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The Tops supermarket in Buffalo, seen here in February. On May 14, a self-described white supremacist gunned down 13 people at Tops, killing 10 of them. Eleven of the victims were Black. Photograph by Andre Carrotflower.

Slouching toward Buffalo -- white fear and the culture of narcissism

May 17, 2022

Perhaps the single most important phenomenon in the United States in this still-young century is that white people are on their way to becoming a majority-minority — less than 50% of the population — by the next decade or so. This is not an opinion. It is a fact. There is nothing white people or anyone else can do to stop it. It will happen, because it is happening.

The United States has always been a country with a violent, racist streak, but this not-so-simple fact of the white majority-minority has taken us to new heights — which is to say new depths….

Pro life and its culture of death

May 7, 2022

Just in time for Mother’s Day, the United States Supreme Court has a gift that is “sure” to warm the hearts of moms and would-be moms everywhere — a leaked draft decision that would appear to repeal Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortion legal in America. Chief Justice John Roberts — whose position as a swing vote on the court appears to have been nullified by the arrival of conservative Amy “the Handmaiden” Coney Barrett and whose legacy is in jeopardy — was shocked, shocked I tell you, that someone leaked the draft and has vowed an investigation. But the leak is hardly the point, which we’ll get to in a minute.

John Collier’s “Lady Godiva” (1898), oil on canvas. Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. Hair has long been a symbol of female sexuality in patriarchal society. So it was shocking but not altogether surprising that a callous joke at the Academy Awards about the loss of it should trigger a violent response.

The Oscars' hair-raising moment

March 29, 2022

The adage about the Academy Awards is that nobody remembers who won last year. Will Smith has ensured, of course, that no one will ever forget that he won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Venus and Serena Williams’ father in “King Richard” — even as his awards-ceremony performance eclipsed it.

As everyone knows by now, Smith got out of his seat, marched up to presenter Chris Rock — who moments earlier had made a snarky joke about Jada Pinkett-Smith’s shaved head, a response to her autoimmune alopecia — and slapped him. Smith then added insult to injury with an emotional apology/about-face in his acceptance speech a few minutes later. (Smith has since apologized to Rock as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences reviews the incident.)

Nothing about Smith’s behavior is in any way excusable. But I also think Rock is equally culpable in a moment that rolled out every cliché pf America — stupid, classless and violent.

Kaori Sakamoto, seen here at the 2018 Winter Olympics, was a surprising third place finisher after the women’s short program Tuesday, Feb. 15, in which embattled Kamila Valieva took first. Photograph by David W. Carmichael.

The Kamila chronicles continued

February 15, 2022

The Olympic doping saga continued Tuesday, Feb. 15, in Beijing as Kamila Valieva, who tested positive for the banned heart medication trimetazidine, was allowed to compete in the short program by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), pending a fuller investigation of the obvious. Despite finishing first in the short program, ahead of Russian Olympic Committee teammate Anna Shcherbakova and Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto, Valieva is in a lose-lose situation — sure to be asterisked if she wins and still facing possible disqualification.

Indeed, there are no winners among the skaters as no one will be awarded medals until the investigation is complete, and that could take months.

For others, however, there may be a “silver lining.”

Kamila Valieva demonstrates her superb extensions in the International Skating Union Junior Grand Prix Final in 2019. At the Olympics, she finds herself mired in another Russian doping scandal. Photograph by
Luu.

Iphigenia in Beijing: the inexorable politics of the Olympics

February 12, 2022

Held in a country known for its abuses of nature and human nature, attended by the president of a nation banned for doping but whose athletes are still allowed to compete, how could the Beijing Games not be a hot, hypocritical mess?

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.

Edvard Munch’s “Vampire” (1895), oil on canvas. Munch Museum. Anne Rice’s romantic vampires and witches have resonated with late-20th and early-21st century readers and writers.

Interlude with the vampire -- Anne Rice (1941-2021)

December 13, 2021

It’s a cliché in publishing that writers who are popular aren’t good and vice versa. There’s a bit of sour grapes to that notion, as if it were a consolation for those acclaimed writers who’ve never found a wide audience.

Certainly, there were those critics who pooh-poohed Anne Rice — who died Saturday, Dec. 11, at age 80 of complications from a stroke . Her prose could be purple, while her plots at times alternated between the meandering and the static. But Rice, whose 30 novels embraced the sacred (Jesus) and the profane (an S and M Sleeping Beauty trilogy, an escapist “Exit to Eden”) would create one of the most seminal novels, “Interview With the Vampire,” and characters, Lestat de Lioncourt, in American literature. By her own standards, her best-selling books (more than 150 million copies sold) were great, because they resonated with the tectonic shifts in our perceptions of gender, sexuality and race in the second half of the 20th century.