Daum: Hillary's next drama

January 10, 2013

Watching Hillary Rodham Clinton's exit from the State Department is a little like watching the season-ending episode of a popular television series that may not come back the next year. As loyal as its viewers are, there are always wary network executives and even exhausted writers and producers who'd just as soon let it go. It's a good policy, after all, to leave your audience wanting more.

Daum: I 'like' me, I really 'like' me

January 3, 2013

Recognize this pattern?

Daum: Finally, it's time for gun control

December 20, 2012

The time is now.

Daum: A gayer approach to marriage

December 13, 2012

Amelia Earhart's "prenuptial agreement" with her husband, George Putnam, whom she married in 1931 when she was 32, drew a flurry of attention this week. Los Angeles writer Amanda Hess posted the letter on her Tumblr page after running across it in the online library of Purdue University, which houses Earhart's papers.

Daum: Texting turns 20, LOL

December 6, 2012

It's been an especially fruitful week for rueful lamentations about "kids today." Monday marked the 20th anniversary of the text message. Along with it came the predictable chorus of bellyaching about the demise of literacy, the shortening of attention spans and the rise of abbreviations and acronyms that take longer to decipher than it would to pick up the phone and have a real conversation.

Daum: Hostess is the Republican Party

November 22, 2012

Wednesday, just two weeks after the election all but declared an end to white male dominance, yet another nail was driven into the wood-paneled coffin of old-fashioned America. Hostess Brands, maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread, announced that even after eleventh-hour talks with union leaders, it would permanently cease operations.

Daum: The frump factor and Holly Petraeus

November 15, 2012

Last week was a historic one for women. Eighteen women won or reclaimed Senate seats, bringing the number of women in that body to 20. Nearly 80 women now occupy the House. New Hampshire became the first state to elect a female governor and an all-women congressional delegation.

Daum: Obama and the single girl

November 8, 2012

Daum: After Sandy, a bit of weather envy

November 1, 2012

When it comes to the relationship between Southern Californians and massive storms like Sandy, the conventional wisdom is that such weather (“such” meaning the kind not commonly found in Southern California) can give rise to just a tiny bit of gloating.

Daum: Madonna's tone-deaf tattoo

October 18, 2012

There goes Madonna, classing up the joint again. To show her support of Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani girl shot and critically wounded by the Taliban because of her advocacy for girls' education, the Material Girl (a.k.a. Madge, Esther, the Queen of Pop, the Hottest Bod in the AARP) took the opportunity during a recent concert at L.A.'s Staple Center to pull her pants down and reveal a (fake) tattoo of the girl's name inked across the small of her back.

Daum: Bring in Obama the Hulk

October 11, 2012

It's hard to say which is more cringe-worthy: President Obama's debate performance last week or his efforts to control the damage by poking fun at himself. In Los Angeles on Sunday night, Obama recognized Stevie Wonder and Katy Perry as "incredible professionals" who "perform flawlessly night after night." Then he added, "I can't always say the same."

Daum: Jesse Ventura, 'the Body' politic

September 27, 2012

Don't deny it: This presidential race, for all its minor dust-ups, has mostly been a snore, a bloodless standoff between two men who, despite their differences, are both essentially uptight squares whose wives are forever trumpeting how poor they used to be. Thank goodness, then, for the blast of fresh air that is Jesse "the Body" Ventura.

Daum: Romney's sorry state

September 20, 2012

When it comes to apologies, some people are like scent hounds: They can sniff them out anywhere. This is especially true when it comes to the supposed regrets and self-hatred of President Obama. Though he began his term with a series of speeches in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East in which, according to several fact-checking sources, the words "apology" or "I'm sorry" were never once uttered, his opponents nonetheless decided to construe the trips as some sort of mea culpa (make that Americana culpa) world tour. (Can't you just picture it on a heavy metal concert T-shirt?)

Daum: Naomi Wolf's vaginal sideshow

September 13, 2012

It's a strange time to be a woman. I say this not because state legislatures enacted no less than 95 restrictions on reproductive rights this year. I say it not because at the same time, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker repealed his state's equal pay law and Wisconsin state Sen. Glenn Grothman conjectured that "money is more important for men." Or because, just last month, an alarming number of male legislators demonstrated serious confusion about the birds and the bees.

Daum: Michelle Obama's traditional values

September 6, 2012

At the risk of inviting legions of conservatives to swoop down and tell me I'm drowning in the Obama Kool-Aid (actually, it's not just a risk; it's a guarantee), I'm just going to come out and say it: Michelle Obama was spectacular at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night. She managed to do in 25 minutes what her husband has been struggling to do for nearly four years: remind us why we were once so excited about the prospect of seeing this family in the White House.

Todd Akin's remarks on rape may help clarify the abortion debate

August 23, 2012

Like any sentient person, I was appalled by Missouri Republican Congressman Todd Akin's comments about "legitimate rape." I was shocked by the Limbaugh-ian proportions of his ignorance about the female reproductive system ("in cases of legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down") and remain flabbergasted that he hasn't caved in to party pressure to quit his Senate campaign.

Helen Gurley Brown, Cosmo and the limits of stiletto lib

August 16, 2012

Helen Gurley Brown, legendary editor of Cosmopolitan and doyenne of stiletto-heeled self-empowerment, died Monday at 90. The author of "Sex and the Single Girl," Brown was widely credited for revolutionizing the precepts of women's media, transforming a melange of recipes and homemaking tips into an unapologetic celebration of sexual, social and professional striving captured in cover lines like "Four Fab New Vibrators" and "Get Hit On All The Time."

Daum: Rise of the Olympic armchair judges

August 8, 2012

The conventional wisdom about the Olympics has always been that it turns its viewers into wannabe athletes. Every time the Games roll around, particularly the Summer Games with their relatively easy-to-try-at-home events like track and swimming , we start hearing about surges in running shoe purchases and gym memberships.

Daum: America's shortcut culture

August 2, 2012

Not even the Olympics are a sufficient distraction from the scandal of Jonah Lehrer. He's the 31-year-old who rose to prominence writing such bestselling books as "Proust Was a Neuroscientist" and "How We Decide," and delivering lucrative corporate lectures to go along with them.

Daum: Confessions of a TV couch potato

July 19, 2012

I recently attended a lecture by a distinguished man of letters. A poet, novelist, playwright and literary critic, this man also edits journals, directs literary festivals, collaborates on documentary projects, teaches full time at a university and is raising a family. When an audience member asked how he managed to find the time for all these things, he said, "Everything I do is in the interests of making time for my true passion: watching TV."

Daum: The GOP's Palin hangover

July 12, 2012

Ann Romney is on the record: She would like to see a woman as her husband's running mate. And so would any number of Republicans who are concerned about their party's standing with female voters. But for all the excitement that the topic stirs up, don't hold your breath: It's unlikely a woman will share the spotlight at the top of the GOP ticket.

Daum: Under Nora's wing

June 28, 2012

If you're a particular kind of writer, the kind with a taste for "social observation" and a belief in the divine partnership of unbridled humor and unapologetic honesty, Nora Ephron, who died Tuesday, almost certainly fell into the category of Central Influence. If you're a particularly lucky writer, Nora was not only an influence but a sort of literary mother hen with a cashmere-clad wing outstretched. She was a connector, a cajoler, a cheerleader — maybe even a friend. I was among those lucky ones.

