Gustave Moreau’s “Delilah” (1896), oil on canvas. Museo de Arte de Ponce.
Ann Coulter called Donnie a “wimp.”
And Nancy Pelosi proved she was right.
On yet another Farewell Friday — goodbye, Roger Stone — President Donald J. Trumpet announced that a deal had been made to end the 35-day government shutdown that held 800,000 federal workers and the rest of the nation hostage. Translation: Senate Majority Leader “Mitchie” McConnell told Hair Furor that he didn’t have the votes to keep the repudiated Repubs in line and so Donnie Two Scoops was forced to cave.
Read MoreWilliam-Adolph Bouguereau’s “Orestes Pursued by the Furies” (1862). oil on canvas. Chrysler Museum of Art. We bet Sen. Mitch McConnell can relate.
Sometimes in life you get what you want but do not recognize it. For more than a month, President Donald J. Trump, enabled by the Republicans, has held 800,000 federal workers and, indeed, the entire nation hostage and all for a wall that is designed ostensibly to increase security at the southern border but is really about keeping out the people he considers undesirable.
And yet, Donnie already has a wall.
Her name is Nancy Pelosi. And everywhere he turns, he finds himself up against it, her.
Read MoreEnes Kanter (right), — then of the Utah Jazz, now of the New York Knicks — attempting to block a shot by Patrick Beverley at the Houston Rockets’ Toyota Center March 17, 2014.
Everyone is entitled to his opinion, until, of course, someone thinks he isn’t. Recently, three incidents have challenged our concept of freedom of speech.
Read MoreThe border on Killeen School Road between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is marked only by a sign in kilometers. What will happen with this open border is one of the sticking points of Theresa May’s Brexit deal. Photograph by Oliver Dixon.
t was an historic day on both sides of the Pond — the 10th anniversary of the “Miracle on the Hudson” when Capt. “Sully” Sullenberger landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the river, saving all 155 aboard, and the day the old Tappan Zee Bridge deliberately went down, taking with it coincidentally Theresa May’s Brexit deal dream as the House of Commons voted by a more than 2 to 1 margin to reject her plan for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union.
Read MoreAndy Murray and Novak Djokovic at The Boodles Tennis Challenge exhibition in Stoke Park, Buckinghamshire, England in 2012.
Andy Murray winning his second Wimbledon in 2016. Photograph by Daniel J. Cooper.
When an athlete retires, it is a little death. People start speaking about him in the past tense, as if he were truly gone instead of just moving on to another chapter of his life.
But in a way, athletic retirement is a kind of death. Few occasions remind us so much of our mortality as the thought of a seemingly invincible body now broken down or past its prime. Few engender so many memories and what-ifs, particularly if you identify with the athlete.
Few sports offer that identification the way tennis does. A team like the New York Yankees has a host of players to adore (and, on occasion, vilify). But a tennis match has only four players at a moment at best. And, if you’re a singles player, then it’s just you — and all those people out there who see you in themselves and themselves in you.
Perhaps that’s why the reaction to the retirement of Andy Murray — whom I’ve written much about on this blog and in my other life as an editor at WAG — has been so poignant.
Read MoreGone with the wind: The Florida Panhandle, seen here after Hurricane Michael in a photo from ABC Action News WFTS Tampa Bay, finds itself in the eye of the government shutdown storm.
Patricia Mazzei’s recent New York TImes story on Florida Panhandlers doubly victimized by Hurricane Michael and the government shutdown ended with a quote that left many readers cold — and coldly infuriated. Crystal Minton, a federal prison secretary, is already challenged by being the single mother of 7-year-old twins and the caretaker for disabled parents. She’s facing a complicated work schedule in February but don’t cry for her, Argentina.
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