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The gift Tom Stoppard gave to me — and to all who adore him
In 2022, during a reporting trip to London, I had tea with a source who confessed to me that her mother’s central interest was the work of Tom Stoppard. It was more than an interest, really: “He was the main thing in her life,” she said.
There are artists you admire, and then there are artists you flat-out adore. Particularly cerebral types, like Stoppard, risk falling into the first category: They may generate great thoughts, but those great thoughts have a great chance of leaving you cold. That wasn’t the case for Stoppard, who died Saturday at 88, and was a thinker worth adoring. His best work achieved a rare balance: Audiences left his most affecting plays with both a fresh perspective on the world, and a feeling of great warmth toward it.
I felt that myself, after seeing a much-heralded revival of Stoppard’s Travesties on Broadway in 2018. It’s quite a highbrow play, about the brief intersection, in Switzerland during World War I, of the lives and work of James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin and Tristan Tzara, founder of Dadaism. It made me laugh until I cried. And the gloss Stoppard bestowed on this obscure episode of history followed me out of the theater, giving a brief sheen to everything and everyone I saw. I felt as though I floated back to Brooklyn, and as if the Q train might be full of personalities I’d never guess were important until years afterward.
Much of Stoppard’s work revolved around the question of what it really means to live an important life — one that is not just full, but has some kind of identifiable impact on others. The main character of Travesties isn’t Joyce, Lenin or Tzara; he’s an endearingly self-satisfied British diplomat, Henry Carr, who briefly found himself in the same circles as those luminaries. As the play opens, decades later, he’s trying to conjure up a memoir about his time in the presence of the greats, with the implication that he deserves to be considered among their ranks.
In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the play that made Stoppard into a star at age 29, the two title characters grapple with their inability to in any way change the course of a narrative — that of Hamlet — that they know will lead to their deaths. In Shakespeare in Love, the film that won Stoppard an Oscar in 1998, he and his coauthor Marc Norman imagined the king of English playwrights as a young man full of talent but still struggling toward greatness, in need of an overwhelming emotional shock to propel him into complete ownership of his gifts.
There are the 19th-century Russian revolutionaries of the ambitious trilogy The Coast of Utopia; the intellectuals seeking to redefine the world and its history in Arcadia; the striving academics of The Hard Problem; the newly emancipated Viennese Jews of Leopoldstadt, the play Stoppard wrote that most profoundly invoked his heritage. Over and over, variations of the same question emerge. What does it mean to live completely and well, as an individual and a member of society?
“If there is any meaning in any of it” — “it” being the brutal course of history, its neverending cycles of destruction — “it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of nonentities,” Joyce declares in Travesties. Later, Carr echoes him — a surprise, as the two hold very little respect for one another. When told that the only relevant function of art is “social criticism,” he protests.
“A great deal of what we call art,” he says, “has no such function, and yet in some way it gratifies a hunger that is common to princes and peasants.”
Not everyone wants to be an artist, and, as Carr reflects at the end of Travesties, it’s a sure thing that not everyone can be. But in the wake of Stoppard’s death, I’ve found myself thinking about the mother of my one-time source, so enraptured by what Stoppard created that her own child saw his work as the most profound passion of her life.
It’s easy to say that kind of effect made Stoppard’s life important. But the quieter story, I think, is that it made that devoted fan’s life important, too. Because she loved Stoppard, she saw herself as more firmly secured in her own existence; she saw herself as having a purpose and place.
To help someone experience their own significance — to gratify the common hunger that afflicts us all — is a great gift. And Stoppard gave it to many, including to me.
The post The gift Tom Stoppard gave to me — and to all who adore him appeared first on The Forward.
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US Justice Dept. to Seek Death Penalty for Man Accused of Murdering 2 Israeli Embassy Staffers
Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim who were shot and killed as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum, pose for a picture at an unknown location, in this handout image released by Embassy of Israel to the US on May 22, 2025. Photo: Embassy of Israel to the USA via X/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – The Justice Department will seek the death penalty for the man accused of murdering two staff members of the Israeli Embassy in Washington outside a Jewish museum, prosecutors said in a court filing Friday.
Elias Rodriguez faces federal hate crime and murder charges in the killings of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, the couple he shot execution-style as they left an event at the museum last May. Rodriguez shouted “Free Palestine” during the shooting and later told police, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.”
