Déjà vu all over again: She was brilliant at the 2016 Democratic Convention (seen here), and Michelle Obama was brilliant in support of Joe Biden at the opening of the 2020 Democratic Convention Aug. 17. Photograph by Tim Pierce.
It was a socko night for the Democrats as they opened a presidential convention like no other with a response like no other — cohesive, compassionate, commanding.
Read MoreSen. Kamala Harris, seen here in 2010 in her official portrait as California attorney general, will have to bring all her prosecutorial gifts to bear on the presidential campaign as Joe Biden’s running mate.
So Joe Biden has picked California Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate and the plumbing of why he did so has commenced. Biden picked her because she possesses a prosecutorial mind and temperament — she couldn’t have done the jobs of San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general without them — which enables her to give and take a punch. This ability to serve and volley should also make her formidable in any vice presidential debate.. (See her questioning of now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Attorney General William Barr.)
My uncle, a conservative, likes to point out that a vice president isn’t a prosecutor. That may be, but this one may have to be.
Read MoreContrary to what the sign says, the lockdown didn’t kill this man’s business. Rather, fear and denial of the virus ravaged the American economy.
Given the highly individualistic nature of American society, the coronavirus was always going to be a lethal challenge here. But it didn’t have to be as devastating as it is.
Read MoreMy latest novel, “Seamless Sky,” published by JMS Books in January, will be serialized by the Westchester and Fairfield County Business Journals next week and in WAG magazine, their sister publication, in September.
Challenging times call for creative measures – and so it is that newspapers, purveyors of factual truth, have joined forces with fiction writers, purveyors of psychological truth, in the hope of expanding their readership and providing that readership with an escape from the grim news of the day.
On Sunday, July 12, The New York Times devoted its entire magazine to fiction. And the Boston Globe recently serialized Ben Mezrich’s “The Mechanic,” a novella, the Globe said, “with a strong Boston accent.”
I’m delighted that Dee DelBello — publisher of the Westchester and Fairfield County Business Journals and of WAG magazine, which I edit — has decided to serialize my latest novel, “Seamless Sky,” published in January by JMS Books, in the business journals next week and in WAG in September.
Read MoreRep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seen here at a Bernie Sanders rally in Council Bluffs, Iowa, last year, says that while haters gotta hate, you can still shine on. Amen, sister, amen. Photograph by Matt Johnson.
I was going to do a blog post about the Ibsen-ization of Dr. Anthony Fauci,;how President Donald J. Trump has tried to turn him into Henrik Ibsen’s title character in “An Enemy of the People” for speaking truth to power,; how Trump, jealous that Fauci got to throw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals home opener against the New York Yankees, just had to announce that he, too, would be throwing out the first pitch at the Yanks’ Aug. 14 game against the Boston Red Sox; how fans of teams and individuals who behave contrary to their beliefs are left in a quandary: Do you support your team, as you might your family, no matter what? Or do you stand on principle and part company?
I’ll always love the Yanks, but I cannot for the life of me understand how their former, legendary closer Mariano Rivera — a self-proclaimed Christian and proud Panamanian — can support Trump, whose actions are antithetical to the teachings of Jesus, particularly when it comes to Hispanic immigrants.
As I said, I was going to write about all this, and then Rep. Ted Yoho called colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a “f***ing bitch “and the Repubs went after one of their own, Rep. Liz Cheney, for sticking up for Fauci, and I realized I had to write about that.
Read MoreLin-Manuel Miranda, creator and star of “Hamilton.” Photograph by Steve Jurvetson.
It’s not often that I promote another blog on this one, but recently, my publisher, JMS Books, put out a call to any of its authors who wanted to guest blog on its website. Being an inveterate blogger, I jumped at the chance, and my post is running Tuesday, July 14, Bastille Day. (Vive la France.)
The post is not about France but about how I came to write “The Games Men Play” series, about power, dominance and rivalry, set mainly in the world of sports, although I’ve expanded the series to include earlier novels that have only recently been published. I won’t recount the post here, so you can discover it for yourself at jms-books.com as well as my books,, including my latest work, the short story “The Glass Door,” about love in the time of corona. (It’s a theme that’s haunting me and other writers of late.) It’s due out Aug. 10.
I will, however, discuss a subject here related to that post since many of my books are about gay or bisexual men and that is cultural appropriation.
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Read MoreHarvard Yard in 2005: Fewer students will be attending Harvard University in person this fall, because of the coronavirus, leading to a crisis for those who rely on the school for more than just academic learning.
In Agatha Christie’s much-admired, oft-filmed “Murder on the Orient Express,” her irresistible Belgian detective, the great Hercule Poirot, finds his “little gray cells” stymied by a case in which everyone is a suspect. Everyone has it in for the loathsome victim, a child murderer on the order of the Lindbergh baby kidnapper, the inspiration for Christie’s villain.
I think it fair to say that we have reached the “Murder on the Orient Express” portion of the people versus the Trump Administration, and the denouement is at hand. Each day brings some fresh outrage against a group that won’t be voting for him. (Roger Stone-pardon critics and New Yorkers, anyone?) Recently, the wheel turned to educators and parents whom the president and his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, are trying to bully into getting kids back into the classroom this fall as the virus still rages and no clear plan is in sight.
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