Cuomo Hits the Magazine Stands, Head First

Left: Courtesy of New York Magazine; Right: Reprinted with permission from the April 8, 2013 edition of “The Nation.”

ALBANY - It was probably to be expected for a man whose name is invariably mentioned on a short list of 2016 presidential contenders, but Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has become a full-fledged cover boy, albeit one whose defining physical and personal characteristic seems to be his head.

That, at least, is the take-away from the illustrations and observations contained in a batch of national cover stories and splashy profiles of Mr. Cuomo over the last few weeks. And while each article hits many of the same themes - Mr. Cuomo’s unspoken presidential ambitions; his complicated relationship with his father; his sometimes cudgel-like political operation and oratorical styles - what’s more notable is their seeming obsession with the governor’s skull.

The most recent example came on Monday in New York magazine, whose front cover featured Mr. Cuomo’s outsized image, and his enormous, artificially enhanced visage, with the claim, “Andrew Cuomo may be the shrewdest American politician since LBJ.” (The headline inside and online, “The Albany Machiavelli,” was a little less flattering.)

The 6,000-word piece, by Chris Smith, opens with a scene set at an early March meeting where the governor apparently wowed a crowd of “left-leaning lunchers” with tales of his “New Democratic brand” and his on-time budgets, something Mr. Smith described as “a vivid illustration of the genius and expediency of the Andrew Cuomo method.” But then, too, it notes that “he’s engendered more fear than love” while in office. (Maybe it’s that gigantic skull)

The same lunch scene was also described in the April 8 cover story in The Nation, which praised Mr. Cuomo’s “winning combination of idealism, hardheaded political realism and charming self-effacement.”

But the Nation piece, which was written by Eric Alterman and went online in late March, also raised the specter of an almost schizophrenic political pragmatist whose progressive agenda stands in stark contrast to his low opinion of new taxes, which Mr. Alterman said made Mr. Cuomo “the soul brother to Grover Norquist.” (The print version of the article went to press before the governor struck a last-minute deal extending a special high tax for the state’s biggest earners, something the magazine noted online.)

The article - titled “Cuomo vs. Cuomo” - also had a creepy cranial look to it, with an eerie, and decidedly unappealing, cartoon of the governor bisected by two other caricatures.

The New Republic also played up a conflicted Mr. Cuomo in an article about the “running Freudian drama” between the current governor and his father, Mario (who was governor from 1983 to 1994), as well as the younger man’s affection for former President Bill Clinton. The headline was also psychologically obsessed: “Meanwhile, Inside Andrew Cuomo’s Head … It’s Mario vs. Bubba, Again.”

Here, too, the illustrations suggest a man whose noggin is not without nuance, showing Mr. Cuomo’s face, with a pair of penumbral profiles - his father’s and Mr. Clinton’s - leaning to either side.

The article, by Alec MacGillis, concludes with a note that Mr. Cuomo’s success on a national stage will rely on his ability “to transcend both his role models, or rather, to meld them into one, the deft tactician and the righteous idealist.”

“It would be quite an achievement,” Mr. MacGillis wrote, “essentially resolving the longstanding tension between his party’s heart and its head.”

Democratic Candidates Criticize Disciplining of City’s Students

“A tale of two cities.” “Wrong.” “A police state.”

Three Democratic candidates for mayor on Monday used such terms to denounce New York City’s approach to student discipline, saying black and Latino students’ suspensions were disproportionately high and principals imposed unnecessarily harsh penalties on students with disabilities.

William C. Thompson Jr., a former comptroller now running for mayor, suggested that the city should emphasize mental health counseling over punishment.

“We’re suspending students far too often,” Mr. Thompson, who was the Democratic nominee for mayor in 2009, said at a City Hall news conference organized by Dignity in Schools, an advocacy group.

John C. Liu, the current comptroller and also a mayoral contender, said school leaders had overstepped their authority, creating a “criminal-industrial complex.”

In the 2011-12 school year in the city, 52 percent of suspensions involved black students and 46 percent involved Hispanic students, the Education Department said. Over all, 40 percent of the public school system’s students are Hispanic, 27 percent are black and 15 percent are white.

