We must neither behave as children by resisting honesty, nor allow ourselves to be treated as children by having honesty withheld.

Every third person in the world is a drama queen. And crying 'victim,' especially when you're not really a victim in any real way, feels good. It feels good to cry victim if you're not one.

If you took away the color of Barack Obama's skin, nobody right now would be paying him any attention.

People have been warning us that language was going to the dogs ever since Latin started turning into French. Yet the dogs in question never seem to emerge yelping on the horizon.

Politics is work. Hiphop is music. The idea that hiphop, because it makes the body feel good to move to it and it makes the soul feel good to hear out angry young black men, can be transmuted into changing the world is narcotic but nonsensical. Wherever hiphop is ever "going," we can be sure it will not be in a constructive direction, anymore than fashions in the color of cars. And it shouldn't "concern" us in the least.

Barack Obama's said some very nice things and he says them well. But if you ask me, the reason that we're looking at somebody who is such an inexperienced senator, who has said some very pleasant but not especially sterling or innovative things, the reason that he's considered such a big deal is simply because he's black.

Texting is fingered speech. Now we can write the way we talk.