And now a word form the Land of the Rising Sun and Sanrio’s Hello Kitty.
Dear Nobel Committee-san,
It is with the utmost humility and civility in that decorous but still somehow aloof Asian manner — not to mention the teensiest, weensiest bit of arm-twisting by the White House — that I write to you to nominate President Donald J. Trumpet of the United States of America and Chairman L’il Kim Jong-un of North Korea for the Nobel Peace Prize — the committee’s answer to the Miss Congeniality Award.
Read MoreThe remains of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s palace on Lake Victoria.
PBS has just concluded its series “The Dictator’s Playbook” with an episode on Idi Amin (circa 1923-2003), the murderous buffoon who ruled Uganda from 1971 to ’78. The program might’ve been amusing were it not so chilling — and so prescient.
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Read MoreEnd of a quarterback, birth of an icon, as captured by AP.
Colin Kaepernick’s collusion case against the NFL is now one for the record books, though no numbers have been reported. Such is the way with private settlements. My uncle said he probably got $40 million. I think he got at least twice that. The NFL isn’t merely buying his silence in a suit that he may well have won. They’re saying adios to an activist player.
Read MoreThere are walls and then there are walls. The Great Wall of China at Jinshanling.
Seizing defeat from the jaws of victory, President Donald J. Trump has trumpeted his intent to invoke his emergency powers to build a wall on the southern border even as he plans to sign the bipartisan deal to fund the government and avert a shutdown, because, you know, a shutdown is “a terrible thing,” especially if it adversely affects your ratings, er, polling numbers.
Read MoreJohn Steell’s “Alexander & Bucephalus” (1882-84) in front of Edinburgh’s City Chambers. We could use some of Alexander’s leadership about now. Photograph by Stefan Schäfer, Lich.
Last week was another minefield in which we found ourselves treading carefully.
We begin with the state of Virginia, which seems to be collapsing like a house of cards with revelations of blackface and allegations of sexual assault against the governor and the lieutenant governor respectively. (The state attorney general and some Republicans have also admitted to having done blackface.) I have great respect for Mark Shields and David Brooks on “PBS NewsHour,” but I think they missed the point in saying that Gov. Ralph Northam’s blackface experience is mitigated by his good work. The Buddhist principle of karma holds that what you put out in the universe returns to you. This is different from the vengeful, biblical “What you sow you reap.” It’s merely cause and effect. You do it, you own it, because it will come full circle, regardless of what else you have done.
Read MoreJ.M.W. Turner’s “Shipwreck of the Minotaur” (1810), oil on canvas. Calouste Gulbenkian Museum.
When I was in college, I was invited by some female classmates to join them in posing nude for some Polaroids. Horrified but not wanting to appear uncool, I instead posed a question: “You want to be an architect, a lawyer, a doctor, a biochemist?,” I asked. “Yes, of course," they said. This was the 1970s when sexual liberation and experimentation was in the air along with lofty ambitions for women and the women’s movement. But I saw that those ambitions and that liberation were on collision course and told my classmates that those photos would one day come back to bite them in their bare butts.
Read MoreColin Kaepernick (number 7) is set to throw a pass in Super Bowl XLVIII on Feb. 3, 2013.
“New England Patriots legend Tom Brady will be playing in his record ninth Super Bowl on Sunday, while the Los Angeles Rams’ 24-year-old signal-caller, Jared Goff, will be playing in his first. But no quarterback looms over the NFL like one who has not set foot on an NFL field since the 2016 season — former San Francisco 49er Colin Kaepernick,” Michael A. Fletcher writes on The Undefeated.
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