Is Anybody There? The Foxes Multiply

 

As usual, a political cartoon encapsulates the truth—this one by Matt Davies in Newsday.

 

In February, I argued that the midterms may be a chimerical defense against autocracy, highlighting Kurt Olsen's appointment as Director of Election Security as a "fox in the henhouse." I said then that "putting a man sanctioned for spreading election falsehoods in charge of 'integrity' feels like a satirical plot point a novelist would reject as too preposterous." Rather than recapitulating everything, here is the link to Is Anybody There? The Systematic Dismantling of the Midterms.

 

The recent appointments of Bill Pulte and Todd Blanche reinforce that warning by suggesting a broader consolidation of political control over institutions traditionally expected to operate independently. Like Olsen, both men are widely viewed as unwavering political loyalists. Todd Blanche, nominated to serve as Attorney General, appears tasked with reshaping the Department of Justice by targeting political opponents while diminishing independent oversight. Bill Pulte, appointed concurrently as Acting Director of National Intelligence despite having no intelligence background, appears intended to exert direct political influence over the nation's intelligence community. In my opinion, these appointments undermine the integrity of elections (the Midterms in particular)—ironically, the very thing T***p claims he’s concerned about. 

 

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, former U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr—once denounced by Trump as "gutless" and a "coward" for refusing to overturn the 2020 election and prosecute political opponents—appears to be seeking a return to Dear Leader's good graces in his op-ed: Confirm Todd Blanche at Justice—He Is Well Qualified and Will Run the Department as Well as Anyone Could Under President Trump.

 

Barr's principal argument is that, regardless of senators' reservations, rejecting Blanche would merely invite an even worse nominee. As he writes, "It wouldn't force the president to make a better choice. It will simply invite more chaos and a less desirable appointment." This line of reasoning not only indirectly admits to Blanche's lack of qualifications, but it also normalizes the idea that the Senate should confirm a nominee not because he is demonstrably independent, but because someone even less acceptable might otherwise be chosen. By that logic, every successive appointment merely lowers the standard further. Isn't it better to reject someone who fails even that diminished test, leaving Blanche to serve only temporarily?

 

Barr concludes: "The nation needs a serious, effective and competent attorney general. America's interests are best served by confirming Mr. Blanche." You decide.

 

Meanwhile, T***p is reportedly using Bill Pulte's controversial acting appointment and the delayed confirmation process as leverage to pressure Congress into passing the SAVE Act—a sweeping elections bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote, mandating photo identification, restricting mail-in ballots, and incorporating additional provisions touching on transgender issues.

 

A concise summary of the SAVE Act appears on the BBC, a source that, in my opinion, has become more consistently reliable than much of today's American media. As the BBC notes, "some Republican-led states have taken up the cause to introduce their own proof-of-citizenship bills. Democrats say the SAVE legislation disenfranchises eligible voters, while Republicans say it is necessary to prevent voter fraud."

 

It is hardly surprising that Republicans would champion legislation that may discourage participation by elderly voters, those in poor health, citizens who rely on mail-in ballots, and even many first-generation Americans who are fully eligible to vote but may find the new documentation requirements burdensome or even onerous. It erects considerable barriers to address what appears to be a minuscule incidence of voter fraud.

 

Taken together, Olsen, Blanche, and Pulte seem well-suited to reducing independent oversight while strengthening executive influence over the institutions charged with enforcing the law, gathering intelligence, and protecting the electoral process. So, regarding the prevention of elections from being "stolen"—long their boss’s pet screed—one must ask: from whom, and by whom? They also divert public attention from unresolved questions surrounding the administration's handling of the Epstein files—an issue that only days ago dominated the national conversation.

 

Democracies rarely disappear in a single dramatic moment. Just look at how the January 6th insurrection of more than five years ago has been swept under the rug of history, the perpetrators either not being called out or, for those arrested, pardoned. It all happened before our eyes, as are these appointments. But history teaches that by the time we recognize a pattern, it has already become the new reality.

 

Postscript:

Yesterday, Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, spoke at the ultraconservative Faith & Freedom Coalition’s 2026 Road to Majority Conference, pledging a “protection program” for Trumpublicans… “heaven forbid, these Democrats, y’all, impeachment is not even the big concern. They will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body, and they’ll go after the president’s family, the cabinet, his donors and friends. Half of you in this room will be targeted. I run the protection program. I’ll take care of you. Okay? We’re gonna win. We’re gonna win the midterm.” 

