Andrey Rublev at the 2023 Monte Carlo Masters. After losing to Carlos Alcaraz at the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin, Italy, recently, he reacted by hitting himself in the knee to the point of drawing blood. Photograph by si.robi.
From the courts of the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin, Italy, to the halls of the United States Congress, these have not been the best of times for men and anger management.
Read MorePresident Joe Biden, seen here at left with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Oct. 18, is pressing Netanyahu for a three-day pause to secure the release of hostages. Courtesy the White House.
All life is narrative. Control the narrative, and you control public perception and opinion.
At the moment, Israel and President Joe Biden seem to be losing the narrative thread. I say “seem,” because I haven’t interviewed everyone in the world on this, of course. But based on what’s making news, former President Donald J. Trump and the Palestinians seem to be winning the battle for hearts and minds, in large part because the battle is being waged not primarily with words but with images.
Read More“Achilles in the Court of King Lycomedes“ (marble, 240). Musée du Louvre. The Greeks’ greatest warrior and a king in his own right, Achilles is the main character and antihero of Homer’s “The Iliad.” His rage at his humiliation by Agamemnon, the Greek high king and commander, during a quarrel over women as war prizes sets in motion the catastrophic events of Homer’s “The Iliad,” about a critical moment in the Trojan War.
Do we believe in coincidence or predestination? Is everything happenstance or is it a case that there are no accidents (Freud) and that “God does not play dice with the universe” (Einstein)?
Is that universe sending us a message by releasing a new translation of Homer’s “The Iliad” by University of Pennsylvania classics professor Emily Wilson just as Hamas savagely attacked Israel and Israel responded with a ferocious declaration of war? It would seem so, for the ancient Greek epic has much to tell us about issues that speak to our time, not the least of which are overweening male pride and rage, power as a zero sum game and stupefyingly bad leadership.
Read MoreFormer Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy on the day he was elected speaker — Jan. 7, 2023 — after 15 attempts. Now he is gone after almost nine months, about the time it takes for a full-term pregnancy and with no baby to show for it. Courtesy the former Speaker.
The Oct. 3 ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — a man brought down as much by his own ambition as by the hard right of the Republican Party and the united Democrats, who refused to oppose it — echoes ancient Greek and Shakespearean tragedies, to say nothing of the Hindu/Buddhist principle of karma and Randy Rainbow, who parodied McCarthy’s pathetic groveling for the speakership in a takeoff on “Les Misérables’” “Master of the House.”
Read MoreThe Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta, Georgia. Former President Donald J. Trump is expected to surrender in Atlanta on charges of racketeering no later than Aug. 25. He’ll be formally arraigned in September.
If indictments were tennis, former President Donald J. Trump would be Rod Laver.
Rod “the Rocket” was the last man to win all four Slams — the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open — in a calendar year. He did it twice — in 1962 and 1969.
Trump, however, won’t be lifting and kissing any trophies. Instead of appearing on the court, he’ll be in the courts of four different venues — New York City, Miami, Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, where he’s been charged with everything from paying hush money to a porn star to obstruction, violation of voting rights and racketeering.
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 MoreThe remains of the day: J. Robert Oppenheimer and Gen. Leslie Groves returned to the Trinity test site in Los Alamos, New Mexico, for news crews in September 1945, two months after the July 16 detonation of the first atom bomb. Courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Friday, July 21, marks the opening of two highly anticipated movies that have nothing to do with each other but have already been paired in the public consciousness, perhaps because they both ask us to consider what it means to be human in a world where people constantly grapple for power.
The two films — “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie” — have already been conflated as “Barbenheimer” (is that like “Frankenstein”?), with movie buffs planning a five-hour double feature of “Oppenheimer’s” main course and “Barbie’s” dessert. (Well, why not? After all, Barbie and J. Robert Oppenheimer were both physicists.)
I’ll have more on Barbie,“Barbie” and the male gaze in a subsequent post. But for now I’d like to consider Oppenheimer (1904-67), the scientist who spearheaded the creation of the atom bomb and whose life, lived at the nexus of ambition and conscience, would be eclipsed by his failure to understand the power dynamic.
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