Bloodless coup Now, I’m a good girl. I’m no menstrual activist. You won’t catch me at a rally swinging nunchucks made of tampons or at a roundtable discussion of store-bought panty liners vs. reusable organic cotton pads. I’m not one to make waves. But the new extended-cycle oral contraceptive pill that suppresses the period indefinitely […]
Jennifer Loviglio
Posted inNews & Opinion
The XX Files – 4.26.06
The Condi man can “I have a crush on her,” my husband said one Sunday morning last spring while pouring batter on the waffle iron. That kind of comment would normally disturb me, but he was talking about someone on TV. Just a harmless fantasy crush, the kind of thing that keeps a marriage lively. […]
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The XX Files – 4.12.06
The Mommy Crap Although the media keeps hammering away at the idea — and some may enjoy imagining a catfight — there aren’t any Mommy Wars. Sorry to disappoint you. The news from the reproductive front is that there are no bonbon-flinging, manicured, stay-at-home mothers screeching “neglectful bitch” at briefcase-wielding full-time working mothers who are, […]
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The XX Files 3.29.06
I learned at home that you can’t make fun of your parents. I learned at school that you can’t make fun of your teacher. But it was Mad Magazine that taught me the most important lesson of all: you can make fun of the president. In the circumscribed world of a child, there are few […]
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The XX Files 2.22.06
The people are leaving. They’re packing up their cars and pulling their kids out of school, and they’re leaving and leaving and leaving. They’re looking for work. An average of nearly 1.7 million people has left the state in the past nine years, according to the Manhattan Institute. That’s nearly 200,000 — almost as much […]
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The XX Files 2.8.06
If 80 percent of Americans have Katrina fatigue, the nation’s level of Frey fatigue must be reaching the high 90s. And yet the debate about whether James Frey’s memoir is truth, lies, lying truths, or truthy lies has fragmented into a million little pieces and is lodged, intractably, in every print, broadcast, and cable outlet. […]
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The XX Files – 1.25.06
Live and let die? Let’s hope the Bush administration got the hint last week. Finally someone — the Supreme Court, specifically — took it to task for overstepping its bounds. The Court, in a 6-3 ruling, pulled the plug on the administration’s program of siccing the Drug Enforcement Agency on Oregon doctors who help terminally […]
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The XX Files – 1.11.06
Layers of liars Maybe they’re not as exciting as the walls in HBO’s “If These Walls Could Talk,” but I’ve got some talking walls of my own. While fixing a hole where the rain got in — and then the ants and small mammals — we gutted the back of our house and decided to […]
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The XX Files – 12.28.05
Whose lovely lady lumps? People say jazz is the only art form invented by Americans, but they’re wrong. Rap is another truly American art form. I’ll never forget the first time I heard Sugarhill Gang’s seminal work, “Rapper’s Delight.” It took a high-school trip to Paris to discover this American treasure. I was in a […]
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XX Files – 12.14.05
Merry Democratsmas With all the gifts the Republicans have been giving Democrats lately, I think we should change Christmas to Democratsmas. I know: there’s been a big hue and cry about taking Christ out of Christmas, and here I am replacing him with Democrats. That’s probably heretical to some. Others might say the energy and […]
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The XX Files 11.30.05
Although there has been tension between science and religion since well before Darwin, passions are running higher than ever. The lines are drawn: you’re either with God or you’re against him. That is, you support teaching intelligent design or you “believe in” evolution, as if it’s some half-cocked theory like, well, ID. You’re either a […]
