Essays
1090 results
Page 76
What's cancer really like?
The romancing of cancer (by one who's been there)
Take it from one who knows from experience: We do cancer patients a disservice if we see the fight but not the rage, the fear, the full storm of emotions that strikes mortals facing their own mortality.
Essays
5 minute read
Hitler's ultimate irony
Hitler's racial purity: One key question
How did Hitler manage to hijack Wagner's Aryan ideal when he wasn't an ideal Aryan himself?
Essays
2 minute read
Why did Anthony Weiner resign?
Our fantasy lives, the Internet, and Anthony Weiner
Everybody agreed that Congressman Anthony Weiner had to resign for sharing his ego and his privates online. But he broke no laws and no rules of the House. He didn't prostitute himself politically, at least any more than his self-righteous colleagues. Liberated by ostracism to speak his mind, he could have done a great deal of public good.
Essays
6 minute read
"Seeing Gertrude Stein' in San Francisco
A feminist's question: What was Gertrude Stein really about?
Gertrude Stein wrote unreadable prose, admired Hitler, had little use for women, betrayed her fellow Jews and was unspeakably mean to her longtime companion. Yet for one reason, I forgive her everything.
Essays
5 minute read
A baby boomer looks at tattoos
From the Woodstock generation to the tattoo generation
Baby boomers like me connote tattoos with bikers and drunken sailors on shore leave. But these days it's difficult to find an athlete or movie star who believes tabula rasa is an acceptable approach to one's epidermis.
Essays
3 minute read
Love song of an aging hippie
The magic tank top, or: O, to be 73 and never grow up
That aging hippie selling tie-dyed tank tops on the Wildwood boardwalk shared a lot in common with me— including a refusal to turn our backs on the Age of Aquarius.
Essays
6 minute read
Male sex abuse and the silence of women
Time for women to speak up
The alleged sexual predations of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn make the headlines but are only the tip of the iceberg. As a family therapist, I can testify firsthand that sexual abuse is prevalent in all cultures, the privileged as well as the poor.
Essays
7 minute read
Priestly sex abuse: Blaming the hippies
When the shepherd blames the sheep
A report on priestly sex abuse prepared for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops pins the blame not on celibacy but on the sexual revolution that began in the '60s. Take it from one who was victimized by a priest even before that era began: The 1960s were the best thing that ever happened to victims of clerical sex abuse.
Essays
5 minute read
Bin Laden and Petraeus: Two birds with one stone
Hit man in the White House
Barack Obama neutralized his two great enemies in one week, the elusive Osama bin Laden and the excessively visible General David Petraeus. Each operation depended on the other; both succeeded. But what is the moral cost of a targeted assassination?
Essays
5 minute read
Symbols, from bin Laden to the royal wedding
Let them eat symbols!
Osama bin Laden's death. The royal wedding. It seems there's been so much to celebrate lately. Yet what did these symbolic feel-good events actually accomplish?
Essays
2 minute read