The Struggle Between Mothers and Daughters
Written on June 29th, 2006June 29, 2006 | Daughters, do you feel that your mother is always criticizing you? Mothers, do you feel that your daughter shuts you out? Do you habitually bicker with each other, yet long for approval and understanding? In her newest book, “You’re Wearing That? Understanding Mothers and Daughters In Conversation,” linguist Deborah Tannen untangles the knots that daughters and mothers tend to get tied up in.
Tannen’s bestseller, “You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation,” brought gender difference in communication style to public awareness. A later book, “The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War on Words,” explored why America seems to make everything a battle, a debate, or a war — and what that costs us as a society.
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The Mommy Wage Gap
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The Electric Kool-Aid Medicine Test
Written on May 24th, 2006May 24, 2006 | In 1954, when the national mood was one of suspicion and conformity, Aldous Huxley wrote, “All … the hallucinogens that ripen in berries or can be squeezed from roots — all, without exception, have been known and systematically used by human beings from time immemorial.”
Ten years later Timothy Leary was fired from Harvard for “systematically using” LSD (admittedly not from a berry or a root) with students. Leary’s sensational promotion of turning on and dropping out closed the door on serious dialogue or research into the potential benefits of psychedelic substances. Yet today, in the midst of the current revival of patriotic and moral paranoia, some are beginning once again to scientifically consider their value as visionary or psychological medicine.
Charles Grob, M.D., is director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine. He conducted the first government-approved psycholobiological research study of MDMA, was the principal investigator of an international project in the Brazilian Amazon of ayahuasca, and is now studying the use of psilocybin with advanced-stage cancer patients. He is editor of “Hallucinogens: A Reader” and recently co-edited, with Roger Walsh, “Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics.”
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Lapham’s Case for Impeachment
Written on March 21st, 2006March 21, 2006
| In November 1972 Richard Nixon won 61 percent of the popular vote, carried 49 of 50 states and won the Electoral College 520-17. Yet only three months later the Senate voted 77-0 to hold hearings investigating the Watergate break-in and its coverup — a bit of petty theft, a campaign dirty trick that could hardly have made the difference in one of the most lopsided elections in U.S. history. A year later the House voted 414-4 that the Judiciary Committee investigate whether there were grounds for impeachment. Three articles of impeachment were eventually approved by the committee, and in August 1974 Nixon resigned before he could actually be impeached.
In 1999 Bill Clinton was acquitted by a vote of the full Senate after being impeached over lying about an extramarital affair.
Today George W. Bush sits apparently shielded from accountability by loyal and unified Republican control of the House and Senate. Bush, who deceived this nation into a catastrophic war and has admitted domestic wiretaps without warrants in clear violation of federal law, has seemed invulnerable to even the possibility of impeachment.
Is the tide finally beginning to turn?
Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper’s Magazine for nearly 30 years, wrote a cover essay for the March issue of the magazine that makes a strong and well-reasoned case for the impeachment of George W. Bush. Lapham has recently shifted roles, becoming editor emeritus so that he can devote himself to editing Lapham’s Quarterly, a new journal about history, while continuing to write his monthly column for Harper’s.
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He Who Cleans the Street, Gets the Vote
Written on February 10th, 2006February 10, 2006
| Editor’s Note: This interview took place before the outbreak of protests against the publishing in Europe of cartoons depicting Mohammed.
Following the electoral victory of Hamas in Palestine, I was struck again by how many lives are devoted to beliefs, agendas and passions about which so many of us remain recklessly ill-informed. Reza Aslan, in his book “No god But God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam” (now out in paperback), and in his commentaries, offers insight informed by an understanding of history. Aslan, who was born in Iran, has dedicated himself to developing an alternative to the widely accepted “clash of civilization” theory that pits East against West in an apocalyptic struggle.
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