Suzanne Fields Best Quotations

The Academy Awards ceremony is designed to be without irony, but Chris Rock supplied it anyway with filmed movie-theater interviews with black men and women who had never heard of the movies nominated for Best Picture.

Trashy private lives of the stars is a given today, and scandal causes hardly a ripple of disapproval. Digitalized characters can be created with neither moral nor mortal concern, and best of all can be packaged, licensed and promoted at far less cost than dealing with flesh and blood. The stars are products, too, shills for marketing tie-ins.

Condoleezza Rice insists that all she wants be is the best secretary of state she can be, and can't imagine running for president. Perhaps. But a lot of other people have no trouble imagining it. Four years is an eternity in politics, and the secretary of state has a lot of heavy lifting ahead.