It’s time to stop amplifying that assault, grab the key takeaway, and move on. — Can it be that our long national Rorschach test is finally over? I’m talking about The Slap, of course. Not the Supreme Court hearings. Although Charles Blow used the term Rorschach first, that is the appropriate metaphor for what we’ve been through since the Oscars. …

As Will Smith’s meltdown plays out like Greek tragedy, it offers big lessons about how to keep imposter syndrome from hijacking your life. — Now that the initial shock has subsided, we can see the incident for what it was — an act of self-sabotage on a grand scale. This is not another speculation on the man’s psychology. It is simply a case of seeing what is right before our eyes. On the night…

Hitting a smaller man is not bravery — Let’s face it: the thought wouldn’t even have crossed his mind. He would have known better. Maybe he was standing up for his woman. Maybe he was reinforcing a negative Black stereotype. Maybe he was enforcing a patriarchal value. Maybe he was standing up for all the Black women the…

After allegedly using steroids to bulk up for ‘Ali,’ the actor has never seemed quite the same. — After watching Will Smith’s unmanly attack on Chris Rock at one of the best Oscar shows in years, many of us are asking WHY. Why does a man with an estimated net worth of $350 million walk onto a stage and slap a man worth $100 million in the middle…

You don’t have to be Black to know what the SCOTUS nominee was feeling when Ted Cruz asked her about racist babies — Writer Alexandre Dumas once said the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits. From his heavenly garret in the sky, Dumas must have been laughing his head off recently when Senator Ted Cruz asked the first Black woman Supreme Court nominee if she believed babies could be…

Watching white GOP senators attack Ketanji Brown Jackson turned me upside down until I remembered the GOAT — When I worked in TV news, I got pretty good at holding back my feelings. But this week I couldn’t do that. I got emotionally involved in the Supreme Court. Maybe that’s because writing has forced me to get in touch with my feelings. …

You can still be sued for libel. So how does ‘Law & Order’ get away with it? — So far this year, I’ve watched the first three episodes of the original Law & Order, which recently returned to NBC after a 12-year hiatus. And I’ve recognized a famous case in each of them. I’ve never been a fan of the series, but my mother loved it. …

How an ancient legend triggered an astral kiss and a life lesson about healing and transformation. — It’s been a long time since a woman kissed me in a dream. But that’s what happened last night. I was back in the neighborhood where I grew up. For some reason, I had parked just around the corner from our house instead of pulling into the driveway. Before leaving…

How the 5 pillars of his Nobel Prize speech saved my life and could save yours too. — It was difficult to read William Faulkner in school. Even short novels like As I Lay Dying seemed obscure to me. As for The Sound and the Fury — fugget about it! His 1950 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech is easier. Now that Vladimir Putin has placed his nuclear forces on…