If you are one of those people who are often the last to hear about the latest addition to the list of politically-incorrect words, this blog is for you. I clearly count myself among your number. Not since I heard that "dutch treat" was considered a pejorative have I...

Just when we think we've got something nailed, just when we think it's all going our way, we get upended by some cosmic trip wire. "Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans," John Lennon once said. He might have said the same of Death....

While it is always dangerous to predict the outcome of elections, here is one prediction that is certain to hold up: approximately half of U.S. voters will be ecstatic on Tuesday night and the other half (or slightly less than half) will be devastated. And the winning side will see...

Despite my usual tendency to delight in the unmasking of hypocrisy, I am having a tough time hopping on the bandwagon of outrage over Sarah Palin's 150-thousand dollar clothing allowance. Oh sure, it puts the lie to her small-town, off-the-rack values and reinforces her critics' image of her as some...

When it comes to dismissive finger gestures, there is nothing quite like the two-handed "air quote." For pure sarcastic appeal, it beats the much more obvious middle finger every time. But beware what words you put inside those little air quotes. John McCain used the gesture twice during his final...

When Ross Perot coined the phrase 'that giant sucking sound' during his 1992 presidential campaign, he was referring to the sound of American jobs being sucked into Mexico under NAFTA. Today, as Americans hold their collective breath to see what new horror the markets will bring, the giant sucking sound...

The minute Sarah Palin tried to take the VP debate hostage by announcing she would not be "answering the questions the way the moderator would like," the moderator needed to set her straight. But Gwen Ifill seemed reluctant to rein in Palin, instead allowing her to evade question after question...

I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted.

It's not so much a matter of actually working too hard or sleeping too little. No, that would make sense only in the context of the way the world used to function. "Why am I so tired?" you would...

We've become so accustomed to the absence of our president that it comes as something of a shock when he actually appears. The nation has been on the verge of financial collapse for weeks and this guy has never once gone on television to reassure the country or outline a...