John Everett Millais’ “Ophelia” (circa 1851, oil on canvas), for which the artist and poet Elizabeth Siddall posed, helped inspire Taylor Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia. Courtesy the Tate Britain.
Why does a billionaire feminist continue to write songs about being rescued from towers by men who “were just honing their powers”?
Read MoreDisplaced Palestinians in Deir el-Balah line up to receive food provided by charitable organizations. This photograph was taken by Ashraf Amra for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, on Aug. 27, 2024, before the crisis reached an inflection point.
What is the statute of limitations on atrocity? When do the oppressed become the oppressors?
Before and during World War II, the world did nothing about the Holocaust, nothing. Never forget, people rallied when it was all over, never again.
But they did forget. And it has happened in varying degrees again and again and again.
Which brings us to the systemic, systematic starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza in a war that has seen passive-aggression at its most brutal play out in a zero-sum game whose end strategy now is the elimination of the Palestinians from Israel in one form or another.
Read MoreThomas Lawrence’s “John Philip Kemble as Coriolanus” (1799, oil on canvas). Guildhall Art Gallery. William Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus,” about rivalries and shifting alliances, offers some insights and warnings for the Trump-Musk feud.
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.
Read MoreWilliam-Adolphe Bouguereau’s “Orestes Pursued by the Furies” (1862, oil on canvas), Chrysler Museum of Art.
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.
Read MoreVittore Carpaccio’s “St. Augustine in His Study” (1502, tempera on canvas). JD Vance used the idea of the ordo amoris, or ordering of love that Augustine expounded on in defense of nationalism on Fox News. His interpretation was rejected by Pope Leo XIV, an Augustinian friar.
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.
Read MoreBob Dylan performing in Rotterdam on June 22, 1978. Photograph by Chris Hakkens.
Last night, I saw “A Complete Unknown,” based on Elijah Wald’s book “Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night That Split the Sixties,” and I found myself haunted not just by the music and the excellent evocation of Bob Dylan —from his 1961 arrival in Greenwich Village as a gifted but vulnerable folk music newbie to his imposition of rock’n’roll on the 1965 Newport Folk Festival as its legendary, disruptive closing act. — but by an idea.
And that idea, beautifully embodied in the film by Timothée Chalamet, is this: Why Dylan? Why not somebody else, or, for that matter, anybody else?
Read MoreFrom left, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, American President Donald J. Trump and Vice President JD Vance in a heated exchange at the White House Friday, Feb. 28. Courtesy the White House.
As I’ve written many times on this blog — too many times but it bares repeating — there is much discussion of various “isms” when it comes to President Donald J. Trump, from communism to socialism, racism and sexism. But the only “ism” that matters is narcissism, and the failure to understand this prevents us from having any hope to dealing with him effectively.
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