I stumbled into 2022 burdened by despair at the damage Trump was doing to America. A rolling pandemic was holding me imprisoned in my own home, mostly alone, mostly troubled. The economy was tanking. Forecasts of a Red Wave in the fall elections, with polls increasingly leaning right, promised worse…

I’ve lived these past few years with a tremor of fear that the world is going dark. It hasn’t been absolute, or constant. It’s been interrupted by moments of ecstatic joy, some intimate and some public. But when I was alone and let my mind wander, it often wandered into…

For a movement to be sustained, it needs leaders. And there are signs that we may, as a nation, be experiencing a youth movement toward national leadership. Until a year ago — or, before the most recent mid-term elections — it felt as though America was at risk of becoming…

I’ve been persuaded in recent months that the time has come for anyone capable of bearing witness to the truth, to do so — including me. My integrity isn’t rooted in who listens to me; it’s based in what I say whether anyone is listening or not. We’re in a…

I’m modestly famous for a speech I gave thirty years ago. It was called “A Whisper of AIDS,” offered as a keynote address at the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston. On that steaming Wednesday evening, I began by asking the Republican Party “to lift the shroud of silence which…

Thirty years ago today — August 19, 1992 — I spoke for 13 minutes to the Republican National Convention in Houston, and to audiences around the world. Most of the themes tucked into that speech (“A Whisper of AIDS”) still resonate today: compassion, courage, integrity and honor. Brent Staples, later…

The news is still reverberating from San Antonio where 50 migrants — men, women and children — were steamed to death in the back of a sealed semi. Where do I find an appropriate response to such a grim horror? I’m shocked into paralysis by watching the leaked draft of…

During the years I spent mostly in my studio as a working artist, I would occasionally reflect on Norwegian Edvard Munch’s famous portrait “Scream,” a sordid face reflecting the terrorized human condition. I preferred images of flowers and photographs of my children. But I never was far from Munch’s ghastly…

When it comes to those who have a leadership role — a Senator, maybe, or a CEO — I’ve always most admired the quiet ones. I don’t know Warren Buffet personally but he strikes me as someone who doesn’t bellow and scream. I imagine he talks. I thought it was…