At the office holiday party the other night, the newly controversial song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” came up on the playlist. I explained to my publisher that the 1949 Oscar-winning song – which composer Frank Loesser had actually written five years earlier and performed with wife Lynn Garland as a kind of calling card at parties – has come under fresh scrutiny in the #MeToo era for its lyrics and the way they’re performed.
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Saving face while losing themselves?
It was no minor metaphor when British Prime Minister Theresa May’s car door stuck as she strove to exit recently to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who waited with characteristic stoicism on the red carpet for yet another go-round in May’s futile attempt to negotiate a better Brexit deal. Brexit has been the ultimate stuck car door for May and the British people, a frustrating rigmarole with no satisfactory conclusion in sight.
Read MoreQueen to pawn in a game of love and death
The new movie “Mary, Queen of Scots” — which I am reluctant to see for reasons that will become clear — belongs to what I like to call the Sylvia Plath school of storytelling. That is, if your telling the story of the suicidal poet, the husband will always be the villain. (That he had two wives who killed themselves in exactly the same way doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in him as a spouse. You know what they say. Once is a tragedy. Twice is an unsettling coincidence.)
Read MoreAs the Channel churns
These are not the best of times on either side of the English Channel. Paris is burning as les citoyens – who have protest in their blood – take to the streets in outrage over higher taxes on the hoi polloi but not on the hoigty-toigty types. French President Emmanuel Macron took to the airwaves to promise tax relief for workers and pensioners and an increase in the minimum wage. While he acknowledged his own role in the situation – protestors have accused him of being out of touch – Macron said France’s problems predate him by decades and stem from the changes wrought by globalization.
Read MoreOh, no, no, no. He's a Tariff Man
The day after President Donald J. Trump was elected, I, along with scores of others, hopped on a conference call with leaders of my brokerage firm to assess whither we were going in this brave new world. There were the usual attempts to reassure — the exhortations to stay the course, the discussion of the glories of diversification, the view that things might not be so bad after all. And though shocked global markets dropped, a lot, in the immediate aftermath, the worst never happened. At least, not immediately.
Read MoreThe quiet man
The passing of President George H.W. Bush – whom the nation mourned officially Wednesday – was a reminder of all that we have lost and that still remains.
Read MoreDon't cry for him, Argentina
Ah, the G-20 – how it breaks the heart and stings the soul with the scent of “Evita,” “The Fountainhead,” “Citizen Kane” and all those glamorous Hollywood tales of megalomania run amok and ultimately grounded into the muck and mire.
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