My novel “The Penalty for Holding” will be reissued by JMS Books Sept. 25.

A new chapter in 'The Games Men Play' series

September 11, 2019

They say when one door shuts another opens. Over the summer, I was saddened to hear that Less Than Three Press, the publisher of my football novel “The Penalty for Holding,” had folded and, for a while, I thought that was the end of the book’s publishing life. So you can imagine my joy that the work – about a gay, biracial quarterback’s search for identity in the NFL – will be reissued by JMS Books Sept. 25. And you can imagine my further delight in hearing that JMS has agreed to publish my new psychological thriller “Burying the Dead” – about a rising Russian tennis star whose career masks his real “day job,” political assassin – Oct. 30.

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President Donald J. Trump receiving an update on the path of Hurricane Dorian from Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan Aug. 29. The map was later altered with a sharpie to show it affecting Alabama. Photograph by Shealah Craighead/… — President Donald J. Trump receiving an update on the path of Hurricane Dorian from Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan Aug. 29. The map was later altered with a sharpie to show it affecting Alabama. Photograph by Shealah Craighead/White House.

Hurricane Donald hits Alabama

September 8, 2019

It’s been two weeks of hurricanes in our corner of the world — Hurricane Dorian, which devastated parts of the Bahamas and rocked the Carolinas; and Hurricane Donald, which threatened to destabilize Alabama.

A United States Naval Research Laboratory photograph of Hurricane Dorian taken Sept. 2.

The 'D' list -- Hurricane Dorian and the Donald

September 4, 2019

Some leaders rise to the occasion of a crisis. Others sink. And then others add a whole new category of chaos.

For the last two weeks, much of the nation — make that much of the media — has been gripped by a Category 5 hurricane that leveled parts of the Bahamas before churning toward the East Coast of the United States. Hurricane season has not been President Donald J. Trump’s forte, as the Hurricane Maria-Puerto Rico debacle two years ago can attest. That salient point has been underscored in recent days by Dorian, the latest in a series of Cat. 5 storms that are becoming a yearly event.

Irina Belotelkin’s oil portrait of Mikhail Baryshnikov, one of the greatest male dancers of the last half a century.

Faux pas de deux -- Lara Spencer's cultural ignorance

August 28, 2019

The contretemps over “Good Morning America” co-anchor Lara Spencer mocking Prince George for taking ballet lessons is both a tempest in a teapot and the latest salvo in the culture wars that began with the demonization of Western civilization in the 1960s by liberals who could not separate it from its imperialistic, colonial roots and continued with the demonization of the arts in the 1970s and ’80s by conservatives who decried the arts falsely as a louche tax drain.

“We’ll see how long that lasts,” Spencer retorted to the news that the young prince is taking ballet lessons, with his father Prince William’s enthusiastic approval. It was the flippant, stupid remark of someone with no cultural background (remember her short-lived stint on PBS’ “Antiques Roadshow”?) trying to be witty or at least cool, and it was met with swift condemnation, a swift apology and a redemptive moment played out against the backdrop of 300 male dancers in Manhattan’s Times Square.

And that would be the end of it, except that, as one person put it, you can’t unring a bell, particularly in a divisive time in which every statement seems to be a clarion call to partisanship. Perhaps that’s unfair. We all make mistakes. We’re all more than our worst days. Yet Spencer’s ridicule cannot be undone, particularly for those who have been mercilessly bullied or marginalized for their love of the arts.

Greenland — so lovely this time of year.

How Green(land) was his valley

August 18, 2019

Imagine you are Greenland. You are a semiautonomous nation, part of Denmark, doing your Greenland thing with your clusters of colorful houses and glaciers and hot springs when suddenly you find yourself in the midst of a geopolitical controversy courtesy of President Donald J. Trump, who, in the words of one waggish poster on The Hill, is now up to the Louisiana Purchase in the manual on how to be el presidente.

Perhaps the president was thinking of Thomas Jefferson’s 1803 purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France, which doubled the United States, or the Alaska purchase of 1867 or President Harry Truman’s overture to buy Greenland for $100 million in gold in 1946 — yeah, I’m sure he was thinking of all of this — when he floated the idea of buying Greenland from Denmark.

Rembrandt’s “Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer” (1653, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art), is actually three portraits — Aristotle, Homer and, dangling from Aristotle’s gold chain, an image of his most famous student, Alexander the… — Rembrandt’s “Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer” (1653, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art), is actually three portraits — Aristotle, Homer and, dangling from Aristotle’s gold chain, an image of his most famous student, Alexander the Great.

Jeffrey Epstein and the virtuous life

August 14, 2019

I’m of two minds about Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide, which is something I never thought I would say. On the one hand, he was portrayed as pond scum, his alleged victims will now never have to worry about recriminations or retribution and the taxpayers don’t have to support him for the rest of his life in prison — a point my uncle always makes in defense of the death penalty — which is surely where Epstein was headed.

But leave aside the vast right- and left-wing conspiracy theories about the rich and powerful who may have offed him, the federal investigations into whether or not Metropolitan Correctional Center officials turned a blind eye to his suicidal mindset — it appears two correctional officers may have lied about checking on him — and consider instead whether or not we should’ve extended to Epstein the dignity he allegedly denied to his underage victims.

On leadership: Trump, the shootings and the stock market

August 7, 2019

So, shortly before 10 a.m. last Sunday, I boarded a plane for New York from Florida, and shortly after 10 a.m., the pilot informed us that one of the engines was leaking, which was “a blessing in disguise,” he said, because there was also a more problematic electrical malfunction outside the cockpit that wasn’t discovered until the check of the plane right before takeoff.