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    Libyans Try to Move On From Conflict With Comedy and Burgers

    MISURATA, Libya — When Taha al-Baskini won a part in a new play about soldiers who reunite after dying in combat, his costume was already in his closet. His onstage camouflage pants were the same ones he had worn as a militia fighter during Libya’s most recent civil war a few years ago, when an airstrike injured Mr. al-Baskini and killed several of his comrades as they defended their city.“People are sitting and talking to you, and the next moment they’re bodies,” Mr. al-Baskini, 24, whose brother died in the same conflict, said after a recent rehearsal for the play, “When We Were Alive,” at the National Theater in Misurata, Libya’s third-largest city. “You never forget when they were smiling and talking just moments before.”As an actor, “I try to show reality to the people,” he went on. “The message of the play is: ‘No more war.’ We’ve had enough war. We want to taste life, not death.”Friends playing in Tripoli. Many Libyans embraced militia culture as teenagers, but the trend is waning.Laura Boushnak for The New York TimesTo the audience, that message is hardly a tough sell.After more than a decade of violent chaos — years that saw their country overrun by foreign mercenaries and subjugated by militias whose power made them a law unto themselves — Libyans are clamoring for peace. The question is whether the country can maintain a brittle truce even as two rival governments and their foreign backers jockey for power, raising fears that Libya is, once again, sliding toward conflict.To achieve lasting peace, Libya needs not only to find its way out of the current political crisis, but also to demobilize a generation of young men who have grown up knowing little but war.Misurata, whose powerful militias were key to overthrowing Libya’s longtime dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, during Libya’s 2011 Arab Spring revolt, is full of such men. More than 40 of them — mostly veterans of Libya’s conflicts — now act at the National Theater, a former meeting hall for Colonel el-Qaddafi’s political party. They hope to bring Misurata entertainment, they say, and some semblance of normalcy.But there is no avoiding the city’s damage, physical and psychic alike, onstage.A damaged building in Misurata. “The theater is impacted by Libya’s reality,” said an actor, adding: “A play is like a mirror reflecting the consciousness of our society, and our society is sick.”Laura Boushnak for The New York Times“I’d rather do something funny to lighten people’s moods, instead of reminding them of the friends and brothers they lost,” said Anwar al-Teer, 49, an actor and former fighter who raised money and put his own earnings toward converting the venue, which city officials were renting out as a wedding hall, into the National’s 330-seat theater.“But the theater is impacted by Libya’s reality, even when you don’t want it to be,” he said. “A play is like a mirror reflecting the consciousness of our society, and our society is sick.”Libya’s 2011 revolution made rebels into heroes. In the years that came after, as the country splintered into rival political factions and warring regions, many former rebels and new fighters joined armed militias, hoping to defend their hometowns or simply to make a decent living. Militias could pay three times as much as the average salary or more. It was not only the money that appealed. At a time when weapons spoke loudest and wearing a militia uniform inspired deference, young men took to imitating the fighters’ style, even if they had never fired a shot: driving pickup. trucks with blacked-out windows, wearing their beards long, dressing in fatigues.Taha al-Baskini, left, Mohammed Ben Nasser, bottom, and others rehearsing for “When We Were Alive.” Many of the actors say they hope to bring a sense of normalcy to the city.Laura Boushnak for The New York Times“They were seen as heroes,” said Mohammed Ben Nasser, 27, a rising star in Libya’s small-but-growing television industry who also acts in “When We Were Alive.” “It was how you got money, power, cars.”Mr. al-Teer, the theater’s owner, has used social cachet to steer young men toward acting instead. Put them onstage, he says, and their social media likes will pile up. (Women are in the audience, and a few act, but in a country that remains deeply conservative, most of his actors are men.)