Connie Schultz from Creators Syndicate

Campaign Supporters Who Are Not Really Supporters for 03/09/2008

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0800

In the fall of 1964, my father pushed back from the dining room table and announced that he was taking my sister and me to Washington, D.C.

Stunning news. We did not take vacations. Dad worked at the power plant, and Mom worked at stretching his paycheck for a family of six stuffed into a two-bedroom rental house in small-town Ohio. Our big trip was the annual fall drive into Pennsylvani ...

Updated: Sun Mar 09, 2008

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Same Son, Bigger Sneakers for 03/12/2008

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

His long fingers wrap around the head of his newborn son, and I wonder: When was it that this boy became a man?

He is long past this age of speculation, a married man now in his early 30s, but I still remember the exact way he wore out his sneakers when he was 7. I could flip over the shoes tossed just inside the front door or dropped at the side of the bathtub or kicked under the bottom ...

Updated: Wed Mar 12, 2008

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A Real Man's Apology for 03/14/2008

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Most women wanted to hear one thing on Wednesday from Eliot Spitzer.

We didn't care about his future plans to serve "the public good," his lamenting "what could have been" or how bad he felt about letting down his fellow New Yorkers.

No.

First and foremost, we wanted this philandering hypocrite of a husband to step up to the microphone and turn, not towa ...

Updated: Fri Mar 14, 2008

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Oh, Those Pesky Preachers for 03/19/2008

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

After all these years of wrestling and wrangling with my pastors about what it means to be a Christian, it turns out I was supposed to agree with everything they said or plant my posterior in a different pew.

What? Do I have the wrong Bible? Again?

If I always agreed with my pastors, that would mean I would have a better relationship with Pastor Kate and Pastor Woody th ...

Updated: Wed Mar 19, 2008

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The Sin of Our Silence for 03/23/2008

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

When I was in seventh grade, I was grounded for having a crush on a black boy.

Like so many white Americans in the late 1960s, my father was afraid of the shifting sands in his universe.

He was afraid of a race of people he never had known until he married and left the family farm. He was afraid of the rage of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. And he was afraid of his 13-year-old ...

Updated: Sun Mar 23, 2008

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A Tip or Two for Starbucks for 03/26/2008

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Once again, we have questions about a tip jar.

This time, the dispute takes place at a coffeehouse. And not just any coffeehouse, which explains the coast-to-coast hand-wringing by managers who should know better.

A California judge has ordered Starbucks to pay more than $100 million to its low-wage coffee servers, called "baristas," after ruling that the company violate ...

Updated: Wed Mar 26, 2008

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The Legacy of Our Past for 03/30/2008

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

During the Civil War, a popular poem ran in various black newspapers to illustrate how the anguish of white Americans finally had reached parity with the suffering of slaves.

In the poem, titled "The Two Southern Mothers," a white woman greeted with "frantic sorrow" the body of her only son, a Confederate officer who had died in battle.

Her "aged slave,&qu ...

Updated: Sun Mar 30, 2008

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Sexy Salamanders and Other Rites of Spring for 04/02/2008

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Silly humans.

We always think it's all about us.

We're so busy grousing about how spring must have decided to land somewhere else this year that we haven't even noticed the wildlife romping all around us with the fervor of newlyweds.

Go ahead. Stick your head out the window at sunrise tomorrow and listen to all that wooing going on. It's a whole neighborhood of pillow talk. ...

Updated: Wed Apr 02, 2008

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Men, It's Not Your Place To Tell Clinton To Quit the Race for 04/06/2008

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Someone tell me, please, how grown men in 2008 can believe it's their right — their duty, even — to tell a woman when she should rein in her ambition and go home.

Male columnists, male politicians, male talking heads, male "surrogates" — all of them harrumphing that it's time for Hillary Clinton to stop it, just stop it, with all this talk of being president.< ...

Updated: Sun Apr 06, 2008

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We Hardly Knew Her Until We Knew Her Well for 04/09/2008

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Monday morning, and the traffic was heavy as usual on the highway, as hundreds of us drove toward whatever it is that yanks you out of bed before you're ready.

There were signs of reluctant journeys: Travel mugs bobbed up and down, cigarettes were flicked out windows, car radios boomed. I was headed to work, grumbling to myself as my mind raced over the day's commitments.

