E.J. Graff

Last week, many in the D.C. elite were chattering about Ron Suskind’s new book, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President. While I’m not going to weigh in on the merits and demerits of the book as a whole — too many people have done that already — I was fascinated […]

Last week I wondered how Elizabeth Warren’s rousing sermon espousing core progressive beliefs, which brought so much joy and hope to the left, would affect those on the right. One libertarian parody was posted by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.com. Here’s how it starts: There is no woman in this country who got hot on her […]

Here’s an interesting take on #OccupyWallStreet from Matt Stoler (which I found via @jayrosen): What these people are doing is building, for lack of a better word, a church of dissent. It’s not a march, though marches are spinning off of the campground. It’s not even a protest, really. It is a group of people, […]

Last week, I discussed some of the fraud and corruption that haunt international adoption. If you’re interested, you should know about Erin Siegal, author of the forthcoming Finding Fernanda, which explores kidnapping, fraud, and endemic corruption in adoptions from Guatemala. For years, that country was one of the top “sending” countries in international adoption — […]

Do you know the “It Gets Better” project? In response to last year’s spate of gay-teen suicides, writer and editor Dan Savage launched a series of online videos in which adults tell teens: Hang on. High school isn’t forever. You will have a good life. Some have been fabulous, burning their way across the Internets; […]

Yesterday, The Washington Post published a nice summary of the various federal lawsuits underway in the court battles over same-sex marriage, a piece occasioned by a panel at the College of William and Mary Law School’s Institute of Bill of Rights Law. The panel, according to reporter Robert Barnes, was debating whether the government’s political […]

Over at TheAtlantic.com, I look into the question of whether openly lesbian Tammy Baldwin can become Wisconsin’s senator. Pop quiz: What’s the ” L-word” that’s likely to hurt her most? Hint: It’s not this one. Here’s an excerpt: In 1998, Tammy Baldwin became the first openly gay candidate to be elected to the U.S. Congress […]

Here’s a follow-up to my mini-review last week of NBC’s The Playboy Club: a Daily Beast article, “My Mom’s Life as a Playboy Bunny,” by Susanna Spier. Spier interviews her mother about what things were really like. Was Hugh Hefner’s comment — that bunnies could be anything they wanted to be — accurate? Ha. We […]

I’ve only been here in Boston for, oh, a couple of decades. While I enjoyed the region’s collective delirium when the Red Sox finally reversed the curse, I’m an October fan, not a real one. But my wife is a real fan, dating back pre-natally. She lives and dies with each Sox at bat. She […]

Last year in a New Yorker blog item, Susan Orleans explored some of the joys of the #hashtag, that funny and versatile little Twitter symbol, which can help you track public discussion of a subject—or make fun of yourself and others. Over the weekend, I was at the Online News Association’s annual conference, #ONA11, where […]