Women who are beautiful or who achieve beauty according to the imposed standards are rewarded; those who cannot or choose not to be beautiful are punished, economically and socially.

I met Muslim immigrants in Brooklyn who were swept up in 9-11 raids, held in abusive conditions, beaten, denied rights. That's how things started in Germany. Guantanamo was modeled after what Stalin developed for the Gulag.

Since Reagan, it's almost impossible to get funding for research on sexual pleasure. You can find sexual behavior research, but not sexual pleasure. And let alone lesbian or homosexual sexuality.

Documentary film without nuanced journalistic sourcing risks being sensational, tendentious or broad-brushed.

Excellence, to me, is the state of grace that can descend only when one tunes out all the world's clamor, listens to an inward voice one recognizes as wiser than one's own, and transcribes without fear.

Liberals roll their eyes about going on "Oprah" to reach a mass audience by using language that anyone can understand even if you majored in semiotics at Yale. We look down on people we don't agree with. It doesn't serve us well.

The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behaviour and not appearance.