Quote of the Day (N.C. Wyeth, on ‘Practical’ and ‘Artistic’ Ideals)

“Practical ideals and artistic ideals are as foreign to each other as black is to white. They are of equal value (in their proper places) in their relations to life and living. But if a boy is naturally gifted with the ‘artistic ideal,’ be it in either art, music or writing, he should be guided into it, placed into its atmosphere unhampered by too much practicality; the latter will come from necessity."—American illustrator and painter N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), letter to his father, Andrew Newell Wyeth II, July 30, 1906, in The Wyeths: Letters of N.C. Wyeth, 1901-1945, Second Edition, edited by Betsy James Wyeth (2008)

Wyeth, the patriarch of a great family of painters, knew all too well the tug between practical and artistic ideals. As I discussed in this prior post about his death, he was afflicted towards the end of his life with “melancholy and self-doubt over an inability to be taken seriously as a producer of fine paintings rather than of popular commercial art”—the illustrations he created for classics by the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson, James Fenimore Cooper, and Jules Verne for which he is still best known.

In some way, many artists, writers, and musicians who’ve achieved popularity have struggled with the same aspiration for higher achievement that Wyeth did.

(The image accompanying this post is a self-portrait of Wyeth.)

Quote of the Day (Lawyer Allen Grubman, on the Best Results of a Negotiation)

“When you walk away from negotiation, both sides should feel the same way—happy, but also a little sad that they didn't get everything they wanted. That's a success. If you walk away delighted that you got everything, the guy who got screwed will be waiting for the opportunity to get you back. Getting everything you want is the beginning and end of the relationship.”—American celebrity entertainment lawyer Allen Grubman quoted by Holly Peterson, “Earn Your Luck: Allen Grubman,” WSJ. Magazine, Spring Women’s Fashion Issue 2026

This observation holds as true in high-level diplomacy as in business contracts or divorces. There’s at least one public figure I can think of (and I’m sure you can, too) who’s familiar with all three situations. These days, let’s hope he’s taken this advice to heart.

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Beverly Hillbillies,’ on ‘The Saddest-Lookin' Horse’)

[Granny and Jed are looking at a sheik's royal camel.]

Granny [played by Irene Ryan]: “Ain't that the saddest-lookin' horse you ever seen?”

Jed Clampett [played by Irene Ryan]: “Pitiful, just pitiful.”— The Beverly Hillbillies, Season 4, Episode 3, “The Sheik,” original air date Sept. 29, 1965, teleplay by Paul Henning and Mark Tuttle, directed by Joseph Depew

Spiritual Quote of the Day (First Letter of St. Peter, on the Need to ‘Rid Yourselves of All Malice’)

“Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.”—1 Peter 2: 1-3 (New International Version)

In the past week, the man currently occupying the highest office in our land participated in a marathon Bible reading session. This was rather surprising news to those of us not previously aware that he read much from the Good Book, or indeed from any book.

The other eye-opener happened to be the verses he read, from the seventh chapter of 2 Chronicles: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

Oh, I know why he read this passage. It’s that word “heal.” He regards himself as a doctor ministering to the nation, you see!

Well, when I was in a bank yesterday morning, my teller wore a sweater with a number referring to this epistle from St. Peter. I was going to cite it, until I saw the first couple of verses from the chapter, which I felt might be infinitely more instructive for our President.

The image accompanying this post is from a painting of the apostle by Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640).

Theater Review: The Musical ‘Ragtime,’ at Lincoln Center

The musical Ragtime has been playing at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater since October (with its engagement there extended through August 2), but I finally got around to seeing it last week. 

Now in its third Broadway run since it premiered in 1997, it is not a musical comedy (the humor relieves the overall tone of tragedy) so much as something quite different: a musical protest epic.

When the E. L. Doctorow novel was published in 1975, its unusual premise—real-life characters interacting with each other and with fictional ones, in ways they were never recorded to have done—brought acclaim as well as debate about its fidelity to history.

These days, whatever stir it creates comes from our current moment: a national atmosphere that takes its cues from a President spewing inflammatory anti-minority rhetoric and policies.