“It’s like with TikTok,” he said. “Everyone wants to get famous.”For the four decades of Colonel el-Qaddafi’s rule, no one was allowed to be more famous than the dictator. Soccer players’ jerseys carried no names, only numbers, lest they gain a following. Paranoid about what it saw as the contamination of foreign ideas, the regime banned foreign films. If Libyans saw anything else during that period, it was thanks to smuggled-in videotapes and, eventually, illicit internet downloads.A building pockmarked by bullets in Misurata. “People are sitting and talking to you, and the next moment they’re bodies,” said Taha al-Baskini, an actor, recalling his time in Libya’s civil war.Laura Boushnak for The New York TimesSo Mr. al-Teer is teaching many Misuratans how to be a theater audience, down to when to clap. He stages comedies, tragedies and histories from Libya and abroad. He plans to add movie screenings, which will make his venue Misurata’s first cinema since the few allowed under Colonel el-Qaddafi closed down during the revolution. One Misuratan father recently told him that when it opens, it will be the first cinema his children have ever visited. Many of the plays carry an antiwar message. “When We Were Alive” is a black comedy in which dead soldiers return to confront their general, who survived and went on to glory. One character had joined up for money, another for fame, a third because he wanted to fight. They all ended up the same: dead.Weaponry used in the 2011 conflict, in Misurata. Its powerful militias were key to overthrowing Colonel el-Qaddafi during Libya’s 2011 Arab Spring revolt.Laura Boushnak for The New York Times“I feel like the audience knows what we we’re talking about,” Mr. al-Baskini said. “The generals are doing political deals with the enemy, while we’re fighting and giving our lives.”Mr. al-Baskini still bears scars on his left palm and left knee from Libya’s most recent civil war, from April 2019 to June 2020, in which forces from the country’s east marched on Tripoli, the capital.Three hours’ drive along the coast west of Misurata, Tripoli, too, has violence etched all over it: Half-destroyed houses still litter Tripoli’s outskirts, and families still occasionally scramble to get children home from school when rival militias clash.A business that made light of such violence might seem unwelcome. Yet right downtown is a burger joint called Guns & Buns, where most of the items on the menu are named after weapons. The Kalashnikov burger comes with mayo; the grenade with onion rings; the PK machine gun with tomatoes.Soccer practice in Misurata in May. During Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s rule, soccer players were not allowed to have names on their jerseys, a measure meant to prevent them from gaining fame.Laura Boushnak for The New York Times“DON’T CALL 911, WE JUST MAKE BURGERS,” reads a sign on the back wall — though the “N’T” has been rubbed out.The owner, Ali Mohamed Elrmeh, 40, opened Guns & Buns in 2016, when Libyans were battling to expel the Islamic State. He said the concept was controversial, but it helped his business stand out. It has become so successful, he’s about to open another branch.“Now we have kids, teens, even girls — when they hear the sounds of weapons, they can say whether it’s a Kalashnikov or a 9-mm gun or a grenade,” he said. “This is the Libyan reality. But my idea was that when you say ‘Kalashnikov’ or ‘PK,’ these things don’t have to frighten people. Now you just laugh.”In Tripoli, half-destroyed houses from the civil war still litter the capital’s outskirts, and families still occasionally scramble to get children home from school when rival militias clash.Laura Boushnak for The New York TimesLibyans hardly needed burger names or plays to remind them of the violence that has infused every part of life. After more than a decade, Libyans say, they are fed up with the lawlessness, the impunity and the violence that the militias have come to stand for. These days, dressing like a rebel is more likely to draw sneers and headshakes than imitators.Mr. Ben Nasser, the television actor, said he had many friends who had embraced militia culture as teenagers, including some who dropped out of school to join. Now, the trend is waning, and most have gone back to university or into business. A few, seeing his success, have joined him in show business.“They realized, ‘We’re fighters, but we have nothing,’” he said. “They started feeling ashamed of being fighters, because now it’s a shame on your family to be a fighter. When they looked at others, they saw you can succeed without being a fighter.”Ali Mohamed Elrmeh, 40, the owner of the Guns & Buns burger joint, in Tripoli, Libya. “My idea was that when you say ‘Kalashnikov’ or ‘PK,’” he said, “these things don’t have to frighten people. Now you just laugh.”Laura Boushnak for The New York TimesThe financial incentive to fight is also fading: Libya has been largely stable for the past two years, though politicians continue to pay militias for their own protection. One such politician, Abdul Hamid Dbeiba, the prime minister of Libya’s Tripoli-based and internationally recognized government, has blunted demand for militia jobs (and netted popularity) by handing out subsidies to families and newlyweds.But recent clashes between militias loyal to Mr. Dbeiba and others aligned with the Sirte-based rival prime minister, Fathi Bashagha, are a reminder that violence is never far away.“People are too used to these things,” said Alaa Abugassa, 32, a dentist ordering a Guns & Buns burger on a recent afternoon. “It’s become part of their reality. It’s the new normal.”A day at the beach in Tripoli. A generation of young men have grown up knowing little but war.Laura Boushnak for The New York Times More

