A scene from “The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead” (British Museum), in which the heart of the deceased is measured against the feather of truth.

The company Trump and others keep

July 12, 2019

So Sir Kim Darroch, British ambassador to the United States, has resigned after his remarks about the Trump Administration’s dysfunction — made in private to his own government — were leaked and President Donald J. Trump proclaimed himself “not a fan.”

Everyone but particularly an ambassador should have the right to express his opinion in privacy without fear of reprisals. But in the age of 24/7 social media and Brexit — of which Darroch was apparently not a fan — it was perhaps inevitable that he should be done in. I guess we’ll have to go back to communicating the old-fashioned way — face to face.

“Not a fan”: Darroch should have those words emblazoned on a T-shirt and wear it proudly. Remember, El Presidente wasn’t a fan of the late Sen. John McCain. So Darroch is in good company.

And The Donald had been a former fan of some who are now in the hot seat, including Jeffrey Epstein, who has been charged in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York with sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York.

Against political correctness (with a caveat)

April 27, 2019

My cousin-hosts served up an intense political discussion along with delicious herb-crusted lamb chops for Easter dinner. As with most American families, mine is made up of Democrats and Republicans, Trumpettes and never-Trumpers. Me, I’m a moderate-independent, although I caucus with the Dems, so to speak.

About the only thing we all agree on is that we’re lifelong Yankee fans. So what did I, they wondered, think of the New York Yankees banning Kate Smith’s rendition of “God Bless America” because she sang a song about “darkies” that Paul Robeson, the great African-American actor-singer, also sang?

Lestat, the rapturous protagonist of Anne Rice’s “The Vampire Chronicles,” has the right attitude toward (unending) life.

Fear itself

March 17, 2019

Three friends, the same reaction: They’re all in a tizzy — bewitched, bothered and bewildered — by Trump world.

One is appalled at the Trump Administration’s restrictive treatment of pregnant undocumented immigrants. Another is angry about President Donald J. Trumpet’s policies and tone in general. And speaking of which, the third is severely stressed by his threats to the American resistance, which preceded the massacre of 50 Muslims — and the injury of just as many — at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand by yet another young man with a disproportionate rage at life’s rejections, one who counted El Presidente as a white power inspiration.

“The Garden of Eden With the Fall of Man” by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder (1615), oil on panel. The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague.

'An otherwise blameless life'

March 10, 2019

So Paul Manafort was given four years for his “decade-long, multimillion-dollar fraud scheme,” which drew outrage from the legal community and beyond.

The remains of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s palace on Lake Victoria.

The demagogue's playbook

February 18, 2019

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.

The National Gallery of Art’s cherry blossom snow globe, which I purchased just days before the government shutdown fully kicked in. It’s inscribed with the words “The end of spring lingers in the cherry blossoms.”

The cherry blossom theory of the shutdown

January 6, 2019

The cherry blossom snow globe arrived last Thursday. Outside it’s the beginnings of what I hope will be a mild winter. But inside its magical sphere, two wands of blossoms flank a petal-strewn footbridge nestled on green earth in an eternal spring, for it can never be winter in the heart as long as there are cherry blossoms in the world or in the imagination.

I like to think of the cherry blossom snow globe as the object equivalent of the last plane out of Saigon. I had purchased it at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Dec. 27 and had it mailed home as I was going to The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts that evening to see “Miss Saigon” and didn’t want to take a chance that it would break there or on the train back.

So I watched the woman at the register take my address and stamp it. I wondered when I might see it again. I figured that mailing the snow globe might be one of the last things the workers there would do and that I would be one of the last visitors before the full effects of the government shutdown could be felt. As it turned out, I was right and, when it did arrive, just five days after I came home, I opened it with both a delicious sense of anticipation and a certain ruefulness.

Home Secretary Theresa May with Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010. It’s her show now. Courtesy UK Home Office.

Saving face while losing themselves?

December 18, 2018

It was no minor metaphor when British Prime Minister Theresa May’s car door stuck as she strove to exit recently to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who waited with characteristic stoicism on the red carpet for yet another go-round in May’s futile attempt to negotiate a better Brexit deal. Brexit has been the ultimate stuck car door for May and the British people, a frustrating rigmarole with no satisfactory conclusion in sight.