I have long argued that no one should be allowed to write opinion without spending years as a reporter – nothing like interviewing all four eyewitnesses to an automobile accident and then trying to write an accurate account of what happened.
Losing a part of a breast or all of one or both has, obviously, serious psychological consequences.
I think provincialism is an endemic characteristic with mankind, I think everybody everywhere is provincial, but it is particularly striking with Texans, and we tend to be very Texcentric.
It really is possible to disagree with someone’s policies without hating them. Grown-ups can do that.
The Internet goes doot-doot-doot – it goes sideways. There’s nothing hierarchical about it. And the best thing about it is also the worst thing about it, which is there are no gatekeepers on the Internet. Consequently, there’s a whole lot of bad information on the Internet. But I think that sorts itself out over time.
Anyone who watched George W. and Karl Rove while the former was governor of Texas will recognize a familiar pattern. Like much of Bush’s social policy – from faith-based social services to railing against gay marriage – women’s issues are one of the bones they’ve decided they can throw to the Christian right.
I spent my girlhood as a Clydesdale among thoroughbreds.
Some days, I’d feel better with Punxsutawney Phil in the Oval Office – at least he doesn’t lie about the weather.
To mistake Midland for the volk heartland is the West Texas equivalent of assuming that Greenwich, Connecticut, is Levittown.
The greatest moral leader of my lifetime was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose private life does not bear close examination.
The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.
I wouldn’t say that dittoheads, as a group, lack the ability to reason. It’s just that whenever I run across one, he seems to be at a low ebb in reasoning skills.
The danger of the blogosphere is reading only those you agree with. While there are right-wing blogs that are entertaining freak shows, it’s hard to find substantial journalism there.
In all my fantasies, I always assumed I would get married and have six children along the way with the greatest of ease.
Laura Bush, it seems, is used to cast a softer light on her husband, who then proceeds to reverse whatever she’s just promised.
You can’t ignore politics, no matter how much you’d like to.
I am one of those people who are out of touch with their emotions. I tend to treat my emotions like unpleasant relatives – a long-distance call once or twice or year is more than enough. If I got in touch with them, they might come to stay.
We need to reform the political system, or we’ll lose the democracy. I don’t think it’s that hard. It doesn’t take rocket science. We’ve done it before successfully at the presidential level and tried it several places at the state level.
Good thing we’ve still got politics in Texas – finest form of free entertainment ever invented.
It’s a monstrous idea to put people in prison and keep them there.
What I’ve been telling people is that the doctors are gaining on cancer very rapidly. It’s almost become a chronic disease, like diabetes – something you can treat. It doesn’t go away, and you’re not well in the sense of being over it, but you go on and live your life.
Even after four years in office, George W. Bush’s record on women doesn’t leap out at you. It’s composed almost entirely of little things, small enough to fly well under the media’s radar screen, so few of us have any sense of their cumulative impact.
There was really quite a remarkable level of sexism on newspapers when I started.
Am I the only person covering politics who ever noticed that Newt Gingrich is actually a nincompoop?
In truth, there is no rational argument for guns in this society. This is no longer a frontier nation in which people hunt their own food. It is a crowded, overwhelmingly urban country in which letting people have access to guns is a continuing disaster.
People like to help. They like to be able to do something for you. Let them.
There is more hooey spread about the Second Amendment. It says quite clearly that guns are for those who form part of a well-regulated militia, i.e., the armed forces including the National Guard. The reasons for keeping them away from everyone else get clearer by the day.
All my life, I’ve been sort of a professional optimist, full of good cheer about matters political and journalistic. I always thought I’d get older and become an unnaturally cheerful old fart. But it’s not happening.
And the funny thing is, I’ve always been an optimist – it’s practically a congenital disorder with me.
Rove, of course, is an exceptionally good, exceptionally skillful campaign guy, and Bush himself is really gifted at the political end of politics. But he’s always been, as he says, misunderestimated.
I’m happy to be called a liberal.
Fourteen-year-old boys are not part of a well-regulated militia. Members of wacky religious cults are not part of a well-regulated militia. Permitting unregulated citizens to have guns is destroying the security of this free state.
We should all laugh more at our elected officials – it’s good for us and good for them.
People in Midland are real nice folks: I can’t prove that with statistics, but I know West Texas, and it’s just a fact.
I’d worked for the ‘Dallas Times Herald’ for ten years, and its death was a kick in the gut the like of which I cannot recall ever having experienced.
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