Daum: 2012's pop song for grads

June 21, 2012

Every year around this time, a few notable lines from a few notable commencement speeches start insinuating themselves into the canon of "words to live by." Recent favorites include Steve Jobs' 2005 speech at Stanford ("Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life"). Then there was Stephen Colbert's 2006 address at Knox College about "saying yes." Also in 2005 was David Foster Wallace's now-enshrined speech at Kenyon College, which discussed freedom, among other things, and which I won't even try to sum up in a single quote.

Daum: Really? First gay president?

June 14, 2012

It's been a month since President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage and was declared, on the cover of Newsweek, "the first gay president." That's an eternity in politics, but Obama's swing through California last week, which included a Beverly Hills fundraiser sponsored by the LGBT Leadership Council and a $25,000-per-plate dinner hosted by "Glee" creator Ryan Murphy, got me thinking about his gayness all over again.

Daum: Speaking down to Americans

June 7, 2012

Lest you think the bullying and foot-stomping of Congress most resemble a tantrum-prone bunch of second-graders, think again. Data compiled by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group focused on greater transparency in Washington, has shown that today's congressional "dialogue" is actually on a par with a 10th-grader's verbal prowess.

Daum: When parents hover

May 31, 2012

Since the release of the May 21 issue of Time magazine — the one with an attractive if rather indignant-looking young motherbreast-feeding a nearly 4-year-old child on the cover — much of the country has been abuzz with both admiration and condemnation of the child-rearing philosophy called "attachment parenting." Known for its hyper-protectiveness, not to mention its plain-old hype, attachment parenting concerns itself with issues like the benefits of home schooling, the value of "co-sleeping" and whether disposable diapers and store-bought baby food are instruments of neglect.

Daum: Attack of the flesh-eating bacteria story

May 24, 2012

What spreads almost as fast as necrotizing fasciitis, a.k.a. flesh-eating infection? News stories about it.

Daum: Too brainy to be president?

May 10, 2012

As devotees of Barack Obama know all too well, qualities that made him so attractive as a candidate — an affinity for subtle arguments, a tendency to carefully weigh his options — have at times proved less useful in his role as president. That carefulness has been read as indecisiveness. The subtle arguments have sounded, to some ears, like hedging. In response, the president has simplified his rhetoric. The nuances of the 2009 Cairo speech about relations between the U.S. and the Muslim world have given way to chest thumping over killing Osama bin Laden. The sophistication of the speech on race he delivered during the 2008 campaign has morphed into sentimental headline grabbers: "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."

Daum: Beauty in the eye of the app

May 3, 2012

If you're one of those people who says, "There should be an app for that!" every time you're confronted with one of life's little quandaries (recent entrepreneurial brainstorms in my household include What's the Dog Thinking? and some form of gaydar), you've probably already imagined this: an app that will tell you how ugly you are.

Daum: The Ann Romney trap

April 19, 2012

President Obama displayed quick damage-control reflexes last week when he called out Democratic pundit Hilary Rosen for claiming that Ann Romney, mother of five, had "never worked a day in her life." It was "the wrong thing to say" and "not something I subscribe to," the president said. He also rolled out the old chestnut that almost always gets invoked amid ugly battles over motherhood and women's career choices. "There is no tougher job than being a mom," he said.

Daum: The radical message of 'Girls'

April 12, 2012

When I was 24 and living in a funky New York City apartment with roommates, roaches and ambitions that were both utterly consuming and utterly unfocused, I was convinced my generation was cursed. It was the early 1990s, and between a recession, the AIDS crisis and the last vestiges of the crack-and-crime epidemic, daily life had a certain apocalyptic quality.

Daum: We're weary of 'being Trayvon'

April 5, 2012

In the wake of the media blackout imposed last week by Angela Corey, the newly appointed special prosecutor investigating February's fatal shooting of black Florida teen Trayvon Martin, the media has had no choice but to cover the story surrounding the story. This would include the widespread public demonstrations, the evolution of the "hoodie" as a symbolic rallying point, and the emergence of protest T-shirts adorned with phrases like "I Am Trayvon" and "Justice for Trayvon," both of which Martin's mother is trying to have trademarked.

Daum: When truth is trumped by theatrics

March 22, 2012

Even if you don't have a cupboard full of pledge-drive coffee mugs, you've probably heard about the latest dust-up in public radio. A stage performer named Mike Daisey chronicled a trip he made in 2010 to China to check out conditions at a factory run by Foxconn, the chief manufacturer of iPads and iPhones. Even before Daisey told his tale, news reports of suicides and harsh working conditions there had introduced at least a dose of guilt into the previously sunshiny experience of owning an Apple product.

Killing a teenager's laptop, loudly

February 23, 2012

Perhaps you've heard of Tommy Jordan. He's the North Carolina dad who recently recorded a video of himself reading and responding to a Facebook post composed by his 15-year-old daughter, Hannah, after which he shot her computer nine times with a .45 pistol.

Santorum: The personal isn't always political

February 16, 2012

Recently some readers complained about my characterization of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum as a "weird, pious wackadoo," charging bias against religious conservatives. Obviously they didn't realize that when it comes to mockery, I'm an equal-opportunity columnist. I've taken plenty of stabs at Democrats over the years, not least of them Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom I've compared to an old sofa.

Daum: Memed, and proud of it

February 1, 2012

Say what you will about the latest Internet video sensation — in which someone lampoons one group of humans or another based on certain conversational proclivities — but if nothing else, we can credit it with bringing mainstream awareness to the word "meme." That's the term coined by Richard Dawkins for the way evolutionary principles can be used to explain how cultural ideas take hold. It's now basically turned into a fancy way of talking about things that are popular on the Internet. This includes cats with funny captions inserted below them.

Daum: Newt's debt to Clinton

January 26, 2012

So it's official. No one really cares that Newt Gingrich is an egotistical, vainglorious scoundrel, at least where women are concerned. Sure, his ex-wife went on TV two days before the South Carolina primary and re-dished a bunch of dirt about their marriage, but based on Saturday's outcome, it seems GOP voters got over the whole family values thing a long time ago.

Daum: Santorum and the mythic power of the zealots

January 12, 2012

If you think Rick Santorum is a weird, pious wackadoo, try being a female walking around certain ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in Israel with your ankles showing.

Daum: Christopher Hitchens gets the last laugh

December 22, 2011

As fans of the late Christopher Hitchens cycle through the five stages of grief, it's interesting to see which of his opinions can still inspire the kind of anger that is unlikely to ever fade into acceptance. There are, of course, the obvious candidates: his characterization of Bill Clinton as "a rapist" or his vilification of Mother Teresa as "a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud." There is also his oh so chivalrous shout-out to the Dixie Chicks, whom he called "fat slugs" (or "slags" or "sluts" depending on your source) despite later admitting "having not the least idea of what any of them looked like."

The 'hot mess' of politics

December 15, 2011

A delightfully useful and versatile term has been floating around a lot lately: "hot mess." Usually it refers to a person, often (but not always) a woman, whose behavior is exceedingly self-destructive but who remains exceedingly compelling nonetheless. (Type "hot mess" into Google and names such as Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Charlie Sheen make a strong showing.)

Daum: Think first tweet later #duh

December 1, 2011

"Emma Sullivan just became the new Ferris Bueller."

