Gene Hackman with wife Betsy Arakawa at the 2003 Golden Globes

Dear Commons Community,

Gene Hackman, the screen actor with memorable roles in The French Connection, Unforgiven, Superman, and a host of other movies, has died. He was 95.

The actor and his wife, classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, were found dead at their home in Santa Fe Summit on yesterday, reported the Santa Fe New Mexican, citing County Sheriff Adan Mendoza who confirmed to the outlet that the couple had died, along with their dog.

Mendoza added there was no immediate indication of foul play in the deaths, the outlet added. He also did not provide a cause of death or say when the couple might have died.

For decades, Hackman has been one of my favorite actors.

Below is his obituary courtesy of The New York Times.

May he rest in peace!

Tony

The winner of two Oscars, he was hailed for his nuanced performances in films like “The French Connection,” “Unforgiven” and “The Royal Tenenbaums.”

By Robert Berkvist

Feb. 27, 2025Updated 4:50 a.m. ET

Gene Hackman, who never fit the mold of a Hollywood movie star, but who became one all the same, playing seemingly ordinary characters with deceptive subtlety, intensity and often charm in some of the most noted films of the 1970s and ’80s, has died, the authorities in New Mexico said on Thursday. He was 95.

Mr. Hackman and his wife were found dead on Wednesday afternoon at a home in Santa Fe., N.M., where they had been living, according to a statement from the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department. Sheriff’s deputies found the bodies of Mr. Hackman; his wife, Betsy Arakawa, 64; and a dog, according to the statement, which said that foul play was not suspected.

Mr. Hackman was nominated for five Academy Awards and won two during a 40-year career in which he appeared in films seen and remembered by millions, among them “Bonnie and Clyde,” “The French Connection,” “The Poseidon Adventure,” “Mississippi Burning,” “Unforgiven,” “Superman,” “Hoosiers” and “The Royal Tenenbaums.”

The familiar characterization of Mr. Hackman was that he was Hollywood’s perfect Everyman. But perhaps that was too easy. His characters — convict, sheriff, Klansman, steelworker, spy, minister, war hero, grieving widower, submarine commander, basketball coach, president — defied pigeonholing, as did his shaded portrayals of them.

Still, he did not deny that he had a regular-Joe image, nor did he mind it. He once joked that he looked like “your everyday mine worker.” And he did seem to have been born middle-aged: slightly balding, with strong but unremarkable features neither plain nor handsome, a tall man (6-foot-2) more likely to melt into a crowd than stand out in one.

It was Mr. Hackman’s gift to be able to peel back the layers from characters who carried the weight of middle age.

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“Because they’ve been around long enough to experience failure and loss, but not long enough to take it easy, Hackman could play them with a distinctive mix of shadow and light,” Jeremy McCarter wrote in an appraisal of Mr. Hackman’s career in Newsweek in 2010, six years after the release of what turned out to be his last film, the comedy “Welcome to Mooseport,” and two years after he confirmed that he did not plan to make any more movies.

“While some actors congratulate themselves for venturing into the moral gray zone,” Mr. McCarter continued, “Hackman has called it home for so long that we’ve ceased to notice. In his performances, as in life, the good guys aren’t always nice guys, and the villains have charm.”

If the critics had one word for Mr. Hackman as a performer, it was “believable.” He seemed to live his roles, they said, not play them.

“There’s no identifiable quality that makes Mr. Hackman stand out,” Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times in 1988. “He simply makes himself outstandingly vital and real.”

He avoided self-analysis when he talked about acting. “I don’t like to look real deep at what I do with my characters,” he once said. “It is that strange fear that if you look at something too closely, it goes away.”

Mr. Hackman was forever associated with his breakout role, that of the crude, relentless narcotics cop Popeye Doyle — a grim-faced bloodhound in a porkpie hat — in the hit 1971 film “The French Connection.” That performance brought him his first Academy Award, as best actor.

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But that was only one of countless memorable film portraits. He received an Oscar nomination for his work in Alan Parker’s “Mississippi Burning” (1988), in which he played an F.B.I. agent investigating the disappearance of three civil rights workers — a “scratchy, rumpled, down-home-talking redneck, who himself has murder in his heart,” as Vincent Canby wrote in The Times.

In “Unforgiven” (1992), as a vicious small-town sheriff who crosses six-guns with a bounty hunter played by Clint Eastwood, he was a chilling study in sadistic brutality. That performance brought him his second Oscar, as best supporting actor.

