The death of five police officers in Dallas – coming after the shootings in Baton Rouge and Minnesota – overwhelms. How to make sense of the incomprehensible? How to know what to do?
“That was horrible,” people said definitively over and over again in its wake. “People are tired of being lied to," my cousin told me by way of explanation.
But I don’t think this has anything to do with people’s disgust at being lied to unless they are fed up with the lies they tell themselves. ...
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The world is like a restaurant with a major conflict in the front of the house and a fire in the kitchen.
In the front of the house is Brexit – the tip of whose Titanic-smashing iceberg we’ve just experienced. In the kitchen, we have terrorism in Istanbul and Bangladesh and the shootings in Baton Rouge and Minnesota.
Brexit will have sweeping, long-term effects – not the least of which will be the continued rise of women to the heights of political power, probably the only good effect.
But the more immediate issue is the continued violence in this world. ...
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Novak Djokovic has lost to Sam Querrey, who’s having a helluva Wimbledon. So no Grand Slam, and I can’t pretend that I’m not disappointed even though I’m not entirely surprised. Nole had won 30 Slam matches in a row. Though there’s no Law of Averages, the longer you win the closer you are to losing.
No one wins forever, but the good news is that no one loses forever. “Anyone can be beaten on any given day,” former New York Football Giants’ coach Tom Coughlin said after his “mediocre” Giants beat the “perfect” New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. “It’s not important to be the best, it’s only important to beat the best,” John McEnroe said in his pursuit of Björn Borg. Querrey must’ve been repeating these as mantras – or words to these effects. Whatever he did, he’s come through on a big stage, so congrats to him. ...
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I boldly predicted to a publicist-friend the other day that Theresa May would be the last man standing, so to speak, in the Brexit scandal and become the new PM. I also believe Hillary Clinton will be the next president and Elizabeth Warren, her secretary of state.
You never want to make bold predictions, because they have a way of not coming true. But what is clear is that we’ve been moving toward an era of greater female political power and why not? As Brexit continues to demonstrate, there’s nothing quite like a man when it comes to mucking things up. And women – bless their little detail-loving hearts – would seem better-suited to the day-to-day nitty-gritty of governance.
Perhaps more important, they’re less likely to let their egos get in the way of doing a job. ...
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Another day, another Brexit drama, another example – or two or three – of political cupidity and stupidity.
By now, Brexit buffs know that BoJo – alias Boris Johnson, the Brit Donald Trump, how I love how Maureen Dowd describes them maliciously as “prolific authors” – is out, having been stabbed in the back by erstwhile supporter Michael Gove, who decided he wanted to be a king rather than a kingmaker and thus run for prime minister himself.
Personally, I think Gove is barking up the wrong bamboo and that Home Secretary Theresa May is going to be the next PM. ...
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“It’s a great race, it’s a great race, it’s a great race” I kept screaming at the TV as Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte went 1-2 in the 200 IM finals in the Olympic Trials in Omaha.
“Win or lose, we have a good friendship and that’s why it’s a great rivalry,” Lochte said afterward.
Frankly, I thought Lochte, swimming with a groin injury, had Phelps in the final leg, the free, but hand it to Phelps – he has the longer reach and the champion’s ability to close. That takes nothing away from Lochte, who has never been intimidated, never backed down. That’s what makes it a great rivalry. ...
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It’s a story worthy of the Bard and, like all great narratives, it has many juicy plotlines to unravel.
Shall we begin with the rudderless winners or the heartsick losers, the aggrieved Continent looking for payback or the partner nations forced into a choice not of their making?
Or should we consider how the land of Shakespeare and Shelley, Charles Dickens and Winston Churchill could be so shortsighted?
Why not begin with England’s leaders – Labour and Conservative Party members alike – who showed an appalling lack of Alexandrian leadership, by which I mean leadership from the frigging front, including a definite plan B (the need for which Alexander the Great learned from his teacher Aristotle). The Brexit brigade not only didn’t have plan B. It didn’t have plan A.1. It’s like the hapless title characters in “The Producers,” who never actually anticipated the outcome they strove for. Indeed, neither the Leave nor the Remain leaders thought a leave-taking was really in the offing. Each side was just hoping to use the referendum on whether or not the United Kingdom should exit the European Union to its political advantage. And that never works. ...
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