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Musk crosses the Rubicon

Those who think President Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk will make up, or staged their feud for effect, do not understand how narcissism works.

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The Michael Cohen-ing of Elon Musk

Well, that didn’t last long but perhaps longer than we thought it would.

Actually, Elon Musk was only slated to have a six-month tenure at DOGE, although given the importance of groceries — remember them? — Musk’s sell-by date was always ready to be stamped.

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J.D. Vance's concentric circles of love

Now that Pope Leo XIV has hit the ground running — and done some fence-mending, albeit stiffly, with Vice President JD Vance and the Trump Administration — the Memorial Day weekend is a good moment to look at the overcomplicated idea that created the Trump-Vatican rift in the first place.

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With Leo, the College of Cardinals checkmates Trump

So who had Robert Francis Prevost on their bingo card?

No one, right? The election of the cardinal to succeed Pope Francis as Leo XIV came so far out of left field as to be outside the park of the Chicago-born Leo’s beloved White Sox. And yet, it didn’t take long to see that the choice of Leo – calm, centered, bespectacled, math-studying, multilingual, trumpet- and tennis-playing ,Republican primary-voting, Francis-mentored Leo – was the perfect one to countermand the rising American nationalism under President Donald J. Trump. 

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The mirror, not the light -- royal dramas in the age of Trump

“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” — Shakespeare, “Henry IV, Part 2”

“Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light” and “Marie Antoinette” — airing back to back on PBS’ WNET-Channel 13 on Sunday nights — give us two kings in crisis as seen through the eyes of two insiders who will soon be axed.

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Eye of the storm -- our vicious moment

In the musical “Hamilton,” Alexander Hamilton sings about writing his way out — of the tragic storm on his childhood home of Nevis, an act that would set him on a course for New York and destiny, and later out of scandal.

That’s the good thing about being a writer — maybe the bad thing, too — you can write your way out of almost anything but especially tumult as you try to make sense of the irrational.

This week, I was verbally attacked by two people.

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