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    Stephen Colbert Explains How His Staff Was Detained at U.S. Capitol

    “The Capitol Police are much more cautious than they were, say, 18 months ago, and for a very good reason,” Colbert said. “If you don’t know what that reason is, I know what news network you watch.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Puppet ShowMembers of “The Late Show” production team were detained while filming near the U.S. Capitol last week. On Monday night’s show, Stephen Colbert explained how his staff was in Washington to shoot Triumph the Insult Comic Dog interviewing members of Congress about the Jan. 6 hearings (“He’s a bipartisan puppy. He’s so neutral, he’s neutered.”), and that they were all detained, processed and released.“A very unpleasant experience for my staff, a lot of paperwork for the Capitol Police, but a fairly simple story — until the next night, when a couple of ‘the TV people’ started claiming that my puppet squad had ‘committed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building,’” Colbert said in Monday’s monologue.“This was first-degree puppetry; this was high jinks with intent to goof; misappropriation of an old ‘Conan’ bit.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The Capitol Police are much more cautious than they were, say, 18 months ago, and for a very good reason. If you don’t know what that reason is, I know what news network you watch.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, it’s predictable why these TV talkers are doing this — they want to talk about something other than the Jan. 6 hearings on the actual seditionist insurrection that led to the deaths of multiple people, and the injury of over 140 police officers. But drawing any equivalence between rioters storming our Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral ballots and a cigar-chomping toy dog is a shameful insult to the memory of everyone who died, and it obscenely trivializes the service and the courage the Capitol Police showed on that terrible day. But who knows? Maybe there was a vast conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States with a rubber Rottweiler.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“After all, Thursday night, the night they were detained, was the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. Are we supposed to believe that was a coincidence? Yes.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Joe Biden’s Bike Accident Edition)“The only thing falling faster is Bitcoin and Joe’s approval ratings.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I think we just found the new spokesperson for Life Alert.” — SEAN HAYES, guest hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live”“Poor Biden — even his bike was like, ‘I’m sorry, but I can no longer support you.’” — JIMMY FALLON“If you want to see that clip again, it’s airing on a 24-hour loop on Fox News.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, it’s — it’s shocking. Not the fall, that Biden looks kind of good in bike shorts.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingKristen Bell teased a third “Frozen” film while on Monday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightElliot Page, star of “The Umbrella Academy,” will appear on Tuesday’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”Also, Check This OutDrake’s “Honestly, Nevermind” is a clear pivot, an increasingly rare thing for a pop icon.Vivien Killilea/Getty Images “Honestly, Nevermind,” Drake’s seventh album, takes the rapper in a new direction — the dance floor. More

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    Jury in Bill Cosby’s Sex Assault Case Ends Third Day of Deliberation

    No verdict has been reached in the civil case brought by a woman who says Mr. Cosby molested her at the Playboy Mansion in 1975, when she was 16.The jury in the Bill Cosby sexual assault trial deliberated for a third day Monday without reaching a verdict even though the judge in the case indicated at the end of deliberations last week that the jurors were close to deciding the case.On Friday, the judge, Craig D. Karlan, said the jurors in Santa Monica, Calif., had resolved most of the questions on a verdict sheet they were being asked to vote on. But their uncertainty surrounding some final issues led him to call the jury back Monday to resume its deliberations.“It does not feel right to rush a verdict when there is so much at stake for both sides,” Judge Karlan said Monday, explaining his actions.One of the 12 jurors who sat through the first two days of deliberations — the same juror who had acted as the foreperson — had to be excused from Monday’s deliberations. So an alternate juror took a seat with the panel, which was directed to start fresh in examining the issues at the heart of the case.It was not clear what effect the inclusion of the new juror might have on the deliberations. Nine of the 12 jurors need to agree on a verdict, and they are using a verdict sheet with nine questions on it to guide their deliberations and to decide on any damages.The jury on Monday asked for clarification on several points, including one about whether Mr. Cosby’s accuser, Judy Huth, had come forward to report she had been assaulted within five years of discovering the emotional distress caused by it, as is required by California law. The judge said that jurors should apply the same standard of proof, the preponderance of the evidence, in deciding this matter as for all civil trial matters.The case is the first civil case accusing Mr. Cosby of sexual assault to reach trial. Ms. Huth testified that Mr. Cosby molested her in 1975 in a bedroom inside the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles when she was 16, a minor.In testimony, Ms. Huth, 64, described how Mr. Cosby tried to put his hand down her pants and then forced her to perform a sex act on him.Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have described Ms. Huth’s account as “a complete and utter fabrication” and have questioned why she spent hours at the mansion after what she described as the assault.The jury also asked to review testimony by another woman, Donna Samuelson, who had accompanied Ms. Huth to the Playboy Mansion.Ms. Samuelson told the jury that Ms. Huth cried and showed anger as she described her encounter with Mr. Cosby shortly after what she depicted as the assault. She said that they had talked in her car for about a half-hour and that she had persuaded Ms. Huth to stay at the mansion because she thought spending an evening there would calm her down.Mr. Cosby, 84, has denied having any sexual encounter with Ms. Huth. He has not attended the trial and did not testify after invoking his Fifth Amendment right. But he was heard by the jurors in a videotaped deposition saying that he did not remember ever meeting Ms. Huth.Ms. Samuelson took two photos of Mr. Cosby and Ms. Huth together at the mansion, though, and they have been entered into evidence.Over the course of 10 days of testimony, the jury heard Ms. Huth’s account that she and Ms. Samuelson had first met Mr. Cosby in a park in San Marino, Calif., where he was filming a scene for the movie “Let’s Do It Again” in 1975.She and Ms. Samuelson testified that Mr. Cosby had invited them to his tennis club, and then to the house where he was staying, where he gave them alcohol and invited them to follow him in their car to the Playboy Mansion. More

