Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III’s private, now public, battle with prostate cancer raises some interesting questions about how we process disease — ours and others’.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III’s failure to disclose his hospitalization for complications from prostate cancer at a particularly sensitive moment when we are fighting proxy wars in Ukraine and the Middle East has raised the expected political hackles as well as some fascinating philosophical questions.
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Read MoreSpecial counsel Jack Smith making a statement regarding the indictment of former President Donald J. Trump in the documents case on June 9. Photograph courtesy the U.S. Department of Justice.
Recently, I went to see “Barbie,” a surprisingly touching film about what it means to be human, with a cousin who collects Barbies. Afterward, the conversation at dinner drifted as it invariably does these days to former President Donald J. Trump. I explained to my cousin that whatever you may think of Trump — and she’s a conservative with a higher opinion of him than I have as a moderate independent — you must acknowledge that he is great at creating a narrative and sticking to it. That’s real power — power that is now being seriously countered with his arraignment Thursday, Aug. 3, on charges of fraud, obstruction and violation of voting rights in a federal court in Washington, D.C.
Read MoreFreud said there were no such things as accidents so it should come as no surprise that The New York Times would carry a front page story on women who decided against reconstruction after mastectomy – complete with fascinating photographs of their flat, scarred and, in many cases, beautifully tattooed chests – at a moment that The Frick Collection in Manhattan is exhibiting “Cagnacci’s ‘Repentant Magdalene’” (through Jan. 22).
As several Times posters noted, the newspaper would not be displaying those photos had the breast cancer survivors had one or both breasts. And that’s in part because of artists like Guido Cagnacci, the Italian Baroque master whose subjects included Cleopatra and who helped sexualize the female body and female breasts in particular. ...
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