Suzanne Fields from Creators Syndicate

Family Values Without the Wink for 02/10/2012

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

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. But his strength against Newt Gingrich, still his chief rival despite Rick Santorum's burst of speed in this week's caucuses of beauty con ...

Updated: Fri Feb 10, 2012

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Romney's Risks in Clean Living -- Voters Expect a Little Sin on a Rap Sheet for 02/03/2012

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

"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.

If he is the Republican n ...

Updated: Fri Feb 03, 2012

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Is America in Decline? for 01/27/2012

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

There'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?

The debate, as such intellectual exercises always are, is restricted so far to the small but influential magazines read by the ...

Updated: Fri Jan 27, 2012

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Race and Racist Screeds for 01/20/2012

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

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.

By 1800, when John Adams had been president for four years, he was inundated by what he called "squibs, scoffs and sarcasms" — nasty stuff imbedded ...

Updated: Fri Jan 20, 2012

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Transcending the Gaffe for 01/13/2012

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

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 mo ...

Updated: Fri Jan 13, 2012

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Racing for the Triple Crown for 01/06/2012

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

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.

The pundits who long to be racing writers, handicapping election campaigns like horse r ...

Updated: Fri Jan 06, 2012

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The Social Medium, Not The Message for 12/29/2011

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

This is the week that pits the old fogies against the rising generations in determining "what's in" for 2012 and "what's out" for 2011. Fashion and political opinions have traditionally made for a showdown at Generation Gap, but now, 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.

Some com ...

Updated: Thu Dec 29, 2011

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Grave Thoughts on Grim Reaper for 12/23/2011

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

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 d ...

Updated: Fri Dec 23, 2011

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Newt the Historian for 12/16/2011

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Newt Gingrich is a fat target for everyone. So easy to hit. He makes the others in the race jump up, 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 re ...

Updated: Fri Dec 16, 2011

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Blaming the Victim Again for 12/09/2011

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

This has been a bad week in Israeli-American relations — more accurately, Israeli-Obama White House relations. Three White House players who should know better (and probably do) dumped on the only democracy in the Middle East, boldly contradicting the president's boast to Jewish donors that he's the most Israel-supporting president in history. (Where does that leave Harry Truman?)

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Updated: Fri Dec 09, 2011

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Sex, Lies and Politics for 12/02/2011

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Once upon a time, they called it "the double standard." Women were held to higher virtue than men. Then women learned to stoop to conquer. In a sex-saturated world, women could exploit their tales of sex for titillation and money. A woman no longer has to be the victim of a brute. She could be a damsel in the distress of others.

Ginger White, the latest accuser of Herman Cain, ...

Updated: Fri Dec 02, 2011

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Filling in the Generation Gaps for 11/24/2011

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Thanksgiving is the holiday that pulls families together, squeezing them around a table for a feast of turkey, tradition and togetherness. We encourage conversations meant to be personally relevant, but sometimes they turn into a horizontal Babel, with each generation speaking in a different tongue. It's a stretch to identify an entire generation by its tastes in fashion and music, but such tas ...

Updated: Thu Nov 24, 2011

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When Manly Virtue Died for 11/18/2011

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

These are difficult and perilous times for boys. A distorted culture has robbed them of virtue to measure themselves against. The good once associated with masculinity in a patriarchal society has been tossed out with the bad. This, alas, is the era of feminist ascendency.

Manhood is more easily mocked, satirized and derided, or exposed for its villainy, exploitation and criminality, tha ...

Updated: Fri Nov 18, 2011

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Digging for Gold for 11/11/2011

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The war between the sexes will never be easy to win because there are too many incentives for men and women to lay down their arms and call for a truce, if not a tryst. Nothing is more powerful than that image of Adam giving up all for Eve. He chose to leave paradise and work for a living rather than lose the woman he loved. (Besides, he couldnt spare another rib.)

In the Darwinian scen ...

Updated: Fri Nov 11, 2011

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The Morass of Harassment for 11/04/2011

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The accusations of sexual harassment against Herman Cain are so far small potatoes, and badly baked at that. On a scale of 1 to 10, they're hovering around 2. An accusation is only an accusation until we know who's making it and hear her evidence. Looking back, the accusations of Anita Hill against Clarence Thomas weren't so weighty, either. They were about a few suggestive remarks about a movi ...

Updated: Fri Nov 04, 2011

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Sexual Politics at the Movies for 10/28/2011

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

"The Ides of March," the slick new movie with George Clooney as an unethical presidential candidate, is a morality tale for our time. It lacks tragic dimensions, it's melodramatic without complexity of character, and it has a neatly constructed plot that has no emotional depth, sliding over the surfaces of the political world as we have come to know it, up close and personal.

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Updated: Fri Oct 28, 2011

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Turkey's About-Face Toward Islamist East for 10/21/2011

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ISTANBUL — A young American man with black hair and dark brown eyes checked into a small hotel in Cappadocia, where visitors to Turkey flock to see the famous lava formations carved into the landscape.

"Are you Muslim," the clerk asked, acknowledging his Semitic features.

"No, I'm Jewish," the young man replied, smiling and assuming the question was ask ...

Updated: Fri Oct 21, 2011

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At Last, Fun on the Hustings for 10/14/2011

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Some of the Republican candidates wanted to audition for Comedy Central the other night, aiming their one-liners at Herman Cain. But the pizza man is no joke. Cain is able, you might say. If his rivals are not taking him seriously, they should. Everyone else is.

Stand-up comedy is for professionals, and the comedy candidates, particularly Jon Huntsman and Michele Bachmann, showed us why ...

Updated: Fri Oct 14, 2011

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Germany Comes of Age for 10/07/2011

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

BERLIN — A united Germany turned 21 this week. Families celebrated a three-day weekend, with the children waving black, red and gold national flags in the bright sunlight of an unseasonal October summer in Berlin. In Bonn, the capital of West Berlin when Germany was divided into the Soviet east and the free West, fireworks flashed across the night sky.

Unification has not been wit ...

Updated: Fri Oct 07, 2011

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Mahmoud Abbas Is No Anwar Sadat for 09/30/2011

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

It's the Jewish New Year. Rosh Hashanah is followed by Yom Kippur. We listen to that strange instrument called the shofar, made of a ram's horn, with long plaintive and short bleating notes resounding in synagogues around the world. The mix of dissonance and energy calls for reflection and renewal, and we've got a lot to reflect on, particularly now that Israel and the Palestinians are once mor ...

Updated: Fri Sep 30, 2011

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