What can you say about the past week in Washington D.C. except that God is the best screenwriter. I mean, who else could come up with such a beta-ameloid and tau tangle of plot twists and turns replete with a depth of characters – which is not the same as depth of character.
In the latest scene in our saga, Don Donald Trumpet – cue “The Godfather” theme – had sought an oath of loyalty from would-be consigliere James Comey. But Comey had demurred, necessitating his “termination.” ...
Read More
I was a selfish child. Make that a self-centered child marked by a self-possession that I wore as a kind of armor against difficult parents and, later, other difficult authority figures. When I was 13, I had a teacher who told us students that selfishness was the root of all evil, the vice from which all others emanate. (She herself was a horror who should’ve practiced what she preached.)
But there is a fine line, I understood, between selfishness and self-possession in service of self-preservation. Recently, one of the columnists I edit wrote a piece in which he observed that there’s a reason that airlines ask you to put on your own oxygen mask first in case of an emergency: You cannot help others if you yourself are in harm’s way.
Which brings us to the new era – actually the cyclical era – of America First. ...
Read More
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? ...
Read More