Diana, Princess of Wales, with Luciano Pavarotti at his 1995 benefit concert for Bosnian children in Modena, Italy. Ian Rank-Broadley’s new sculpture of the princess, commemorating what would’ve been her 60th birthday on July 1, fails to capture he… — Diana, Princess of Wales, with Luciano Pavarotti at his 1995 benefit concert for Bosnian children in Modena, Italy. Ian Rank-Broadley’s new sculpture of the princess, commemorating what would’ve been her 60th birthday on July 1, fails to capture her shapely beauty and sheer goddess-ness.

Diana's true legacy

July 1, 2021

Like summer itself — which seemed to define her — Princess Diana’s season was too brief. She was born 60 years ago today, July 1, when summer, like an open road, stretches out before us, full of promise, and died 36 years later on Aug. 31, when summer’s promise, like its roses, has faded and its leaves have burnished, signaling fall.

Earlier today, she was remembered with a statue in the redesigned Sunken Garden of Kensington Palace, where she lived in London. Contemporary figurative sculpture is difficult to do. There’s something about modern clothes that seems at odds with sculpture’s heroic idealization. Think of all those dreary Soviet bureaucrats. That said, Ian Rank-Broadley’s Diana, Princess of Wales, is a total miss.

Flying blind: Our peculiar reaction to the Ryanair hijacking

May 27, 2021

Though we should never court tragedy, we know our true selves really only in it. Catastrophe, adversity of any kind, reveals character. So what does the Belarusian hijacking of a Ryanair jet tell us about ourselves?

It tells us what we have known all along in our fractured age, what we have seen with the pandemic, which is that we can’t come together in a crisis, because we can’t think clearly about it.

John R. Bolton (fourth from right) joins Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (second from right) in negotiating with the Russians, Nov. 3, 2001. Photograph by R.D. Ward/Department of Defense

The impeachment plot thickens

January 26, 2020

Why impeach President Donald J. Trump only to have the Senate acquit him? What’s the point?

You can’t help but be nagged by this question as the trial churns on, despite Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s politically savvy and Representative Adam Schiff’s sharp prosecutorial skills. But just when you’re about to despair, a light or two. There are the tapes by Lev Parnas, the Rudolph Giuliani goon who was in on muscling Ukraine for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and son Hunter, who worked for a Ukrainian energy company while his father was in office.

And now there is the leaked unpublished manuscript of former National Security Adviser and perpetual loose canon John R. Bolton, which establishes a link, once again, between the withholding of $391 million in American aid to Ukraine and the quest for damning information on the Bidens, thus undercutting Trump’s argument that there was no quid pro quo….

The ruins of the Gates of All Nations in Persepolis, Iran. As the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire, Persepolis was burned to the ground by the conquering Alexander the Great accidentally or as an act of revenge for the destruction of the Acr… — The ruins of the Gates of All Nations in Persepolis, Iran. As the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire, Persepolis was burned to the ground by the conquering Alexander the Great accidentally or as an act of revenge for the destruction of the Acropolis in Athens and/or the mutilation of Greek captives. Now President Donald J. Trump is threatening Iranian cultural sites like this one, which is illegal under international law.

Between Iraq and a hard place

January 7, 2020

So President Donald J. Trump, a man who’s always tilting at “cancer-causing” windmills, finally has something to rail against for real. From the beginning, he’s been against Iran and all Muslims and anything he imagined President Barack Obama espoused, whether he actually did (like the Iran nuclear deal) or not (the Muslim Brotherhood).

President Donald J. Trump talks with President of the Republic of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the leaders lounge at the G20 Japan Summit on June 28 in Osaka. Photograph by Shealah Craighead/White House.

Trump talks Turkey

November 14, 2019

Like the man who divorces his wife but keeps showing up for dinner night after night, President Donald J. Trump just can’t quit his opponents. No sooner had he announced that he was forsaking New York as his primary domicile for Florida than he was back in the Big Apple, not once but twice. The second time was for the 100th anniversary of New York’s Veterans Day Parade, at which he talked about New York’s daring and defiance, which the city demonstrated by protesting him. LOL, you just can’t make this stuff up.

Sudden death on D.C.'s power courts

October 24, 2019

A president in thrall to a foreign power. A disenchanted first lady. A White House moving toward crisis.

No, not that White House. But sometimes life imitates art, as it does in Georgette Gouveia’s new psychological thriller, “Burying the Dead” (JMS Books, Oct. 30). It’s a high stakes game of love and death, set on the power courts of Washington, D.C. and other glittering world capitals, that represents a departure for Gouveia, whose previous novels were in the trending category of male/male romance.

PYD militiaman manning a checkpoint in Afrin, Syria, during the 2012 Syrian Kurdistan rebellion. Photograph by Scott Bobb/Voice of America — PYD militiaman manning a checkpoint in **Afrin,** Syria, during the 2012 Syrian Kurdistan rebellion. Photograph by Scott Bobb/Voice of America

Trump and our road to Damascus

October 10, 2019

when you think you’re free to blog about something fun like the new tennis pavilion Melania Trump is building at the White House for her, Novak Djokovic-like husband — not— or the new movie “The King,” starring Timothée Chalumet as a real leader, Henry V , President Donald J. Trump does something else stupid on the road to IM, impeachment meltdown. If it’s not Rick Perry being thrown under the bus one day, it’s the Syrian Kurds watching the bus filled with American soldiers pulling out the next, leaving these staunch American allies in the fight against ISIS to fend for themselves against their longtime enemies, the Turks, in what has already become a humanitarian crisis.