Unthinkable

The following is the first of two excerpts from "Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values," by film critic Michael Medved.No notion has been more aggressively and ubiquitously promoted in films, popular music, and television than the idea the children know best -- that parents are corrupt, hypocritical clowns who must learn decency and integrity from their enlightened offspring.Teen-agers in particular are portrayed as the ultimate source of all wisdom, sanity and sensitivity and our one hope for redeeming the world from the terrible mistakes of the benighted generations that preceded them.

Washington -- THE WORDS, bugle calls and booming cannons amid rows of white crosses were loaded with irony.A stern-faced Bill Clinton was laying a Memorial Day wreath to honor the dead of America's past wars.Behind the ceremonial facade, he wrestled with a crisis in the bloody crags of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It's a chunk of real estate few Americans care deeply about or can even pronounce.Mr. Clinton was pushed closer to the unthinkable -- sending U.S. ground troops into the caldron of hate between Bosnian Muslims and Serbs.

GAITHERSBURG -- He tries not to dwell on it. But sometimes Ken McDowell finds himself thinking the unthinkable -- where would he live, what would he do, how would he manage if his wife, Navy nurse Lt. Denise McDowell, didn't come back from the Persian Gulf?And while every bomb blast that he heard Wednesday night, sitting on the edge of his bed transfixed by the television and the chilling sounds of war, made him a little more fearful, it also made him a little relieved."I'm viewing this as the beginning of the end of this whole nightmare," says Mr. McDowell, a 41-year-old banker whose wife left him and their then-year-old daughter last August to board the USNS Comfort hospital ship.

The Lucky Ones, by Rachel Cusk. Fourth Estate. 240 pages. $24.95. The naked truth about parenthood -- stripped of all its pleasures and precious moments -- isn't pretty. In this haunting new work, British talent Rachel Cusk (winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award) lays bare the lives of new mothers, fathers and grandparents. Billed as a novel, the book is more a collection of short stories -- loosely linked by a few forlorn characters and the overriding themes of isolation, anxiety and strained relationships.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Make no mistake, John Oates has a double standard when it comes to handling his pitching staff.And he isn't hesitant to admit it."This is not a knock at our young pitchers," the Orioles manager said after last night's 2-1 win over the Kansas City Royals, "but if it had been anybody else, [Gregg] Olson would've pitched the ninth inning."Instead, Rick Sutcliffe was allowed to do the unthinkable -- pitch his third complete game in four starts. With one more appearance remaining before the first month of the season is completed, the veteran righthander already has as many complete games as anybody on the staff had in either of the last two years.

Student should learn that throwing tantrum is no honorable act . . .I had to comment on the article about the Anne Arundel County student who was denied a National Honor Society membership and now admits to harassing his teacher ("Student barks, teacher frets," Feb 13).I can't believe that the principal feels he cannot take action against this student without adult witnesses. If the teacher had been accused by the student of harassment, I'm quite sure that she would now be on administrative leave pending an investigation.

NEW YORK -- It's with an almost blase air that Reed Krakoff mentions his latest dabblings as president and executive creative director of Coach. Grabbing a fistful of gloves splayed on a chair outside his office, he mutters, "We have mink-lined mittens, stripes, oranges." He casually gestures over at a nearby Game Boy pouch for Holiday 2003 that has fuchsia patent leather piping. And, during a quick tour of his floor, he stops briefly to inspect a new Coach shopping bag featuring a sharp pattern of pink and blue flowers.

A group of friends and family from Elkridge prepared for the Preakness as they have every year for decades. They packed tubs of Rice Krispies treats, shrimp salad, macaroni salad, cashews, soft drinks and a giant bag of Utz chips into their cars and headed to Pimlico Race Course . But this year, the Boston Marathon bombing was in the back of their minds. Peggy Maher, one of the group, brought her grandson for the first time. Just in case the unthinkable happened, she went over an emergency plan with everyone should they get separated: Meet at Sinai Hospital, a little over a mile away.

Like many Americans and citizens of the world, on the morning of Nov. 5, I awoke with a renewed sense of purpose. Having witnessed, the night before, an event that I never imagined contemplating, the election of an African-American to the office of president of the United States of America, I felt truly vindicated in the belief that if you live long enough, anything is possible. The night before, as I sat with family and friends watching the election results come in, I resigned myself to tempering my emotions.

WASHINGTON -- The blistering denunciation of the FBI leadership by a whistleblower in Minneapolis who says the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks possibly could have been thwarted can only add to the grief of the surviving relatives and friends of the victims. Yet it is important that Coleen Rowley, the agency's top lawyer in Minneapolis, made public her letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller III, which flatly charges that agency indifference to, or mismanagement of, internal warnings may have detoured preventive action.