Is there any man left in America who hasn’t groped, assaulted or raped some girl/boy/woman?
From Capitol Hill to Hollywood, they’re dropping like proverbial flies. The latest to drop – Democratic Sen. Al Franken, who apologized – awkwardly to say the least – for groping a woman in 2006.
Question: What is the difference between a Democratic assaulter and a Republican? No, it’s not a setup for a joke. ...
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Say who?
Sayfullo Saipov. He now joins the long list of terrorists, mass murderers, assassins and dictators who are part of what I call “the literature of rejection.”
The terrorist who mowed down 20 on a Manhattan bike path, killing eight and injuring 12 on Halloween, is yet another man – it’s virtually always a man – with a disproportionate rage at rejection. ...
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The fog of war – or of “advising and assisting,” as every student of the Vietnam War knows – is such that the truth of what happened isn’t immediately apparent. What is apparent is that Trump handled the situation’s aftermath with less than Alexandrian leadership, first by not commenting on it for more than a week and ultimately by saying he did not “specifically” authorize it. (Dude, you are the president. You are responsible for everything that happens in your administration.)
Then he got involved in a typically Trumpian tone deaf controversy with Sgt. La David Johnson’s widow, in which he consoled her by saying that this was what her husband “signed up for. But I guess it still hurts.” ...
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Among the questions to emerge from the Harvey Weinstein scandal is one that human beings of conscience have been grappling with forever: Is it ethical to support the work of a scoundrel?
At first glance, the answer would appear to be simple: Art transcends biography. You wouldn’t rebuff a child because his father was a murderer, would you? So why hate the brainchild of a Weinstein or a Woody Allen – who, tellingly cautioned about a “witch hunt” against Weinstein – or a Mel Gibson or any other artist/athlete accused of heinous behavior?
But it’s more complex than that, isn’t it? ...
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I once had a movie producer kiss me on the neck.
How’s that for an opening sentence? Pretty good, huh? Got your attention, right?
It was at the end of an interview when, shaking my hand goodbye, he suddenly lurched forward and kissed me on the neck. (It may have been more of a bite than a kiss, but I don’t actually remember and don’t want to overstate what was a pretty bizarre sendoff.)
Afterward, the embarrassed publicist apologized, concerned that I would be writing about this. But I was a young journalist and had, as a woman, been raised to soldier on. So I said, wrote and did nothing about this. And I hadn’t thought about it until Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual harassment of, well, just about every woman on the planet opened the floodgates of ew-ness. ...
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In Anna Ziegler’s new play “The Last Match,” opening in Manhattan Oct. 24, she uses the rivalry between two male tennis players – think an American Roger Federer and an early Novak Djokovic – to tell the story of life at deuce, never advancing without retreating, never retreating without advancing.
Perhaps the reason the world is at deuce is because the people who created it – primarily men – are at deuce. (It’s the score in tennis, at 40-40, from which the player must win two points in order to win the game.)
Think about it: Most of the world’s great creations were made by men (as men like to point out as a way to explain their superiority to women). All but 49 of the 923 Nobel laureates have been men.
And yet – you know there’s always an “and yet” – they have consistently destroyed the worlds they have created. You could say that this is the human condition, but in fact it’s the male condition. ...
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A new development in the continuing saga that is the Trumping of some NFL players taking a knee during the National Anthem to protest police brutality against people of color: Vice President Mike Pence left the Indianapolis Colts-San Francisco 49ers game after several Niners – former teammates of protest initiator and onetime quarterback Colin Kaepernick – took a knee during the Anthem.
"I asked @VP Pence to leave stadium if any players kneeled, disrespecting our country. I am proud of him and @SecondLady Karen," Trump wrote on Twitter.
"I left today's Colts game because @POTUS and I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem," Pence wrote on Twitter.
But he and @POTUS must’ve known that there would be kneeling players, particularly on the Niners – who, along with the rest of California, are to the resistance of @POTUS what Boston was to the American Revolution. ...
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