I was working on a story about Emily Katz Anhalt’s new book, “Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths” (Yale University Press), when I decided to take a break with The New York Times online. The headline hit me in the gut:
“At Least 58 Dead and 500 Hurt in Las Vegas as Gunman Rains Bullets on Concert.”
The suspect, Stephen Craig Paddock, 64 – and, according to Las Vegas Police, also dead by his own hand – was described as a quiet, unassuming man with no criminal history by his understandably defensive brother. Of course, he was. The president called for peace and unity. Of course, he did. ...
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Read MoreIs President Donald J. Trump racist?
It’s a question that has threaded his virulent response to the NFL players kneeling before the National Anthem to protest racism and his passive-aggressive approach to Puerto Rico’s suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.
I don’t think Trump is a racist. Indeed, I don’t like to think of any American president as one. But I do think that he is a joyless, mirthless person who takes no pleasure in other people and strikes a misanthropic tone. ...
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Read MoreNancy Pelosi, the House of Representatives Minority Leader and sometime new BFF (along with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer) of President Donald J. Trump told “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd Sunday that she would like to see the president as more of a unifier.
Well, Nancy, you have gotten your wish. Seems like the NFL is united – against the president.
Of course, that’s not the way El Presidente saw it. Here’s what he tweeted after players took a knee during the National Anthem in protest ...
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Read MoreScooch over, Harvey and join Sandy, Katrina, Andrew and (here insert your personal past hurricane nemesis) on the long couch.
As the Repubs learned yesterday, there’s no political storm quite like Hurricane Donald. (Here we cue a fabulously appropriate folk song that figures in my novel “Water Music” – “The Wind and Rain” – beautifully realized by the band Crooked Still.)
He blew through Washington D.C., cutting a three-month deal to raise the debt ceiling with Dems Nancy Pelosi and “Chuck Chop” Schumer, the Minority Leaders of their respective Congressional Houses, leaving the repudiated Repubs to wonder in the manner of hurricane survivors, “What the hell just happened?” ...
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Read MoreI had hoped to be writing more about tennis with the US Open underway. I had hoped to be resting from my labors on Labor Day.
But as Eleanor Roosevelt said of World War II, “This is no ordinary time.” With challenges and crisis on the home front and abroad, the time demands we go within to reach out, that we roll up our sleeves intellectually, physically and spiritually and use pleasure as it was always meant to be used – as a dessert rather than a meal.
Perhaps, however, it is still possible for me to write about tennis while also writing about character. Both are subjects of a new book by James Blake...
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Read MoreDoes politics have a place in tragedy?
That depends on the tragedy. Politics was integral to Charlottesville. It has no place in Hurricane Harvey, still devastating southern Texas, particularly Houston, our nation’s fourth largest city. What’s needed there are prayers, money and assistance. There will be time for squabbles about climate change and government performance later.
What’s not needed is a presidential visit as the storm still rages. But then, you sense that President Donald J. Trump hates to be upstaged, even by Mother Nature. So he has to interject himself into the storm when he isn’t slipping something under the radar.
Like a presidential pardon. ...
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Read MoreI must confess to a certain smugness as the debate regarding the removal of Confederate statuary has taken on an aesthetic perspective. For years, I have endured the tacit, passive-aggressive notion from some newspaper colleagues and even bosses that my job as a cultural writer was not as important as those of the political and municipal writers and even the sports reporters. (Indeed, I lost that job partly because it was considered of lesser significance.)
But the arts – somewhat like religion and the family – are the refuge of the desperate and the inconsolable. Unfortunately for the arts, they are a refuge that their seekers often do not fully understand.
Some of my colleagues in my present job as an editor wonder about the artistic value that may be lost in the removal of the Confederate statues. No less an art lover than President Donald J. Trump bemoaned “the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks.”
But are these works beautiful and, more to the point, are they art? ...
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