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Reynolds and Fisher’s mother and child reunion

Though I admired Debbie Reynolds’ and Carrie Fisher’s talents, I can’t say that I followed their careers particularly. And yet, the deaths of this mother and daughter – one day apart, the daughter’s, Fisher’s, first on Dec. 27, perhaps causing the mother’s from a broken heart– resonate with me. As the daughter of a glamorous mother who often upstaged me, I got the “Postcards From the Edge” aspect of the Debbie-Carrie relationship. But as the niece of a beloved aunt who raised me and whom I mourn so intently that I just dreamt about her the other night, I also understand the Debbie-Carrie who lived next door to each other.

The mother-daughter bond is perhaps not as fraught as the power struggle between fathers and sons but it is no doubt more intense. At its heart is the quest for control and perfection that is part of each woman’s hypercritical life. But there’s also an intimacy and, yes, a real love as mothers and daughters become neighbors, roommates and  friends. ...

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Nightmare on Elm Street – the return of Anthony’s ‘weiner’

On Halloween, the scariest night in this god-awful election season, you have to feel sorry for Hill – a woman seemingly destined to be haunted by men who just can’t keep it in their pants.

First, of course, came Bill. Then came Trumpet. And now the compulsive exhibitionist who is the estranged husband of Hillary Clinton’s right-hand woman, Huma Abedin – Anthony the Weiner. (Technically, that should be spelled wiener, but who has time for technicalities with so much at stake?) Talk about your triangulation.

We are left with two questions – the same two questions we’re always left with, because they can never be answered:

Why are men obsessed with their privates?

And why do smart women make such foolish choices when it comes to men? ...

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The Athena principle: Ivanka and Donald Trump

A patron at a restaurant I frequent finds Donald Trump’s relationship with his older daughter, Ivanka, peculiar. He seems to be closer to her than to his wife, Melania, she has said.

Jill Filipovic – a lawyer and journalist who’s the author of the forthcoming “The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness,” offers an explanation: A man wants a nurturer in a wife, who will care for his needs, and an independent-minded, strong woman in a daughter, who, after all, reflects him. I myself saw this with my own father and I’ve seen this with every man I’ve known who had daughters. Whether or not he was a feminist, married or divorced, gay or straight, he always wanted his daughter or daughters to succeed and thus women to have opportunities and pay equal to that of men. ...

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Mother of myself

You knew it had to hit a nerve, didn’t you? The title alone – “Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not To Have Kids,” edited by Meghan Daum (Picador, $26, 282 pages) – is bound to be a scab that many will have to pick. 

Apparently, childlessness is a growing trend, with many of those feeling they are childless by circumstance rather than by choice. For women in particular, it’s a case of going entirely against the grain. Despite some horrific stories of child abuse and murder by mothers – and examples in the animal kingdom that give lie to the idea of “maternal instinct” – we as members of the human race expect women to become mothers. (Men, always granted more freedom, are given a pass on fatherhood, but then their role in reproduction is over quickly. Indeed any gynecologist will tell you we could continue the human race without men at all. Figures that men would invent the technology that has made them obsolete. Talk about shooting yourself in, well, not the foot.)

For myself, I can only say that it was a no-brainer. I wanted to be free to be a writer, and I realized early on that I would never be the writer I wanted to be if I had  children (or, for that matter, a husband). ...

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Men’s tennis at a crossroads?

Had an interesting conversation with a saleswoman the other day regarding watches. I remarked that it’s intriguing that so many watch manufacturers have tennis players for pitch men – and women. You don’t see as many NFL players representing watches.

That might seem counterintuitive since tennis isn’t played against a clock – although it certainly records the time of each match, whereas football is played in four 15-minute intervals, albeit with lots of timeouts and a halftime. Shouldn’t Peyton Manning be the spokesman for Piaget?

But a watch – a gift of time – is a classy thing, she said. Tennis players are classy, she added. By implication, football players are not.

It’s always dangerous to generalize, of course, but there is some truth in what she said, as I myself have pointed out in this blog. Tennis has prescribed rules for deportment and an intimate, relatively quieter setting – though it can get pretty loud – that underscores infractions. When Novak Djokovic sarcastically applauded the crowd as it applauded his double-fault in a semifinal against Kei Nishikori at the Barclay’s ATP World Tour Finals in London Nov. 15, he was quick to blame himself for letting the crowd get to him and losing his concentration.

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The NFL, Colin Kaepernick and the R-word

Well, thank God Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos beat Colin Kaepernick and the San Francisco 49ers on “Sunday Night Football,” with Manning breaking Brett Favre’s record for most touchdowns thrown (508). All’s right with the universe – the universe that sees Colin Kaepernick as such a threat, that is.

All last week we had to hear how Manning, legend, is an elite pocket passer who knows how to read the field when he throws to receivers while Kaepernick, overrated upstart, is a hybrid QB – part running back, part major league pitcher – who may be excitingly unpredictable and talented enough but no Manning.

That may very well be the case, but what grates is that the argument seems to extend beyond football to the realm of the personal where race and sexuality intersect.

Let’s stay with football for a moment, shall we? In three seasons thus far, Kaepernick has put up numbers comparable to the first three seasons of the Niners’ last great quarterback, Steve Young, who was also a running QB. Indeed, Kap was about the only one who kept his injury-riddled team on the field at all in the abysmal 43-17 loss to the Broncos. So he’s the real deal.

But he’s not the real deal in a traditional way. He’s a QB who’s a brilliant runner in a sport where “running quarterback” is code for “black” (Michael Vick, Russell Wilson, Robert Griffin III, Cam Newton) and “elite pocket passer” is code for “white” (both Mannings, Peyton and Eli, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, etc.) ...

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