Suzanne Fields

FIELDS: Dorky digital and ‘the new cool’

Every generation seeks a hero or an anti-hero, a trend or countertrend, a fashion or non-fashion to define itself in both politics and the culture, pop and otherwise. Recall Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock in the movie "The Graduate," lolling about in his parents' swimming pool, fins and all, with no place to go. Quintessential '60s.

October 7, 2010

FIELDS: ‘Money Never Sleeps’ misses the mark

Conservatives who love hating moviemaker Oliver Stone - one who has never found a particular reason to love America - won't find enough venom to abet their passion against him during his latest movie, "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps." He has gone soft, mushy and sentimental.

September 29, 2010

FIELDS: Arranging the tea leaves

What do women want? That was Sigmund Freud's endearing, if naive, question, asked when "Freudian" still meant a deep look into the unconscious. But the good Viennese doctor, as we've learned since, had not a clue to what he was talking about. He posed various notions like envy of you-know-what, that anatomy is destiny. Some were cute, but no cigar.

September 22, 2010

FIELDS: The view beyond Ground Zero

New York, New York, a wonderful town. The city is a study in "doubleness." The subway runs deep, the buildings scrape the sky. There's an east side and a west side, an uptown and a downtown, two rivers, two coastlines.

September 16, 2010

FIELDS: American tolerance and Islam at odds

Summer fades into autumn, and with it comes the seasonal focus on ancient faith. Muslims fast for Ramadan, seeking mercy and forgiveness, closing the last day of the observance with prayer and celebration on Eid al-Fitr. Jews blow the shofar, with its piercing cry ringing in the New Year, first with the celebration of Rosh Hashanah, when we nibble apples dipped in honey, hoping for sweetness in the days ahead, and then the solemn fasting on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

September 9, 2010

FIELDS: Little girls and ‘Mad Men’

Two little girls I know, age 6, showed up the other day at a public pool in Washington for a swim. They were excited by the prospect of escaping, if only for a little while, the heat pushing the thermometer close to 100. Alas, they were wearing the only bathing suits they had: bikini bottoms, no tops. No go, they were told by the pool manager. There was a dress code, and no one was allowed to dress "inappropriately in a way that may offend others." Did I say these were 6-year olds?

September 3, 2010

FIELDS: Common sense for sacred ground

We stood together in the rain on a Sunday in late summer, most of us as protesters, some of us angrier than others, and some of us there as observers to take the temperature of anger at West Broadway and Park Place. We stood close to Ground Zero, as the place where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once stood will always be called. This was holy ground. We could feel it.

August 26, 2010

FIELDS: Battle of the books

Many of us lament the loss of the neighborhood bookstore, where we enjoyed engaging the owner in conversation, but losing that was a small price (if not so small for the bookshop proprietor) to pay for the luxury of more impersonal service for less money.

August 18, 2010

FIELDS: The new dance on a pinhead

It's been a long time since Nietzsche announced that God was dead. But debates over the existence of God have taken on an urgency in the 21st century, mainly argued by atheists eager to take on those long-dead monks who counted the angels dancing on the head of a pin. Theology is not a popular subject at the dinner parties of urban political sophisticates; a host who says grace before a meal could curdle the gazpacho. But atheism is a fashionable topic in Washington.

August 12, 2010

FIELDS: Down to the sea in discontent

A perch in the sand on a pristine beach invites a summer afternoon's reflections, and here where North Carolina's Outer Banks meet the Atlantic we're all sea-watchers, looking and listening for changes in color and texture in the ocean, diving for shells, wondering how far from the distant Gulf of Mexico the tar balls will travel.

August 4, 2010

FIELDS: Growing up with POTUS

Chelsea Clinton is getting married, and we all wish her well on the biggest day of a girl's life. Bill and Hillary were the focus of scandal and controversy, left, right and in-between, but never the first child. Chelsea's parents and the press deserve credit for preserving her privacy when she was growing up, first in the governor's mansion in Little Rock, Ark., and then in the White House. That's as it should be.

July 29, 2010

FIELDS: When burly becomes surly

Ah, men. That's no benedic- tion. These are tough times to be a man. It's too Freudian to say they're suffering from an identity crisis, but since macho has been put in mothballs many men are searching for a new scent. Over-the-hill celebrities remind us of the many roads leading men have taken past Gender Gap and wound up in No Man's Land.

July 21, 2010

FIELDS: Endless electronic summer

Three generations inhabit the summer house, and an extended family gathers each evening at the dinner table to talk about the events, reflections and encounters of the day. The adults worry about the growing scarcity of doctors who take insurance because they fear lower fees when Obamacare kicks in. Both children and adults lament the dying fish and birds on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico 1,500 miles away and talk warmly of the pleasure of swimming in the cool, clean Atlantic. The boys, age 11 and 14, taking summer science classes in marine biology, describe how certain parasites look under a microscope and marvel at the distinctive colors of feldspar and quartz in the neighborhood.

July 14, 2010

FIELDS: Wonder Woman behind the curves

Wonder Woman got a makeover, but she's still behind the curves. Her designers seem not to realize that for decades women have been in the ascendancy in the marketplace, and it's male action heroes who require a makeover, literally and figuratively. Exceptions still rule the imaginations of children, but in the world which most grown-ups inhabit, the male sex seems to need a Wonder Man to idealize possibilities.

July 8, 2010

FIELDS: Good reasons to light a firecracker

Not so long ago, most Americans regarded the Fourth of July as "Independence Day" and called it that, celebrating liberty and freedom, prizing independence above all. For the graduates of high school and college, their "Independence Day" marks the breaking away from parents, of moving toward responsibility. For many of us, it's a celebration mixed with more than a little concern. Where will this new independence take the young? What kind of adults will they become? Have we "done good" by them?

July 1, 2010

FIELDS: Scapegoating Israel

Moral indignation and human outrage are writ large in the Holocaust memorials growing ubiquitous throughout Europe. How could such things happen? The question numbs the senses, but it doesn't go away no matter how many times the question is asked.

June 24, 2010

FIELDS: The human face on history

The sun shines brightly on an unusually warm day for early June. Men, women and children in T-shirts of black, red and gold, the national colors, celebrate the German national soccer team, playing for the World Cup in South Africa.

June 16, 2010

FIELDS: Fear the intellectual

The super-intelligent often aren't very smart. Only yesterday, to be called an "intellectual' was a compliment. But intellectuals no longer carry much weight in politics, in cultural salons, book clubs or the wider world of ideas. Like professors whose faculty-lounge infighting is so vicious because the stakes are so small, intellectuals are often noisy because they have nothing to say.

June 9, 2010

With friends like these …

If Israel won't do it, who will? The Israelis understand that friends, even old friends like the United States, are nice - but nice is never enough. The Europeans, who were saved by outsiders from an evil a lot like radical Islam twice in the previous century, are the last people on Earth the Israelis can depend on. And who knows what this American president would do for anybody when crunch comes to crunch? No, if the Israelis are interested in survival, they'll have to do it.

June 2, 2010

FIELDS: With friends like these …

If Israel won't do it, who will? The Israelis understand that friends, even old friends like the United States, are nice - but nice is never enough. The Europeans, who were saved by outsiders from an evil a lot like radical Islam twice in the previous century, are the last people on Earth the Israelis can depend on. And who knows what this American president would do for anybody when crunch comes to crunch? No, if the Israelis are interested in survival, they'll have to do it.

June 2, 2010