Early Accolades

Early in his career Mr. Hackman worked on television shows like “Route 66” and “Naked City,” in improvisational theater and in Broadway comedies, including Muriel Resnik’s “Any Wednesday,” with Sandy Dennis, and Jean Kerr’s “Poor Richard,” with Alan Bates and Joanna Pettet. His performance in a bit part in a 1964 Warren Beatty movie, “Lilith,” made a lasting impression on Mr. Beatty, who remembered him when he was producing “Bonnie and Clyde” and looking for someone to play Buck Barrow, the explosive brother of the gangster Clyde Barrow (played by Mr. Beatty). Mr. Hackman’s performance in that film, directed by Arthur Penn and released in 1967, brought him his first Oscar nomination.

By the time the director William Friedkin cast him in “The French Connection,” Mr. Hackman had more than a dozen films under his belt and a second supporting-actor Oscar nomination, for “I Never Sang for My Father” (1970), in which he played a widower coping with a demanding parent (played by Melvyn Douglas).

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Not all his roles explored life’s dark side. His knack for comedy, honed on the stage, resurfaced in Mel Brooks’s “Young Frankenstein” (1974), in which he was cast as a blind hermit who unknowingly plays host to the monster, and served him well in later films like “The Birdcage” (1996) and “The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001).

By the mid-1970s Mr. Hackman was making movies at such a frantic pace that he became known as the hardest-working actor in Hollywood. In 1972 he appeared in three feature films, most notably “The Poseidon Adventure,” in which he played a minister trying to survive with other frantic passengers aboard a capsized ocean liner. (The other two were “Prime Cut” and “Cisco Pike.”) He repeated that trifecta in 1974 with “Young Frankenstein,” the western “Zandy’s Bride” and “The Conversation,” Francis Ford Coppola’s taut, understated drama about a surveillance expert who becomes involved in trying to prevent a murder.

His work in “The Conversation” was one of a string of critically acclaimed performances in the 1970s; among the others were his brawling ex-con in “Scarecrow” (1973) — which he considered the best performance of his career — and his troubled private eye in “Night Moves” (1975), in which he was reunited with Arthur Penn. But perhaps inevitably, given how many there were, his performances were often routine.

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Mr. Hackman was making lots of money, but he was also wearing himself out. His return appearance as Popeye Doyle in “French Connection II” in 1975 was one of four Hackman films that were released that year. By the end of the decade, he decided he’d had enough for a while.

After playing Lex Luthor, nemesis of the Man of Steel, in “Superman” (1978) — and simultaneously filming his scenes for “Superman II,” released two years later — Mr. Hackman briefly left Hollywood. He did not make another film until “All Night Long,” a comedy co-starring Barbra Streisand, in 1981.

His streak of well-received performances soon resumed: as a high school basketball coach in search of redemption in “Hoosiers” (1986) and a government official who accidentally murders his mistress in “No Way Out” (1987); as a district attorney trying to protect a witness from two hit men in “Narrow Margin” (1990); and, in “The Birdcage,” a remake of the French comedy “La Cage aux Folles,” as a conservative, pompous politician whose daughter’s fiancé turns out to have two gay men, one of them a drag performer, as parents.

No Slowing Down

Even the heart surgery he underwent in 1990 did not slow his pace. In 2001, a year after turning 70, Mr. Hackman was seen in five films: the comedy “The Heartbreakers,” as a tobacco tycoon; “The Heist,” David Mamet’s story of an elaborately planned robbery, as a master thief contemplating retirement; “Behind Enemy Lines,” as a naval chief trying to rescue a pilot shot down over Bosnia; “The Mexican,” a comedy adventure starring Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts, as an imprisoned mob boss; and Wes Anderson’s quirky “The Royal Tenenbaums,” as the absentee father of three prodigiously talented children.

That same year the critic David Edelstein, noting that unlike most actors of comparable stature, Mr. Hackman occupied “a middle ground between character acting and movie stardom,” suggested one key to his success. “Even at their jauntiest,” Mr. Edelstein wrote in The Times, “Mr. Hackman’s performances have volcanic undercurrents. It might be that the secret of his uniqueness is that his comfort zone is such a scary and volatile place.”

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Eugene Allen Hackman was born in San Bernardino, Calif., on Jan. 30, 1930, and grew up in Danville, Ill. His father, also named Eugene, was a pressman for the local newspaper. His mother, the former Anna Lyda Gray, was a waitress.

When young Gene was 13, his father abandoned the family, driving away while his son was out playing in the street. As his father passed by, Mr. Hackman recalled years later, he gave him a wave of the hand.

“I hadn’t realized how much one small gesture can mean,” he once said. “Maybe that’s why I became an actor.”

