I must confess to a certain smugness as the debate regarding the removal of Confederate statuary has taken on an aesthetic perspective. For years, I have endured the tacit, passive-aggressive notion from some newspaper colleagues and even bosses that my job as a cultural writer was not as important as those of the political and municipal writers and even the sports reporters. (Indeed, I lost that job partly because it was considered of lesser significance.)
But the arts – somewhat like religion and the family – are the refuge of the desperate and the inconsolable. Unfortunately for the arts, they are a refuge that their seekers often do not fully understand.
Some of my colleagues in my present job as an editor wonder about the artistic value that may be lost in the removal of the Confederate statues. No less an art lover than President Donald J. Trump bemoaned “the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks.”
But are these works beautiful and, more to the point, are they art? ...
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Read MoreIt’s fitting that President Donald J. Trump should address the nation regarding our recommitment to the war in Afghanistan on a day when most of the continental United States saw a total solar eclipse.
Historians would say that Afghanistan has eclipsed all our other wars. Not for nothing is Afghanistan known as “the graveyard of empires.” Certainly, it’s the graveyard of modern empires. The British in the 19th century and early 20th centuries and the Soviets in the 1970s got bogged down in wars there but left without the victor’s laurel wreath. We Americans have been fighting there 17 years, our longest war. ...
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Read MorePresident Donald J. Trump is a huge fan of the past, largely because he doesn’t understand it.
He fails to differentiate between the historical past – which is always with us to enlighten, inspire and, at times, to warn (those who do not remember the past are doomed, etc.) – and the social past of deathless grievances, like Trump’s feud with Rosie O’Donnell, which is deader than Jacob Marley.
We live with the past, not in it, and study its narrative, which is history itself. The study of history provides you with context and context drives perception. The greater, the wider the context, the deeper the perception. ...
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Read MoreI was planning to riff on novelist Jennifer Weiner’s New York Times piece about the body disconnect and the phenomenon she calls “skinny women eating cheeseburgers in magazines” – and I will in a future post.
But events of the past few days make it impossible to put that on the front burner. How can we talk about our ambivalence toward the body when the body politic is being ripped asunder? ...
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Read MoreIt’s clear now that President Donald J. Trump is like the Lord: He giveth and he taketh away.
Just ask the Dow and the Nasdaq.
Trumpet said he was responsible for the Dow at 22,000. If that’s so, he’s going to have to own the 205 point drop today, to say nothing of the 135 point drop in the Nasdaq and the 36 point drop in the S & P.
But hey, for all of you who thought you could coast into September, Trumpet is just looking out for your interests when it comes to fellow narcissist and nutjob Kim Jong-un of North Korean nukes fame. “It’s about time somebody stuck up for the people of this country and the people of other countries,” Trumpet said from the comfort of his Bedminster, N.J. golf club. ...
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Read MoreOne of the many complexities that has come to light in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus that is the Trump White House is the supposed New Yorkification of Washington D.C. The two cities have always had an uneasy relationship ever since Alexander Hamilton, perhaps the ultimate New Yorker, and Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the ultimate non-New Yorker, struck a deal that would make Washington the political capital of the country and New York, the financial one.
Even today, this remains an unusual arrangement but one that has worked for the United States. As Ric Burns notes in his superb “New York: A Documentary Film," ...
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Read MoreSmit-ten.
That was the mutual word. Donnie said it was an “honor” to meet Vladdie. Vladdie, looking out from under shy eyes – or should that be sly eyes? – kept calling Donnie “Mr. President.” It must’ve been like the moment Mark Anthony reunited with Cleopatra on her barge. For so long the meeting had been a foregone conclusion. Now, here it was at last.
They shook hands. They leaned in. The chemistry was described as “warm.” (Try hot.) And when Melania tried to break up the meet to keep her hubby on track, she was – what a surprise – ignored. Oh, Melania, will you become like the embittered Michelle Williams character in “Brokeback Mountain”? Is there a Slovenian word for “triangle”? ...
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