We Continually Want To Unmask

It Is Not That Fathers Are Better Or Worse, Not That They Are More Loved Or Criticized, But Rather That They Are Viewed With Far Less Intensity. There Is No Philip Roth Or Woody Allen Or Nancy Friday Who Writes About Fathers With A Runaway Excess Of Humor, Horror ... Feeling. Most Of Us Let Our Fathers Off The Hook.

She Goes In With A Prejudice And Comes Out With A Statistic.

If There's A Single Message Passed Down From Each Generation Of American Parents To Their Children, It Is A Two-word Line: Better Yourself. And If There's A Temple Of Self-betterment In Each Town, It Is The Local School. We Have Worshipped There For Some Time.

Kerry Asks Americans To Look At The Evidence. Bush Asks People To Believe.

I Am A Member Of A Small, Nearly Extinct Minority Group, A Kind Of Urban Lost Tribe Who Insist, In The Face Of All Evidence To The Contrary, On The Sanctity Of Being On Time. Which Is To Say That We On-timers Are Compulsively, Unfashionably Prompt, That There Are Only Handfuls Of Us In Any Given City And, Unfortunately, We Never Seem To Have Appointments With Each Other.