In moving from its prior acclaimed "Encores" concert, the production, under director Lear deBessonet and set designer David Korins, has taken full advantage of its greater resources. A sprawling, multicultural group of characters, whose fates are spelled out over nearly three hours, is matched by startling stage effects, including:

*A trap door that yields the entire cast rising for the opening number, “Prologue: Ragtime”;

*Harry Houdini dropping down to the stage from a fly space;

*A steamship carrying a New Rochelle patriarch on one of Robert Peary’s polar expeditions, while simultaneously the Jewish immigrant Tateh arrives in a “rag ship”; and,

*Other Jewish immigrants walking in a circle around the stage turntable.

Surprisingly, the score by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens includes without concentrating on the musical genre of the title, while also mixing elements of Harlem jazz, gospel, Jewish klezmer/folk music, Sousa-style marches, even impassioned operatic ballads.

All of this, along with the early 20^th-century costuming, might encourage the unwary to think they will be seeing a piece of nostalgic Americana—except that, as we find in following the fortunes of the three families in pursuit of the American Dream in this pageant, the good ol’ days were marked by media sensationalism, racial divisions, and violence.

Arriving penniless on the Lower East Side, desperate to keep his young daughter from want, Tateh uses a moving picture book he creates as a foothold into the fledgling silent film era, restyling himself as Baron Ashkenazy. In New Rochelle, an African-American baby boy left on their doorstep rocks the once stable relationship between Father and Mother. The child’s biological father, aspiring African-American musician Coalhouse Walker Jr., is maddened into domestic terrorism when his attempt to seek redress for the destruction of his new car is repeatedly frustrated by a white establishment that is at best indifferent and at worst hostile.

The soundtrack to the musical traces these characters’ transformation and, sometimes, dislocation: 

*Ben Levi Ross expertly voices the pivot by Mother’s Younger Brother from purposelessness to committed radicalism in "The Night That [Emma] Goldman Spoke at Union Square." 

*Tateh (played by Brandon Uranowitz) segues from protective father in “Gliding” to early motion-picture impresario in “Buffalo Nickel Photoplay, Inc.” 

*The exquisite mezzo-soprano Caissie Levy delineates Mother’s progression from dutiful wife (“Goodbye My Love”) to outright questioning of her society and marriage (“Back to Before”), while 

*Colin Donnell makes plain Father’s rigidity and unease with changing times and marginalized people with “New Music.”

But the greatest alteration of any character—and the steepest vocal demands made on any of the talented cast—comes in the form of Coalhouse.

Joshua Henry, previously Tony-nominated for Carousel, makes him first a powerhouse of optimism and pride in his work as a pianist (“Wheels of a Dream”) that dramatically turns into all-consuming rage (“Coalhouse's Soliloquy”) at a Progressive Era America oblivious to the grinding daily humiliations inflicted on African-Americans. And his baritone rings with righteous power in the musical’s finale, the protest song “Make Them Hear You.”

I came to the musical partly because my curiosity had been aroused by watching the 1981 film adaptation directed by Milos Forman.

I was surprised, then, by the greater presence onstage of anarchist agitator Emma Goldman and the total disappearance of police commissioner Rhinelander Waldo (played onscreen by James Cagney), whose function in the plot is assigned to DA Charles Whitman.

But Terrence McNally, author of the musical’s “book” (non-musical elements), was in both cases sticking closer to the novel.

Too bad that he and the other creators of the musical didn’t add nuance to another element of the book that they carried over: its stereotypical treatment of Irish-Americans. 

Unlike the musical’s white Protestants, Jewish immigrants, and African-American families, they are depicted as holders of service jobs—and almost singularly ignorant, resentful, and bigoted in a country where such personality traits crossed ethnic, sectional, and sectarian lines.

Mother upbraids her servant Kathleen for not moving faster to help the baby left outside, like Scarlett O’Hara bossing around Prissy in Gone With the Wind. And, lest we be in any doubt about the ethnicity of the cretins who destroy Coalhouse’s beautiful car, not only is their leader named Willie Conklin but they operate out of the “Emerald Isle Firehouse.”

