Blog

Sen. Elizabeth Warren stumping for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire in 2016. Photograph by Tim Pierce.

A country for old (white) men

March 8, 2020

Remember that film “No Country for Old Men”? Well, this isn’t that.

Just when you thought Bernie Sanders was the second coming of, well, Bernie Sanders, “Uncle Joe” — as one of my sisters calls former Vice President Joe Biden — came roaring back. Now no matter who gets the Democratic presidential nomination, the presidential contest will be between two old white guys and, if it’s between Sanders and President Donald J. Trump, two grumpy old men with an enormous sense of grievance and my-way-or-the-highway entitlement. (They’re like the relatives you have to tolerate on holidays and then pray they don’t say anything politically incorrect.)

The Trumpian return to classicism

February 10, 2020

Far be it from me to agree with President Donald J. Trump on anything, but as the saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Trump’s decision to MABGA — Make American Buildings Great Again — finds him decreeing in a new executive order that federal buildings in Washington, D.C. should be classical in style, rather than Modern.

The liberal media, Modernists and the art world are not taking this well — understandably. Everyone gets nervous when the federal government starts telling folks what to do, especially conservatives. And Modernism isn’t less a standard of beauty than classicism, Marion Smith, chairwoman of the National Civic Art Society, which is leading the anti-Modernist charge, notwithstanding. As the great composer-pianist Duke Ellington — who wrote jazz standards and classical works alike — observed, there are only two types of music, good and bad. So it is with all the arts.

But the Trump order is in keeping with a growing backlash against Modernism n art and design.

Between Iraq and a hard place

January 7, 2020

So President Donald J. Trump, a man who’s always tilting at “cancer-causing” windmills, finally has something to rail against for real. From the beginning, he’s been against Iran and all Muslims and anything he imagined President Barack Obama espoused, whether he actually did (like the Iran nuclear deal) or not (the Muslim Brotherhood).

Trump and the empathy paradox

November 23, 2019

On Nov. 20 — which, as it turned out, would’ve been the 94th birthday of onetime Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan on June 5, 1968 — PBS’ “Nova” aired a fascinating program, “The Violence Paradox” — one that said a lot about the paradox of empathy in our own time.

Based on the controversial work of psychologist Steven Pinker, the program posited that civilization has become increasingly less violent — yes, despite a world in which every Middle Eastern, African and South American country appears to be protesting its corrupt leadership, Hong Kong students are fighting for democracy against China in a classic David-versus-Goliath battle; and school shootings continue unchecked in the United States.

A legend comes to life

November 21, 2019

He was a realist and a romantic, a lover of strong women and beautiful men. And though he was in his day the richest, most powerful man in the world, his most prized possession was a book – Homer’s “The Iliad,” annotated by his tutor, Aristotle.

Most of all, he was as much a myth as a man and a mystery – even to himself.

When Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 B.C. – a month shy of his 33rd birthday – after conquering and reordering Persia, he left a sprawling empire and a burning question: What drove him?

It’s a question I explore in “Daimon: A Novel of Alexander the Great” (Nov. 30, JMS Books), the latest entry in my series “The Games Men Play” and its first historical subject.

Jeffrey Epstein and the virtuous life

August 14, 2019

I’m of two minds about Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide, which is something I never thought I would say. On the one hand, he was portrayed as pond scum, his alleged victims will now never have to worry about recriminations or retribution and the taxpayers don’t have to support him for the rest of his life in prison — a point my uncle always makes in defense of the death penalty — which is surely where Epstein was headed.

But leave aside the vast right- and left-wing conspiracy theories about the rich and powerful who may have offed him, the federal investigations into whether or not Metropolitan Correctional Center officials turned a blind eye to his suicidal mindset — it appears two correctional officers may have lied about checking on him — and consider instead whether or not we should’ve extended to Epstein the dignity he allegedly denied to his underage victims.

Greek to us

June 27, 2019

“We’re not interested in Alexander I.”

That’s what one of my colleagues said to me about Alexander the Great (who was Alexander III, but no matter).

I thought about this as I returned to Greece recently on another “Legacy of Alexander the Great” tour, this time with The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Arrangements Abroad. I thought about this as we swept by plane from Thessaloniki — Greece’s second largest city, named for one of Alexander’s younger sisters — spitj to Athens, the capital, on a 12-day tour that included buscapades to many of the nation’s most important museums and archaeological sites.