After all the buildup, the scandals and the controversies – How stripped down would the affair be? Would Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, attend? Would people take the oath of allegiance? – the coronation of King Charles III Saturday, May 6, at Westminster Abbey in London emphasized the profoundly religious aspect of the ceremony. Like a baptism or confirmation – with its special rituals, symbols, clothing and music – the coronation underscored the covenant between an individual and God, which in this case must also be a covenant between a king and his people, who are going through a tough time.
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King and Queen to pawn in a game of love and death
We’ve got our teacup all set for the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla on Saturday, May 6, but what we’ve really been obsessing about is a distant relative of the king’s by way of another Charles — Charles I of England.
He was a direct ancestor of Louis XVI of France, whose marriage to a certain notorious Austrian archduchess is the subject of the revisionist, feminist “Marie Antoinette,” finishing its first season on PBS Sunday, May 7. Quite the royal weekend.
Read MoreIn Holy Week, a day of reckoning for Trump
In the end, it was, as one observer said, like Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade — only without the talent. On one side of the police barricades in a small Manhattan park were the Trumpers; on the other side, the anti-Trumpers. In the middle was a whole lot of booing, shouting, whispering and whistling, the last courtesy of the Trump whistle guy.
Read MoreWhy do we project ourselves onto others?
There is no March Madness for Novak Djokovic.
The un-Covid vaccinated world No. 1 isn’t playing in the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California, (otherwise known as the Indian Wells Masters) this week, and he won’t be playing in the Miami Open (March 19 through April 2), this despite appeals from notables like Billie Jean King that went all the way to the White House and from tournament directors, who, faced with the retirement of Roger Federer and Serena Williams and injury to Rafael Nadal, need all the superstars they can get.
Read MoreOur failure to respond to 'the literature of rejection'
What do the Black cops who murdered Tyre Nichols have in common with the mass shooters in California — and indeed all the cops who murder and the mass killers?
They are all men with a disproportionate sense of entitlement and grievance and thus rage at some kind of rejection. They are part of what I call “the literature of rejection,” one with everyone from assassins like John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald to dictators like Adolf Hitler to terrorists like Osama bin Laden to mass murderers like Timothy McVeigh. And they share a great deal as well with such fictional antiheroes as Achilles in Homer’s “The Iliad,” Iago in Shakespeare’s “Othello,” Lucifer in John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’a “Wuthering Heights.”
What they all have in common is that they are men with an overweening, overwhelming pride that seeks the destruction of everything, and everyone, in its wake.
Read MoreA guide to living through the chaos
I no sooner arrived in Washington, D.C., for Christmas than the sister I was traveling with came down with Covid and the sister we were visiting developed a non-Covid virus. Other family members became sick as well. (Miracle of miracles, I never got Covid.) On my return, I had a sinus attack that has left me tired, which is why this New Year’s post is so tardy. Apologies, dear readers.
As I sat alone at breakfast in the hotel, shuttling between drop-offs for the Covid sister in the room next to mine and visits to the non-Covid sister, I had an opportunity to read a book that has had a profound effect on my life and that I believe can help you navigate the world as well.
Read MoreWhose art is it anyway?
What is it about Colorado?
First, there was the baker who didn’t want to make wedding cakes for gay couples. He told the U.S. Supreme Court that it violated his artistic and religious freedoms.
Now we have Lorie Smith, a Colorado website designer, who’s making pretty much the same argument before the court.
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