‘Heated Rivalry’ is fantasy. Wake up, it’s Miller time.

By Alfred P. Doblin

I was in a gay bar Sunday night and overheard two men talking about Heated Rivalry, the HBO surprise hit about closeted gay hockey players falling in love. The Canadian-produced series is drawn from Rachel Reid’s six-novel “Game Changer” series. As a struggling fiction writer, I say to Reid, “BRAVA!” All caps just like, well, I will get to that in a bit.

The two men in the bar were discussing which of the series’ four featured characters – three are hockey players and one is a graduate art student – is the most desirable. Both men dismissed Shane and Ilya, the main characters in the series. One went with Scott, the older hockey player of the three, and one went with Kip, the grad student.

Some have described the series as steamy, others smutty, and in a recent essay in The New York Times, as some kind of revelation on gay culture in mainstream entertainment.

Heated Rivalry is steamy. Smutty? There are dozens of other shows that have graphically depicted adults having sex in pretty much every way that adults can have sex. As to the revelatory part? A little boy with a toy shovel in a sandbox has broken more ground.

Let me state the obvious: It’s the story of impossibly handsome, physically fit, white gay men with money, power, and privilege, struggling to find happiness. The white part is glaring, yet no one seems to care. Perhaps when it comes to abs and a tight rear end, nothing else matters.

As queer people fall all over Shane, Ilya, Scott, and Kip a quote from the musical Cabaret keeps coming to mind.

“There was a cabaret. And there was a Master of Ceremonies. And there was a city called Berlin in a country called Germany. It was the end of the world, and I was dancing with Sally Bowles. And we were both fast asleep.”

Cliff Bradshaw, the disillusioned writer, says that at the end of the show, as he leaves Berlin. Lots of people quote it; not so many understand its significance beyond the musical.

This past weekend, the United States removed Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela. By all accounts, he was a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people and destroyed his nation’s economy. I won’t get into the moral implications of regime change – there are many – but move to another quote. This one is by Stephen Miller, President Trump’s trusted advisor who is playing a key role in much of the administration’s policy decisions on immigration and territorial expansion.

In an interview this week with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Miller said, “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” He added, “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Tapper was not asking Miller about U.S. intentions in Venezuela, but in Greenland. Greenland! A few years ago, this would have been a joke, but this is real. Miller is deadly serious. He is not a provocateur. He is stating facts. And this moment in America is Miller time.

Oscar Wilde once said, “I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.”

There is something chilling about Miller’s complete confidence in stating the strongman’s credo. The world is not a nice place; it is not a place governed by niceties. Power is might and might makes right. Darwin, compared to Miller, was an effete elite.

Which brings me back to my gay bar and all the gushing over Heated Rivalry.

As an elder gay man, it troubles me that the queer community is not recognizing that society – not just American society – is veering dangerously toward a place we have not been since the 1930s. If power makes right, and the rule of law is a nicety that can easily be dismissed when it interferes with the agenda of the powerful, the guardrails that have protected us – queer people – will no longer stand.

The idea that what happened in Europe in the 1930s cannot happen here is foolishness on steroids. Miller said, “Nobody's going to fight the U.S. militarily over the future of Greenland.” I imagine German advisors in 1938 said that about the Sudetenland. And they were correct in 1938. But a year later, things changed – things changed forever.

There is nothing wrong that queer men are excited over a steamy series about wealthy white athletes struggling to come out of the closet in a homophobic environment. I get it. It’s fantasy. But that is all that it is. It is not groundbreaking. There have been many queer-themed series making better points about the struggle to find acceptance and to forge lasting intimate relationships, but perhaps because not all the principals in those series were beautiful, wealthy, athletic, young, and white, not enough influencers paid attention. Noah’s Arc is a brilliant example of a groundbreaking queer-themed series.

Times are changing and not in a good way for queer people, or persons of color, or non-Christians, or non-U.S. born individuals.

“Nobody's going to fight the U.S. militarily over the future of Greenland.” My message to queer folks: We’re Greenland! Wake up! Get off the dance floor!

We all need fantasy. And we need writers who can weave fun stories. Heated Rivalry is fun, but it is a distraction. It should not be the center of attention for queer people in 2026.

Cabaret was based on Christopher Isherwood’s novel Goodbye to Berlin. The title says it all.

There is a time to dance. There is a time to sleep. And there is a time to wake up.

Alfred with a P

Come all ye faithful, with or without documentation

By Alfred P. Doblin

On Christmas Eve 1914, in the early months of World War I, soldiers fighting on the Western Front temporarily put down their guns. The event is as close to a Christmas miracle as you can find in recent history.

Whether German soldiers in their trenches began singing Christmas carols first, or it were the English, French, and Belgian soldiers who began, the two opposing sides found comity in the songs of Christmas. For a moment, in what would be a long, horrible war, the fighting ceased.

The Christmas truce was organic, an example of the spirit of Christmas rising in the hearts of men above the militaristic ambitions of nations. It did not last long. Years of brutal combat followed, sowing the seeds for an even greater affront to humanity two decades later.

I am not so naïve to believe that there are peaceful resolutions to absolute evil. True evil has to be stopped, and sometimes the human cost is great. But there are times when “evil” is but a word, a dog whistle for political agendas and nothing else.

This Christmas, there was a chance for a much smaller Christmas miracle than the one on the Western Front in 1914. On Monday, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement to President Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis asking them “to pause immigration enforcement activities during the Christmas holidays.”

The bishops’ statement acknowledged the importance of protecting borders, while citing that U.S. borders have been secured, and that “the initial work of identifying and removing dangerous criminals has been accomplished to a great degree.”

The bishops went on to discuss the effects of the government’s current approach to removing undocumented immigrants – sweeping raids that remove people without any criminal histories, and as a result, instilling fear in immigrant communities across the nation.

“Since these effects are part of enforcement operations, we request that the government pause apprehension and round-up activities during the Christmas season. Such a pause would show a decent regard for the humanity of these families. Now is not the time to be callous toward the suffering caused by immigration enforcement.”

It is a powerful message. The bishops were not asking the president or the governor of Florida to permanently halt the raids – although they have been clear they would favor that – instead, this was a Christmas appeal to temporarily pause those efforts.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson responded: “President Trump was elected based on his promise to the American people to deport criminal illegal aliens. And he’s keeping that promise.”

The advantage of a short statement is that it is not hard to read between the lines because there aren’t many. There was no attempt to address the core of the bishops’ statement: that in this season of peace and humility, a pause – just a pause – in sweeping immigration raids would allow people to heal, albeit briefly.

The Christmas story is a narrative of a poor, young couple, Mary and Joseph, seeking lodging before Mary delivers her child. It is a story about generosity without promise of repayment, it is a story about humility, it is a story about the wonder following the birth of a savior. Even if you do not believe it as truth, the story is a powerful one, or it would not have withstood in some form for more than 2,000 years.

But the Bible is also filled with Herods and Pilates who do little, do nothing, or just do not care about other people. And it is not just the Bible.

The soldiers who put down their guns on Christmas Eve 1914 were pawns in a sprawling conflict where the principals who ordered them to war were mostly related by blood. Ironic, because the men who died, were wounded, or were permanently damaged by the war, all became related by blood, the blood spilt across Europe from 1914 through 1918.

We are a nation ruled by laws. Our cities need to be safe. Dangerous people need to be held to account. Law enforcement is a 24/7 activity. All these things are true.

But we are a nation of people, not statutes. We live, breathe, make families, and form communities. We are – I believe at our core – people of good faith, not a specific faith, but of good faith.

We believe in decency. We believe in dignity. We believe there is always a higher version of ourselves within our reach.

As the Catholic bishops of Florida wrote, “Now is not the time to be callous toward the suffering caused by immigration enforcement.” Indeed.

The Christmas miracle of 1914 was merely a blip in a horrible conflict – but it proved that goodness resides in all of us, even in the worst of situations.

Evil is denying the equal humanity all people possess. We hold individuals accountable for actions against the state, but we cannot diminish their humanity. They are people. For a moment in 1914, soldiers fighting one another saw that. Today, we are not faced with anything as morally challenging. But we seem incapable of seeing what those soldiers saw on that Christmas Eve.

Agree or disagree. Believe or do not believe. But we can be better versions of who we are – at Christmas and in the days that follow.

“Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”  Luke 2:10-11

Until next time, Alfred with P

The Three Kings always needed directions

By Alfred P. Doblin

When I was little, my mother told me about the Christmas star, the one that guided The Three Kings to Bethlehem. I didn’t question the accuracy of the story. I was a child, and children accept the stories told to them by their parents as true until one day they do not.

There is no set moment when that happens, but thinking back, it probably occurs at the point that Santa becomes suspect.

We had a nativity set that went under our Christmas tree. It was made of plaster of Paris, or something similar. The pieces were small and chipped. St. Joseph looked more like St. Francis, with a white spot on the back of his head.

The sheep were covered in flocking, and stray pieces of straw lined the infant’s crib. There was no manger or building; there was nothing elegant about this nativity. My mom had purchased it sometime in the 1940s, I believe, but it was part of our Christmas tradition. It was my job to place all the pieces under the tree.

The Three Kings had to be put as far back as I could reach, and then, starting on Christmas, I would move them ever-so slowly toward Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, so the kings arrived at Jesus on January 6th, a day that used to be known as Epiphany, before being coopted by political forces much removed from the message of Christmas. The Magi have been replaced by the MAGA, who had a different “come to Jesus” moment.

The nativity set was stored in a non-descript cardboard box, the relic of some shipment of something long forgotten, and each piece was wrapped in white tissue paper. Putting it away was as significant as taking it out.

And so, it went for years and years. Many epiphanies came to pass. Santa became suspect, as did many other truths. My parents aged poorly and moved eventually into a nursing home, my mom with advanced dementia, unable to even speak by the last years of her life. The nativity set disappeared. Neither my sister nor I knew what happened, aside that many things “disappeared” as our parents’ health faltered in various assisted-living facilities, and we came to accept that the set was gone.

A few years after my parents had both passed, my sister and I finally went through the last of assorted boxes of towels, linens, and such that had been in storage in Florida, where my parents had died, and finally shipped to my sister’s home, then in New Jersey. The boxes had sat in her garage, much like the Ark of the Covenant at the close of the first Indianna Jones film.

