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Beijing National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, site of the Beijing Winter Olympics’ opening and closing ceremonies, Feb. 4 and 20 respectively.. Photograph by Peter23.

To watch or not to watch the Beijing Games

February 2, 2022

The Beijing Winter Games officially launch Friday, Feb. 4, with the opening ceremonies airing on NBC, and for many of us it will be something of a guilty pleasure.

Climate change. Human rights abuses. Restrictions on freedom of expression. Covid outbreaks. Critics charge that the Chinese do not have a great track record here and that a full boycott, such as the one the U.S. instituted in 1980 against the Moscow Summer Games when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, would’ve hit them in their prestige and their wallet.

Anderson Cooper at the 35th annual luncheon for the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, held in Phoenix, Arizona. He’s among the announced celebrities who won’t be leaving his heirs great wealth. Photograph by Gage Skidmore.

To have and have not

October 19, 2021

Earlier this evening, a publicist sent me a pitch about a law professor’s take on the trend among the rich and famous, like CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, to leave their heirs with less rather than more — the idea being that children who inherit vast sums of money would be de-incentivized to get off their keisters and work for a living.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Great Hall, seen here in happier times, is not as bustling as it once was. Some experts have suggested that tourists may not return to the Big Apple until 2023, Photograph by TomasEE.

New York in the time of Covid

September 30, 2021

“So, how was the city?” my hairdresser asked.

I was telling her how my cousin who is also my goddaughter had graciously offered to take me on an impromptu adventure last Saturday evening to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan for The Costume Institute’s “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion,” which she, a fashionista by vocation and avocation, was longing to see.

How was the city? Something of a foreign country, but then, as Ric Burns’ “New York: A Documentary Film” (1999-2003) noted, it has always been a place that looked outward to the world rather than to the rest of the nation, particularly to Europe. That internationalism cost it dearly a year ago as the pandemic spread from European visitors throughout the city, where 34,000 people died and thousands more fled.

The new Japan National Stadium — site of the opening ceremony for the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics and many events inside as well as protests outside. © Arne Müseler

Going for the (tarnished) gold -- our ambivalence to the Olympics

July 25, 2021

Well, the 2020 Summer Olympics have finally arrived in Tokyo. Let the naysaying games begin.

Once again we’ve heard about the tyranny of the International Olympics Committee, which is more interested in maintaining its power and money than in the athletes it purports to represent; nations trying to medal in the game of under-the-table bribery in a bid for host city status; boycotts by politicians and other world leaders, including South Korean President Moon Jae-in, miffed by a remark made by a Japanese diplomat; and the usual weird Olympic village stuff, like the recyclable, cardboard beds that were thought to deter any extracurricular nooky by the athletes. (As if anything could deter people from having sex, as a world population of 7.7 billion can attest.)

Donald J. Trump, former blogger

June 6, 2021

Lost in all the hoopla surrounding former President Donald J. Trump being banned from Facebook for two years is the news that his blog and website are kaput after 29 days. As a blogger myself, I was more than intrigued by this. Apparently, it was due to lack of interest on the part of the public. But could it also be that domain contracts, like prenups, have shelf lives? Maybe 30 days was the free trial.

The Ryanair Boeing 737 that was hijacked on May 23, seen in 2019 in Poland. Photograph by Andrzej Otrębski. — The Ryanair Boeing 737 that was hijacked on May 23, seen in 2019 in Poland. *Photograph by* *Andrzej Otrębski*.

Flying blind: Our peculiar reaction to the Ryanair hijacking

May 27, 2021

Though we should never court tragedy, we know our true selves really only in it. Catastrophe, adversity of any kind, reveals character. So what does the Belarusian hijacking of a Ryanair jet tell us about ourselves?

It tells us what we have known all along in our fractured age, what we have seen with the pandemic, which is that we can’t come together in a crisis, because we can’t think clearly about it.

The 2009 All-Star Game in St. Louis. This year’s game has been moved to Denver from Atlanta to protest Georgia’s new restrictive voting law. Photograph by Barbara Moore.

The real relativity of cancel culture

April 9, 2021

Major League Baseball recently decided to relocate the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver, because of Georgia’s new voting law. The Georgia Legislature would have you believe that the new regulations improve voting, and they do — for Republicans. Let’s face it, they lost the presidency and two U.S. Senate seats, because Black voters turned out for the Democrats. So to mix our sports metaphors, the Republicans decided to move the goal posts by changing provisions to make it even harder for poorer people of color to vote.

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