When did we get this grown? Because we are, aren't we? Grown. Lawmakers ("I pay the rent here"). Enforcers ("There's the door"). Wise women and men with lives and tales of our own -- our parents' stories interesting if no longer instructive. And far from dazzling because: now we have...

1. Just so we're clear: writing a song in support of a woman you believe to have been wrongly convicted means you should never set foot in the White House, but presiding over more executions than any governor in modern times is qualification to lead the nation?

2. What are...

1. Between "Up in the Air" and "Contagion," aren't you starting to rethink the common wisdom on who cheats?

2. Did you convince yourself that none of the scientists would catch the virus?

3. How many emotions flooded your brain when Dr. Erin Mears (played by Kate Winslet) sits up...

Ruth Marcus, a columnist for The Washington Post, said something rather curious to Jim Lehrer on a Friday, Aug. 19 episode of "PBS NewsHour."

"I thought the tour was very odd," Ms. Marcus said, referring to President Barack Obama's August bus tour through rural Midwestern America. She didn't...

Once upon a time, not so long ago, and in a land right here, election to the Presidency of the United States of America was a big deal. But no longer. Now, elevation to head of government and state of the world's only superpower is a humdrum affair, a middling...

All along Sugar Hill Harlem, we think it began with Caroline. The slide, the trenchant derision, the Partied and, some hope, parting exile.

"He should have appointed Caroline Kennedy," my neighbor, Ms. Helen, told me on Saturday. By "he," Ms. Helen meant the embattled Governor of the State of New...

"It's not oversharing if it's done on TV," Naomi said, then she walked to Clark, and because she was in a "1930s kind of mood" said, "Cigarette me, Big Boy."

We stood on the roof of the Flatiron Building, the steroided bottle rockets and Roman candles coming across the...

On Wednesday, June 17, several of my fourth grade students went off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz, in a production staged by PS 76 and Harlem Children's Zone and dedicated to the organization Teens Making a Difference, founded by Koree Richardson and Samantha Lawrence. With sets...

"You worked as hard as us, you'd all be President," says Violet Weston over the dinner table, her fracturing family gathered in the hours after settling patriarch Beverly Weston in the Pawhuska, Oklahoma earth. Violet Weston, brought to us in her third incarnation from the beautiful mind of Tony Award...

As Elphaba, the tortured, misunderstood and green young woman who would grow up to become the Wicked Witch of the West, makes her way through the Vinkus region of the Land of Oz in Gregory Maguire's marvelous novel Wicked, she encounters the changeling Princess Nastoya--both woman and elephant--who tells her,...

What remains of the bruising grace can make grown men cry. Women, too, in their toughness are not immune. Mary Murphy of So You Think You Can Dance turned stormy eyed during the show's season premiere Thursday after Brandon Bryant's magnetic interpretation of Carl Orff's "O Fortuna."

"I have to...

"Jackie Robinson was a Republican," Clark said to Anwar, then he turned to the bartender. "Do you have white tea? Jasmine, then? Okay, let me get that. So, who do you think should be Speaker?"
"Clyburn," Anwar said.
"That's not going to happen. I think Pelosi is...

We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting...