Like the French language, the liberal brain works in reverse. Where we say “the red book,” the French say “le livre rouge.” They start with a blank book and work backwards to fill it in with rouge. Liberals start with, “All men are created equal” and walk backwards from there without looking. If everyone isn’t succeeding equally, it can’t be because they made some bad decisions or have unequal abilities. It’s because we didn’t do enough.

If America is fat, it must be because nobody told them food is fattening. If women earn less than men, it must be because of sexism. If gays aren’t getting married, it must be because homophobes are cockblocking them. If the top ten mathematicians of all time are white males, it must be because nonwhite mathematicians with vaginas suffered discrimination.

These babies want to make us all as equal as the day we were born, even if it kills us.

But despite their love of helping the average Joe, they’ve never met him. They don’t preach what they practice so they don’t know what goes on in the real world. The rest of us see women abandon math in college not because they’re discouraged or there’s a dearth of role models but because they tend to suck at it. IQ tests regularly show that although men are stupider than women, they’re smarter, too. A man’s bell curve is much wider than a woman’s, so although it dives far deeper into idiot, it also soars farther into brilliant. We have more dummies than them, but we have more geniuses, too.

Despite having so many geniuses, we still let gay marriage determine national elections even though the few gays that actually give a shit represent a tiny fraction of one percent of the population. And half of them get divorced! In northern Europe where this experiment has been going on for a long time, gays are finally asking themselves, “Wait, why are we doing this? We don’t have kids.” No one likes being told they can’t do something, but that doesn’t mean it’s something they want to do. Gay culture doesn’t fixate on commitment. Monogamy is not their bag. I’m not allowed in the ladies’ bathroom and I’m usually pretty cool with that. I’m not interested in what comes out of a woman when she’s in the bathroom, and gays aren’t interested in what comes out of a woman when she’s in the hospital.

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Which is also why women earn less. They’d rather be with their kids. That’s right. Women earn less because they choose to earn less. This hatefact drives feminists nuts—or nuttier—but it’s perfectly logical. Picture a boardroom where the top brass realizes they’re going to have to stay there all night if they’re going to meet tomorrow’s budget deadline. Which gender is more likely to say, “Sorry, my daughter has a dance recital and there’s no way I’m going to miss it”? Women put family over work more often than men, which means they tend to get promoted less often. When women don’t have kids they actually make more than men. Those of us in the eyeball community see this every day. It’s common sense. If women were a cheap labor source they’d be hired in droves the same way illegal aliens are.

The liberal brain has clogged arteries. Do they honestly believe Americans are fat because the nutritional facts chart at McDonald’s wasn’t prominently displayed? Everyone knows a healthy sandwich costs less than a dollar, but liberals keep telling us poor kids are fat because they can’t afford to eat better. They’re fat because watching TV doesn’t burn calories.

First Book is a DC organization devoted to providing America’s poor with books they can afford. Have any of these people been to a used bookstore? There is almost always a bin at the back with $1 books. I’ve even seen boxes of free books when the store is overstocked. America is lousy with books. First Book tells us there are “tens of millions of poor Americans” who can’t afford to buy books, but in a country where TV ownership only very recently went down from 99%, I’m guessing they’re not exactly deprived.

We’re at a point where we can’t explain away failure. If you’re living in the freest country in the world in 2012 and you’re fat, broke, and single, it’s probably your fault.

Every time a human sacrifice is made to appease the gods of political correctness, the Sane Community yells questions such as, “Wait! What exactly did the person do that was so wrong?” and “What parts were factually inaccurate?” and sometimes “Are you sure it wasn’t just a joke?”

To ask such questions is to miss the point. Political correctness isn’t a political belief where people want to stimulate a discussion and get to the truth. It’s a totalitarian religion dedicated to the exact opposite. They hate hatefacts and want all sinners to be burned at the stake no matter what the collateral damage. The unfortunate thing about their holy war is that it’s virtually nothing but collateral damage.

My colleague Chuck Ross just explained why Naomi Schaefer Riley shouldn’t have been fired. The same could be said for Brett Ratner, Juan Williams, Rick Sanchez, and the “Chink in the Armor” guy, but despite this barrage of well-publicized examples people keep saying political correctness is “sooo 90s.”

