Everybody despises Harvey. Usually by this time in the public pursuit of a villain the scoundrel begins to attract a little undeserved sympathy. Not this time. The accusers keep on coming, with the passion of Emile Zola famously accusing the French government of hounding Alfred Dreyfus -- "J' accuse!" -- only because he was a Jew. Published October 18, 2017
What is it about these pathetic men with a paunch who imagine their looks and libidos are immortal, and think their excuse for manliness continues to attract sweet young flesh? You might ask some of the women. Published October 11, 2017
Hugh Hefner dies at 91 and women in Saudi Arabia get royal permission to drive a car. These two markers separated by continents and cultures, one in the West and the other in the East, dramatically reflect the changing ways men and women relate to each other. Published October 4, 2017
Now we're "the Divided States of America." Or maybe the "Untied" States of America, with a suitable new slogan, "In Mammon We Trust." Tribalism trumps unity. Gone is the idealism of e pluribus unum, "out of many, one." The melting pot, which united us for so long by blending differences, is banished to the trash. Published September 27, 2017
Ambitious young men in Germany feel entitled to wonder when a man will ever be chancellor again. They, too, want a "role model." Published September 20, 2017
Feminist politics turned a corner with the final defeat of Hillary Clinton. You can feel it in and between the lines of her blame-game book, "What Happened." The exuberance of her supporters, which buoyed her in the campaign to elect the first woman president, has dissipated. All she has left is a memoir of an angry woman, raging that her time has passed, that the abundant fruit of opportunity that fell from the family tree was crushed beyond hopes of redemption and there's nothing left to put in a new bottle but old whine. Published September 13, 2017
America got lost on the way to the 21st century. Many Americans lost pride in being American, and no longer cherish the rigors of the First Amendment, which gives pride of place to freedom of speech. This didn't happen in one generation, though the baby boomers, born after the soldiers came marching home in triumph in 1945, grew up nursing grievance. This led to crucial changes in attitude, and succeeding generations felt empowered by rebellion. Published September 6, 2017
Donald Trump has a skill for recruiting Cabinet officers he has treated badly. Serving in his administration can require selfless devotion to duty. Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, could tell you about that. So could Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who is swiftly becoming the Cabinet superstar. Published August 30, 2017
"Dunkirk" is the movie hit of summer, particularly with the millennials who may even absorb a modicum of history with the spectacle. Published August 30, 2017
Every generation has its own axes to grind, attitudes to assume, enemies to attack. It's the way the young move into maturity, sometimes with smarts and sometimes not. Every generation wants to make the world over in its own image. Published August 23, 2017
Identity politics has gone over the top, and the flood of intolerance is drenching everyone. What began as a campaign to re-right injustice has created injustice. What was meant to change attitudes toward intolerance has become intolerance enthroned. Published August 16, 2017
Donald Trump has a skill for recruiting Cabinet officers he has treated badly. Serving in his administration can require selfless devotion to duty. Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, could tell you about that. So could Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who is swiftly becoming the Cabinet superstar. Published August 9, 2017
"Summertime, when the livin' is easy." George Gershwin's haunting melody and DuBose Heyward's tender lyrics once floated over the mood of summer, coaxing us all to reverie. But that was when vacationers lay on the beach under a lazy old sun, concentrating on important things, like grains of sand seeping through their toes, and watching the currents of salty waves ebb and flow before rippling back to the vasty deep. Published August 2, 2017
Any woman could tell you that a good man is hard to find. Some men don't measure up to what a woman wants them to be. Some are coarse, profane, mean and other bad things. Published July 26, 2017
You could call it the tale of two election reflections, two competing points of view, two American perceptions of out-of-focus reality. Two important liberal voices "looked back" this week at the November election to try to figure out how and why Donald Trump, whom "everybody" despised and "nobody" wanted to win, actually did. Published July 19, 2017
When President Trump defended his use of social media as not simply "presidential" but "modern day presidential," he had a point. If George Washington, John Adams or Thomas Jefferson wanted to get a personal message duplicated for the public to read, it took at least 24 hours to get it printed (even when their friends owned the presses.) Published July 12, 2017
Barack Obama's speech in Indonesia, warning of "an aggressive kind of nationalism," has drawn both criticism and applause, depending on the politics of who was listening, but it ignited a useful and needed debate on the actual meaning of "nationalism." Published July 5, 2017
Approaching the first Fourth of July in the time of Trump, a holiday Americans also call "Independence Day," it's hard to find much independent thinking. Polarized rages and rants follow red and blue patterns of division, deepening the fragmentation of national unity and making patriotic pride suspect. Verbal fireworks are today's "bombs bursting in air." Published June 28, 2017
Whether the famous dead Roman is a look-alike for Donald Trump, with a blond comb-over and a long red tie, a cool black dude in a tailored suit suggesting Barack Obama, or a 1930s Orson Welles with a Sam Browne belt resembling Benito Mussolini, the character has captured the imagination of public and players since Shakespeare wrote it more than four centuries ago. Published June 21, 2017
Thirty years ago this week Ronald Reagan stood up on a podium in what was then West Berlin, framed by the Brandenburg Gate behind him. Through a thick sheet of bulletproof glass, he gazed at the ugly concrete symbol of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, and addressed the most famous words of his presidency to Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet empire: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Published June 14, 2017