Daum: Don't 'drink the Kool-Aid'

November 17, 2011

Drunk any Kool-Aid lately? Or maybe you accused someone else of doing it? If so, congratulations, you're right in step with one of the nation's most popular idiomatic trends. A snappy, fruit-flavored way of referring to someone who unquestioningly embraces a particular leader or ideology, "drinking the Kool-Aid" has become a staple of self-righteous public discourse.

Daum: Zygotes on a slippery slope

November 10, 2011

When I first heard about Personhood USA, I got it confused with Up with People, the organization best known for song-and-dance troupes that go around the world singing songs like "Which Way America?" and "What Color Is God's Skin?" When I realized it was actually an anti-abortion group devoted to the idea that any fertilized human egg should be considered a person, I still couldn't shake the image of wholesome young performers spreading fetus love across the globe. Instead of singing about peace and "dances through the ages" they could sing about zygotes and implantation, though admittedly those lyrics might be tough to rhyme.

Daum: Denial — Madoff style

November 2, 2011

I didn't see any Ruth Madoff masks on Halloween night, but it wouldn't have surprised me if I had. The wife of disgraced Wall Street Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff is Pariah No. 1 this week, followed closely by her son, Andrew. The two, along with Andrew's fiance, appeared on "60 Minutes" on Sunday night to promote their "authorized family biography," "Truth and Consequences."

Daum: Inside the mating economy

October 20, 2011

Kate Bolick is an attractive, educated and professionally accomplished 39-year-old who despite 20 years of dating and a string of steady relationships has — cue the ominous organ music — never married. In a long (at 12,000 words, very long) article that's part personal essay, part enfilade of facts, stats and interviews with experts, she tells her story in the Atlantic this month. It doesn't end happily ever after — at least it hasn't so far — but this leaves Bolick not so much sad or even angry but surprised by what she's found: a dating pool of men who increasingly cannot keep up with their female counterparts.

Daum: Liberals pin hopes on Elizabeth Warren

October 13, 2011

Liberal fervor, which took a hit when it became apparent that Barack Obama the president was not going to live up to the promise of Barack Obama the Shepard Fairey poster, is back in action. From the streets of Manhattan to the pages of Facebook, from L.A.'s City Hall to email blasts from MoveOn.org, left-leaning types are getting their mojo back, summoning the spirit not just of the Obama campaign (that decorous, dignified affair) but kicking it old school in the vein of the wild and crazy 2004 Howard Dean campaign (you remember, back in the days when the word "liberal" was actually spoken out loud — in Dean's case really loud).

Daum: The Amanda Knox moral — there's no place like home

October 6, 2011

I didn't have a huge investment in the fate of Amanda Knox, the 24-year-old American whose conviction for killing her roommate four years ago in Italy was overturned Monday. I was generally too put off and confused by the media circus surrounding the case to try to figure out the whole story. Still, in the moments before the appeals decision was announced, I found myself on the edge of my seat, constantly refreshing my Internet browser until the word "acquit" flashed across the screen. Then I exhaled, a far bigger sigh of relief than I thought I had in me.

Daum: Chick flick TV

September 22, 2011

Perhaps it's been brought to your attention that this is a big week for retrograde representations of women on television. Monday marked the premiere of NBC's "The Playboy Club," a noir-ish look at Hugh Hefner's flagship Chicago club in 1963, and Sunday will see the launch of ABC's "Pan Am," a stylish, soapy paean to those proto-feminist archetypes known as stewardesses. With their curling cigarette smoke and hourglass-shaped, not-necessarily-Pilates-toned actresses, these shows suggest we're in a moment not just of "Mad Men" withdrawal (it won't be back until March) but out-and-out fetishization of the 1960s (make that the early 1960s, before things got complicated).

Daum: Save the nation — buy now

September 15, 2011

Remember the famous Stanford marshmallow study of 1972? It asked children at a campus nursery school to choose between eating a marshmallow (or a cookie or a pretzel, depending on their preference) right away or waiting while the researcher stepped out of the room for a period of time, at which point they would get two marshmallows. The purpose of the study, which involved more than 600 children, was to determine at what age we begin to develop an understanding of delayed gratification.

Daum: Sept. 11 and the impulse to pay tribute

September 8, 2011

Not that you needed reminding, but Sunday is the 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Around the world, memorials will be held, prayers said, tears shed. President Obama has called on the nation to "reaffirm the strength of our nation with acts of service and charity." Mozart's Requiem will be performed in countless venues.

Daum: New words to live by

September 1, 2011

Every year around this time, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary releases a list of words that will be added to its next edition. It's lucky that the announcement comes toward the end of August, when most humans want to go on vacation and most columnists, therefore, need to write an "evergreen."

Daum: Invasion of the idiocrats

August 18, 2011

You may not have seen "Idiocracy," the 2006 sci-fi comedy set in an utterly dysfunctional nation 500 years in the future, but chances are you've heard it mentioned lately. References to the film seem to be everywhere, and not just in op-eds penned by cranky columnists (I mentioned it in a column last year about public spaces being sold as advertising space). The latest issue of the Economist has an article about the business-sabotaging effects of the battles in Washington, headlined "American Idiocracy."

Daum: When being authentic requires work

August 11, 2011

Want to be authentic? Good luck! These days it takes deliberate effort, focus, even a long-term commitment to change. This might sound surprising to those of you who associate authenticity with just being yourself, but misconceptions about authenticity abound, not least among them the idea that it comes naturally to everyone.

Daum: Norway's paradise lost

August 4, 2011

Anyone who's hung around in liberal circles and found himself in those perfunctory What's Wrong With America conversations has heard the refrain: "Well, in Sweden they have (fill in the blank): mostly free healthcare, free college, 13-month parental leave."

Daum: The siren song of Google+

July 28, 2011

Google+, which launched a month ago to great fanfare, is so far feeling more like Google nonplussed. Reported to have crossed the 20-million-user mark last weekend, the new social networking site is designed to correct one of Facebook's major drawbacks: the problem of too much information being shared with too many people.

Daum: The Marcus Bachmann hypocrisy

July 21, 2011

Marcus Bachmann, the husband of GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, is having a bad month. Not only is his counseling clinic under attack for offering gay conversion therapy, he's being pursued by an angry mob. Composed of gay activists, comedians, left-leaning bloggers and members of the alternative media, this mob is not only angry about Bachmann's "pray the gay away" ideas, it's growing ever more willing to give voice to a nudge-nudge flurry of middle-school locker-room innuendo. All from people who in other circumstances would be asking for an injunction against the stuff.

Daum: Jaycee Dugard and the feel-good imperative

July 14, 2011

To watch Diane Sawyer's interview Sunday night with Jaycee Dugard was to wonder at times if that was Dugard herself on screen or an actress hired to play the role of the quintessential survivor. Dugard was so serene and lacking in rancor that it was hard to believe she had been kidnapped at age 11 and held prisoner for 18 years, during which she was repeatedly raped and bore two children, the first when she was just 14.

Daum: You pays your money …

July 7, 2011

There's something exhilarating about walking out of a movie. Not only does it reacquaint you with the notion of your own free will ("Wait a second, no one is forcing me to watch Tom Hanks ride around on a scooter!"), it's like getting two extra hours in your day. To walk out of a bad movie is literally to escape from the darkness, to show yourself who's boss, to remind yourself that your time is valuable.

