The myth of the strongman

March 4, 2018

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. The Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte. Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Russia’s Vladimir Putin. China’s Xi Jinping. And, of course, our own Donald J. Trump.

The world is in the grips of the strongman – tough, reactionary and taking no prisoners. Part of this is a response to the terrible, fascinating transition in which we find ourselves – a backlash to the global, multicultural, digital age to which so-called “feminine” energies (communications skills, sensitivity, a sense of service) are better suited. Part of this is the envy, rage and resentment, particularly in this country, of white, blue-collar males, who lacked the courage, intelligence, industry and imagination to confront their greedy employers and, failing that, reinvent themselves when manufacturing jobs began to dry up in the 1970s. ...

The emotional minefield of #MeToo

February 4, 2018

The #MeToo movement continues to explode, and we continue to tread gingerly through its landmine-riddled landscape.

The New York Times skewers Alec Baldwin for satirizing P-Grabber in Chief Donald J. Trump while defending filmmakers Woody Allen and James Toback, both accused of sexual abuses. Actress/author Rose McGowan – who’s been fiercely outspoken in her accusations of film producer Harvey Weinstein raping her – cuts off interviewer Christiane Amanpour before she can read a Weinstein response to McGowan’s new book, “Brave.” Museums wonder what their response should be to photographer Chuck Close, who has apologized for sexual harassment.

And yet, a woman friend of mine, a Hillary Clinton supporter whom I consider to be strong on women’s issues, wonders if we’ve gone too far ...

The State of the Union – the Trumps’ and ours

February 4, 2018

President Donald J. Trumpet went all “Kumbaya” in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, proclaiming the pablum platitude that every president proclaims – that the state of the union is strong, because the American people are strong and together they’ll continue to be strong, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Look, it’s too little, too late. The mean-spirited, divisive damage is already done, with more always just an unscripted tweet away. And in case you didn’t get that message ...

A timely ‘Post’ about an underestimated woman

January 23, 2018

We get, it is often said, the art we deserve – that is, the art we need, the art that the times demand.

That certainly could be said of the new Steven Spielberg thriller, “The Post.” The story of a First Amendment showdown between a rising newspaper, The Washington Post, and the Nixon White House, “The Post” works on several different planes – politically, professionally and personally, as Edie Demas, executive director of the Jacob Burns Film Center, noted at the screening I attended. As such the movie speaks to an era in which “fake news” and #MeToo have become buzzwords. ...

Choosing life – and choice

January 21, 2018

With the anti-abortion rally this past Friday and Women’s March Saturday, I thought it was time I address a subject that I have avoided writing about for most of my life – choice.

I have always been pro-life, though not in the way the pro-life movement might think. I’m not only personally anti-abortion but I’m also against the death penalty. Heck, I don’t even like to kill bugs. I feel bad when buildings are taken down, and don’t even get me started on historic buildings. ...

The pit and the pendulum of sexual harassment

January 14, 2018

Every revolution has a counterrevolution. We push a pendulum away from us and it comes back to us with equal force. That’s just physics.

And, as it turns out, politics. A pair of Catherines – actress Deneuve and writer Millet – have joined with 100 Frenchwomen to sign a letter in Le Monde stating that #MeToo has gone too far. They want men to be treated fairly. They don’t want women to appear as wimps. And, most of all, they don’t want sexual freedom curtailed. The “freedom to bother” – as in a man bothering a woman – is “indispensable to sexual freedom.” ...

The setting of a sun god

January 2, 2018

There were no less than three sexual harassment stories in Tuesday’s New York Times.

A story headlined “300 Strong: Hollywood Women Unite to Fight Harassment” detailed the agenda of the new Time’s Up initiative, which includes a legal defense fund, already backed by $13 million in donations, to protect underprivileged women “from sexual misconduct and the fallout from reporting it.” The initiative is also calling for women to turn the Golden Globes’ red carpet Sunday into a bully pulpit as they don basic black to talk about the sexual harassment issue instead of what they’re wearing. ...