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Otto Warmbier and the limits of male power

Some years ago, I saw an exhibit at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Mass. in which a male artist included an image of the Y chromosome. It’s much smaller than the X chromosome. And it’s been shrinking.

I couldn’t help but think of this on the death of Otto Warmbier, the young American imprisoned and apparently tortured for allegedly taking a propaganda poster off the wall of a North Korean hotel. Returned to his homeland in a coma, he died six days later on June 19.

Lost, however, in the geopolitical story – the barbarism of North Korea, the failure of the Chinese to contain it and the challenge this poses for America – is both the larger and deeper cultural and psychological story. It is a narrative that says simply no one does stupid like a stupid man. ...

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The Lochte caper enters the backlash-against-the-backlash phase

I had planned to write a post about the big, fat September Vogue and editrix Anna Wintour’s latest anointed tennis star, Alexander Zverev, who at 19 is the youngest player to crack the top 30 since Novak Djokovic a decade ago. (The magazine article’s headline blares “Alexander the Great” above a picture of a shirtless, Alexandrian figure indeed.)

But I’m afraid such pleasures pale with the news that Brazilian Police have recommended that Ryan Lochte be charged with falsely reporting a crime for saying he’d been robbed at a gas station during the Rio Games. ...

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