Daum: Geez Frisco, lighten up

June 30, 2011

Dear San Francisco,

Meghan Daum: Michele Bachmann the believer

June 23, 2011

If I had a dollar for every time a Sarah Palin supporter accused me of not taking her seriously because I'm jealous of attractive women who've combined powerful careers with large families, I'd be in another tax bracket, one that might encourage me to vote for Ron Paul.

Meghan Daum: Anthony Weiner's inner geekdom

June 16, 2011

Anthony Weiner, the disgraced New York congressman whose sins certainly don't need to be spelled out again, has, we are told, checked himself into rehab. We can't be sure exactly what kind, since his spokeswoman said only that he was seeking "professional treatment to focus on being a better husband and a healthier person." That's code, in a lot of people's minds, for a sex-addiction program, like the ones attended by Tiger Woods and David Duchovny, both of whom got in trouble for actually having sex.

Meghan Daum: What's with the 'hiker hate'?

June 9, 2011

The story of Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal and Sarah Shourd, the American hikers who in July 2009 crossed the border — inadvertently, all evidence suggests — from Iraqi Kurdistan into Iran and were imprisoned for espionage, is back in the headlines. Shourd, who was released in September on humanitarian grounds and after paying $500,000 in bail, has been promoting a "rolling hunger strike" to remind us that Bauer and Fattal remain in Tehran's Evin Prison without a trial date or access to their lawyer.

Meghan Daum: David Mamet's new herd

June 2, 2011

David Mamet, the acclaimed playwright known for characters that drop the F-bomb at every opportunity, has dropped the ultimate bomb on his fans and the creative community: He is no longer a "brain-dead liberal" but rather a "newly minted conservative."

Meghan Daum: Obama's fast brain vs. slow mouth

May 26, 2011

Apparently, a lot of people consider President Obama to be bumblingly inarticulate. "The guy can't talk his way out of a paper bag!" a reader wrote to me recently. "Sarah Palin is a brilliant speaker. It's the president whose sentences are undiagrammable," said another in response to a column I wrote about Palin. It's not just my readers, nor is it exclusively conservatives, who hold this view. A Google search of "does Obama have a speech impediment" turns up several pages of discussion among the president's supporters and critics alike.Admittedly, the president is given to a lot of pauses, "uhs" and sputtering starts to his sentences. As polished as he often is before large crowds (where the adjective "soaring" is often applied to his speeches), his impromptu speaking frequently calls to mind a doctoral candidate delivering a wobbly dissertation defense.

Meghan Daum: Breaking comedy's raunch barrier

May 19, 2011

The results are in: "Bridesmaids," the much-hyped girl-raunch comedy touted as the long-awaited antidote to Judd Apatow's "bromance" phenomenon, opened way bigger than expected at the box office, thereby proving that women can be just as funny — and, moreover, sell as many tickets — as men. (Apatow, it should be noted, is a producer on the film.)

Royal wedding: Her Royal Blandness

April 28, 2011

I admit it: I love Kate Middleton. I love that she defied the usual dating advice and waited years for her prince to come around. I love that she's a commoner but still wears those outrageous feathered hats. Most of all, I love that the hats are the most remarkable thing about her.

Meghan Daum: Kids, do your own homework

April 21, 2011

I get lots of emails. They generally break down like this: People telling me I'm brilliant and the reason print media is hanging on; people telling me I'm a moron and the reason print media is dying; people trying to get me to write about their book/cause/personal gripe; people asking me to read something they wrote about their book/cause/personal gripe; and people asking for help with their homework.

Campaign of misinformation against Planned Parenthood

April 14, 2011

In the ongoing rancor surrounding federal funding of Planned Parenthood, misinformation has a starring role. There have been, of course, predictable gusts of hot air from pundits like Bill O'Reilly, who asserted last month that "nobody's life is affected by Planned Parenthood," and Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy of "Fox & Friends," who suggested on April 9 that Planned Parenthood's non-abortion-related services were redundant because you can get your blood pressure checked and get a pap smear or a breast exam at Walgreen's. (Blood pressure, yes; the rest, uh-uh.)

Let's all get off the term 'on steroids'

April 7, 2011

Not so long ago, the way to convey that something was extreme was to simply call it extreme ("X" for short.) There were extreme sports (think bungee jumping), extreme tourism (think traveling in order to bungee jump) and, of course, the "Extreme Makeover" television franchise, which took self-improvement and home improvement to new levels by throwing in hefty doses of plastic surgery and new construction along with the usual hairstyle and paint color changes.

NPR needs a backbone

March 17, 2011

Oh, NPR, won't you please state your game? Are you liberal? Are you neutral? Are your employees secret socialists? Do their screensavers feature slideshows of Noam Chomsky? Do your office Christmas parties serve only free-range eggnog? Do your parking lots offer preferred spaces for vehicles with "Free Tibet" bumper stickers?"

Carrie Prejean vs. Perez Hilton

April 25, 2009

It's been a notable week in not-really news. Songstress Susan Boyle, who supposedly delivered us from our shallowness by belting out a showstopper without the help of hair dye or eyebrow tweezing, continued to make headlines. The former vice presidential candidate's grandbaby daddy, Levi Johnston, went on "Larry King Live" and managed to say and be asked almost nothing. And Earth Day, with its myriad opportunities for celebrities to talk about CFL bulbs, filled talk shows like so many Styrofoam peanuts in a cardboard box.

The recession heats up romance novels

April 4, 2009

Amid the ceaseless reminders that the economy is in a persistent vegetative state, it's easy to forget that some industries and products are thriving. U.S. News & World Report, which recently released its list of "10 Winners in the Recession," says that Hershey's chocolate increased earnings by more than 50% last quarter and the Burpee seed company has said it expects sales to increase by 25% in 2009 (and this was before the first lady's organic-gardening initiative).

Michelle Obama's no-win role

March 28, 2009

I'm having a hard time forming an opinion about First Lady Michelle Obama, mostly because there are already so many out there, and they're almost uniformly inane.

Curse you, Zillow!

March 21, 2009

If you've looked up your home value over the last year or so, you know the experience is not unlike weighing yourself after eating a large meal. The number is simply wrongThe number is simply wrong.

Happiness is in your mind -- and wallet

March 14, 2009

Oh, no. Here comes another study about happiness. We can't seem to do enough of these paeans to cheerfulness. In the last few months alone, the British Medical Journal suggested that having a happy close friend boosts our own odds of being happy by 25%; the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological

The age of Friendaholism

March 7, 2009

Thwarting the age-old theory (and high school coping mechanism) that unpopularity in adolescence portends wealth and success in adulthood, a new study from the University of Essex in Britain has shown that the more friends you have in school, the more money you'll earn later.

The day the talk died at KLSX

February 28, 2009

For those of us who like to listen to people rant, whine and talk about their gastrointestinal problems on the radio, the last week has been a sad one in Southern California. KLSX, which had been the region's only all-talk FM station since 1995, abruptly changed its format to Top 40 music on Feb. 20. The switch, according to executives at its parent company, CBS Radio, was an effort to attract younger listeners.

Refusing to toe the Oscar party line

February 21, 2009

Irealize what I'm about to say is a form of blasphemy in this town: I hate the Oscars. I hate everything about them: the gazillion awards shows that precede them, the obsession with the gowns and their designers, the scenery-chewing movie performances they inspire and, most of all, the parties.

