A timely ‘Post’ about an underestimated woman

January 23, 2018

We get, it is often said, the art we deserve – that is, the art we need, the art that the times demand.

That certainly could be said of the new Steven Spielberg thriller, “The Post.” The story of a First Amendment showdown between a rising newspaper, The Washington Post, and the Nixon White House, “The Post” works on several different planes – politically, professionally and personally, as Edie Demas, executive director of the Jacob Burns Film Center, noted at the screening I attended. As such the movie speaks to an era in which “fake news” and #MeToo have become buzzwords. ...

Is our mean streak getting wider?

February 28, 2017

Is it me or have people become less civil, nastier even?

I think of the lines from Bruce Springsteen’s song “Nebraska,” inspired by the mass murderer Charles Starkweather:

“They wanted to know why I did what I did.

“Well, sir, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.”

But is there? As far as institutions and laws are concerned, the world has gotten more just and compassionate. Today, most of us would agree that slavery is unjust, for instance. That wasn’t true 150 years ago.

But these past two weeks I have either experienced or heard about three instances of ego-besotted, bizarro, apoplectic rudeness. ...

In defense of Streep, the humanities – and humanity

January 11, 2017

The latest salvo in the culture war that is surely to deepen under President Donald Trump was fired by Meryl Streep in a graceful and grace-filled speech at the Golden Globes.

I’m not a fan of people using award shows as a bully pulpit, coming of age as I did in the 1970s when such Oscar speeches (think Vanessa Redgrave and an absent Marlon Brando) were a kind of cliché. I’m not a fan of gesture politics like refusing to stand for the National Anthem. I’m not even a fan of Meryl Streep, a sometimes mannered actress (“Sophie’s Choice,” “The Hours”) who’s nevertheless capable of great work (“Marvin’s Room,” “The Manchurian Candidate”).

But Streep – a hard-working craftswoman who has paid her dues – offered a master class in a performer giving a political speech by turning the concept of the politician as performer inside out. ...

Nick Kyrgios and the mystery of temperament

August 28, 2016

So The New York Times Magazine’s US Open Special is basically a cover story on bad boy du jour Nick Kyrgios, pictured biting on the cross he wears around his neck and, oh, you can imagine the posts in response – not just about the cross but on Nick in general.

But the cross is an interesting metaphor here. Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Matthew 16: 24-36)

What indeed. ...