Word: essay
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Andrew Ferguson's musings, in "Me Tarzan, You Minivan," that men like sport-utility vehicles while women prefer minivans are full of sound and fury, signifying nothing [ESSAY, Aug. 4]. What Ferguson did get right is that very few SUVs ever perform any task more rugged than driving to the grocery store or picking up kindergartners. But to set up minivans vs. SUVs as a female-male battleground is an exercise in blowing hot air. Ferguson needs to look at the SUV in the lane next to him. The driver is probably not Tarzan at all--it's Jane! MARY...
Nevertheless, the worm has already begun to turn again. Last winter, Whitehead expanded her essay into a book, The Divorce Culture, and all hell broke loose. A New York Times reviewer dubbed Whitehead's treatise a "self-blame book" and mocked its scholarship. Esquire magazine ran the bold-face cover line DIVORCE IS GOOD FOR YOU. In the New York Times, essayist Katha Pollitt took on the new Louisiana law that created "covenant marriage," a more binding vow that can be ended only because of extreme circumstances. "You don't have to be abused or betrayed," Pollitt declared, "to have...
...jells. Take the national debate about divorce. In 1992 Vice President Dan Quayle made his infamous Murphy Brown speech railing against single motherhood and was ridiculed by almost every social observer to the left of Pat Robertson. Less than a year later, social historian Barbara Dafoe Whitehead published an essay in the Atlantic Monthly titled "Dan Quayle Was Right." Citing studies that tracked the development of children raised by single parents, she identified broken families as Public Enemy No. 1, responsible for a generation of sad and angry, underachieving youngsters. In a flash, Whitehead's point of view won converts...
...bottom line is that the campaign is a misfire, full of mixed messages. The last line of the essay in TV Guide, just after the celebration of cerebral-free non-activity, asks the reader to "climb the highest figurative mountaintop and proclaim, with all the vigor and shrillness that made Roseanne a household name, that TV is good." But "Roseanne," an ABC success that ended its run last season, always required a cerebrum for optimum enjoyment...
...other colleges, however, similar changes have not occurred. Princeton and Brown both required a thesis to graduate with honors in English; Cornell requires a 50-page essay Yale requires all seniors to write a 30 to 40 page work