President Obama waxed eloquent at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington this week, speaking of the men and women commemorated there as "a testament to the endurance and the strength of the human spirit." He told how his great uncle, an American soldier, was stunned by what he saw at the liberation of the death camp at Buchenwald. Published April 25, 2012
Rosen versus Romney is not exactly high noon at the Powder Puff Arena. But it provides an insight or two in the gender games at the center of the culture: Trendy lesbian working mom, a public relations strategist raising adopted children, attacks traditional super mom for staying home to raise five sons. Published April 18, 2012
BERLIN Published April 11, 2012
No one would ever call Mitt Romney a rock star, even on stage with a Gibson SG Standard Vintage Sunburst with a mahogany body, baked maple fingerboard and two humbucking pickups. Even on a roll, Mitt doesn't rock. But his wife Ann does. Suddenly she's hot. Published April 4, 2012
The Internet is the latest tool for compassionate activism. When the sight of Angelina Jolie's legs goes viral, she magnifies her female celebrity by focusing attention on the miseries of Darfur. She teases and titillates in a celebrity culture and uses her fame for a good cause. Published March 28, 2012
"Moderate Republican" wasn't always an oxymoron, but now it is. Politics is about opposites in search of compromise, and moderates only make fat targets in a crossfire, shot by friend and foe. If the best ideas are drawn from strong debate, even at the extreme, moderates usually disappear in the mush of the middle. Published March 21, 2012
You don't have to be an elderly Aunt Agatha to remember when feminism was about equal rights and equal pay. In those heady days of righteousness unbound, not all women cheered the revolution, but most did. Our mothers and grandmothers who enjoyed the freedom of being full-time moms, home for the children after school, nevertheless believed that pay scales deprived women of what was rightly theirs. Published March 14, 2012
The Republicans still have a lot of bullets in the magazine. Mitt Romney's tin ear, Rick Santorum's gag reflex, Newt Gingrich's endless pomposity and Ron Paul's narrow-minded consistency all come accompanied by big feet to shoot at. You can't blame the Democrats for putting in a call to the caterer for a November party. Published March 7, 2012
Rick Santorum is making social conservatives look bad. While President Obama sets off class warfare and exploits natural income inequality, Mr. Santorum appeals to the lowest common denominator of social values in reckless pursuit of a winning political formula. Published February 29, 2012
If you're tired of watching the Republican debates, tune in Sunday night to the Academy Awards. The night will show off beautiful eye candy for both men and women, diversion with glitz. We once worried about protecting the children from "inappropriate" movies, but now the candidates talk about condoms and abortions and adultery scandals. With pop culture awash in sex and violence, movie themes can hardly shock. This year's crop of Oscar movies is mild indeed. Published February 22, 2012
Only Americans of a certain age remember what the holiday on the third Monday in February is all about. I asked a few high-school students the other day what it is, exactly, we celebrate with Presidents Day. One young man suggested it was about selling used cars, since there are so many newspaper advertisements and television commercials announcing "birthday sales." Published February 15, 2012
Every campaign has a storyline, a theme - one written by the candidate's spinners, another by the opposition's trimmers and one, usually the accurate one, hidden in plain sight. Mitt Romney's pushing the storyline of his successful business experience. Published February 8, 2012
"I don't smoke, and I don't chew, and I don't go out with girls who do." My, how times have changed since kids amused each other with schoolyard doggerel like that one. Tobacco's out, but now nearly everything else is "in." Modern voters no longer pursue clean-living good boys, but good ol' boys with a little sin on their rap sheets. Published February 1, 2012
T here's a debate just behind the Republican search for a winning candidate, just at the edges of President Obama's campaign for re-election, about whether America is finished. These debaters put it in the form of a polite academic question: Is America in decline? Published January 25, 2012
Presidential campaigns are notorious for unleashing scurrilous rhetoric. Only George Washington was elected as an uncontroversial reflection of the nation's will. Then we got political parties, and it was downhill after that. Published January 18, 2012
Mitt Romney is learning what candidates before him learned. Small mistakes count, but usually not for much. But big ones can put a man down for the count. Right now his "$10,000 bet" seems insignificant. His pleasure taken in "firing" greedy incompetents, taken out of context and exaggerated by opponents who know better, is slightly more damaging, but the fair-minded (as most Americans are) understand what he meant. Published January 11, 2012
What a country. Between the tears and triumphs, the angry accusations and the grudging admiration, the repetitive epithets and the evocative patriotism, the race in Iowa ends in a photo finish. But any bookie will tell you that no matter how close the finish, you still pay out for win, place and show. Published January 4, 2012
T his is the week that pits the old fogies against the rising generations in determining "what's in" for 2012 and "what's out" from 2011. Fashion and political opinions traditionally have made for a showdown at Generation Gap, but this year, as we move into a new year, there's a communication gap, too. It's as much about process as substance in how we see the future. Published December 28, 2011
This has been a busy week for the Grim Reaper, slashing out at friend and foe, winning each battle fought against clay-footed humans who earned obituaries on the front page inspired by love or hate or both. Words often have a life of their own, particularly in matters of life and death. Cosmic coincidences in man's fate bring to our attention very different men merely because they died within days of each other. Published December 21, 2011
Newt Gingrich is a fat target for everyone - so easy to hit. He makes the others in the race jump up and down and sometimes leap sideways, like it or not. He shakes things up. He forces voters to look differently at things they thought they already understood, lulled by habit rather than thought. That may not be the ultimate role for a leader of the Western world, but for now, he's the pause that refreshes. Published December 14, 2011