At a hearing on student discipline before the City Council on Monday, Kathleen Grimm, a deputy schools chancellor, defended the department.

Ms. Grimm said that since the beginning of this school year, suspensions of black male students had decreased 26 percent and suspensions of Hispanic male students had decreased by 25 percent. She pointed to efforts to simplify the disciplinary code and promote the use of restorative justice tools.

“Promoting a positive school culture and improving school safety has been and continues to be a cornerstone of the department’s efforts,” she said.

While acknowledging that the number of arrests and suspensions has fallen over the past several years, Mr. Thompson and Mr. Liu argued that the city should focus on alternative means of punishment.

“Parents don’t want to see school discipline outsourced to the police or to the emergency room,” Bill de Blasio, the public advocate and another mayoral contender, said in a statement.

Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker who is also running for the Democratic nomination for mayor, said in her own statement, “Continuing the practices we know are harmful to students and their futures will not work.”

Student discipline has long been a contentious topic in New York City. Critics of the Education Department’s practices hope they can harness some of the political energy that has fueled anger at the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactic, which has also been criticized for disproportionately affecting minorities.

With five months until the city’s mayoral primary, the candidates are making a point of highlighting their education credentials.

On Monday, Mr. Thompson noted his stint as president of the city’s Board of Education, which at the time oversaw the city’s schools, and Mr. de Blasio pointed out that he was a parent of a high school student.

The candidates are aggressively courting the endorsement of the city’s powerful teachers’ union, the United Federation of Teachers. Union representatives will meet on Wednesday to decide whether to offer an endorsement in the primary.

Live Streaming: TimesTalks With Alec Baldwin, Ben Foster and Tom Sturridge

Tonight ArtsBeat will live stream a conversation with Alec Baldwin, Ben Foster and Tom Sturridge, who star in the darkly comic play “Orphans,” opening on Broadway on Thursday. Starting at 6:30 p.m., click on the image above to watch the event, which will be moderated by Patrick Healy.

‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ Will Close on Sunday

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Cory Michael Smith and Emilia Clarke in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

The new Broadway play “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” will close on Sunday after 17 preview performances and 38 regular performances, the producers announced on Monday. The play, adapted by the Tony Award winner Richard Greenberg (“Take Me Out”) from the Truman Capote novella, opened on March 20 to largely negative reviews.

The production stars Emilia Clarke (HBO’s “Game of Thrones”) as Holly Golightly and Cory Michael Smith (“Cockfight Play”) as the narrator Fred. Ticket sales held fairly steady in the first days after the bad reviews, but they started to dip recently - especially as several other new plays and musicals began performances on Broadway.

The play was directed by Sean Mathias and produced by Colin Ingram, Donovan Mannato, Geoffrey Thomas and Dominic Ianno. The $4 million production nearly collapsed during rehearsals this winter after an investor pulled out, but the money was replaced. The show will close at a loss.

Another of Mr. Greenberg’s plays, “The Assembled Parties,” opens on Broadway Wednesday at the Manhattan Theater Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater.

20 Lifeboats Remembered in 60 Verses

A lifeboat from the Titanic, about to be picked up by the R.M.S. Carpathia.

To mark the 101st anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, the City Room comment stalwart known as Lifeboat No. 6 has bestowed upon us a mini-epic: a long, traditional-form haiku of 20 stanzas, each representing one of the lost liner’s 20 lifeboats. We salute him.

Titanic’s Lifeboats

Lifeboat number one
of Titanic’s twenty-odd
rescued just twelve souls.

Lifeboat number two
loaded at threatened gunpoint
seventeen lives saved.

Boat three went to sea
with thirty-two of sixty
and a small dog, too.

Crowded number four
the final boat of too few
Widow Astor’s here.

When five was lowered
the Chairman’s frantic orders
nearly drowned them all.

Onboard number six
Molly grabbed an oar and rowed
helmsman and lookout.

Lucky boat seven
the first to leave, dropped half full
to an empty sea.

Beside boat eight:
If you stay, Husband, I stay!
Her maid went instead.

Number nine was where
a lover hid his mistress
in an open boat.

Suspense in boat ten
from the sinking ship above
a baby dropped down.