I was working my way through a carton of towels and there it was – the cardboard box with my mom’s writing on it. Inside, waiting to be unwrapped was Jesus, Mary, Joseph with the bald spot, the angels, shepherds, animals, and the three kings – one partially broken.

I teared up much as I did this week seeing Amahl and the Night Visitors presented at Lincoln Center in a beautiful, simple production dominated by a vast starlit night sky.

The nativity set held a deeper meaning to me than to my sister and she, like The Three Kings, wisely understood that, and let me take it home.

I glued the fractured king back together, and I taped the aging cardboard of the crib, but the overall effect had not been diminished by age.

I put it under my tree still, each year, bringing out the cardboard box with my mom’s handwriting on the sides, and eagerly taking out each piece wrapped in the tissue and pieces of paper towels that mom had last wrapped them in.

Yes, pieces of paper towels – she must have had some limited awareness the last time she went through the packing process in Florida, but not quite the same level of concern she would have had five or six years earlier.

I have not replaced the paper towels, although I take fastidiousness to high levels. It is a connection to her – those pieces of paper towels. And it takes me back to my youth, to a different time in my journey. And yes, we, like The Three Kings, are on a journey in search of the peace and blessings of a savior.

We may call it or him something else, but we start at the back of the tree, and then keep scanning the sky for direction. As we age, we stop looking up and assume we can find it ourselves. Today, little kids may be told there is an app for that, like those Santa finders on Christmas Eve.

I don’t believe in apps. And I don’t believe we get anywhere solely by ourselves. I teared-up at the end of Amahl, as a bright star flew across the night star. Myth is faith without belief. Faith is belief without proof.

Now, in my late 60s, it is harder placing those three kings toward the back of the tree – either my tree is bigger than the one of my youth or my mobility is more limited. But I do it because, like the pieces of paper towels that still wrap the nativity set, it connects me to my mom, and to Christmases long past.

Santa may still be suspect. January 6th is no longer first spoken as a day of joy, at least in many parts of America. But The Three Kings, splotched by glued, and Jesus, Mary, and St. Joseph with his chipped scalp, remain part of my Christmas.

I will move the kings slowly to their destination; they always needed guidance. And I will scan the night sky for a star that does not need to be seen to be believed.

Until next time, Alfred with P

Boq to basics on the Yellow Brick Road

By Alfred P. Doblin

Like millions of others, I saw Wicked: For Good over the Thanksgiving holiday. To cut to the chase down the yellow bricks, I enjoyed it; I enjoyed, very much. The second part of the elongated stage musical’s transformation into a film is visually stunning and musically perfect. But…

Is it just me, but what about Boq?

Look, I took my niece to see Wicked at the Gershwin Theater in October 2005. I know Boq becomes a walking, talking, and chopping recyclable. On stage, I did not dwell much on the unfairness of it all. Things were harder for Nessa—what can be harder than having a house fall on you?

Perhaps it is because Ethan Slater, the actor who plays Boq in the film, was SpongeBob Square Pants on Broadway. From a singing-dancing sponge to a walking-talking can—the actor has range. He’s charismatic. But I digress.

The film gives the audience more of a chance (spoiler alert—albeit too late) to take in that the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion all have less than six degrees of separation.

This is particularly true of Boq and Fiyero, who according to many press accounts, cavorted shirtless in the water in a cut scene from the first Wicked.

Boq becomes literally heartless after a scorned Nessa puts a spell on him, forcing Elphaba to put another spell on him to prevent him from dying. Boq, now heartless, is well… also spiritually heartless, vowing to take out Elphaba.

Who can blame him? He led Nessa on, but for that he is condemned to an eternity of facials with Bar Keepers Friend?

What happens to him? And more important, what happened on the Yellow Brick Road? Wicked: For Good sets up the trio—Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion with backstories. I get why Dorothy remains in the background; I’ve seen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. But wouldn’t Boq recognize Fiyero in his new iteration? Wouldn’t Fiyero know it was Boq?

Forget about the Cowardly Lion, who is minor in all this. Anecdotally, I heard the lion’s big song was cut from the immersive The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere in Las Vegas, so it’s not a good year for him. And homoerotism aside, because as a gay man I would have liked to see the cavorting in the water scene, how does the Tin Man react to seeing Fiyero/Scarecrow?

Tin Man: Dude, did you mess with that Wicked Witch? You used to have a hairy chest and now you, literally, have a patch of thatch?

Scarecrow: Listen, my little animated muffler, she’s not like that.

Tin Man: Look at me. First her sister and then her—they are evil. Look at me!

Scarecrow: Were you so attractive before? You were a Munchkin.”

Tin Man: That’s it! That’s it! I always knew you looked down on Munchkins.

Scarecrow: Everyone looks down at Munchkins. You’re like 3-feet tall.

Tin Man: Don’t you dare body shame me. And that was only in another version of the story. I have size.

Scarecrow: I thought that was your ax.

Tin Man: I ought to slice you up right now.

Scarecrow: You can’t scare me.

Tin Man: How long have you been waiting to say that to someone?

Scarecrow: Not long. I’m naturally clever.

That’s one possible exchange, or does Fiyero play dumb—he is brainless—and not let Boq in on the planned intrigue.

Scarecrow: Which witch did that to you?

Tin Man: Both of them.

Scarecrow: You must have done something [pause] wicked. [Scarecrow winks to the camera]

Tin Man: I love Glinda. I always loved Glinda.

Scarecrow: Been there. Done that. The bubble gets annoying and let me tell you, she is obsessed with that wand.

Tin Man: So, are you up for this? We’re going to melt the witch.

Scarecrow: Melt her?

Tin Man: Yes, throw water on her and she melts.

Scarecrow: Dude, and they say I’m brainless? Remember the picnic by the water?

Tin Man: She didn’t go in. She didn’t go in.

Scarecrow: Are you sure?

Tin Man: No, they cut the scene.

Scarecrow: I rest my case.

Tin Man: You have no case. This is a dumb conversation.

Scarecrow: I have no brain.

Tin Man: I have no heart.

Scarecrow: There’s a lake over there. Maybe we could finish what we started.

Tin Man: I can’t go into the water. Do you know what would happen to my joints if they were exposed to water.

Scarecrow: I do. It could be fun.

Tin Man: For you.

Scarecrow: I’m still a prince. It’s still about me. I’m brainless, not selfless.

Tin Man: I’m going to throw a bucket of water on the Wicked Witch.

Scarecrow: OK. Throw your water. I say when you’re done with that, we scare the Coward Lion.

Tin Man: That seems heartless. That’s my job.

Scarecrow: Exactly.

Tin Man: Dude, I miss that day in the water.

Scarecrow: Don’t get all misty on me. You’ll rust and I don’t have a can or bottle of…

Tin Man: You can’t say that. This is a family blog.

Scarecrow: Right. So, shall we just skip along with Bob Dole’s granddaughter in the calico?

Tin Man: It’s gingham, dummy, and who’s Bob Dole?

Scarecrow: Who’s Bob Dole? Let me tell you a story about the Wizard of Oz. He comes from a place called Kansas…

As I said at the top, I thoroughly enjoyed Wicked: For Good. But too much is still unresolved. Does that bother anyone else? Give us the untold story about the Tin Man. What’s his backstory? I want another sequel. Wicked: I’ll be Boq.

Until next time, Alfred with P

America bleeds on this World AIDS Day

By Alfred P. Doblin

According to the UNAIDS website, “Political leadership is paramount to advancing policies that address structural inequalities and protect vulnerable populations.” On this World AIDS Day – a commemorative day that dares not speak its name in official Washington, D.C. – I say to UNAIDS, “Lots of luck with that.”

In a rather infamous interview, I believe with Howard Stern, then-businessman Donald Trump referred to his youthful, rabid dating life and the possibility of contracting an STD, as his “personal Vietnam.” Perhaps his administration’s decision to erase official World AIDS Day this year, is a way of telling the millions of people who lost someone to HIV/AIDS, who are living with HIV/AIDS, or are at greater risk for infection, “Welcome to Saigon.”

To be charitable, the official decision is tone deaf and callous. To be honest, it is cruel, petty, and carries a whiff of 1980’s homophobia.

Back in the ’80s, October 1988 to be precise, Ronald Reagan wrote:

“One of America’s greatest strengths has always been our ability to work together in times of adversity. We must rely on this strength to sustain us as we work to prevent the spread of AIDS and the HIV [infection] and as we care for those already afflicted.”

Reagan wrote that in a presidential proclamation designating October as National AIDS Awareness and Prevention Month. Later that same year, the first World AIDS Day was observed on December 1.

Those were hard times, and Reagan had done little to address the AIDS pandemic over the course of his presidency, which began, like the first reported cases of what would later be known as AIDS, in 1981.

Reagan’s proclamation was significant, yes. But it came years too late, and it could not erase the suffering that might have been lessened if the federal government had been committed, from the beginning of Reagan’s presidency, to finding a cure and to helping curb the spread of HIV/AIDS, rather than at the end.

By 2024, 44.1 million people globally had died from AIDS-related illnesses since the start of the epidemic. It is a staggering number. In the United States, more than 700,000 people have died from AIDS-related illnesses since 1981.

I came out as a gay man during the height of the AIDS crisis, at the beginning of the 1990s. Then, the specter of AIDS followed gay men – like the random groups of straight men with bats, bottles, and fists that roamed gay neighborhoods – looking to exact vengeance on people only trying to live and find their place in the world.

In those days, death could be just one encounter away. Even when it became clear how the virus was transmitted, it was never truly clear to any gay man how to go about meeting someone, dating him, and being sure that you and he were completely safe.

Reagan wrote in that 1988 proclamation: “To prevent the further spread of AIDS and the HIV infection, we must heed lessons taught by medicine and morality alike. The Surgeon General has reminded all of us that the best way to prevent AIDS and the HIV [infection] is to abstain from sexual activity until adulthood and then to restrict sex to a faithful, monogamous relationship.”

I wonder if Reagan followed that advice as a young man, or as an adult. I have learned to be wary of people who pitch morality to others. As it says in Luke 7:3 – “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?”

People make good and poor choices every day, particularly when it comes to sex. Making a poor choice about sex should not result in death. But back then, there were plenty of “good people” who believed just that – that gay men were getting what they deserved, and that AIDS was a “just” punishment from God.

