Gustave Moreau’s “Delilah” (1896), oil on canvas. Museo de Arte de Ponce.
Ann Coulter called Donnie a “wimp.”
And Nancy Pelosi proved she was right.
On yet another Farewell Friday — goodbye, Roger Stone — President Donald J. Trumpet announced that a deal had been made to end the 35-day government shutdown that held 800,000 federal workers and the rest of the nation hostage. Translation: Senate Majority Leader “Mitchie” McConnell told Hair Furor that he didn’t have the votes to keep the repudiated Repubs in line and so Donnie Two Scoops was forced to cave.
Read MoreIn his superb column titled “White Extinction Anxiety,” The New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow quotes archconservative Pat Buchanan as saying that the great issue of the day “is whether Europe has the will and the capacity, and America has the capacity to halt the invasion of the countries until they change the character – political, social, racial, ethnic – character of the country entirely.”
Let me fix it for you, Pat: Do Europe and America have the will and capacity to turn back the hordes of people of color beating on their doors? That’s really what he’s asking, though I would turn it around: Do we have the intelligence, talent, industry and character to be greater than ourselves and truly become a global society? …
Read MoreScooch over, Harvey and join Sandy, Katrina, Andrew and (here insert your personal past hurricane nemesis) on the long couch.
As the Repubs learned yesterday, there’s no political storm quite like Hurricane Donald. (Here we cue a fabulously appropriate folk song that figures in my novel “Water Music” – “The Wind and Rain” – beautifully realized by the band Crooked Still.)
He blew through Washington D.C., cutting a three-month deal to raise the debt ceiling with Dems Nancy Pelosi and “Chuck Chop” Schumer, the Minority Leaders of their respective Congressional Houses, leaving the repudiated Repubs to wonder in the manner of hurricane survivors, “What the hell just happened?” ...
Read More
I had hoped to be writing more about tennis with the US Open underway. I had hoped to be resting from my labors on Labor Day.
But as Eleanor Roosevelt said of World War II, “This is no ordinary time.” With challenges and crisis on the home front and abroad, the time demands we go within to reach out, that we roll up our sleeves intellectually, physically and spiritually and use pleasure as it was always meant to be used – as a dessert rather than a meal.
Perhaps, however, it is still possible for me to write about tennis while also writing about character. Both are subjects of a new book by James Blake...
Read More