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    ‘Hooded; or Being Black for Dummies’ Review: A Tragic Pageantry

    Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm’s ambitious and sometimes metaphysical comedy playfully tries to tackle thorny issues at 59E59 Theaters.What defines Blackness? The idea that there might be a clear answer is absurd. But skin color is all it takes to land two diametrically opposed teenagers in the same jail cell. In the eyes of the law, at least, the connotations of race are obvious.The laughable and at times deadly assumptions that attend Black men in America are the subject of “Hooded; or Being Black for Dummies,” an imaginative and occasionally metaphysical comedy of identity by the playwright Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm. The production at 59E59 Theaters has the playful mood and aesthetic of an insightful and ambitious school project, traversing thorny terrain with deceptive simplicity.Marquis (Lambert Tamin) is splayed out on the ground playing dead, a pose he calls “Trayvonning,” after Trayvon Martin. “It’s a meme,” he explains, like planking or owling. Though his cellmate, Tru (Tarrence J. Taylor), doesn’t see the point of it, he’s not surprised to hear that Marquis was caught doing such nonsense with some white friends (in a cemetery, no less) and that only Marquis was arrested.“Typical,” says Tru, who embodies certain conventions associated with Blackness — fly kicks, street smarts, bravado — that Marquis utterly lacks. Adopted by a white mother (Tjasa Ferme), an arrogant lawyer who easily springs both boys from the town slammer, Marquis lives in Achievement Heights, where he attends an all-white academy. His mom thinks Tru would be a good (that is, Black) influence on her son and invites him to live with them (assuming that Tru comes from poverty and lacks sufficient parental care).Marquis’s classmates are caricatures of whiteness, affluence and ignorance — the girls are all blond and selfie happy, and his best friends, Hunter (Zachary Desmond) and Fielder (Henry James Eden), are troublemakers who make him the scapegoat. Marquis fits right in with his peers, with their retro-preppy uniforms and lofty life goals (costume design is by Latia Stokes). But if racial identity is a performance, Tru considers that Marquis doesn’t have the right script. So Tru writes one, called “Being Black for Dummies,” that winds up in the wrong hands.“Hooded” demonstrates a voraciousness for forms and ideas. Chisholm deploys an array of devices — scenes that reset and repeat, a light-up laugh sign — that disrupt the narrative rhythm and provoke indirect associations. Greek theater looms large (the set design, of deconstructed cardboard columns, is by Tara Higgins), and Chisholm engages with Nietzsche’s theory of tragedy to illustrate the duality inherent to his young Black characters. “There’s a little bit of Apollo and Dionysus in all of us,” Marquis tells Tru. (In case you couldn’t tell, Marquis is the kind of teenager who reads Nietzsche in bed.)It’s a lot to pack into two hours, just as a dummy’s guide to being Black could hardly be contained between binder clips. “Hooded,” presented by Undiscovered Works, is evidence of a provocative and spirited writer whose inkwell overflows onto the page. The play’s exploration of race as a kind of tragic pageantry suits its current form, but there’s more style and substance here than ultimately coheres into a convincing theatrical argument.The director, George Anthony Richardson, gives the production a freewheeling assurance. It is pleasantly lo-fi, but for projections, designed by Hao Bai, that draw wry inspiration from European art, like the schoolyard that resembles Edvard Munch’s expressionist painting. The adult actors play their teenage characters with a touch of exaggeration, suggesting both the volatile eagerness of youth and that Chisholm is interested in the origins and politics of self-presentation.“I am Black, and so whatever I do is acting Black,” Marquis tells Tru. “Or not. Or whatever!” he says, growing flustered. As with any signifier, meaning is determined by the beholder as much as by the object itself. The question isn’t what defines Blackness, but who.Hooded; or Being Black for DummiesThrough July 3 at 59E59 Theaters, Manhattan; 59e59.org. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: The Stanley Cup Finals and ‘Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes’

