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Eugène Thirion’s “Joan of Arc Listening to the Voices” (1876, oil on canvas). Joan heeded the voices of St. Michael the Archangel, pictured with her here, St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Margaret to rally the French against the British during the Hundred Years’ War of the Late Middle Ages. Burned as a heretic in 1431, she was canonized in 1920 and is revered today by the French, the Roman Catholic Church and feminists alike as a woman who remained true to her beliefs.

Transcending in the new Trump era

November 10, 2024

I’ve been thinking a lot about transcendence in sports and politics — two fields in which the quantitative and the qualitative collide.

T.H. Matteson's "Examination of a Witch" (1853, oil on canvas) was inspired by the Salem Witch Trials. *Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum.*

The pet-eating conspiracy theory -- the Salem Witch Trials of our time

September 18, 2024

Former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance blame the alleged second assassination attempt on Trump’s life on the Democrats “hateful” rhetoric. But the Democrats aren’t the ones who called Mexican immigrants “rapists,” instituted a Muslim travel ban, put babies on the border in cages, referred to women as “dogs,” “nasty” and “four out of 10” and disdained American P.O.W.s as “losers.”

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell has said Trump possesses “the most hateful mind in presidential history.” This after Trump tweeted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,” all because she endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president after the debate in which Trump went on a tangent about pet-eating Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.

Humanity's continuing mean season

May 18, 2024

When I was thinking about what my next blog post should be, there was no lack of ideas. Should it be about the student protests, which, however sincere, lack historical perspective, or dog-, goat- and horse-shooting Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota or the Republicans’ “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” at former President Donald J. Trump’s trial in New York or the continuing wars in Ukraine and Gaza? Or how about Speaker-vacating Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene going after Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s eyelashes verbally, which led to Crockett’s sly rebuke “about somebody’s bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body”?

Then I had an unsettling personal experience that made me realize that what all these events and people have in common is further proof that despite the upward arc of civilization, we live in cruel world.

Andy Murray surving at the 2015 Australian Open. *Photograph by Brendan Dennis.*

Mitch McConnell, Andy Murray and the art of letting go

March 2, 2024

News that tennis star Andy Murray plans to retire this summer after the Paris Olympics and that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to become a backbencher has brought me back to a very bad summer day two years ago and thoughts of what it really means to let go of a a career — and your ego.

Alexei Navalny, who died in a Siberian prison Feb. `16, seen here in 2011. *Photograph by* *Mitya Aleshkovsky*.

Trump, Assange and the Navalny complex

February 24, 2024

Donald J. Trump is Alexei Navalny, haven’t you heard? And so is Julian Assange.

Indeed, just about anyone with an ax to grind who feels put upon is Navalny, the Russina opposition leader who died mysteriously in Siberia on Feb. 16 just as the Munich Security Conference, which wife Yulia Navalnaya attended, was underway and Russia was making headway in its war on Ukraine, thanks to the Republicans in the House of Representatives.

Sandro Botticelli’s interpretation of the Nativity (1473-75, oil on canvas. Columbia Museum of Art.

The greatest story ever sold

December 25, 2023

Today — Monday, Dec. 25 — is, as virtually everyone knows, Christmas Day, an occasion that has not always been about “peace on earth, good will to men.” Perhaps it was always thus, but it has become particularly more so in our politically divisive times.

There are those who resent what they see as their holy day being coopted by the commercial holiday. And then there are those who don’t want secular culture subsumed by what is essentially a religious tradition. What both groups have in common is that they see Christmas as an either/or proposition. In reality, it has always been a mix of the sacred and profane, as it were.

Former 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.*

Speaker of the House, but never master of it

October 4, 2023

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.”

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