In the last decade, New York’s theater community has made a laudable effort to foster inclusiveness and avoid offending particular groups. With a couple of short text edits, the Vivian Beaumont could have done so again in this case. The fact that it didn’t doesn’t speak well of their judgment.

The practice of “revisal” has arisen in recent years to clean up older, worthy musicals by removing outdated or stereotypical elements. Future companies that mount Ragtime should consider doing so to burnish an already fine musical.

Quote of the Day (Elizabeth Barrett Browning, on What It Takes ‘To Move the Masses’)

“I hold you will not compass your poor ends
Of barley-feeding and material ease,
Without a poet's individualism
To work your universal. It takes a soul,
To move a body: it takes a high-souled man,
To move the masses ... even to a cleaner stye:
It takes the ideal, to blow a hair's breadth off
The dust of the actual.–ah, your Fouriers failed,
Because not poets enough to understand
That life develops from within.”— English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), “Aurora Leigh” (1856)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Seinfeld,’ As George Doesn’t Take Well to a Breakup)

[George’s girlfriend Gwen announces she’s breaking up with him. George suspects it’s because she saw him on TV pigging out on a hot-fudge sundae at a tennis game.]

Gwen [played by Linda Kash] [disputing his reasoning]: “It's not you. It's me.”

George Costanza [played by Jason Alexander]: “You're giving me the ‘it's not you, it’s me’ routine? I invented ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ Nobody tells me it’s them, not me. If it’s anybody, it’s me.”

Gwen [fast tiring of this]: “All right, George, it's you.”

George: “You're damn right it's me!”—Seinfeld, Season 5, Episode 6, "The Lip Reader,” original air date Oct. 28, 1993, teleplay by Carol Leifer, directed by Tom Cherones

 

Quote of the Day (Peter James, With Advice for Beginning Authors)

“The two best pieces of advice I can give are: Firstly, read, read, read the biggest-selling books in the genre you want to write, and deconstruct them—literally dissect them—to analyze what made then work, what kept you hooked, what made you want to follow the characters. Writing is a craft, at one level—if you were going to be a doctor, as a medical student you would be given a cadaver to dissect, to learn how it all worked. If you wanted to be a car mechanic, you would take apart a car and its engine to see how they work. The second piece of advice is: love your characters—even the bad guys. That was terrific advice I was once given. If you think back on many of the most enduring villains in literature, they have something about them that makes you them. Frankenstein’s monster, telling the doctor that he didn’t want to exist—the doctor created him! Dracula: a monster, but charismatic and charming. Hannibal Lecter—a monster, but we like him, so we engage and, in a strange way, care for him.”—Mystery novelist Peter James, quoted by Andrew J. Gulli, “Interview: Peter James,” The Strand Magazine, Issue XXXVI (2025)

Photo of the Day: Saddle River County Park, Fair Lawn NJ

I took the image accompanying this post yesterday while soaking in the sun. 

Though I entered Saddle River County Park from Fair Lawn, that’s not the only suburb encompassed by its 577 acres. It also runs through five other Bergen County towns: Glen Rock, Paramus, Ridgewood, Rochelle Park, and Saddle Brook.

I can never get enough of bodies of water, and though the crisp air may have kept more people from venturing outside, I was happy to take the path around this pond without bumping into crowds.

Quote of the Day (William Shakespeare, on a Fearful People ‘Possessed With Rumors’)

“But as I traveled hither through the land,
I find the people strangely fantasied,
Possessed with rumors, full of idle dreams,
Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear.” —English playwright-poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616), King John (1594-6), Act 4, Scene 3 

William Shakespeare died on this day in 1616 at age 52, but his influence reverberates to this day.

Following decades of Tudor authoritarianism, Shakespeare knew that it was safer to project his insights into distant times (King John’s death predated the playwright’s by four centuries) and even distant lands (in the case of The Tempest, a small, remote island in the Mediterranean).

His history play King John is one of his thornier and less performed works, but such was The Bard’s genius that even in this passage from the play, he served as a profound analyst of how corruption and tyranny at the highest government levels lead inevitably to rampant conspiracy theories and contagious fear.

