Suzanne Fields

Nikki Haley gives U.S. a stronger voice in role at U.N.

The new sheriff at the United Nations is stylish in heels but not so stylish in attitude, and the delegate lounges haven't been the same since Nikki Haley arrived almost three months ago.

April 5, 2017

Gender identity not matter of opinion

Sex and gender are serious subjects, but academics, pundits and the pop media have so stretched their meanings to use as weapons of political persuasion that the words sometimes don't mean very much. Communication becomes confusion and distraction.

March 29, 2017

Education scene for post-millennials will be tricky

The college Class of '21 is racing with caught breath and trembling fingers to check their email, pick up their snail mail, and steel themselves to read those college acceptance and rejection letters. Many schools have already dispatched congrats and regrets to thousands of applicants, and the Ivies still have a week to go before they put their letters in the mail.

March 22, 2017

Violent campus rioting reflects a sordid culture

Middlebury College, a symbol of violent rioting in the name of tolerance, is easy to scorn and disdain. Nice boys and girls, sons and daughters of nice moms and dads, get caught acting out on intolerant impulses, and a "disturbance" sends a professor to the hospital. (At Ole Miss this would be called a "riot.")

March 15, 2017

International Women’s Day draws militant feminists

Donald Trump has been a boon for angry women. He excites their troops, animates their causes no matter how diffuse, and in turn the ladies have turned him into a pinata, a uuuuge target for thwacking. With his coarse verbal machismo, he has become a greater-than-lifesize quarry for blaming "the man."

March 8, 2017

Media bias showed in Age of Anger

Donald Trump has been president for only a little more than a month, and writers, pundits, commentators and the rest of us are exhausted trying to get a grip on the insults, epithets, laments and grievances that define the times.

March 1, 2017

Donald Trump speaks truth to power

Donald Trump is the carnival barker with a megaphone and the loudest voice on the midway, shilling for "the greatest show on earth." He's the used-car salesman pushing a battered Buick with manifold sins within covered over with a few coats of slick new paint.

February 22, 2017

Tolerance has no place in new pop culture

Pop culture once offered a needed respite from politics and the expression of personal opinion that becomes public invective. It was easy to escape into music and movies to pursue pleasure beyond the reach of "the real world."

February 15, 2017

Lady Gaga and Super Bowl bear criticism

Halftime at the Super Bowl, once merely a forgettable 30 minutes to get another beer or join the line at the restroom, is more entertaining now. Halftime at the Super Bowl sometimes gets different reviews from different generations. But this year everyone could find something to be dazzled by in Lady Gaga's terrific patriotic pop.

February 8, 2017

When the truth is ‘twisted by knaves’

It's hard to "keep your head when all about you are losing theirs," as Rudyard Kipling reminded us in his poem of simple homilies that every school child once put to memory. It's all about holding your own counsel, thinking hard, using your brain, and keeping your cool when bombarded with the fashions and whims of others. Kipling, a Nobel laureate of the late 19th century, was banished from the modern canon, naturally, as terminally politically incorrect.

February 1, 2017

Telling the post-truth with alternative facts

When Kellyanne Conway used the phrase "alternative facts" engaging in a verbal fistfight with Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press," the hysterics in the media saw the sky falling. (Chicken Little lives.) George Orwell's "1984" flew off library shelves as the millions ran to see what "newspeak" and "doublethink" were all about. (Or not.)

January 25, 2017

Good feelings of inauguration dissovlve under division, derision

One circus closes, another comes to town. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, "the greatest show on Earth," is striking the big top for good, and has sent its elephants -- who looked like they enjoyed the attention -- to an assisted-living home for pachyderms. But the elephant lives on T-shirts, hats, caps and banners decorating the nation's capital this week.

January 18, 2017

Meryl Streep and Madonna, of all women, reach for greater celebrity as ‘victims’

Women are angry, this time at Donald Trump. But they're mad about a lot of other things, too. They've come a long way, baby, but a lot of them don't like what they see over their shoulders as they look back into the future. I'm not talking about the women's march on Washington on the day after the Donald becomes the 45th president of all of us.

January 11, 2017

The intellectual argument for the Trump presidency

Everyone's wondering just what kind of president Donald Trump will make. Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, Tories and Whigs (there must be a few of them still tucked away somewhere) who are still talking to each other, have embraced timid and tentative expectations.

January 4, 2017

Obama’s U.N. treachery unkindest cut of all to Israel, right in the back

If Israel were a nation in human form, like Uncle Sam or Marianne, the feminine symbol of France, long, bloody knives would be protruding from both back and breast.

December 28, 2016

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, a very odd couple

Vladimir Putin is portrayed by "Saturday Night Live" as a bare-chested Santa Claus, sliding down the chimney with a sack full of presents, a muscle-bound energetic figure of fun. He delivers a small surveillance device shaped like an elf for a shelf to Donald Trump (played by Alec Baldwin), who is ripe for satire. When the president-elect apologizes for not having a gift in return, the Russian leader replies, "Please, Mr. Trump, you are the gift."

December 21, 2016

Donald Trump appoints the best and brightest

On his television reality show, "The Apprentice," viewers could see that Donald Trump took a certain pleasure in saying, "You're fired!" Those are the two saddest words any employee can hear. But that's the way high-stakes business is played, and every CEO knows the importance of keeping the best performers in the company and getting rid of the chaff.

December 14, 2016

Concern for schools who aren’t teaching kids very much

The little red school house, famous in the lore of the early days of the republic, is long gone, but the memory of it is a nostalgic reminder of how the education of children was once the responsibility of the town. As public education has grown into extensive public school systems in towns big and small, the schoolhouse is no longer the source of civic pride.

December 7, 2016

First lady position should be discarded

The role of first lady is out of date, an anachronism and benign nepotism at best. At worst it's an unelected appendage to the president. In Trump time, when all assumptions are subject to revision, the time is right to think again about the ultimate "wife of."

November 30, 2016

Mike Pence to ‘Hamilton’ boos: ‘That’s what Freedom sounds like’

We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing, to hasten and chasten our will to partake of turkey and the fruits of the field as we imagine the pilgrims did at their first Thanksgiving in 1621. We actually know little of their menu and it may not please the traditionalists or the squeamish to learn that the early settlers were also keen on dining on swan, crane and even eagle.

November 23, 2016