At boat eleven
two children already aboard,
their mother held back.

Twelve boat descended
A knife! Give me a sharp knife!
A dozen ropes snarled.

Unlucky thirteen
drifted beneath boat fifteen
nearly smithereens.

Boat fourteen had guns
and a man wearing a shawl
but later saved six.

Full fifteen was packed
people stacked and freeboard lacked
toes and skulls soon cracked.

Sixteen proved most sweet
for two-score third-class women
of richer fortune.

Collapsible A
had collapsing canvas sides
that promptly collapsed.

B Collapsible
went down upside down, reversed
Death was not confused.

C is for Chairman
and for the Collapsible
in which he was Cursed.

Collapsible D
was how a father sent home
his two kidnapped sons.

Via Wikimedia Commons Collapsible Boat D approaching the Carpathia on the morning of April 15, 1912.

Labyrinth Theater Company Names Mimi O’Donnell Artistic Director

Andrew Gombert/European Pressphoto Agency Ms. O’Donnell attending the Academy Awards in 2008.

Labyrinth Theater Company, a downtown ensemble devoted to producing new plays with multiracial casts, announced on Monday that the costume designer Mimi O’Donnell will be its new artistic director - an appointment aimed at stabilizing the company after three years of uneven output.

During that period, which included critical disappointments like “Radiance” and “The Atmosphere of Memory,” Ms. O’Donnell had been one of Labyrinth’s three artistic directors - along with the playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis and the actor Yul Vazquez. They served on a volunteer basis and juggled Labyrinth along with their own projects: Mr. Guirgis, for instance, made his Broadway debut in 2011 with “The ___________ With the Hat,” which earned a Tony nomination for best play.

The Labyrinth board chairman, Jeffrey A. Horwitz, said in an interview that the old leadership model of a part-time triumvirate did not align with the troupe’s ambitions.

“We thought having three artistic directors would keep the leadership well-connected to our entire company,” Mr. Horwitz said, referring to Labyrinth’s membership of roughly 135 actors, writers, designers, and other artists. “But we decided that this needs to be somebody’s full-time job - that for Labyrinth to do consistently strong work, it needed someone who would bring their full attention to it beyond Danny Feldman,” the company’s managing director.

Ms. O’Donnell said by telephone that she was putting aside most of her design work to concentrate on eventually producing three plays a year at Labyrinth’s home, the Bank Street Theater in the West Village, as well as continuing its free Barn Series readings of plays in development. Labyrinth has been staging two plays a year recently, and planning for them has been haphazard at times, she acknowledged; reviews for several of those plays have described them as needing more work.

“Under the old system, when one of the three of us got a job, Labyrinth work would stall and we’d have to wait until we all had enough time to get together,” Ms. O’Donnell said. “I want us to make sure that great artistic experiences keep happening on a consistent basis. Now that we have our own theater at Bank Street, we have the ability to do so much more programming. It just needs an artistic director who is there.”

The 21-year-old ensemble had an informal and consensus-driven leadership style for many years, yet found success under two actors who shared the job of artistic director in the 2000s, John Ortiz and the Academy Award-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman. The troupe also boomed with admired plays by Mr. Guirgis (“Our Lady of 121st Street”), Bob Glaudini (“Jack Goes Boating”) and others.

Ms. O’Donnell - who is Mr. Hoffman’s partner and has three children with him - said that Labyrinth’s leadership change had stirred “some fiery feelings and some freak-outs” among some company members who were worried that a conventional leadership structure - one full-time, salaried artistic director - might be hidebound, less inclusive, and not artistically daring. Labyrinth would not disclose Ms. O’Donnell’s salary; she would only say that she had a standard three-year contract that could be renewed.

“I think we’re growing and growing up as a company, and some people have a desire to hold onto the past and the way we used to do things in the past,” she said. “Labyrinth’s culture used to be, Stephen writes a play, let’s raise money and put it on, and never much thinking beyond that current season. But we have such great artists who deserve to be doing work that is sustainable.”

Mr. Guirgis and Mr. Vazquez released statements praising Ms. O’Donnell and saying they were joining Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Ortiz in an advisory capacity at Labyrinth.

