6 memorable moments from the Tony Awards

From the emotional to the humorous, here are the highlights of the 2012 Tony Awards ceremony.

2. Hugh Jackman gets a surprise presenter

Deborra-Lee Furness (l.) and actor Hugh Jackman (r.) Lucas Jackson/Reuters

Hollywood actor and Broadway vet Hugh Jackman received a Special Tony Award for his achievements, centering on his one-man show which raised more than one million dollars for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. The camera cut to Jackson's surprised face when the presenter for his award came onstage and it turned out to be his wife, Deborra-Lee Furness, who Jackson said had just told him she was going to the bathroom. "I know you hate public speaking," Jackman told Furness when he got onstage. "This is probably the greatest thing you've ever done for me."

2 of 6

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.