Out of that darkness, came light. The LGBT community began to coalesce. And a great thing – the NAMES Project, more commonly known as the AIDS Quilt – became a growing tribute to the people who had died from HIV/AIDS. To see even a single panel of the Quilt is powerful; to see it in large sections, is to walk through a cemetery as Thornton Wilder might have created, and to see and hear each person laid to rest below, speaking once again as the living.

It needs to be displayed again – on the National Mall, if possible, or somewhere else, like in a vast section of Central Park. People need to hear those voices and see those faces.

In 2025, HIV/AIDS is not the specter of death it was once. There are preventative drugs, and effective treatments that enable people living with HIV/AIDS to have long, productive lives. But HIV/AIDS still exists. It is important we remember that to prevent new transmissions, particularly in poorer communities, and in impoverished nations. And it is important that we remember all the people who have died from HIV/AIDS.

It is distressing that the United States will no longer officially recognize December 1 as World AIDS Day. Federal employees are still allowed to tout programs that help people, but they cannot spend a penny of taxpayer money noting World AIDS Day, whether it be in an email, a text, or a speech.

Why? The New York Times reported a State Department spokesman saying, “an awareness day is not a strategy.” But the Times also reported that the White House has issued many proclamations for other observances, including National Manufacturing Day. Yes, National Manufacturing Day.

An awareness day may not be a strategy at the State Department, but it is hard to believe that eliminating AIDS Awareness Day is not a strategy.

More than 40 years since the first reported cases of AIDS, this makes me sad and angry.

Whatever young people think about the challenges of COVID – of going to a hospital where no one could visit you; or having funerals outside churches, without friends and family; it was not as horrible as what happened to AIDS patients, particularly in those early years.

No one infected with COVID was told they deserved to die, that their suffering was a judgement from God. But that was all too common an experience for the people – mostly gay men – dying with AIDS.

I read the once-ubiquitous AIDS ribbon is red to symbolize blood and compassion – two seemingly incongruous things – blood and compassion. The former is often related to violence; the latter to love. But perhaps the two are two sides of the same coin. Blood is violence, but it is also life. I do not know.

I do know that when we lack compassion, we bleed as a society.

We are bleeding now.

Until next time, Alfred with a P

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s tale of two MAGAs

By Alfred P. Doblin

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is in the news, and I’ve been thinking about Madame Defarge, the woman knitting at the guillotine in Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. Defarge is a singular villain, consumed by revenge, retribution, and just plain hate. Her focus is on the execution of all members of the family Evrémonde. She eventually comes to a bad end, at the hands of another determined woman, Miss Pross.

The two women have a drag-down fight, but the outcome is predicted. Dickens writes, “It was in vain for Madame Defarge to struggle and to strike; Miss Pross, with the vigorous tenacity of love, always so much stronger than hate, clasped her tight, and even lifted her from the floor in the struggle that they had.”

It wasn’t quite so bad for Greene. On Friday, the pugnacious congresswoman from Georgia unexpectedly announced she was resigning her seat in the House, effective January 5, 2026. It was a highly unusual announcement on all fronts. Unexpected. And her exit, mid-term, absent illness or raging scandal, is not normative.

But then again, normative and Greene do not go hand in hand. What used to go hand in hand, was her relationship with President Trump. But when Greene continued to push for the release of the so-called Epstein files, hand in hand became hand to hand combat. Rock beats paper. President beats lowly member of Congress.

The president called Greene names, including “traitor,” and serious threats against her family began. After she resigned, Trump said, she “went Bad,” I guess like an egg or Veruca in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Ironically, this was the same day that Trump and our mayor-elect, Zohran Momdani, all but spoke the love that dare not speak its name.

The two men, once polar opposites, were all but singing a duet from Wicked in the Oval Office. “Who can say if I've been changed for the better? I do believe I have been changed for the better. And because I knew you, because I knew you, because I knew you, I have been changed for good.”

The juxtaposition of the two stories – Trump and Greene and Trump and Momdani – are remarkable. Clearly, the president recognizes one is an imploding star, and one is a star on the ascendent. Back to Greene.

What is more disturbing than much of what she said for the past five years as a MAGA megaphone, is how quickly she crumbled when faced with the same fate she eagerly condemned others to. It might be easier to feel some remorse for her sad ending if one felt she had the courage of her convictions, but I for one, don’t even know what her convictions really were or are.

Political movements on the right and left are often more about noise than substance. But there usually are some true believers on both sides. The speed of her exit rather than face a primary she would probably lose contrasts greatly with former Rep. Liz Cheney’s willingness to stand up for what she believed to be true and right regardless if that meant losing her seat in the House.

America today offers the fallen, discarded, and/or the disgraced a second and even a third act. Greene could get a podcast. A gig on television. She could tour with George Santos in a revival of Noel Coward’s Private Lives – this is America, anything is possible.

Greene’s story is a reminder that if that is true – and it is – that people with little to offer in way of expanding the promise of America can rise to high offices and stay there until someone pushes them aside so they can take that place for themself, or someone deemed more loyal and malleable. Greene wrote on X that our current political system used citizens as “pawns in an endless game of division.” Well, yeah. That’s how she gained power.

Still, I cling to the hope that there is limoncello to be made from these lemons. Heroes appear. Sydney Carton does not have to be just a fictional Dickensian character – “I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, though long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.”

It is a tale of two cities: one shining idealistically on a hill and one shining until the gold spray paint wears away.

Now, Marjorie Taylor Greene will have time on her hands. Maybe she will think about that. Maybe, she will just sit and knit.

Until next time, Alfred with P

Three brights stars illuminate ‘Little Bear Ridge Road’

By Alfred P. Doblin

The setting for Samuel D. Hunter’s debut Broadway play, Little Bear Ridge Road, is “a couch in a void.” The time is during and soon after the Covid pandemic, a period when all of us felt trapped in a timeless void, not knowing what laid ahead.

For the three characters in Troy, Idaho – and you have to appreciate a playwright who subtly invokes the name of a great ancient city under a 10-year-siege while painting a portrait of a tiny, rural Northwestern town – the void is both mystical and real.

Sarah, a misanthropic nurse, is suddenly confronted by her estranged nephew, Ethan, a non-writing, fiction writer, after his father, and her brother dies, presumably from Covid. The dead man was a meth addict and there was no love between him and Ethan. The relationship between Sarah and her dead brother is more complicated. Sarah’s relationship with her nephew is complicated, as well.

Added to the void, is James, an astrophysicist working on his Masters, who becomes Ethan’s boyfriend. There they are in the void, in a place with an expansive night sky unencumbered by light pollution. Ethan knows little about astronomy, but in a phone conversation with James, identifies “Orion’s Belt,” three bright stars – Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka – that while appearing in perfect alignment, are thousands and thousands of miles apart.

Three stars in the void. Three interconnected but distant people on a couch in Idaho. I love me a good metaphor.

And there is brilliance in this quiet place. Oh, people shout and yell, but it is a quiet play where the juxtaposition of the luminous night sky and the void below serves as a buffer to the noise, anger, and frustration of the people in between.

Laurie Metcalf is the brightest star in this Orion’s Belt. As Sarah, she is trapped in a house, a place, and a life she did not want, but in fact, she chose. That will be her wisdom to share with her nephew, brilliantly played by Micah Stock. People can leave; people can choose to leave and make something of their lives, but it requires them to take that step. James, well-played by John Drea, is the academic from a moneyed family, and the most mobile of the three.

Over the course of the lockdown and afterwards, Sarah and Ethan bond, not easily, but they bond. And as in many stormy relationships, they do better when they are not acknowledging they are doing anything – like watching a television series about extraterrestrials that concludes, not with a great ending, but the fact that the aliens were always just aliens. Sometimes extraterrestrials are just extraterrestrials; sometimes people are just people. They do what they were always going to do from the beginning of the story.

Depending on your point of view, that can be very satisfying. As to what happens to Sarah, Ethan, and James, well, that’s the story to be told and I don’t believe in spoilers, aside from this: It is a good ending. An honest ending. And ending that makes you think of what comes next.

It is hard to imagine an actor greater than Metcalf playing Sarah. She understands nuance, even when angered. There is beauty, grace, and pain in what could just be a bitter, aging woman’s last years. And Stock’s Ethan is at times both sympathetic and pathetic, someone who wants to be hugged, while needing a kick in the pants to move on with his life.

Sarah, in a disjointed moment of confused memory, describes a sitcom episode where the lead character discovers a huge void inexplicably opened-up in his living room floor. She recounts how the camera looked down into this void in the living room floor. It is a jumble of memory, but it is prescient because there is a void in her home.

Little Bear Ridge Road is a not a Covid play. It is not about the pandemic, aside from that being a device to bring three distant stars into seemingly perfect alignment. Sarah, Ethan, and James are not fighting against a virus; they are shouting into the void in a place where there is little to distract from how small any one star is in the heavens.

There is a beauty in that effort because that is all people can do, shout until they realize they are shouting at something too vast to comprehend, and then decide to not look up, but ahead, and chart their own course.

Joe Mantello’s direction is perfect for this quiet play where people shout at times. He allows his actors to coax us into their small universe in the void.

If I have only one wish for this production, it is that at the end of the play, after the height of the stark backdrop that travels up the rear of the stage has been revealed, it gave way to the brilliant Idaho night sky, with the stars of Orion’s Belt shining ever so clearly.

It is a small point. Sarah, Ethan, and James are not Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, the three stars of Orion’s Belt. But as portrayed by Metcalf, Stock, and Drea, they are perfectly aligned and brilliantly lighting up the stage of the Booth Theater.

Until next time, Alfred with P

How green was Marjorie Taylor Greene’s valley?

By Alfred P. Doblin

Memory is a strange thing, particularly when it comes to recalling things we should never have done. We all have things in our past we regret, but most of us have not engaged in public acts of toxicity. I am not sure if there is such a phrase, but there is now.

This past weekend, Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was speaking with Dana Bash on CNN and said, “I would like to say humbly, I’m sorry for taking part in the toxic politics. It’s very bad for our country. And it’s been something I’ve thought about a lot, especially since Charlie Kirk was assassinated.”

Greene and her family have become targeted for violence after President Trump denounced her, calling her a traitor. Greene is rightfully concerned that her family’s safety has been compromised. Yet, her contrition comes late in her political career. It’s akin to someone throwing Molotov cocktails for years being surprised that innocent bystanders could ever have been burned or killed by the incendiary bottles.

