Mary Novaria

“Do you think a woman will ever be president?” I asked my mother.   “I don’t know,” she said. “Honestly, I think a black man will be elected president before a woman will be.” Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock.com It was 1972. I was a 13-year-old girl fascinated by Watergate and the Equal Rights Amendment, and I would later go to journalism school on the coattails of Woodward and Bernstein. My mother believed she and my dad were about the only liberals in our very Republican suburb on the North Shore of Chicago. She used to joke that the poll workers had to shake the dust off the Democratic roster when they came in to vote in a primary. She and my dad grew up in hardworking, blue-collar households. Their generation was the first on both sides of the family to attend college and, in my dad’s case, even high school. My mother, Ruthie, was a registered nurse who stayed home with her children—at first. One day she was our carpooling, suburban mother who mimeographe...

"I wish I could quit you!" You know when you reach that point in a relationship where it’s just not fun anymore? Where your nausea and racing pulse aren’t because you’re love sick, but heartsick? That’s where I am, dear politics, my old friend. I can stomach the abuse no longer. I will fondly remember the old days when the worst thing anyone did was steal a yard sign, and negative ads were risky and frowned upon. No more. The campaigns themselves are bad enough, but the splinter groups which claim lies as truth, and fiction as fact, are like out of control adolescents—impulsive, dodgy, polarizing and non-apologetic. The difference? There’s no growing out of it. Nasty videos and spiteful blogs ignite on the web faster than a California brushfire. When friends can’t discuss candidates or issues without anger, judgment and hurt feelings, something is definitely wrong. Some say, “It’s just politics; don’t take it personally.” But you know what? I’m a person and that...