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 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 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 MoreNew York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo, far left, meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden in the White House on Feb. 12. Photograph by Adam Schultz/White House.
Time is indeed another country. Last year, New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo was a hero of the pandemic, his daily Covid briefings compared to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats for their calming humanity.
This year, Cuomo — who announced his resignation today — is another villain of #MeToo, accused in state Attorney General Letitia James’ report of sexually harassing and assaulting 11 women and in other circles of berating, bullying and brutalizing male and female employees alike.
Read MoreThe new Japan National Stadium — site of the opening ceremony for the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics and many events inside as well as protests outside. © Arne Müseler
Well, the 2020 Summer Olympics have finally arrived in Tokyo. Let the naysaying games begin.
Once again we’ve heard about the tyranny of the International Olympics Committee, which is more interested in maintaining its power and money than in the athletes it purports to represent; nations trying to medal in the game of under-the-table bribery in a bid for host city status; boycotts by politicians and other world leaders, including South Korean President Moon Jae-in, miffed by a remark made by a Japanese diplomat; and the usual weird Olympic village stuff, like the recyclable, cardboard beds that were thought to deter any extracurricular nooky by the athletes. (As if anything could deter people from having sex, as a world population of 7.7 billion can attest.)
Read MoreThe Huskies, the University of Connecticut’s winning women’s basketball team with President Barack Obama in 2013. Courtesy whitehouse.gov.
Self-professed feminist that I am, I must confess that I do not follow women’s sports.
I don’t know why. I support Title IX, which equalized sports opportunities in schools, the fruits of which have included higher medal counts for the United States at the Olympics, thanks to golden performances by our female athletes. I’m all for any civil rights initiative and am absolutely sick with worry about the Georgia Legislature’s most recent effort to restrict voting rights, especially for Black voters.
Still, I prefer to watch men….
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?…
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