Quote of the Day (Langston Hughes, on the ‘Little Sleep Song’ of April Rain)

“The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.”—African-American poet, librettist, translator, and fiction writer Langston Hughes (1901-1967), “April Rain Song,” originally published in 1921, reprinted in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel (1994)
 
I had a somewhat different reaction to overnight rain than Langston Hughes did: I awoke to hear its soft patter outside my window this morning, rather than falling asleep to it.
 
But I recalled that I had just heard yesterday about this poem. It’s a lovely set of verses (only five more lines than you see here) and easy to find on the Internet. I urge anyone who’s never encountered it to look it up.

Quote of the Day (Bernard Holland, on Musical Echoes)

“Creating music indoors is like throwing a number of balls around a four-sided handball court and waiting for them to come back to you. If the balls are of different sizes and thrown at different speeds, your ears, so to speak, will have their hands full.”—American music critic Bernard Holland, “How's That Again? An Echoing Refrain,” The New York Times, Dec. 20, 2025

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Stranger Than Paradise,’ As A Hungarian Teen Learns About ‘The Way We Eat in America’)

Willie [played by John Lurie]: “You're sure you don't want a TV dinner?”

Eva [played by Eszter Balint]: “Yes. I'm not hungry. Why is it called ‘TV dinner’?”

Willie: “Um... You're supposed to eat it while you watch TV. Television.”

Eva: “I know what a TV is. Where does that meat come from?”:

Willie: “What do you mean?”

Eva: “What does that meat come from?”

Willie: “I guess it comes from a cow.”

Eva: “From a cow? It doesn't even look like meat.”

Willie: “Eva, stop bugging me, will you? You know, this is the way we eat in America. I got my meat, I got my potatoes, I got my vegetables, I got my dessert, and I don't even have to wash the dishes.”— Stranger Than Paradise (1984), screenplay by Jim Jarmusch and John Lurie, directed by Jim Jarmusch

Quote of the Day (W.H. Auden, on ‘The Situation of Our Time’)

“The situation of our time
Surrounds us like a baffling crime.
There lies the body half-undressed,
We all had reason to detest,
And all are suspects and involved
Until the mystery is solved
And under lock and key the cause
That makes a nonsense of our laws.”— British-American poet, playwright, and essayist W.H. Auden (1907-1973), “New Year Letter (January 1, 1940),” from Collected Poems, edited by Edward Mendelson (1976)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Pope Leo XIV, Warning Against ‘Other Securities’)

“Even today, there are many settings in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent.  Settings where other securities are preferred, like technology, money, success, power, or pleasure."—Pope Leo XIV, in his first Mass as pontiff, May 9, 2025, quoted by Deborah Castellano Lubov, “Pope Leo XIV to Cardinals: 'We Are to Bear Witness to Our Joyful Faith in Christ,'” Vatican News, May 9, 2025

Photo of the Day: Swings at Lincoln Center

This past Wednesday, heading over to a matinee event at Lincoln Center, I was surprised to see this set of bright-red swings across the plaza. I didn’t recall ever seeing it before. Indeed, it was only just installed and is temporary.

"Mi Casa, Your Casa 2.0" is an interactive artwork, a series of open, house-shaped frames, each roughly 8 feet wide and nearly 10 feet tall. Designed by Mexico-based studio Esrawe + Cadena, it’s open to the public as part of Lincoln Center’s Big Umbrella Festival.

The piece only lasts as long as the festival, through April 26. On the warm, sunlit afternoon when I took this photo, many visitors were taking advantage of the installation while they still could at this New York entertainment and cultural mecca.

Quote of the Day (Norman Mailer, Telling JFK How He Erred at the Bay of Pigs)

“Wasn't there anyone around to give you the lecture on Cuba? Don't you sense the enormity of your mistake – you invade a country without understanding its music. You listen to intelligence agents and fail to interpret the style of the prose in which they submit their reports. You, with your shrewd sense of character, neglect to see that none of your boys and men can tell you the truth about Cuba because it would flagellate them too psychically to consider the existential (that is, indescribable) quality of what they report. So they turn nuances into facts, and lose other nuances, and mangle facts into falsities. It keeps you perhaps from recognizing what all the world knows, that we have driven Cuba inch by inch into alliance with the Soviet, as deliberately and insanely as a man setting out to cuckold himself.”— Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and essayist Norman Mailer (1923-2007), “An Open Letter to John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Fidel Castro,” originally published in The Village Voice, Apr.27, 1961, reprinted in Collected Essays of the1960s (2018)

Sixty-five years ago this week, a CIA-backed brigade of exiles attempted to take back their country from Fidel Castro, landing at the Bay of Pigs on the southwestern coast of Cuba. Within two days, the invaders were overwhelmed by Castro’s army.

