Trump, rape and the demonization of ‘the other’

February 24, 2017

In the Another-Country-Heard-From Department, Sweden was upset by President Donald J. Trump’s remarks at a campaign rally that implied the country had suffered an attack recently related to a refugee/immigration problem. (Gee, Australia, Mexico, Sweden – three countries down and only 193 left to go.)

"We've got to keep our country safe," he said. "You look at what's happening in Germany. You look at what's happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this? Sweden.”

Despite the president’s problems with tenses, he was actually referring to a Fox News report Feb. 17 on an Ami Horowitz documentary that links refugees in Sweden to an increase in violent crimes – a correlation that has been debunked. ...

Trump as metaphor

February 22, 2017

When I interviewed historian David Starkey about his new documentary and book “The Six Wives of Henry VIII” in 2001, I asked him about the downfall of the most bewitching of the wives, Anne Boleyn (No. 2) How did such a smart Rules Girl lose her head?

Starkey’s response was a shrewd one: What’s attractive in a mistress is often annoying in a wife.

I thought of that as I watched President Donald J. Trump back on the stump as if it were 2020. (God, if only it were.) Not that Trump is any Anne Boleyn. If anything, his outsize ego, multiple wives and sybaritic cruelty are much more reminiscent of Henry. But The Donald is an Anne in this regard: They have proved better at the pursuit than the prize. ...

Vladdie and The Donald: A fine bromance

February 13, 2017

As a writer of homoerotic fiction, I consider myself a collector and connoisseur of male/male romances. I began with the ancient Greeks, who practically invented homoerotic relationships – all those youths beloved by Apollo, whose depiction reached an apotheosis in the paintings of neoclassical Paris (see Abigail Solomon-Godeau’s provocative book “Male Trouble”); and the relationships of Alexander the Great with his right-hand man, Hephaestion, and eunuch Bagoas, portrayed so movingly in Mary Renault’s “Fire From Heaven” and “The Persian Boy,” respectively.

Then there’s Marguerite Yourcenar’s “Memoirs of Hadrian,” a model for all aspiring historical fiction writers, which tells the story of the titular Greek-loving Roman emperor and his love for the tragic Greek youth Antinous.

Moving on to our own (mostly) gay-friendly, postfeminist time, there’s Gus Van Sant’s ingenious “My Own Private Idaho,” based on “Henry IV,” and Annie Proulx’s hauntingly spare novella “Brokeback Mountain,” made into an equally worthy film by Ang Lee. ...

By Jove! Trump as disrupter in chief

February 4, 2017

God created the world in seven days, the Bible tells us.

It took President Donald Trump only 14 to destroy it.

“Destroy” may be too strong a word. “Disturb,” “disrupt” are better choices. In one of the greatest games men play, politics, he is the lord of misrule, tweeting and executive-ordering us into a new world that may or may not be brave; terrifying the already traumatized “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and insulting world leaders – with the exception of boy crush Vladimir “Rootin’ Tootin’” Putin – in equal stead.

Australians, refugees, refugees in Australia – is there anyone who has not been blasted by Trumpet? ...

Swinging for (and missing) the fences

January 29, 2017

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” Robert Frost writes in “Mending Wall” – one of two Frost poems, the other being “The Tuft of Flowers,” that addresses the nature of human relationships. “That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, and spills the upper boulders in the sun; and makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”

The poem ends with the neighbor telling the poet famously, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Well, they certainly make resentful ones. This has been a week of walls, literal and metaphoric, courtesy of President Donald J. Trump. There is the actual, proposed wall between Mexico and the United States whose cost would be covered by a tariff on Mexican imports like avocados. (Oh, no, whither Cinco de Mayo?) To say that Mexico is not taking this well is the understatement of 10 lifetimes. El Presidente Enrique Peña Nieto – not exactly the most popular man south of the border – nonetheless got a boost at home after he cancelled his meeting with Trump, though the two have since spoken by phone. ...

‘America First’ – to serve others

January 22, 2017

I was a selfish child. Make that a self-centered child marked by a self-possession that I wore as a kind of armor against difficult parents and, later, other difficult authority figures. When I was 13, I had a teacher who told us students that selfishness was the root of all evil, the vice from which all others emanate. (She herself was a horror who should’ve practiced what she preached.)

But there is a fine line, I understood, between selfishness and self-possession in service of self-preservation. Recently, one of the columnists I edit wrote a piece in which he observed that there’s a reason that airlines ask you to put on your own oxygen mask first in case of an emergency: You cannot help others if you yourself are in harm’s way.

Which brings us to the new era – actually the cyclical era – of America First. ...

Whither the female gaze in the Trump era?

January 15, 2017

Years ago, I had a dream job with Gannett Inc. as senior cultural writer. One of my beats was to cover the big arts stories of the day and so it was that I found myself on one occasion interviewing Richard Cragun the American-born star of the Stuttgart Ballet and one of the finest male dancers of the 20th century.

In those days, Gannett recycled our stories in its many publications, and my Cragun piece found its way into one of the tabloids overseen by a favorite editor who was fond of the Daily News and New York Post. It was with some sheepishness then that I handed the publicist a copy of the publication with the words “Ballet Hunk” in the headlines. I needn’t have worried. He was thrilled.

I covered most of the great “ballet hunks” of the 20th and early-21st centuries ...