22 January 2011: We Are Our Pronouns!

Ricky Martin’s new memoir is called ME, and Oprah Winfrey’s new network is called OWN.  I cannot think of two better words to describe a society mostly obsessed with oneself and, in Oprah’s case, also with ownership. It’s now all me and mine. Gone are the days of you and yours, their and theirs, our…

14 January 2011: Cash Cows in Kansas!

Republican Governor Sam Brownback’s new budget plan for Kansas has moolah to help grow economic sectors such as “animal health,” whatever that may be, but will cut grants to community mental health centers by $10 million.  His budget recommendations also include shutting down the state hospital (i.e., the Kansas Neurological Institute in Topeka) for developmentally…

13 January 2011: All the President’s Children

Not once during his lengthy and moving eulogy in Tucson, Arizona, at the memorial service for those whose lives were cut short by gunman Jared Loughner, not once in his many references to Christina-Taylor Green, the nine-year-old girl who tragically died alongside five others, did President Barack Obama mention his own daughters, Sasha (also 9)…

Remembering Ilse Steinhardt

I know Ilse Steinhardt (2 November 1914—3 December 2010) only through her good friends Anita Herzfeld and Grant Goodman, who for some reason always included me in their dinner parties and birthday celebrations for Ilse.  I was told that Ilse liked me, even though for many years she called me Jim instead of Paul.  Once,…

15 December 2010: What Makes You Cry?

We’re all familiar with Sarah Palin’s mantra that leaders in Washington need to “man-up.”  I wonder what the swaggering gun-toting ex-governor of Alaska thinks of all the press and television coverage that GOP Weeper of the House John Boehner has been getting by precisely ignoring her dick-tum, and daring to open up the floodgates of…

7 December 2010: Oprah Opts for Dickens!

Oprah Winfrey says she has never read A Tale of Two Cities or Great Expectations, so she decided to select them for the Oprah Book Club, and viewers have until the end of January before she begins discussing the two novels by Charles Dickens on her television show. The selection of these two novels seems…

4 November 2010: Me-sogynist?

I’ve always admired Hillary Clinton, but there’s no denying that, once the Republicans saw the handwriting on the wall and the glass ceiling breaking, our Hillary gave birth to their Sarah Palin, who then spawned such shrews as Sharron Angle, Carly Fiorina, Linda McMahon, Christine O’Donnell and Meg Whitman. I don’t want to sound misogynistic,…