I hope that this won’t be a surprise to the reader, but a whole generation has grown up in which lying, deception, and manipulation are just part of the game; a generation where too many people think that responding to a question with, "That depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is" under oath is a sign of cleverness.
-By Clayton E. Cramer

Literature Something Fishy

Many citizens harbour the secret suspicion that politicians are a bunch of truth tellers. The flame of truism burns bright in Shane’s love for Dostoyevsky's kind of Crime & Punishment.
Even now, a great white or a blue pointer was rising from the deep, circling for the kill ... or something worse. Some nameless horror from the primordial depths. A creature of suckered tentacles or poisonous spines. Anyone familiar with the leading personalities of the NSW branch of the Labor Party would know exactly how I felt.
Tony was a tosser and a letch, and his garlic bread was mediocre, but those aren't capital offences. So what if he'd fiddled his taxes and done business with crooks? Start killing people for that sort of thing and you'd have to execute the entire Australian corporate community. Apart from the Murdoch family, of course. And the Packers.
· Murray; Whelan [SMH]
· NSW branch of the Labor Party [SMH]

Critic

A critic, like a reader or a spectator, is allowed to go over the top in wonder and delight, or, if he is a good hater, to make us laugh out loud.
· American Studies [The New Republic]
· US Exams: altering Franz Kafka and sanitizing Aldous Huxley [NY Times]

Searching for Respect

Look at the amount of energy that people invest in the passing on of privilege. A lot of white people object to affirmative action because it is viewed as giving unfair advantages to black people, and they don't perceive the upper middle class's ability to pass on privileges through networks, summer jobs, internships, all kinds of things .
· Privileges [Chronicle]