The airheads of Congress will keep their own plush healthcare plan – it’s the rest of us guinea pigs who will be thrown to the wolves.

What has been forgotten is that there were major intellectual breakthroughs in the 1960s, thanks to North American writers of an older generation. There was a rupture in continuity, since most young people influenced by...

Our presence in Afghanistan is not worth the price of any more American lives or treasure.

Eroticism is mystique; that is, the aura of emotion and imagination around sex. It cannot be ‘fixed’ by codes of social or moral convenience, whether from the political left or right. For nature’s fascism is...

We live in a period of declining stars. Few celebrities these days (aside from the smoldering Angelina Jolie) seem to have complex psychic lives.

Capitalism has its weaknesses. But it is capitalism that ended the stranglehold of the hereditary aristocracies, raised the standard of living for most of the world and enabled the emancipation of women.

Madonna is her own Hollywood studio – a popelike mogul and divine superstar in one. She has a laserlike instinct for publicity, aided by her visual genius for still photography (which none of her legion...

It is capitalist America that produced the modern independent woman. Never in history have women had more freedom of choice in regard to dress, behavior, career, and sexual orientation.

I have a long view of history – my orientation is archaeological because I’m always thinking in terms of ancient Greece and Rome, ancient Persia and Egypt.

As a scholar who regularly surveys archival material, I think that, a century from now, cultural historians will find David Horowitz’s spiritual and political odyssey paradigmatic for our time.

My generation of the Sixties, with all our great ideals, destroyed liberalism, because of our excesses.

Bravo’s ‘Real Housewives’ series isn’t just entertainment for devoted fans like me – it’s an entire all-absorbing universe of pride and passion.

I guess I’m just a natural warrior.

As a longtime fan of talk radio, I’m very worried about the low opinion that conservative hosts and callers have of the American artist. Art is portrayed as a scam, a rip-off and snow job...

Perhaps there is no greater issue facing contemporary women than the choices they must make about balancing home and work.

Charisma is the numinous aura around a narcissistic personality. It flows outward from a simplicity or unity of being and a composure and controlled vitality. There is gracious accommodation, yet commanding impersonality. Charisma is the...

All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!

There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.

I certainly derived my skills as a prose writer from my scrutiny of poetry and of the individual word. But schools don’t do things like that anymore – tracking words down to their roots.

Modern bodybuilding is ritual, religion, sport, art, and science, awash in Western chemistry and mathematics. Defying nature, it surpasses it.

My generation of bossy, confident, baby-boom women were something brand new in history. Our energy and assertiveness weren’t created by Betty Friedan, unknown before her 1963 book, or by Gloria Steinem, whose political activism, as...

Because of my own family’s service (in the U.S. Army, Navy, and Massachusetts and New York National Guard), I am a strong supporter of the military and do believe that there are just wars.

Popular culture – above all rock ‘n’ roll, with its African-American R & B roots – did far more to radicalize us than did any feminist leader.

Music never dies. Do we really need another Madonna tour? Does she have to compete with women performers 25 years her junior?

When I was a child, my father taught me to put up my fists like a boy and to be prepared to defend myself at all times.

I’m a professor of media studies as well as humanities, and I’m an evangelist of popular culture, but when there’s only media, then there’s going to be a slow debasement of language, and that’s what...

You have to accept the fact that part of the sizzle of sex comes from the danger of sex. You can be overpowered.

Now that virtually every career is an option for ambitious girls, it can no longer be considered regressive or reactionary to reintroduce discussion of marriage and motherhood to primary education. We certainly do not want...

I don’t like reality shows and have never watched them, but I’m addicted to ‘Real Housewives’ because it’s authentic old-time soap opera reborn!

In an era ruled by materialism and unstable geopolitics, art must be restored to the center of public education.

Back in the 1960s , I got a superb education for very little money. The bill for my first year at Harpur College in New York was a few hundred dollars.

Working moms commonly testify that they feel guilty when they are away from their children and guilty when they are not at their jobs. Devoted fathers certainly miss their children deeply, but it does not...

Students are very gullible about the web. The only way you can really sort out information on the web is if you’ve had a prior training in book culture.

Considering the popularity of soaps with the African-American audience, it’s grotesque that the entertainment industry, for all its vaunted liberalism, is lagging so far behind social changes in the United States. And why has there...

Though men may be deep, mentally they are slow.

I see far stronger and more charismatic personalities strolling around Philadelphia’s neighborhoods than are being featured in most of today’s bland daytime soaps.

The western mind makes definitions; it draws lines.

If feminism has receded in visibility and prestige, it is precisely because its vision of life’s goals and rewards has become too narrow and elitist.

Madonna remains the most visible performer on the planet, as well as one of the wealthiest, but would anyone seriously say that artistic self-development is her primary motivating principle? She is too busy with Kabbalah,...

A war still rages over the legacy of the 1960s.

If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.

I’m very pro-American – my entire family escaped poverty in Italy because they rightly believed in the American dream.

Primary-school education is a crock, basically. It’s oppressive to anyone with physical energy, especially guys.

I regard affirmative action as pernicious – a system that had wonderful ideals when it started but was almost immediately abused for the benefit of white middle-class women.

A lesser complaint: hair extensions. There are moments on ‘All My Children’ when half the women actors, young and old, seem to be afflicted by android Barbie creep. All those thick swatches of lifeless strands...

I want to promote the introduction of art history in primary schools and to convince the general public that, even in a period of economic crisis, arts funding is an absolute necessity at the federal,...

Madonna can still produce a catchy pop song, but she hasn’t expanded her artistic vocabulary since the 1990s. Her concerts are glitzy extravaganzas of special effects overkill. She leaves little space in them for emotional...

Throughout history, ambassadors have always been symbolic incarnations of the sovereignty of their nations and the dignity of their leaders.

As a registered Democrat, I am praying for a credible presidential candidate to emerge from the younger tier of politicians in their late 40s. A governor with executive experience would be ideal.

Every reading is partial, but that does not absolve us from the quest for meaning, which defines us as a species.