Being a newspaper columnist is like marrying a nymphomaniac - it's great for the first two weeks.
Lewis Grizzard
1947-1994

Media First thing first: A man exposing himself at the White House

News, it seems, is becoming a lot more like life, just one damn thing after another.
· Good News [NY Times]

All languages seem to contain proverbs along the lines of ‘the best laid schemes of mice and men ...’ By now, the connection between men and mice has become as well-known for its genetic connection as for the failure by a real person to ensure his own life follow a particular pattern. Such attempts invariably come unstuck and the result is either comedy or tragedy

Politics Media Time Capsule: Looking Backward at 2002

Fiddling with the gas mask on her face, the child wishes that Americans back then had paid more attention to the content of communication and less to the technology of it. If the media preoccupations had been different a few decades ago, maybe now she wouldn't have to wear a gas mask every time she went outside.
· Ti me _& Tragedy [Fair]

Lifestyle Life is too hard.

Old folk sayings describe life as "a vale of sorrows," "a woeful trial," "a kick in the teeth," "not worth living," and so on. Like much common wisdom, these sayings turn out to contain more than a little truth.
· Wisdo m [Shouts]

The American psychologist Mary Pipher recently wrote about refugees being resettled in the United States in her book The Middle of Everywhere (Harcourt, 2002). Human beings will not be denied their consolations; and one of the consolations of being poor migrant has always been faith in the fact that while the rich may be more comfortable, they are morally degraded:

She was poor but she was honest,
And unsullied was ’er name,
Till the local squire came courtin’—
Now the poor girl’s lost in shame.

It’s the same the ’ole world over,
It’s the poor what gets the blame.
It’s the rich what gets the pleasure,
Ain’t it all a bloomin’ shame?