When he won the French Open last June – capping a long-held dream and holding all four Slams, the first man to do so in 47 years – the world was Novak Djokovic’s oyster.
That now seems like a long time ago. He won only one title, the Rogers Cup, during the second half of 2016 and lost his No. 1 ranking to Andy Murray. (Because he had won so many tournaments in 2015 and had to defend all those points under the ranking system, he actually lost points, nothing failing in tennis quite like success.)
At the Australian Open, he lost in the third round in a tournament that was won by the returning Roger Federer, who defeated Rafael Nadal. ...
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Read MoreDay three of President Donald J. Trump’s seven-nation immigrant ban, and things are getting curiouser and curiouser.
Trump supporters say he’s just following former President Barack Obama’s lead, then claim Obama did nothing to prevent terrorism. Well, which is it? It can’t be both.
Then The New York Times reports that since nature abhors a vacuum, the Chinese – hardly the paragon of democracy – are ready to step in and lead the free world in free trade, which is looking mighty good to the Europeans. So much for making America great again. ...
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Read MoreThe current political climate has broadened the mission of this blog and its title, The Games Men Play, deepening its commitment to culture and sex (gender), two of its themes. But in the meantime, I realize I have been neglecting sports. Time to get back in the saddle.
On Saturday, Jan. 28, Arrogate, the super gray colt, provided us with some much needed distraction by winning the world’s richest horse race, the $12 million Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream Park, defeating a retiring California Chrome. Previously, Arrogate beat Chrome in the Breeders’ Cup Classic while setting the fastest pace ever at the Travers Stakes against Exaggerator and Creator. Clearly, the 4-year-old, trained by Bob Baffert of American Pharoah fame, is the horse to beat. ...
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Read More“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” Robert Frost writes in “Mending Wall” – one of two Frost poems, the other being “The Tuft of Flowers,” that addresses the nature of human relationships. “That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, and spills the upper boulders in the sun; and makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”
The poem ends with the neighbor telling the poet famously, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Well, they certainly make resentful ones. This has been a week of walls, literal and metaphoric, courtesy of President Donald J. Trump. There is the actual, proposed wall between Mexico and the United States whose cost would be covered by a tariff on Mexican imports like avocados. (Oh, no, whither Cinco de Mayo?) To say that Mexico is not taking this well is the understatement of 10 lifetimes. El Presidente Enrique Peña Nieto – not exactly the most popular man south of the border – nonetheless got a boost at home after he cancelled his meeting with Trump, though the two have since spoken by phone. ...
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Read MoreMary Tyler Moore – who died Wednesday of cardiopulmonary arrest after pneumonia at age 80 – was the Jackie of TV. And like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, she road the wave of feminism from chic wife and mother to career woman.
If Laura Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” was White House Jackie in Capri pants, Mary Richards on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” was Jackie O, the Doubleday and Viking editor, a sweater draped nattily over her shoulder. But Mary was not only a career woman, she was a certain kind of working woman, one who, unlike Jackie, had to go home and cook and face being alone. ...
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Read MoreI was a selfish child. Make that a self-centered child marked by a self-possession that I wore as a kind of armor against difficult parents and, later, other difficult authority figures. When I was 13, I had a teacher who told us students that selfishness was the root of all evil, the vice from which all others emanate. (She herself was a horror who should’ve practiced what she preached.)
But there is a fine line, I understood, between selfishness and self-possession in service of self-preservation. Recently, one of the columnists I edit wrote a piece in which he observed that there’s a reason that airlines ask you to put on your own oxygen mask first in case of an emergency: You cannot help others if you yourself are in harm’s way.
Which brings us to the new era – actually the cyclical era – of America First. ...
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Read MoreInitially, President Donald J. Trump was confused. Why the Women’s March?, he tweeted. Didn’t we just have an election? (Yes, Mr. President. And here’s the rebuttal. A representative democracy is not a one-and-done deal but more of an ongoing conversation.)
Later, Trump – or his handlers – tweeted that this was democracy at work blah, blah, blah. But he wasn’t alone in wondering: What gives? Why march, particularly in the United States, where women enjoy such a high standard of living?
Some women, presumably Trump supporters, were mystified, too. ...
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