Johnny Cash was plenty good enough to fool his fans. They believed he felt it in his soul when he sang the Gospel while stoned on drugs. |
Lebanon is restless, Syria got its walking papers, Egypt is scheduling elections with more than one candidate, and even Saudi Arabia, whose rulers are perhaps more terrified of women than rulers anywhere else in the world, allowed limited municipal elections. |
Mahmud Abbas is not Thomas Jefferson. The spirit of Patrick Henry has not emerged in Lebanon. Although more than a 140 Syrian intellectuals have protested Syrian troops there and signed a public statement opposing the occupation, these intellectuals are not in the league of our own Founding Fathers. |
Many critics of the Palestinians, especially those in Congress, think the current calm is merely the eye of the storm. That's why the House of Representatives approved a foreign aid package last week that forbade the direct financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority . |
Many of the Europeans who want Israel to go away don't even know why they do. Nearly a third of those interviewed concede they have no idea what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about. It's enough to know that Israelis are Jews. |
Most of the debate over the cultures of death and life is about process. The debate focuses on the technology available to determine how we prolong life and how and when we end it. |
Must an aerobics instructor be thin? A tailor make the best-dressed lists? A cosmetic saleswoman be pretty? |
Rape is the most bankable event in our culture, more valuable than murder and a lot more valuable than mere mayhem. Jessica Lynch has no memory of being raped; Iraqi doctors at the hospital insist they found no evidence at all that she ever was. But it's in her book. |
Rushing willy-nilly into the future without giving deep thought to the influences of biotechnology in the way we treat each other, and the impact it makes on social behavior, would be foolish indeed. |
Sometimes the ignorant are among the most educated. |
Stupidity fuses notoriety and celebrity. |
Style has rarely been either a characteristic or a qualification for secretaries of state. Henry Kissinger had his square, dark-rimmed glasses, and Madeleine Albright her funky hats, but these were carefully contrived affectations. |
That's what Major League Baseball's steroid scandal was all about, the hidden harm in competitive sports that sends the wrong message to the young. |
The Academy Awards ceremony is designed to be without irony, but Chris Rock supplied it anyway with filmed movie-theater interviews with black men and women who had never heard of the movies nominated for Best Picture. |
The death of Pope John Paul II led many of different faiths and of no faith to acknowledge their debt to the Roman Catholic Church for holding on to absolutes that the rest of us can measure ourselves against. |