Labyrinth Theater Company Names Mimi O’Donnell Artistic Director

Andrew Gombert/European Pressphoto Agency Ms. O’Donnell attending the Academy Awards in 2008.

Labyrinth Theater Company, a downtown ensemble devoted to producing new plays with multiracial casts, announced on Monday that the costume designer Mimi O’Donnell will be its new artistic director - an appointment aimed at stabilizing the company after three years of uneven output.

During that period, which included critical disappointments like “Radiance” and “The Atmosphere of Memory,” Ms. O’Donnell had been one of Labyrinth’s three artistic directors - along with the playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis and the actor Yul Vazquez. They served on a volunteer basis and juggled Labyrinth along with their own projects: Mr. Guirgis, for instance, made his Broadway debut in 2011 with “The ___________ With the Hat,” which earned a Tony nomination for best play.

The Labyrinth board chairman, Jeffrey A. Horwitz, said in an interview that the old leadership model of a part-time triumvirate did not align with the troupe’s ambitions.

“We thought having three artistic directors would keep the leadership well-connected to our entire company,” Mr. Horwitz said, referring to Labyrinth’s membership of roughly 135 actors, writers, designers, and other artists. “But we decided that this needs to be somebody’s full-time job - that for Labyrinth to do consistently strong work, it needed someone who would bring their full attention to it beyond Danny Feldman,” the company’s managing director.

Ms. O’Donnell said by telephone that she was putting aside most of her design work to concentrate on eventually producing three plays a year at Labyrinth’s home, the Bank Street Theater in the West Village, as well as continuing its free Barn Series readings of plays in development. Labyrinth has been staging two plays a year recently, and planning for them has been haphazard at times, she acknowledged; reviews for several of those plays have described them as needing more work.

“Under the old system, when one of the three of us got a job, Labyrinth work would stall and we’d have to wait until we all had enough time to get together,” Ms. O’Donnell said. “I want us to make sure that great artistic experiences keep happening on a consistent basis. Now that we have our own theater at Bank Street, we have the ability to do so much more programming. It just needs an artistic director who is there.”

The 21-year-old ensemble had an informal and consensus-driven leadership style for many years, yet found success under two actors who shared the job of artistic director in the 2000s, John Ortiz and the Academy Award-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman. The troupe also boomed with admired plays by Mr. Guirgis (“Our Lady of 121st Street”), Bob Glaudini (“Jack Goes Boating”) and others.

Ms. O’Donnell - who is Mr. Hoffman’s partner and has three children with him - said that Labyrinth’s leadership change had stirred “some fiery feelings and some freak-outs” among some company members who were worried that a conventional leadership structure - one full-time, salaried artistic director - might be hidebound, less inclusive, and not artistically daring. Labyrinth would not disclose Ms. O’Donnell’s salary; she would only say that she had a standard three-year contract that could be renewed.

“I think we’re growing and growing up as a company, and some people have a desire to hold onto the past and the way we used to do things in the past,” she said. “Labyrinth’s culture used to be, Stephen writes a play, let’s raise money and put it on, and never much thinking beyond that current season. But we have such great artists who deserve to be doing work that is sustainable.”

Mr. Guirgis and Mr. Vazquez released statements praising Ms. O’Donnell and saying they were joining Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Ortiz in an advisory capacity at Labyrinth.

Survey on Gun-Carrying Youth Adds Fodder to Stop-and-Frisk Debate

Here’s more grist for the debate over whether the New York Police Department stops and frisks too many young members of minority groups: Among high school students in the city, more black and Hispanic young men than white young men said in a federal survey that they had carried a gun at least once in the previous month.

Other variables figure in the stop-and-frisk metric, of course, like descriptions of criminal suspects by victims and witnesses and the demography of neighborhoods in which the police are responding to a crime or where they are monitoring furtive behavior.

But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, conducted locally by health and education agencies, introduces a bit of statistical evidence from the youngsters themselves.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly this month cited figures from 2011 and earlier surveys as support for actions taken in New York City: the percentage of gun-toting teenagers in New York declined between 2001 and 2011 and was smaller than in any other major American city, which the mayor and commissioner said was a result of the local laws against gun possession and of the department’s aggressive policing.

