A depiction of the murder of St. Thomas Becket by knights of his friend King Henry II of England. From the Carrow Psalter, 1250, ink, gold and parchment. Courtesy Walters Art Museum.
OK, so who had Pope Leo XIV versus President Donald J. Trump on their fight card, let alone bingo card?
Today, many shocked posters on the internet are saying they didn’t. But I did.
Read MoreIlia Malinin before the free skate of the 2025 World Figure Skating Championships. Courtesy
FloweringDagwood/Wikipedia.
In a not-very-good but nonetheless watchable 1998 film of Alexandre Dumas”The Man in the Iron Mask” that capitalized on the Taylor Swift-like phenomenon of then teen heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio, Jeremy Irons’ Musketeer Aramis tells DiCaprio’s hapless title character that the greatest mystery in life is who we are.
Who are we? Who are you? We receive names and unique Social Security numbers at birth, pose for endless selfies, research our digital DNA data and generally live in a “me” culture, branded and monogrammed. But who are we really? What are our values? What are the strengths and weaknesses of our personalities?
Read MoreFrom left, President Donald J. Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the White House in Washington, D.C. on May 6, 2025. Carney’s willingness to take on Trump by moving past him has raised his profile on the world stage. Photograph by Gabriel B. Kotico/the White House.
There is another approach to narcissism that I had forgotten – to stand up to the narcissistic, bullying abuse and either directly (Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney) or indirectly (Pope Leo XIV) announce that you are not going to stand for it and will build a world around, through or without it.
Read MoreFormer Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse seen in his 2016 U.S. Senate portrait. He’s announced that at 53 he has terminal pancreatic cancer. Courtesy U.S. Senate.
Ryan Holiday’s “The Daily Stoic” – generally inspirational although too hard on Alexander the Great and too easy on Marcus Aurelius – says that December is the month of endings in which we must contemplate our own. Meanwhile, there have been a number of high profile endings of different sorts, so let’s delve into them, shall we?
Read MoreFrom left, President Donald J. Trump and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani before a portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House Nov. 21. Courtesy the White House.
There’s nothing like a new bromance to get the creative juices flowing: Both Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers outdid themselves with their comic analyses of the lovefest between President Donald J. Triump and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani at the White House Nov. 21 – this after the two politicians traded the most abject insults amid Mamdani’s meteoric rise.
Read MoreBette Davis’ murderous adulteress, seen here with costar Herbert Marshall as her duped husband, finds she cannot outrun her past, in the form of an incriminating missive, in “The Letter” (1940). Courtesy Warner Bros.
“The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” – Corinthians 3:6
In W. Somerset Maugham’s much-adapted 1927 play “The Letter,” a spurned woman kills her rejecting lover, then passes the crime off as an attempted rape and self-defense. Her story seems plausible but for one thing – an incriminating letter inviting her lover to her home while her husband is away, a letter that’s in the hands of the lover’s mistress.
No one writes letters anymore, we’re told, but they do write lots and lots of emails, which they apparently never delete. Will the thousands of emails released from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate ultimately prove to be politically lethal?
Read MorePresident Donald J. Trump campaigning in Arizona in 2016 wearing one of his MAGA hats. Recently, he and members of MAGA have disagreed over the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Photograph by Gage Skidmore.
President Donald J. Trump is learning all about karmic comeuppance with regard to the Jeffrey Epstein files. …
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