When I was younger, I called Vietnam – the conflict of my youth and my generation – “the war that never ends.”
Now Iraq is threatening to become that war as we are drawn back into its political and humanitarian crises. It was, of course, the wrong war, which President Barack Obama pointed out when he was a senator, the war for al-Qaeda being the province of Afghanistan. But we went anyway, little understanding the culture (echoes of Vietnam) or the lesson of Alexander the Great – that to conquer you must immerse yourself in a place and be prepared to risk being seduced, being conquered, by the place itself.
Alexander – the Greco-Macedonian conqueror of the Persian Empire – never left Iraq, dying in Babylon a month short of his 33rd birthday. We left, but in leaving, stayed.
Iraq figures into one of the four story arcs that make up my new novel, “Water Music,” about the tennis prodigy Alí Iskandar – a favorite character of my readers...
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Read MoreLike a star who’s found new life in the age of the Internet, Lassie’s on the comeback trail as pitchdog and charity ambassador. And I’m among the millions who are thrilled.
As with many a boomer, I grew up with the TV series (1954-73), still in syndication, and the various movies that found their way to the tube. And, not surprisingly, I had a Lassie and later on Lassie 2.0, whom we called Sassy. (Yes, I know, lame, but I loved that dog, who was a rescue, and all the animals we had and ah!, don’t get me started.)
I also had the pleasure of interviewing Bob Weatherwax – son of dog trainer Rudd Weatherwax – whose pooch, Pal, played “Lassie” in the 1943 film “Lassie Come Home.” Bob told me fascinating stuff about how trainers use physical commands to elicit seemingly emotional responses from canine actors. He also confirmed what is one of the most intriguing aspects of Lassie...
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Read MoreAt first glance, Colin Kaepernick and Michael Brown would seem to be as far apart as San Francisco and Ferguson, Mo. But in a week in which Brown became yet another unarmed young black man killed by a police officer, Kaepernick was telling Bleacher Report why he thinks he’s criticized as the 49ers quarterback:
"Stereotypes, prejudice," Kaepernick told Bleacher Report when asked about the criticism. “Whatever you want to call it. I think between the tattoos, the way I dress, the way I talk. People don't think it should go together with a franchise quarterback or someone that's leading the team or representing the organization. At the end of the day, you have to look at, 'Are they knowledgeable? Are they doing their job?' Not what their appearance is."
Appearances were on the mind of Sen. Rand Paul, who wrote a piece for Time magazine in which he talked about the fact that as a white kid mouthing off, he wouldn’t have expected to be shot.
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Read MoreAn Aug. 13th article in The New York Times on the death of actor-comedian Robin Williams carried this striking statistic:
“More than 70 percent of all suicides in the United States are white men, most of them in their middle years, and many take their lives in the wake of some loss, whether professional, personal or physical.”
Notice the demographic. It’s the group that has held power in American society, a power that’s been eroding as an increasingly multicultural coalition – women, blacks, Latinos, Asians – takes form. While often independent, these minorities certainly came together to elect Barack Obama president and defeat the predominantly white male Tea Party – twice.
The white American male, then, is going the way of the dinosaur.
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Read MoreThe U.S. national championships have been a disappointing meet for fans of Phelpte, the Michael Phelps-Ryan Lochte rivalry. (Also known as Phlochte, which sounds better.)
Anyway, Phelpte, Phlochte, it boiled down to the same thing: Phelps finished second in the 100 butterfly, perhaps his signature event; sixth in the 100 back and seventh in the 100 free. Lochte was second in the 100 free and third in the 200 back.
The only time the old rivalry kicked in was in the 200 IM, in which Lochte bested Phelps, with both posting among the fastest times in the world this year. They didn’t race next to each other, however, in the center of the pool, eyeballing each other as they used to, matching stroke for stroke, breath for breath. Instead they were in outside lanes, where mere mortals dwell.
"I guess we can say this is kind of our off-year," Lochte said of himself and Phelps. "Well, I can say that." (Love Ryan, and the way he can defer to Michael in friendship while still holding his own.)
Bottom line...
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Read MoreToday brought the shocking news of Oscar-winning actor and comedian Robin Williams’ death at 63 from asphyxia in an apparent suicide.
Suicide always begs the question, Why? Why would someone who had so much end it all? It’s the theme of a very good, underrated early Keanu Reeves movie, “Permanent Record,” about a golden student who takes his own life and the friends who are left to wonder, Well if that can happen to someone so together, what about the rest of us?
Except that suicides don’t think of themselves as being very together people. As I said in my novel “Water Music,” many suicides don’t want to die. They want not to live, which is a very different thing...
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Read MoreFollowing a train of thought, I thought I’d expand on the previous post concerning the new movie “Hercules.”
I suppose there is a segment of society that won’t see it – or admit to seeing it. But to me pop culture is culture, too, and thus a starting point for intellectual discussion. Indeed, the film sent me scurrying to my bookshelves for a childhood favorite, Philip E. Slater’s psychoanalytic “The Glory of Hera” (Beacon Press), a book so old that it cost $3.95. (Actually, it’s not that old. It was published in 1968.)
Slater paints a portrait of a complex character – a man who is at once gay and straight, masculine and feminine, a lover of family and its destroyer, mother-identified and mother-loathing, victim and victimizer, monster and martyr, all-too-human being and transcendent god. Hercules – Heracles in Greek – is all this, because his myth changed as Greece evolved. He is a metaphor then for the birth of a nation. And more...
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