Doomed by your name?

February 7, 2009

If you read "Freakonomics," the popular 2005 book that applied economic theories to non-economic issues, you probably remember the mention of African American twins named OrangeJello and LemonJello (pronounced a-RON-zhello and le-MON-zhello).

Eight is more than enough

January 31, 2009

Ihave octuplet derangement syndrome. Ever since Monday, when an unidentified woman gave birth to eight babies at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center near Los Angeles, I've been obsessed. And not in a good way.

Dream dad: one job too many for Obama

January 24, 2009

Which image of President Obama with his daughters is your favorite? Is it the goofy-faced shot riding bumper cars with Sasha at the Iowa State Fair? Is it one of the photos snapped on the beach when the family vacationed in Hawaii in August? Or is it the moment that Sasha, talking to her father on a huge screen during the first night of the Democratic National Convention, punctuated his remarks with "I love you, Daddy," a declaration sure to claim a permanent spot in the annals of political campaign adorableness?

Obama's poet

January 17, 2009

This time last year, on the snowy campaign trail in New Hampshire, Hillary Rodham Clinton took a swipe at her opponent Barack Obama with the quip, "You campaign with poetry, but you govern with prose."

Ashley Madison's secret success

January 10, 2009

'Life is short. Have an affair."

Fictional memoirs

January 3, 2009

How did Herman Rosenblat, a 78-year-old Holocaust survivor and seemingly sweet old man, become the pariah of publishing? He spent upward of 15 years telling this story: As a teenager at a German concentration camp in 1945, he encounters a girl on the other side of the camp's fence who tosses food to him daily. The two never speak, but she gives him the strength to survive. Settled in New York 12 years later, Rosenblat finds himself on a blind date with a Polish woman named Roma Radzicki whose family, she says, lived near the camp during the war. Despite incalculable odds, Radzicki turns out to be the girl from the fence. He proposes to her on the spot, and they remain married today.

Burger King's body spray

December 27, 2008

You know you're in the throes of hard economic times when one of the most talked-about gift ideas of the holiday season is body spray from Burger King. You heard me right. There's a new burger in town, and it's not a burger at all. It's a fragrance called Flame by BK (pour hommespour hommes, presumably).

Barack Obama has added you as a friend on Facebook

December 20, 2008

Despite common assumptions that President-elect Barack Obama's Cabinet nominees are told of their selection via personal phone calls, The Times has learned that the famously tech-friendly Obama is actually notifying his picks by "friending" them on the social networking site Facebook. Requests to Obama for comment on the following transcript have gone unanswered, though he did "poke" us just as this went to press.

Recession-free Christmas ads

December 13, 2008

Tired of reading grim news about the economy? Then skip the articles and go straight to the ads. It's December, after all; the season of lights, gift giving and glossy magazines and newspaper supplements that smell like Glade PlugIns and weigh enough to break your toe.

From YouTube to Carnegie Hall

December 6, 2008

For every bassoonist or violist who's bemoaned his exclusion from that celebrated form of artistic democracy known as "American Idol," the dark days are over. No, Paula Abdul probably will not be waxing befuddled on the finer points of Mozart concertos. But YouTube has announced plans for something possibly even scarier: the YouTube Symphony, the "world's first collaborative online orchestra."

Life on our own L.A. fall line

November 29, 2008

Congratulations Southern Californians, autumn -- or something resembling it -- has finally arrived. It's been a long, dry, flame-engulfed road, but I'm glad to say (and I hope this won't jinx it ) that we probably won't hit 95 degrees again for at least five or six months.

Bushes' books

November 22, 2008

If you thought exiting your last job was painful, because you had to stand around eating sheet cake and acting excited about your impending "freelance projects," imagine being an outgoing president. Not only do you have to give up your career, move out of your house and bid farewell to your jumbo jet all on the same day, you're expected to embark on one of the most onerous tasks known to humans: writing a book.

Dog days ahead for the Obamas

November 15, 2008

In case you hadn't heard, Barack Obama's daughters are getting a dog. They were promised one after the election regardless of the outcome and, as the president-elect noted at his first news conference, the subject is generating "more interest on our website than just about anything." He said this in the same somber tone with which he also discussed Cabinet appointments and Iranian nuclear proliferation, referring to "criteria that need to be reconciled" (the need for a hypoallergenic dog and a preference for a shelter dog) and calling it "a pressing issue in the Obama household."

Gratitude with attitude

October 11, 2008

Question: What prize was recently characterized by one of its winners as "mundane"?

Straight talk expressed

September 20, 2008

On Sept. 12, the writer David Foster Wallace, who was 46, died by hanging himself in his Claremont home. A formidable intellect and a virtuosic craftsman whose following seemed cult-like despite being too large to really qualify (several of his books were bestsellers), Wallace had been a professor of creative writing at Pomona College since 2001.

Obsessed? Addicted? It's politics

September 13, 2008

Are you experiencing disturbing, election-related thoughts? When you close your eyes at night, do the colors of CNN's "magic" electoral map dance in your head like red and blue sugarplums? When you get in your car and hear the same talk-radio personalities saying the same things they said the last time you got in the car, do you wonder what day it is? Are you getting carpal tunnel syndrome from hitting "refresh" at political websites and blogs? Are you aware that most of these sites refresh automatically, yet you find yourself clicking the navigation bar because new information about Sarah Palin's other baby, the alien dinosaur, might have surfaced seconds ago and you can't wait that long to read about it? Are you at once totally sick of election news and insatiably hungry for more? As a result, are you sick of yourself?

Greetings from the energized GOP base

September 6, 2008

Sure, I spent much of the last week in a state of apoplexy at the hypocrisy and cynicism of the political process in general and the Republican Party in particular. But I can't say those were the very first thoughts that came to mind when Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was introduced to the world Aug. 29.

A few PUMAs on the loose

August 30, 2008

Now that the Democratic National Convention is over, have all the PUMAs gone back to their dens? Is it safe to jog in the mountains or are rabid, ravenous Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters still crouching in the chaparral, patiently waiting until November, when they'll avenge their candidate in one deadly pounce?

Roy Den Hollander's war on feminism

August 23, 2008

This week, while you were distractedly waiting for one of the presidential candidates to just go ahead and pick Michael Phelps as his running mate, a Manhattan lawyer sued Columbia University for discriminating against men.

In China, a pretty face wins

August 16, 2008

China's never been known for its stellar policies on little girls. But this week, its female trouble in Beijing has been especially vexing. There are, of course, the rumblings about members of the Chinese women's gymnastics team who appear younger than the International Olympic Committee's age requirement of 16. But that controversy has been put on the back burner by the fracas surrounding Lin Miaoke, the 9-year-old who lip-synced "Ode to the Motherland" during the opening ceremony.

I'm nonplussed, maybe

August 9, 2008

Ineed to say something. And even though I'm going to refrain from typing in all caps, I urge you to pretend I did.

All together now

March 29, 2008

You know a nation is in trouble when the worst epithet its citizens can hurl at each other is the title of a folk song: "Kumbaya," an African American spiritual whose name (and chorus) translates from the Gullah dialect as "come by here."

