The newly crowned King Charles III and his wife, Queen Camilla, wave from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. *Courtesy the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, government of the United Kingdom.*

Threading the needle – the coronation of King Charles III

May 7, 2023

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.

For Anna Wintour, everything new is old again… when selecting a TB (tennis boyfriend)

August 27, 2014

Each August, I breathlessly await the arrival of the gazillion-page September Vogue, not for the fashion, silly, but to answer the question that flits among my neurons all summer: Who will editrix Anna Wintour anoint as her new TB (tennis boyfriend)?

For as I said in a post on this site last winter about Maureen Dowd, RGIII and Jane Austen, an accomplished woman of good fortune must be in want of a PB (pretend boyfriend).

Or, in Anna’s case, a PTB or just TB. As we all know, Anna – who has featured many, mostly male tennis stars in the pages of Vogue – has been pretend-dating Roger Federer – aka Feddy Bear – for years, sending racks and racks of clothes over to his hotel suite when he’s in town for the US Open, presumably while Mrs. Fed looks the other sartorial way.

Then in 2011, Anna’s journalistic instincts got the better of her and she decided to play the hot hand...

Jared Leto, the inside man

March 3, 2014

How great was it to see Jared Leto – who left Hollywood to front a band – win the Best Supporting Oscar for his role as a transgender prostitute in “Dallas Buyers Club”? (Actually, the win was sort of a no-brainer. Hollywood loves to reward actors who transform themselves and stories that have their hearts in the right place.)

Leto seems to have his in the right place, too. Of course, there was plenty of Internet snark about his acceptance speech, in which he told the “dreamers” in Ukraine and Venezuela that we were thinking of them. (Apparently, actors aren’t allowed to be human.) I came late to his speech, but I’m glad I caught the end: "This is for the 36 million people out there who have lost the battle to AIDS.” He concluded, “To those of you who have felt injustice because of who you love and who you are, I stand here with you and for you.”’

As he left the stage, host Ellen DeGeneres shook her head and said, “Beautiful.”’