Colin Powell’s popularity doesn’t mean we’ve made progress on race issues The media, having created the Colin Powell Bubble, are now having a wonderful time bouncing it around. Recall, if you will, the heady spring of 1992, when all the polls showed that the leading contender for the presidency was…

Republicans are aiding and abetting denial of the worldwide shift in climate Seeing yet another story in the newspaper about global warming doesn’t make much of an impression unless, of course, some storm has just knocked out your electricity for three days and your acquaintance with the greenhouse effect is…

On the theory that it is sometimes helpful to point out the obvious, may I enter the debate on family values by pointing out that there are a lot of unhappy families in the world? Miserable, in fact. Some sociologists study unhappy, unsuccessful families trying to figure out why their…

Happy anniversary, women of America! Happy anniversary to us. Hasn’t it been fun to hear all the wonderful foremothers quoted and to see all the doughty old dames marching in the demonstrations of 75 years ago? Abigail Adams, of course, is always quoted on the famous letter to her husband:…

Following the downward trajectory of television news Warning! O.J. content within. Let’s “stipulate,” as Marcia Clark says, that if the media had spent as much time on what the Republicans in Congress are doing to environmental laws and regulations as they have on O.J. Simpson, we’d all be on the…

Heads up, team; sneak play ahead. The deliriously misnamed Coalition to Save Medicare is about to join the national debate about health insurance programs for seniors. What we have here, hiding behind those Foster Grants, is a coalition of huge corporations and insurance companies out to loot Medicare to pay…

AUSTIN–I could be wrong, but I think the Bob Packwood problem is actually simple. Suppose–just suppose–that Bob Packwood was a predatory homosexual. Normally a decent enough guy after having a few drinks, but suppose he was given to grabbing men a lot smaller than he is, kissing them and sticking…

So why should you care if Mega-MonsterMedia merges with MultiMam-mothMovies? No skin off your nose, is it? Look again, Bubba. That’s blood on your proboscis. How are you going to like living in a city where one company owns the newspaper, two TV stations, several radio stations, the phone company,…

Let’s assume that everyone on all sides of the affirmative-action debate is speaking in good faith. It makes the discussion so much more pleasant. What we are all after is the famous level playing field. We may differ on how to get there, but that doesn’t automatically mean that some…

“I think it proves there is a God,” said one Texas liberal of Senator Phil Gramm’s presidential campaign, which is going nowhere fast. Gloating is in violation of the liberal creed, which calls for compassion at all times, especially for those who are getting kicked around. On the other hand,…

Wouldn’t you think that by now we would all react to the word “deregulation” the same way we do when we hear the buzz of a rattlesnake? Freeze, spot it, then run like hell. ‘Cause we sure have been snake-bit by deregulation in this country. Deregulating the savings and loans…

Damn, life’s a funny ol’ female-dog, idn’t she? Here I am, back in Tucson, one of my favorite places in the U.S. of A., and also the place of one of my most bitter professional regrets. I did a man wrong here one time. I didn’t mean to, and it…

My, my, my. I know the fashion is for political folks to bash Hollywood these days, but if you’ll permit, I’d prefer to bash Washington for a bit. Sometimes this place strikes me as politically toxic. It’s practically radioactive, just pulsing out all this conflict and controversy and clawing down…

Sifting deeper into the rubble of the 74th session here in Austin, one finds several nominees for Worst Bill of the Session beyond the previously nominated “takings” bill, also known as “property rights.” One law we need desperately is truth-in-bill-naming. One more piece of special-interest, greed-head legislation called the Something…

OK, here’s the score card from the Texas Legislature: Environment–screwed. Consumers–screwed. Legal and civil rights–screwed. The Senate–a whore’s dream. The House–some leadership, but mostly outgunned minorities, not enough to stop “local control” of schools. It was a baby version of what’s happening in Washington, except there’s no President Clinton to…

To read the Christian Coalition’s “Contract With the American Family” is to wonder how well-intentioned people can come up with so many bad ideas. And then again, to wonder what some of it has to do with either the family or Christianity. What in the world do these people have…

AUSTIN–A truism of education debates is that somebody, somewhere, has already figured out how to solve whatever the problem is. In Los Angeles, there’s a Jaime Escalante, about whom the film Stand and Deliver was made, successfully teaching physics to kids in the barrios. In Philadelphia, there’s a terrific program…

The municipal motto of Northfield, Minnesota, is “Cows, Colleges, and Contentment.” Honest. Last year, they had a contest to think up a new motto and, after some civic thought, decided to keep “Cows, Colleges, and Contentment.” So as we veer rhetorically toward the apocalypse, as various social prophets mutter direly…

Sometimes there is solace in having the right words to use, in being able to call something exactly what it is. I would like to thank President Clinton for the phrase “evil cowards.” Evil cowards killed babies in the springtime. Evil cowards made death in Normal, Oklahoma. A pickup truck,…

Don’t you think the greatest heroes are those who persevere? Some people get medals for being in the right place at the right time to do a splendid thing in a split second–and deserve medals for presence of mind alone. But those who hang in there for a long time…

I always did think the Washington press corps had played center too long in the Great Football Game (old joke: sees the world backward and upside down), and now I know it. For three months, we have been reading about “the new leadership” in Washington. People have devoted long and…

Censorship in cyberspaaaaace! (Why is it that computer issues lend themselves to horror comic book headlines? “Tiny Mummies in Cyberland!”) Aside from fear of technology (one of the most sensible phobias of our time–did anyone ever ask a fly if it needed eyes on its wings?), I think we’re stuck…