Greene’s fall from grace with the president – and possibly her finding of redemptive grace – is a result of her wanting the release of the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files, something the president has fought until just the other day. As an aside, a person could get whiplash from the sudden changes in direction in D.C.’s beltway.

The president is dismissive of Greene’s claim that his comments have put her in harm’s way. He said he does not think Greene is in any real danger; that no one cares about her. I leave that statement as is. It is consistent with his messaging. So, it is hard to believe that Greene did not realize that if she fell out of favor with the president, she would be treated just as he and she have treated others no longer orbiting the sun.

Still, I believe in redemption narratives, with a caveat. Forgiveness is a spiritual act; it has no bearing on the temporal need for accountability. Erika Kirk showed the world what Christian love is when she said at her assassinated husband Charlie’s memorial that she forgave his killer. That remarkable act of grace did not absolve the killer from what he did, or should it have any impact on the killer’s date with justice.

We should not live in the past, but we cannot change the past. We are called to live with it – the good, the poor, and, sadly, the evil. How we process that, effects how we move forward.

The “Swift-boating” speed of the president’s turn on Greene is not surprising in the least. And when the most powerful person turns on you, and he is also, for good and bad, the most effective communicator of his message on the planet, it is also not surprising that more than the trolls of Middle Earth arise from the darkness to do harm.

Greene has an opportunity now to rise above her own limitations and her incendiary past. Whether she can do that will be revealed in the coming weeks and months. Her genuine fear for her family’s safety is a strong incentive to push back against ingrained poor choices.

As someone who believes there is a grace to be found after suffering, I believe Erika Kirk unleashed a wave of grace that could help put out some of the fires of politically stoked hate. But I am not so naive to believe, that it will.

On CNN, Greene appeared willing to accept that she has helped foment public toxicity. But on X on Sunday, she wrote, "President Trump’s unwarranted and vicious attacks against me were a dog whistle to dangerous radicals that could lead to serious attacks on me and my family."

Her comments are still in the first person – the president did something to “me” and to “my family.” It’s a half awakening. When she writes that the president and his followers are doing the same thing to many, many others, she will be looking with eyes not wide shut. Because grace and true conversion is seeing how our actions, and the actions of others may affect people we do not even know, and we would not even like.

Toxic politics is dangerous, not because it may affect us, but rather because it affects all of us. You can’t escape this nuclear winter by hiding in a gilded cave.

Greene’s political rise is attributed to her embrace of toxicity. That was her entire brand. She did not build a political career on being a serious person, with respect for others. None of that is admirable. But none of that provides a rationale for putting her or her family in harm’s way.

Maybe this is a crack in the MAGA dam. Maybe it is nothing more than a blip, and the president is correct when he said nobody cares about Marjorie Taylor Greene. The sign that it is a crack in the dam, will be when the president’s statement is correct, but incomplete: Nobody cares about Marjorie Taylor Greene, but they still think this is wrong and unacceptable.

When that happens, when that dam does break, there will be a flood in the valley below, and we will be awash in grace.

Until next time, this is Alfred with a P

Immigrants are in the spaces between the details

By Alfred P. Doblin

There’s an expression: God is in the details. My understanding is it originally meant that attention to the small things was important. I don’t disagree. But applied to people, God is in the spaces between the details.

The details are facts, inanimate things. People are not facts, statistics, or inanimate.

This week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) met in Baltimore for their Fall Plenary Assembly. During their assembly, they issued what is called a “Special Message.” It is not usual – the last time they issued one was in 2013 – and the message can only be issued during plenary assemblies. This week’s message was indeed special. It addressed the bishops’ concern over the United States’ current immigration policy.

To issue such a statement, two-thirds of the body had to approve it. If you think Congress can be difficult, sit in a room of Catholic bishops. I have, and it’s not always pretty. Consensus comes hard.

Yet, this “Special Message” passed with 216 “yes” votes, five “no” votes, and 3 abstentions. That is, in of itself, remarkable.

And “remarkable” seems a limited word to describe our present time. Supposedly, our nation is drifting to the hard right, with more people espousing the need for America to become a Christian nation. There is nothing Christian about treating people like chattel.

The bishops wrote:

“We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.”

The bishops do not dismiss the need for borders, and the enforcement of law, but they question its current application. A focus solely on removing everyone without legal status in broad, often, militaristic strokes, ignores the fact that the law must be applied to individual people, who regardless of legal status, have human status.

God is in the spaces between the details because that is where the people are – between the spaces of legal statutes and executive orders.

It isn’t easy. Yet, that is what we should be called to remember – by bishops, by religious and community leaders, and, most importantly, by our own consciences.

When I was young, the Catholic Church was at the forefront of the social justice movement. It lost its way because of the institutional rot that focused on protecting itself over protecting the marginalized people between the details. God was never in the institutional Roman Curia. God was outside the marble and defined dogma.

God is still out there.

In Washington, many prominent Catholics are controlling the levers of power. But they talk about immigrants like someone cascading down a gold-plated escalator talked about immigrants. They dehumanize them. I don’t know what Catholic Church they attend, but people cannot dehumanize another human being. Our humanity is not subject to any law. What we do, how we act – that is subject to the rules of law. But the intrinsic value of the human person cannot be diminished by another person.

That is the Catholic message, like or not.

This newfound backbone of the USCCB may be braced by Pope Leo XIV, the first American pontiff. But I don’t think it’s that simplistic – I think the bishops understand this is a moral moment. We can enforce the laws of man without spitting in the face of God. Drug dealers, members of violent cartels – no one wants them loose on the streets. It is a false argument to say that people who demand dignity for all people are advocating for that.

I wasn’t born yesterday. The bishops’ statement isn’t going to change the thinking in Washington. No one will so much as blink.

But that doesn’t make it right or acceptable. Most of us trace our roots to immigrants. The nation has never easily welcomed the huddled masses despite what is written on the Statue of Liberty. Our forebearers came here because the light of freedom burned bright against the darkness.

Liberty’s torch was the beacon from a lighthouse that guided millions of people to safe harbor. Somehow, over the years, we allowed someone to put a dimmer switch on her torch. It burns still, but not so brightly.

If American bishops want to reclaim their moral pulpit, this Special Message is a good start. It will not be universally embraced. It will, in fact, be dismissed as nothing but words by many of the powerful Catholics who wear their Christianity like a baseball cap. But that does not matter. It needs to be said.

God is in the spaces between the details. He is with the marginalized. And if believing that we, as a country, can do better when it comes to finding a humane resolution to immigration while upholding the rule of law, makes us marginalized, as well, then we are not alone.

God is in the spaces between the details.

Until next time, Alfred with a P

The Queen of Versailles, lost in the wilderness

By Alfred P. Doblin

You wonder how these things begin?[1] It does not begin in a glade where the woodchucks woo, that is for sure. And to be clear, this isn’t a mega-flop; no one says, “I was born in Dusseldorf and that it is why they call me Rolf.[2] But not far into the new Stephen Schwartz musical, The Queen of Versailles, I started humming in my head, (yes, I’ll be humming[3]) another Schwartz lyric, “Where are you going?”[4]

And then I began to wonder “does anyone have a map?”[5]

OK. I will try to refrain from showtunes from shows that were better conceived, but I make no promises. The Queen of Versailles is a mess, and I so wanted to like this show.

It has Stephen Schwartz, one of the best composer/lyrists in the business. It’s directed by Michael Arden of Maybe Happy Ending and Parade fame. It has Kristin Chenoweth, for gosh sakes! Yet, the whole does not equal the sum of the parts. Not even close.

The set is impressive, maybe too impressive – think original production of Sunset Boulevard. The scenic design by Dane Laffrey and the costumes by Christian Cowan are over the top, a metaphor for the message of the show. The story of Jackie Siegel’s rise from obscurity to absurdity is an old song. It’s a tragedy.[6] It’s a unique America tragedy, because there is no redemption at the end. She loses it all. She loses a daughter. Yet, Jackie remains focused on glitter and be gay.[7] She keeps building her Versailles, an abomination of taste in Orlando, home to Sea World and Disney, and putt-putt golfing.[8]

The Queen of Versailles is based on a documentary, much as the creators of Grey Gardens took the sad song, really it was a tragedy, of Edith “Big Edie” Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith “Little Edie,” as depicted in the documentary of the same name and made it into a brilliant musical. But in The Queen of Versailles, the brilliance comes not from the narrative, but from the sparkly costumes and the final set piece that distract from a flat plot that never pops.

Shows about unpleasant, self-obsessed people can work. Audiences don’t need a play about Mary Magdalene.[9] But in this case, Jackie is little more than an avatar in her own story of excess. We can’t get invested in her because we aren’t given enough capital by way of script or music.

The Queen of Versailles might work if the songs were memorable, but they, surprisingly, are not. Schwartz has written glorious songs for so many musicals. The body of his work is extraordinary, but there is not one memorable song in the show. There are some with aspirations like “Caviar Dreams,” and some that try so hard to be musically fabulous, like “The Royal We,” a showpiece for Jackie and Marie Antoinette, but they do not come off.

Oddly, the most effective song is a duet sung by Jackie’s troubled daughter and her adopted one, “Pavane for a Dead Lizard.” It’s a bonding number, like “If Momma Was Married” from Gypsy, without any joy. It’s about a lizard that died from neglect.

Jackie’s story is bookended with that of Louis XIV, who built Versailles, and Marie Antoinette, who was married to Louis XVI. Perhaps if the creative team had aligned on one or the other, this could have been a more significant dramatic device. Louis XIV was all about excess, like Jackie, but he didn’t end poorly. That fate fell on his grandson and Marie Antoinette. Her tale is tragic, but the stories of her excesses are overblown and she, as the British would say, “comes a cropper.” That does not happen to Jackie. So, seeing Marie led off to the guillotine doesn’t quite work.

And the great F. Murray Abraham, who is cast as Jackie’s richer than rich husband, doesn’t get much to do. He’s almost a plot device like Wiley Post in The Will Rogers Follies, someone who marks the passage of time in Jackie’s life.

And so, the show comes to an unsatisfying conclusion. No lessons learned. No great songs sung. And yet, so many talented people on stage and behind – all lost in the wilderness[10] of West 44th Street.