Unmentioned were details of who admits to carrying guns. According to the centers’ 2011 survey of several thousand high school students in New York City, 4.6 percent of black, 4.2 percent of Hispanic and 1.9 percent of non-Hispanic white young men said they had carried a gun at least once within the past 30 days.

Critics expressed skepticism about the results, saying they may have been skewed because some youngsters were probably boasting about being armed while others, fearing prosecution, may have falsely denied carrying a weapon. Moreover, dropouts or others disconnected from the school system might be more likely to have access to a gun.

“Research indicates data of this nature may be gathered as credibly from adolescents as from adults,” countered a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control, Brittany Raines. “Internal reliability checks help identify the small percentage of students who falsify their answers.”

Apprised of the racial and ethnic disparity in the survey, John Feinblatt, the mayor’s chief policy adviser, said: “The data is clear. In New York City, young minority males are more likely to report carrying a gun than any other group. The youth themselves report this. They are also far more likely to be the victims of gun violence. It makes sense that police enforcement resources are in neighborhoods where high-risk groups are most at risk of gun violence.”

But Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is suing the city over the stop-and-frisk policy, countered:

“This is no different than the N.Y.P.D.’s unconstitutional â€" and highly disputable â€" claim that since black and Latino New Yorkers commit higher rates of violent crime it legally justifies stopping a grossly disproportionate number of black or Latino individuals. The law requires individualized suspicion based on specific facts. Otherwise you are simply harassing innocent people based on some kind of collective punishment for the color of their skin.”

Paul J. Browne, Mr. Kelly’s chief spokesman, said the department’s strategy was not based on surveys.

“Police make stops based on reasonable suspicion, not on how surveys are conducted or answered,” Mr. Browne said. “Mayor Bloomberg was encouraged that the C.D.C. found indications that New York City teens were carrying guns less often.”

Isabel Leonard Wins Richard Tucker Award

The Richard Tucker Foundation said on Monday that the mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard had won its award named after the American tenor. The award, which comes with a $30,000 prize, is conferred on singers who the foundation deems are about to plunge into major international careers, and it often makes good calls. Past winners include Angela Meade, Joyce DiDonato, John Relyea, Matthew Polenzani, Deborah Voigt and Renée Fleming.

Ms. Leonard, 31, has become a regular at the Metropolitan Opera, performing in a half-dozen productions. They include three Mozart operas: “Don Giovanni,” “The Marriage of Figaro” and “Così fan tutte.” She will be back at the Met in May with Poulenc’s “Dialogue of the Carmelites,” but not before appearing on “Sesame Street” later this month.

100 Years Later, Seeing the Influence of the Erector Set

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times Dave Frieder, who lives in Closter, N.J., is an avid collector of Erector Sets. This year is the 100th anniversary of when the popular toys went on the market.

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times Part of Mr. Frieder’s collection of Erector Sets includes models of the George Washington Bridge.

Dave Frieder sees a connection between two of his passions: The bridges that tie the city to the rest of the world, and Erector Sets.

The connection is Othmar H. Ammann. He designed some of the bridges and, according to Mr. Frieder, also loved Erector Sets, with their prefabricated parts â€" which, to a Jersey-bound commuter at the end of a difficult day, look like careful little copies of the box beams on the George Washington Bridge that cannot go by soon enough.

“Is it coincidence or deliberate” asked Mr. Frieder, a photographer who is assembling a coffee-table book about the bridges in and around New York and who also collects Erector Sets. Just as he knows exactly when Ammann’s bridges opened â€" the Bayonne Bridge and the George Washington Bridge in 1931, the Triborough Bridge (now the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge) in 1936, the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge in 1939, the Throgs Neck Bridge in 1961, and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1964 â€" he knows that 2013 is the 100th anniversary of when Erector Sets went on sale.

Erector Sets were the invention of a commuter, Alfred Carlton Gilbert, who had started a company that manufactured props for magicians. The non-hocus-pocus inspiration struck in 1912. “Gilbert was traveling into New York when they were electrifying” the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, said William Brown, an expert on Gilbert in Hamden, Conn.

Gilbert looked out the window and saw workers riveting the steel beams of a power-line tower. “He saw the girders in the tower,” Mr. Brown said, “and that was that.”