The indictment includes a hate crime resulting in death and notice of special findings, which allows prosecutors to pursue the death penalty.
“My message to anyone who seeks to commit political violence in this district — D.C. is not the place. You will be held accountable and you will face the full wrath of the law,” Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said on Friday.
Prosecutors described the killing as calculated and planned, saying Rodriguez flew to the Washington region from Chicago ahead of the event at the Capital Jewish Museum with a handgun in his checked luggage.
Rodriguez went inside the museum after murdering his victims and said, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza, I am unarmed,” according to court documents. He also told interrogators of his that he admired Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty Air Force member who set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in February 2024, describing Bushnell as “courageous” and a “martyr.”
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Israel Kills Hamas Armed Wing Leader Haddad in Gaza Strike
People carry a body identified by mourners as Hamas’ military wing commander Izz al-Din al-Haddad, who was killed in an Israeli strike on Friday, during a funeral, in Gaza City, May 16, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
An Israeli airstrike on Gaza killed the chief of Hamas’ military wing, the most senior official from the Palestinian terrorist group killed by Israel since an October US-backed ceasefire agreement that was meant to halt fighting.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that Izz al-Din al-Haddad was killed in what it described as a precise strike on Gaza City on Friday. Israel has repeatedly carried out strikes on Gaza since the ceasefire started.
Hamas confirmed in a later statement that Haddad, who was born in 1970, was killed along with his wife and daughter. It described him as a central figure in directing combat operations and accused Israel of trying to achieve politically through killings what it had failed to achieve militarily.
At Al Aqsa Martyrs Mosque in central Gaza, a joint funeral was held on Saturday for Haddad, his wife and their 19-year-old daughter.
CASUALTIES MOUNT DESPITE CEASEFIRE
In a joint statement with his defense minister on Friday, announcing the military had targeted Haddad, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Haddad was an architect of the October 7, 2023 attacks that precipitated Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Haddad, who became the group’s military chief in Gaza after Israel’s killing of Mohammad Sinwar in May 2025, “was responsible for the murder, abduction, and harm inflicted on thousands of Israeli civilians (and) soldiers,” they said.
Nicknamed “the Ghost,” Haddad had survived multiple assassination attempts by Israel, according to Hamas sources. Israel’s military says that he was one of Hamas’ longest-serving commanders, rising through the ranks from the group’s early establishment in the 1980s to hold several senior positions.
Israel and Hamas remain deadlocked in indirect talks to advance US President Donald Trump’s post-war plan for Gaza that is meant to end more than two years of fighting.
Israel has stepped up attacks in Gaza in the weeks since halting its joint bombing with the U.S. in Iran, redirecting its fire back on the devastated Palestinian territory where the military says Hamas fighters are tightening their grip.
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Piers Morgan is what’s wrong with media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and I can’t stop watching him
Piers Morgan’s online debate about Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times op-ed containing allegations of Israeli dog rape was loud, chaotic and unenlightening — and I couldn’t stop watching it.
That’s a problem. Morgan’s format is a trap. On his YouTube talk show, Piers Morgan Uncensored, he pits people holding intransigent, often extreme positions against each other, goads them to yell at one another across Zoom, and positions himself as the voice of reason in the middle. It’s hateporn — addictive, and not reflective of reality.
And yet Piers Morgan Uncensored and many similar YouTube- and social-media based news programs are where people increasingly get their information and engage with controversial issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
These programs rack up views by persuading viewers there is no middle ground, no moderate position, no alternative to conflict. And their strategy is working.
The Kristof episode, which racked up 340,000 views in a day, is titled, “Torture Does NOT Work!” — all Morgan show names have one word in all caps and end in an exclamation point.
It begins with people shouting. “You are not a journalist!” Ana Kasparian, a commentator on another YouTube show, shouts at podcaster and online anchor Emily Schrader — before Morgan comes on to introduce the segment.
He quickly recaps the lurid details from Kristof’s New York Times oped, “The Silence That meets the Rape of Palestinians,” and a newly issued nearly-300 page Israeli report on Hamas sexual violence.
“As far as I’m concerned, the only cause is basic human decency,” Morgan says in his cool British accent, “If your first instinct about either report is to look for ways to smear them, you might have run out of that yourself.”
Yet the six deeply partisan guests spend the next 45 minutes smearing the reports, and each other.
