The ultimate mind-over-matter guy — John Milton’s Satan in “Paradise Lost,” seen here in John Martin’s “Satan Presiding Over the Infernal Council” (1824), engraving. Victoria and Albert Museum/The Bridgeman Art Library.
I started out writing this post about President Donald J. Trump and taxes and then about Trump and the appalling debate and now about Trump having Covid-19. In the Trumpian universe, you really have to be blogging every minute. That’s how fast the news changes.
Read MoreThe way the ball bounces: Novak Djokovic on his way to being the No.1-ranked men’s player in the world at Wimbledon in 2011. Still number one, Djokovic was bounced from the US Open last Sunday when he accidentally hit a lineswoman.
What kind of year has it been for you, for our global community? For many, it has been an “annus horribilis,” to borrow from what Queen Elizabeth II said of 1992. (Chuck and Di divorced. Windsor Castle burned. Your Majesty, we felt your pain.) People have lost loved ones, jobs, homes and their health to the coronavirus. Their loss and grief are incalculable, as are our feelings of inadequacy in trying to help them.
For others, it’s been “the best of times, the worst of times,” to quote another Briton, Charles Dickens. They have not lost their health, loved ones, jobs and homes. Instead they are working from and on their homes, using their extra time to acquire new skills, take up a language, a sport or an art, exercising and losing weight and generally getting their lives in order. They’ve made money in the market, as tech and pharma stocks help buoy the Dow, and have even earned honors. Or maybe they haven’t endured any losses but they’re struggling with a number of challenges, like the kids’ schooling.
In any event, it’s hard for them to take much pleasure and pride in their accomplishments and blessings with so much suffering around them — and with the occasional curve ball thrown their way. They’re having what we might call a Novak Djokovic kind of year.
Read MoreFrederic Leighton’s “Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon” (1868-69), oil on canvas. Mourning and black become her.
There they were, the first family of the United States, gussied up — with one tennis-ball green exception — in basic black, clashing with the red, white and blue backdrop and looking for all the world like a group ready for a New York cocktail party to which they’d never be invited. There’s a metaphor or two in there somewhere.
A poster to a New York Times article said they looked like a contemporary Addams Family, minus the kindness and the humor. Like Eugene O’Neill’s Electra (more on her in a bit), mourning becomes them.
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Read MoreWhen it started: Former Vice President Joe Biden kicking off his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination on May 18, 2019. Photograph by Michael Stokes.
Against all odds, the Dems, no longer in disarray, pulled off a terrific virtual convention with superb renditions of “The Star-Spangled Banner” (The “No Longer Dixie” Chicks, those kids on opening night); star wattage (Julia Louis-Dreyfus! Eva Longoria! Tracee Ellis Ross! Kerry Washington!); powerful speeches, particularly from the megawatt Obamas; and a clever roll call of the states that was part Olympic Parade of the Nations and part infomercial. (My sister Gina gives a shout out to Rhode Island, our smallest state, for plugging its fishing industries. “Little Rhody” has become “the calamari comeback state.”)
The four nights belonged, however, to so-called ordinary people, who illustrated movingly the failures of the Trump Administration.
Read MoreRep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seen here at a Bernie Sanders rally in Council Bluffs, Iowa, last year, says that while haters gotta hate, you can still shine on. Amen, sister, amen. Photograph by Matt Johnson.
I was going to do a blog post about the Ibsen-ization of Dr. Anthony Fauci,;how President Donald J. Trump has tried to turn him into Henrik Ibsen’s title character in “An Enemy of the People” for speaking truth to power,; how Trump, jealous that Fauci got to throw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals home opener against the New York Yankees, just had to announce that he, too, would be throwing out the first pitch at the Yanks’ Aug. 14 game against the Boston Red Sox; how fans of teams and individuals who behave contrary to their beliefs are left in a quandary: Do you support your team, as you might your family, no matter what? Or do you stand on principle and part company?
I’ll always love the Yanks, but I cannot for the life of me understand how their former, legendary closer Mariano Rivera — a self-proclaimed Christian and proud Panamanian — can support Trump, whose actions are antithetical to the teachings of Jesus, particularly when it comes to Hispanic immigrants.
As I said, I was going to write about all this, and then Rep. Ted Yoho called colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a “f***ing bitch “and the Repubs went after one of their own, Rep. Liz Cheney, for sticking up for Fauci, and I realized I had to write about that.
Read MoreLin-Manuel Miranda, creator and star of “Hamilton.” Photograph by Steve Jurvetson.
It’s not often that I promote another blog on this one, but recently, my publisher, JMS Books, put out a call to any of its authors who wanted to guest blog on its website. Being an inveterate blogger, I jumped at the chance, and my post is running Tuesday, July 14, Bastille Day. (Vive la France.)
The post is not about France but about how I came to write “The Games Men Play” series, about power, dominance and rivalry, set mainly in the world of sports, although I’ve expanded the series to include earlier novels that have only recently been published. I won’t recount the post here, so you can discover it for yourself at jms-books.com as well as my books,, including my latest work, the short story “The Glass Door,” about love in the time of corona. (It’s a theme that’s haunting me and other writers of late.) It’s due out Aug. 10.
I will, however, discuss a subject here related to that post since many of my books are about gay or bisexual men and that is cultural appropriation.
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Read MoreArtemisia Gentileschi’s “Susannah and the Elders” (1610), oil on canvas. Collection of Schloss Weissenstein. The biblical theme of an assaulted woman and the men who both prey on and condemn her had special resonance for Gentileschi, herself a rape victim who was tortured to ensure she was telling the truth.
Context drives not only perception but the passion with which we hold that perception. Witness Tara Reade, who has accused presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden of sexual assault when she was an aide in his Senate office in 1993. In another time, Reade would be one more explosive chapter of the #MeToo movement. But as Eleanor Roosevelt might put it, this is no ordinary time.
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