What if Fox News ran the USA? Some people think that's already happened, but in Italy a human experiment has been underway for three decades, culminating in a mass television culture that degrades women and allows a 1950s style "Mad Man" to party on with almost no checks. Some Italians...

Genius and the lure of young flesh.

Until recently, in the western world, the right of a Great Man to man-handle a reluctant, pliant young woman was simply not questioned. With the advent of sexual harassment laws, the old order is under attack. It won't go down easily. Novels...

VENICE - The two surprise winners at the Venice Film Festival represent the yin and yang of the modern Middle East. Conquering both Michael Moore and George Clooney, "Lebanon," winner of the Golden Lion is a gory anti-war punch in the face, an autobiographical account of the writer-director Samuel Maoz's...

Can anyone remember what happened the last time a left-winger brought a loaded assault rifle to display in public within sight of a George W. Bush presidential event?

No, we can't, because college kids with backpacks sporting John Kerry stickers got thrown in jail for their menacing presence at Bush...

Anybody left debating who is winning the p.r. war over the bloodbath underway in Gaza need only hold up the New York tabloids today. Besides running pictures -- exclusively -- of Israelis running for cover, we see half-page images of our own Mayor Michael Bloomberg, usually a man of reason...

I will admit it took us the longest time to get properly introduced to Mr. Madoff, but that was part of his appeal. For years, our friends the Jerkoffs - the ones with seven houses, the ones whose kids taught our kids to believe that taking a helicopter is the...

With the global financial meltdown underway, right-wing fundamentalist Christians are gleefully packing their bags for the final Rapture ride. It's quite possible that Sister Sarah will literally not be on our planet by the time November rolls around.

In the event that the great almighty doesn't decide fall 2008 is...

Sarah Palin's small-town-girl-takes-on-Washington act is a brilliant success, for today anyway. But anytime political parties bring their aw-shucks, folksy Gomer Pyles out in front of the klieg lights, it's time to be suspicious. And that's especially true when the Republicans, party of corporate America and Big Oil, are casting the...

There is no limit to what we won't do to revive the "Morning in America" illusion. We'll down any anodyne to slap ourselves back into productivity at the dawn of another bleak day. A great opportunity arrived this week, when the fat white cat came drifting through the pitiless landscape...

In the vitriol over primacy claims to victimhood between females and blacks, we see our two candidates draining the pustulous boil of the once-silent liberal majority. That in the end, is going to be a good thing. It might not get either of them elected against the rich white guy...

Standing on the sunny, well-guarded streets of Manhattan yesterday, basking in the communal joy of spring, watching the Pope's limo whiz up tulip-lined Park Avenue, I had time to appreciate the papal apology.

I'm not a Catholic or a formerly fondled altar boy, but the Pope's apology for demonic priestly...

I've resisted piling on Spitzer mainly because I've been struck dumb.

Like many New Yorkers, I totally bought his guy-in-white-hat persona. Bottom line is, as my dear husband pointed out, imagine how different this story would be if Spitzer had spent his $80G on a shrink.

So it...

I hate to admit this, but I haven't been able to decide which of the two eminently qualified Illinoisans now running for president I support. They both have their flaws and their strong points. The best thing about them, though, is that they both sprout from the mighty loins...

Federal and state authorities are hotly pursuing an alleged rapist/killer Marine on the run in some southeastern state. Updates on the search crawl under the CNN feed all day. Meanwhile, the screen displays a different sort of heinous American criminal, at large in, of all places, Abu Dhabi. This one,...

I'll be down in Washington this week to talk about my new book, Mirage , about the adventures and misadventures of the French scientists who founded Egyptology. While poking around in the temples and pyramids, these atheist scholar-explorers were participating in another, long-ago failed effort to bring democracy to...

As I write these words in an office above midtown Manhattan, armed men are disembarking from black SUVs on the street down below. A helicopter beats overhead. It's just a Homeland Security exercise, another nail in the coffin of my long-dead sense of security. Farther downtown, there's a hole where...

The demise of mountain state Republican Senator Larry Craig amuses those of us who enjoy watching right-wing heroes crash to the ground, spiked on their own hypocrisy. It further confirms my theory: prick any conservative and the kink oozes out. The rockier the rib, the more likely you'll find pink...

Oh har-dee-har-har. Don't you have a sense of humor, you bitches and ho's, nappy-headed or otherwise? What's wrong with "you people?" You one of those furry-legged fanatics, a bull dyke or what?

Against his will and apologies notwithstanding, Don Imus will be taking his long gray locks, styled and dyed...

Nobody sleeps anymore. White nights are the plague of our generation.

We lie awake until dawn, gnashing our teeth over missed opportunities, plotting revenge, envisioning catastrophe. As soon as my head hits the pillow, I see suitcase nukes and the undiagnosed brain tumor.

Lots of my friends medicate for insomnia....

What's so funny about this one is that the Jack Kennedy comparison really belongs to her husband - minus the war experience and impeccable social standing, of course.

Both men instinctively and unapologetically mixed political power with sexual power, making their ability to win voters and seduce women one and...