Gilbert switched from making magic to making metal parts â€" little girders, little wheels for pulleys, little gears, little engines â€" and big money. By the early 1950s, his company had sales of $20 million a year. But it went out of business within five years of Gilbert’s death in 1961.

Gilbert’s family sold 51 percent of their stock to the company behind the television series “Lassie,” among other programs. Some Erector Set fans see irony in that transaction, because it was television that undercut Gilbert.

“He’s a perfect documentation of pre-television America,” Mr. Brown said. “There are only two epics in American toys. His goes from 1913 to 1954, when you see declines. And the face of that decline is Walt Disney. In 1954, he starts to put documentaries on TV. The Erector Set is a toy you can’t play with while watching TV. With Disney in 1954, people’s attention span was divided by television time, and the place where you put the Erector Sets became a television room. And there just wasn’t space for both.”

Mr. Frieder, 59, had an Erector Set when he was a boy, much the way later generations have had Legos. He said he never cared for Legos. “I have always preferred steel,” he said, echoing other Erector Set fans.

“Veterans of the Erector generation find a vague incompleteness in the ease and precision of Lego construction,” Mr. Brown wrote on Web site of the Eli Whitney Museum, of which he is the director. “Nothing in Lego matches the test of the Ferris wheel’s improbable rim, which was constructed of 13 rather than the logical 12 segments. Gilbert the magician seemed to want to be sure you were watching very closely. The bolder the challenge to be mastered, the sweeter the satisfaction.”

Mr. Frieder spent eight years, from 1993 to 2001, taking photos of the bridges around New York. He climbed and photographed all of Ammann’s bridges (except for the “truss bridge” over Randalls Island that is part of the Robert F. Kennedy span). And then he met Ammann’s daughter, Margaret Ammann Durrer.

“I started telling her I was collecting Erector Sets,” he recalled. “She said, ‘Oh, my father used an Erector Set in designing the G.W.B.’ I said: ‘You’re kidding me. Really’ She said, ‘Yes, he used some Erector Sets as an aid in designing the G.W.B.’”

Mr. Frieder has amassed 15 Erector Sets, including one from 1915, when Gilbert had been in the Erector Set business for only two years. “Some of the girders look like some of the box beams used in the G.W.B., the angle pieces that are called lacing bars,” Mr. Frieder said. “They look like the ones in the older sets. They’re an inch wide. The ones in the newer sets look different, and they’re only half an inch.”

The Web has made it easier for collectors to buy and sell old Erector Sets â€" eBay had more than 2,500 listings on Monday, many for less than $50 â€" and Mr. Frieder said he also has the largest Erector set that Gilbert’s company issued in the 1950s. “It builds a robot, it builds a Ferris wheel, it builds the parachute jump,” he said. “In 2006 and 2007, I climbed and photographed the Coney Island parachute jump. Well, A.C. Gilbert made a model of that jump.”

Mr. Frieder also has an Erector Set from 1942 that was apparently never used. It will stay that way.

“I don’t build with the Erector Sets,” Mr. Frieder said. “I only collect.”

Slide Show: Scenes From Coachella

Chad Batka for The New York Times The rapper Danny Brown performing at Coachella on Saturday.

More photographs.

A slide show of photographs from the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif.

Talking ‘Mad Men’ Week 2: The Coca-Cola of Condiments

Every Monday morning, Sloane Crosley and Logan Hill will be offering their post-”Mad Men” analysis here. Read on and share your reactions to Pete’s behavior, Don’s affair and more, in the comments:

Logan Hill: Wow, Sloane, that was a lot of plot for one episode. The Heinz betrayal. Pete and Trudy’s split. The miscarriage. And the return of Herb. I thought we were going to have a key party and a couples swap in the first three minutes.

Sloane Crosley: That party was a major red herring. Because tonally I thought, “Wow, Trudy is frighteningly good at playing along with these two horny knuckleheads and Pete seems so over the female equivalent, perhaps burnt by Beth.” But of course it turns out that Pete doesn’t quite know the score as well as he thinks he does.

