The Marist Institute for Public Opinion polled Americans about what the most annoying word used in conversation is, and "whatever" won out with 47% of the vote. "Anyway" and "you know" (Caroline Kennedy's favorite) came in close, and completely beat out "at the end of the day," which received only 2% of the vote. Whatevs, I tots use it like, all the time when I txt my bffl. LOL! And vote on which word/phrase you think is most annoying: more ›

Matt Lauer gave it the old college try with Caroline Kennedy today, using her appearance on the Today Show (to plug the Kennedy Profiles in Courage awards) as a chance to solve the ongoing mystery over why she dropped her bid to occupy Hillary Clinton's vacated Senate seat. A Vanity Fair excerpt of the forthcoming book Ted Kennedy: The Dream That Never Died cited an unnamed "family adviser's" assertion that Kennedy's children had intervened and begged her to drop her campaign, telling her "that if she was getting this worked up just getting the job, they didn't want to see what she would be like in the trenches of a political campaign or a fight in Washington." more ›

No one is exactly racing to put the stamp on Caroline Kennedy as our next senator following her recent series of interviews with local media. Veteran New York politics journalist Andrew Kirtzman says thinks her roll-out has been disastrous, telling Politicker NY, "The interviews were catastrophic to her cause. They totally undermined one's faith in her. It's becoming clear why the roll-out has been so tentative and low-key: Her communications skills could take months to improve, and she doesn't have that kind of time." Ouch. more ›