Author: Janet Scott Barlow (Janet Scott Barlow)

On a Wednesday in June, it is reported that a woman in Houston, Texas, has methodically drowned her five children in the bathtub. The day after this horrific news, two things happen. First, the woman’s husband—his wife now jailed, his children not yet buried—stands outside his home and, while displaying a framed portrait of his...

“You may look bad, Bill, but we look just plain stupid.” That was the wounded and furious summation of Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen upon Bill Clinton’s inglorious exit from the presidency. Many questions are raised by that single sentence from a lone writer, the first being: Who is the “we” Cohen referred to? His...

Maureen Dowd, premier columnist for the New York Times, is possessed of a rare professional gift: She can be mean (often really mean) and funny (often very funny) at the same time. What’s more, her potent powers of observation and sheer talent as a writer usually combine to mitigate her predictable Washington cynicism. But with...

Last spring, ABC News sent movie heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio to interview Bill Clinton for an Earth Day special, a decision which reflected a lovely symmetry: In terms of human maturation, the 25-year-old actor and the 54-year-old President are approximately the same age (19). Symmetry aside, all hell broke loose. The resultant tempest, played out over...

One sure sign of advancing age is a transition in our perceptions of unchanging events: What was once on some level interesting or amusing is now simply irritating. As a few things become more important, many things become more boring; while there’s more to love, there’s less to like. Time robs us of—or frees us...

Because the New York Times is a continual source of annoyance and amazement to me, I was predictably stunned and incensed to read last May that this most self-important of publications was presenting as news the following information: “[T]here is no evidence of an anti-poor mentality, at least as measured by reported [financial] giving, among...

In my mind’s eye, I have come to see a great arc radiating above the Clinton presidency, an arc of constant existential activity, a zone where effects are received but not transmitted, a curved line on which every American, with the single exception of the President of the United States, occupies a place. One of...

Recently, the New York Times ran an article that described, at some length, California’s latest tourist attraction, a “theme park and dinner theater” called Tinseltown Studios. Located, appropriately, just a stone’s throw from Disneyland, Tinseltown is a $15 million complex that exists for the purpose of “simulating fame.” Purchase your $45 ticket (“designed to look...

Frank Rich, op-ed columnist for the New York Times, is an annoying public presence. He is paid by the Newspaper of Record to work himself into a twice-weekly snit, his love of the suit-state making clear that he would do it all for free if he had to. Rich spends much of his professional time...

A bit of autobiography. I was born and reared in Chicago. I am married to a man of achievement. I have watched my children leave the nest for college. I am highly opinionated and tend to believe that the world would be a better place if more of my fellow citizens agreed with me. I...

Last year, in a span of less than six months, President Clinton vetoed the congressional ban on partial-birth abortion, thereby positioning himself, based on public-opinion surveys of the procedure, as an abortion extremist; and spoke publicly, more than once, about his desire, now or in the future, to adopt a child. (His current position on...

Oh, the tedium. We are confronted, yet again, with the spectacle of the establishment media suffering one of their spasms of professional angst, as they ask each other, with fake drama, what their audience, in genuine anger, frequently asks them: Why do you get so much so wrong so often? For those who have witnessed...

For at least a year now—ever since the evidence became intellectually irrefutable while yet being emotionally deniable—every second sentence written or spoken about Bill Clinton by the dominant media has begun with the word “if.” Reduced to its essence, the two-sentence refrain goes like this: Americans do not believe Bill Clinton. If Bill Clinton can...

Are we all going crazy? A few months ago, I read a newspaper column containing information so shocking yet unsurprising, so awful yet predictable, that I was overcome by emotional vertigo. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, I thought of John and Lawrence, two children I knew long ago, and disorientation was replaced by generalized depression....

Perhaps you heard that Roseanne Barr recently sang the national anthem at a Padres-Reds game in San Diego. If not, then you’re one of maybe three people in America who missed it, so let me fill you in. Looking like she had just rushed over from an all-day garage cleaning, Barr took the field in...

I know three people (and if I alone know three, there must be more of them out there) who think “This Land Is Your Land” is a country song—and one of the three sings it to the tune of “You Are My Sunshine.” Now, it’s a fact that Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs once recorded...

When he was younger, my son would pipe up from time to time with what he called “Scott’s rules to live by,” his distinctly personal little life guides. My all-time favorite, arrived at when he was seven, was “Never get your hair cut by a man named Buster.” But the tidbit I would ponder most...

One afternoon last winter, I was trying on jackets in a department store dressing room when a woman with a child entered the compartment next to mine. The child was cranky; the woman was chatty. Choosing hope over reality, as mothers in chancy situations often do, the woman said, “Be a good boy, Jeffrey. This’ll...

The two most elemental questions raised by the Pete Rose gambling scandal were: do actions have consequences? and do the rules mean anything? With Rose’s suspension from major league baseball, in keeping with the rules of major league baseball, came one answer to both questions: yes. But the affair raised other questions whose answers weren’t...

Is it possible, in 50 words or less, to describe today’s woman, the postfeminist 80’s woman, the woman who will soon become the 90’s woman? I’m glad you asked. The typical American woman in 1989 is divorced, in need of financial guidance, worried about her career, either agonizing about her biological clock or searching out...

The below are little collections of information I picked up from, respectively, Esquire and GQ. The world’s finest ready-made suits are found in America. The world’s most intriguing men’s store is in Italy. The world’s best harmonicas come from Germany.   Fifteen percent of all furs in the United States are sold to males. Some...

Back in September, USA Today (circ. 1,400,000), in its equivalent of the man-on-the-street interview, asked citizens at random, “Do we need a federal death penalty for drug-related murders?” That same week, the Adair County ‘News-Statesman (circ. 3,800; advertising slogan: “The only newspaper in the world that covers Adair County”) asked its man-on-the-street question: “What do...

You are what you eat. Up to a point, I tend to believe that maxim. Because I am unwilling to apply it to my own life, I also tend to resent it. The food police are everywhere, and the harder they work, the less there is to eat. For instance, if you should eat an...

To judge by the tone, content, and amount of recent media coverage of Protestant Fundamentalism in general and television evangelists in particular. Fundamentalists are a collection of interchangeable religious parts that have grouped themselves into a united cultural force which grows stronger and more indivisible by the week. But the conclusion is incorrect because the...

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. For 30 years country music has alternately ignored and embraced that small truth, always bouncing between the apparent threat of extinction and last-minute rescue. And now, after a decade of “evolution” and “transition,” the country music industry again is surprised that the real thing was good enough all...

In the 30 years since it first gained broad popularity, rock ‘n’ roll has put on some show; it has been by turns entertaining, grotesque, energetic, absurd—and always “successful.” There were even times when it had a good beat and you could dance to it. But since the 60’s, the decade of pervasive Relevance, an...