Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) in 2016. Courtesy Office of Liz Cheney.
You have to wonder what Nathaniel Hawthorne would’ve made of ousted House Republican Party Conference chair Liz Cheney. Would she have been standing on the scaffold with Hester Prynne and her out-of-wedlock baby, Pearl, wearing a big scarlet “O” for ousted or a scarlet “B” stabbed with an interlocking “L” for “Big lLie”?
Read MoreJustify streaks home with the Belmont Stakes win and the Triple Crown in 2018. The Bob Baffert-trained beauty would later face a drug-doping charge that was dropped. Photograph by Mike Lizzi.
It’s Triple Crown season, and once again controversy is afoot — or rather, a-hoof.
After the gallant win of little Medina Spirit in the Kentucky Derby, news broke that the horse had tested positive for Betamethasone, a steroid used to treat inflammation but banned on race day. throwing a cloud of suspicion on trainer Bob Baffert. The trainer of TC winners American Pharoah (2015) and Justify (2018) — who was also involved in a banned substance charge that was ultimately dismissed — Baffert has denied the allegations, claiming foul play, sour grapes and “cancel culture” were behind them. (More on “cancel culture” in a bit.) Turns out the anti-inflammatory was in an antifungal ointment that was being used to treat Medina Spirit’s dermatitis. But what Baffert knew and when he knew it remains subject to question.
Read MoreA man leaves flowers at a makeshift memorial for George Floyd on May 27, 2020, two days after he was murdered by then Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Photograph by Lori Shaull.
“A man has a choice. That’s what makes him different from an animal,” Raymond Massey’s Adam tells James Dean’s Cain-like Cal in the 1954 film of John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden.”
But some men choose to act like animals. Derek Chauvin made a choice to murder George Floyd in cold blood. He did it, because he could do it. Power: The English historian Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But he had it backwards. Power doesn’t corrupt people. People corrupt power by the choices they make for selfishness and against responsibility and service.
Read MoreFloral tributes to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who was laid to rest Saturday, April 17, at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, line Buckingham Palace in London.
Having logged more than 22,000 solo engagements for the British monarchy, Prince Philip – who was laid to rest at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle Saturday, April 17 -- knew a thing or two about attending funerals. And so it’s no surprise that his own, which he planned himself, was lovely – simple, straightforward and moving as befitted a no-fuss naval man and our Covid times – with hymns, selections from the “Book of Common Prayer” and 30 masked, socially distanced mourners – led by his widow, Queen Elizabeth II – who could not help but shed the occasional tear.
Read MorePrince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (left), examines building models at the University of Salford in 1967. During a 70-year career as a working royal, he carried out more than 22,000 solo engagements in addition to being what Queen Elizabeth II called her “strength and stay.” Courtesy the University of Salford Press Office.
Among the photographs The New York Times used to commemorate Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh — who died on Friday, April 9, at Windsor Castle two months short of his 100th birthday and will be buried from there Saturday, April 17 — was a 2017 photo in which the natty duke faces the camera smiling amid a sea of red-garbed Canadian soldiers, who are virtually all facing right. It encapsulates Prince Philip, a part of and yet apart from the British monarchy, “the strength and stay” of Queen Elizabeth II (her words) through 73 years of marriage, the longest in British royal history, who served crown and country with a confounding mix of devotion, action, humility, crotchety humor and a patronizing snobbery that critics have called impolitic at best and prejudiced at worst.
Read MoreNancy Kwan on the set of “Flower Drum Song” (1961), in which her China doll character, showgirl Linda Low, sings “I Enjoy Being a Girl.” It’s hard to imagine the musical being revived today.
Pope Francis has blessed civil same-sex unions but says gays can’t be married in the church, because what they’re doing is a sin.
So gay people are good enough for the state but not good enough for the church. Good to know.
Whatever happened to religion’s famous “hate the sin but love the sinner”? That turns out to be an impossible needle to thread. For the sin is apparently inseparable from the sinner. Georgia’s Crapabble First Baptist Church has cut ties with Richard Aaron Long, who killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent., in the Atlanta massage parlor shootings because of what he described as a sexual addiction. (What is it with shooters and three names — Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth?) I make no excuses for this man, who belongs to the long list of the literature of rejection, filled with men, usually young and white, who have a sense of self-aggrandizement and a disproportionate rage at rejection or some other supposed grievance.
But perhaps if religion spent less time equating sexual pleasure with sin and guilt and more time concentrating on actual love for humanity, we would at least eliminate one motivating factor in Long’s hate crimes, for they are truly hate crimes in the deepest sense of the term — a hatred of self that he had to turn on others lest he implode.
Were his crimes, however, also racist?…
Read MoreThen Meghan Markle and Prince Harry attend church at Sandringham on Christmas Day, 2017. Photograph by Mark Jones.
Just how damaging was the interview Oprah Winfrey did with Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, on Sunday, March 7 on CBS? Put Prince Charles’ revelations about him never loving Diana, Princess of Wales, together with Diana’s “there were three in this marriage”, multiply it a gazillion times and you have an idea of the damage quotient not only for the royal family but for the Sussexes as well.
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