Azar Nafisi reports in the New Republic on the halting progress of liberalization in Iran. Twenty years after coming to power, the Islamic Republic has begun to allow Hollywood movies to be shown, but Iranian television's version of Mary Poppins still showed less than 45 minutes of the original film. All scenes featuring women singing or dancing were cut out and instead described by a narrator. In Popeye, all scenes featuring Olive Oyl were cut out because her relationship with Popeye is considered lewd.

A recently published art book featured a discussion of Edgar Degas's Dancers Practicing at the Bar. Under the heading "Spatial Organization," the text focuses on the artist's placement of the ballerinas: "The two major forms are crowded into the upper right quadrant of the painting, leaving the rest of the canvas as open space." But in the accompanying reproduction of the painting, the ballerinas are airbrushed out, leaving only a picture of an empty dancing studio, with a bar running along the wall.

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