The wildfires in Australia are a poignant metaphor for our time — a world out of control, untold collateral damage.
The Iowa Caucuses are in meltdown due to “inconsistencies in reporting data,” whatever that means. Results are due later today, Feb. 4. (Gee, they missed Groundhog Day just by two days. It would’ve been so appropriate.) Remember when we had voting machines that worked?
Meanwhile, President Donald J. “Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City (Kansas)” Trump will be acquitted in his witness-less impeachment trial. The Republicans say they voted against witnesses for the good of the country, which would be torn apart if Trump’s presidency were declared illegitimate. There’s nothing that lends an air of ease to a non-choice quite like one whose expediency is couched in faux nobility.
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Read MoreLike the student or reporter who simply cannot meet a deadline, the United Kingdom will today ask the European Union for a short (three-month) extension to the March 29 deadline for its leave-taking from that organization. No, that’s not the right analogy. The British are like the soon-to-be-ex hubby, who needs to spend a few more months on your couch as he ponders his commitment to the woman he betrayed you with. How well does that end? The other 27 members of the E.U. must approve such a request. And they’re not inclined to a longer goodbye without a new game plan, which the Brits don’t seem to have. As Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte said, there’s really no point to the British “whining on for months.” Yes, quite.
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Read MoreLast week was another minefield in which we found ourselves treading carefully.
We begin with the state of Virginia, which seems to be collapsing like a house of cards with revelations of blackface and allegations of sexual assault against the governor and the lieutenant governor respectively. (The state attorney general and some Republicans have also admitted to having done blackface.) I have great respect for Mark Shields and David Brooks on “PBS NewsHour,” but I think they missed the point in saying that Gov. Ralph Northam’s blackface experience is mitigated by his good work. The Buddhist principle of karma holds that what you put out in the universe returns to you. This is different from the vengeful, biblical “What you sow you reap.” It’s merely cause and effect. You do it, you own it, because it will come full circle, regardless of what else you have done.
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Read MoreJust when we needed a well-deserved break from the circus that is the Trump Administration – what with former National Security adviser Michael Flynn seeking immunity to testify about Ruskie hacking and oxymoronic House Intelligence chair Devin Nunes skulking around the White House bushes like the star of some third rate Tom Clancy thriller and President Trumpet and Ayn Rand-reading House Speaker Paulie PowerPoint trying to keep the No, No Nanettes of the Freedom Caucus in line for another pass (God help us) at repeal and replace – Brexit is back to remind us that it is just a transatlantic mirror of all of the above. ...
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Read MoreWhen Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, the satirical newspaper The Onion ran an article that said the country was now badly mucked enough to be run by a black man. (Actually, the word The Onion used rhymed with “mucked,” but then I think you knew that.)
To which we might add that the world is now badly mucked up enough – again, still – to be run by women. Tomorrow Theresa May, home secretary of the United Kingdom, will become only the second woman in that country’s history (after Baroness Margaret Thatcher) to become prime minister. Already, she has distinguished herself from Lady Thatcher by announcing that half her cabinet will be made up of women. ...
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Read MoreIt’s a story worthy of the Bard and, like all great narratives, it has many juicy plotlines to unravel.
Shall we begin with the rudderless winners or the heartsick losers, the aggrieved Continent looking for payback or the partner nations forced into a choice not of their making?
Or should we consider how the land of Shakespeare and Shelley, Charles Dickens and Winston Churchill could be so shortsighted?
Why not begin with England’s leaders – Labour and Conservative Party members alike – who showed an appalling lack of Alexandrian leadership, by which I mean leadership from the frigging front, including a definite plan B (the need for which Alexander the Great learned from his teacher Aristotle). The Brexit brigade not only didn’t have plan B. It didn’t have plan A.1. It’s like the hapless title characters in “The Producers,” who never actually anticipated the outcome they strove for. Indeed, neither the Leave nor the Remain leaders thought a leave-taking was really in the offing. Each side was just hoping to use the referendum on whether or not the United Kingdom should exit the European Union to its political advantage. And that never works. ...
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Read MoreGoodness, I don’t know how much longer I, an Elizabeth I fan, can hang with “Reign.”
This season, The CW series about Mary, Queen of Scots has introduced another nemesis apart from her ever-hating mother-in-law, Catherind de’ Medici – Elizabeth I of England.
But portraying Elizabeth as a mean girl is so limiting – particularly when the truth is more delicious than the fiction. ...
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