Lying about his age, he enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1946 and served in China and then in Hawaii and Japan, at one point working as a disc jockey for his unit’s radio station. After his discharge he studied journalism at the University of Illinois for six months and then went to New York to learn about television production.

He worked at local stations around the country before deciding to study acting, first in New York and then at the Pasadena Playhouse in California, where Dustin Hoffman was a fellow student. They struck up a lasting friendship, though they did not appear in a film together until 2003, when they were both in “Runaway Jury,” a courtroom drama based on a John Grisham novel.

Back in New York, Mr. Hackman met and married Faye Maltese, a bank secretary, and began the classic actor’s struggle to survive. “I drove a truck, jerked sodas, sold shoes,” he told an interviewer.

A Broadway Hit

Eventually he found theater work, first in summer stock and then Off Broadway. In “Any Wednesday” — his third Broadway play, but the first to last more than a few days — he played a young man from Ohio who goes to New York and falls in love with a tycoon’s mistress. The critics applauded, the play was a hit, and Mr. Hackman never had to sell another pair of shoes.

Mr. Hackman’s first marriage ended in divorce in 1986, after several trial separations. In 1991 he married Ms. Arakawa, a classical pianist, and they settled in Santa Fe. He is survived by his children from his first marriage.

Mr. Hackman returned to the stage in 1992, opposite Glenn Close and Richard Dreyfuss in Mike Nichols’s production of “Death and the Maiden,” Ariel Dorfman’s play about a Latin American woman (Ms. Close) who succeeds in trapping the man (Mr. Hackman) she believes had raped and tortured her as a political prisoner years earlier. It was his first appearance on Broadway in 25 years; it was also his last.

In his later years Mr. Hackman devoted much of his time to painting and sculpture at his adobe home in Santa Fe. He also became a published author. He collaborated with his friend Daniel Lenihan, an underwater archaeologist, on three historical novels, and later wrote “Payback at Morning Peak” (2011), a western, and “Pursuit” (2013), a thriller.

He never formally retired from acting, but he told an interviewer in 2008 that he had given it up because he did not want to “keep pressing” and risk “going out on a real sour note.” Three years later, when an interviewer for GQ magazine told him, “You’ve got to do one more movie,” he said, “If I could do it in my own house, maybe, without them disturbing anything and just one or two people.”

In that same interview, Mr. Hackman was asked to sum up his life in a single phrase. He replied:

“‘He tried.’ I think that’d be fairly accurate.”

Robert Berkvist, a former New York Times arts editor, died in 2023. Yan Zhuang and Alex Marshall contributed reporting.

Photo courtesy of ABC News.

Dear Commons Community,

New York Governor, Kathy Hochul ordered the City University of New York (CUNY) to immediately remove a job posting advertising a Palestinian studies professor role at Hunter College.   As reported by The Guardian, ABC News and other media.

In the job listing, Hunter College wrote that the institution is seeking “a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender, and sexuality”.

It added that Hunter College is open to a “diverse theoretical and methodical approaches” to teaching the class.

A spokesperson for Hochul told the New York Post: “Governor Hochul has directed CUNY to immediately remove this job posting and conduct a thorough review of the position to ensure that antisemitic theories are not promoted in the classroom/”

Félix V Matos Rodríguez, the CUNY chancellor, and William C Thompson Jr, chair of the board of trustees, shared a joint statement regarding the removal of the job listing: “We find this language divisive, polarizing and inappropriate and strongly agree with Governor Hochul’s direction to remove this posting, which we have ensured Hunter College has since done.”

The job posting, which also said it was part of a Palestinian studies “cluster hire” for two positions, has since been taken down from CUNY’s website.

CUNY’s faculty and staff union condemned the move in a letter to Hochul and Rodríguez. “We strongly object to your removal of a job posting for a Palestinian Studies faculty position as a violation of academic freedom at Hunter College,” the Professional Staff Congress wrote. “We oppose antisemitism and all forms of hate, but this move is counterproductive. It is an overreach of authority to rule an entire area of academic study out of bounds.”

Palestine studies has grown as an academic discipline in response to the campus protests that rocked the US after 7 October attacks and Israel’s ensuing bombardment of Gaza.

But the CUNY listing sparked immediate and intense backlash from Jewish groups and pro-Israel activists. Several critics, including watchdog groups, argued that the language describing the position “promotes antisemitism”.

StopAntisemitism, a pro-Israel group, described the listing as part of a “antisemitic blood libel” at CUNY in a post on X.