JFK’s authorization of the invasion (concocted in the waning days of White House predecessor Dwight Eisenhower) led Norman Mailer to reevaluate his prior appreciation for the young President as a candidate the year before in the Esquire essay “Superman Comes to the Supermarket”:

“I think it is not impossible he will become a great President, but I also think he could lead us into dictatorship. It is not only up to him, but to many of us, whether he becomes a good leader or a bad one. The question is whether he has a mind deep enough to comprehend the size of the disaster he has inherited here.”

Suffice it to say that in his short tenure in the White House, Kennedy, no matter his faults, showed no signs of leading America into a dictatorship.

But it is doubtful that Mailer—within a few years, and certainly by the end of his long life—could still labor under the illusion, as he put it in his post-invasion “Open Letter” to the caudillo, that the Cuban leader evinced “some sense that there were heroes left in the world.” 

Like other intellectuals who were part of the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee,” he could only cling to the belief that American foreign policy had driven Castro towards Communism. (Documents released in 2022 show that, as early as July 1960, Raul Castro told Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev that his brother was "discreetly" placing Communist sympathizers in key government positions.)

Dennis Wrong’s February 1962 Commentary post-mortem on Castro’s December 1961 announcement that he was, in fact, a “Marxist-Leninist” predictably took to task Mailer, other members of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and the burgeoning “New Left” movement in general for naivete.

That pronouncement was not without justice, especially in the case of Mailer, who, in addition to his still somewhat starry-eyed view of Castro in the wake of the Bay of Pigs, urged him to invite Ernest Hemingway—who had just left Cuba and was in precarious physical and psychological health—to come back to the island, meet with the new leader, and write about what he saw.

But Mailer was right about one thing: JFK’s “boys and men”—i.e., the CIA—had planned a scheme with little to no chance of success, even if Kennedy had authorized more than the limited air support provided. 

The exile brigade totaled 1,500 against Castro’s regular army of 25,000; there was no real groundswell of support within the island; and the Castro regime was aware in advance that an operation would be coming.

To JFK’s astonishment, his assumption of responsibility for this fiasco only three months into his administration boosted rather than lowered his approval ratings. 

But the shadow of that operation’s failure haunted the rest of his thousand days in office—most dramatically, in the Cuban missile crisis a year later—as well as, to an only somewhat lesser degree, those of the 11 men who succeeded him in the Oval Office.

In her 1987 impressionistic portrait Miami, Joan Didion noted that embittered Cuban exiles—conspicuously missing from the chorus of approval for JFK, because of his late refusal for additional support for the landing force—had been involved in multiple foreign and domestic misadventures, including assassination plots against Castro, the Watergate burglary, Chile, Nicaragua, Angola, and Iran-contra. 

In no small measure, they have also anchored GOP support as Florida migrated from being a purple to a red state at election time.

Though even Kennedy court historians like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. acknowledged early on that the exiles had been forgotten in the crush of events, I doubt that any policymakers at the time could have imagined that Cuba would remain a Marxist regime today.

Both Cuban exiles and those still living on the island used to joke that even Castro was mortal. Yet even after his death, control of the government remained in the hands of his aging brother Raul, and now his designated successor, Miguel Diaz-Canel.

But how much longer that continues is very much a live question.

Late last year, as New Yorker contributor Jon Lee Anderson noted in late March,

“[T]he island had faced daily electricity blackouts owing to a lack of fuel, along with severe shortages of food, water, and medicine. Economic activity had all but stopped, and the government, which was essentially broke and unable to secure new loans, had been incapable of providing solutions. Even garbage collection was virtually nonexistent, with huge mounds of refuse piling up on street corners.”

