Taylor Swift at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards. Courtesy iHeartRadioCA.
When Peggy Noonan, who was one of President Ronald Reagan’s speechwriters, writes in The Wall Street Journal, that Taylor Swift should be Time magazine’s Person of the Year, you know that Swift has captured the zeitgeist.
Read MoreCenter of attention: (From left foreground) French culture minister André Malraux, wife Marie-Madeleine and President John F. Kennedy have eyes only for Jacqueline B. Kennedy in her pink Oleg Cassini. Even today first ladies like Melania Trump and first lady wannabes like Casey DeSantis channel Jackie’s look. Photograph courtesy the White House.
What would Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis make of J. Randy Taraborrelli’s “Jackie: Public, Private, Secret” (St. Martin’s Press, $35, 439 pages) — out Tuesday, July 18, 10 days before what would’ve been her 94th birthday?
Read MoreWith my books prior to Westfair Communications Inc.’s first literary luncheon, “History: Fiction and Nonfiction,” held Feb. 23 in White Plains, New York. Photograph by Sarafina Pavlak/Westfair.
There are few things in life more satisfying than living the life you see in your head. Such moments are rare, but when they happen, you have to savor them. Such was the case Thursday, Feb. 23, as Westfair Communications Inc. presented its first literary luncheon in White Plains, New York.
“History: Fiction and Nonfiction” was the theme of “Literary Westfair,” featuring Mary Calvi’s new “If a Poem Could Live and Breathe: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt’s First Love” (St. Martin’s Press) – about his first wife, the former Alice Hathaway Lee – and John A. Lipman’s biography “Alfred B. DelBello: His Life and Times” (Atmosphere Press). As Westfair’s chief cultural writer and luxury editor, I had a lot of skin in this game, serving as moderator and one of the authors who would be reading.
Read MoreHarry Styles, seen performing in Rio de Janeiro last year, was heckled by Beyoncé fans at “The Grammy Awards.” Photograph by Leticia Morales.
Heckling is as old as performing, but our digital cult and culture of narcissism, which has made everyone an instant celebrity, has given it a trending obnoxiousness. President Joe Biden was heckled by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the other MAGA Republicans at the State of the Union address. Harry Styles was heckled by Beyoncé fans at “The Grammy Awards.” Novak Djokovic was heckled by a drunken “Where’s Waldo?” quartet at the Australian Open. And Sydney Warner, wife of San Francisco 49ers linebacker Fred Warner, was among the Niners contingent heckled at the Eagles-49ers National Football Conference championship game.
Read MoreThe cover of Prince Harry’s new best-selling book, “Spare” (Random House). Jacket design by Christopher Brand. Front cover photograph by Ramona Rosales.
Having written about Prince Harry’s “Spare” (Random House, 407 pages, $36) elsewhere – and written about him many times for a variety of publications — I wasn’t going to weigh in on this blog about the book. I thought it might be passé. But what I’ve learned is that with politically divisive figures — and make no mistake, the prince and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, are politically divisive figures — there is no such thing as passé. Witness this New York Times opinion piece, which plays right into the hands of everyone who defines liberals as “woke.”
I’m not going to reargue the article, except to say that while some members of the British press and posters have made scurrilous, racist remarks, the Sussexes must also be held accountable for their lack of professionalism in leaving the monarchy and the contradictory narrative they have since put forth. A similar contradictory quality dominates “Spare,” which purports to be an authentic account of Prince Harry’s life in his own words but is certainly not written in his own voice.
Read MoreIn 1976, President Gerald R. Ford presented the Congressional Medal of Honor to Rear Admiral James B. Stockdale for his leadership as a prisoner during the Vietnam War. Stockdale, whom I interviewed when he was a vice presidential candidate on Ross Perot’s 1992 independent ticket, said that the writings of Epictetus helped him get through his ordeal. U.S. Navy photograph by Dave Wilson.
I no sooner arrived in Washington, D.C., for Christmas than the sister I was traveling with came down with Covid and the sister we were visiting developed a non-Covid virus. Other family members became sick as well. (Miracle of miracles, I never got Covid.) On my return, I had a sinus attack that has left me tired, which is why this New Year’s post is so tardy. Apologies, dear readers.
As I sat alone at breakfast in the hotel, shuttling between drop-offs for the Covid sister in the room next to mine and visits to the non-Covid sister, I had an opportunity to read a book that has had a profound effect on my life and that I believe can help you navigate the world as well.
Read MoreLost opportunity: Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, chats with children during a visit to ActionAid in South Africa in 2019. Judging from photographs like this, you’d have to conclude that she and Prince Harry could’ve been king and queen of the Coomonwealth. It wasn’t enough. Photograph courtesy eNCA.
In the trailer for “Harry and Meghan,” the new six-part Netflix series that dropped like an H bomb Thursday, Dec. 8, with the final three installments on Dec. 15, Prince Harry observes, “It’s really hard to look back on it now and go, “What on earth happened?”
Boy, ain’t that the truth.
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