Then I s ...

Updated: Wed Apr 09, 2008

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Guantanamo's Only Justice Is Poetic for 04/13/2008

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

"I have composed these lines

For the day when your children have grown old."

— Abdullah Thani Faris al Anazi, Guatanamo detainee

When law professor Marc Falkoff volunteered in 2004 to represent some of the prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, he figured they were as horrible and dangerous as the Bush administration made them out to be.

&quo ...

Updated: Sun Apr 13, 2008

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Blue-Collar Blues: When Fear Masquerades as Rage for 04/16/2008

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

When I was a kid, my family once relied on food stamps to eat.

I didn't know that until I was nearly 40, when my mother, in a rare mood of melancholy, admitted she once did something she never thought she could do.

My father's union was on strike. All I remember from that time is that we ate a lot of cornmeal mush and fried Spam for dinner, and Dad was either out working the picke ...

Updated: Wed Apr 16, 2008

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Husbands Create More Housework? Shocking! for 04/20/2008

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Here's a question to get the thunder rolling in marriages across the country: How much housework do husbands create?

My friend John passed along news of a recent study out of the University of Michigan meant to answer that very question.

"I'm guessing it's something all women already knew," John said in an e-mail.

I must have assured John a tad too quickly that ye ...

Updated: Sun Apr 20, 2008

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Journalism's Loss Was Propaganda's Gain for 04/23/2008

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

When journalists fail to ask the right questions, inevitably the majority of Americans will believe the wrong answers.

It's that simple and that potentially devastating, this relationship between journalists and the public. Especially in a democracy, where a free and aggressive press is supposed to be a crucial check against the abuses of power.

We are the watchdogs, but too many ...

Updated: Wed Apr 23, 2008

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The Right To Be Young for 04/27/2008

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Four years ago, a friend talked me into visiting a department store to get a makeover.

This was not my idea of a good time.

Why would I sit in a grown-up highchair — in public, no less — so that a stranger could tsk-tsk over my middle-aged face as she plied, plucked and poked? To me, this ranked right up there with a colonoscopy for whoo-whee fun.

My friend knew ...

Updated: Sun Apr 27, 2008

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The World Stopped for One Fallen Soldier for 04/30/2008

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

For just a moment last Sunday, I was inconvenienced by the war in Iraq.

Sure wish I'd handled it better.

I was in Cincinnati for the funeral of Matt Maupin, a staff sergeant in the Army Reserve. A lot of you have heard of Maupin. He was missing in action for four long years, and throughout that time, his family publicly dared to hope that he would come home alive.

Maupin wa ...

Updated: Wed Apr 30, 2008

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It's God's Church, Not Obama's, and It Needs Some Peace for 05/04/2008

Sun, 04 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Last weekend, the Rev. Cally Rogers-Witte traveled from Cleveland to Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago to sit onstage with the head pastor and one of his newly hired security guards.

Rogers-Witte, one of five executive officers at UCC headquarters, was there for Sunday service to send a message to the beleaguered congregation.

"We want them to know we support them through t ...

Updated: Sun May 04, 2008

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There's No Equal Footing in Sex With the Boss for 05/07/2008

Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Well, here we go again.

This time it's in Ohio, where Attorney General Marc Dann insists that his extramarital affair with a subordinate was consensual.

That suggests an equal footing. It also suggests that Dann thinks the rest of us are as dimwitted as the buddies he fired last week.

Jessica Utovich is virtually half Dann's age, has a smidgeon of his higher education, earn ...

Updated: Wed May 07, 2008

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Students Take Flight Through Readers' Generosity for 05/11/2008

Sun, 11 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Everywhere I go, I get the same question.

It happened when I was squeezing melons at a grocery in suburban Cleveland. Happened in Pittsburgh, too, in a room full of journalists and backstage in Los Angeles at "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson." I even was stopped in the halls of Congress by someone who just had to ask:

How's the Shaw band doing?

I just love ...

Updated: Sun May 11, 2008

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Students Take Flight Through Readers' Generosity for 05/11/2008

Sun, 11 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Everywhere I go, I get the same question.

How's the Shaw band doing?

I ju ...

Updated: Sun May 11, 2008

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