Kathleen Parker

Mariska Hargitay, better known as "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" Detective Olivia Benson, is the human intersection of life and art.

All things considered, I'd rather be in Rome. Isn't everyone?

The media love optics, and no one understands this better than President Barack Obama.

If second-term presidents feel liberated by re-election to pursue bolder agendas, first ladies often become more comfortable to be their own person.

First they came for the drones.

When President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union address that "This time is different," referring to his push for tighter gun control laws, he wasn't just whistling Dixie.

Now is the time for all good women to pay homage to Betty Friedan, who 50 years ago wrote the game-changing manifesto "The Feminine Mystique."

When Burma's Zin Mar Aung was placed in solitary confinement for trying to organize students in 1999, Bill Clinton was president of the United States.

It must be true what they say about women – that they are smarter, stronger, wiser and wilier than your average Joe.

To the world-weary, Lance Armstrong's confession to Oprah was just one more in a series.

Unlike many who recently have joined the debate about gun rights, I have a long history with guns, which I proffer only in the interest of pre-empting the "elitist, liberal, swine, prostitute, blahblahblah" charge.

The new year has begun with an avalanche of Republican retrospectives: What went wrong? What must the GOP do?

The new year began not with a cannonball off the "fiscal cliff" but with an outbreak of conspiratorial cynicism.

HASHTAG, America – It is comforting to think of death as a passing rather than an end. In that vein, I prefer to think of Steve Jobs' final words as editorial commentary: "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow."

In today's world of social media, where everyone's every little thing is on display, it is sometimes difficult to recall a time when exhibitionism wasn't ubiquitous and was, in fact, not admired.

As politicians compete to prove who loves the middle class more, they're missing the elephant and the donkey in the room.

One of my great hopes for a Barack Obama administration – and thus one of my personal disappointments – was that he would use his bully pulpit to emphasize the importance of a two-parent family, and especially of fathers, to children's well-being.

Americans are justified in feeling numbed by the car alarm of Washington politics.

Much speculation has followed the private luncheon between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, about which little is known.

It is tempting, oh so tempting, to unleash the snark as the script unfolds: Real Housewives of Tampa. Or is it Real Generals of Kabul? But recent events are too sad for snark. With so much at stake, schadenfreude has taken a vacation. Here is what we know: Retired Gen. David Petraeus abruptly quit his job as CIA chief when it became clear that his long-running affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, would become public.

The headline was inevitable: "What went wrong?"

Four-year-old Abigael Evans spoke for millions when she sobbed, "I'm tired of Bronco Bamma and Mitt Romney."

We shouldn't be talking about this silliness – Big Bird, "bull---- er," or a girl's "first time."

ORLANDO, Fla. – Forget "horses and bayonets." The most important word uttered during the third presidential debate was "peace."

Oh, to be 12 again, the better to enjoy the presidential debates.

Contrary to conventional wisdom that debates are rarely, if ever, game-changers, the first presidential debate was a demolition derby.

Not since Rocky Balboa met Apollo Creed have so many greeted a matchup with as much anticipation as tonight's debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

Gloria Steinem is unmistakable.

"This time, the imbeciles have won."

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – They came, they were adored, they conquered.

There's no point trying to find something wrong with Michelle Obama's speech to the Democratic National Convention. It was perfection.

TAMPA, Fla. – Gazing out on the pale continent of the Republican National Convention, it was interesting to ponder: What if Barack Obama had been a Republican?

TAMPA, Fla. – Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is either the luckiest or unluckiest man in America. Every year about this time, he gets slammed with a potentially catastrophic natural disaster and has to miss all the fun.

I had hoped he would wait until I got here, but he was in a rush to go.

Some days Mitt Romney must wonder how he got involved with this crew. Here he's trying to talk about jobs, jobs, jobs – and his political colleagues keep changing the subject to a topic about which an alarming few seem to know anything at all: women.

"Under a democratical government, the citizens exercise the powers of sovereignty; and those powers will be first abased, and afterwards lost, if they are committed to an unwieldy multitude."

The legendary Cosmo Girl, Helen Gurley Brown, has died and with her, one hopes, a not-so-fabulous legacy.

One is hard-pressed to top silliness this political season but a strong contender would be recent speculation about Mitt Romney's likely running mate and the benighted "boring white guy (BWG)."

Oh, to be the fastest woman in the world.

Not surprisingly, Barbara Bush said it most succinctly: "The first lady is going to be criticized no matter what she does."

The same week that President Barack Obama's health regulations go into effect, forcing people of faith to violate their conscience or shut their doors, Mitt Romney was preaching the gospel of economic and religious freedom in Poland and Israel.

When it comes to over-the-top politics, the Obama campaign has set a new standard with recent attempts to paint Mitt Romney as a felon.

We're still a few weeks from summer's dog days and the conventions, and already feral rabidity has set in. Add to the long list of psycho-political syndromes the "Romney Derangement Syndrome."

South Carolina politics never fails to amuse – and bemuse.

As we celebrate our nation's independence midway through a year of rabid presidential politics, it is refreshing to reflect upon our first president, the hero of America's revolution and commander in chief upon our liberation from King George.

As the Supreme Court rules this week on a variety of volatile issues, the question has come up: Is Barack Obama really running against the high court?

The punch line is at least as old as the eldest baby boomer: "I didn't get a pony."

By now most sentient Americans have heard about the war on women. That is, the so-called Republican war on women, which has been framed as a battle waged by stodgy old white guys who want to deny women reproductive freedom.

Forty years ago, all of America learned the name of a particular condominium, hotel and office complex along the Potomac in the nation's capital.