Fresco of dancing Peucetian women from the Tomb of the Dancers in the Corso Cotugno necropolis of Ruvo di Puglia, end of the 5th or mid-4th century B.C. The ancient Greeks believed that charisma was the grace of the gods. But charisma has little gra… — Fresco of dancing Peucetian women from the Tomb of the Dancers in the Corso Cotugno necropolis of Ruvo di Puglia, end of the 5th or mid-4th century B.C. The ancient Greeks believed that charisma was the grace of the gods. But charisma has little grace in the modern age.

Boris, The Donald and charisma in the age of reality TV

December 23, 2019

Boris Johnson and his Conservative Party won big in the United Kingdom’s recent election, establishing a clear path — or more precisely, a clearer path — to Brexit Jan. 31. Amid all the questions of winners (the Tories) and losers (the Labour Party, its unpalatable former leader Jeremy Corbyn, and quite possibly the British worker, London as world financial capital, immigrants, globalism, Scotland, the Irish backstop), was the notion that the Conservatives succeeded because of Johnson’s Trumpian charisma, which he damped down for the occasion by corralling his usual hijinks.

Sudden death on D.C.'s power courts

October 24, 2019

A president in thrall to a foreign power. A disenchanted first lady. A White House moving toward crisis.

No, not that White House. But sometimes life imitates art, as it does in Georgette Gouveia’s new psychological thriller, “Burying the Dead” (JMS Books, Oct. 30). It’s a high stakes game of love and death, set on the power courts of Washington, D.C. and other glittering world capitals, that represents a departure for Gouveia, whose previous novels were in the trending category of male/male romance.

PYD militiaman manning a checkpoint in Afrin, Syria, during the 2012 Syrian Kurdistan rebellion. Photograph by Scott Bobb/Voice of America — PYD militiaman manning a checkpoint in **Afrin,** Syria, during the 2012 Syrian Kurdistan rebellion. Photograph by Scott Bobb/Voice of America

Trump and our road to Damascus

October 10, 2019

when you think you’re free to blog about something fun like the new tennis pavilion Melania Trump is building at the White House for her, Novak Djokovic-like husband — not— or the new movie “The King,” starring Timothée Chalumet as a real leader, Henry V , President Donald J. Trump does something else stupid on the road to IM, impeachment meltdown. If it’s not Rick Perry being thrown under the bus one day, it’s the Syrian Kurds watching the bus filled with American soldiers pulling out the next, leaving these staunch American allies in the fight against ISIS to fend for themselves against their longtime enemies, the Turks, in what has already become a humanitarian crisis.

Stuck in the middle with you: President Donald J. Trump greets Finnish President Sauli Nanistö in happier times, Aug. 28, 2017. Photograph by Natig Sharifov.

'Coup'ed up with Trump

October 3, 2019

Well, that went well. We’re talking about President Donald J. Trump’s press conference with the latest hapless foreign leader caught in the crosshairs of his love-hate relationship with the press. Really, it almost doesn’t matter who it is. That it happened to be the president of Finland — land of the properly raked forests — held a certain irony, particularly after Sauli Ninistö turned out to be the sly one, telling Trump to keep America’s “great democracy” going.

‘The things we did last summer’: President Donald J. Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the G7 in Biarritz, France Aug. 25.. Official White House photograph by Shealah Craighead.

Push comes to shove for politics' Bobbsey Twins

September 26, 2019

Well, it’s been a bad time for blonds — LOL, as people say (whoever those people are).

Not to gloat but those of us who are sick onto death of the baloney-swilling strongmen have gotten a bit of our own back this week. And what is particularly sweet is their enemies delivered the coup de grace mob-style: They blindsided them.

A United States Naval Research Laboratory photograph of Hurricane Dorian taken Sept. 2.

The 'D' list -- Hurricane Dorian and the Donald

September 4, 2019

Some leaders rise to the occasion of a crisis. Others sink. And then others add a whole new category of chaos.

For the last two weeks, much of the nation — make that much of the media — has been gripped by a Category 5 hurricane that leveled parts of the Bahamas before churning toward the East Coast of the United States. Hurricane season has not been President Donald J. Trump’s forte, as the Hurricane Maria-Puerto Rico debacle two years ago can attest. That salient point has been underscored in recent days by Dorian, the latest in a series of Cat. 5 storms that are becoming a yearly event.

Mette Frederiksen. The Danish Prime Minister is out of the Trump doghouse — for now. © News Øresund - Johan Wessman.

The universal timeshare on the Trump doghouse

August 24, 2019

Liberal American Jews and Muslims.. Brown border babies. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Oscar-winning actresses and kneeling athletes. And, of course, the old standbys, the Democrats and the media.

Round and round it goes. And where the Catherine wheel of Trump hatred stops, nobody knows. Much has been made — hammered home, really — about President Donald J. Trump’s racism, anti-Semitism and misogyny. But if we fail to consider these under the umbrella of his narcissism, we miss the dangerous point. It’s not so much that he despises people of a certain religion or race, though there are elements of that. It’s that he apparently loves no one really except himself, not even Ivanka. (He’s been undermining her efforts on Capitol Hill to press for further gun control by telling everyone she’s nothing but a liberal Democrat. You know when Ivanka comes in for criticism that we are all in a dark place.)