This is brilliant - thank you for writing so insightfully and powerfully about the Epstein files and the conceptual & actual links to classical music and musicians.
Exceptional work tracing how the rhetoric around intellectual pluralism became infrastructure for exploitation. The email exchanges show how quickly rationalization becomes routine once someone decides their mission justifys the compromise. Saw simillar patterns working in nonprofit fundraisng where donor cultivation starts normal and then slowly you're just normalizing whatever keeps the check coming.
I saw an email yesterday quoted on Bluesky where Botstein makes some self-deprecating remark about preparing for a Carnegie Hall concert (in 2014) and “putting homeless people to sleep again,” and I almost felt sorry for the poor groveling bastard, but that’s the life he chose, so.
Right? Like, if he were doing free concerts in Central Park, that MIGHT make sense (although it would still be an asshole thing to say), but in this context it's just stupid.
This is brilliant - thank you for writing so insightfully and powerfully about the Epstein files and the conceptual & actual links to classical music and musicians.
Much appreciated, Leah. I think you hit the nail on the head that this is a conceptual matter as much as it is a practical one.
Exceptional work tracing how the rhetoric around intellectual pluralism became infrastructure for exploitation. The email exchanges show how quickly rationalization becomes routine once someone decides their mission justifys the compromise. Saw simillar patterns working in nonprofit fundraisng where donor cultivation starts normal and then slowly you're just normalizing whatever keeps the check coming.
I saw an email yesterday quoted on Bluesky where Botstein makes some self-deprecating remark about preparing for a Carnegie Hall concert (in 2014) and “putting homeless people to sleep again,” and I almost felt sorry for the poor groveling bastard, but that’s the life he chose, so.
Also on what planet does Botstein live where he thinks unhoused people are going to Carnegie Hall concerts?
Right? Like, if he were doing free concerts in Central Park, that MIGHT make sense (although it would still be an asshole thing to say), but in this context it's just stupid.