The idea of American exceptionalism doesn’t extend to Americans being exceptional.
The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.
Celebrity distorts democracy by giving the rich, beautiful, and famous more authority than they deserve.
Digital platforms are worthless without content. They’re shiny sacks with bells and whistles, but without content, they’re empty sacks. It is not about pixels versus print. It is not about how you’re reading. It is about what you’re reading.
The Obamas, especially Michelle, have radiated the sense that Americans do not appreciate what they sacrifice by living in a gilded cage. They’ve forgotten Rule No. 1 of politics: No one sheds tears for anyone lucky enough to live at the White House.
The Clintons want to do big worthy things, but they also want to squeeze money from rich people wherever they live on planet Earth, insatiably gobbling up cash for politics and charity and themselves from the same incestuous swirl.
Afghanistan is more than the ‘graveyard of empires.’ It’s the mother of vicious circles.
Women have become so obsessed with not withering, they’ve forgotten that there are infinite ways to be beautiful.
It is men’s worst fear, personally and professionally, that women will pin the sin on them.
Women are affected by lunar tides only once a month; men have raging hormones every day.
When you’re young, and even at times when you’re older, it’s hard to fathom this: What needs to be nurtured is the stuff that’s different, that sets you apart from the pack, rather than the stuff that helps you blend in.
Good and evil are not like the Redskins and the Cowboys.
When I need to work up my nerve to write a tough column, I try to think of myself as Emma Peel in a black leather catsuit.
The Mormons even baptized Anne Frank. It took Ernest Michel, then chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, three years to get Mormons to agree to stop proxy-baptizing Holocaust victims.
Personally, I’ve decided to stop evolving.
It is an astonishing thing that historians will look back and puzzle over, that in the 21st century, American women were such hunted creatures. Even as Republicans try to wrestle women into chastity belts, the Vatican is trying to muzzle American nuns.
It takes a lot of adrenaline and fear to make me actually write.
Are women necessary? Not with Ava around.
Americans want to be protected, but not at the cost of vitiating the values that make us Americans.
As a woman, I know that if I write about another woman, it will be perceived as a catfight.
Journalism, spooked by rumors of its own obsolescence, has stopped believing in itself. Groans of doom alternate with panicked happy talk.