Starting in January, encouraged by the successful extraction of the Cuban regime’s post-Soviet benefactor, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump Administration decided to exert maximum pressure on the government of Diaz-Canel, issuing an executive order that declared it a national security threat in terms not even used by Dwight Eisenhower and JFK at the height of the Cold War. The administration also authorized tariffs on goods from third countries that sell or provide oil to the island.

Even if the Trump administration succeeds in destabilizing the government of Diaz-Canel, it has operated under wishful thinking reminiscent of both Mailer’s and the JFK-era CIA, an amnesia about history that brings to mind the legendary remark about the benighted Bourbon restoration in France: “they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing."

A change in regime will not by itself bring political freedom or economic opportunity, especially considering the lack of clearly defined goals for Trump’s military operations against Venezuela and Iran. Indeed, new leaders under American aegis may only revive for a new generation resentment towards yanqui exploitation.

In the Reagan administration, as Iran-contra came to light, Didion harked back to the post-Bay of Pigs atmosphere of the Kennedy administration, believing that again it was “time to talk about runaway agencies, arrogance in the executive branch, about constitutional crises and the nature of the presidency, about faults in the structure, flaws in the process." 

The need for that “talk” is certainly even more urgent now.

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Duck Soup,’ on Forgetting Faces)

Rufus T. Firefly [played by Groucho Marx]: “I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.”— Duck Soup (1933), story by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, with additional dialogue by Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin, directed by Leo McCarey

Photo of the Day: Better the Sax Man Than the Tax Man

Yesterday, having paid my debt to Uncle Sam, I happened to be in New York’s Duffy Square when I came upon the fellow you see here.

In contrast to the costumed characters that have come to populate (or, if you prefer, litter) this center of the Manhattan entertainment world, this musician was intent not on sight but on sound, blowing sweet notes into the rapidly warming air. 

It felt like such a blessing and relief, amid the high temperatures and the annual presence of the IRS, that I just had to take his photo.

Quote of the Day (Barbara De Angelis, on Love and Kindness)

“Love and kindness are never wasted. They always make a difference. They bless the one who receives them, and they bless you, the giver.”— American personal growth adviser, lecturer and author Barbara De Angelis, Are You the One for Me?: Knowing Who's Right and Avoiding Who's Wrong Real Moments (1992)

Quote of the Day (Margaret Mitchell, on Taxes and Other Inconveniences)

“Death, taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.”—American novelist Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949), Gone With the Wind (1936)

Pope, Pentagon, and Imperial Impiety

So much chaos erupted on multiple fronts with the Trump Administration in the last 10 days that it’s easy to lose sight of the astonishing Free Press report that in January, Pentagon officials issued a veiled threat to the former papal nuncio that the Vatican had better side with the President on foreign-policy issues—or else.

This news item should concern all Americans, but especially Roman Catholics, one of the key electoral swing groups of the Trump era. (An estimated 56% of American Catholics voted for the President in 2024.)

Although it can be problematic to ascribe a single motive to a demographically diverse group like Catholics, GOP officials have surely been pleased that the church’s hierarchy emphasized so-called cultural issues like abortion and LBGTQ.

It encouraged voters to put in the background matters of relatively secondary interest to the archbishops, such as the rights of labor, economic justice, international peace, and humane treatment of immigrants—to say nothing of a return to power by the lone Presidential candidate since the Civil War to contest election results and foment a domestic insurrection.

I wish but don’t expect that archbishops and parish priests will use their sermons to address the disquieting report about the Pentagon meeting with the papal nuncio (a permanent diplomatic representative of the Holy See, in effect an ambassador).

Administration officials and voters still in their thrall have predictably dismissed it as—take your pick—“fake news,” “uncorroborated” or “highly exaggerated.”

