Lev Raphael's Blog, page 61

Who Will I Be Married To?

With the Supreme Court scheduled to hear two same-sex marriage cases, I'm wondering, like everyone else, what their decisions will be. I'm also wondering what I'll call the guy I've been with for 28 years, and the question has bedeviled me for as long as we've been together.



I never considered "lover," because our commitment was for life, and the word felt too temporary. Back in our early years together I tried "partner." Since we had collaborated on more than one book and had even taught toge...

Skyfall: Boredom Overkill

In my long years as a book reviewer for the Detroit Free Press, the Washington Post and other newspapers and magazines, every now and then I felt I'd slipped into an alternate universe. The whole world seemed to praise a new novel in terms so rapturous you'd think nobody had ever accomplished anything worth praising in fiction until then. I'd read the book and go, "Huh?"



That's how I feel about Skyfall. Its almost unanimous raves had me set for a movie experience of a lifetime, or at least the...

The Real Obamacare: Look What Else He Sent Me!

Okay, I wasn't entirely honest when I reported last week on the gifts that Obama gave me.



Fact is, I was overwhelmed by his munificence, and the thank you note signed by the whole First Family. See, I had the very first Obama sign in my mid-Michigan neighborhood years ago when he was running against Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries. Obama doesn't forget that kind of loyalty. He and his amazing team of elves, I mean operatives, took note.



And because they care so much about Educa...

Obama Gave Me Gifts -- It's True!

Okay, Romney is taking a lot of flack right now for saying that Obama won because he gave gifts to people including African-Americans, Hispanics, women, and young people.



But they're not the only ones who enjoyed Obama's generosity.



You think the billion dollars they spent on the campaign just went for voter turnout and ads? No way. Obama clearly hired an army of personal shoppers who knew -- or thought they knew -- what voters like me wanted.



I'm Jewish, and I got a tin of rugelach, a dozen ba...

Was Romney 'Gracious'?

After weeks of being pilloried in the press for telling one lie after another, the night he lost, Romney was transformed.



Suddenly you heard one pundit after another calling him a "good man," a "decent man." Why? Because his concession speech was "gracious."



Honestly, what did the media expect of him the night Romney lost? That he'd put a curse on Obama's second term? That his head would spin around and he'd start projectile vomiting?



I heard even more bilge across the media spectrum: If only...

Being a Rabbi Doesn't Make You Right

There are so many right wing Christians inveighing against homosexuality that it's sometimes easy as a Jew to feel superior, or at least comforted. My people don't get that crazy.



Then a rabbi like Noson Leiter shamefully claims that Hurricane Sandy is punishment for gay marriage being legal in New York State. You feel implicated, and you have to admit that bigotry comes in all shapes and sizes, all religions.



His comments outraged me, but they're also funny in a sad way.



This learned man claims...

Breastfeeding in the Classroom? What's Next?

Last month, Adrienne Pine, an American University professor, became momentarily famous for breast feeding her little son in class. The topic raised the questions of adequate child care, American discomfort with the female body and much more.



I've been teaching as a guest author at Michigan State University after many years away from academia, and I asked my students what their reaction to the story was: how would they feel if a professor did what Pine did in one of their classes?



A few were sym...

Really Listening to the Debate

Commentators with all kinds of opinions are analyzing last night's debate along predictable lines and with predictable language. They're fact checking. They're talking about body language. They're talking about performance.



But they seem to be missing something crucial that works on viewers and listeners more subtly than finger pointing or accusations: voice pitch and modulation.



Despite some occasional hesitations mid-sentence, President Obama sounded smooth, controlled, forceful. His voice is...

Why Do I Write Mysteries?

I grew up in a household where my parents read a handful of different newspapers and my mother read Georgette Heyer and Agatha Christie as well as Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes, Thomas Mann and Margaret Mitchell. Not at the same time, mind you, but the model of reading she set for me was broad and enlightening.



That meant I was never told what not to read, and I carried that freedom with me through my school years, reading whatever interested me for whatever reason, delving into science f...

First, Stop All the Literary Agents

A literary agent was recently attacked in California by a writer whose query she had apparently rejected.



I have better anger management skills than this assailant, but I'm not surprised the writer went over the edge (if that's actually what happened). In fact, I'm not surprised more agents haven't been assaulted over the years. I keep meeting authors who rave about their agents as if they were combinations of the Buddha and Captain America. My own experience with agents has been anything but...