President Donald Trump had a dream. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times published an op-ed about Creatures from the Green Lagoon .  A few quotes: A historian once told me that the presidency would distill Donald Trump to his essence.  That essence, it turns out, is trillions of microscopic organisms that suck up all the oxygen and endanger life around them. The algae is a perfect metaphor to reflect on our unreflective president and his impulsive and solipsistic style of governing. This is the hallowed site where Marian Anderson serenaded a throng after getting banished from Constitution Hall for her race, and where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech to an even bigger crowd around the 2,028-foot pool. Reports of Trump victories, with the knotty issues of Iran and the reflecting pool, are premature. Iran is gloating about Trump’s bad deal. Senate Republicans who normally don’t have the temerity to challenge Trump are deriding it. And the hydrogen peroxide t...

But I'll start with the New York Knicks.  According to the New York Times , the Knicks gave their city something new, IMPOSSIBLE JOY .   It is different because New York’s mass unifying events tend to imply unbearable tragedy: 9/11, Sandy, Covid. Their best player, Jalen Brunson, was small (for basketball), underestimated (by his last team), conditioned (by his father, a former Knick) to know that winning here would mean more than winning anywhere else. This place has cheated bankruptcy, built (and rebuilt) towers, raised Jay-Z and J. Lo and J-Seinfeld. It has been told to drop dead and refused. It has elected a billionaire and a socialist and a Bill de Blasio. It has processed Donald Trump as a 20-something curiosity, a chattering pooh-bah, a steak salesman, a defendant and a president whose attendance in Game 3 had Knicks maniacs of all political persuasions wondering about an executive curse. Then from Sports Illustrated : Some of the greatest athletes in sports history hav...