Chinese doubles player Peng Shuai at the 2016 US Open. Her disappearance and then sudden “happy” reappearance after leveling a #MeToo accusation against a former Chinese official has sparked international outrage. Photograph by si.robi
When the history of the early decades of this century is written 100 years from now, it will be recorded as a time when those who had power were challenged by those who did not.
Read MoreAaron Rogers’ #12 Green Bay Packers road jersey on display in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2017..Photograph by Erik Drost
Those returning from little planet Pluto last week — perhaps aboard an Elon Musk rocket — are undoubtedly the only ones in our solar system who are unaware that this has been Aaron Rodgers’ turn in our timeshare that’s the doghouse.
Read MoreDiana, Princess of Wales in Russia in 1995. Photograph by Nick Parfjonov.
In “Spencer” — the third leg in a November Diana trilogy that includes Season Four of “The Crown,” now on DVD, and “Diana: The Musical,” now on Broadway — director Pablo Larrain does for the late Princess of Wales what he did for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in “Jackie” (2016) : He imagines a goddess at a tipping point.
Read MoreWinston Churchill (center) inspects the ruins of Coventry Cathedral on Sept. 28, 1941. The English city of Coventry was bombed many times during World War II, most notably during the Coventry Blitz of Nov. 14 and 15, 1940. Photograph by Capt. Horton. Courtesy the Imperial War Museums.
Recently, I bought a copy of October/November issue of Military History magazine, which featured a cover story on Alexander the Great, who readers of this blog know has been a lifelong passion of mine, along with the ancient Greeks.
I was soon disappointed. His conquest of the Persian Empire in 331 B.C. was written off as pure narcissism. There was no mention of possible motives (the backdrop of the Greco-Persian wars; his father Philip II of Macedon’s dream of conquering Persia; his mother Olympias instilling in him a divine sense of purpose; his tutor Aristotle schooling him in the Homeric idea of arete, or excellence, which often saw its fulfillment in military glory; and finally his own inexplicable pothos, or longing, for the next horizon.)
There was no discussion of Alexander, having conquered Persia, instituting self-rule in the disparate regions of his far-flung empire. The notion that he killed all the men and enslaved the women and children is laughable. Who was going to run things and do the work? He wasn’t importing Greeks and Macedonians to do this.
Finally, there was no sense of his legacy, which includes the dissemination of Hellenistic culture, including Greek, the lingua franca of the empire. Centuries later, Greek translations of the Gospels would enable the spread of Christianity. In a sense, Alexander — who came from a world that knew how to spin stories and identities in words and images — made Jesus’ story more readily available. (Plus how could Alexander have no legacy? More than 2,000 years later there he was on a magazine cover.)
I thought about all this as I read The New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker’s review of Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s “Churchill’s Shadow: The Life and Afterlife of Winston Churchill.” To sum it up: He’s not a fan.
Read MoreThat roar you hear at the Art Institute of Chicago isn’t from Edward Kamey’s pair of lions but from conservatives up in arms over a decision to eliminate the museum’s docents, volunteers who are mostly older, white women. Photograph by Kim Scarborough.
This has not been the best of times for older, white women in the United States. First, there was a not particularly thoughtful New York Times article on self-described despiser of white boomer women Jamie Loftus. Then came word that the Art Institute of Chicago, in an effort to create a diverse staff more reflective of the city in which it’s located, is doing away with its volunteer docents, who are, yes, mostly older, white women.
Instead, a letter sent to the 82 docents noted, the museum would phase in a new program mixing paid educators and volunteers “in a way that allows community members of all income levels to participate, responds to issues of class and income equity, and does not require financial flexibility to participate.”
Let me translate this for you: Museum officials, fearing they would be declared irrelevant, had to find someone else to appear so.
Read MoreAnderson Cooper at the 35th annual luncheon for the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, held in Phoenix, Arizona. He’s among the announced celebrities who won’t be leaving his heirs great wealth. Photograph by Gage Skidmore.
Earlier this evening, a publicist sent me a pitch about a law professor’s take on the trend among the rich and famous, like CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, to leave their heirs with less rather than more — the idea being that children who inherit vast sums of money would be de-incentivized to get off their keisters and work for a living.
Read MoreWinslow Homer’s “Summer Night” (1890), oil on canvas. Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Each summer, I dream of spending part of it by the sea as I did as a child. Never happens. Maybe summer disappoints, because we expect too much of it.
Winter, it is generally agreed, is the harshest season. But summer may be the cruelest. It offers its promises with soft, welcoming arms only to snatch them away.
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