Until next time, Alfred with a P

[1] The Fantasticks,[2] The Producers, [3] Carnival,[4] Godspell,[5] Dear Evan Hanson,[6] Hadestown, [7] Candide, [8] The Book of Mormon, [9] On the Twentieth Century – sorta, [10] Children of Eden

Those who stand with Fuentes, stand on broken glass

By Alfred P. Doblin

When I was a youngster, two leading right- and left-wing intellectual pundits got into it on television. It was 1968, the Democratic National Convention, and Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, Jr., were debating. Vidal called Buckley a “crypto-Nazi.” Buckley’s response was to call Vidal a “queer” and threatened to punch him in the face.

It was television gold at a time when many Americans still watched television in black and white. By today’s standards, both Vidal and Buckley would be dismissed as being too intellectually grounded.

No one can accuse the leading pundits of today of that. And to prove my point, ask anyone you meet, “What’s a crypto-Nazi?” I guarantee the majority would think it’s related to the promotion of bitcoin.

This week, Tucker Carlson, who had Hitler-praising Nick Fuentes on his widely watched podcast, The Tucker Carlson Show, is at the center of a firestorm. Well, that’s not exactly true. This firestorm is like that attraction at Universal Studios – the one that simulates the film Backdraft. The fire is turned on and off for show… or cable… or podcasts.

According to the blurb on Spotify promoting Tucker’s podcast, “The Tucker Carlson Show is your beacon of free speech and honest reporting in a media landscape dominated by misinformation. The only solution to ending the propaganda spiral is by telling the truth. That’s our job. Every day. No matter what.”

Well, here’s a truth: Nazism is evil. People who promote or advocate for Nazi-values are dangerous. Giving an unchallenged platform to those people – whether you agree with them or not – is not defending free speech; it is giving legitimacy to evil.

I’m old enough to know that you cannot tell what many people secretly think. That was the whole point of Vidal’s crypto-Nazi comment. “Crypto,” by the way, refers to a crypt – the Nazi support is hidden. But I’m also old enough to know that giving someone like Nick Fuentes several hours of airtime, which Tucker did, is giving Fuentes added legitimacy.

Here in New York, antisemitism was a significant issue in the just-concluded mayoral campaign. On Thursday, I was walking in my Brooklyn neighborhood, and I overheard a woman on her phone saying, “they elected someone who hates Jews” as the mayor and she was concerned about what would happen next.

I don’t share that fear in New York as it relates to the mayor elect, but I do share the fear that antisemitism is on the rise, and that anyone who thinks it is strictly an academic concern is either a fool or an idiot. There is no “left” or “right” to being a fool or an idiot. They are in that small group of non-affiliated human beings.

Fuentes thinks Adolf Hitler was “cool.” This is not a joke like in The Producers. This is real. The people who believe what Fuentes says have a right to believe it, and Fuentes has a constitutionally protected right to say it, but no one is required to give him unchallenged airtime.

It is irresponsible, at best, to say that the backlash against Tucker for giving Fuentes a platform is orchestrated by a “venomous coalition” that wants to cancel Carson. But that is what the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, said.

His first reaction was to circle the wagons around Carlson and fellow conservatives. Now Roberts is in full retreat mode, but it’s a little hard to make your escape when you’re the one who ordered the wagons to encircle you in the first place.

The real issue is a lack of national moral leadership. It does not exist. There are no voices of clarity cutting through the noise. This isn’t new. Do a little searching on the internet and cue up Father Charles Coughlin, the antisemitic radio priest of the 1930s. At its peak, his radio show was listened to by more than 30 million people, a huge number back then – and would still be today.

America did not rush into Europe to save millions of Jews. It did not open its doors to those trying to escape. When you are searching on the internet, type in the German ship, MS St. Louis.

The toxic partisanship that prevails today prevents political leaders on both sides of the aisle from joining together to denounce Fuentes and, also to criticize in the strongest of language Carlson’s decision to give Fuentes a platform.

This is more odious because of the timing of this national conversation. This Sunday and Monday marks the 87th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the November 9th and 10th, Nazi-orchestrated, antisemitic riots across 1938 Germany. Houses of worship, businesses, homes, and Jews – were all targeted for attack. It was a precursor of what was yet to come. The name “Kristallnacht” refers to the night of broken glass.

Perhaps by this weekend, someone will also make the connection, but I do not hold my breath. We do not live in an age of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, Jr.

Today, there are no crypto-Nazis. They are not being secretive about what they think, believe, and want to see happen.

We have a choice: We either stand up against hate and evil, or we stand on streets covered in broken glass.

Until next time, Alfred with a P

Election Day, pizza, and the green light at the end of the dock

By Alfred P. Doblin

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning—”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Great Gatsby”

Another Election Day. I spent decades of my life awaiting Election Day like it was Christmas – so much to unwrap. And instead of a fragrant roasted turkey, there was the promise of election-night newsroom pizza, boxes and boxes of the stuff – never really hot – but if you made your way quickly to the line snaking out a conference room, you might get slices warm enough to remind you of what it once was.

Election results were eagerly awaited if you ran an Opinion desk, as I did for many years. If it was a big enough race, say for president or governor and it had been too close to predict in advance, there were two editorials written in advance. One would be reworked to reflect what had happened in real time, the other discarded.

The promise of democracy is never so bright as it is before the results come streaming in. The penultimate paragraph in The Great Gatsby speaks to our belief that somehow tomorrow will be different, the outcome will be what we desired.

I saw the musical Hadestown the week Broadway reopened after the pandemic. The theater was electric – audience and actors – all wanted to be there and to be closer to what was before Covid. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is, to borrow from the show’s lyrics, “a sad song.” Yet, when the tragedy ends as it has for centuries, many in the audience gasped. Perhaps no one reads anymore, but I suspect it was because of the very construct of the show: Despite knowing how the story ends, we sing it again and again because we hope it will play out differently this time.

Some may call that madness. Maybe. But maybe, it’s the secret sauce that enables us, every now and then, to surprise ourselves. We hope against all odds.

Gatsby dies, Daisy and Tom disappear into their money, and Nick, the narrator, remains a wounded, cynical observer of the events. Still, we hope.

The ethical and moral bar for elections was never high. Dirt, rotting food, and whatever else awaited composting, have been heaved with abandon since our inception. I am not surprised by the ads that have flooded television, my computer, and phone. I also am not surprised that inspirational candidates are a rarity.

That explains why when one appears, whether from the left or right, he or she commands attention. It does not matter whether they will make life better or worse for the bulk of the electorate. That is not why they gain attention. They will make things different – or so we believe.

This time Orpheus will not look back at Eurydice. This time Gatsby lives happily ever after with Daisy. We do not want the ending of the story as written. We want to rewrite it. And so, when given an option, we vote for dramatic change.

Often the results are calamitous. Change for change’s sake is not a solution, but feels, at the beginning like it will be. Change for good, aside from sounding like a song from Wicked, is the green light flashing at the end of Daisy’s dock. “Gatsby believed in the green light.”

Is it such a bad thing to believe in what we know to be an impossibility?

The end of The Great Gatsby always struck me as both sad and hopeful. Fitzgerald’s view of an unmoored, decadent society is sexy and bleak; beautiful faceless people hopscotched from one party to another. But we will keep doing it over and over because maybe just this one time—

The irony of the lavish Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago last week could not be greater. It’s a sad song and we will sing again.

Decadence is not new. Callous indifference to the needs of the many is not new.

Yet, somewhere between the lines of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – documents authored by slave owners – is the hope that it can turn out differently; that if we keep telling the story again and again something about us in the moment it is being retold this new time, will change the outcome.

It is madness. But is a beautiful madness. It is why we vote for candidates that rarely excite us, because if we keep doing it, again and again, just maybe one time the choices will be different.

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,” as Fitzgerald writes at the conclusion of The Great Gatsby.

Things will change for the better. Democracy will thrive. And in some newsroom, the election-night pizza will be hot.

Until next time, Alfred with P

SNAP may become the sound of hunger

By Alfred P. Doblin

The fancy term is “food insecurity.” The realistic one: “going hungry.”

Unless there is a deus ex machina intervention, an estimated 42 million people in America will face that prospect if funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) expires on November 1.

Funding for SNAP, which is more commonly known as food stamps, is caught in a nasty web of politics. Wasn’t it Charlotte in a children’s book who wrote in her web, “Some pig,” referring to an actual hog? Here, it would be an appropriate label for the maker of the web, the body politic.

There is, no doubt, room for reform within SNAP, but funding is not ending because of that. SNAP has become a bargaining chip in Congress. Hungry people aren’t chips. Hungry people are people, like you and me. In most cases, fortune has not been kind to them and the cessation of SNAP funding will affect children, people with disabilities, the elderly, and many veterans and their families.

That’s the thing about webs – they do not separate the wheat from the chaff. Everything is trapped.

Former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, a man I much admire, used to speak about the “politics of inclusion.” It seems quaint today when politics has become a blood sport. We desperately need “policies of humanity.”

That sounds equally quaint, or worse, a little self-righteous. That is not my aim. At some point, we must recognize that everyday Americans are not poker chips to be wagered in a high-stakes game of chance.

When did we become such a people? Perhaps, a better question is when were we not so cruel?

It is not yet December and I hear this familiar exchange:

“‘…a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?’

‘Nothing!’ Scrooge replied.”

Yes, Dickens had a way of making a point. The “Poor,” “Want,” and “Abundance” are all capitalized. There was a time when after hearing that exchange, a reader would be taken aback by Scrooge’s indifference. Now, I am not so sure.

Elected officials have a responsibility to be good stewards of the public’s money. But no one regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum believe the funding for SNAP has anything to do with “undeserving” people gaming the system.

I don’t come from a moneyed background. I grew up in Lindenhurst, Long Island. It was a working-class and middle-class place in the 1950s and 60s. My family was not wealthy, but we had dinner every night. There was always enough money for food.

That is not the case in many households, today. Mother Teresa would rail against people who criticized her for feeding the poor rather than focusing on teaching them ways to make a living. She would respond that her mission was to ensure that no one went hungry; if you want to teach a man to fish, you have to feed him first so he can learn the skill.

Both are important, but the Working Poor are as real today as the Poor was real in Dickens’ time.

There’s a lot of national conversation about making America a Christian nation. I’m not sure what that means. Matthew 25:31-46 is clear about what happens to people who look the other way when faced with hunger. “And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” Matthew is not suggesting the people who ignore Want will spend eternity in an adult community in Boca.