CUNY was a focal point for the pro-Palestinian protests that roiled campuses last year during the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, resulting in dozens of arrests and prompting pushback from both the university administration and the state. The Nation reported earlier this month that CUNY is investigating members of its student government for their participation in protests and for promoting boycotts of Israel.

In September of last year, Jonathan Lippman, a former state judge, submitted a report to governor Hochul “noting an alarming number of unacceptable antisemitic incidents targeting members of the CUNY community” and arguing for an overhaul in how the university deals with antisemitism allegations.

The controversies at CUNY are playing into broader debates about when anti-Zionism crosses over to antisemitism. “The Lippman report is a serious attack on the movement for Palestine,” one CUNY doctoral student wrote when it came out. “Throughout this year, Jewish people, including organizations like [Jewish Voice for Peace], have played a central role in pointing out that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism and speaking out against the genocide. Yet, this report repeats this false equivalence.”

In my fifty plus years at CUNY, I don’t ever recall a governor ordering the removal of a faculty job posting.

Tony

Courtesy of 97.3 KKRC

Dear Commons Community,

A study published in the journal BMC Microbiome found a link between eating citrus and depression risk, suggesting that you may be able to lower your risk of developing depression by doing something as simple as adding oranges into your daily diet.

It’s important to stress that there are a lot of factors that go into depression, and it wouldn’t be fair to suggest that just eating an orange will dramatically alter your mental health status. But, if you want to learn more about things you can do to lower your risk of depression, these findings are definitely worth paying attention to.

Research has made it clear that your gut and brain like to talk to each other, and even influence the health of the other. Yes, what you eat (and the bacteria that creates in your gut) can have a big impact on how you think and feel. And new research even suggests that that connection could extend to your mental health as well.

Here’s what the researchers found, plus what a dietitian and psychologist want you to keep in mind when interpreting the study’s results.  As reported by Women’s Health.

What did the study find?

The study analyzed data from nearly 32,500 women who participated in the Nurses’ Health Study 2, a longitudinal study that tracked women to learn more about chronic disease risk factors. Researchers also looked at data from more than 300 men. They then used that information, along with fecal (i.e. poop) samples to learn more about the participants’ gut microbiomes.

The researchers found that when people had a daily serving of citrus, it lowered their risk of developing depression by about 20 percent. This was unique to citrus—meaning, data didn’t establish the same link with other fruits or vegetables.

When researchers drilled down even more, they found that the bacteria Faecalibacterium prausnitzii (F. prausnitzii), which is found in the gut microbiome of people who eat citrus fruits, was more abundant in people who weren’t depressed.

“These data underscore the role of diet in the prevention of depression, and offer a plausible explanation for how the intestinal microbiome modulates the influence of citrus on mental health,” the researchers wrote in their conclusion.

How does gut bacteria influence your mental health?

The bacteria in your gut, a.k.a. your gut microbiome, play a “crucial role” in your mental health by influencing the production of neurotransmitters (chemical messengers that help cells “talk” to each other), bodily inflammation, and the integrity of your gut barrier, says Scott Keatley, RD, co-owner of Keatley Medical Nutrition Therapy.

“Certain gut bacteria, like F. prausnitzii, contribute to the gut-brain axis, a bi-directional communication system between the gut and the brain,” Keatley says. This particular bacteria is especially important because it can help to reduce inflammation, he explains.

“Since chronic inflammation has been linked to depression, increasing F. prausnitzii in the gut [by way of consuming citrus] may help regulate mood by reducing inflammatory markers,” Keatley says.

Still, while the gut-brain relationship is firmly established, the way this pathway actually functions on a cellular level is still being explored. “We don’t fully understand the pathways between gut health and depression,” says Thea Gallagher, PsyD, a clinical associate professor at NYU Langone Health and cohost of the Mind in View podcast. “But we do know there’s something there.”

How many oranges do you have to eat to see benefits?

This particular study found that eating one medium orange a day could help lower your risk of depression. But the researchers also lumped all citrus together. So, if you’re a grapefruit fan, you can feel good knowing that you’re also doing your mental health a solid by having a daily serving.

Why is citrus so special?

There are a few things about citrus that seem to give it extra oomph when it comes to improving mental health.

“The real game-changer in citrus is its high concentration of flavonoids, such as naringenin and formononetin,” Keatley says.

These flavonoids help support the growth of the essential bacteria F. prausnitzii, and also may regulate processes in the gut that help increase the availability of our “feel-good” neurotransmitters, serotonin and dopamine, in the body, he says.

But keep in mind that the study’s findings don’t actually prove that consuming citrus influences your mental health—they just establish a link.

