Like many this week, I’ve been haunted by the death of Nelson Mandela. In watching the coverage, I was flooded with memories of my years as a cultural writer for Gannett who reported on the arts and sports worlds’ reactions to apartheid in the 1980s.
Culture is more than gala productions attended by ladies in couture and jewels. It’s about the fabric of a people.
Nelson Mandela, who died Thursday at his home in South Africa at age 95, understood the transcendent role that the arts and sports can play in uniting a people and galvanizing them to recognize that no one is truly free as long as some remain enslaved. That’s why I can think of few better ways to pay tribute to him at this time than to listen to the music of Hugh Masekela, Paul Simon, Annie Lenox and others who voiced a movement. (Some may wish instead to watch Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus,” about how Mandela used rugby to bring his nation together, or await the Christmas release of Harvey Weinstein’s “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.”)
Often when I met with South African musicians and filmmakers… Read more
Read MoreThe ancient Greek key pattern – symbol of eternal life, beloved by tastemakers like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis – continues to play a key role (pun intended) in home and fashion design offerings this holiday season.
Versace's Arabesque Ice set of four canapé plates in gold or blue-gray Rosenthal china (Bloomingdale’s, $130) features Versace’s iconic Greco-Roman face surrounded by swirling leaves and a Greek-key border.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Adler has a black-and-white tote made up of squares of Greek keys that give off a trompe l’oeil effect, and C. Wonder makes the pattern pop with bright colors on monogrammed home goods. Too bad they don't make a set with my "G"… Read more
Read MoreNelson Mandela, who died Thursday at his home in South Africa at age 95, is a reminder that you have to live the life in front of you, however painful or difficult it may be.
He lived his as a son not only of South Africa but of the world.
Rest in peace.
Read MoreThe death of Peter Graf – father of tennis legend Steffi Graf – Saturday in Germany reminds us that there is no stage parent quite like a tennis parent. We are taught never to speak ill of the dead, and yet as Shakespeare observes in “Julius Caesar,” “the evil that men do lives after them.” Peter Graf, who died of pancreatic cancer at age 75, was a manipulative, even abusive, father who mismanaged his daughter’s winnings and embarrassed her with a Playboy model liaison. (He was convicted of tax evasion and served a little more than two years in prison.)
But he was also the man who spurred and inspired Steffi to become the only tennis player to date to win the Golden Slam – the four Grand Slam events plus the Olympic gold medal – in a calendar year. So there had to be something there, right? Read more
Read MoreShould it surprise us that a man would think that an image of a naked/sexualized woman doesn’t objectify her?
In a piece for the “Gray Matter” column in the Dec. 1 edition of The New York Times, Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom states that images of a naked or sexualized woman don’t objectify her and that objectifying people isn’t necessarily a bad thing (as in sitting behind someone to block the sun). What makes pornography dangerous, he says, is the way it reduces people to their animal nature.
Fair enough, but I think the subject is even more complex than he realizes. First off, he confuses the words “naked” and “nude,” which the art historian Kenneth Clark brilliantly differentiates between in his book, “The Nude.” Naked is about reality and vulnerability. You’re naked in the shower. You’re naked in the doctor’s office. The people in a porno film are really naked, and they’re really having sex. Read more...
Read MoreWhat kind of man walks away from $1 million?
Maybe the kind who knows that some things are more important than money.
Such a man is John Moffitt, a third-year guard with the Denver Broncos who recently retired from the NFL.
Moffitt had a so-called dream job protecting the glamorous, commanding Peyton Manning, the Broncos’ already legendary quarterback. But protecting quarterbacks is one aspect of football that has led an increasing number of players to develop CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a form of dementia resulting from the concussions and sub-concussive events that are part of the sport. Read more...
Read MoreThe man who is perhaps the best swimmer in the world won’t be helping the U.S. win another “Duel in the Pool” when the five-year-old event is contested Dec. 20 and 21 in Glasgow. (This is one of those events that pits us against everyone else.)
It seems that an enthusiastic teenage girl ran into Ryan Lochte, literally, tearing a ligament in his left knee and spraining another. (In my second novel, “In This Place Your Hold Me,” the rakish star quarterback of the New York Templars breaks his leg when he slides off his girlfriend in a particularly lubricious encounter, paving the way for my main character, Quinton Day Novak, to become the signal-caller. I guess you can’t make this stuff up.) Read more...
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