What, if anything, about this benighted moment of American life will anyone in the future look back on with nostalgia? Well, those of us who have cable are experiencing a golden age of sarcasm (from the Greek sarkazein,"to chew the lips in rage"). Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann are digging into our direst forebodings so adroitly and intensely that we may want to cry,"Stop tickling!" Forget earnest punditry. In a world of hollow White House pronouncements, evaporating mainstream media and metastasizing bloggery, it's the mocking heads who make something like sense.

Let not those heads swell, however. News in the form of edgy drollery may seem a brave new thing, but it can all be traced back to one source, the man Ernest Hemingway said all of modern American literature could be traced back to: Mark Twain. Oh, that old cracker-barrel guy, you may say. White suit, cigar, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated--but he died back in 1910, no?...

A mobile museum highlighting the major contributions of African-Americans in the history of the United States will make its debut in downtown New Orleans today as part of the Essence Music Festival.

The "America I AM Across America" tour will provide a 15- to 20-minute sneak peek at artifacts to be featured in a traveling museum exhibit documenting the rich history of Africans in America, slated to open in November.

Highlighted pieces appearing in the mobile museum will include slave shackles, a pair of Muhammad Ali's boxing gloves and letters written by Frederick Douglass and Marcus Garvey.

SIEM REAP, Cambodia — There is no question that Angkor and its famed temples are among the world’s archaeological treasures, providing a window into the Cambodian dynasty that flourished there from the ninth century to the 15th century. But tourists who flock to the site in northwestern Cambodia say something is missing; few artifacts remain to help them imagine the customs and rituals of the ancient empire.

Antiquities were looted over the centuries or appropriated by museums in France, the country’s former colonial ruler. Of those that remained, many were relocated to Cambodia’s National Museum, more than 185 miles from Angkor.

Now, a Thai company says it is trying to address the problem, opening a museum that borrows artifacts, including nearly 1,000 Buddhas, from the National Museum and elsewhere. It is just a few miles from Angkor Park, the sprawling area near here that is considered one of Southeast Asia’s most important archaeological sites and includes...

There's a war going on, and Army Lt. Col. J. Todd Breasseale has a mission.

But it's far removed from the captured Iraqi palace where he was once stationed. He fights his war now from an office on Wilshire Boulevard lined with movie posters chronicling conflicts real and imagined, from "Patton" to "War of the Worlds."

Breasseale's desk is piled high with scripts, each marked with his name and stamped "confidential." It's his job to help decide which movies should get Army help.

The mission is both harder and more important than it might appear.

After the Vietnam War, movies like "Apocalypse Now" and "Born on the Fourth of July" helped cement an image of psychologically damaged Vietnam veterans.

"In the '80s and early '90s, the Vietnam War vet was the 'other,' " Breasseale said. "Hollywood had created the crazy Nam vet."

For the Army, it was a...

Wish "Yankee Doodle" a happy 250th birthday. Maybe.

The original lyrics to one of America's best-known songs, one associated with the American Revolution, were actually written a couple decades earlier during the French and Indian War, although an exact date has eluded historians. Some peg the year as 1755, when the war's first major battles were fought, or 1756.

The other year often cited is 1758. Now, a state archaeologist believes he has narrowed down the date to sometime in June of that year, when a large British-led army was mustering at Albany for an expedition against the French.

Dr. Richard Shuckburgh, a British army physician, is credited with penning the "Yankee Doodle" lyrics to mock the ragtag New England militia serving alongside the redcoats. As the story goes, Shuckburgh wrote "Yankee Doodle" while at Fort Crailo, across the Hudson River from Albany, after witnessing the sloppy drill and appearance of...

Tortured images from the mind of the Victorian artist and brutal murderer Richard Dadd will shed light on the nature of his mental illness in a new London show this weekend.

Dadd, who is one of the most macabre figures in British art history, spent more than 40 years in lunatic asylums after stabbing his father to death. For the remainder of his life the painter believed he was the victim of an ancient Egyptian curse.

Despite his violent and delusional behaviour, Dadd is still regarded as an eminent Victorian talent, with work hanging in Tate Britain. He is particularly celebrated for his paintings of fairies and exotic landscapes.

Now drawings and watercolours that were completed during his time in the Bethlem Royal Hospital - known colloquially as Bedlam - have been lent for display in 'Dreams of Fancy', billed as the most significant exhibition of Dadd's work for several decades...

A man has been arrested after tearing the head off a wax figure of Adolf Hitler at a newly opened branch of Madame Tussauds in Berlin.

The 41-year-old man was held after attacking the waxwork, only hours after the attraction opened on Saturday.

The inclusion of Hitler in the exhibition has aroused controversy in a country where Nazi symbols are banned.
But the exhibition's organisers said they could hardly depict German history without portraying Hitler.

There are times when art should be the last thing on an art critic's mind. The thunderous popularity of a number of contemporary Chinese artists compels a political analysis. Much of the work is powered by a startling and completely delusionary infatuation with Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution. This is more sinister than anything we have seen in the already fairly astonishing annals of radical chic. We are witnessing a globalized political whitewash job, with artists and assorted collectors, dealers, and sycophants pouring a thick layer of avant-garde double-talk over the infernal decade of suffering, destruction, and death that Mao unleashed on his country in 1966. And as we are also dealing with the house of mirrors that is the art world, I have no doubt that somebody is ready to explain that I am confusing appropriation with approbation or that fascism is just another way of spelling freedom. I must say, the theory people have a lot to answer for. But here is the bottom line...

Benjamin Franklin and Betsy Ross celebrated the eve of the Fourth of July not with fireworks but with wedding vows.

Ralph Archbold and Linda Wilde, who portray the historical figures, tied the knot Thursday evening in a public ceremony in front of Independence Hall, where the real Franklin helped draft the nation's founding documents.

The bride and groom, as well as the entire wedding party, were in costume for the event.

"Ralph and Linda, the entire city could not be happier for you," said Mayor Michael Nutter, who performed the brief ceremony.