Sotomayor's vainglorious lecture bromide about herself as 'a wise Latina' trumping white men is a vulgar embarrassment - a vestige of the bad old days of male-bashing feminism.

All great stars are competitive. That's a sign of a true artist - if you don't have the fire of competition deep down inside, you're never going to achieve anything. You have to want to be king of the heap.

As a major contemporary composer, Madonna should not let the eye dictate to the ear.

Bisexuality is our best hope of escape from the animosities and false polarities of the current sex wars.

Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist.

It's time for a recovery and reassessment of North American thinkers. Marshall McLuhan, Leslie Fiedler and Norman O. Brown are the linked triad I would substitute for Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, whose work belongs to ravaged postwar Europe and whose ideas transfer poorly into the Anglo-American tradition.

Poetry is the way into a spiritual vision of society and the universe.