PARKER: All the news that's unfit to print
Patrick Witt, who played quarterback for Parkview High in 2005 before transferring to a school in Texas, is in the news again after making headlines about a decision to compete for a Rhodes Scholarship. This time the news is not so flattering, as he is the subject of a New York Times story that essentially indicted and convicted him on an alleged sexual assault charge by an anonymous accuser.
KATHLEEN PARKER: The perils of projection
WASHINGTON — Newt Gingrich's standing ovation Thursday night, when he attacked CNN moderator John King for asking about allegations that Gingrich wanted an "open marriage" with his second wife, told us little about South Carolina, but much about human nature.
KATHLEEN PARKER: Angry women
WASHINGTON — I can't speak for Michelle Obama, but call me an angry white woman. If the first lady isn't angry, she certainly has every right to be.
KATHLEEN PARKER: There was just one Hitch
WASHINGTON — The Republicans' final debate preceding the Iowa caucuses is suddenly uncompelling. There is nothing to do but write about Christopher Hitchens, whose death has made the world immeasurably less interesting.
KATHLEEN PARKER: The GOP's death wish
WASHINGTON — "Anybody but Mitt" has become a familiar mantra throughout the Republican primary campaign. It is also weird and self-defeating.Republicans apparently want to nominate ANYone except the one person who can defeat Barack Obama. And for all the strangest reasons:
KATHLEEN PARKER: The GOP's death wish
"Anybody but Mitt" has become a familiar mantra throughout the Republican primary campaign. It is also weird and self-defeating.
PARKER: Ignorance isn't bliss
WASHINGTON The headline on Democratic strategist Paul Begala's recent Newsweek essay dodged subtlety: "The Stupid Party.""Republicans used to admire intelligence. But now they're dumbing themselves down," was the subhead.. Democrats couldn't agree more. And quietly, many Republicans share the sentiment. They just can't seem to
PARKER: Ignorance isn't bliss
Ignorance isn't bliss, Republicans
PARKER: Cain's smoking gun
Cain's smoking ad: Amateurish, genius or dumb luck?. WASHINGTONHerman Cain's craggy-faced Chief of Staff Mark Block took a drag off a cigarette, blew smoke at the camera and sent the political class into coughing fits.Theories about what Block intended have run the gamut from James Carville's "He was drunk
PARKER: Cain's smoking gun
WASHINGTON—Herman Cain's craggy-faced Chief of Staff Mark Block took a drag off a cigarette, blew smoke at the camera and sent the political class into coughing fits.Theories about what Block intended have run the gamut from James Carville's "He was drunk," to amateurish campaigning, to post-modern genius. Me? I'm leaning toward accidental brilliance.
PARKER: Election process shouldn’t be good TV
WASHINGTONThe operative maxim in cable television can be summed up as follows: Is it good TV?Brilliant is good, but not enough. Attractive is imperative, but not enough. Also needed are tension, conflict and passion. Television is visual storytelling and it doesn't succeed without all elements working in sync with
PARKER: Celebrating the "f" word: Failure
WASHINGTON — By the time Steve Jobs' Wikipedia page had been adjusted to past tense, eulogists had added a footnote to his biography of success. Failure.Jobs, though wildly successful, also failed often and badly. Therein, we note posthumously, lies perhaps the larger lesson of his life: Sometimes you have to fail to succeed.
PARKER: Celebrating the "f" word: Failure
Celebrating another taboo 'F'-word: failure. WASHINGTONBy the time Steve Jobs' Wikipedia page had been adjusted to past tense, eulogists had added a footnote to his biography of success. Failure.Jobs, though wildly successful, also failed often and badly. Therein, we note posthumously, lies perhaps the larger lesson of his life
PARKER: Davis execution barbaric
In my opinion, capital punishment is barbaric, for Troy Davis and all others.
PARKER: Will God be on Perry's side?
Will God be on Perry's side?. That's the mirror-mirror question for Republicans.
PARKER: Untrending Sarah Palin
The latest trend in the media world is "trending." That is, monitoring what people are buzzing about and directing coverage accordingly.
PARKER: Washington's tea becoming old and stale
Take names. Remember them. The behavior of certain Republicans who call themselves tea party conservatives makes them the most destructive posse of misguided "patriots" we've seen in recent memory.
PARKER: A story not quite right
Most would agree that one would have to stoop pretty low to question the story of a man's mother's death.
PARKER: Sometimes it's just best to not share everything
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell says he’d own up if it were his. Jon Stewart says he doesn’t remember his old friend being quite all that!
PARKER: Flushing good water down the drain
NEW YORK — In a slender essay titled "Here Is New York," E.B. White wrote about the implausibility of the great city, mentioning among other things the millions of gallons of water needed each day just so people could brush their teeth.
PARKER: Eat, drink and be on the lookout for big brother
Once upon a time, Ma would say: “Sit up and eat your vegetables.” Pa said: “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
PARKER: Mitt Romney's pre-emptive strike on health care plan
Sitting under the lush palms and blue skies of the richest Americans’ favorite resort — during off-season when the rich wouldn’t be caught dead here, I hastily add — I naturally couldn’t wait to watch Mitt Romney's PowerPoint presentation on health care.
