Lisa Solod Warren is a former newspaper and magazine journalist who now writes fiction and essays and blogs at blogcritics.com and redroom.com. She is the author of Desire: Women Write About Wanting (Seal Press, 2007) and can be visited at www.lisasolodwarren.com.

Blog Entries by Lisa Solod Warren

What a Difference a Year Makes: Will We Ever Have Truth in Politics?

Posted November 6, 2009 | 07:04 AM (EST)


Arianna Huffington 's headline in HuffPo Tuesday was "Obama One Year Later: The Audacity of Winning vs The Timidity of Governing." On Wednesday's Hardball MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews was pissed: he thought Obama had already become an incumbent insider who plays golf and hangs around with big money guys. He...

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Who is Kidding Whom? The Shriver Report on Women

6 Comments | Posted October 22, 2009 | 12:05 PM (EST)


I don't think I or any woman I know needs to read "The Shriver Report: A Women's Nation Changes Everything" by Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress. Although the Report is being highly touted as important on several NBC programs, all the women I know know exactly...

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Big News? Women Over 50 Less Likely to Remarry

22 Comments | Posted September 17, 2009 | 06:15 PM (EST)


Duh.

Okay, perhaps the New York Times article that graced the front page of the Style section recently deserves a little more parsing than that.

But really. Like that other scary statistic that turned out to be wrong -- remember the one about women over forty being as...

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The End of the World: One Reality Show and Internet Comment At a Time

2 Comments | Posted September 15, 2009 | 10:08 AM (EST)


Once upon a time, a little Pollyanna-ish I know, I actually believed that most people were decent, most people were inherently good, and most people, when given the chance, were kind. I also believed in a) manners b) civility and c) generally good behavior in public and private.

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Didn't We Always Suspect Guilt Was Good?

Posted August 25, 2009 | 10:31 AM (EST)


Sometime in the middle of the self-help movement in the early seventies, my father came to the dinner table with a book he had just bought. It was by Thomas Harris and was entitled I'm Ok, You're Ok. "Guilt," he announced, putting the book down on the table with a...

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Who's Your (Bad) Mother? Ayelet Waldman Takes On The Art of Mothering

3 Comments | Posted May 4, 2009 | 01:25 PM (EST)


How about this Mother's Day we all give ourselves a break, pick up Ayelet Waldman's latest book, Bad Mother, put our feet up, eat some chocolate, and pat ourselves on the back that the kids are still alive, we are, too, and that, really, if we think real hard...

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"Trickle Down Torture"

Posted April 23, 2009 | 07:25 PM (EST)


Will anyone every forget the pictures of Lynndie England, looking as though she were gleefully enjoying he torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad during the American occupation of Iraq? Or then president George Bush's insistence that England was one of a few "bad apples" in the...

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Why NATO is Dead Wrong

Posted April 4, 2009 | 01:47 PM (EST)


I am not a warmonger. I hate war. I did not support the Viet Nam War, nor the Iraq War. I wish diplomacy would work and I think it can in some instances and should be tried whenever and wherever possible. But on the issue of sending troops to fight...

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Why American Women Are Alone When They Don't Want to Be

Posted March 27, 2009 | 03:05 PM (EST)


Having just returned from a lovely week in Paris with my sixteen-year-old daughter I was intrigued to pick up my friend Jamie Cat Callan's new book French Women Don't Sleep Alone and find so much good and spunky wisdom in it. I've traveled to France a dozen times and...

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The New American Witch Hunt

Posted March 19, 2009 | 01:01 PM (EST)


First, there was Senator Charles Grassley's not-so-funny suggestion that the heads of A.I.G. should commit public suicide, and then in yesterday's Senate hearing Edward Liddy, the Chairman of A.I.G. detailed the numerous death threats the employees of the company had been getting, some of them quite horrific. Senator Barney Frank...

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A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Posted March 3, 2009 | 12:52 PM (EST)


Now that we have officially elected an elitist as president, I can finally come out of the closet. Although close friends and family have known for years that I am an elitist, I guess it is time to announce myself publicly. It seems that people are enjoying casting stones at...

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Why Do Repubicans Hate Artists And Writers So Much?

Posted February 23, 2009 | 02:16 PM (EST)


A few days ago, at a huge writers conference in Chicago, I met a charming and articulate man -- dressed in lizard cowboy boots and a very interesting sort of felt cowboy hat -- who happens to be a lobbyist for the arts. He was very excited to have just...

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Dear President Obama, With All Due Respect, Listen Up!

Posted January 30, 2009 | 12:51 PM (EST)


Mr. Obama,

No one respects your intelligence or your desire to turn this country around more than I. But I think you are missing a huge opportunity here. Your skills as an orator, as a man who can reach out to the people and gather them to your side...

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My Turn to Man the Polls in Small Town Virginia

Posted October 31, 2008 | 03:32 PM (EST)


For more than thirty years, each election day, wherever I lived, I went into the polling place, showed my voter registration card, followed whatever instruction I was given, voted in whichever kind of booth was then available, got my cute little "I voted" sticker and then went on about my...

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Campaign Journal: The Randomness of the American Dream

Posted October 28, 2008 | 04:37 PM (EST)


"I don't believe in coincidences. I believe in the curlicued whimsy of fate," says Sam Tyler, the character actor Jason O'Mara plays on my favorite new television show Life on Mars. He's accepting the philosophy of a ditzy post-hippie who's adopted him when he lands in 1973 after a car...

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Voters Haven't Given Up On American Dream

Posted October 28, 2008 | 03:08 PM (EST)


"I don't believe in coincidences. I believe in the curlicued whimsy of fate," says Sam Tyler, the character actor Jason O'Mara plays on my favorite new television show Life on Mars. He's accepting the philosophy of a ditzy post-hippie who's adopted him when he lands in 1973 after a car...

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Campaign Journals: Phonebanking in "Real" Virginia

Posted October 24, 2008 | 11:46 AM (EST)


Lisa Solod Warren is an OffTheBus grassroots correspondent. Each week she contributes a campaign journal documenting her life out on the trail.

It's busy in all the tiny rooms in the rabbit warren of the small headquarters located on a narrow side street in downtown Staunton, busier than I've ever...

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Obama Enjoys Boost in Va. From Influential Sen. Webb

Posted October 24, 2008 | 11:23 AM (EST)


Jim Webb, Democratic Senator from Virginia, has made a huge difference in the Senate. As the 51st Democrat in the Senate, he swung the majority two years ago when he won the hotly contested seat during his race against George Allen, when Allen was derailed by allegedly racist remarks captured...

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Obama Makes His Seventh Trip to Southwest Virginia

Posted October 18, 2008 | 12:11 PM (EST)


Roanoke, Virginia -- To the music of Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising" and against a backdrop of a huge contingent of screaming Virginia Tech students from nearby Blacksburg, Barack Obama spoke to over 8,000 enthusiastic fans in Roanoke, Virginia, Friday, as he made his seventh trip to southwest Virginia in an...

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Campaign Journal: The View from the Valley

Posted October 15, 2008 | 08:15 PM (EST)


When I first began phone canvassing Staunton city (populations about 26,000) and then more rural Virginia Augusta County undecided and independent voters earlier in the fall most were still uncommitted. They had yet to make up their mind and were still "thinking" about it, as they told me over and...

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