The literature of rejection

June 9, 2018

I tend to use this headline to write about young men who have a disproportionate rage at the world and take it out on others as mass murderers, assassins, terrorists and serial killers. I’ve also written about a number of literary works that deal with such young men – Homer’s “The Iliad,” John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” among them.

But I think it is also an appropriate title for a post about the Lambda Literary Awards, which I attended Monday night at New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts as a nominee. My book “The Penalty for Holding,” published by Less Than Three Press, the second novel in the series “The Games Men Play” was a finalist in the Best Bisexual Fiction category. (When I got the news, I had two thoughts: This must be an email for somebody else. And, were any of the characters in my book bisexual? It goes to show that the readers sometimes know more than the authors do.)

As I sat there, I had a feeling of disassociation. I didn’t know anyone …

Why are women so hard on one another?

June 2, 2018

In my guise as editor in chief of WAG magazine, I had a pleasure of sharing a moment with Ashley Judd on the red carpet of the Greenwich International Film Festival (GIFF) in Connecticut Friday night. She is an exquisite-looking woman who is, more important, exquisite in her manners and manner. I began by thanking her for her work as one of the leaders of #MeToo and asked her if she thought that this time, the response to the sexual harassment women have suffered would really be different.

It already is, she said, and the result will be an improvement not only in the lives of women but of men as well. …

Negotiating with the stars

May 16, 2018

One of the more endearing but also infuriating things about Americans is their belief that anyone can do anything if he just works hard enough, fast enough. This is the “Dancing With the Stars” philosophy of life that says you, too, can be a ballroom dancer if you have three weeks of intense training and, possibly, Maksim Chmerkovsky as a partner.

This would be amusing if it weren’t sometimes so deadly. Now we have a president who lacks the talent, temperament, training and technique for the job and it shows in the country pulling unilaterally out of the Iran nuclear deal, moving its embassy to Jerusalem with violent consequences and now facing a North Korean pullout from the planned summit due to American-South Korean military maneuvers. …

The art of the ‘no deal’

May 10, 2018

So, President Donald J. Trumpet has gone and done what he said he would do, what many feared he would do, and backed out of the Iran nuclear agreement. There were sunset clauses, Iran could still produce ballistic missiles that could reach Israel, blah, blah, blah. Then, too, President Barack Obama was an architect of the deal and we all know of the obsessive psychodrama that is Trumpet’s hatred of Obama. So, the Iran nuclear agreement was nuked the moment The Donald became president.

But if it were so terrible, why not go to our allies – alias Emmanuel Macron, who’s left to pick up the pieces – and work with them to strengthen the deal, revamp it or put a new one in place?…

Change agents – Trump and Alexander the Great

April 14, 2018

The Fresno Bee columnist Victor Davis Hanson has written a column comparing President Donald J. Trump’s slash-and-burn style with the Greco-Macedonian conqueror of the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great, cutting the Gordion knot impatiently with his sword, thus ensuring the prophecy that whoever did so would become lord of Asia.

Hanson’s gotten some bristling responses from history buffs, and my first thought was to lend my voice to the chorus, being rather protective of Alexander myself. More than anything I wanted to say: “I knew Alexander. Alexander was a friend of mine. Trump, you’re no Alexander.” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the issue is deeper than Hanson and his critics might’ve realized. ...

Trump’s ‘Uncertainty Principle’

April 7, 2018

Nature may abhor a vacuum, but Wall Street really abhors uncertainty. As an investor, you can make money in wartime, and you can make money in peacetime. What is really tricky is to make money when one day you’re going to war and the next you’re not.

At the moment, we’re in a trade war – except when we’re not. The idea fluctuates not merely from day to day but from Trump Administration individual to individual on the same day. ...

Of Amazon – and Amazons

April 1, 2018

In the through-the-looking-glass world of Trumpian lunacy, it was perhaps inevitable that President Donald J. Trumpet should tilt his lance at one of the corporations that he was supposedly trying to help with his tax cuts and defend a business that has been laying off the very kinds of workers he swore to protect.

But then, little makes sense about Donnie Two Scoops’ attack on behemoth Amazon. ...