The study also only looks at one aspect of citrus’ impact on the gut, and specifically, the bacterial link, points out Gail Saltz, MD, associate professor of psychiatry at the NY Presbyterian Hospital Weill-Cornell School of Medicine.

“Citrus may impact the gut biome, but it also has other features, such as high vitamin C, which could figure into this story,” she says.

Are there other foods that can lower depression risk?

Possibly. Research has found a link between eating a lot of ultra-processed foods and a higher risk of depression, which suggests that eating whole, unprocessed foods may be better for your mental and physical health, Gallagher says.

Gallagher adds that focusing on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and foods that don’t have a lot of ingredients is the “safe route” when it comes to eating for mental health. But she also suggests focusing on an 80/20 style of eating, where you try to eat healthy 80 percent of the time and are more lenient with what you eat for the other 20 percent of the time.

Keatley also suggests consuming fermented foods like yogurt, kimchi, and kefir, which have probiotics that can help regulate neurotransmitter levels in the brain, along with nut and seeds, which provide omega-3 fatty acids that reduce inflammation and enhance gut-brain communication.

Legumes, fatty fish, and leafy green vegetables may also help, per Keatley. “Together, these foods create a diet that supports gut health, reduces systemic inflammation, and enhances neurotransmitter balance, all of which contribute to lowering the risk of depression,” he says.

How does this effect compare to antidepressant medications?

Well, this study specifically looked at preventing depression. Antidepressants are usually used to treat depression, Gallagher points out. So, it’s not clear, based on these findings, how eating oranges when you already have depression may impact your symptoms or treatment.

But this is important: “Don’t go off your medications and start eating oranges,” Gallagher says. Saltz agrees. “I would not advise anyone based on this study to in any way consider oranges a treatment for clinical major depression,” she says.

Still, Gallagher calls the findings “exciting” for mental health. “This is something that you could easily implement in your diet and probably should regardless,” she says. “It’s accessible, and that’s always a good thing.”

I just finished eating my morning orange!

Tony

Courtesy of Newsweek.

Dear Commons Community,

The United Nations is no great moral arbiter of anything, but at least the United States has tried over the years to have that group of nations recognize the truth about bad actors. That wasn’t the case yesterday, as the U.S. voted with Russia against a General Assembly resolution calling out Russia for its invasion of Ukraine three years ago.  As reported and commented upon in a Wall Street Journal editorial.

What a regrettable moment. The resolution, sponsored by Ukraine and European nations, wasn’t even all that strong. It merely noted “with concern that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation” has had “devastating and long-lasting consequences” and called for “an early cessation of hostilities.”

Apparently even this was too much of a rebuke to Vladimir Putin for President Trump to tolerate as he seeks to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war. The U.S. had supported these resolutions since the war began but is now voting with the world’s rogues rather than with its allies. The U.S. tried to pressure Ukraine to withdraw its resolution in favor of an American draft that didn’t cite Russia as the aggressor in the war. Kyiv understandably refused.

The resolution has no practical importance, though it does underscore Mr. Trump’s turn toward Russia in the conflict. Perhaps he thinks that telling the truth about Russia will cause Mr. Putin to walk away from the Ukraine negotiations. Ronald Reagan, who also sought peace and achieved it, never shrank from telling the truth about the Soviet Union. The truth was an essential weapon in defeating what Reagan called an “evil empire.”

Meanwhile, at the White House yesterday, Mr. Trump and Emmanuel Macron discussed the Ukraine talks. The French President went out of his way to praise Mr. Trump’s peace effort and said Europe will be willing to deploy peace-keeping troops to Ukraine after a deal is struck. Mr. Macron also made clear such a deal would have to be backed by U.S. guarantees to be credible. He’s certainly right given that a cease-fire would give Russia a chance to rearm for another invasion if the U.S. abandons Europe.

Mr. Trump didn’t say if the U.S. would provide such guarantees. It’s hard to be optimistic if he won’t tell the truth about which country started the war.

Lady Liberty wants to hang her head in shame!

Tony

Rupert Murdoch and Children (from top) Prudence, Elizabeth, Lachlan, and James.  Courtesy of The New York Times.

Dear Commons Community,

If you are interested in what is happening with the control of Rupert Murdoch’s  media empire including Fox News, The New York Times had a featured article in it Magazine Section on Sunday.  At thirteen pages, it is a long read but well worth it to understand the intrigue (maybe nastiness) that is going on among Rupert and his family namely children Lachlan, James, Prudence, and Elizabeth.  The focus is a family trust that leaves all of Rupert’s holdings to  four of his children.  However, there is grave concern for Rupert and Lachlan, who currently controls the family’s media business.  Should Rupert pass on (he is 93 years old), the four children would have equal control.  The article painstakingly (it reviews 3,000 pages of court documents) explains why the trust cannot be changed unless “it benefits the heirs.”  The issue is that Rupert and Lachlan suspect that the three other children will take the family-media empire in another direction editorially and end its right-wing bent. There is a lot of judicial maneuvering but right now the trust remains intact leaving Rupert and Lachlan scurrying to change it.