 

 

Knicks Nostalgia

 

Everyone is talking about 1973, the last time the Knicks won an NBA championship. But what about the first championship? That was even more of a landmark. From 1969 to 1973, Ann and I followed the Knicks intensely, going to games whenever we could. To us, 1970 was the greatest year of all: their first championship and a playoff series never to be forgotten, with Willis Reed squaring off against Wilt Chamberlain and the Finals going the full seven games.

 

I don't follow professional basketball that closely anymore. Three-pointers galore, replay challenges on the floor, strobe lights and music introducing the players, even the constantly changing uniform styles (hate the knee length shorts). Give me old-time basketball, even a set shot here and there or some underhand foul shooting. Maybe today's teams would wipe the floor with those of yesteryear, but the games of my youth were played with pure heart.

 

Victor Wembanyama's 7'4", 235-pound frame, to me, though, pales beside Chamberlain's 7'1", 280 pounds. Imagine Reed trying to box Chamberlain out at 6'11". Yet Reed more than held his own in the series until he tore a thigh muscle and missed Game 6, allowing Chamberlain to erupt for 45 points and 27 rebounds. Reed's courageous appearance in the opening minutes of Game 7, despite the injury, helped inspire the Knicks to their first championship. His symbolic presence seemed to galvanize the entire team.

 

But I'm getting into details that could go on forever. This entry is pure nostalgia. As I wrote in an earlier blog post, we were married in 1970, on the eve of those historic playoffs:

 

"The ceremony itself was what one would expect from a humanist minister. A substantial part of the service captured our enthusiasm for the then victorious New York Knicks, with names such as Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusschere, Walt Frazier, and Willis Reed sprinkled throughout our wedding vows."

So for me, this feels a little like Halley's Comet arriving ahead of schedule. We were married 56 years ago when the Knicks won their first NBA championship, and now, on the eve of another possible championship, those memories come flooding back. The fact that the occasion may be sullied by the attendance of a man whose presence tends to make every event about himself will not sit well with many Knicks fans.

 

So from many years ago, I present the opening pages of a 1970–71 Knicks program, probably from the last game I attended in person. It captures much of the excitement of those years, and I'm glad I held on to it all this time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teddy Starr, A Man Reinvented: Ross Barkan's ‘Colossus’

 

 

Ross Barkan's recent novel, Colossus, returns to a theme he explored in Glass Century: concealed family relationships and the reinvention of self in an unmoored America.

 

The subject is clearly a personal one for Barkan, but unlike Glass Century, which often felt driven by emotion, Colossus initially seems more intellectual than heartfelt. Only about halfway through does the novel reveal the emotional core that has been hidden beneath its portrait of a declining Americana. I found myself wondering whether Barkan might have developed the story more chronologically rather than withholding so much of Teddy Starr's back story until Part Two. Yet there is method in the structure. By delaying the revelation of Starr's origins, Barkan creates a mystery that sustains the reader through the novel's opening movement.

 

Teddy Starr is the pastor of Trinity Church in Pine Haven, a fictional Michigan town. At first he resembles a fox among the hens of his congregation, pursuing unhappy parishioners' wives with a confidence that John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom might have admired while simultaneously cashing in on local real estate opportunities in a manner reminiscent of Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe.

 

The Richard Ford influence is impossible to miss. Barkan even opens with an epigram from The Sportswriter: "All we really want is to get to the point where the past can explain nothing about us and we can get on with life."  Indeed, Teddy Starr has shut the door on his past and like Bascombe, Starr also becomes a real estate agent, giving him a unique vantage point on his community (and ability to profit on it): “A realtor is a showman, a handmaiden, and advertiser for your arriving life, the one you want to live.”

 

And it is in his depiction of Pine Haven that Barkan’s writing truly excels. The town becomes a miniature America, where affluent retirees and struggling laborers live only blocks apart, and where chain restaurants, economic anxieties, and cultural fragmentation define the landscape. The novel's greatest strength may be its portrait of contemporary middle-America, observed with both affection and skepticism.  The area’s annual Flapjack Festival is its entertainment pinnacle.

 

Starr himself is not particularly admirable. He is married to Daniella and the father of three children, yet he moves through life in the community assuming privileges he has never earned. He cheats almost casually, regarding temptation as one of the benefits of being Teddy Starr. His rationalizations are often revealing, particularly when he reflects on the limitations facing women in Pine Haven and quietly congratulates himself for having "sought my advantages."

 

Yet Starr does not entirely escape consequences. His relationship with his pubescent son Theodore is strained, and the estrangement between fathers and sons becomes one of the novel's recurring concerns. Here again one hears echoes of Richard Ford.

