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A recent protest against the Beijing Winter Games by Tibetan independence groups in New Delhi after India announced it would join the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia in a diplomatic boycott of the Games. Photograph by Rizhwickh.

The game within the Games

February 5, 2022

Like most people, I’m not thrilled to be proven wrong. But here is one instance in which I’m glad: I said in my previous post that I didn’t think the Beijing Winter Games would withstand an actual geopolitical analysis of the host country, China. But I was wrong. NBC tackled the human rights abuse issues on Feb. 3 and Feb. 4, the day of the opening ceremonies.

Beijing National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, site of the Beijing Winter Olympics’ opening and closing ceremonies, Feb. 4 and 20 respectively.. Photograph by Peter23.

To watch or not to watch the Beijing Games

February 2, 2022

The Beijing Winter Games officially launch Friday, Feb. 4, with the opening ceremonies airing on NBC, and for many of us it will be something of a guilty pleasure.

Climate change. Human rights abuses. Restrictions on freedom of expression. Covid outbreaks. Critics charge that the Chinese do not have a great track record here and that a full boycott, such as the one the U.S. instituted in 1980 against the Moscow Summer Games when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, would’ve hit them in their prestige and their wallet.

On Jan. 7, 2021, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana posted this picture with these words: “Took these pictures of the damage caused by insurrectionists who stormed our nation’s Capitol yesterday. The physical signs of this siege will only be temporary, and the People’s House still stands. God Bless America.” A year later, many of his fellow Republicans are spinning the event in a different way.

Jan. 6, Covid and the year of the false narrative

January 5, 2022

New year, same old crap. Tomorrow marks the Feast of the Epiphany or Three Kings — otherwise known as the Twelfth Day of Christmas or Twelfth Night — a time that should be one of revelry as the Christmas season reaches its climax. Instead it’s also the first anniversary of the insurrection of the Capitol, which from the get-go has been recast as a tourist excursion run amok, a peaceful protest infiltrated by Antifa and bungled by Capitol Police, a riot exploited by Democrats — anything and everything but what it was, which was an assault on the Capitol and our democracy by Trump supporters who bought into yet another fiction, that he had been robbed of victory in his bid for re-election.

Thomas Savage’s novel “The Power of the Dog,” now a major motion picture, asks us where real power lies — in brute force or the brains to overcome it?

'The Power of the Dog': the limited power of an American archetype

December 12, 2021

Like John Ford’s “The Searchers,” the Kirk Douglas movie “Lonely Are the Brave, “Larry McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove,” Jim Harrison’s :Legends of the Fall” and Cormac McCarthy’s “The Crossing,” Thomas Savage’s novel “The Power of the Dog” — now an acclaimed film starring Benedict Cumberbatch — centers on the American archetype of the solitary, unvarnished cowboy, the outsider who remains true to his wild nature even as civilization encroaches upon and eclipses him.

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

Challenging the alphas: The cases of Kyle Rittenhouse, Peng Shuai and Ahmaud Arbery

December 3, 2021

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.

Mister Rodgers' Covid neighborhood

November 15, 2021

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.

Diana, Princess of Wales in Russia in 1995. Photograph by Nick Parfjonov.

Diana and the body politic -- 'Spencer'

November 9, 2021

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.

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