It makes we wonder how anyone in government cannot be alarmed by what is happening. Sharing food is the key tenet of hospitality. All the major faiths share an understanding and a reverence for the sharing of food, and at times, abstaining from food.

Food is life. You cannot be pro-life and pro-hunger. It’s impossible.

Scrooge would have said no one goes hungry in Victorian England. Bah, humbug. No one goes hungry in 21st century America? Humbug and shame.

Good people will donate to food pantries. Charities will do all they can. And in some cases, neighbors will see another neighbor struggling and bring a casserole to their door or treat them to a bag of groceries.

The thing is when it comes to stopping hunger, we can never do enough. The thing is at this moment in America, all we do is too little.

Until next time, Alfred with a P

Toxic masculinity, toxic femininity, and the marathon of life

By Alfred P. Doblin

In 2006, I ran the New York City Marathon – not well. Out of 10 marathons run, it was my worse time. Yet, the T-shirt I bought before the race remains my favorite. The shirt features illustrations of the six stages of man above the months of June through November.

The six months represent the average training time for a New York City marathon runner; the race is always held the first Sunday in November. The first illustration is of an ape and the subsequent ones follow an evolutionary path to a modern, “shredded” runner.

All six images are male. That’s a statement right there.

Female runners are as impressive as male ones. Biology may affect what a body physically can achieve, but as in other sports, biology is one part of the equation. Your mind is the other significant force. It’s negotiating with your body every step of that 26.2 mile-journey.

The marathon shirt is front of mind for a couple of reasons.

I just finished a piece in The Washington Post by Megan McArdle on female toxicity. She writes there has been much discourse over toxic masculinity, but toxic femininity is ignored, and it contributes to our currently dysfunctional society.

I don’t agree with all she wrote, but it’s an interesting point of view. I don’t agree with much I have read about toxic masculinity, either. Except that it is real.

But from a gay man’s perspective, toxic masculinity isn’t new. It’s not a MAGA invention. It’s existed since the primate on the far left of my T-shirt began advancing toward the 21st century. What’s different today, is we have the technical ability to more quickly advance any trend.

To suggest that things are worse now ignores that things were never all that good for most men who didn’t fit a traditional heterosexual stereotype. Legal protections gained in the past 30 years have changed what can be criminalized and successfully prosecuted in a court of law, but that has little do with the lived LGBTQ experience outside the urban bubbles of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and a few other cities.

Last week, I saw a trailer for the film, Wicked: For Good (Clearly, I don’t fit a traditional heterosexual stereotype). In one sequence, Glinda discovers a “Tap to Bubble” button on the floor of what becomes her famous flying contraption. She plays with the button. Inflate bubble. Pop bubble. Inflate bubble. Pop bubble. You get the idea.

In this iteration of the Oz story, the bubble appears not to be magic, but a technological achievement. Either way, it’s not permanent. Bubbles never are. In Oz. In America.

McArdle’s essay has me thinking about how masculinity is expressed. Three showtunes – yes, showtunes – have been playing in my head. “Proud Lady” from The Baker’s Wife, which is being revived by Classic Stage Company, “She’s a Woman” from Kiss of the Spider Woman, and “I Am What I Am” from La Cage aux Folles.

“Proud Lady” is a paean to the male peacock. The guy is strutting his stuff as he announces his intentions to woo another man’s wife. Here’s a lyric describing his plan of attack: “I’ll know exactly what I’ll wear, a belt that’s tight, a shirt that’s red, and open just enough to show a little hair.”

I know that guy. At times, I’ve been that guy although not looking to impress a woman. The song, out of context from the show, is funny because the guy is a self-absorbed poser.

In “She’s a Woman,” an imprisoned gay man voices his desire to be a woman, describing the beautiful life of his film idol. The song ends with, “How lucky can you be? So lucky you’ll agree. And I wish that she were me, that woman.” Modern audiences may hear it as his desire to transition, which may be accurate, or the character could just be yearning to express his femininity while remaining a biological male. I don’t know.

“I Am What I Am,” is a “power anthem” sung by a drag queen who refuses to hide who he is for anyone.

In order, the three songs are about preening, yearning, and proclaiming. Which brings me back to the T-shirt with the six evolutionary stages of a runner.

Preening, yearning, and proclaiming – they define how men evolve from primate to who we are today.

None of us can escape these stages – even a showtune-loving man like me. I peacock more than I would freely admit. I sometimes yearn to express the showtune side with the preening side, as I still lament what a miserable marathon I ran in 2006. And I want the courage of self-belief to proclaim, “accept me with all my contradictions.”

At the root of toxic masculinity is an inability to merge those three different stages of human development.

Men too often get stuck in phase one. They preen. They may express that as a rant or an attack. Or they can’t move past the yearning stage and acknowledge the chasm between what they believe they want and who they authentically are. Without that, the anthem in the final stage rings hollow. It should proclaim who I am, not who I think I should be.

Life is a marathon, and we get to run it only once. No one should be silent in the face of oppression, hate, and toxic masculinity or toxic femininity. But we can’t cancel people like they are a bubble to be burst because there is no easy redo, no “Tap to Bubble” switch to activate.

My 2006 New York City Marathon T-shirt reminds me that I used to run marathons, and I did preen about with my finisher’s medal later that day. That is a part of me. But I kept moving, albeit with less cartilage in my left knee. I evolved. I am evolving. I’m not the shredded runner in the last of the six illustrations. I never was. I never will be.

Toxic masculinity. Toxic femininity. Buzz words don’t do much. They are not anthems to proclaim.

I am what I am, but you are who you are. That would be a song to sing.

Until next time, Alfred with P

The Louvre, the ballroom, and Graham Platner’s tattoo

By Alfred P. Doblin

Friday. No one in charge of security at the Louvre apparently ever watched Ocean’s 8. No one yet has suggested the East Wing of the White House was demolished to make way for a replica of the old flagship Bonwit Teller store, not a ballroom. (Old New Yorkers will understand) And it seems no male Democrat running for the U.S. Senate in Maine can keep his shirt on.

There is a lot of serious things happening around the globe, so it may be surprising that the lack of shirts in Maine is on my list, but the story has legs… and torsos. Sorry.

This bare-chested tale begins with Graham Platner. He’s a progressive Democratic, supported by Bernie Sanders, who is trying to unseat the Republican incumbent, Susan Collins, who’s been in the Senate since 1996. When I first heard the story, I was a bit confused. A video of Platner had gone viral. He was dancing at his brother’s wedding 10 years ago. He was in his underpants. Nothing else.

Platner was lip-syncing to a Miley Cyrus song. I believe it’s “Wrecking Ball” which could tie us back into the demise of the East Wing, but I digress. With Platner, the song title was prescient. The old video revealed he had a tattoo on his chest that resembled a Nazi symbol. Platner claims that when he was a Marine in Croatia, he and his equally drunk buddies got tattoos and gravitated to skull and crossbones and that was all there was to it.

People may accept that part of the narrative. But it’s hard to believe that more than a decade of stripping later, the possibility that the tattoo was a symbol of Hitler’s Schutzstaffel never came up.

Leave aside the judgement of stripping at your brother’s wedding, other things have been revealed, as well. Platner’s history on Reddit of crude, misogynistic, racist, and homophobic posts also have come to light. The slurs against LGBTQ people are particularly graphic and offensive. Platner spoke to The Advocate about them and admits they are indefensible.

He says he is not the same person he was back then. I hope, for his sake, that is true. The men and women who serve in our military step-up to do something most of us would not do. I respect that. And I respect his admission of struggling with the demons that followed him out the service.

Yet, he says that much of what he posted was just designed to get a rise out of people; he never believed some of the outrageous things he posted. So, he said them for attention? For followers? Does that make it better?

As the fallout from the tattoo continued, Platner promised to have the tattoo removed. He did not, but rather, had it covered up. Sadly, he cannot cover up, so there I was watching CNN at lunch on Thursday as the anchor explained that a large image of a man’s bare chest on the screen was not gratuitous. It was news.

Platner revealed his new tattoo: a Celtic knot with a spread-eagled dog. Or something like that. It’s not very attractive.

If the Maine story couldn’t get odder, I found a re-posted post in my X feed by Jordan Wood. He’s running for the same U.S. Senate seat as is Platner and Maine Governor Janet Mills, who is also looking to unseat Collins. In Wood’s post, he is lying shirtless in bed with his baby daughter on his chest. A lot of dads have shirtless photos of themselves holding their babies. I’ve never quite understood why.

Wood’s post highlighted that he, too, had a tattoo, but he knew what it meant: it was the symbol for the Obama presidential campaign.

It’s important to remind yourself that these are Democrats trying to bring a more relevant, serious approach to government. We have primaries to sort out who is who and what the electorate wants. Platner is leading by a wide margin in a recent University of New Hampshire poll. The folks in Maine will have to figure it out.

But why do we have to know what it on these candidates’ chests. When did this become relevant? Platner’s Reddit posts are enough for a serious conversation on its contents, and also, on the effects of PTSD. I don’t know whether that can excuse Platner’s past conduct. I remain troubled by anyone claiming what they posted online was never reflective of what they believed, but rather only a gimmick to get attention.

That’s not a credo for leadership; it is a good line for a stripper. Listen to the sage Miss Mazeppa in Gypsy, “You've gotta get a gimmick, if you want to get ahead.”

Jordan Wood’s shirtless post was reflective of that mantra, as well. He saw an opportunity. His tattoo is on his arm. He could have just flexed in a T-shirt to make his point. But that wouldn’t have garnered the same attention as the shirtless photo with his daughter. He got people’s attention. OK. That was a minute. Now what?

With all that is happening or not happening in Congress, to quote the fictional President Andrew Shepherd of The American President, “We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them.”

We have serious problems, but we are consumed by so much that is not serious. Shiny objects are everywhere, and we dart from one to the other. No wonder jewel thieves could drive a truck with a ladder to the side of the Louvre and steal millions of gems in broad daylight. Or that a section of the White House could be demolished in days. Or that Democratic candidates for a U.S. Senate seat in Maine have made a splash not over progressive policy, but pectorals and body ink.

As I wrote at the top of the blog: Friday.

