 2007, Ayers has
transformed the creaky committee into a tight ship that has attracted Republican money bundlers dis- illusioned with Michael Steele’s Republican National Committee and its spending sprees.
ayers continued on C9
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