Kathleen Parker Columns

IRS, AP scandals bring tea partyers, ‘lamestream media’ together

Kathleen Parker — Tue, 14 May 2013 23:18:00 GMT

Breaking news: Conservative organizations suddenly have found common cause with one of their favorite objects of contempt — the benighted Mainstream Media.

Or as the tea party queen and former Alaska governor likes to put it, the “lamestream media.”

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Yes, Ted Cruz is Hispanic ‘enough’

Kathleen Parker — Tue, 07 May 2013 23:26:00 GMT

Enough with this “enough” business.

Latest to the question of whether a person is sufficiently identifiable as belonging to a particular demographic is Ted Cruz — the conservative Texas senator who happens to be of Hispanic descent.

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Prude or prudent? The debate over access to Plan B

Kathleen Parker — Sat, 04 May 2013 00:02:00 GMT

They lost me at the word “women.”

As so often happens in contemporary debate, arguments being proffered in support of allowing teenagers as young as 15 (and possibly younger) to buy the “morning-after pill” without adult supervision are false on their premise.

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Bush’s legacy is more than Iraq

Kathleen Parker — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 01:35:00 GMT

In a reprieve from the horror of the most recent terrorist attack, the nation’s attentions turned to the man who declared the war on terror, George W. Bush.

During Thursday’s dedication of his presidential library at Southern Methodist University, nary a word was spoken about the most controversial aspect of his tenure, the invasion of Iraq. All living presidents were in attendance and made only generic references to mistakes and regrets familiar to all. Of course Bush famously acknowledges no mistakes or regrets but rather bequeaths judgment to history and self-doubt to those of lesser conviction.

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The terror of not knowing

Kathleen Parker — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:13:03 GMT

As the manhunt for the Boston bombers reached its climactic conclusion, Americans of all hues and backgrounds heaved a sigh of relief. Thank goodness it wasn’t . . . fill in the blank:

● a white Christian from the South;

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Forgiving a cheater requires spousal permission

Kathleen Parker — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 01:00:37 GMT

CHARLESTON, S.C.

As the reporter said to the novelist: Why bother to make stuff up?

For stories and characters, one needs only a pair of walking shoes in this city, where recent attentions have turned to two salacious stories. One concerns a murder-for-hire plot involving a banker, his wife, his lover’s ex-husband and his ex-lover’s husband’s cellmate. Not to be confused with his soul mate.

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The day after the Boston bombings

Kathleen Parker — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 23:20:17 GMT

You know the feeling. You wake up filled with dread but, still groggy, you can’t put your finger on the reason.

Possibilities flitter across the landscape of near-consciousness: An exam? A deadline? A speech? What day is it?

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Beauty and the beast

Kathleen Parker — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:54:02 GMT

The recent kerfuffle over a secret recording of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s campaign strategy meeting, which focused on opposition research about a likely opponent, actress Ashley Judd, has divided observers into two groups.

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The balm of gun control

Kathleen Parker — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 23:56:07 GMT

The biggest obstacle to the Obama administration’s push for tighter gun control may be its own best argument: Newtown.

This is because nothing proposed in the gun-control debates would have prevented the mass killing of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and everybody knows it. At best, tighter gun laws will make us feel better.

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Leaning on the world to save women and girls

Kathleen Parker — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 23:59:00 GMT

NEW YORK

The striking juxtaposition of the preternaturally perfect Angelina Jolie, waifish and wispy in a ghostly gown, and the scrappy Pakistani schoolgirl Malala, her face cruelly misshapen by the effects of a Taliban bullet to the head, captures the confluence of feminine power assembled here to “lean on” the world to save women and girls.

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A monument to reconciliation

Kathleen Parker — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 23:42:04 GMT

CAMDEN, S.C.

It isn’t often that one gets to hear both the strains of “Dixie” and an African drum concert in the same public square. Nor, usually, are statue unveilings the riveting stuff of storytelling.

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For Hillary Clinton, the time may finally be right

Kathleen Parker — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 00:09:00 GMT

No matter what Barack Obama does, he cannot escape the shadow of his former political opponent.

Hillary Clinton, back from her global travels visiting places and peoples hardly heard of on this continent, is stealing the spotlight without even touching the stage.

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Steubenville and the online bystander effect

Kathleen Parker — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 23:26:11 GMT

The recent rape conviction of two teenagers, one of whom also distributed a photo and sent cruel text messages about their victim, has captured the “bystander effect” in graphic and nauseating detail.

The bystander effect is the psychological term coined after Kitty Genovese was raped and murdered outside her New York apartment building in 1964. As the story unfolded, neighbors ignored her screams during three attacks over a 30-minute period.