Why we still need Clinton

March 8, 2008

Admit it, Obamaphiles, there was a part of you that was a teeny bit relieved about the outcome of Tuesday's primaries. As much as you think you want Hillary Rodham Clinton out of the picture so you can love your man with uninterrupted, full-time ardor, you're just not quite ready to cut Clinton loose. She's just too fundamental, too necessary, too much like a sofa you think you hate but, while attempting to move it through the doorway, realize is crucial to the look and feel of the room.

Booming sense of pride

March 1, 2008

I'm not going to pretend I knew what Michelle Obama meant when, at a rally in Milwaukee, she said that "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country." She later said she meant she was proud of people "rolling up their sleeves" and "trying to figure this out," which I take to mean she wasn't so sure either.

Finding Mr. Good Enough

February 23, 2008

In the march issue of the Atlantic magazine, sandwiched between an article about Chinese Internet technology and a review of modernist art criticism, lies a seven-page essay called "Marry Him! The Case for Settling." Its author is Lori Gottlieb, a 40-year-old Los Angeles writer and single mother who admits that the idea of finding Mr. Right, a notion she once harbored, was in fact a bill of goods. Young women in search of marriage and family, she writes, should think seriously about resigning themselves to Mr. Good Enough.

Chelsea's rant control

February 9, 2008

Maybe you were privy to an e-mail that was circulated, perhaps, by Chelsea Clinton this week. According to a post Tuesday by Emily Bazelon of the online magazine Slate, the e-mail's subject heading was "a must read ... send to every woman you know." The body of the e-mail was a pro-Hillary screed by the famous 1960s- and 1970s-era feminist Robin Morgan (author of the iconic "Sisterhood Is Powerful" anthologies) called, "Goodbye To All That (#2)." The essay was dated Feb. 2 and appeared (and can still be read) on the website for the Women's Media Center, a nonprofit feminist media watchdog organization that Morgan helped found.

News from the Department of Depression

February 2, 2008

Misery really does love company. How else to explain our endless fascination with studies about why it's so much easier to worry than be happy? In the last few years, researchers have provided us with all manner of mood-related news, much of which has gotten more ink than civil unrest in Third World countries (and no wonder; that stuff is really depressing).

A house is more than an ATM

January 26, 2008

If real estate in 2008 has a fashion corollary, it's the Member's Only jacket. Like those elasticized, cotton/poly zip-ups that were all the rage in the 1980s, houses and condos -- at least those purchased in the last few years -- have gone from must-have items to invitations for public mockery.

High-definition anxiety

January 19, 2008

Say what you will about society's shallow preoccupation with physical appearance, no one can accuse us of not sweating the details. Never was this more clear to me than a few years ago, when I visited a "laser spa" at a dermatologist's office in the hope of lightening a small (and, in retrospect, inconsequential) scar on my knee. Without looking at my chart, the porcelain-skinned, flawlessly made-up "laser spa technician" led me into the treatment room, gestured toward a hulking machine worthy of the Starship Enterprise, glanced up at me and asked, "Just your face today?"

Hillary's gotta have it

January 12, 2008

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton may have clawed her way out of an abyss in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, but the shadows over her campaign are a reminder that the path she's forging is still in the deep woods.

Leno writes a wrong

January 5, 2008

In hopes of learning the true -- and possibly mystical -- value of writers, I did something Wednesday I hadn't done in years. I watched the "Late Show With David Letterman" and "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" all the way through (thanks to DVR technology). The occasion, of course, was the programs' return to the air after two months off because of the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike.

The gift card shuffle

December 29, 2007

Who cares that holiday spending fell short of expectations this season? The real shopping is happening right now.

Tracking the mild coyote

December 22, 2007

In the last few weeks, a buzz has developed around a weblog called the Daily Coyote. It features the comments and photographs of Shreve Stockton, a 30-year-old woman living in a one-room cabin in an undisclosed "town of 300 people" in Wyoming. The focus of the blog is Charlie, a 9-month-old coyote that Stockton took in when he was orphaned shortly after birth. Feeding him goat's milk from syringes and then baby bottles (he promptly chewed the nipples off), Stockton has raised him from a tiny fluff ball that cried unless he could sleep in her bed to a long-snouted, giant-eared, 25-pound almost adult coyote that still sleeps in her bed. Oh, and her cat, Eli, sleeps there too.

Knocked up but not out

December 15, 2007

When I was in high school during the Reagan years, teen pregnancy wasn't just taboo, it was the worst possible situation you could find yourself in. Equal parts personal tragedy and quasi-criminal act, getting knocked up (not to be confused with knocking someone else up, which might have been a tiny bit cool) was the ultimate wrong move -- not least because it was preventable in so many ways.

Save the world: stay married

December 8, 2007

The American obsession with striking out on our own, with poster children as varied as John Wayne and Mary Tyler Moore, appears to be at odds with our other current obsession: saving the planet.

The Red Cross' latest emergency

December 1, 2007

I just took an informal survey and discovered that a lot of people are under the impression that the American Red Cross is a religious organization. Maybe it's the cross that's throwing them (though it's really more of a plus sign), or maybe it's the fact that the 126-year-old disaster relief agency acted more like the morality police than an international humanitarian organization this week. After losing two presidents in the last six years -- Bernadine Healy resigned in 2001 amid accusations about the mishandling of donations for 9/11 victims; Martha J. Evans stepped down in 2005 after the Red Cross' response to Hurricane Katrina was deemed inadequate -- yet another leader has made a scandalous departure.

No more reading the readers

November 24, 2007

One of the many uses of air travel is the opportunity it provides to take a snapshot of the public's reading tastes. Sure, bestseller lists rank what's popular, but if you want to do more detailed market research -- to know what kinds of people are reading what kinds of books, and how many pages into them they fall asleep -- there is no better vantage point than the aisle of a jetliner. It is from there that my extremely scientific research has produced data suggesting the following: Readers of mass-market thrillers often wear Dockers and polo shirts bearing company logos; readers of books like "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" can often be found in business class or first class (it works, folks!); and, almost without exception, there will be a young person in the last row traveling with nothing but a knapsack and reading Camus for the explicit purpose of striking up a conversation with a sexually desirable fellow passenger.

Pictures imperfect

November 17, 2007

Readers of this newspaper were mesmerized this week by staff photographer Luis Sinco's two-part series about Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller, the man behind his now famous portrait, "Marlboro Marine." Taken in 2004 during the battle of Fallouja, the photograph shows a weary Marine staring into the morning sun. His face is smeared with mud, the bridge of his nose is bloodied, and a cigarette dangles from his lips with a Bogart-style insouciance we rarely see anymore.

Things have never been better for kick-ass bloviators.

November 3, 2007

Is it just me, or has it become super-cool to be a blowhard? Everywhere I turn, it seems someone's speaking a bit too loudly, going on slightly too long and imparting ideas dressed up with dropped names, self-serving anecdotes and sanctimonious chest-thumping. And you should hear what I run into when I leave my house.

Cliche and cataclysm

October 27, 2007

Whenever California burns or shakes or collapses in mudslides, a cavalcade of familiar noir-isms comes along for the ride. Social critics wax nihilistic about impermanence as a permanent state of mind. Inevitably, Joan Didion quotes blow in like the Santa Anas themselves, offering up heavy doses of the line about the winds forcing an acceptance of "a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior." Inevitably, references will be made to Nathaniel West's "The Day of the Locust," to Raymond Chandler's "Red Wind," even to Steely Dan lyrics.

