Is one man’s Playboy another’s Picasso?

February 23, 2016

You wouldn’t think that literature had much in common with pornography but indulge me, will you?

Recently, the California porn industry objected to a proposal for stiffer – probably not the best choice of words here – regulations.

“I see what I do as my art,” actress Lily Cade told the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board. “And in the past, throughout history, art has been persecuted.”

Such self-deluded statements give me a chuckle. Art is about psychological truth no matter how realistic or unrealistic it is. Whereas the hyper-realistic pornography suggests that if you could be this super-sexed person – or have this super-sexed person – you’d be happy. And how true is that? ...

A-Rod, Ray Rice and the game of ‘Who’s Sorry Now?’

February 18, 2015

Cue Connie Francis. In this “the winter of our discontent” – the season of 90-inch snowfalls, Southern ice, broken water pipes and equally shattered hearts – the lament of the woman with the catch in her voice and a torch-song life to match would seem most appropriate.

Really, it’s as if we’re all stuck in “Dr. Zhivago” – without Omar Sharif.

In this “region of ice” – thank you, Joyce Carol Oates – everyone is sorry. Ray Rice is sorry for cold-cocking his then wife-to-be, Janay Palmer, issuing an apology almost a year to the date of his Valentine’s Day (image) Massacre. (Could the holiday of hearts have been the inspiration?)

Hot on Ra-Ri’s Achilles heels comes A-Rod and his handwritten apology for steroid abuse and – the thing that always does you in more than the transgression itself – lying about it.

And speaking of lying, opprobrium and ridicule continue to snow down on disgraced anchorman Brian Williams for aggrandizing his role in the Iraq War – although Jerry Seinfeld’s line on the SNL 40th anniversary show about Williams being part of the original “Saturday Night Live” cast was one of the subtler digs. The irony is that the talk show-minded Williams probably counted as friends many of the people now making fun at his expense. Ouch.

Let’s just say Williams should be glad that he’s not A-Rod. The disdain heaped on him by The New York Times’ columnist Tyler Kepner is typical of the way in which the once and apparently future New York Yankee is now viewed. There are two schools of thought on this. One says that justice is justice and compassion, like patience, has its limits, particularly as said limited patience is often accompanied by the sneaking suspicion that the contrite are not all that contrite but actually seeking something less noble than the epic redemption found in Joseph Conrad’s “Lord Jim,” say like a return to the Yanks or the NFL. (It reminds you of the moment in “Gone With the Wind” in which Rhett Butler tells Scarlett O’Hara that she’s like the thief who isn’t sorry for what he’s done but is awfully sorry he got caught.) ...

Jared Leto and the bridge of the imagination

March 1, 2014

If you were to ask me – a woman who considers herself to be a great connoisseur of beautiful men – who is the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, I’d have to say Jared Leto. He is it for me (though Johnny Depp is a close second.) I’m not talking beauty plus brains, personality, character or anything else but just sheer physical beauty. It’s no wonder that Oliver Stone cast him as Hephaestion – the love of Alexander the Great’s life – in “Alexander.”

So naturally, I was delighted to see Leto as the frontrunner for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar March 2 for his role as a transgender prostitute in “Dallas Buyers Club.” And just as distressed to see a fatuous Time magazine piece titled “Don’t Applaud Jared Leto’s Transgender ‘Mammy’,” in which Steve Friess likens Leto’s gender portrayal to the racial cliché of Hattie McDaniel’s Mammy in “Gone With The Wind.”

There are so many misguided ideas in this article that it isn’t even funny.