Until next time, Alfred with a P

A kiss and a miss for this ‘Spider Woman’

By Alfred P. Doblin

There was no grand plan behind seeing Kiss of the Spider Woman the same weekend as the “No Kings” rallies. America is not the 1983 Argentina of the latest adaption of Manuel Puig’s novel. Yet, the thought of the rallies, unprecedented challenges to our democracy, and the images of immigrants being rounded up, loaded on planes, and sent to a notorious Venezuelan prison or places to be determined, swirled in my head much like the Hollywood musical fantasies do in the mind of the prisoner Molina in Kiss of the Spider Woman.

While there may be a new moral to Puig’s story waiting to be drawn out, the waiting will have to continue. The film version of the hit Kander and Ebb stage musical is many things – some quite beautiful and moving – but it is surprisingly less powerful than it should be. Given the planning for any big film, it is unlikely the creative people involved in the project were anticipating where the world would be in 2025. Not everyone is as prescient as Fred Ebb who wrote: “The planet spins and the world goes round and round.”

When I began writing these blogs, I said there would be showtunes, so like Bette Davis said in All About Eve and Lauren Bacall tried to sing in Applause, “fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

I wanted so much to love this film. Jennifer Lopez remains an underappreciated serious talent despite all her commercial success. Maybe she will get Oscar this time. Maybe this time she’ll be lucky.

Yet, something does not work in the film. The construct of this Kiss of the Spider Woman is a film within a film, which is sort of like the stage version, but it was not so deliberately bifurcated. Director and screenwriter Bill Condon has put all the songs into Hollywood movie musical sequences, that follow the plot of the “film within the film,” The Kiss of the Spider Woman, told by Molina, an imprisoned gay window dresser, to his cellmate, Valentin, a political prisoner. Both Molina and Valentin will “step into” this movie of Molina’s imagination.

The star of this film is a fictional Latina star of yore: Ingrid Luna who plays Aurora, who runs a fashion magazine.

Aurora has a gay assistant who quickly becomes Molina, because the actor in the “real” film, who was gay, tried to “butch it up” too much. There is a quick dig at Danny Kaye. If you don’t know, there was a great stage musical, Lady in the Dark. The Kurt Weill-Ira Gershwin show set all its musical numbers into three dream sequences. The main character, Liza Elliott, is the editor of a fashion magazine named Allure, and in the original stage version, she had a very gay fashion photographer played by none other than Danny Kaye. The role made him a star.

That piece of trivia is perhaps what got in my way in this film version. That and the constant references to great movie musicals. All the musical scenes are riffs on something else – which could be fantastic – but there is a fine line between an homage and being derivative. Rather than be taken into a new vision that clearly was influenced by the great directors and choreographers of the past, I was constantly reminded that Gene Kelly did this better, and that Judy Garland is, well, Judy Garland and why would you want someone as talented as Jennifer Lopez setting herself up to be compared with Judy Garland? Or Rita Hayworth? Or anyone else?

The movie musical is a dicey thing. Bob Fosse found that sweet spot in Cabaret. He took the stage musical, eliminated many songs including “So What,” my favorite because it sums up the entire Weimar culture, and aside from a Nazi youth singing in the countryside, put all the songs inside the cabaret.

Valentin says something to the effect, “No one sings in real life,” to which Molina replies, “Well, maybe they should.” The difference between Cabaret and Kiss of the Spider Woman is that a good part of the former show is set inside a cabaret; the songs add context to the characters and the plot, so eliminating the songs of mainly secondary characters, did not affect the story telling.

But to go out on a limb here, removing all the songs from the characters inside the prison in Kiss of the Spider Woman is a little like Molina’s criticism of the obviously gay assistant in the fictional film who butches it up. You can either accept the construct of a musical – that everyone is singing everywhere – or you create a straight (no pun intended, well-maybe just a little) play.

The two stories playing out in Kiss of the Spider Woman, one in the prison and one in the movie musical, never quite connect dramatically. In fact, the prison scenes are the more powerful and beautiful. By putting all the music in one basket, and then creating a single fantasy musical where everything Technicolor happens, Condon keeps the stories separate rather than woven together.

Condon found magic in Chicago, but in Kiss of the Spider Woman it felt like Chromolume #7 (See Sunday in the Park with George).

Diego Luna is perfect as Valentin. Tonatiuh is nothing short of a revelation on screen as Molina. And Jennifer Lopez is technically brilliant in everything she does. But I still found myself disengaged. The story is about accepting who you are, having the courage to die for who you are and what you believe to be true, and most important, to acknowledge the importance of love in all of this.

Love is the Technicolor.

If you believe in democracy, we are living in dangerous times. Across the globe, people I don’t quite recognize are singing “Tomorrow belongs to me.” This is a moment when the underlying message of all the variations of Manuel Puig’s novel needs to be proclaimed. Something was missing in this film version. The final, haunting shot seemed part of another film, one that would have had more edge.

“And the candles in our hand will illuminate this land, if not tomorrow, then the day after that.” Valentin sings that in the stirring, political song, “The Day After That.” It was a big moment in the original stage version. It was cut from the film.

Until next time, Alfred with P

In wake of Politico story, no elephants, no donkeys, just a lot of pigs

By Alfred P. Doblin

Language matters. As I understand some of the legal arguments made defending the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, there is constitutionally no such thing as hate speech. It’s a complicated argument, like how “many angels fit on the head of a pin.” Sadly, I’m not a Jesuit.

In my limited comprehension, it comes down to there is no “hate speech,” but there is hateful speech, and that is legally permissible. When speech incites violence, it crosses a legal line. Again, because lawyers will argue what that means, the “line” drawn is a line drawn in the sand. Despite the common use of that phrase meaning something is set forever, I simply point to the tide that rushes in with regularity and laugh.

This week, Politico broke a story revealing that a sizable group of young Republicans engaged in vile discourse in an online chat thread; nearly 3,000 pages of racist, homophobic, and disturbing comments.

There’s been blowback, of course. Democrats are incensed. Some Republicans are incensed. But mostly folks have retreated to their corners of the sandbox. I use that analogy because the only way to understand discourse in America is recognize that most adults who have power, want power, or delusionally believe they have power, are emotionally 5- and 6-years old.

However, the disturbing comments, which included professing love for Hitler, were not written by children, but by adults. And even if it were the former, we all should be greatly concerned.

In response to questions regarding the Politico story, Vice President J. D. Vance said, “I refuse to join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence.” He was referring to once-private texts made several years ago by the now-Democratic candidate for Attorney General in Virginia saying the then-Republican leader in his state should be shot and his children should die. Those comments are despicable. There is no excuse for that and if that ruins Democrats’ chances in Virginia, someone should have done a little opposition research before jumping on the campaign bus.

But Vance isn’t out of the clear, either, because while I find his allusion to “pearl clutching” Dame Edna-worthy, one person’s despicable act does not excuse another person’s. More to my point, it does not excuse our action of not taking any action against what is obviously abhorrent.

Saint Augustine wrote, “He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent.” I take that to mean, we have to own-up to what we do and do not do, and unless we acknowledge our responsibility for the consequences of those actions or inactions, we cannot expect to receive the blessing of God.

Instead, what I am reading from Republicans and Democrats, alike, are words less profound: “I know you are, but what am I?”

That’s not St. Augustine. It’s Pee-wee Herman.

The Politico story is important whether you think the information is a gamechanger for societal discourse – which of course, it’s not – or you think it’s just a cheap, political hit job – which I don’t think it is, either. It’s just reporting.

We all should be disturbed that anyone is saying these things. Let’s not get diverted by red herrings and think someone is saying it’s a crime to be a bigoted, racist, homophobe. The Constitution protects the entire spectrum. But the American people should be protecting the dignity of all Americans. That means standing up and calling a pig a pig.

If it oinks like a pig, grunts like a pig, and likes rolling around in muck, it’s a pig.

All people of good faith should be outraged by anyone saying they love Hitler or use demeaning phrases to describe Black men or gay men or any person. It doesn’t matter if someone from an opposing political view said something worse. It’s not a contest. Both sides are losers.

This is not about politics. This is about the soul of America.

The framers of the Constitution wrote, what at times seems to be, a somewhat vague document because they believed in the underlying goodness of people. They were not fools. They put up guardrails. And they put up some that needed to be taken down since 1788, when the Constitution was ratified. But they did not spell everything out. They wanted to allow future generations to fill in the grey areas. As an aside, that grey area has guaranteed lawyers an income for perpetuity.

People disagree. People say horrible things. And when they do, we need to say unequivocally that it is horrible, that hateful speech is not acceptable. If we are so self-impressed that we believe everything we say has value, then everything we say has consequences.

“I know you are, but what am I?” is not the response of an adult. It’s time to get out of the sandbox.

Until next time, Alfred with a P

In the Middle East, the day after tomorrow is today

By Alfred P. Doblin

Today is the day after tomorrow in the Middle East. Forget the 2004 apocalyptic film with that title. Today is neither a piece of celluloid fiction nor a cautionary tale about climate change. Today is the day after an extraordinary step toward peace was made in the Middle East.

There are people smarter than I who can and will opine on whether lasting peace is possible, people with a deeper knowledge of the politics and emotions that have swirled above the Middle East like waterspouts above a warm sea.

The images of the final living hostages returning to families in Israel bring tears to anyone with a heart and the belief that we can experience moments of joy so intense that they are proof of the existence of God.

The devastation in Gaza, is tearful, as well. These are not tears of joy. There is little left there except for the hope that refuses to die in all of us that something better is on the horizon – tomorrow.

The Gaza images are reminiscent of photos of bombed-out Warsaw after World War II, a city left in ruins waiting for someone to rebuild it. If you visit Berlin, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is an unsettling reminder of what much of Germany’s capital city looked like following the war. The ruined Kaiser Wilhelm Church remains as a testament to the consequences of war. But it is just a building.

Relatively few of the millions of people who lived through World War II as adults still live. And when we, collectively, say “never forget” and “never again,” we imperfectly believe that we will do just that. Yet, history shows us otherwise. Part of the problem is Time, uppercase “T.”

Time does not heal all wounds. Time propels us forward; we have no choice in the matter. We remove the rubble. We rebuild. And we believe we will never forget and never allow such a thing to occur again.

The Holocaust is unique in its horror and its sheer explosion of evil. What we are seeing now in the Middle East is horrific enough, but it is not that. But there is a lesson from the 1940s that must not be forgotten: we can rebuild houses, offices, and roads. We can infuse economies with billions of dollars in aid. But we cannot infuse innocence lost into the survivors of horror. It is when we think we can – or even worse – when we think that we have, that we backslide into the same patterns we profess never to return to.

