Matthew Hennessey

Let’s try an experiment: Imagine you are a high school junior just starting to think about college. You have your heart set on The Big Catholic Football School with A Good Academic Reputation. But your mom and dad want you to have options, so they make you go onto the websites of a few other schools and ask them to send you their application materials. When these arrive in the mail, you toss them into a corner where they sit for months and months. After all, your mind’s already mostly made up—there’s really only one school you’re thinking of going to. Continue Reading »

I am an editor. My job is to improve manuscripts submitted by authors and prepare them for publication. I approach every new piece sceptically. I probe. I attack. I play devil’s advocate. I search for error and dispose of it. Often I rely on instinct. Even when I can’t initially diagnose a problem within a text, I can sense when something’s wrong. In such cases I have to work backward to find the answer. This process can be tricky. Writers have egos. Everyone has preferences. There is no right or perfect way to compose a sentence or structure an argument. Continue Reading »

I was not at all interested in reading Judy Nicastro’s New York Times op-ed. Not at first, anyway. A piece in any newspaper titled “My Abortion, at 23 Weeks” stands a pretty good chance of ruining my day. But in the Times? Breezy titles like this are usually confined to the posh pages of the Travel section (“My Kashmir Adventure, at 23 Weeks”). Make no mistake: The Times knows what it’s doing… . Continue Reading »

There is a movement gaining steam among advocates for the disabled to spread awareness of so-called “people-first language,” that is, usage that puts a little distance between an individual and his or her physical or intellectual challenges. The goal is to train the government, the media, and the medical professions to learn to talk about “kids with cerebral palsy” or “people with autism … Continue Reading »

Last week, Glee aired a “ripped from the headlines” episode meant to capitalize on the debate over gun control. According to the Washington Post, the program featured “long, unsettling stretches of students sitting in the darkness, hiding under tables and desks and sobbing, while leaving devastating video messages for their loved ones … Continue Reading »

You may have read that Russian president Vladimir Putin recently signed a new law banning the adoption of Russian children by Americans. Andrea Roberts read the news with “disbelief” and was sure this meant certain death for the dozens of Russian orphans with special needs for whom she helps to find American homes each year… . Continue Reading »

It all comes down to abortion. That’s what my late father-in-law always said. No philosophical disagreement, no policy debate, no theological quibble rivals our fundamental and unbridgeable divide on the question of abortion. No other issue carries half as much baggage in the public mind. Not taxes, not health care, not immigration, not war, not peace. In the final tally, it all comes down to abortion… . Continue Reading »

Over the years, the American political left has excelled at using the vocabulary of rights”human and civil”to bolster and advance its policy objectives. Conservatives would do well to copy them. Building on the successes of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, progressives and Democrats have successfully cloaked their policy platform in rights-based language. In this way the battle over voter ID laws was transformed into a crusade against the resurgence of Jim Crow-era racialism… . Continue Reading »

“It’s a free country.” You used to hear that a lot. Mind if I have the last piece of pie? “It’s a free country.” Mind if I smoke? “It’s a free country.” Too bad it has receded from everyday lingo, replaced by the ubiquitous, meaningless, “Whatever.” Something has been lost. “It’s a free country” was more than just whatever, it was, “Yeah, I mind. But I ain’t gonna stop you.” Isn’t that where the rubber hits the road in a truly free society? … Continue Reading »

When I was a kid, it took twenty-four hours to get the results from a simple strep- test. Now it takes minutes. People used to get chickenpox. Now they have a vaccine for it. Usually, medical innovation is a good thing. But as the parent of a little girl with Down syndrome, I find news that geneticists are close to perfecting a noninvasive prenatal test that can map almost all of an unborn baby’s DNA sequence deeply troubling. This test will not be used to make your throat feel better or your leg stop itching. It will be used to abort babies. Lots of them… . Continue Reading »