Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
"Being wealthy and feeling rich are often inversely correlated. In a room full of rich men, only one doesn’t feel poor by comparison. This lesson is often overlooked in the ongoing debate over income inequality"
Playing fields have long been segregated on the basis of sex. But what happens those whose physiology doesn't match their gender identity? Against whom do they compete? What obstacles do they face? And how are they being treated?
"I want to challenge the received wisdom about difference, diversity and multiculturalism. I want to question what we mean by diversity and contest the claim that racism and multiculturalism are concepts at opposite ends of a pole"
The play, Clybourne Park, has become a cultural fixture during the Obama presidency. It suggests that, when it comes to race in America, not much has changed over the past half-century. "It is the audacity of rage, not hope"
Individually the poor are not too tempting to thieves. Collectively, they provide a juicy target. "The trick is to rob them in ways that are systematic, impersonal, and almost impossible to trace to individual perpetrators"
US reaches tipping point in transition from "mostly white baby boomer culture to globalised multi-ethnic country". What does it mean? Will older Americans balk at paying for a generation who look less like themselves?
"No one knows how many children are sleeping in manholes, or basements, under bridges, or on top of hot water pipes around Ukraine, but the figure is likely to be in the tens of thousands." Theroux seeks some of them out
Notes from a same-sex wedding, three days after Obama's intervention. "A cultural barrier has been crossed, a taboo forever retired. Gays have not claimed marriage; it has claimed us. We are a sideshow, an outlier, no longer"
In Canada, rich and poor sit side by side waiting for treatment in the local public clinic. A good thing. "The health care system constitutes a point of forced solidarity." What's the US equivalent? The courtroom, perhaps?
"The joining of husband and wife yields a more productive firm, because it allows one spouse to specialise in earning income from working in the market, while the other specialises in the domestic sphere." But times change
American citizen of Palestinian descent flies to Israel, aiming to visit sister in West Bank. On landing in Tel Aviv she faces immigration. Despite best preparations, it doesn't go well. Soon she's sent to the "Arab room"
"One day, not long from now, it will be hard to remember what worried people so much about gay and lesbian couples committing themselves to marriage." Eventually the US Supreme Court will "do the right thing", as Obama has just done
"Give us a world where half our institutions are run by women"
"Our desire for praise can be truly satisfied only if we deserve it. No one is satisfied merely to look praiseworthy"