My dad never talked much about Berlin in the early 1930s before he fled. He did speak at times about an encounter with what he believed was the SS. He was brought into an office on an upper floor of a building and was gradually being “pushed” toward a window. Exactly, how he escaped that fate was never made clear to me. I’m not sure if he remembered all of it. He was damaged just like the Kaiser William Church.

Like that church, my dad continued to exist in an everchanging world. He adapted as best he could, but he remained damaged for the rest of his life. When we rebuild a structure, we replace what was there. When people rebuild their lives, their damaged structure remains part of their foundation.

That foundation is what kept them from crumbling during the conflict, so there is much good there. But it has been altered forever and nothing can change that.

The day after tomorrow holds the promise of the future. That is magnificent. But it also holds the scars of the past. That is challenging.

The freed hostages will be forever changed. Their families will be forever changed. The people living in fear and devastation in Gaza will be forever changed. Most people do not deserve the fate that befalls them. They are entangled by events bigger than any one person. How to untangle them, or untangle ourselves – well, there’s the rub.

Smart people will study the politics and the generations of conflicts responsible for what has recently unfolded in a vast region that gave birth to the teachings of the Gospels, the Torah, and the Quran. The Middle East is a holy place. Perhaps that is why the forces of evil can never resist staining it with blood.

Celebrate the day after tomorrow. Something good has happened, something that offers promise. But do not celebrate too much, because the day after the day after tomorrow – well, that’s the future. The work ahead is the hardest.

Until next time, Alfred with a P

Come out when you’re ready to come out

By Alfred P. Doblin

October 11 is National Coming Out Day. On one level, it does not affect me anymore. If I were to call up one of my friends and say, “I’m coming out,” their response would be: “Again? Did you leave something in the closet? A tie? Or perhaps a pair of shoes?”

That I can joke about it is a sign of progress from where I was 35 years ago, when I finally did come out. There was nothing funny about it then, and the idea that I would become so flippant about it decades later was as improbable to me as the possibility of hooking up with a woman.

But National Coming Out Day remains important to me because there are still many individuals – young and old – who struggle with accepting who they are. To them, I say, “Come out when you are ready. It doesn’t have to be October 11, or in Pride Month, or while you are waiting on a line to see Kiss of the Spider Woman. Come out when you are ready.”

I was 33 when I came out, and the more I reflect on my coming-out process, the more I am amazed at how much I fought what I always knew. My strongest early gay memory is seeing the play, Cactus Flower. Picture it. Not Sicily, but the Royale Theater on 45th Street in Manhattan. June of 1967. A nine-year-old is taken with his parents and sister to see a play with Lauren Bacall. The plot is way over his head. I was small for my age, so everything was way over my head, but I digress. Early in the play – it may have been the first scene, I don’t recall – a young man climbs through a window wearing a towel. That was it. A hot man in a towel. I was transfixed. I think the play ends with the cactus plant on Lauren Bacall’s desk blooming, but I am not sure. Neither Bacall nor the cactus was wearing a towel or for that matter was a shirtless young man.

While I hope my memory of the scene is correct and I have not conflated it with something else, the dates are right because I’ve saved every damn Playbill from every Broadway show I’ve ever seen. They’re in official Playbill binders filled to their maximum capacity. I have 23 binders to date. And still it took me to 33 years to come out of the closet! Lauren Bacall’s cactus wasn’t the only late bloomer.

My story is significant because there was no social media in 1967. No one was telling me to be gay. There were no gay role models. Gay was not even the common word for homosexual men. The word most trafficked began with an “f” and it still cuts me sharply today.

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a challenge to a Colorado law that bans licensed therapists from using what is termed as “conversion therapy.” The therapy has been widely discredited by the medical community. Its underlying principle is that gay people can be taught to be straight.

If that were the case, would the therapists who believe sexual orientation is a choice also believe “practicing” straight people could be taught to be gay?

I’ve never met a straight man who could be pressured into being gay. And I have never met a gay man who said society or some outside influence made him gay. It doesn’t work that way. I don’t have a medical degree – it’s not as if I could tell you with impunity not to take Tylenol if you’re pregnant – but I have almost 68 years of lived experience and I can say with surety, I did not choose to be gay any more than I chose to be. Period.

If there were gay role models in the 1960s and early 1970s, perhaps I would have come out in high school. I don’t know. Looking back, I wasn’t ready for any of that as a teen or even in my twenties. I needed space. A lot of space. It required me moving from Long Island to Los Angeles. But that was just me.

Which brings me back to October 11, National Coming Out Day. I’m not a fan of all these “days.” They are contrivances based on a moment in history that unintentionally put pressure on people to “get with the concept” on that date. No one should feel compelled to come out on anyone’s timetable but their own. It is a personal journey, and I can say with pride, that I came out when I was ready and because I had met someone who was kind, safe, and lit me up in a way I did not think I could be lit up.

It was glorious. Most gay men I know do not describe their first gay experience as glorious. I make no judgement on that. We all want and need different things. There is no one way to be gay. There is no one way to be. Period.

You cannot turn off being gay like a light switch. Yes, that is a reference to a song in the musical The Book of Mormon. (I said in my first blog there would be showtunes.) Reparative therapy is dangerous. Yet, the Supreme Court will probably rule in favor of the licensed therapist and many states across the country will find their bans on the practice disappear. I fear the damage to LGBTQ individuals subjected to the therapy will be longer lasting.

That saddens me as an elder gay man. But I remain hopeful that the human spirit is stronger than the legal profession and the vagaries of nine people in black robes.

Come out when you are ready. Things may not always get better, but things will always change. Laws change. Society changes. And how each of us deal with both changes. But who we innately are? That doesn’t change. And whatever it is that makes us whoever we are does not need repairing. It needs nurturing. And it needs – from time to time – celebrating.

So celebrate October 11, if that date works for you. If it does, shout it out. We will applaud you for your courage, strength, and most importantly, for your authenticity. But if not October 11, there are 364 other possibilities in the year.

For me, October 11 is a day to remember that I started coming out long before I knew I was gay. There’s a Judy Garland song lyric – I cannot help myself – “I was born in a trunk in the Princess Theater in Pocatello, Idaho.” For me, as a gay man, it was the balcony of the Royale Theater in New York City, New York.

Until next time, Alfred with a P

Banning books is never right

By Alfred P. Doblin

This is Banned Books Week, and to be clear, since we are living in strange times, the week was launched by the American Library Association (ALA) in 1982 not to celebrate the banning of books, but rather “in response to a sudden surge in the number of book challenges in libraries, schools, and bookstores.”

That quote from the ALA’s website sadly sums up the current situation in America where book bans are on the rise. The theme for this year’s Banned Books Week is: “Censorship Is So 1984. Read for Your Rights.” The theme is a nod to George Orwell’s dystopian novel.

The ALA also has released the list of the Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2024. I haven’t read any of the books on the list, but according to the ALA’s summaries of each title, four of the 10 books have LGBTQ themes; the others are flagged for sexually explicit material.

In my youth, people were still up in arms over the likes of Henry Miller. Perhaps no one is trying to ban Tropic of Cancer anymore because they think it’s the basis for a Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr, Jack Black film. Yes, I know that was Tropic of Thunder, but I wonder whether most Americans have even heard of Henry Miller. According to a 2025 study by the University of Florida and University College London, daily reading for pleasure in the United States declined by more than 40 percent over the last 20 years.

It's a little ironic that there is a rise in banning books while there is a decrease in reading them. 

Certainly, there is a difference between a government ban of a book that could result in criminal charges and a local book ban. But it is not a great difference because the latter is just one or two exit ramps away from the former.

As an author of an LGBT book, this is more than an academic exercise to me, although I doubt my book will rise to the level of attention needed to become a source of outrage for anyone. That isn’t the point. Writers have something to say, and you can listen or not, but in a free society your choice should not become, by default, my choice.

The thing about books is that readers will find things in them that the author never thought they put there. When I was in high school, we read A Separate Peace, by John Knowles. It’s a coming-of-age story set in a prep school in the early 1940s, centering around two boys, Gene and Finny. When I read that story as a closeted teen, it read gay to me.

Years later, I learned that I was not alone in that interpretation. Yet, I also have read that Knowles steadfastly rejected that there was any homoerotic subtext to his book. OK… but, I still believe there is.

I found all sorts of hidden sexual innuendo in dozens of classic books – it didn’t need to be spelled out because I had an imagination. I could romanticize and fantasize to my heart’s content over characters that were not appearing in sexually explicit novels. I can still recall a Tom Swift book – a once-popular series of books for boys – where our hero Tom is stripped, placed in a small boat, and set adrift at sea. It was not written to be erotic, but you cannot control what’s in the reader’s mind. That was Orwell’s point, wasn’t it?

We live in the age of YouTube, phones with apps, and songs with lyrics that are not just sexually explicit, but racist, misogynistic, and homophobic. The 10 most challenged books are books; they are not how-to videos. And let’s be honest, young people have been figuring out the how-to part without the help of authors since the beginning of time. They don’t need a book for that.

What adolescents do need are books where they can find people like themselves. When we’re growing up, we often feel no one is like us, and that is amplified if you realize that you are part of a marginalized community. Books are friends to anyone, but most importantly, they are friends to people who need a friend like themselves.

I’m not a parent, so I cannot fathom what it is like to watch your child navigate their way into adulthood. I get that. I respect that. And I believe parents have the right to determine what their minor child reads and watches. But the ALA notes that “pressure groups and government entities” initiated 72 percent of the demands to censor books in either school or public libraries in 2024. The rise in book bans is not the act of individual parents with a concern, but of organized movements.

I’m not a very “woke” person. I am not moving all that easily through my late 60s, but the opposite of woke is unconscious and that isn’t very appealing either. I would prefer to be curious – open to new ideas, to new points of view even if they are hard for me to hear. I will accept or reject them as I see fit.

It is my choice to make; Big Brother has no place in our society. After reading the list of the 10 Most Challenged Books of 2024, I went out and bought the number one challenged book, “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson. It is a form of activism that I am comfortable with – buying books and reading them.

I hope for the sake of our society in these strange times that I am not alone.

Until next time, Alfred with a P