July 6th, 1535

When they executed Sir Thomas More

for telling the truth, his inquis-

itor, Thomas Cromwell - who would

die from the same axe, five years

later, for wielding it impetuously - 

taunted him about his serene con-

fidence in the welcome of God. The

playwright Robert Bolt has trans-

cribed this in a way we recalled

in the Star Chamber torment of an-

other innocent, in an overbearing

and embittered stampede of lust —

                    He will not refuse someone 

                    who is so blithe to go to Him.

Five years are many lifetimes

in American politics, but every

Senator in that debauch faces 

election in 2 more years or 4.

Every one will answer for his

conduct then, though he thought 

his warfare were accomplished.

Gabriella Demczuk

Christine Blasey Ford

The New York Times©

28 ix 18

Suppose it were Friday clxiii: What's your tipsy

we got guy tipsy

goofy tipsy

mean tipsy an'

even nasty tipsy

Suppose the choice

were yours: that's

what a Senate does.

Committee will come to order

The clubhouse at last is the seat

of its own trial, and this is es-

pecially frightening if one has

structured all of one's rejection

of human rights on denying juris-

diction in the tribunal - our min-

ister Bolton's complaint with an

International Criminal Court, the

Supreme Court nominee du jour's

denial of our law enforcement's 

reach into the White House. Funny

coincidence, that. But the Senate

has never discovered a thing it

ought not do; and now its trial is

opened, in the place where it sits.

Plato did warn, Diotima would en-

ter the Symposium. But who knew?

Angelos Tzortzinis

Acropolis at sunset

The New York Times©

21 ix 18

We remember, of course, the General Assembly

It's where poor old Townsend, of UNIPO,

was expected to render some sort of ad-

dress, in Hitchcock's N by NW. Might've

made it, too, but for a knife toss when

meeting Cary Grant. Oh my. These things

happen, to try our souls. And so it was

that our President, that genital-seizing

prophet of American greatness, remark-

ed on his superiority to any predecessor

ever, and positively brought down the

house in herd farts and lowing moos we

cannot be asked to transcribe, in res-

pect for his indelicate posture. Even

then, there's the bell, as Grace Kelly

breathlessly remarked to Ray Milland, be-

fore that faculty came under duress, in 

Dial M. Do we ever ask ourselves, how we

might otherwise get by, without farce?

Possibly not often enough. Yet, more to

the point, how can one compensate the

UN, for putting our President on-stage

during the Interval, so we might safely

graze amongst our kind, in rustic peace?

Tony Ray-Jones
Glyndebourne
Christie Estate
1967

Shall we protract the Age of Helplessness?

The only thing we can see, really to
give pause to Sarah Saunders' revival
of the Age of Involuntary Servitude 
to Puberty's Disturbances Defense, on
behalf of the wakening boy from Brazil
about to ravish our higher Law, is its
implication of expiring into some self-
control. The price of invoking the an-
cient gold standard of adolescent en-
titlement is its promise of an emanci-
pation all profess to welcome, except
the American President - who exalts it
as Greatness, itself. Yet who could ex-
pect the President, almost elected by
the American People, to deviate from a
principal so defining, in infiltrating
our institutions with cloned vassals?

Thus the hoary Defense, hectic in its
design to distract from the scarcity
of its cover, is only more exhibition.

Tiger Woods is back

Numerous times rebuilt, the great

race meetings at Longchamp return

naturally to mind in heavy polit-

ical weather, having been bombed

in the siege of '70 and foully

besmirched with swastikas in the

early '40s. Manet and Dégas got

there before the Communards, Bon-

nard a generation after; and to

conceive of Longchamp with eyes

not steeped in Impressionism is

less an indecency than a gesture

of inexperience with its meaning.

Something about a sport such as 

this is never vulnerable to lit-

erality's intrusion, mortal as 

its exemplars are, even somewhat 

fickle in their followings. Tiger

Woods is competing in Paris this

week, numerous times rebuilt, in

a frame held together by the same

single breath. What else is on?

Pierre Bonnard

At the Races, Longchamp

Private collection

1894

Further news of our rollicking little goodguy

Mr Ronan Farrow, chronicler ex-
traordinaire of exhibitionism's
grownup years, has traced Brett
to a dorm party at Yale, at an
age of legal if not Republican
adulthood. A surviving, dazed
recipient of our Brett's self-
cherishing offer of his play-
thing in her face, has named
herself to Farrow as its un-
receptive hostess. Her memory
is very clear, of his hoisting
up his trousers after the fact,
which will probably exonerate
him on the grounds of respect-
ing its creases. The pants, we
mean. Small wonder, he would go
on to implore Kenneth Starr to
discover how a President had
dealt with the same challenge:
an entirely sensible preoccu-
pation in a pillar of the Law.

All of which leads one to hope,
when the present unpleasantness 
is past, our Brett will enjoy 
the recompense which is his due.
A good stiff one, on the House.

Hey, Judge, borrow your gag?

Who knew, the Senate would become

such a happening place, all of a

sudden, lunging to sanitize the

life of the Party under a gag or-

der of keeping what goes down in

school, in school. Genies in bot-

tles, that kind of thing. Just as

well, the failed St Paul's School

rapist isn't angling for the fish

story unfolding this week, of the

one that got away. No, we're indul-

ging that imaginary line between a

"No," and a "No" so smothered at

the time, and tormented in its re-

lease, that we can tease about it

to encourage male youth everywhere,

to have their way while they can.

Make it all great again, you know?

This Party is not going to relin-

quish, willingly, its nostalgia

to perpetuate all it can, of what

it so long got away with, only to

fashion an election on just that.

Let it discover a choice, denied.