He’s Henry VIII, he is

April 12, 2018

Tuesday, Thirteen-WNET, PBS’ New York flagship, offered a fascinating juxtaposition – “Inside the Court of Henry VIII” and, on “Frontline,” “Trump’s Takeover,” – about the president’s takeover of the Republican Party, a documentary that looks chillingly prescient airing as it did a day before House Speaker Paul “Paulie PowerPoint” Ryan announced that he would not seek reelection and instead intended to spend more time with his family. (I love the poster on The New York Times who wrote, “What makes him think his family wants to spend more time with him?” ...

When Donnie met Vladdie, part trois

December 16, 2017

Vladimir “Vladdie, Vlad the Lad, Rootin’ Tootin’” Putin is running for reelection as Russian president for life and is taking a page out of the playbook of BFF President Donald Trump (“Donnie Trumpet”) – deny, deny, deny and throw your enemies under the bus.

America is awash in “spy hysteria,” there was no collusion or attempt to throw the American presidential election, Donnie’s wonderful, look how the stock market is up, we call each other by our first names, we still hope to work together – blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Jeez. Get a room already. This is getting weird, even for me, and I write homoerotic novels. ...

‘Come back, Little Sheba’: The myth of lost opportunity in Trump’s America

February 27, 2017

The horrific violence visited on Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani – two Indian immigrant engineers whose death and assault respectively are now being investigated as a hate crime – places the American workforce and immigration, particularly the notion of the immigrant as demonized other, at the intersection of crisis in the America of President Donald J. Trump.

To recap, the two engineers – who worked for Garmin, a GPS navigation and communications device company – were enjoying a workday-ending whiskey at Austins Bar and Grill in Olathe, Kan., as was their wont, when Adam W. Purinton began hurling ethnic slurs at them. After patrons complained, he was thrown out but returned in a rage and shot the two, killing Kuchibhotla and wounding Madasani and Ian Grillot, who intervened. Purinton, formerly with the U.S. Navy and Federal Aviation Administration, fled to Missouri but has since been extradited to Kansas, charged with premeditated first-degree murder and two counts of attempted premeditated first-degree murder as the FBI investigates the crimes as a violation of the victims’ civil rights. (Ya think?) ...

Ken Stabler’s CTE and the threat to quarterbacks

February 4, 2016

A few days before Super Bowl 50 this Sunday comes sobering news: Onetime Oakland Raiders quarterback and Super Bowl MVP Ken Stabler had CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a kind of dementia related to concussions and sub-concussive hits.

Stabler, who died in July of cancer at age 69, left his brain to be studied by researchers in Massachusetts.

Of the 91 brains of ex-players that have been tested – you can’t test for this except after death – 87 had brain trauma. ...

‘A dangerous gift’: ‘Concussion’ and the NFL

January 3, 2016

“Concussion” – the new movie about football and head trauma – is a beautiful film beautifully rendered. That may be an odd choice of words for a story about two of the sometimes uglier games men play – power and violence – but then, football, like humanity, is a multifaceted subject, at once mindless and Shakespearean, as one character notes.

This football tale is told from the viewpoint of an outsider who longs to be an insider, a Nigerian immigrant who has grown up thinking of America as God’s country. Armed with a slew of degrees from Nigeria, New York and London, Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith) is a proud, accomplished but obscure forensics pathologist working for Dr. Cyril Wecht (Albert Brooks), the chief medical examiner in Allegheny County, Pa., in 2002 when he is given what he describes as “a dangerous gift” – a gift for knowing. ...

Concussed

December 21, 2015

“Concussion” – starring Will Smith as Dr. Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who blew the whistle on NFL head injuries and their relationship to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a form of dementia – opens on Christmas Day and is already stirring the pot.

Some say it’s too easy on the NFL.

Others that the movie plays fast and loose with the events and exaggerates the relationship between football and poor health.

“Are we actually watching players kill themselves before our eyes?” Daniel Engber writes for Slate. ...