PARKER: What happened to sanity in this country?
NEW YORK — If you really, really dislike Barack Obama, his long-form birth certificate, finally proffered in exasperation, is quite simply a counterfeit.
PARKER: The Donald to the rescue
As the number of Republicans declaring themselves potential presidential candidates has begun to look like a conga line without music, hope lingered that somewhere unnoticed was a brilliant dark horse biding his sweet time.
PARKER: Lend me your tired, your poor, your Yuan
NEW YORK — So why do Republicans hate art, the elderly and children?
PARKER: It's the women, stupid
Whether the topic is Libya’s rebels or Afghanistan’s “reconciliation” with the Taliban, the pivotal question is, or should be: What about the women?
PARKER: A strange battle over improving education
NEW YORK — It would be hard to find two more compelling, formidable women in American public life than South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and fellow South Carolinian and philanthropist Darla Moore.
PARKER: A tale of actual help
SAG HARBOR, N.Y. — Everybody wants to save the children. It’s the cliche that tipped the point that jumped the shark in a perfect storm.
PARKER: Women's lib spawns new breed of conservatives
Now would be a very good time to be a cartoonist. Or perhaps not. As the late cartoonist Doug Marlette frequently lamented, “How do you cartoon a cartoon? We’re living in ‘Toon Town.’”
PARKER: Outgunned by Twitter
It is hard to think largely about the sweep of events when one is reacting instantaneously to breaking ... tweets.
PARKER: Give journalists credit for going to the big story
The turmoil in Egypt has been a lesson in the fragility of a right we so often take for granted: to speak.
PARKER: One little word sometimes can make all the difference
He didn’t say it. That word: “exceptional.” Barack Obama described an exceptional nation in his State of the Union address, but he studiously avoided using the word conservatives long to hear.
PARKER: The outrage industry
As a longtime champion of greater civility in public discourse and one who has led the charge for dialed-back rhetoric, may I respectfully take most of it back?
PARKER: From Russia with envy
NEW YORK — It is bracing, not to mention annoying, laughable and obnoxious, to hear a White House press secretary lectured by a Russian journalist about the parameters of free expression American-style.
PARKER: Better read than dead?
While sorting through the perennial lip-pursing tempest about a certain word in Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” — the “N-word,” as we now say it — I turned for inspiration to the master himself.
PARKER: Everybody needs to just quit with the word play
Words matter.
PARKER: It's grown-up time in America
Thanks to WikiLeaks, even Vlad the Putin can raise an eyebrow and presume to know more about founding American principles, democracy and free speech.
PARKER: Democrats need to listen when the people speak
Two words: Narrative, schmarrative.
PARKER: High-tech lynching, redux
NEW YORK — In 1991, the world divided itself in two camps: those who believed Anita Hill and those who didn’t. I fell somewhere in the middle: She may have told the truth, but so what?
PARKER: With election nearing, the mean girls are out
Fair is foul, and foul is fair. There’s something witchy in the air.
PARKER: 'Inside Job' will make you furious at almost everyone
NEW YORK — If you haven’t been humming tunes from “Les Miserables,” you haven’t seen “Inside Job,” the new documentary about how our economic crisis evolved.
PARKER: Privacy needs rescue from the voyeurs
The suicide of an 18-year-old Rutgers University student following an unimaginable invasion of his privacy has launched an overdue examination of casual — and possibly criminal — disregard for others’ personal space.
PARKER: A nation divided not by politics, but density
NEW YORK — After living in New York City for a few weeks, I’ve reached a few conclusions about the great political divide in America.
PARKER: Crackpot theories show no sign of ending soon
Of course I knew it all along. President Barack Obama is a Kenyan anti-colonialist and that’s why he doesn’t get us. He’s a ticked-off African.
PARKER: Boehner now the un-Obama, and that's good
NEW YORK — How worried are Democrats? V-E-R-Y.
PARKER: An American Dream borne out of one man's heroic act
August finally redeemed itself from shark-jumping hysteria with an original, spontaneous, transcendent event — the accidental intersection of one Antoine Dodson, his sister, her would-be rapist, and some musical magicians who tapped into that uniquely American reservoir of salvation — irreverence.
PARKER: It's time to hit pause button on the outrage
As I was perusing headlines that seem seldom to change -- mosque, immigration, sacred ground, 9/11, more mosque -- an unlikely trio intruded upon my malaise: Paul Newman, Rodney King and John Lennon.
PARKER: It's time to hit pause button on the outrage
As I was perusing headlines that seem seldom to change — mosque, immigration, sacred ground, 9/11, more mosque — an unlikely trio intruded upon my malaise: Paul Newman, Rodney King and John Lennon.
PARKER: Free speech isn't easy, nor is it always sensitive
NEW YORK — It is hard to imagine that anything has gone unsaid about the so-called ground zero mosque, but we seem to be missing an important point.
