#MeToo: My story (ies) of sexual harassment

October 19, 2017

I once had a movie producer kiss me on the neck.

How’s that for an opening sentence? Pretty good, huh? Got your attention, right?

It was at the end of an interview when, shaking my hand goodbye, he suddenly lurched forward and kissed me on the neck. (It may have been more of a bite than a kiss, but I don’t actually remember and don’t want to overstate what was a pretty bizarre sendoff.)

Afterward, the embarrassed publicist apologized, concerned that I would be writing about this. But I was a young journalist and had, as a woman, been raised to soldier on. So I said, wrote and did nothing about this. And I hadn’t thought about it until Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual harassment of, well, just about every woman on the planet opened the floodgates of ew-ness. ...

Trump and the soundtrack of our lives

May 22, 2017

What can you say about the past week in Washington D.C. except that God is the best screenwriter. I mean, who else could come up with such a beta-ameloid and tau tangle of plot twists and turns replete with a depth of characters – which is not the same as depth of character.

In the latest scene in our saga, Don Donald Trumpet – cue “The Godfather” theme – had sought an oath of loyalty from would-be consigliere James Comey. But Comey had demurred, necessitating his “termination.” ...

As the Easter egg rolls: A bromantic breakup

April 18, 2017

Easter eggs are not all that have been breaking lately. Hearts have been broken, too, as the bromance of the century ends.

Donald J. Trumpet and Vladdie “Rootin’ Tootin’” Putin called it quits after a relationship that lasted less time than that of Aaron Rodgers and Olivia Munn but certainly longer than Britney Spears’ first marriage.

“There is a low level of trust between our countries,” Secretary of State “Sexy Rexy” Tillerson, the John Forsythe of our 1980s nighttime soap opera, noted somberly after meeting with the Russians. ...

Resurrection

April 16, 2017

As Lent ends and the Easter season begins today with Christians celebrating Jesus’ Resurrection, TV has once again presented its share of documentaries and films about Jesus’ Passion.

PBS’ “Last Days of Jesus” offers a detailed consideration of what it meant to die by crucifixion. I now no longer watch such scenes, just as I no longer watch horror movies. “Those of us who have more yesterdays than tomorrows,” as President Bill Clinton put it at the Democratic National Convention this past summer, prefer to dwell on happier circumstances. Not that we eschew suffering. Indeed, the surest way to prolong suffering is the refusal to endure it. It’s just that we no longer feel the need to go out of our way to create or endure needless suffering. ...

Of two worlds, belonging to neither

April 15, 2017

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. ...

By Jove! Trump as disrupter in chief

February 4, 2017

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? ...

‘America First’ – to serve others

January 22, 2017

I 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. ...