Chinese doubles player Peng Shuai at the 2016 US Open. Her disappearance and then sudden “happy” reappearance after leveling a #MeToo accusation against a former Chinese official has sparked international outrage. Photograph by si.robi
When the history of the early decades of this century is written 100 years from now, it will be recorded as a time when those who had power were challenged by those who did not.
Read MoreDiana, Princess of Wales in Russia in 1995. Photograph by Nick Parfjonov.
In “Spencer” — the third leg in a November Diana trilogy that includes Season Four of “The Crown,” now on DVD, and “Diana: The Musical,” now on Broadway — director Pablo Larrain does for the late Princess of Wales what he did for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in “Jackie” (2016) : He imagines a goddess at a tipping point.
Read MoreThat roar you hear at the Art Institute of Chicago isn’t from Edward Kamey’s pair of lions but from conservatives up in arms over a decision to eliminate the museum’s docents, volunteers who are mostly older, white women. Photograph by Kim Scarborough.
This has not been the best of times for older, white women in the United States. First, there was a not particularly thoughtful New York Times article on self-described despiser of white boomer women Jamie Loftus. Then came word that the Art Institute of Chicago, in an effort to create a diverse staff more reflective of the city in which it’s located, is doing away with its volunteer docents, who are, yes, mostly older, white women.
Instead, a letter sent to the 82 docents noted, the museum would phase in a new program mixing paid educators and volunteers “in a way that allows community members of all income levels to participate, responds to issues of class and income equity, and does not require financial flexibility to participate.”
Let me translate this for you: Museum officials, fearing they would be declared irrelevant, had to find someone else to appear so.
Read MoreNew York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo, far left, meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden in the White House on Feb. 12. Photograph by Adam Schultz/White House.
Time is indeed another country. Last year, New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo was a hero of the pandemic, his daily Covid briefings compared to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats for their calming humanity.
This year, Cuomo — who announced his resignation today — is another villain of #MeToo, accused in state Attorney General Letitia James’ report of sexually harassing and assaulting 11 women and in other circles of berating, bullying and brutalizing male and female employees alike.
Read MoreChurch fathers like St. Augustine of Hippo, seen here in Vittore Carpaccio’s 1502 painting “Vision of St. Augustine,” were influenced by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle in holding that abortion was acceptable in the first trimester because the fetus had not yet been “ensouled.”
Before I went to Sarah Lawrence College, I attended Trinity College in Washington, D.C., an excellent school that set me on the path of cultural writing. Among my professors was a contrary sort who taught philosophy. He was married to a well-known feminist, but despite this — or perhaps because of it — he liked to confound his logic class in this women’s college by proclaiming women were illogical and that no one would ace or even pass the course unless he graded on a curve. (I used to sit there, praying, “Please let him grade on a curve. Please let him grade on a curve.”)
The professor bewitched, bothered and bewildered the diverse class, which included everyone from Irish nuns to the daughters of Iranian diplomats — with Aristotelean syllogisms and thought experiments like the following.:
Say New York City is under threat of annihilation, and the only thing that will save it is the sacrifice of one man. Do you sacrifice the one man? The answer, which thrust the class into paroxysms of frustration, outrage and utter revolt, is that you can’t. Each life, our professor said, is worth the same as any other. — or millions of others. Life cannot be quantified. As Soviet dictator Josef Stalin is said to have observed — although he may not have meant it the way my professor did — “One man’s death is a tragedy. Twenty million (the number of Russian who died in World War II) is a statistic.”
I thought about all this when I read Ross Douthat’s New York TImes column on American bishops’ threatening to withhold Holy Communion from Roman Catholic politicians who are pro-choice, like President Joe Biden.
Read MorePrince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (left), examines building models at the University of Salford in 1967. During a 70-year career as a working royal, he carried out more than 22,000 solo engagements in addition to being what Queen Elizabeth II called her “strength and stay.” Courtesy the University of Salford Press Office.
Among the photographs The New York Times used to commemorate Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh — who died on Friday, April 9, at Windsor Castle two months short of his 100th birthday and will be buried from there Saturday, April 17 — was a 2017 photo in which the natty duke faces the camera smiling amid a sea of red-garbed Canadian soldiers, who are virtually all facing right. It encapsulates Prince Philip, a part of and yet apart from the British monarchy, “the strength and stay” of Queen Elizabeth II (her words) through 73 years of marriage, the longest in British royal history, who served crown and country with a confounding mix of devotion, action, humility, crotchety humor and a patronizing snobbery that critics have called impolitic at best and prejudiced at worst.
Read MoreThe Huskies, the University of Connecticut’s winning women’s basketball team with President Barack Obama in 2013. Courtesy whitehouse.gov.
Self-professed feminist that I am, I must confess that I do not follow women’s sports.
I don’t know why. I support Title IX, which equalized sports opportunities in schools, the fruits of which have included higher medal counts for the United States at the Olympics, thanks to golden performances by our female athletes. I’m all for any civil rights initiative and am absolutely sick with worry about the Georgia Legislature’s most recent effort to restrict voting rights, especially for Black voters.
Still, I prefer to watch men….
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