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Former President Jimmy Carter was buried on the day (Thursday, Jan. 9) that the United States Supreme Court refused to stay President-elect Donald J. Trump’s sentencing in his hush-money conviction.
Let that sink in. Here was on the one hand a humanitarian and on the other a man whose compassion for the Los Angeles wildfires was crystallized by his calling rival Gov. Gavin Newsom “Newscum.”
And yet, there are plenty of Americans who think Carter, though a great humanitarian, was a poor president, and many Americans who can’t wait to see Trump back in power on Monday, Jan. 20, which is coincidentally Martin Luther King Jr. Day as well as Inauguration Day.
Central to the feast of Christmas, which Christians —and let’s face it, many non-Christians — will celebrate Wednesday, Dec. 25, is the story of the angel Gabriel coming to the town of Nazareth to tell the Virgin Mary that she will miraculously conceive and bear Jesus, the Son of God.
Much has been written about Mary as the new, obedient Eve — the anti-Eve, as it were — acquiescing to become the mother of God, with all the suffering his Passion will entail for her as well as him. (Think Michelangelo’s poignant “Pièta.”) And just as much has been written about so-called sacrilegious interpretations of Mary doubting this calling, (see Netflix series “Mary”); and Jungian interpretations of Mary as yet another mother in the miraculous birth narratives of famous men (see the stories of the Buddha, Alexander the Great and Augustus).
All these interpretations miss the point of the original text.
By now we can assume that there are few people in the nation who are unaware of the Dec. 4 shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson — on his way to an investors’ conference at the New York Hilton in Manhattan — and few people who are unaware that feelings are running about nine to one in favor of the shooter.
“The truth is forced upon us, very quickly, by a foe,” the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes wrote, and that was perhaps never truer than of tennis’ “Big Four” — Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray. They were, strictly speaking, not foes — which implies an element of enemies, along with cross and double-cross — but rather opponents and especially rivals in the glorious first three decades of this century, when they won 69 Slam titles and three of the last four gold medals in men’s singles at the Summer Olympics (Nadal in 2008, Murray in ’12 and ’16 and Djokovic this year).
People talk about Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz and their contrasting temperaments and talents — Apollonian ice versus Dionysian fire respectively — which may ultimately eclipse the four. But I predict that when the history of tennis is finished, fans will look back at the Big Four as the likes of which we never saw again.