LH: We’ve always known Pete was a cretin: We’ve seen him force himself on women and cheat on Trudy before. But, God, it’s the callous cluelessness that makes me hate him. And Trudy destroys him, with a line as bold as her bouffant dresses: “If you so much as open your fly to urinate, I will destroy you.”

SC: Honestly, I was so affected by Trudy’s Last Stand that when later in this episode Roger says, “You know what this is It’s Munich!” I kept having visions not of WWII but of Eric Bana. Trudy! An assassin!

LH: Trudy is a warrior. And this episode is set during the Tet Offensive. Do you think Matthew Weiner, the show’s creator, is putting these characters through so much because, well, so much is happening in the world at large

SC: Yes, but I think it’s even more than that â€" would you agree that the theme of this episode, or a theme anyhow, is surprise attacks Whoops, I had a miscarriage. Whoops, I am going to steal an account from my friend. Whoops, Trudy knows all.

LH: Well, I think a few things are going on: I think Weiner’s pushing the pace and amplifying the sense of crisis to mirror the world outside Madison Avenue. I didn’t read it as surprise, so much as just brutal war, with real victims. There’s lots of blood. And Heinz ketchup.

SC: So Stephen King prom-queen blood. I think it’s about that fake and contrived in this particular episode. Usually the bleed, if you will, between the fictional and the historical is a bit more smooth. All the radio broadcasts felt a little grafted on in order to fulfill the basic tenets of the show.

LH: Yes: The “Hair” reference in the first five seconds. The Johnny Carson spot. Peggy’s pants. They’re pushing so hard. I’m hoping that the show will calm down a bit once the table’s set. Question: Do you think Megan really had a miscarriage Or was it a euphemism for abortion

SC: Oh, no, I think she had one. Remember, she’s not that great of an actress (Megan, not Jessica Paré, who plays her). Her guilt stems pretty clearly from the fact that she didn’t want to be pregnant and would have had an abortion. Also: she has no reason to lie to Ms. Pearly McLong Nails downstairs. Question for you now: Why is it that I am pretty disinterested in Don and Megan vs. Pete and Trudy

LH: Well, the commenters last week also seemed very uninterested in Don and Megan. I wonder if it’s because everyone’s given up on Don changing â€" that his season so far feels like a repeat.

SC: Twitter was full of that sentiment as well. Lots of: “Next time on Mad Men, Don drinks something and says, “Some people can’t help themselves,’ puts on his coat and leaves the room.”

LH: And what about the lurid flashbacks They practically reminded me of “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song,” the Melvin Van Peebles movie about the gigolo who grows up in a brothel.

SC:The flashbacks! The flashforwards! I feel like they’ve both been used more effectively in the past, like when Joan is prostituted out to Herb. I’m a bit down on this episode, I have to say, because seeing Don as a kid in a brothel and then seeing him hand money to his mistress:  It’s all so obvious. At least he didn’t throw it in her face.

LH: Absolutely. At this point, I feel like there should be AMC coffee mugs emblazoned with Don’s catchphrases, which he repeats in this episode: “Don’t Think About It.” And “This Didn’t Happen.”

SC: Yes, Theme No. 476: Compartmentalization.

LH: I have some faith because past seasons were so good, but every line this week was so portentous. One exception: Peggy and Stan. Aren’t they adorable

SC: Can men and women really be friends, Logan An age-old question. All they need is to watch “Casablanca” together.

LH: Ha! And that â€" the show’s one decent relationship â€" is corrupted immediately: Peggy uses Stan’s insider info on Heinz to help her boss steal the Coca-Cola of Condiments. Sad.

SC: It’s all so tawdry, so Sausage King of Chicago. And on top of that, the face of this monstrous tomato-based paste Kip Pardue! Last I saw him was maybe in the film adaptation of “The Rules of Attraction.” Love his oeuvre. Meanwhile, I think the show might be in some legitimate danger if the center will not hold.
LH: Yes. And the line I hated most in this episode was from Peggy’s boss: “Do you need a friend more than a job This is how wars are won.” How novel: a war reference. I hear there was a war in the ’60s.

