It was no minor metaphor when British Prime Minister Theresa May’s car door stuck as she strove to exit recently to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who waited with characteristic stoicism on the red carpet for yet another go-round in May’s futile attempt to negotiate a better Brexit deal. Brexit has been the ultimate stuck car door for May and the British people, a frustrating rigmarole with no satisfactory conclusion in sight.
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Queen to pawn in a game of love and death
The new movie “Mary, Queen of Scots” — which I am reluctant to see for reasons that will become clear — belongs to what I like to call the Sylvia Plath school of storytelling. That is, if your telling the story of the suicidal poet, the husband will always be the villain. (That he had two wives who killed themselves in exactly the same way doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in him as a spouse. You know what they say. Once is a tragedy. Twice is an unsettling coincidence.)
Read MoreThe quiet man
The passing of President George H.W. Bush – whom the nation mourned officially Wednesday – was a reminder of all that we have lost and that still remains.
Read MoreOf time and Trump
In the movie “Cast Away,” a driven Fed Ex official survives a plane crash, isolation on an island and a daring open-sea voyage only to be rescued and discover that his fiancée has moved on – marrying and having a child – during his four-year absence.
“You were the great love of my life,” he observes in their farewell reunion, realizing that though he has lost her, she was there when he needed her most – on that island, in his mind, keeping hope alive during all those years of solitude.
Spoiler alert: At the end of the movie, he delivers the one unopened package from the crash and, though the last shot shows him standing at a crossroads, we’re lead to believe that he will form an attachment with the woman the package was intended for. Indeed, you could say that everything he went through was designed to lead him to that moment.
I was reminded of this listening to President Donald J. Trump’s continuing rants against the French and their president, Emmanuel Macron.
Read MoreDon't rain on his parade
The election is still not over – with Senate races in Arizona and Florida and governor’s races in Georgia and, again, the ever-conflicted Florida still too close to call – but the fallout has been swift. No sooner did Nancy “With the Laughing Face” Pelosi take to the mike for a victory speech last Tuesday as Dems no longer in disarray took the House from repudiated Repubs, then Beauregard himself, alias Jeff Sessions, was out as AG.
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