As with everything concerning President Donald J. Trump — including the boos that greeted him for Game Three of the NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan Monday night — much has been written about his on and off Freedom 250 concert series. It included an array of performers from country music’s Martina McBride to funk and soul’s The Commodores — until it didn’t.
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Ilia Malinin before the free skate of the 2025 World Figure Skating Championships. Courtesy
FloweringDagwood/Wikipedia.
Alex Pretti, Bad Bunny, Ilia Malinin and the challenge of identity
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?
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William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s “Orestes Pursued by the Furies” (1862, oil on canvas), Chrysler Museum of Art.
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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The poster for “Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light,” now airing on PBS’ “Masterpiece.” Its story of power and glittering doom in Tudor England holds up a mirror to our own mirthless times.
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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Slaughter on Sixth Avenue: One of New York City’s ubiquitous security cameras captures the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brfan Thompson outside the New York Hilton in Manhattan Dec. 4.
State of denial: When a nation's moral compass is 'out of network'
By now we can assume that there are few people in the nation who are unaware of the Dec. 4 shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson — on his way to an investors’ conference at the New York Hilton in Manhattan — and few people who are unaware that feelings are running about nine to one in favor of the shooter.
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Hurricane Milton seen from the International Space Station. Photograph by NASA astronaut and U.S. Navy Commander Matthew Dominick.
The gathering storms -- Hurricane Milton and the presidential election
As “A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes” by Eric Jay Dolin demonstrates, hurricanes in the United States have always been about two kinds of storms — meteorological and political.
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From left, President Joe Biden takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2021 as wife Jill and children Ashley and Hunter look on. Courtesy the White House.
Hunter Biden and life's double-edged sword
Context drives perception. What may be perceived as a strength in one scenario may be an Achilles’ heel in another.
Privilege raised Hunter Biden up. And privilege, which enabled his long addiction, may send him to prison for lying about that addiction on a gun application.
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