Originally published in the Boston Globe.

If you’re obsessed with the news cycle and inclined toward anxiety, one way to get through this strange time in American history is to see it as just that: another chapter in a long national story, full of novelistic characters with rich back stories and complex motivations.

Peel away the politics and unfounded innuendo from “Fire and Fury,” Michael Wolff’s book about the first months of the Trump administration, and that’s what you get: a family saga about a colorful band of social climbing publicity hounds who never expected to actually be handed global power, and don’t really know what to do with it.

These same characters are the focus of “Born Trump,” the new family biography by Vanity Fair senior reporter Emily Jane Fox. But unlike “Fire and Fury,” this book is not concerned with policy positions, or really about government at all. It starts on the day of Trump’s inauguration, then promptly moves backward in time to become an encyclopedic retelling of pre-2016 Trump family drama (largely featuring the children, along with Jared Kushner), for those of us who weren’t following the New York gossip press for all of those decades.

Originally published in Politico Magazine.

In the first episode of “Roseanne,” the ’90s sitcom that launches a revival run on ABC on Tuesday, we learn that Roseanne Conner and her sister Jackie haven’t spoken in a year, on account of the 2016 election. Roseanne, played by the outspoken comedian Roseanne Barr, voted for Donald Trump. Jackie, played by Laurie Metcalf, did not. “Not only did she vote for the worst person on Earth,” Roseanne says, “but she was a real jerk about it, too.” Jackie shows up at the house wearing a pink pussy hat and a “Nasty Woman” T-shirt. After a tense dinner, the sisters shout and parry; Roseanne explains her vote—“He talked about jobs, Jackie. He said he’d shape things up”—and Jackie tells Roseanne what she was really thinking on Election Day, and whom she really voted for. No one switches sides, but they declare a truce and return to their default relationship, loving but comically strained.

It’s the most overtly political exchange in the episode, and in the nine-episode season overall, says executive producer Bruce Helford. But the way he describes it, it’s also a metaphor for the series and its overarching goals. Barr herself is a vocal Trump supporter, and has talked about how meaningful it felt to place one of TV’s quintessential working-class families in Year Two of the Trump administration. So I asked Helford, who also worked on the original show, about the producers’ intention. Was it to appeal to Trump voters, who might finally see themselves in sympathetic TV characters? To explain the Trump-voter mind-set to coastal elites? To bridge the gap between two sides?

Helford responded by talking about conversations. As ever-present as politics might be in people’s lives today, he notes, we often avoid tough discussions, in real life, with people on the opposite side.

“There are lots of families that are divided. It’s like a civil war,” Helford says, recounting some of his own family gatherings, where people steered away from political topics because they knew things would get too heated or cruel. “What’s really important to ‘Roseanne,’ and for all of us, is to put the whole discourse out in the open,” he says. “We’re hoping we can bring a kind of dialogue back.”

Read the rest here.

Originally published in Politico Magazine.

It’s tough to lose an election for student council, let alone for president. So it made sense that, after November 2016, Hillary Clinton would have spent some time wallowing in the past, howling at the universe with a side of Chardonnay. That’s the frame of mind she described in What Happened, her post-campaign memoir that came out in September, which was more of an angry play-by-play of how she was wronged than a clear-headed self-assessment of the race. Now, five months after the book came out, 15 months after the election, Clinton’s been spotted promoting family friend Lanny Davis’ new book, The Unmaking of the President 2016: How FBI Director James Comey Cost Hillary Clinton the Presidency.

We just passed Groundhog Day on the calendar, but it feels like we’re still living it; we can’t break free from the gnashing and rehashing of the 2016 election. It’s not just the Mueller probe and legitimate questions about Russian influence. It’s the emotional notes of triumph and defeat. President Donald Trump hasn’t dropped the subject, which is as perplexing as anything else Trump has done. But Clinton hasn’t dropped it, either. And at this point, she should.

Read the rest here.

Originally published in WBUR’s Cognoscenti.

Don’t talk to me right now. I am sad, in the way that only a hormonal woman can be sad, about the fact that Doritos won’t be coming out with a line of “lady-friendly” junk food.

Word of that glorious product spread like wildfire after Indra Nooyi, the (female) CEO of Doritos’ parent company, went on a podcast and describedsome market research that yielded important insights into the feminine mind: Women don’t want to chew too loudly, they don’t want to lick powdered fake-cheese residue from their fingertips, and they want a bag of snacks they can fit into their purse.

Has Nooyi seen a normal woman’s purse? Mine is so large that it could hold a party-size bag of Doritos, a two-liter bottle of soda, and a roast chicken, though it would take me 15 minutes to root around and find them.

Read the rest here.

Originally published in the Boston Globe Magazine

Several years ago my husband and I did something singularly unwise: Promised our kids, via some combination of Santa Claus and the ancient Hanukkah miracle, that we would acquire a dog in the coming calendar year.

It seemed a simple task: Rescue dogs were all the rage, so we’d find a sad, furry friend in need of a home. But we had conditions, which became complications. We needed a dog who was hypoallergenic (for my benefit), didn’t require too much exercise (modest-sized yard), and was small (little house, a son who was skittish about big dogs). What followed was many months of hope and disappointment.

We started off strong, when my husband spotted Maurice, a 3-year-old Yorkie, on a breed-specific rescue website attached to the interspecies meat market that is Petfinder.com. Maurice was living in Massachusetts with a foster family. I want to say he wore an ascot around his neck in his glamour shot, but I might be remembering wrong.

Read the rest here.