select writings from (relatively) recent years

for Los Angeles Times columns, scroll down

How to Get a 140-Pound Newfoundland Across the Country

Condé Nast Traveler, February 23, 2015

I Nearly Died, So What? 

The New York Times Sunday Review, November 14, 2014

Difference Maker

The New Yorker, September 29, 2014

Lena Dunham Is Not Done Confessing

The New York Times Magazine, September 10, 2014

Haterade

The Believer, January 2012

This Is Not Forty

The New Yorker online, December 29, 2012

What Would Hannah Horvath Make of Elizabeth Wurtzel?

The New Yorker online,  January 11, 2013

In Praise of Messy Thinking: On Katie Roiphe

Los Angeles Review of Books, September 4, 2012,

Having, or Making, or Thinking About Making a Drink: On Joan Didion's Blue Nights

Los Angeles Review of Books, October 28, 2011

 

The essay My Misspent Youth, which originally appeared in The New Yorker in 1999, is available as a Longform reprint.

Los Angeles Times

Meghan's column about politics and social issues appeared on the Los Angeles Times op-ed page from 2005 to 2016.

Recent columns are below. Select columns from previous years can be found here.

 July 29, 2018   We're All Bound And Gagged By The Social Media Mob Now

May 25, 2018  In The Age of #MeToo, Philip Roth Offered An Unlikely Blueprint for Feminists

March 16, 2018  A New Movement To Speak Truth To Identity Politics Is Our Best Hope Against Regressive Thinking

January 27, 2018  Had Enough of the Visceral Response to the Trump Era? Try A Little Nuance Instead

March 5, 2017  A Day Without A Woman Is A Strike For Privileged Protestors

December 25, 2016  "Special Snowflake" Is The Triscuit Of Insults: Banish It In 2017

December 8, 2016  Identity Politics Did In Clinton, But Not The Way You Think

November 24, 2016  Trumpocalypse Now: Are You Panicking Or Taking A Deep Breath?

November 6, 2016  We Have A Chance To Make History By Electing America's First Woman President. Why Aren't We Celebrating?

October 27, 2016  All Trump Gropes Are Bad, But They Aren't All Equal Or Equally Horrible 

October 12, 2016  Clinton The Resilient Shows She's Tougher Than Trump The Bully

September 29, 2016  Donald Trump Takes Mansplaining To An Even Lower Level--Dumbsplaining

September 15, 2016  Could a Clinton Presidency Unleash a Post-Gender Society? Not a Chance.

September 1, 2016  When It Comes To Campus Groupthink, Trigger Warnings Aren't The Half Of It

August 16, 2016  What Hillary Clinton And Simone Biles Have In Common

August 4, 2016   Why Trump Can't Tell The Difference Between A Twitter War And A Presidential Campaign

July 21, 2016   Why The Weasel Word "Problematic" Should Be Banned

July 7, 2016   Will Hillary Clinton Throw Down And Name Elizabeth Warren As Her Running Mate?

June 23, 2015  My White Privilege Meets Sonia Sotomayor's Scathing Attack On Police Power

June 9, 2016  The Dangerous Irony of Rape Accusation Culture

May 26, 2016  Why The Right Hides From Its Own Good Luck

May 12, 2016   Madeleine Albright A War Criminal? Scripps College's Baffling Crusade of Simple Thinking

April 28, 2016  #FreeToBleed? No Thanks. Sometimes Discretion Is The Better Part of Activism

April 14, 2016  If You're Shocked By Donald Trump, It's Probably Time To Take the Bubble Quiz

April 7, 2016  The GOP's Misogyny Problem Is Bigger Than Trump

March 17, 2016   Will Evangelicals Take Trump on Faith?

March 3, 2016   The "Stand By Your Man" Feminism of Hillary Clinton

February 18, 2016  Scalia and Ginsburg: The End of a Beautiful Friendship

February 4, 2016   Curvy Or No, Barbie Is Still A Mean Girl

January 21, 2016   Yes, Millennials, Hillary Clinton Is A Feminist

January 7, 2016  

December 10, 2015 Forget "Bleeding Heart Liberals," The GOP Is Now The Party Of Feelings

November 25, 2015 Eat, Shop, Click: Another Kind of Black Friday

November 12, 2015  Protests at Mizzou and Yale Reveal More Than PC Problems

October 29, 2015 Sanders and Clinton: What's All The Shouting About? 

October 15, 2015 Right To Dry Movement Gets Its Day In The Sun

October 1, 2015 A Presidential Campaign As Reality TV

September 17, 2015 Right to Die Laws: Do We Have The Gumption To Make Such Big Life Decisions

August 26, 2015 With Flippant Adoption Comment, Jonathan Franzen Births Social Media Outrage

August 20, 205 In A Way, We All Work for Amazon Now

August 6, 2015  Does Cosmo Deserve a Plain Brown Wrapper?

July 23, 2015  Give Atticus' Parents a Break

July 9, 2015  Over The Facebook Rainbow

June 11, 2015 Will Smart Looking Glasses Do The Trick for Rick Perry?

June 1, 2015 "Jezebel Effect" Poisons Conversations on Gender and Sexual Violence

May 26, 2015 Time For Young Feminists To Look Past The Mattress and Campus Rape

May 14, 2015 The Hung Jury In The Etan Patz Case Was Right

April 29, 2015 Has Millennial Self-Esteem Become Self-Righteouness? 

April 16, 2015 Hillary Clinton's No-Knife, No-Botox Run for the White House

March 18, 2015 Hillary Clinton and Us: Portrait of an Abusive Relationship

March 4, 2015  How Grievance Culture Undercuts the Fight Against Rape Culture

February 18, 2015 The Westminster Dog Show Doesn't Deserve PETA's Bite

February 12, 2015  Fifty Shades of Grey's Allure: Sex or Money?

February 2, 2015  Political Correctness is Back in Hurricane Force

January 21, 2015 Does Mike Huckabee Want to Be President? Or Beyoncé's Bassist?

January 14, 2015  Why Blaming Leelah Alcorn's Parents Only Compounds the Bigotry

January 7, 2015 Mansplaining? Windbags Come in Both Genders

January 2, 2015  Hollywood's Idealized View of CIA Officers Is No Substitute for Reality