Morgan’s introductory call for human decency is not a plea, it’s a ploy. He plays the mature voice of reason standing between the extremist pro-Israelis and the pro-Palestinians — not to persuade them to come to a moderate position, but rather to exploit the most virulent voices in order to generate clicks, while still claiming the cover of journalism. This approach causes real harm by giving extremists a megaphone, and a degree of exposure that all but guarantees that people actually trying to build a better future go unheard.
A recipe for drama
Morgan repeats this formula over and again. In an episode entitled, “Netanyahu CONNED Trump!” Dave Smith, a sidekick to Joe Rogan, accuses Israel of dragging the United States into the Iran war. In “I’m SICK of it!” commentator Megyn Kelly launches into a similar attack on Israel.
Morgan has had long interviews with white supremacist and proud antisemite Nick Fuentes (“What a crock of S***!”). In “STAND for Dead Soldiers!” Morgan hosted four Israelis at the extreme ends of the political spectrum and watched them fight when one refused to stand as a siren sounded to honor Israel’s fallen soldiers.
Not extreme or dramatic enough? How about the time Morgan hosted Crackhead Barney, a Black pro-Palestinian street activist, to explain why she harasses celebrities to get them to say, “Free Palestine.”
“I’m truly shocked/disgusted that @piersmorgan would have this nutjob & clearly unwell person to go on his show and even remotely try to talk about Palestine or the war,” wrote the Gazan-born activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib.
Alkhatib is a moderate Palestinian who works for a peaceful solution to the conflict. He has, unsurprisingly, not been on Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Instead, Morgan’s choice of guests is calculated for maximum friction, a function of an attention economy that monetizes the time people like me spend watching the fights.
From ‘Animal House’ to Piers Morgan
Luring viewers this way isn’t exactly new. President Ronald Reagan called The McLaughlin Group, a current affairs program that ran on public television for 34 years beginning in 1982, “the political equivalent of Animal House”— more drunken frat house than graduate seminar. McLaughlin begat Crossfire, a CNN political debate program hosted by a younger Tucker Carlson that Jon Stewart once compared to pro-wrestling.
In 2025, Morgan, who came up in British tabloids before a long stint at CNN, moved away from traditional broadcast TV and went all in on social media and his YouTube channel.
His success on that platform is part of a larger shift in media from major institutions to independent personalities, and from actual news — the dutiful and expensive process of finding out and relaying what’s actually happening in the world — to opinion that spins itself as reporting, which is far cheaper and more entertaining.
That shift has come as audiences have moved from loyalty to long established institutions to following enterprising, independent personalities. The podcaster Joe Rogan has 20.9 million subscribers; Carlson has 5.6 million; Morgan’s show has 4.42 million subscribers and over 1.36 billion total views.
In other words, Morgan is not some guy some people watch now. He is what people will be watching in the future.
A bias toward extremes
That prospect should alarm us. Morgan’s shows rarely feature people working toward compromise or reconciliation. A Piers Morgan Uncensored discussion spotlighting the many civil society groups in Israel working toward coexistence? A show where he sits down with Arab and Jewish Israelis who share a vision for a common future? A segment that highlights the actual, albeit rare, instances of cooperation?
Pipe dreams. All that is also happening in Israel and the West Bank — but Piers Morgan Uncensored effectively censors it.
Compare that to Jon Stewart, who on The Daily Show last month conducted a long interview with the Palestinian and Israeli co-authors of The Future Is Peace, a book that calls for moving beyond violence and stalemate to a shared future. Same approach — a streaming interview on a hot-button topic, with an eye toward entertainment — but radically different editorial choices.
That episode garnered a mere 400,000 views. Morgan’s comparative millions of eyeballs may, in his mind, justify his guttersweeping approach to international conflict. And in his defense — and mine, for watching — it’s never boring. He can be a thoughtful and provocative interviewer, and his not-ready-for-primetime, self-created show allows him, when he so chooses, to platform voices that more mainstream venues overlook, like former Israeli Speaker of the Knesset and longtime peace activist Avrum Burg.
Alas, he stuck the erudite former statesman with a diehard evangelical and a firebreathing American Jewish conservative pundit. That episode is called, “A SHAME on Judaism!”
Whatever this is, it’s not journalism. But it is the future.
The post Piers Morgan is what’s wrong with media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and I can’t stop watching him appeared first on The Forward.