 

There are comparisons to Sinclair Lewis as well. Although Starr is no Elmer Gantry, Lewis's skeptical eye toward Main Street America hovers over much of the first half of the novel. Then comes the event that changes everything: a mysterious man begins following Starr and claims to be his brother.

 

From that moment the novel pivots.

 

Barkan signals the turn with one of the book's most powerful passages, a meditation on secrets, reinvention, and the curtains we draw between ourselves and the past:

 

“Imagine Daniella now what she would say, another man calling the only child, Theodore Starr a brother. Imagine, really, what Daniella would say if she knew it all, even this afternoon with Guinevere, if whatever she suspects matches up against vertiginous reality, if she can even produce a notion. But few can. Few can fathom what waits behind the curtain. Curtains are thick, after all, and it’s a greater feat than it looks to pull one back, to force one back.  And what if only disease and rot are behind them? What if, by closing the curtain, you escaped it all, as any individual with a modicum of intellect and ambition would? This is the pioneer spirit, the American Mundus, reinvention to starve or perdition, to work your way closer to God, the true God. And my brother, and his people, knew nothing of that.“

 

Suddenly the reader is thrust backward into another life entirely.

 

Without venturing too far into spoiler territory, Part Two reveals that Teddy Starr (né Reuvain Gantz) was raised in Brooklyn and that his origins are far removed from the evangelical Protestant identity he has constructed. The details emerge gradually, but the central conflict is familiar: family expectations versus personal freedom.

 

His father, an overbearing, workaholic collector of apartment buildings and something of a slumlord, expects his son to inherit the business (one of course can draw parallels to a certain contemporary figure). The prospect repels him. Ironically, it is his brother who is being groomed for scholarship and religious life. The burden of expectation hangs heavily over the household.

 

How Reuvain becomes Teddy Starr is the heart of the novel. Two figures shape that transformation: Talia, his first youthful love, and Teddy, an extraordinary Asian handball player whose influence proves even more significant.

 

The handball sequences are among the finest passages in the book. Much as tennis functioned as a metaphor in Glass Century, handball becomes a metaphor for life itself—competition, discipline, courage, and self-definition. On the handball court even the Mexicans and Puerto Ricans defer to Teddy.  “It was fury, and it was a dance.  With balletic rage, he rearranged the geometry of the courts, his ball cracking low against the wall, unreachable every time.”

 

Eventually Reuvain must confront his father: “I anticipated, always, my father‘s rage. I was like a mariner reading the clouds for a rainstorm. I had chosen the handball courts over him, and I would pay.“ He accuses his father of running “a gutter empire” and soon the confrontation becomes deadly.

 

He flees Brooklyn.  He borrows his new first name from his handball court mentor and as he boards a random bus to Detroit, he sees a neon sign “Starr and Co., Deli” and so life changes for the reborn “Teddy Starr” and he ultimately begins the life we have already seen unfolding in Pine Haven.

 

Part Three examines the consequences of that reinvention. The truths Starr has concealed are exposed to his wife, his congregation, and his community. Daniella's furious assessment of him as a fraudulent outsider cuts directly to the novel's central concern: how much of a life can be built upon invention before the structure collapses?

 

Forced to confront his congregation, Starr prepares to deliver his sermon and confession: “they shimmer, my flock, even as they begin to bend my way, their wet lips crinkling, curiosity, commingling with fury… I feel oxidized and ancient like the same statue was striding the Rhodesian Harbor, my brassy flesh, collapsing into the brine. They gape at my crumbling.”   

 

Yet this is also a novel about America, and America has always had a remarkable capacity for reinvention. Time passes. Wounds heal. The disgraced pastor discovers that public life remains open to him. Indeed, he is even offered an even greater opportunity: a run for Congress.

 

The irony is unmistakable. The man who built his life on concealment and reinvention is rewarded rather than punished. One might even view his ascent as a metaphorical ride UP the escalator to seize the golden ring of success. Yet Barkan's point is not simply political. Teddy Starr embodies a distinctly American belief that identity is endlessly renewable, that the past can be escaped, rewritten, or transformed into advantage, no matter how corrupt that past might have been.  Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby similarly tried to hide a past in his delusional pursuit of the American Dream. 

 

In Colossus, Ross Barkan has produced a worthy successor to Glass Century and an impressive second installment in what appears to be an emerging trilogy examining authenticity, family, ambition, and American political life.

 

One final note. I found the hardcover's overall low-contrast typographical design and leading to be tiring on older eyes during extended reading. A minor complaint, but one worth mentioning.

 

And a coda, totally unrelated, sunrise this morning during my daily early walk…