    The Tampa Bay Lightning battles the Colorado Avalanche for the Stanley Cup. And HBO airs a new documentary about the Chernobyl disaster.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, June 20-26. Details and times are subject to change.MondayHOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE (2012) 8 p.m. on TCM. Long before there were dependable treatment options for AIDS, activist groups including AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power and Treatment Action Group were hard at work trying to change the rhetoric surrounding the disease and pushing for solutions that could cut down on AIDS-related deaths. This documentary, directed by David France, uses archival footage from the 1980s to explore the rancor and apathy toward the disease during that period and how work by activist groups helped lead to robust treatments and a deeper understanding of the disease.NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS (GAME THREE) 8 p.m. on ABC. The Tampa Bay Lightning, the two-time defending champions, will continue facing off against the Colorado Avalanche in Game 3 of the finals. The best-of-seven format means the team that wins four games first wins the cup. If the Lightning takes home that title, it will be the first team to win three consecutive championships since the New York Islanders won four straight cups in 1980-83.TuesdayWILD ’N OUT 8 p.m. on VH1. The fate of this sketch-comedy and improv show was uncertain when ViacomCBS fired the show’s host and creator, Nick Cannon, in 2020 for making antisemitic remarks on a podcast — but the network hired him again last year. It is safe to assume that the new, 18th season, which debuts this week, will feature plenty of other faces: Previous guests on the show have included Chance the Rapper, Zendaya and Machine Gun Kelly.WednesdayA scene from “Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes.”HBOCHERNOBYL: THE LOST TAPES (2022) 9 p.m. on HBO. In the 36 years since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, there has been a fascination with the incident in just about every form of media imaginable: Movies, video games, YouTube videos of people exploring the exclusion zone and now the recent fictionalized HBO mini-series. “The Lost Tapes” uses a trove of new archival footage to look at the explosion and its aftermath. It also includes interviews with survivors, who discuss what they knew about the nuclear power plant before the incident — and what they were told after.Thursday2022 N.B.A. DRAFT 8 p.m. on ABC and ESPN. Some of the most promising young basketball players will assemble in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Thursday for the 76th annual N.B.A. draft. A draft lottery in May determined that the Orlando Magic will have the first overall pick, with the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Houston Rockets and the Sacramento Kings rounding out the top four in the draft lottery. This is the first time in two years that the draft will take place at the normal time, in June, after pandemic-related postponements in 2020 and 2021.BUCKHEAD SHORE 9 p.m. on MTV. Following in the infamous footsteps of “Jersey Shore,” “Floribama Shore” and “Geordie Shore,” this MTV reality show captures fights, hookups and nights out among a new cast of characters in Buckhead, Ga., where nine friends share a lake house for the summer.FridayJennifer Nettles in “American Anthems.”Believe Entertainment GroupAMERICAN ANTHEMS 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The inspiration behind pieces of music can often be hard to pin down, but that won’t be the case here. In each episode of the six-part series, a country star meets with a local community “hero” and then turns his or her story into a personalized country song. The first episode will feature Jennifer Nettles. Other acts in the series include Lee Brice, the War and Treaty, Cam, Lindsay Ell, and Ruston Kelly.49TH ANNUAL DAYTIME EMMY AWARDS 9 p.m. on CBS. This year’s Daytime Emmy Awards will be live from the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in California. The show, which will be hosted by Kevin Frazier and Nischelle Turner, recognizes shows that air during the daytime. This year’s nominees include “General Hospital,” “The Young and the Restless,” and “The Bold and the Beautiful.” Beyoncé is a nominee in the outstanding original song category for her song she wrote for her mother’s Facebook Watch series “Talks With Mama Tina.” The PBS show “This Old House,” which earned its 100th nomination this year, will receive a lifetime achievement honor.SaturdayTHE HAUNTING (1963) 6 p.m. on TCM. This horror film, adapted from the Shirley Jackson novel “The Haunting of Hill House,” follows Dr. John Markway, a researcher interested in psychic phenomena. He encounters two women, Eleanor (Julie Harris) and Theodora (Claire Bloom), and uses their supernatural experiences in a haunted mansion to investigate his paranormal theories. For a looser, modernized take on the novel, see the much more recent adaptation “The Haunting of Hill House,” a series on Netflix.SundayTaraji P. Henson hosting the BET Awards in 2021. She will return to host this year’s ceremony on Sunday.Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated Press2022 BET AWARDS 8 p.m. on BET. Lizzo, Jack Harlow, Chance the Rapper and many more celebrities will be at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday night to perform at this year’s BET Awards. Taraji P. Henson will host. Nominees in the top categories include Doja Cat — who has six nominations, the most of any artist this year — and Drake and Ari Lennox, who each have four. Sean Combs is set to accept a lifetime achievement award.CITIZEN ASHE 9 p.m. on CNN. This documentary on the tennis star Arthur Ashe, a three-time Grand Slam singles title winner who died in 1993, features Ashe’s brother, wife and friends. They discuss Ashe’s experience as a Black man in a white-dominated sport — his ascent to tennis stardom happened during the Jim Crow era — and his career in the context the AIDS epidemic, South African apartheid and civil rights in the United States. In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis called it an “engrossing, politically astute documentary portrait.” More

