The Bush administration's performance record has imperiled my country, not made it safer.
The department chair put an end to that: Insufficient fealty to the Western canon (which my proposed subject clearly did not include) imperiled my job prospects, because even then, identity politics, as it would soon become known, was a threat to the curriculum at universities across the country.
I'm socially permitted, in the current climate, to say things such as "I hate men" on Facebook without imperiling my career or reputation.
In his autobiography he would refer to "my own 'line' constantly imperiled by my love of good food," a coy declaration that hid a fund of pain.
Now, on the eve of another election — a chance to redirect, or reaffirm, the policies of their fiscally imperiled state — my students at the Camden campus of Rutgers University have one thing on their minds: Phillies baseball.
Occasionally I'd tear along, revving raucously and relishing the fuck-you-ness of it all, but more often than not I felt out of place, imperiled and sure only of my imminent mangledness.
When I returned home from my years of campaigning I realized with horror that all I had wrought had been imperiled by the licentiousness and poor judgment of my oldest son, Prince Mael-Maedoc, Duke of Leinster and scion of the Kingdom of Ireland.
That made me desperately anxious because it imperiled the fragile hairdo I'd devised to tame my natural curls: bangs blow-dried around a huge roller and sprayed so they sat in a stiff, perfect, artificial hoop on my forehead as long as I didn't move fast or encounter moisture.
But as a human rights activist for writers imperiled for their choice to put pen to paper, my ears were perked for any mention of the great freedom participants in the 83rd Oscars have enjoyed to pursue their craft.
My roses, which need full sun, have been imperiled for years by the creeping shade of an ever-larger locust tree owned by a neighbor two doors over.
In many regards my goodbye salute to Pope Benedict XVI is to be found in my book, "The Pope's War: How Ratzinger's Crusade Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved," where I put the past 42 years of the papacy in perspective.
