Suzanne Fields

Identity politics will divide America

Every generation has its own axes to grind, attitudes to assume, enemies to attack. It's the way the young move into maturity, sometimes with smarts and sometimes not. Every generation wants to make the world over in its own image.

August 23, 2017

Google diversity memo shows need to watch for intolerance

Identity politics has gone over the top, and the flood of intolerance is drenching everyone. What began as a campaign to re-right injustice has created injustice. What was meant to change attitudes toward intolerance has become intolerance enthroned.

August 16, 2017

Nikki Haley does well on North Korea

Donald Trump has a skill for recruiting Cabinet officers he has treated badly. Serving in his administration can require selfless devotion to duty. Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, could tell you about that. So could Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who is swiftly becoming the Cabinet superstar.

August 9, 2017

Social media on phones takes away from enjoying summer moments

"Summertime, when the livin' is easy." George Gershwin's haunting melody and DuBose Heyward's tender lyrics once floated over the mood of summer, coaxing us all to reverie. But that was when vacationers lay on the beach under a lazy old sun, concentrating on important things, like grains of sand seeping through their toes, and watching the currents of salty waves ebb and flow before rippling back to the vasty deep.

August 2, 2017

Liberalism shames masculinity

Any woman could tell you that a good man is hard to find. Some men don't measure up to what a woman wants them to be. Some are coarse, profane, mean and other bad things.

July 26, 2017

American cultural divide remains wide

You could call it the tale of two election reflections, two competing points of view, two American perceptions of out-of-focus reality. Two important liberal voices "looked back" this week at the November election to try to figure out how and why Donald Trump, whom "everybody" despised and "nobody" wanted to win, actually did.

July 19, 2017

Fake news particularly dangerous to young consumers

When President Trump defended his use of social media as not simply "presidential" but "modern day presidential," he had a point. If George Washington, John Adams or Thomas Jefferson wanted to get a personal message duplicated for the public to read, it took at least 24 hours to get it printed (even when their friends owned the presses.)

July 12, 2017

Obama anti-nationalism speech draws cheers and jeers

Barack Obama's speech in Indonesia, warning of "an aggressive kind of nationalism," has drawn both criticism and applause, depending on the politics of who was listening, but it ignited a useful and needed debate on the actual meaning of "nationalism."

July 5, 2017

Fourth of July is about national pride

Approaching the first Fourth of July in the time of Trump, a holiday Americans also call "Independence Day," it's hard to find much independent thinking. Polarized rages and rants follow red and blue patterns of division, deepening the fragmentation of national unity and making patriotic pride suspect. Verbal fireworks are today's "bombs bursting in air."

June 28, 2017

Donald Trump Julius Caesar mockery reduces Shakespeare

Whether the famous dead Roman is a look-alike for Donald Trump, with a blond comb-over and a long red tie, a cool black dude in a tailored suit suggesting Barack Obama, or a 1930s Orson Welles with a Sam Browne belt resembling Benito Mussolini, the character has captured the imagination of public and players since Shakespeare wrote it more than four centuries ago.

June 21, 2017

Reagan stood on Berlin Wall 30 years ago

Thirty years ago this week Ronald Reagan stood up on a podium in what was then West Berlin, framed by the Brandenburg Gate behind him. Through a thick sheet of bulletproof glass, he gazed at the ugly concrete symbol of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, and addressed the most famous words of his presidency to Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet empire: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

June 14, 2017

Wonder Woman fantasy coddles those needing a safe space

Finding a safe space, where never is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day, obviously has a wide appeal. Safe spaces were born on the campus, to accommodate "snowflakes," the sensitive, fearful and fragile folk who imagine themselves unique and demand to be treated that way.

June 7, 2017

Founding Fathers myths trashed in age of Trump

Liberal hysteria over Donald Trump was hardly required to pose questions about "the patriotic myths" of the Founding Fathers, but his elevation to the Oval Office has accelerated the trashing of the heroic past, even the stories of the American Revolution that generations of school children cherished.

May 31, 2017

Muslim world must learn terrorism is a threat to all

Just when everyone here was deep in preoccupation with partisan fantasy over whether Donald Trump should be impeached or removed by the 25th Amendment, the president changed the subject. Presidents can do that.

May 24, 2017

Press out for ‘gotcha’ moments

It's a difficult time to be proud of everything about America. The president is vilified from all sides (some criticism deserved, some not), and what's difficult to defend is the democratic process as we've used it to produce both the likes of Donald Trump and the press that rushes like lemmings to judgment.

May 17, 2017

Mother’s Day shows need to honor moms

Mother's Day ain't what it used to be. (Apologies to Mom for using a word she hated.) The day set aside to obey half of the Biblical commandment to "Honor thy father and thy mother" is grounded root and branch in multi-culti faith, whose diverse goals do not always have much to do with motherhood.

May 10, 2017

Bill O’Reilly and Lena Dunham’s tenures are over

Bill O'Reilly, the opinionator, is out at Fox, and Lena Dunham of "Girls," the sitcom, ended a six-year run at HBO. The two events are not unrelated. They're bookends for the ways men and women relate to each other.

May 3, 2017

Hillary Clinton doomed her ‘inevitable presidency’

While we're examining the accomplishments of Donald Trump's first 100 days -- putting his man on the U.S. Supreme Court is the biggie -- Hillary Clinton is getting the once-over (and the second and third) for all the reasons why she's not the first woman to preside over her own first 100 days in the Oval Office.

April 26, 2017

Theresa May moves to force hard Brexit

Prime Minister Theresa May is giving herself a new identity. Suddenly she's no longer "Theresa Maybe," showing her mettle by moving toward Margaret Thatcher's politics of the bold and unexpected. She still has a way to go to transform that mettle into the steel of the Iron Lady, but she may be on her way.

April 19, 2017

Pregnant Navy sailors reassigned to shore duty

Women can do most things as well as men. Almost nobody any longer disputes that. Women can do some things better than men. Many women thought Donald Trump as president would be a disaster for the final female assault on the glass ceiling. It hasn't turned out quite that way, and women, such as Nikki Haley and Betsy DeVos, have been stars of his new administration.

April 12, 2017