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    Mark Shields, TV Pundit Known for His Sharp Wit, Dies at 85

    A former campaign strategist, he became a fixture in American political journalism and punditry and was seen on “PBS NewsHour” for 33 years.Mark Shields, a piercing analyst of America’s political virtues and failings, first as a Democratic campaign strategist and then as a television commentator who both delighted and rankled audiences for four decades with his bluntly liberal views and sharply honed wit, died on Saturday at his home in Chevy Chase, Md. He was 85. His daughter, Amy Shields Doyle, said the cause was complications of kidney failure.Politics loomed large for Mr. Shields even when he was a boy. In 1948, when he was 11, his parents roused him at 5 a.m. so he could glimpse President Harry S. Truman as he was passing through Weymouth, the Massachusetts town south of Boston where they lived. He recalled that “the first time I ever saw my mother cry was the night that Adlai Stevenson lost in 1952.”A life immersed in politics began in earnest for him in the 1960s, not long after he had finished two years in the Marines. He started as a legislative assistant to Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin.He then struck out on his own as a political consultant to Democratic candidates; his first campaign at the national level was Robert F. Kennedy’s ill-fated presidential race in 1968. Mr. Shields was in San Francisco when Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles. “I’ll go to my grave believing Robert Kennedy would have been the best president of my lifetime,” he told The New York Times in 1993.He had successes, like helping John J. Gilligan become governor of Ohio in 1970 and Kevin H. White win re-election as mayor of Boston in 1975. But he was certainly no stranger to defeat; he worked for men who vainly pursued national office in the 1970s, among them Edmund S. Muskie, R. Sargent Shriver and Morris K. Udall.“At one point,” Mr. Shields said, “I held the N.C.A.A. indoor record for concession speeches written and delivered.”As the 1970s ended, he decided on a different path. Thus began a long career that made him a fixture in American political journalism and punditry.He started out as a Washington Post editorial writer, but the inherent anonymity of the job discomfited him. He asked for, and got, a weekly column.Before long, he set out on his own. While he continued writing a column, which came to be distributed each week by Creators Syndicate, it was on television that he left his firmest imprint.From 1988 until it was canceled in 2005, he was a moderator and panelist on “Capital Gang,” a weekly CNN talk show that matched liberals like Mr. Shields with their conservative counterparts. He was also a panelist on another weekly public affairs program, “Inside Washington,” seen on PBS and ABC until it ended in 2013.In 1985, he wrote “On the Campaign Trail,” a somewhat irreverent look at the 1984 presidential race. Over the years he also taught courses on politics and the press at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.Mr. Shields during a taping of “Meet the Press” at the NBC studios in Washington in 2008.Alex Wong/Getty Images for Meet the PressHis longest stretch was as a commentator on “PBS NewsHour” from 1987 through 2020, when he decided at age 83 to end his regular gig. A self-described New Deal liberal, Mr. Shields was the counterpoint to a succession of conservative thinkers, including William Safire, Paul Gigot, David Gergen and, for the last 19 years, David Brooks.In a panegyric to his colleague, Mr. Brooks wrote in his New York Times column in December 2020 that “to this day Mark argues that politics is about looking for converts, not punishing heretics.”Mr. Shields’s manner was rumpled, his visage increasingly jowly, his accent unmistakably New England. He came across, The Times observed in 1993, as “just a guy who likes to argue about current events at the barbershop — the pundit next door.”His calling card was a no-nonsense political sensibility, infused with audience-pleasing humor that punctured the dominant character trait of many an office holder: pomposity. Not surprisingly, his targets, archconservatives conspicuous among them, did not take kindly to his arrows. And he did not always adhere to modern standards of correctness.Of President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Shields said dismissively that “the toughest thing he’s ever done was to ask Republicans to vote for a tax cut.” The House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy was “an invertebrate”; Senator Lindsey Graham made Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s loyal sidekick, “look like an independent spirit.” In both major parties, he said, too many are afflicted with “the Rolex gene” — making them money-hungry caterers to the wealthy.Asked in a 2013 C-SPAN interview which presidents he admired, he cited Gerald R. Ford, a Republican who took office in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Ford, he said, was “the most emotionally healthy.”“Not that the others were basket cases,” he said, but “they get that bug, and as the late and very great Mo Udall, who sought that office, once put it, the only known cure for the presidential virus is embalming fluid.”Politics, he maintained, was “a contact sport, a question of accepting an elbow or two,” and losing was “the original American sin.”“People come up with very creative excuses why they can’t be with you when you’re losing,” he said. “Like ‘my nephew is graduating from driving school,’ and ‘I’d love to be with you but we had a family appointment at the taxidermist.’”Still, for all their foibles, he had an abiding admiration for politicians, be they Democrats or Republicans, simply for entering the arena.“When you dare to run for public office, everyone you ever sat next to in high school homeroom or double-dated with or car-pooled with knows whether you won or, more likely, lost,” he said. “The political candidate dares to risk the public rejection that most of us will go to any length to avoid.”Mark Stephen Shields was born in Weymouth on May 25, 1937, one of four children of William Shields, a paper salesman involved in local politics, and Mary (Fallon) Shields, who taught school until she married.“In my Irish American Massachusetts family, you were born a Democrat and baptized a Catholic,” Mr. Shields wrote in 2009. “If your luck held out, you were also brought up to be a Boston Red Sox fan.”Mr. Shields, right, talking with Sandy Levin, Democrat of Michigan, before a meeting of the House Democratic caucus at the Capitol in Washington in 2011.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesHe attended schools in Weymouth and then the University of Notre Dame, where he majored in philosophy and graduated in 1959. With military conscription looming, he chose in 1960 to enlist in the Marines, emerging in 1962 as a lance corporal. He learned a lot in those two years, he said, including concepts of leadership encapsulated in a Marine tradition of officers not being fed until their subordinates were.“Would not our country be a more just and human place,” he wrote in 2010, “if the brass of Wall Street and Washington and executive suites believed that ‘officers eat last’?”As he set out on his career in politics, he met Anne Hudson, a lawyer and federal agency administrator. They were married in 1966. In addition to his daughter, a television producer, he is survived by his wife and two grandchildren. There were bumps along the road, including a period of excessive drinking. “If I wasn’t an alcoholic, I was probably a pretty good imitation of one,” he told C-SPAN, adding: “I have not had a drink since May 15, 1974. It took me that long to find out that God made whiskey so the Irish and the Indians wouldn’t run the world.”Some of his happiest moments, he said, were when he worked on political campaigns: “You think you are going to make a difference that’s going to be better for the country, and especially for widows and orphans and people who don’t even know your name and never will know your name. Boy, that’s probably as good as it gets.” More

