The Athena principle: Ivanka and Donald Trump

July 24, 2016

A patron at a restaurant I frequent finds Donald Trump’s relationship with his older daughter, Ivanka, peculiar. He seems to be closer to her than to his wife, Melania, she has said.

Jill Filipovic – a lawyer and journalist who’s the author of the forthcoming “The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness,” offers an explanation: A man wants a nurturer in a wife, who will care for his needs, and an independent-minded, strong woman in a daughter, who, after all, reflects him. I myself saw this with my own father and I’ve seen this with every man I’ve known who had daughters. Whether or not he was a feminist, married or divorced, gay or straight, he always wanted his daughter or daughters to succeed and thus women to have opportunities and pay equal to that of men. ...

‘A world elsewhere,” continued: Ted Cruz and ‘Coriolanus’

July 24, 2016

Much has been made recently about Ted Cruz going Marc Antony – the Roman general, not the singer – on The Donald at the Republican National Convention in a speech in which he congratulated the Trumpster but declined to endorse him. This sent some political and literary experts alike scurrying to Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” in which Antony – a Caesar ally who is waylaid by the conspirators on the day of Caesar’s assassination – turns the tables on the assassins in his famous “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” eulogy.

“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him,” he says, but praise him he does, however subtly, sealing the murderers’ fates.

The analogy here is to Cruz’s call to “vote your conscience,” thereby undermining Trump’s bid for party unity. ...

Alex and Athena take Manhattan

July 20, 2016

In WAG’s June “Celebrating the Globe” issue, I wrote about my passion – OK, some would say my obsession – with all things ancient Greek, particularly Alexander the Great, the Greco-Macedonian king whose conquest of the Persian Empire in 331 B.C. when he was in his mid-20s would lead to the dissemination of Greek culture in the East, underscoring a cultural cross-pollination and political tension that are still with us today.

Recently, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan explored these themes in its blockbuster exhibit “Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World,” which I also wrote about in our June issue and which featured a kind of greatest hits of the Hellenistic (post-classical Greek) world. ...

Brexit: C’est moi?

July 5, 2016

Another day, another Brexit drama, another example – or two or three – of political cupidity and stupidity.

By now, Brexit buffs know that BoJo – alias Boris Johnson, the Brit Donald Trump, how I love how Maureen Dowd describes them maliciously as “prolific authors” – is out, having been stabbed in the back by erstwhile supporter Michael Gove, who decided he wanted to be a king rather than a kingmaker and thus run for prime minister himself.

Personally, I think Gove is barking up the wrong bamboo and that Home Secretary Theresa May is going to be the next PM. ...

Crouching tiger, hidden dinosaur

June 18, 2016

There’s a lot of sports stuff we could talk about this week – including Andy Murray reuniting with former coach Ivan Lendl in an attempt to stop Novak Djokovic’s bid for the Grand/Golden Slam. (Nole fan though I am, I’m all for the “It’s the eye of the tiger,; it’s the dream of the fight, rising up to the challenge of a rival” attitude Murray has adopted. Nothing worthwhile comes easily. There’s no point in lying down for an opponent. And no champ worthy of the name would want a competitor to roll over. I think Nole knows the Grand/Golden Slam will mean nothing if he doesn’t earn it.

But there are two ways to think about sports. Like the arts, they can take us outside ourselves. And there are moments when they simply pale in the wake of tragic events. ...

In memoriam: Muhammad Ali (1942 -2016)

June 5, 2016

Kings and presidents die, and nobody cares, Muhammad Ali once said. But Joe Louis died, and everybody cried.

Are they crying now for Muhammad Ali, who died Friday in Scottsdale, Ariz. of complications from Parkinson’s disease? No doubt.

Boxers are perhaps the most poignant of athletes, for in a sense, they absorb the blows for the rest of us. Boxing, the novelist Joyce Carol Oates observed in her nonfiction work, “On Boxing,” is “America’s tragic theater.” ...

Of Stephen Curry and Stephen Hawking: Sports and destiny

May 30, 2016

There are few more intriguing themes in journalism and literature than that of the brilliant loser – the superb racer who for a variety of reasons fails to meet expectations, be it runners Zola Budd and Mary Decker, speed skater Dan Jansen or Thoroughbreds Spectacular Bid, California Chrome and, most recently, Nyquist; the juggernaut so dominant in the regular season and so vulnerable in the playoffs (the Stephen Curry-led Golden State Warriors battling the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA playoffs); and, most heartbreaking of all, the “perfect” performer who finds that perfection elusive when needed most (Serena Williams against Roberta Vinci in the semifinals of the US Open last year; Novak Djokovic against Stan Wawrinka in the finals of the French Open last year; and, my favorite ...