Day three of President Donald J. Trump’s seven-nation immigrant ban, and things are getting curiouser and curiouser.
Trump supporters say he’s just following former President Barack Obama’s lead, then claim Obama did nothing to prevent terrorism. Well, which is it? It can’t be both.
Then The New York Times reports that since nature abhors a vacuum, the Chinese – hardly the paragon of democracy – are ready to step in and lead the free world in free trade, which is looking mighty good to the Europeans. So much for making America great again. ...
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Read More“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” Robert Frost writes in “Mending Wall” – one of two Frost poems, the other being “The Tuft of Flowers,” that addresses the nature of human relationships. “That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, and spills the upper boulders in the sun; and makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”
The poem ends with the neighbor telling the poet famously, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Well, they certainly make resentful ones. This has been a week of walls, literal and metaphoric, courtesy of President Donald J. Trump. There is the actual, proposed wall between Mexico and the United States whose cost would be covered by a tariff on Mexican imports like avocados. (Oh, no, whither Cinco de Mayo?) To say that Mexico is not taking this well is the understatement of 10 lifetimes. El Presidente Enrique Peña Nieto – not exactly the most popular man south of the border – nonetheless got a boost at home after he cancelled his meeting with Trump, though the two have since spoken by phone. ...
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Read MoreI was a selfish child. Make that a self-centered child marked by a self-possession that I wore as a kind of armor against difficult parents and, later, other difficult authority figures. When I was 13, I had a teacher who told us students that selfishness was the root of all evil, the vice from which all others emanate. (She herself was a horror who should’ve practiced what she preached.)
But there is a fine line, I understood, between selfishness and self-possession in service of self-preservation. Recently, one of the columnists I edit wrote a piece in which he observed that there’s a reason that airlines ask you to put on your own oxygen mask first in case of an emergency: You cannot help others if you yourself are in harm’s way.
Which brings us to the new era – actually the cyclical era – of America First. ...
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Read MoreInitially, President Donald J. Trump was confused. Why the Women’s March?, he tweeted. Didn’t we just have an election? (Yes, Mr. President. And here’s the rebuttal. A representative democracy is not a one-and-done deal but more of an ongoing conversation.)
Later, Trump – or his handlers – tweeted that this was democracy at work blah, blah, blah. But he wasn’t alone in wondering: What gives? Why march, particularly in the United States, where women enjoy such a high standard of living?
Some women, presumably Trump supporters, were mystified, too. ...
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Read MoreIn some ways, The New York Times is the same old Times, getting its knickers all wet at the prospect of Roger Federer’s return from a back injury and, no doubt, a possible Stuart Restoration, or something. The Times has already carried two Feddy articles, one announcing his return and the other exploring how he’s looking to old rival Rafael Nadal for inspiration in his comeback. Given that Rafa hasn’t been the same player since his 2013 return and that his rivalry with Novak Djokovic – or, for that matter, Nole’s rivalry with Fed – has been longer and more exciting, you have to feel that the Old Grey Lady and Feddy Bear are both grasping at straws.
These are not the best of times for The Times. The Paper of Record “backed the wrong horse” – to switch our sports metaphors – in the election, as many of us did.
Since then, its coverage has been at times overwrought, as if it were determined to be a journalistic Cassandra, preaching and prophesying when many don’t care. ...
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Read MoreYears ago, I had a dream job with Gannett Inc. as senior cultural writer. One of my beats was to cover the big arts stories of the day and so it was that I found myself on one occasion interviewing Richard Cragun the American-born star of the Stuttgart Ballet and one of the finest male dancers of the 20th century.
In those days, Gannett recycled our stories in its many publications, and my Cragun piece found its way into one of the tabloids overseen by a favorite editor who was fond of the Daily News and New York Post. It was with some sheepishness then that I handed the publicist a copy of the publication with the words “Ballet Hunk” in the headlines. I needn’t have worried. He was thrilled.
I covered most of the great “ballet hunks” of the 20th and early-21st centuries ...
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Read MoreThe 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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