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    Vince McMahon Steps Down From W.W.E. Amid Misconduct Investigation

    Vince McMahon, a longtime executive for World Wrestling Entertainment who led professional wrestling from a sideshow curiosity into a mainstream phenomenon, has stepped down as chairman and chief executive while the company’s board investigates allegations of misconduct against him, the company said on Friday.Stephanie McMahon, his daughter, will take over as interim chief executive and chairwoman, the company said in a statement. Mr. McMahon will remain involved with W.W.E.’s creative content and “remains committed to cooperating with the review underway,” the company said.“I have pledged my complete cooperation to the investigation by the Special Committee, and I will do everything possible to support the investigation,” Mr. McMahon said in a statement. “I have also pledged to accept the findings and outcome of the investigation, whatever they are.”Mr. McMahon briefly appeared on “Friday Night SmackDown” at the beginning of the show. He stepped into the ring to applause.“I’m here simply to remind you of the four words we just saw,” Mr. McMahon told the crowd, referring to the W.W.E. signature at the beginning of the broadcast. “Those four words are ‘then, now, forever,’ and the most important word is ‘together.’ Welcome to SmackDown.”Mr. McMahon then dropped a microphone and stepped out of the ring, high-fiving fans as he left.On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. McMahon agreed to pay a secret $3 million settlement to an employee with whom he was said to have had an affair, and that the board had been investigating since April. The investigation unearthed other nondisclosure agreements involving claims of misconduct by Mr. McMahon, The Journal reported.A lawyer for Mr. McMahon told The Journal that the employee had not made any claims of harassment against Mr. McMahon and that he used personal funds to pay the settlement.Far from an anonymous executive, Mr. McMahon is among the most recognizable faces of professional wrestling, adopting a swagger-filled public persona who is often at the center of the on-screen action. Since taking over his father’s wrestling company in 1982, Mr. McMahon has presided over its ascent into a cultural giant, with more than $1 billion in revenue in 2021. W.W.E’s programs are aired in 30 languages and are distributed through NBCUniversal and Fox Sports, among others.The company said it had hired independent legal counsel to conduct the investigation, and would also work with an independent organization to review the company’s compliance program, human resources function and overall culture.Jesus Jiménez More