The Porn Age's unsexiness

October 20, 2007

It's been a tough couple of weeks for porn. On Oct. 12, two Arizona men were sentenced to more than five years in federal prison for generating pornographic e-mail spam, a venture in which they'd sent out millions of e-mails and earned more than a million dollars.

Did 9/11 kill feminism?

October 6, 2007

Because I seem to be one of an ever-dwindling handful of women under 50 who still call themselves feminists (and, therefore, am allowed to make fun of feminists with impunity), let me say this: Anyone who blames the weird, conflicted state of contemporary womanhood on the cultural fallout of 9/11 isn't just burning her bras but smoking them.

Live and let live -- nah . . .

September 22, 2007

As the proposed two-year moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in South Los Angeles wends its way through the City Council, the zoning debate over a long-planned Orthodox synagogue continues to simmer in Hancock Park. In both cases, the hullabaloo can be heard for miles. What can be learned from this? Not much other than a) if there's anything we fear more than poor people, it's poor people with high cholesterol, and b) freedom of traffic flow trumps freedom of religion. And, let's face it, we're not even too sure about those.

Should kids be seen?

September 15, 2007

On Wednesday, CBS will premiere "Kid Nation," a reality show that puts 40 youngsters, ages 8 through 15, in a New Mexico "ghost town" for 40 days without electricity, indoor plumbing or adult supervision. While six weeks off the grid may sound like exactly what today's over-mediated, nature-phobic, hyper-parented kids need most, some people are suggesting that the finer points of the arrangements are more reminiscent of "Oliver Twist" than a Sierra Club camping trip.

Defending Jerry Lewis

September 8, 2007

I never thought I'd find myself defending Jerry Lewis. Like a lot of people of my generation (and, unless you live in France, the one before that and quite possibly the one before that), my brain just isn't wired to appreciate the charms of his act, which has always struck me as about as close to dental drilling as comedy can get. But now that we've spent the better part of a week chastising the 81-year-old for saying, in the 18th hour of his Labor Day Muscular Dystrophy telethon, all or most of the verboten word "faggot," part of me is feeling just a wee bit French.

Our wonder of Wonder Bread

September 1, 2007

As a cultural icon, Wonder Bread has always been pretty tiresome. Occupying that dismal, overhyped semiotic space between authentic Americana and ironic pop artifact, its one of those products (see also Spam and Pez) that's been usurped by its own kitsch factor. For every middle-aged cornball who tries to capture his lost youth with mawkish allusions to Wonder Bread, there's a tattooed hipster ironically wearing a Wonder Bread T-shirt. And you kind of want to kill both of them.

American Apparel's ick

August 25, 2007

I've been looking at American Apparel's advertisements for years now, and I'm still not sure what I think about them.

Death by numbers

August 18, 2007

On any given day, an average of 148,000 people will die. That means over a million people have died in the last week. Nearly 5 million have died since around this time last month, which, incidentally, was exactly when we were briefly bombarded with the news that 199 people were killed in a Brazilian airliner crash.

When Hillary met Robert

August 11, 2007

When letters written to a friend by a college-aged Hillary Rodham resurfaced in the news a few weeks ago, her mention of a certain "Dartmouth boy" with whom she spent an evening in 1966 piqued notable interest. But last week, the New York Times reported that the mystery date was none other than Robert Reich, former secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton. In a post on his video blog, Reich called the encounter a "presidential summit" ("She was the president of her freshman class at Wellesley, and I was president of my sophomore class at Dartmouth," he explained.) and said they went to the Michelangelo Antonioni film "Blow Up."

The case for conspiracies

August 4, 2007

Since the May release of his 1,612-page book, "Reclaiming History," criminal prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi has been appearing on everything from C-Span to "The Colbert Report" telling the world that JFK's death had nothing to do with a government conspiracy. By most accounts, he's made a pretty airtight case.

The little black dress of 'responsibility'

July 14, 2007

IN CASE YOU haven't heard, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa takes full responsibility for his relationship with Telemundo newscaster Mirthala Salinas. Not some responsibility, not partial responsibility, not indirect responsibility. Full.

Little voices of distraction

July 7, 2007

HAS THE WHOLE country been sucking on helium balloons?

Who killed Antioch? Womyn

June 30, 2007

ON JUNE 12, the board of trustees of Antioch College, the famously countercultural institution in Yellow Springs, Ohio, announced that the campus would shut down next year. The decision is a result of declining enrollment, insufficient alumni support and facilities so neglected that, according to several reports, some buildings don't have hot water. Earlier this year, a number of faculty members were laid off. Meanwhile, student enrollment, which had been about 2,000 in the college's 1960s heyday, has dwindled to about 400.

40-love, or 20-love?

June 23, 2007

A "GREAT SOCIAL experiment" has commenced on Monday nights on NBC: a reality show called "Age of Love." The idea is to find a mate for Australian tennis star Mark Philippoussis, a 6-foot-5 former GQ cover boy who, according to the show, "has everything except someone to share his life with."

Our blond obsession, from Di to Paris

June 16, 2007

ADMITTEDLY, there's something uncanny about the publication of "The Diana Chronicles," Tina Brown's book about the princess of Wales, just as America's own blond headline-grabber, Paris Hilton, was making her way (back) to jail. It makes it too tempting to draw all sorts of parallels between the two women. And we all know who wins that contest.

Down the aisle and over the top

June 9, 2007

I JUST TYPED "bride" into the search engine on Amazon.com and got 132,398 results. Some referred to fiction titles like "Brideshead Revisited," but the vast majority were nonfiction field guides to femininity. There was "The Conscious Bride," "The Buff Bride," "Chicken Soup for the Bride's Soul" and something called "And the Bride Wore White: 7 Secrets to Sexual Purity." And that was just from the first few pages of the list.

Dr. Death, American icon

June 2, 2007

I'VE ALWAYS BELIEVED that someday there will be a Jack Kevorkian postage stamp. Granted, it will be a first-class stamp that costs $3; that's how far into the future we're talking. But considering we've already had a Richard Nixon stamp, who says you need charisma to grace the upper right corners of America's envelopes?

Without smoking, films lose some fire

May 19, 2007

THE PORTRAIT photographer Marion Ettlinger once told me that the worst thing to ever happen to her art form was the demise of smoking. A cigarette, after all, not only gives a subject something to do with his hands, it seems to provide an uncanny cure for camera shyness, allowing a facial expression and a physical posture to integrate into some ineffable moment of truth.

Does getting him a beer count as work?

April 28, 2007

IF YOU'RE ONE of those women for whom the only hobby more satisfying than aromatherapy wreath-making is complaining about how men don't work hard enough, I'm afraid your lament license has just been revoked.

Why doesn't Harvard love me?

April 9, 2007

IN THE LAST few weeks, the anxiety of high school seniors awaiting news of their college fates seems to have spilled over into the general population. It's easy to see why. UCLA received more than 50,000 applications, more than any other university in the country, and accepted just 11,837 of them. Harvard turned down 91% of about 23,000 hopefuls, 1,100 of whom had perfect SAT math scores. Acceptance rates for Stanford, Yale and Columbia were 10.3%, 9.6%, and 8.9%, respectively. That means thousands of valedictorians and people with grade-point averages of 4.0 or higher were passed over in favor of whatever form of superhuman DNA now constitutes a worthy Ivy Leaguer.