I found it illuminating and rooting for James, Prudence, and Elizabeth.

Tony

Courtesy of El Mundo.

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd had a send-up of Trump in her Times column yesterday comparing him to Roman emperors and particularly to the maniacal Caligula.  Entitled, “Fail Caesar,”  here is an excerpt:

“His megalomania has mushroomed. His derisive behavior toward Zelensky — how can a modestly talented reality show veteran mock Zelensky as “a modestly successful comedian”? — shows Trump can’t abide anyone saying he is doing anything wrong.

When The Associated Press refused to go along with his diktat to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, the news organization was barred from covering some events with the president in the Oval Office and on Air Force One.

The A.P. sued Friday afternoon. “The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government,” it said, adding, “Allowing such government control and retaliation to stand is a threat to every American’s freedom.”

Also on Friday, at a meeting with governors in the White House, Trump stopped abruptly to chide Gov. Janet Mills of Maine for resisting his executive order barring transgender athletes from women’s sports.

“You better comply, because otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding,” the president warned the Democratic governor.

“See you in court,” she shot back.

Of course, Trump needed the last word. Of course, it had to be nasty. “Enjoy your life after governor,” he said, “because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”

AND

“I’ve been reading a book called “How to Be a Bad Emperor: An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders,” written by Suetonius and translated by Josiah Osgood. Osgood writes of Caligula’s “propensity to give in to every whim and the relish he took in putting down others with cruel remarks.”

As Suetonius noted about Caligula, “To the Senate he showed no more mercy or respect. He allowed some who had achieved the highest offices to run alongside his chariot in their togas for several miles or to stand, dressed in a linen cloth, at the head or the foot of his couch as he dined.”

Sound familiar?”

The entire column is below.

Tony

——————————————————–

The New York Times

Opinion

Maureen Dowd

Fail, Caesar!

Feb. 22, 2025

“Remember, I can do whatever I want to whomever I want.”

It sounds like President Trump, to the world. But it was Caligula, to his grandmother.

At least America’s Emperor of Chaos has not made his horse a consul. Yet.

A horse might be better than some of the sketchy characters surrounding Trump.

After pillaging and gutting the U.S. government, the Western alliance and our relationship with Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump is thinking of himself as a king and cogitating on a third term. He basks in the magniloquent rhetoric of acolytes genuflecting to an instrument of divine providence.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference this week, a group calling itself the “Third Term Project” erected a sign depicting Trump as Caesar. A wag on X wondered if they knew what happened to Caesar.

America was forged in the blood and fire of rejecting tyranny; its institutions were meticulously formed around the principle that we would never be ruled by a king.

Yet Trump delights in reposting memes of himself as a king and as Napoleon, with a line attributed to the emperor: “He who saves his country does not violate any law.”

After tangling for years with a legal system he claimed was out to get him, Trump is jonesing to be above the law. (The Supreme Court slapped him back Friday, at least temporarily, for firing a government watchdog.)

His dictatorial impulses were clear when he refused to accept the results of the 2020 election and egged on a mob to disrupt the certification of the election, even if it meant that his own vice president might be hanged. And now he has added imperialistic impulses, musing about taking over the Panama Canal, Greenland, Canada, Gaza, D.C., and mineral rights in Ukraine.

His megalomania has mushroomed. His derisive behavior toward Zelensky — how can a modestly talented reality show veteran mock Zelensky as “a modestly successful comedian”? — shows Trump can’t abide anyone saying he is doing anything wrong.

When The Associated Press refused to go along with his diktat to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, the news organization was barred from covering some events with the president in the Oval Office and on Air Force One.

The A.P. sued Friday afternoon. “The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government,” it said, adding, “Allowing such government control and retaliation to stand is a threat to every American’s freedom.”

Also on Friday, at a meeting with governors in the White House, Trump stopped abruptly to chide Gov. Janet Mills of Maine for resisting his executive order barring transgender athletes from women’s sports.

“You better comply, because otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding,” the president warned the Democratic governor.

“See you in court,” she shot back.

