Wolf, Naomi

Who she is: According to her website, Naomi Wolf is an "author, social critic, and political activist [who] raises awareness of the pervasive inequities that exist in society and politics. She encourages people to take charge of their lives, voice their concerns and enact change."

Her book, The Beauty Myth, was a bestseller that "challenged the cosmetics industry and the marketing of unrealistic standards of beauty, launching a new wave of feminism in the early 1990s. The New York Times called it one of the most important books of the 20th century." This book ushered in what has been called the "third wave of the feminist movement."

Here's some more from her website:

Wolf's New York Times bestseller, The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, is an impassioned call to return to the aspirations and beliefs of the Founders' ideals of liberty. The New York Times called the documentary version "pointedly inflammatory." Her latest book, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook For American Revolutionaries, includes effective tools for citizens to promote civic engagement and create sustainable democracy.

Her international journalism includes the investigative report "Guantánamo Bay: The Inside Story" for The Times of London, and as a columnist for Project Syndicate her articles have been published in India, Philippines, Egypt, and Lebanon. She's a frequent blogger on The Huffington Post and writes cultural commentary for The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Harper's Bazaar. Her TV appearances include Larry King Live, Meet the Press, The Joyce Behar Show, and The Colbert Report.

A graduate of Yale and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Wolf was a consultant to Al Gore during his presidential campaign on women's issues and social policy. She is co-founder of The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, an organization that teaches leadership to young women, and The American Freedom Campaign, a grass roots democracy movement in the United States whose mission is the defense of the Constitution and the rule of law.

The problem with Ms. Wolf and her approach to the world is fairly simple as we see it. While she has been a most courageous opponent of the coming totalitarian state, she is a Rhodes scholar and likely part of the very thing she proposes to confront.

She is, metaphorically speaking, a member in good standing of the power elite's Hegelian Dialectic. She opposes fascism but never describes its underlying structure. She despises the West's creeping authoritarianism, but never explains who is behind it. She is therefore a valuable and courageous person to those who stand with her in their abhorrence of the current system. At the same time, she is in some sense, a progenitor of confusion. She is dealing in a kind of doublespeak. Too bad.

Background: Naomi Wolf was born November 12, 1962 in San Francisco, the daughter of Deborah Goleman, author of The Lesbian Community, and Romaninan-born Leonard Wolf, who is a "horror scholar." Wolf went to Lowell High School where she was involved in debate and forensics, and then attended Yale University. She took a Bachelor of Arts in 1984 and then was a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford in the mid-1980s.