Alex and Athena take Manhattan

July 20, 2016

In WAG’s June “Celebrating the Globe” issue, I wrote about my passion – OK, some would say my obsession – with all things ancient Greek, particularly Alexander the Great, the Greco-Macedonian king whose conquest of the Persian Empire in 331 B.C. when he was in his mid-20s would lead to the dissemination of Greek culture in the East, underscoring a cultural cross-pollination and political tension that are still with us today.

Recently, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan explored these themes in its blockbuster exhibit “Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World,” which I also wrote about in our June issue and which featured a kind of greatest hits of the Hellenistic (post-classical Greek) world. ...

Kasich goes his own way

July 18, 2016

Once upon a time, Gov. Krispy Kreme was my CPB – Chief Pretend Boyfriend. I imagined myself under the boardwalk down by the sea-ee-eeee yeah, on a blanket with my baby, swooning in passion as the waves crashed upon our bodies to the beat of The Boss blaring from my Hello Kitty boom box. We were like Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster in “From Here to Eternity” – if Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster were two beached whales, that is.

But what with Bridgegate and the capitulation to The Donald, it’s become harder to sustain the fantasy of being with my tubby little Luv Guv. So I banished Gov. Krispy Kreme from my heart, and instead promoted my WPB (Weekend Pretend Boyfriend), Rafael Nadal, to CPB status. ...

The hair up there: Trump and the age of transition

July 17, 2016

We live in wondrous, terrifying, complex, fascinating times. In the United States, we are about to embark on two political conventions – the Republican July 18-21 in Cleveland and the Democratic July 25-29 in Philadelphia – that offer productive change and stasis, the future and the past, though not in the ways you might imagine.

The motif of the presidential campaign is that Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, represents the same old-same old inside Washington, while Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, is the fresh, brash outlier. But in fact, we’ve been looking in a mirror, and it’s the opposite. Clinton and the Dems, with their inclusive approach to race, gender and ethnicity, signal the future, and Trump – with his appeal to angry, white, working-class men – the past. ...

Tebow won’t be under center for The Donald

July 15, 2016

The deathless Deflategate is back as the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has decided not to rehear Tom Brady’s case, having already ruled against him.

Which means Tommy’ll have to stalk Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the rest of the Supremes or face the music of the four-game suspension for his alleged role in deflating footballs in the 2015 AFC Championship. And don’t think he won’t take this all the way to the Supreme Court. Guy’s got an ego the size of Texas.

In other Brady buzz, he won’t be a speaker at the Republican Convention for his good – and equally modest – friend Donald Trump. The lineup for the convention – which begins Monday in Cleveland – is hardly stellar, but one name stood out, Tim Tebow’s. ...

May’s day: A woman takes the U.K. helm

July 14, 2016

When Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, the satirical newspaper The Onion ran an article that said the country was now badly mucked enough to be run by a black man. (Actually, the word The Onion used rhymed with “mucked,” but then I think you knew that.)

To which we might add that the world is now badly mucked up enough – again, still – to be run by women. Tomorrow Theresa May, home secretary of the United Kingdom, will become only the second woman in that country’s history (after Baroness Margaret Thatcher) to become prime minister. Already, she has distinguished herself from Lady Thatcher by announcing that half her cabinet will be made up of women. ...

Thoughts on Dallas

July 11, 2016

The death of five police officers in Dallas – coming after the shootings in Baton Rouge and Minnesota – overwhelms. How to make sense of the incomprehensible? How to know what to do?

“That was horrible,” people said definitively over and over again in its wake. “People are tired of being lied to," my cousin told me by way of explanation.

But I don’t think this has anything to do with people’s disgust at being lied to unless they are fed up with the lies they tell themselves. ...

Colin Kaepernick and ‘lynching’ in modern America

July 8, 2016

The world is like a restaurant with a major conflict in the front of the house and a fire in the kitchen.

In the front of the house is Brexit – the tip of whose Titanic-smashing iceberg we’ve just experienced. In the kitchen, we have terrorism in Istanbul and Bangladesh and the shootings in Baton Rouge and Minnesota.

Brexit will have sweeping, long-term effects – not the least of which will be the continued rise of women to the heights of political power, probably the only good effect.

But the more immediate issue is the continued violence in this world. ...