Dreaming your dream house

March 26, 2007

I HAD THE DREAM again the other night, the "extra room" dream. I walked out of my bedroom and instead of being deposited into the living room, which adjoins my bedroom in real life, I entered a long hallway that led to at least two or three other rooms I'd never seen before. "Wow," I thought. "My house is so much bigger than I thought! What's with all the bellyaching about having no space for guests? And why have I been using my sun porch as an office/dining room/tool shed?"

Documentaries or propaganda?

March 19, 2007

IN CASE YOU haven't noticed, documentaries are hot. No longer the domain of university film leagues and vintage un-P.C. jokes — "How many lesbians does it take to screw in a light bulb? One to turn the bulb and 20 to make a documentary about it" — nonfiction films are cheap to make and increasingly free of the esoteric artiness, and sometimes outright pretentiousness, that gave the genre its elitist reputation.

Sleep at your own risk

March 12, 2007

YESTERDAY marked the start of daylight saving time, a month early this year. The theory is that it will help conserve energy, but most of us know this is part of a vast conspiracy (possibly the work of government officials who know all about those aliens who come into our bedrooms and probe us) to keep us from getting enough sleep.

Echo Park in Mexico

February 24, 2007

I SPENT LAST Sunday in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, with a group of more than 500 Americans gawking at the designer homes of other Americans.

Fame-iness

February 17, 2007

WHY IS IT THAT MOST celebrities in the culture today are people I've never heard of? I always thought fame had to do with being well known to the public, with being easily recognized on the street, with being, you know … famous.

I'm with Cupid

February 10, 2007

WHAT HOLIDAY is dreaded more than Valentine's Day? Not enough of an excuse to eat a big meal or take a day off from work, but more than just a vehicle of the greeting card industry, it's an anxiety trigger of the most insidious order. So cloaked in cheesy packaging it makes Groundhog Day look downright sacred, this annual nod to Cupid is a cultural mandate not only to have a nervous breakdown but to feel like an idiot for doing so.

What Hillary's humor reveals

February 3, 2007

THIS WEEK, Hillary Clinton tried out a joke in Iowa. "We face a lot of evil men," she told voters in Davenport. "People like Osama bin Laden come to mind. And what in my background equips me to deal with evil and bad men?" Clinton then smiled big and chortled, cueing the audience that this was not an oral presentation in a women's studies class but, indeed, a joke.

Doggy gentrification

January 27, 2007

COYOTES MAY have invaded the otherwise orderly confines of Hancock Park adjacent, but where I live, in Echo Park, we've got an even more vexing problem: domestic dogs.

Wanna be happy? Expect the worst

January 20, 2007

WHEN PEOPLE ask me why I'm so negative, I always tell them I'm simply looking out for my best interests and everyone else's. Like instant mashed potatoes (which, let's face it, are often better than real mashed potatoes), negativity gets a bad rap. Everywhere you look, someone's waxing fustian about the power of positive thinking.

Adam Carolla's genius -- spoiled

January 13, 2007

THE TIME HAS COME to talk about Adam Carolla. Because you're reading the Op-Ed page of the Los Angeles Times, there's a good chance you're only vaguely aware of him as a host of cable shows you don't like or radio programs you don't tune in to. Maybe you've seen the bus ads for KLSX radio's "The Adam Carolla Show," which bill him as an "American Genius." You probably thought this was idiotic hyperbole. I'm here to tell you it's not. I'm also here to tell you not to listen to his show. Not now.

The books that read women

January 6, 2007

Sprinkled among the novels and political tracts I received for Christmas was a clothbound piece of candy called "The Female Thing." It was written by Laura Kipnis, a Northwestern University professor best known for 2003's "Against Love: A Polemic," and its cover is a frontal photo of a woman's toned, depilated thighs, hips and belly, one hand posed sassily on her hip and the other holding a thin leaf over her privates. Naturally, I plucked it from the stack immediately, leaving Richard Ford and Jimmy Carter to lie in pitiable wait.

Half the resolution is optimism

December 30, 2006

AS WILL BE reported ad nauseum over the next few days, one of the most common New Year's resolutions is "get in shape." Exercise demands many things — patience, discomfort, the ability to ignore people who make weird humming sounds on the StairMaster — but the main requirement is time. So, needless to say, I was elated when my boyfriend showed me an ad for the ROM (Range of Motion) cross-training machine that he'd torn from an in-flight magazine.

As the solstice turns

December 23, 2006

MOST CLICHES, particularly those related to Los Angeles, are rooted in some semblance of reality. But the notion that the L.A. region is a vast strip mall whose only outdoor attractions involve surfing and driving around in convertibles has always irked me. Last month in Ojai, which is close enough to the city that you'd think people would know better, a woman who knew I was from L.A. saw my dog sniffing some tree roots and said, "I bet he doesn't get to do that very often."

Shopping for Person X

December 16, 2006

THE MORE WE LEARN about our loved ones, the less we know what they want from life — not to mention for the holidays. According to a new study, this is the reason couples give each other such lame gifts. In what won't come as a surprise to at least half the people having meltdowns in department stores this weekend, researchers have found that the chances of selecting a gift that the recipient actually wants run in inverse proportion with our degree of intimacy with that person.

My dinner with Joni

December 9, 2006

IT'S ALMOST ALWAYS a bad idea to meet your heroes. No matter what variety of fan you are — there are two kinds: those who innocently hang posters on the wall and those for whom the idol's life and work has been permanently absorbed into the bloodstream — meeting an object of devotion comes with a terrible risk. Having elevated them to a level where there's barely any oxygen left, they have no place to go but down.

Meghan Daum: The State of Student Activism

October 14, 2006

THE EVENTS at Columbia University on Oct. 4, in which about a dozen students stormed a stage where the founder of an anti-illegal immigration group was speaking, didn't exactly resemble those of April 1968. There were no arrests, no soundtrack by the Grateful Dead, no occupation of the president's office. But considering that most young people are considered to be politically apathetic, you have to credit the Chicano Caucus and the International Socialist Organization for trying.

Meghan Daum: $4k Cat Is Nothing to Sneeze At

October 7, 2006

IT IS A TRUTH universally acknowledged that cats make some people sick. As a person who would no sooner pet a cat than stick her hand in a tree shredder, I consider this a law of nature.

Meghan Daum: Finally, It's Dad's Fault

September 9, 2006

THERE WAS some dark poetic justice to a study released this week finding that fathers over 40 were six times more likely to produce autistic children than fathers under 30. As grim a subject as autism can be, the idea that, for once, fathers rather than mothers are seen as responsible for abnormalities in children — because of age, no less — was nothing short of revelatory.

Coulter's a satirist -- really?

June 24, 2006

LIFE IS HARD for satirists. Like high school poets or people who get aroused when they put on furry mascot costumes, no one understands them. Back in 1729, Jonathan Swift was almost universally reviled when he suggested, in "A Modest Proposal," that the antidote to urban squalor was to eat the children of poor Irish immigrants and use their skin to make "admirable gloves for ladies and summer boots for fine gentlemen." If only Fox News had been around; Sean Hannity would have dined out (so to speak) for weeks on the skirmish.