Catherine, Princess of Wales, at the May 5, 2023 Realms Lunch Coronation Event. *Photograph by Ian Smith.*

Catherine, Princess of Wales, that photo and the limits of privacy

March 13, 2024

The year is still young but already the Mother’s Day photograph of Catherine, Princess of Wales and her three children — Princes George and Louis and Princess Charlotte — taken by her husband, Prince William, has become one of the photographs of the year.

The photo caused a sensation for being killed by the Associated Press (AP), Getty Images and Reuters, which regularly supply photographs to news organizations around the world, because it was doctored. Catherine apologized for the clumsy Photoshopping, but that was just the beginning of the firestorm in the media about how the PR debacle came to be.

A 'doctor' in the (White) House

December 16, 2020

The latest skirmish in the culture wars involves incoming first lady Dr. Jill Biden, as she likes to be known.

Biden is not a medical doctor but a doctor of education, and that seems to have stuck in the craw of Joseph Epstein (honorary doctorate), who in a somewhat snarky piece for The Wall Street Journal, told Biden in effect to stow it. Epstein’s commentary was not so much about BIden but about the decline of educational standards in general in this country, something I would heartily agree with, including in the awarding of doctorates, something I would not agree with. My family was enormously proud to see my oldest nephew Matthew receive his doctorate in applied mathematics after years of hard work and challenges that began when he was in high school. The degree has brought him a plum job as a government subcontractor at a prestigious university. So a PhD in any subject is nothing to sneeze at, and we can’t assume it wasn’t well-earned.

Antigone at Grabovo

July 24, 2014

In one of the most moving of the Greek myths, the Theban princess Antigone is condemned to be buried alive for honoring the desecrated remains of her brother Polynices, an enemy of the people.

During the Nazi occupation of Paris, the French playwright Jean Anouilh presented his version of her story as a metaphor for the French resistance. But then, Antigone has always spoken powerfully to modern artists, as everything from the heroine of an opera to that of a comic book.

I thought of Antigone and all those Civil War Antigones – the Southern ladies who decorated the graves of the Union and Confederate soldiers alike, giving rise to the tradition we know as Decoration, or Memorial, Day – as I looked at the front page of the July 23rd edition of The New York Times.