Kate Spade, by any other name

June 6, 2018

In 2013, Tiffany & Co. celebrated Baz Luhrmann’s new film version of “The Great Gatsby” with a day of events that concluded with a Roaring ’20s-style party at the Fifth Avenue flagship. I swanned through the night in a black column dress that was accented mainly by a Kate Spade necklace of green turquoise florets. Throughout the evening, several people stopped me – this was at Tiffany’s, remember – to say what a great necklace it was.

That was the Kate Spade effect. Whether it was with a statement necklace or a book with an inspirational saying or one of her signature vibrant handbags that marked a young woman’s coming of age and defined a generation in the good-times ’90s, Spade had a way of lifting you up. That she could not do the same for herself proved to be her tragedy. …

Picking global winners and losers

May 15, 2018

For someone who’s an isolationist and protectionist, President Donald J. Trump sure has an odd way of showing it. He appointed son-in-law Jared Kushner to lead the White House’s Mideast peace team only to sabotage any chance of achieving that goal by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, thereby acknowledging Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and enraging the Palestinians.

While Kushner and wife Ivanka Trump were celebrating the dedication of the American embassy there yesterday on the 70th anniversary of the founding of Israel – along with preacher John Hagee, who once said that all Jews were going to Hell – the Palestinians in turn clashed with Israeli soldiers 40 miles away in Gaza where more than 50 were killed and more than 1,000 injured. …

A high stakes game on the road to Damascus

April 15, 2018

The United States – using what President Donald J. Trumpet called its “righteous power,” which is an interesting turn of phrase from Stormy Daniels’ alleged one-night stand – has joined longtime allies Great Britain and France in launching 100 missiles at Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons depots and research facilities in Damascus and Homs.

Already, El Presidente – who has the attention span of a flea – has declared “Mission Accomplished.” I really wish American presidents would stop using that I’m-a-tough-guy-even-though-I-never-served-in-a-war phrase. Some 15 years after President George W. Bush declared “Mission Accomplished,” we’re still in Iraq and Afghanistan. You see where we’re going with this. ...

The myth of the strongman

March 4, 2018

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. The Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte. Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Russia’s Vladimir Putin. China’s Xi Jinping. And, of course, our own Donald J. Trump.

The world is in the grips of the strongman – tough, reactionary and taking no prisoners. Part of this is a response to the terrible, fascinating transition in which we find ourselves – a backlash to the global, multicultural, digital age to which so-called “feminine” energies (communications skills, sensitivity, a sense of service) are better suited. Part of this is the envy, rage and resentment, particularly in this country, of white, blue-collar males, who lacked the courage, intelligence, industry and imagination to confront their greedy employers and, failing that, reinvent themselves when manufacturing jobs began to dry up in the 1970s. ...

The gun control movement’s #MeToo moment

February 24, 2018

Just as The New York Times’ Harvey Weinstein series ignited #MeToo, so the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has galvanized a movement – and a generation – against gun violence in a way that we thought the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting would but never did.

I know: We’ve been here before – too, too many times. But this time feels different as high school students have taken to the streets and to buses – latter-day Freedom Riders, Oprah Winfrey called them – to protest the absolute lunacy of children, and the rest of us, being held hostage by people who think their Second Amendment rights entitle them to assault weapons.

Why does their right to own guns that should only be in the hands of the professionals trump our peace of mind? ...

When thoughts and prayers aren’t enough

February 17, 2018

Seventeen people were killed by a gunman in Florida and I feel – nothing.

No, that’s not exactly correct. I feel a certain righteous indignation. The Republican governor of Florida, Rick Scott, thinks FBI director Christopher Wray should resign, because the Bureau got a tip on gunman Nikolas Cruz and didn’t follow it up. Oh, please. The Broward County sheriff’s office got numerous complaints about this guy. Listen, it’s always the same story – young white guy with a disproportionate rage at the world. And it’s always the same result. And the same response. Thoughts and prayers. Nutjob. ...

Against bad manners

February 11, 2018

On Oct. 25, 1995 – one day after the United Nations turned 50 – then New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani threw Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat out of a concert at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall that ironically featured Ludwig van Beethoven’s great ode to humanity, his Symphony No. 9. The Clinton Administration then criticized Giuliani for an egregious breach of international diplomacy, but Giuliani said he could never forgive Arafat’s terrorist past, even though at that point he had been praised by both the Americans and the Israelis for his role in the Middle East peace talks.

It’s an age-old problem. We have our values. Do we cast them aside in social situations? We do not. But neither do we make a mockery of our values by punctuating them with rudeness.

Impolite behavior seeks to ridicule and humiliate others. But it is really only a reflection of those who advocate it.

I thought of this while watching the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang as Vice President Mike Pence avoided contact with Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, even though he was sitting right in front of her and the president of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, had shaken her hand. ...