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Silent on rape no more

Kathleen Parker — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 00:14:07 GMT

Mariska Hargitay, better known as “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” detective Olivia Benson, is the human intersection of life and art.

Precisely, the line between the fictional role she plays and the role she has carved out in real life is approximately a hair’s breadth. The passion that television viewers witness on the popular crime show — the rage, the disgust, that curled lip, the twitching eye — may be part of the actor’s toolbox, but it’s no act.

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Media myopia in Rome

Kathleen Parker — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 23:09:59 GMT

All things considered, I’d rather be in Rome. Isn’t everyone?

Tout le journalism monde has descended on Rome since Pope Benedict XVI’s surprise retirement last month. The ensuing Vatican intrigue has been appropriately sumptuous: Was it the gay cabal? Blackmail? Did the butler do it?

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The optical illusion of dinner with your adversaries

Kathleen Parker — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 00:59:16 GMT

The media love optics, and no one understands this better than President Obama.

Thus, he invited a gang of Republican senators to din-dins at the swank (and legendary) Jefferson Hotel, one of the city’s more discreet (and expensive) gathering places.

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The mommy war that no one will win

Kathleen Parker — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 00:07:38 GMT

Excuse me while I roll my eyes over the latest “mommy war.”

It’s not that I don’t care about the substance. It’s because I’ve lived long enough to know how this turns out. Some wars can’t be won, because to the victor go spoils no one really wants. And the children always lose.

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Why the ‘threat’ on Bob Woodward matters

Kathleen Parker — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 00:50:00 GMT

To the world beyond the Beltway, it might not mean much that Bob Woodward of the famed Watergate duo went public with his recent White House run-in.

This would be an oversight.

It also may not mean much that the White House press corps got teed off when they weren’t allowed access to President Obama as he played golf with Tiger Woods. This, too, would be an oversight.

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Michelle Obama’s wings

Kathleen Parker — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 01:05:00 GMT

If second-term presidents feel liberated by reelection to pursue bolder agendas, first ladies often become more comfortable to be their own person.

Witness Laura Bush, who in her husband’s second term discovered that she, too, had a voice and a bully pulpit. Seemingly overnight, she transformed herself from librarian to liberator, becoming a voice for oppressed women — from advocating for Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratic leader then under house arrest, to spearheading a women’s health movement across the Middle East.

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Sensitivity training that leaves a listener numb

Kathleen Parker — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 00:39:47 GMT

First, they came for the drones.

No, not the unmanned kind that kill strangers from a safe distance but the sort who sit in meeting rooms and repeat slogans until they absorb the proper way of thinking. The killers, figuratively speaking, are the diversity trainers who numb the human mind with slogans and rote instruction on emotional correctness.

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RINOs need to take back the Republican Party

Kathleen Parker — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 01:11:57 GMT

RINO-hunting, the long-popular political sport that morphed in 2008 into a sort of hysteria-driven obsession, lately has become a suicide mission.

RINO, of course, refers to Republicans In Name Only and is the pejorative term used against those who fail to march in lockstep with the so-called conservative base. I used “so-called” because, though the hard-right faction of the party tends to be viewed as The Base, this isn’t necessarily so. My guess is there are now more RINOs than those who, though evangelical in their zeal, are poison to their party’s ability to win national elections.

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Guns are a loaded issue in the South

Kathleen Parker — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 00:34:00 GMT

COLUMBIA, S.C.

When President Obama said in his State of the Union address that “this time is different,” referring to his push for tighter gun-control laws, he wasn’t just whistling Dixie.

Analysts seeking insight into the gun debate need look no further than the land of cotton, where nothing is ever forgotten. In a matter of days, citizens and lawmakers on both sides of the gun issue have advanced laws to:

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‘The Feminine Mystique’ at 50

Kathleen Parker — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 01:16:17 GMT

Now is the time for all good women to pay homage to Betty Friedan, who 50 years ago wrote the game-changing manifesto “The Feminine Mystique.”

With that book, Friedan helped propel a revolution led by, of all people, unhappy housewives.

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Hillary Clinton and the ghosts of Benghazi

Kathleen Parker — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 01:07:24 GMT

We may never know exactly what happened in Benghazi, Libya, the night Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that our response was short of optimal.

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Silenced no more

Kathleen Parker — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 00:34:42 GMT

When Burma’s Zin Mar Aung was placed in solitary confinement in 1998 for trying to organize students, Bill Clinton was president of the United States.

When she was released, Barack Obama was in the Oval Office.

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