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Simone Biles taking the all-around gold at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. Photograph by Agência Brasil Fotografias. — Simone Biles taking the all-around gold at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. **Photograph by** Agência Brasil Fotografias.

Simone Biles and the crush of media expectations

July 28, 2021

Citing some mental challenges, gymnast Simone Biles withdrew from the team competition and individual all-around at the Tokyo Olympics, cheering her teammates instead as they exhibited grace and grit under pressure to win the team silver as their Russian rivals took the gold.

We can’t know what is going through her mind. She had a tough childhood and was among the gymnasts abused by Dr. Larry Nasser. She said she took herself out of competition so she wouldn’t cost her team a medal. Watching her vault again, it’s clear she did the right thing., despite the naysaying from the usual suspects, including provocateur Piers Morgan. Biles seemed disoriented in space, a dangerous thing to be in a sport in which paralysis and death are real possibilities. Without her, there would be no chance for the team gold. But with her, in that condition, there might’ve been no chance for the podium. So Biles was prudent to walk away for now.

Going for the (tarnished) gold -- our ambivalence to the Olympics

July 25, 2021

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.)

The forever war in the graveyard of modern empires

July 16, 2021

The Americans have left Afghanistan and though President Joe Biden and the public are happy, many of us have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, at 20 years it was the United States’ longest war, and no one wants to fight a forever war. On the other hand, there is a sense of a mission unfulfilled, or perhaps one extended beyond its original purpose and thus unfulfilled.

Diana, Princess of Wales, with Luciano Pavarotti at his 1995 benefit concert for Bosnian children in Modena, Italy. Ian Rank-Broadley’s new sculpture of the princess, commemorating what would’ve been her 60th birthday on July 1, fails to capture he… — Diana, Princess of Wales, with Luciano Pavarotti at his 1995 benefit concert for Bosnian children in Modena, Italy. Ian Rank-Broadley’s new sculpture of the princess, commemorating what would’ve been her 60th birthday on July 1, fails to capture her shapely beauty and sheer goddess-ness.

Diana's true legacy

July 1, 2021

Like summer itself — which seemed to define her — Princess Diana’s season was too brief. She was born 60 years ago today, July 1, when summer, like an open road, stretches out before us, full of promise, and died 36 years later on Aug. 31, when summer’s promise, like its roses, has faded and its leaves have burnished, signaling fall.

Earlier today, she was remembered with a statue in the redesigned Sunken Garden of Kensington Palace, where she lived in London. Contemporary figurative sculpture is difficult to do. There’s something about modern clothes that seems at odds with sculpture’s heroic idealization. Think of all those dreary Soviet bureaucrats. That said, Ian Rank-Broadley’s Diana, Princess of Wales, is a total miss.

Father's Day at Greenwich Polo Club

June 24, 2021

White Birch, Greenwich Polo Club’s home team, came from behind to defeat Palm Beach Equine 11-8 for the East Coast Bronze Cup on a hot but picture-perfect Father’s Day that saw the start of summer. All afternoon, White Birch’s Pablo Llorente Jr. and Palm Beach Equine’s Gringo Colombres mixed it up in what was a seesaw match for most of the chukkers. But in the end White Birch pulled away, anchored by tournament MVP Chris Brant, son of club founder Peter Brant.

Naomi Osaka serving in June 2018. Photograph by Peter Menzel.

No love all in Osaka meeting the press

June 3, 2021

Every once and a while a story comes along that touches us neurotic journalists to our core. The latest chapter in the life of tennis star Naomi Osaka is such a story.

As you by now no doubt know, Osaka — the No. 2-ranked woman in tennis and the highest paid female athlete in the world, one who advocates for racial justice and expresses herself through fashion —was struggling through the clay court season when she hit a roadblock at the French Open in Paris. Osaka decided she would not attend the obligatory press conferences as questions about her poor clay court play were messing with her head. Being a 23-year-old, Osaka did what any 23-year-old would do: She made the announcement on social media. Tournament officials did what tournament officials do-do so well: They fined her.

The Ryanair Boeing 737 that was hijacked on May 23, seen in 2019 in Poland. Photograph by Andrzej Otrębski. — The Ryanair Boeing 737 that was hijacked on May 23, seen in 2019 in Poland. *Photograph by* *Andrzej Otrębski*.

Flying blind: Our peculiar reaction to the Ryanair hijacking

May 27, 2021

Though we should never court tragedy, we know our true selves really only in it. Catastrophe, adversity of any kind, reveals character. So what does the Belarusian hijacking of a Ryanair jet tell us about ourselves?

It tells us what we have known all along in our fractured age, what we have seen with the pandemic, which is that we can’t come together in a crisis, because we can’t think clearly about it.

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