Of course, Trump needed the last word. Of course, it had to be nasty. “Enjoy your life after governor,” he said, “because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”

As Shawn McCreesh wrote in The Times, nobody had seen such a moment since Trump came back to the Oval: “Somebody defied President Trump. Right to his face.”

I’ve been reading a book called “How to Be a Bad Emperor: An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders,” written by Suetonius and translated by Josiah Osgood. Osgood writes of Caligula’s “propensity to give in to every whim and the relish he took in putting down others with cruel remarks.”

As Suetonius noted about Caligula, “To the Senate he showed no more mercy or respect. He allowed some who had achieved the highest offices to run alongside his chariot in their togas for several miles or to stand, dressed in a linen cloth, at the head or the foot of his couch as he dined.”

Sound familiar?

Some Republican lawmakers spoke up about Trump, JD Vance and Pete Hegseth caving to Russia — going against a long history of Republicans treating Russia as the “Evil Empire” — or at least with a healthy skepticism. When George W. Bush, as president, said he could look into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and see his soul, John McCain warned that Putin was a “thug” and a “killer,” noting that when he looked in Putin’s eyes, he saw “a K, a G and a B.” But those who spoke up against Trump did not seem ready to do much about it. They’re still cowering before him. As Politico reported, Trump allies moved quickly to stifle dissent with the party’s defense hawks: “Vice President JD Vance and several administration officials who are close to Donald Trump Jr. have been central to the effort to sideline those with traditional conservative foreign policy views.”

After Trump ranted that Ukraine had “started” the war and that Zelensky was a “dictator,” the normally doting New York Post felt the need to put Putin on the front page with the headline: “President Trump: This Is a Dictator.”

The most vivid image of the week was an elated Elon Musk waving a chain saw at CPAC. That glee in the face of pain may come back to haunt Trump. As The Washington Post reported, many lawmakers got an earful from angry constituents about layoffs, freezes and jagged cuts, a hollowing out of government with no sense of logic or heart or safety.

Many who had hoped to tune out Trump this time realize they don’t have that luxury. It’s far more dangerous now. There are frightening moments when our 236-year-old institutions don’t look up to the challenge. With flaccid Democrats and craven Republicans, King Donald can pretty much do whatever he wants to whomever he wants.

Dear Commons Community,

The Trump administration abruptly canceled the long-term NAEP exam that has measured the math and reading skills of the nation’s 17-year-olds for more than 50 years, sparking concern among education policy experts that recent federal spending cuts will affect the data used to measure educational progress.  As reported by Education Week.

The federally mandated National Assessment of Educational Progress Long-Term Trend Assessment has monitored the performance of 9, 13, and 17-year-olds since the 1970s. Unlike the main NAEP assessment—which was launched in the 1990s and is revised periodically to reflect changes in academic standards—the long-term test uses a narrower, largely consistent set of questions focused on basic skills, allowing for comparisons of student achievement over decades of shifts in policy and practices.

The decision conflicts with prior statements from the new Trump administration that NAEP would not be affected by a swath of spending cuts to the Education Department that now total close to $1 billion.

State education departments received a message from the U.S. Department of Education Feb. 19, canceling a planned administration of the assessment to 17-year-old students scheduled for March 17 to May 23.

A long-term assessment of 9-year-olds, which is currently in the field, will be completed, said the message, which a state official shared with Education Week.

The decision not to field the test, which was last administered to 17-year-olds in 2012, “will cripple our ability to understand the effectiveness and efficiency of our schools,” said Sean Reardon, a professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford University.

Assessment experts say long-term data is crucial as educators and policymakers monitor recovery from pandemic-related learning interruptions.

The test “provides the only long-term trend in the performance of students as they prepare to leave high school for the labor market or college,” Reardon said in an email. “In that sense, it provides a summary measure of how well we are preparing students for jobs in the modern economy.”

The decision to axe the test came amid a flurry of sudden, disruptive spending decisions in recent weeks. President Donald Trump, who has pledged to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, empowered billionaire Elon Musk to slash federal contracts and grants through the Department of Government Efficiency, an office within the executive branch. Recent moves included the sudden cancellation of millions of dollars for teacher-training programs and education research contracts.

A spokesperson for the Institute for Education Sciences, which oversees NAEP, referred questions about the test cancellation to Education Department spokesperson Madison Biedermann, who did not immediately respond to messages.

The decision appears to have been made without the approval of the National Assessment Governing Board, a nonpartisan board of educators and assessment experts that meets quarterly to discuss scheduling and administration of the test and the release of results. Members of the board, which is next scheduled to meet March 6, referred questions to the Education Department.

