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Eugène Delacroix’s “Medea About to Murder Her Children” (1862), oil painting. Musée du Louvre. The ancient Greek myth — the subject of Luigi Cherubini’s “Medea” at The Metropolitan Opera — has also been misinterpreted, most recently in Maureen Dowd’s column on Vladimir Putin.

Our crisis of critical thinking and leadership

October 6, 2022

In his perceptive eulogy for Queen Elizabeth II, Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury, observed: “People of loving service are rare in any walk of life. Leaders of loving service are still rarer.”

Ain’t that the truth. At the risk of sounding like the hammer always in search of a nail, I must nonetheless note once again that we are in an increasing crisis of leadership, from Vladimir Putin’s bungling attempts to conquer Ukraine, which would be laughable if they weren’t so horrific and dangerous, to the ham-fisted handling of Miami Dolphins’ quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s concussion. (The doctor/consultant who cleared him to play was fired. Really? The team’s front office and ownership should all be fired.

What does it mean to be a leader? it means you are a steward of everything and everyone in your care, a servant of others. It means you take responsibility, even when you are not directly involved in the action. Say what you want about QEII, put she saw herself as a steward, one who remained on the job till her dying day.

For most, however, it’s me, me, me all the time, and it doesn’t help that people don’t really understand this, because they have a limited understanding of culture.

Aaron Judge, seen here at bat for the New York Yankees against the Baltimore Orioles in 2017, has surpassed Roger Maris’ American League single season home run record. *Photograph by* ***Keith Allison.***

The Promethean struggle of Roger Maris

October 4, 2022

Sixty one in ’61. And now 61 years later, 62.

New York Yankees right fielder Aaron Judge has surpassed the American League record of onetime New York Yankees right fielder Roger Maris for most home runs in a single season, which Maris set on Oct. 1, 1961 against Tracy Stallard of the archrival Boston Red Sox. (The Major League Baseball record is held by Barry Bonds, who hit 73 in 2001 amid the steroids era.)

There’s a symmetry in some of the Judge-Maris numbers – Judge wears 99 on his jersey; Maris wore 9 -- but not in their narratives.

Roger Federer at the 2014 Australian Open. Photograph by Peter Myers.

Getting Federer's G.O.A.T.

September 24, 2022

At his Laver Cup in London this weekend — which Team World won over his Team Europe — Roger Federer ended his professional tennis career , a career that has said as much about fans’ perceptions of sports figures as it has about his accomplishments.

King Charles III, then Prince of Wales, delivering the Queen’s Speech to the Houses of Parliament in May of this year. Photograph by Annabel Moeller. Copyright House of Lords.

Questions abound as Charles takes charge

September 16, 2022

Of the many things funerals are for, they are most certainly not for settling scores. So as the people of Great Britain lay Queen Elizabeth II to rest with all the stateliness for which they are famed (6 a.m. Monday, Sept. 19, EDT), this is not the moment to be wondering if the public should turn its back on Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, for their roles in Megxit. (Why compound their limited professionalism with bad manners?) It is not the moment to take on the weighty, complex issue of the monarchy’s role in colonialism. And it’s not the moment to wonder why people are fascinated with the British royal family. (Because they’re part of history and our modern mythology.)

When someone dies, every decade of his or her life become’s contemporary. Here the future Queen Elizabeth II in a 1933 portrait by Philip de Lázló.

Queen of the world -- Elizabeth II (1926-2022)

September 9, 2022

One of the advantages of longevity is that you eventually outrun everything and everyone else – friends, family, critics, even history. And so it is with Queen Elizabeth II, who began her reign as a 25 year old in the blush of postwar promise and ended it as the world’s sovereign and matriarch with her passing Sept. 8 at Balmoral Castle in Scotland at age 96. The death of England’s longest reigning monarch (70 years) begins a period of mourning in Great Britain that will be crowned by her funeral, led by her eldest son and heir, now King Charles III.

The latest novel in my series “The Games Men Play,” a romantic historical thriller built around the opera “Turandot,” is due out from JMS Books Sept. 17.

Riddling the readers with my new book

September 9, 2022

A number of tough deadlines have prevented me recently from blogging and ashamed of it I am, too, as there have been so many juicy storylines on which to comment — the ridiculous ruling on former President Donald J. Trump’s request for a special master, which will undoubtedly be appealed by the Justice Department;

The less than Churchillian new British prime minister, Liz Truss;

The new nonbinary Joan of Arc play, which asks the question, Does it matter that Joan of Arc was a woman? (Of course it does, since it’s one of the reasons she was executed);

And the zigzag rise of Nick Kyrgios, one of a long line of idiosyncratic players (John McEnroe, having another moment, still; Andre Agassi and Novak Djokovic, who should just get the damn jab and be done with it already) in an idiosyncratic sport.

But I want to beg my readers indulgence for a moment as I announce the Sept. 17 publication of my latest novel, “Riddle Me This.”“Riddle Me This” (JMS Books, Sept. 17)….

Where’s “Citizen Kane” director-star Orson Welles when you need him? The entrance gate to Xanadu, uh, Mar a Lago. Photograph by Thomas Wallace Scherzer.

The special master of his domain

August 24, 2022

This summer — like last summer and the one before it — seems to be another case of promise denied. Once again we started with high hopes or at least middling hopes. (Let’s face it: Since Covid, the bar has been set pretty low. And once again, it has not been cleared. We can each point to personal disappointments, which may or may not be of our own making. But as a society, we must consider a failure that stems from our own lack of rationality, imagination and compassion.

One example — the dominant story of the season — will suffice. No sooner did the FBI search former President Donald J. Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago for documents that belong to the National Archives than the Bureau was under attack.