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    in Theater

    In ‘Downtown Stories,’ Theater That Uses New York as Its Stage

    “Mic check 1, 2, 1, 2. Welcome to the official unofficial unauthorized ‘Hamilton!’ walking tour,” the actress Michelle J. Rodriguez called out into her portable voice amplifier, a headset with a microphone and speaker, worn like a fanny pack. “Just kidding, it’s authorized. I just like to say that.”So begins “Uncovering Downtown: A Magical Expedition of Unrecorded Dreams,” one of two walking tours in “Downtown Stories,” a series of interactive theater being staged through June 25 in downtown Manhattan. Presented by Downtown Alliance, a nonprofit organization that manages Lower Manhattan’s business improvement district, and En Garde Arts, an experimental theater company, the three productions — two guided tours and one “docu-theater” play — weave New York City’s landmarks into the storytelling.The actress Michelle J. Rodriguez leads a fictional walking tour about Alexander Hamilton. Calla Kessler for The New York Times“Who wore it better, Lin-Manuel or Alexander?” Rodriguez continued with the enthusiasm of a college tour guide, drawing from her days as an actual campus tour guide at Williams College. Fun facts are delivered like a history lesson until you remember that you’re on a fictional walking tour. Were Hamilton’s gold epaulets really sold at auction for $1.15 million? (They were.)The play takes its audience members through crowds of rushed New Yorkers and unhurried tourists, perhaps some on their own “Hamilton & Washington” history tours, meandering from Bowling Green Park to the back alley of Marketfield Street — stopping for a moment north of Bowling Green Park to observe tourists gawking at the bronze “Charging Bull” sculpture. (“Boy, do people really like to take pictures with an ass,” Rodriguez says.)Anne Hamburger, the artistic director of En Garde Arts, said the inspiration for the work came from “theater being ingrained with the city at large.”Rodriguez is enthusiastic, drawing from her days as a college tour guide. Calla Kessler for The New York TimesShe added, “That’s what I’m excited by, coming together with a group of artists and saying, ‘How would you use this city as a stage?’”All three productions tell the tales of what the company calls “dreams from New York’s oldest streets.” In “Uncovering Downtown,” directed by Jessica Holt and co-written by Holt and Mona Mansour (“The Vagrant Trilogy”), audiences follow an out-of-work Puerto Rican performance artist who takes a job leading a “Hamilton!” walking tour. “We the People (Not the Bots),” written by Eric Lockley and directed by Morgan Green, introduces a man visiting from the future. He’s here to teach lessons about the past in hopes of stopping the world from becoming a robot-controlled society. The time traveler, played by Lockley, takes his audience to the Soldiers’ Monument at Trinity Church, where he embodies a prisoner of war in 1777, and to the Department of Motor Vehicles at 11 Greenwich Street, where he tells the story of a young Jean-Michel Basquiat tagging Lower Manhattan with graffiti art.In an afrofuturistic guided tour written by Lockley, he plays a time traveler who teaches lessons about the past to protect against a possible robot-controlled society.Calla Kessler for The New York TimesIn writing a sci-fi production heavy on rendering historical moments, Lockley said he wanted to think about how Black people might “use ancestry in the future to arm ourselves.”“I want to remind people that we are more than what we see,” he said. “There’s a spiritual element to it.”In the documentary-theater piece “Sidewalk Echoes,” performed at the John Street United Methodist Church, the playwright Rogelio Martinez and the director Johanna McKeon tell the stories of working immigrants. An Irish immigrant lands a job at an Italian restaurant but can’t pronounce orecchiette. A Catholic man from India begins working as a gas station attendant but quits after three days when the owner asks him if he wears a diaper on his head. An Uzbeki immigrant by way of Israel earns his barber’s license by demonstrating a haircut on a homeless man.The production “Sidewalk Echoes” blends fact, fiction and history. The story draws from real interviews with local business owners in New York City. Calla Kessler for The New York Times“When you see someone sleeping on the subway it’s not because they don’t want to work,” the barber says. “Maybe they just work too hard.”These are the stories of the people working in downtown Manhattan’s businesses. To write the script, Martinez listened to hours of interviews that Hamburger had conducted with local business owners. He then created narratives about immigrants building their lives in New York City. Some of the lines in the play were taken verbatim from their conversations, others are composites of multiple characters, blending together history, fact and fiction.“As an immigrant myself, I’m always interested in reinventing yourself and changing the pattern of one’s stories,” said Martinez, who is from Cuba. “This is my chance to listen to a community reflect. And from there, I could craft my story.”In the show, a banker turned food and wellness advocate tells a friend back in her native Australia that here, “people are really restless.”“We reinvent ourselves,” she tells the audience, sitting in the church pews. “Body cells replace themselves every seven years or so. And that’s in our DNA. And it just so happens it’s in New York’s DNA, too.”Each 45-minute walking tour concludes at neighborhood restaurants where audience members can use their $20 ticket as a meal voucher to support a local eatery. “Sidewalk Echoes” is free. More