A letter to the editor of “Entertainment Weekly” following the “Jazz Singer” review

In a time when a good deal of popular music has been pared down to a redundant percussive beat, with lyrics that glorify the degradation of women, sex, and race, it seems outlandish to me that your magazines’ review of the 1927 version of “The Jazz Singer” was so ridiculously self righteous. Yes, I agree that the film is a relic, with only its being the first mainstream sound film to capture the general public’s imagination to keep it alive in the public eye (other than a chance to see the dynamic Jolson strut his stuff), but to decry it’s value because of Jolson’s penchant for wearing “blackface” is along the same lines as banishing from libraries the books of Mark Twain. Why not obliterate everything from our modern day consciousness that might be considered unpleasant?
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Remembering Roger

by PETER BESAS

On April 23 it’ll be one year that the co-founder of the Simesite joined so many other ex-muggs in the Great Beyond. I still remember with a smile that day in London in November 2002 when Rog and I met Jack Kindred at the Atheneaum Hotel on Piccadilly and the three of us went to have a snack and a drink at a nearby eaterie. Since the conversation inevitably turned once again to the latest scuttlebutt about what some of the former muggs were up to, I at one point threw out: “At times I have thought it would be useful to put out some sort of a newssheet about the old Variety and circulate it”. Whereupon Rog immediately countered that what should be done was put up a website. Well, by the time I got back to Madrid, I was amazed to learn that Rog, with the technical help of his son Ian, had already uploaded Simesite into cyberspace, for Roger was always an enthusiastic “do-er”.
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