Those terms cannot be applied to what has happened since Sunday, however, including:

*Trump’s remarks to a reporter that he was “not a big fan” of Pope Leo XIV, adding “He likes crime, I guess”;

*The President’s lengthy, deranged—and, of course, spectacularly self-centered—Truth Social post claiming, among other things, that Leo “wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump”;

*A later Truth Social post—equally demented, but this time blasphemous—depicting Trump as Jesus ministering to the sick (the image accompanying this post);

* A subsequent news conference in which the President ludicrously declared that this latter AI-generated meme didn’t show him as Jesus but as a doctor.

A confession here: I have never voted for Trump, and it would not be hard to find posts of mine that have criticized him. 

At the same time, accepting at face value any report that confirms one’s biases—including those that, like this one, cited anonymous sources— damages a writer’s credibility and persuasiveness. 

So, when I first heard the Pentagon meeting news in fragmentary form, I wanted to know how much, if any, of it could be validated.

My conclusion, after reading the initial Free Press story, follow-up accounts, and other reports on the principals involved, is that, while not all details are demonstrably true, enough are verifiable that they should prompt soul-searching among past and present Trump-leaning members of the American hierarchy and the faithful who followed their electoral cues.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni has issued a formal statement declaring that “the narrative offered by some media outlets about this meeting is completely untrue.”

“Completely untrue”? Not so fast. 

Possibly, despite what the Free Press article claimed, Pope Leo XIV had other reasons for not visiting America on July 4 than anger or fear over the threat. Even if he might now be reluctant to come while Trump is still President, he could be persuaded otherwise eventually.

In addition, the provenance of the publication may, in this case if few others, underscore the report’s credibility. 

The Free Press cannot be dismissed as a progressive news outlet like MS-NOW or CNN, given that it remains true to the editorial philosophy of co-founder Bari Weiss, who now runs CBS News. It has no motive for publishing a story in which the Trump administration appears bullying.

Moreover, the meeting did take place. While not characterizing the encounter’s tone, the Vatican Embassy, or apostolic nunciature, in Washington told Catholic news and information service OSV News, that the meeting occurred. In addition, there’s a picture of the then-nuncio, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, with Defense Undersecretary Elbridge Colby, issued by the Religion News Service, a credible outlet.

The Financial Times has an article about what seems to have happened:

An American present—not Colby—alluded to the Avignon papacy, infamous in European history as the site of a “Great Schism” between pontiffs who had returned to Rome and “anti-popes” who remained in France, subject to state pressure and corruption.

Other Americans at the meeting, who had hoped to smooth-talk Cardinal Pierre and the pope into taking a gentler tone toward the “Dunroe Doctrine” towards Latin America, were aghast over the effect of the remark. 

That’s why an initial anonymous Pentagon source, while deriding the report as “just absurd,” did admit the meeting included “a frank exchange of views”—a diplomatic euphemism for a tense or even storm encounter.

At this point the Vatican doesn’t want a nasty fight with Trump; hence, Bruni’s disclaimer that offers no further details about what did happen.

While the Vatican Embassy termed meetings with government officials as “standard practice” for the nuncio, neither it nor the Pentagon explained why the meeting occurred in the Defense rather than State Department.

Was it an accommodation to Colby, whose grandfather William, as CIA head and a Catholic, interacted with Rome extensively in the Cold War? Or was the venue an attempt at intimidation?

If the latter, it should come as no surprise. Trump has sought to bully the press, large law firms, universities, corporations, and other non-governmental institutions. 

Why should a major religion fall outside his reach—particularly since Trump whisperer Laura Loomer has derided Leo as a “woke Marxist” for interfering with Trump’s mass deportation program?

If the allusion to the Avignon papacy is true, it would conform to a pattern in authoritarian regimes: the thuggish initiatives taken by a midlevel flunky, sure that his bosses would approve his move or, if not, cover it up.

Though MAGA influencers expressed shock about Trump’s vile actions and language over the Easter weekend, there is little sign yet of a re-evaluation among his base. There should be.

In particular, when his Catholic supporters consider Pope Leo’s increasingly sharp, direct criticisms of the President’s trigger-happy tendencies, they should bear in mind that he is merely conveying the consensus of the 1965 Vatican II document, “The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World”:

“Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.”

