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Dana Parsons• E-mail
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Recent Columns:
Consider the various cool terms vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin could have used in describing herself to Republican Party convention delegates Wednesday night:
I'll tell you right up front that Joe Werner strikes me as a pretty cool guy. He's 22, dark-haired and good-looking, with an easy smile, just the right amount of unshaven face and a vibe that suggests he doesn't think he knows everything.
Between nude sunbathers and homeowners who decide what color to paint their houses, the world is full of rebels and renegades.
The first national political convention J. Owens Smith remembers watching was in 1960, when John F. Kennedy won the nomination and offered the vice presidency to chief rival Lyndon Johnson.
Two scenes from an otherwise ordinary afternoon earlier this week:
Let me suggest the creation of a new governmental position: Moderator General.
It's probably a bad sign that I don't know a lot of people in Southern California's "most hip and stylish 18- to 20-something set." At least, not that I can think of at the moment. Nor is it a good idea, as I found out with some degree of embarrassment this week, to approach young women on the street and ask if they're over 18 and, if so, that I'd like to talk to them.
With the Olympics now at full tilt, you might expect the joint to be hopping over at the Mission Viejo Nadadores Swimming club. After all, the south Orange County club has been pumping out world-class swimmers and divers for four decades and has another one on this year's Olympic team.
I'm not the least bit cynical about pastor Rick Warren's motivation in inviting John McCain and Barack Obama to his Lake Forest megachurch for a public discussion Aug. 16. To the contrary, part of me is wildly hopeful that the pastor-author will bring out things in both presidential candidates that we've never heard before.
While vacationing in my apartment last week, I stumbled upon a newspaper story about the language and tone in the blogosphere being less censored than that in the traditional media. Nothing especially new there; it's part of a larger theme that social discourse grows coarser by the minute.