The board debated the value of the long-term assessment in the past as it has sought to balance growing priorities. In 2015, the board postponed plans to administer the test, typically given every four years, in 2016 and 2020, citing budget constraints.

There are also broader concerns about how seriously high school students take assessments that don’t affect their grades, said Dale Chu, an educational consultant who previously worked in the Florida and Indiana education departments.

“But that [concern] to me doesn’t translate to, let’s have less data,” he said. “If anything, we should be going in the other direction. It’s a slippery slope.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The following is a recap of a talk given yesterday by Mark Cuban as reported by Time magazine.

“Mark Cuban is no fan of Donald Trump. The business moguls have a long, complicated relationship that colored plenty of the 2024 presidential campaign as the reality stars sparred from afar. The frenemy-ship was one of the best subplots of last year’s hard-fought campaign, and one that is showing no sign of abating.

Speaking Saturday to a conference of traditionalist Republicans, the Dallas Mavericks owner and serial entrepreneur suggested Trump merits slim admiration as he continues to hock anything that will slap his name on it, from cryptocurrency to clothing to the U.S. government itself.

“The only reason someone sells all that shit is because they have to,” Cuban trolled.

Cuban by contrast said he doesn’t need to slum it with such petty endeavors. “I don’t need to sell gold tennis shoes that may not ship,” he said, noting Trump’s effort in footwear that warned might never materialize. “He doesn’t want to govern. He wants to sell.”

Bravado of that order is easy when you’re a billionaire. It’s just not clear that it translates to a viable governance strategy, especially with a rival billionaire holding the most consequential job on the planet.

Cuban, a swaggering independent, was regrouping in Washington with anti-Trump Republicans at the Principles First summit, as the Trumpist wing of the party huddled across the river at this year’s CPAC, where Trump was set to speak this afternoon, and Elon Musk brandishing a chainsaw stole the show earlier this week.

The striking split-screen Saturday hinted at the deeply unsettled moment in politics, as our most famous billionaires offer competing views of how to fix Washington. And for Cuban, that prescription was wrapped up in his withering assessment of the Democratic Party, and Vice President Kamala Harris, who he believes failed to reach voters last year.

“If you gave the Democrats a dollar bill and said, ‘You can sell these for 50 cents,’ they would hire 50 people … and then would not know how to sell the dollar bill for 50 cents,” said Cuban, who hit the trail last year for Harris. “If you gave it to Donald Trump and said, ‘Sell this dollar bill for $2,’ he’d figure out a way, right? He’d tell you that $2 bill is, you know, huge.”

All of which leads Cuban to having little optimism that Democrats can steer the country away from the Trumpian skid the nation finds itself enduring.

“I learned the Democrats can’t sell worth shit,” Cuban said.

In Cuban’s estimation, Democratic candidates did not demonstrate having any understanding of small businesses, the impact of inflation, the anxiety about immigration, or even the basics of the tax code. All of that conspired, thanks to bloated consultants looking over their shoulders, to their losses when a win was achievable. It’s also why, after his first event for Harris, he banned her consultants from chirping in his ear, he said, and why he’s watching with frustration and shock that they haven’t learned any lessons from last year’s loss.

Cuban heaped scorn on those Democrats who keep repeating the arguments from the unsuccessful 2024 bid about Trump being a threat to democracy and a challenge to everything that Americans hold dear.

“How’d that work in the campaign?” Cuban said.

As Trump and Musk set about to scrap whole pillars of the federal bureaucracy, Cuban argued that the fascination on the wrecking ball is not a winning tactic because neither he nor Musk need to get it all right to change government in ways that will be difficult to unwind.

“Elon doesn’t give a shit,” Cuban said. “He’s, like, ‘F— it, I’ll be rich no matter what.’”

That said, Cuban was clear he has zero interest in being an elected player in a system he carries avowed contempt toward. “I don’t want to be President,” he said.

As both parties fret over the outsized influence of the super-rich, it is telling how much the prescriptions of celebrities with deep pockets continue to draw so much interest. Cuban’s needling of Democrats was rooted in how much he blames them for everything unfolding now.

“Chaos is not good for this country,” Cuban warned. “There’s no amount of money that overcomes that.”

Sadly, Cuban is telling it like it is!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The above was sent to me by my colleague, Patsy Moskal, at the University of Central Florida.

Roald Dahl was a British author of popular children’s literature and short stories, a poet, screenwriter and a World War II fighter pilot. His books have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. He has been called “one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century”.  In November 1962, Dahl’s daughter Olivia died of measles encephalitis, age seven. Her death left Dahl “limp with despair”, and feeling guilty about not having been able to do anything for her.

Tony