In an Atlantic Monthly essay published after remarks by Pope Leo last week, Francis X. Rocca confessed that, like many observers, he had mistakenly thought that, in comparison with Trump and even Pope Francis, Leo would be a “quiet” pontiff. But I’m not sure that Leo has stopped being “quiet” even now.

A ruthless authoritarian may prompt stances previously unthinkable under ordinary circumstances, as Thomas More, a government official who loved life, found no alternative to opposing Henry VIII. Extreme situations lead some to cowardice but others to courage.

What unites the Tudor-era saint and the American-born pontiff is an inner strength that seems confounding in a time of toadies.

More’s silent refusal to assent to Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn contrasted dramatically with courtiers and counselors who meekly went along, just as Leo’s steadfast opposition to Trump positions on immigration and national security diverges from the President’s allies within the American hierarchy (whose complicity with administration outrages I discussed in this post from last Christmas).

More of that is needed as the President breaches new moral boundaries. Will his followers take the lead of Leo, or follow Trump into ignominy?

The President’s actions over the last 10 days is forcing Catholic allies, within the administration and the American Church hierarchy, to choose sides.

J.D. Vance said the pope should stick to “morality” and not involve himself with “politics”—without explaining why a pontiff denouncing abortion is "moral" but one calling for peace is “political.”

On the other hand, Bishop Robert Barron, such an administration favorite that he’s a member of the Religious Liberty Commission established by the President, called the anti-Leo comments “entirely inappropriate and disrespectful” and urged him to apologize—a move that Trump predictably refused.

Before long, we may well find that whatever happened at the Pentagon in January is a mere dust-up compared with the unholy war that Trump now appears set on mounting against the Vatican.

Quote of the Day (Gillian Tett, on Investors and ‘Once-Unimaginable Disasters’)

“Investors need to get better at imagining — and pricing — once-unimaginable disasters. This is hard. No business school teaches students how to model something like a presidential threat to wipe out a civilisation. And the success of the recent TACO trade will undoubtedly make many even more reluctant to do this. But the grim reality is that even if a ceasefire holds in Iran—a big ‘if’—peace looks elusive.”—British columnist and editor Gillian Tett, “Finance: Six Lessons for Investors on Pricing Disaster,” The Financial Times, Apr. 11-12, 2025

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Astronaut Wives Club,’ on How Prior Couples Came Back Down to Earth)

“Honey, you have orbited the earth. I’m pretty sure you can handle carpooling, meatloaf, and laundry.”— Trudy Cooper (played by Odette Annable, pictured right), to Mercury 7 astronaut Gordon Cooper (played by Bret Harrison, left), in The Astronaut Wives Club, Season 1, Episode 7, “Rendezvous,” original air date July 30, 2015, teleplay by Becky Hartman Edwards based upon the book by Lily Koppel, directed by Elodie Keene

Spiritual Quote of the Day (William James, on Why We Pray)

“The reason why we do pray…is simply that we cannot help praying. It seems probable that, in spite of all that ‘science’ may do to the contrary, men will continue to pray to the end of time, unless their mental nature changes in a manner which nothing we know should lead us to expect.”—American philosopher William James (1842-1910), The Principles of Psychology (1890)

Song Lyric of the Day (Don Henley, on ‘Armchair Warriors’)

“Armchair warriors often fail
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales.”—“The End of the Innocence” (1989), written by Don Henley and Bruce Hornsby, performed by Henley from his CD of the same name

TV Quote of the Day (‘Maude,’ Interfering With Her Daughter’s Life)

[Unable to find a job, frustrated about being a single mom living in her mother's house, Carol decides to accept a marriage proposal from a man she doesn’t love. A chagrined Maude knocks on the door of her room.]

Maude Findlay [played by Bea Arthur]: "Honey, do you mind if I come in? If I promise…."

Carol Traynor [played by Adrienne Barbeau]: "Promise what?"

Maude: "If I promise not to talk like a mother?"

Carol: "All right."

Maude [striding over to Carol]: "If I promise not to talk about the way you're wrecking your life."— Maude, Season 1, Episode 7, “Love and Marriage,” original air date Oct 24, 1972, teleplay by Ralph Goodman, Budd Grossman and Frank Tarloff, directed by Bill Hobin