The latest salvo in the culture war that is surely to deepen under President Donald Trump was fired by Meryl Streep in a graceful and grace-filled speech at the Golden Globes.
I’m not a fan of people using award shows as a bully pulpit, coming of age as I did in the 1970s when such Oscar speeches (think Vanessa Redgrave and an absent Marlon Brando) were a kind of cliché. I’m not a fan of gesture politics like refusing to stand for the National Anthem. I’m not even a fan of Meryl Streep, a sometimes mannered actress (“Sophie’s Choice,” “The Hours”) who’s nevertheless capable of great work (“Marvin’s Room,” “The Manchurian Candidate”).
But Streep – a hard-working craftswoman who has paid her dues – offered a master class in a performer giving a political speech by turning the concept of the politician as performer inside out. ...
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Read MoreWell, we’ve rung out the old and rung in the new, and most of the people I’ve spoken with said it should only have happened sooner. (Or as one clever poster put it, “2016 – Y U no gone?”)
For him and others personally, professionally and publicly, 2016 was an “annus horribilis,” to borrow Queen Elizabeth II’s description of 1992 (the Charles-Diana separation, the Windsor Castle fire, don’t ask).
Certainly, 2016 would give many a year a run for their infamous money. The Zika virus, the continuing Syrian and refugee crises, terrorism, a rash of deaths among the greats of sports (Muhammad Ali) and entertainment (Prince) punctuated by the one-two punch of that sublime mother-daughter act, Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher ...
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Read MoreNetflix’s “The Crown” – the Brits’ most addictive-as-potato-chips offering since “Downton Abbey” – tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II (Claire Foy) from her days as a happy wife of a dashing naval lieutenant on the isle of Malta through her ascendance to the British throne on the death of her father, George VI.
Like many good narratives, its absorbing juiciness derives from familial tensions – between husbands and wives, mothers and daughters and, especially, siblings. But its real subject is one that plagues the contemporary world and whose misunderstanding, I fear, will cost the world dearly as it veers toward demagoguery – the nature of leadership. ...
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Read MoreI have always loved to work. Schoolwork, housework, work-work: I’ve loved it all, perhaps because I’m an accomplishment junkie, and few things measure achievement better than work. You can take pride in your children – as the Earl of Grantham says at the end of “Downton Abbey” when – spoiler alert – Lady Edith finally gets hitched. But then he wonders why he feels a sense of achievement in her marriage. Precisely. A relationship is a state of being, not doing. You can mother someone. But more likely, you say, I am a mother to him.
Work, which is all about doing, is under siege right now in America. It is no doubt the primary reason Donald Trump is the president-elect, just confirmed by the Electoral College. Overworked, underpaid – undervalued – with increasingly fewer perks and increasingly expensive benefits, the American worker has said, “Enough,” we are told. ...
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Read MoreIf you’re a lover of storytelling – as any writer is – the Russian hacking scandal is a great story.
And like any great story, it’s filled with conflict, complexity, intrigue and ambiguity. Just about the only thing everyone agrees on – sort of – is that the Democrats were hacked by the Russians. This is not news. We heard about it all during the campaign, when Donald Trump alternately debunked or doubted it.
What is new is that the CIA has concluded that the Russians did this deliberately to aid Trump. Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham have vowed to investigate, because if there’s one thing Congress hates – even more than cooperating with President Barack Obama, who has called for a full investigation – is Ruskies, especially Ruskies led by Vladimir “Rootin’ Tootin’” Putin. ...
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Read MoreThe devil, they say, is in the details. And so it proved recently as I found myself serving and volleying furiously in a conversation with my Republican uncle about Barack Obama and Donald Trump. (If this had been a tennis match, it would’ve been John McEnroe and Ilie Nastase circa 1979, Madison Square Garden – don’t ask.)
Normally, I am the soul of forbearance with said uncle, who is elderly and served in the Korean Conflict – as he often reminds me. And I have a high tolerance for personal insults, being a confident person and having spent more than 35 years in a newsroom. But when someone I love or admire is attacked, my back is up. Uncle disparaged the current president, and we were off, shouting and talking over each other like a particularly maniacal Eleanor Clift and Pat Buchanan on the late, lamented “The McLaughlin Group.” (The idiosyncratic political round table was even funnier than its “Saturday Night Live” sendup.)
Late into the dustup with Uncle, he delivered what he no doubt thought was the coup de grace: The outfit I wore to the family’s Thanksgiving gathering made me look like a bag lady. ...
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Read More"Behind every great man is a great woman”: It’s an adage that’s been brought home to in our postfeminist age. Witness the apotheosis of Michelle Obama on the cover of the current Vogue and the new “Jackie,” with Natalie Portman transcendent as the tragic former first lady.
Indeed, her Jacqueline B. Kennedy and Jackie herself are better than director Pablo Larrain’s “Jackie.” For one thing, the movie’s music, no doubt intended to strike a discordant note, is merely jarring. It underscores other false notes. Why is the boy who plays John F. Kennedy Jr. a blond? And why does Peter Sarsgaard’s Robert F. Kennedy fail to speak with his distinctive broad Boston cadence, particularly when Portman’s Jackie speaks in her signature breathy New Yorkese? And why do we see her not once but twice in a red gown when she mainly favored white and pastel formal wear?
Perhaps this is quibbling. What “Jackie” and Portman’s Jackie do very well is locate her grief and then show us how she cycles through it, reinventing her husband, his presidency – and, thus, herself – in what remains in some ways a pyrrhic victory. ...
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