May 15, 2012
In 1983, Genevieve Cook brought a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream to a Christmas party in the East Village. She left with 22-year-old Barack Obama’s phone number.The lithe Australian assistant teacher at a Brooklyn grade school was soon in a romance...
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May 1, 2012
WASHINGTON — It is an astonishing thing that historians will look back and puzzle over, that in the 21st century, American women were such hunted creatures. Even as Republicans try to wrestle women into chastity belts, the Vatican is trying to muzzl...
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April 10, 2012
WASHINGTON — There was a boys' club, of course, a band of ardent, jockeying disciples. But as his fame grew, the messiah was also surrounded by women and talked about women with great respect. With his father far away, the golden boy was most influe...
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April 3, 2012
When I was 14, I sneaked into the empty bedroom of my scholarly older brother to poke around in his bookcase. Tucked behind his law school tomes and Winston Churchill memoirs, I found the “Story of O.”I was quickly submerged in the submissiv...
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March 27, 2012
When Mike Nichols had his dazzling comedy act with Elaine May, one of their sketches began with a Jewish mother calling her son and saying, “Hello, this is your mother, do you remember me?”
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March 20, 2012
Trust Mitt Romney to be on top of the latest trend of the superrich: the trophy basement. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported on the new fashion to look low-key on the outside while digging deep for opulence — carving out subterranean spaces...
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March 13, 2012
Usually I’m the one musing about the end of men.But this time it was my friend John, who sent me an alarmed e-mail: “Crying Putin, manscara and now mantyhose. We are over.”
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March 6, 2012
As a woman who has been viciously slashed by Rush Limbaugh, I can tell you, it’s no fun.At first you think, if he objects to the substance of what you’re saying, why can’t he just object to the substance of what you’re saying? Wh...
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February 21, 2012
How do you marry God after you’ve kissed the King?Easy. Just ask Dolores Hart.
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February 7, 2012
WASHINGTON — If you want to figure out why Newt Gingrich is still out there grasping for lost power, howling at the moon like King Lear, look to Callista. You can find her anytime standing statue-still on stage next to Newt as he speaks, gazing at h...
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January 31, 2012
MIAMI — What is it with Barack Obama's penchant for getting in tangles with blond politicians on airport tarmacs? Usually, tarmacs are for joyous welcomes or teary goodbyes. But No Drama Obama saves his rare tempests for the runway.
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January 24, 2012
For eight seconds, we saw the president we had craved for three years: cool, joyous, funny, connected. "I, I'm so in love with you," Barack Obama crooned to a thrilled crowd at a fundraiser at the Apollo in Harlem on Thursday night, doing a sedu...
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January 17, 2012
CHARLESTON, S.C. — What a choice we'll have in the fall: one man on a pedestal, another behind a wall.
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January 3, 2012
DES MOINES, Iowa — It's not often that a political wife presents herself as The Decider. There's too much danger of straying into Lady Macbeth territory, as Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton discovered when some sniped that they were wearing the pant...
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December 27, 2011
WASHINGTON — At the end of his life, Charles Dickens did not have great expectations for Christmas. He had separated from his wife, describing his marriage as "blighted and wasted." His mistress was not around. He was disappointed that his...
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December 20, 2011
WASHINGTON — I was intrigued to learn that the president and I have the same favorite new TV series: Showtime's spectacular "Homeland," set right here in the capital.
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December 6, 2011
WASHINGTON — Newt Gingrich's mind is in love with itself. It has persuaded itself that it is brilliant when it is merely promiscuous. This is not a serious mind. Gingrich is not, to put it mildly, a systematic thinker.
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October 18, 2011
WASHINGTON — Hemingway could be hard on women. And women could be hard on Hemingway. I have always been a Fitzgerald girl. What could be more gorgeous than "The Great Gatsby"?
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October 11, 2011
WASHINGTON — Sometimes it feels as though I spend half my time working and the other half trying to ameliorate the strain of working.
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October 4, 2011
WASHINGTON — Maybe it's the Mario Lanza in him. But Nino Scalia relishes being operatically imprudent. The Supreme Court justice's latest supreme lapse of judgment involves poking his nose in a local legal wrangle about the place where I slept for f...
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September 20, 2011
WASHINGTON — There are two American archetypes that were sometimes played against each other in old Westerns. The egghead Eastern lawyer who lacks the skills or stomach for a gunfight is contrasted with the tough Western rancher and ace shot who has...
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September 13, 2011
WASHINGTON — Wow, what a relief. The president was strong and House Republicans were conciliatory. There was only one teensy-weensy problem: The president is weak and House Republicans are obstructionist.
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September 6, 2011
WASHINGTON — One day during the 2008 campaign, as Barack Obama read the foreboding news of the mounting economic and military catastrophes that W. was bequeathing his successor, he dryly remarked to aides: "Maybe I should throw the game."
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August 30, 2011
Why is it not a surprise to learn that Dick Cheney's ancestor, Samuel Fletcher Cheney, was a Civil War soldier who marched with Sherman to the sea? Scorched earth runs in the family. Having lost the power to heedlessly bomb the world, Cheney has turned hi...
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August 24, 2011
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama was on the way to Alpha when a plea came for him to be, well, more alpha.
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