Last year, I attended OutWrite, the annual LGBT book festival at The DC Center in Washington D.C., with the second (and original) chapter of my then soon-to-be published novel, “The Penalty for Holding.”
This year, I went back with the first chapter of the now published book (Less Than Three Press) and once again enjoyed myself immensely.
Part of the fun...
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Often in life you do something without realizing until later what it meant. When I wrote “The Penalty for Holding” (May 10, Less Than Three Press) – the second novel in my series “The Games Men Play” – I had several goals in mind. Sexy male-male romance? Check. A story that continued the series’ themes of power, dominance and rivalry? Check. A novel about leadership, the workplace and how violence in the workplace spills into everyday life? Check, check and check.
What I hadn’t counted on – what I hadn’t foreseen – was the return of isolationism that ushered in Brexit and Trump and that provides the context for the novel’s theme of belonging. And belonging is one of the great themes of our time. Who are we and where do we belong? For the answer to the first will determine the second. Or at least it should. ...
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White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has apologized for saying that Adolf Hitler didn’t gas his own people and, presumably, for adding that Hitler did bring them into the “Holocaust centers” – you know, the death camps with those nifty gift shops.
Spicer, of course, was awkwardly trying to set up one of the standard ploys of his boss, President Donald J. Trump, which is to throw someone under the bus by comparing that person to someone else who represents abject evil. Apparently, Trumpet has decided that Vladdie Rootin’ Tootin’ Putin’s sell-by date has arrived and thus needs to blame Russia for backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has been roundly condemned for using chemical weapons on his people. ...
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The painting shows a young black man in a coffin, his face a blur of color in the manner of Abstract Expressionist art – and violent death.
The departed, then, is not just someone who has succumbed to the ills that the flesh is heir to. Emmett Till was just 14 years old when he was lynched by two white men for flirting with the wife of one of them. “Open Casket, “ on view at the Whitney Biennial, is Dana Schutz’s 2016 painting of a mutilated Till in the open casket his mother, Mamie Till Bradley, insisted on. The work has drawn protests and condemnation from black artists and writers, who question the right of a white woman to appropriate a searing moment in black history. ...
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God created the world in seven days, the Bible tells us.
It took President Donald Trump only 14 to destroy it.
“Destroy” may be too strong a word. “Disturb,” “disrupt” are better choices. In one of the greatest games men play, politics, he is the lord of misrule, tweeting and executive-ordering us into a new world that may or may not be brave; terrifying the already traumatized “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and insulting world leaders – with the exception of boy crush Vladimir “Rootin’ Tootin’” Putin – in equal stead.
Australians, refugees, refugees in Australia – is there anyone who has not been blasted by Trumpet? ...
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What should be the response of the loyal opposition to President-elect Donald Trump?
In the wake of the election shocker, we’ve seen people veer between extremes – Colin Kaepenick on the one hand, the cast of “Hamilton” on the other – when the Buddhist middle way might prove more prudent.
Kaepenick didn’t bother to vote, because neither major candidate was to his liking. This was a problem for many people. But as the Lotto saying goes, “You gotta be in it to win it.” And a vote for no one is still a vote for someone – in the most passive of ways.
Kaepernick’s non-vote smacked of the illogical and the racist.
"I think it would be hypocritical of me to vote," Kaepernick said. "I'd said from the beginning I was against oppression, I was against a system of oppression. I'm not going to show support for that system. And, to me, the oppressor isn't going to allow you to vote your way out of your oppression."
Was the system oppressive, Colin, when it enacted the Civil Rights Act? How about when Barack Obama – who, like you, is biracial – became president? ...
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I’m the same age as Gwen Ifill – the woman who made TV history with Judy Woodruff on “The PBS NewsHour” as the first female co-anchors of a network news broadcast and who died of endometrial cancer Monday in Washington D.C. – so I’m old enough to remember earlier iterations, “The MacNeil/Lehrer Report” and “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.” Both were anchored by two white men. And though Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer were fine journalists in the Walter Cronkite tradition, theirs were the faces I had seen since childhood.
People will tell you that affirmative action is needless and that you should only look for role models within your immediate circle, but I have to tell you that seeing two women of my vintage, including one of color, on my TV each evening, doing excellent journalism, was a comfort and a source of pride to me, a fellow journalist. I felt I could be enlightened by them without their well-groomed presences taking pride of place. It was their well-groomed minds that inspired. ...
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