SC: There was I thought Agent Orange was a dish best served at a key party. But truly:  when the dark-horse B plotlines cannibalize a series, it’s bad for the show. We shall see …

LH: I’m curious to see what our commenters make of all this. Let’s ask them a few questions. I’ll start: How much more horrible do you think Pete can become without literally sprouting horns

SC: I’ll see your horns and raise you some Lee Press-Ons: Where do we think Don’s affair is going this time around Why is this affair with the doctor’s wife different from all other affairs

LH: And, after our first chat, most commenters seemed disappointed. This episode was even less satisfying for me. Were they let down too And are they craving more Joan

SC: Well, Kip Pardue has few lines but one of them is something like, “You tell me” in response to “What do you want”

LH: Don says the same thing to Megan!

SC: That he does. I was so conscious of the slowness of this episode that I had actual time to wonder about this, about what I would prefer as a fan. It was a bit like tripping down a long flight of stairs and having time to think, “I hope I stop falling soon.” I thought: What do viewers want if not this More Joan for sure. But beyond that â€" what’s the show driving at, anyway

Sloane Crosley is the author of “How Did You Get This Number” and “I Was Told There’d Be Cake“; Logan Hill is a journalist who has contributed to The New York Times, New York, GQ, Rolling Stone, Wired and others.

Anne Frank House Says Visit By Justin Bieber Was ‘Positive’

Representatives of the Anne Frank House on Monday praised Justin Bieber for his visit to the museum after a weekend in which a message he left on a guestbook there set off a maelstrom of criticism.

A short note posted Monday on the Facebook page of the Anne Frank House said: “The Anne Frank House was pleased to welcome Justin Bieber to the Anne Frank House last Friday. We think it is very positive that he took the time and effort to visit our museum. He was very interested in the story of Anne Frank and stayed for over an hour. We hope that his visit will inspire his fans to learn more about her life and hopefully read the diary.”

On Saturday the house, which is in Amsterdam, said in a Facebook post that Mr. Bieber visited there on Friday before he performed a concert in Arnhem. He wrote in a guestbook: “Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber.” (That is, one of Mr. Bieber’s fans.)

That brief message drew many angry comments from people who said Mr. Bieber did not respect the sanctity of the house and was using Anne Frank to reflect on his own celebrity. ” Glad he went,” one commenter wrote on the Facebook post, “but, the last sentence is VERY self serving. he missed the lessons of Anne totally.”

Mr. Bieber has not yet commented on the visit but Annemarie Bekker, a spokeswoman for the Anne Frank House, told Reuters that she and her colleagues were “a bit overwhelmed” by the response that his comments drew.

“He’s a 19-year-old boy taking the effort to come and see the museum,” Ms. Bekker said, “and we’d like to point that out, and I think it’s quite innocent what he put down.”

Encores! Announces Casting for ‘On Your Toes’

The New York City Center announced on Monday that the actress Christine Baranski (“The Good Wife”); Irina Dvorovenko, a principal dancer with American Ballet Theater; and Joaquin De Luz, a principal dancer with New York City Ballet, will be among the cast in the Encores! production of Rodgers and Hart’s “On Your Toes.”

Directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle (“Follies”), the show is scheduled for seven performances May 8-12 and is to be the final Encores! presentation of the 2012-13 City Center season.

Encores! Announces Casting for ‘On Your Toes’

The New York City Center announced on Monday that the actress Christine Baranski (“The Good Wife”); Irina Dvorovenko, a principal dancer with American Ballet Theater; and Joaquin De Luz, a principal dancer with New York City Ballet, will be among the cast in the Encores! production of Rodgers and Hart’s “On Your Toes.”

Directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle (“Follies”), the show is scheduled for seven performances May 8-12 and is to be the final Encores! presentation of the 2012-13 City Center season.

Encores! Announces Casting for ‘On Your Toes’

The New York City Center announced on Monday that the actress Christine Baranski (“The Good Wife”); Irina Dvorovenko, a principal dancer with American Ballet Theater; and Joaquin De Luz, a principal dancer with New York City Ballet, will be among the cast in the Encores! production of Rodgers and Hart’s “On Your Toes.”

Directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle (“Follies”), the show is scheduled for seven performances May 8-12 and is to be the final Encores! presentation of the 2012-13 City Center season.