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Serious beliefs are awkward, especially religious ones. It's not that there's anything wrong with them, it's just that people's real, heart-felt, deeply held beliefs are, well, 'not easy to handle or deal with, requiring great skill, ingenuity, or care' - in a word, awkward.
Alexandra Petri -
Anything you loved, however intensely, becomes mortifying the moment you cease to love it.
Alexandra Petri
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Obama isn't funny.
Alexandra Petri -
Any promising young white man rich enough to theoretically afford a giant oil painting of himself gets to remain young and innocent forever, and none of his actions have any consequences, whether there is magic involved or not.
Alexandra Petri -
If you're doing what you do because you love it, you have room to be happy for others. And that's a lot of fun, when you get down to it.
Alexandra Petri -
Bills ought to be passed with deliberation by committees. Change should be achieved in a bipartisan manner. Incrementally, day by day, we should reach a consensus - not perfect, by any means - but something that we can be proud of, nonetheless.
Alexandra Petri -
You can be brilliant in some ways and despicable in others. You can be a clean, upright, moral individual in your private life who never swears, treats women with respect, and speaks highly of duty and honor - and go out every day and dedicate yourself to a cause that makes the world worse.
Alexandra Petri -
Some information is important, and some is not, and intelligence consists in knowing one from the other.
Alexandra Petri
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Although no one explicitly wants a president who could have a reliable fall back career in stand-up comedy, everyone shudders at the thought of a Rutherford B. Hayes or John Kerry.
Alexandra Petri -
No one has debates on Twitter.
Alexandra Petri -
Nearly everything faith-related that I have done at Harvard has been followed by free food, from going to services at Harvard's Episcopal Chaplaincy to attending a day of interfaith discussion and dialogue hosted by the university chaplains in the fall.
Alexandra Petri -
It's easier to find the joke in something when you think, 'This - this is ridiculous.'
Alexandra Petri -
When police are shutting down cameras, it is a sign that they know the truth is not going to be kind to them.
Alexandra Petri -
Bad things happen, and you can only be so prepared.
Alexandra Petri
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All the young voters who flocked to Obama in droves grew up watching 'The Daily Show' and the 'Colbert Report.'
Alexandra Petri -
Thanks to postmodernism, we tend to see all facts as meaningless trivia, no one more vital than any other. Yet this disregard for facts qua facts is intellectually crippling. Facts are the raw material of thought, and the knowledge of significant facts makes sophisticated thought possible.
Alexandra Petri -
I would say 'competence' actually might be slightly more important than passion. I understand that it is important to feel strongly about things, but give me a competent dentist over a passionate dentist any day, if only because something about the phrase 'passionate dentist' is deeply unnerving.
Alexandra Petri -
The difference between face-to-face conversation and any other medium of communication is simple: No distractions are permitted.
Alexandra Petri -
The problem with technology, as with fashion, is that it's impossible to be 'in' forever.
Alexandra Petri -
Almost nothing anyone told me about Harvard has been accurate.
Alexandra Petri
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I think, when you're doing a column and blogging every day, you get familiar with the sound of your own voice.
Alexandra Petri -
You do not get gold stars for cleaning your toilet. In actual life, there is a depressing lack of stickers.
Alexandra Petri -
If awkward has an antithesis, it is probably Barack Obama.
Alexandra Petri -
President Obama deserves our unalloyed praise for hastening Osama bin Laden's demise.
Alexandra Petri