Sorry, but the witch hunts are alive and well and the PC guillotine has continued chopping off heads since the baby boomers traded their sense of humor for their sense of holiness somewhere around 1980. Here’s ten more you can throw at someone the next time you’re told PC is a paper tiger.

ANTHONY A. WILLIAMS
In 1999, the director of the DC mayor’s constituent services was let go for using the word “niggardly.” This happens so often, the Urban Dictionary defines it as a “word that will get u fired…even though it doesn’t mean anything offensive.”

MELIN
In 1999, this female moderator at The Straight Dope’s message board was fired because she said people shouldn’t care what race you are and if you’re asked to list your ethnicity on government forms, you should put “American.” To be against racism this much is actually racist. Got it?

DAN ISSEL
In 2001, this Denver Nuggets basketball coach was being harassed by an angry drunk fan who kept yelling, “You suck!” Issel blew kisses at first but the fan wouldn’t stop and Issel eventually lost his temper and reportedly said, “Go drink another beer you fucking Mexican piece of shit.” Issel quickly went from making $2.5 million a year to making $0 a year.

LINA MORALES
In 2004, this Hispanic worker at a Florida telecommunications company made the mistake of having a BLT for lunch. Her Muslim employers were offended by her “flesh of swine” and sacked her on the spot. PC apologists pointed out that she had been warned about pork before and was eating the BLT as an act of defiance. What a bitch.

DAVID LENIHAN
In 2006, when this talk-show host was discussing Condoleezza Rice’s dream of becoming commissioner of the National Football League he made it clear he was all for it. He also said it would be a huge coup—only he said “coon” by accident. Lenihan was clearly mortified by his mistake and within seconds he told viewers he was “totally, totally, totally, totally sorry.” Apparently four “totallys” weren’t enough, and he lost his job anyway.

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DAVE SEANOR
During an interview in 2008, a female golf buddy of Tiger Woods was kidding around about how difficult it is to compete with him. Someone joked that they should gang up on him and while laughing she quipped, “lynch him in a back alley.” She doesn’t have a boss and she refused to apologize but the Puritans still needed a sacrifice. It was the biggest story in golf that week so the editor of Golfweek put a picture of a noose on the cover. Finally, someone steps into the crosshairs. He lost his job the next day.

RON FRANKLIN
In 2011, this ESPN announcer said goodbye to 25 years of announcing football games for the crime of calling an asshole an asshole. He had come under fire in 2005 for daring to call a woman “sweetheart” so you can imagine the outrage when, six years later, he said to a woman, “Listen to me, sweet baby, let me tell you something….” She was infuriated by the remark and demanded he refrain from talking to her like a child so he said, “OK then, listen to me, asshole.” Despite his apologies, he was instantly forced into early retirement.

JAMES ENSTROM
Also last year, this UCLA professor conducted a SCIENTIFIC STUDY that found no correlation between particulate pollution and death rates. In other words, big trucks aren’t ruining the planet. Instead of pointing out flaws with a study that dares go against the Holy Green Narrative, the administration let him go.

LEE STEELE
In January, this British soccer player was joking about a hulking gay rugby player named Gareth Thomas who was on the reality show Big Brother. Steele Tweeted, “I wouldn’t fancy the bed next to Gareth Thomas,” followed by, according to conflicting accounts (he deleted the Tweet) “#padlockedarsehole,” “#padlockmyarse,” or “padlock my arse.” Though it is clearly impossible to padlock one’s anus, the LGBT community screamed like ten million bloodthirsty pink hamsters. The league canceled Lee’s contract and padlocked their doors. At press time, their arses were unavailable for comment, possibly because they’ve been padlocked.

MICHAEL BULLERDICK
A couple of weeks ago, a white male editor at a black women’s magazine was canned for making “racist” remarks on his private Facebook page. And by “racist” they meant that he thought Bill Ayers was a radical, Al Sharpton was a race-baiter, and townhall.com is a reputable news site. The fact that all of these are unequivocally true is a hatefact.

Sigh.

There I go again, trying to find reason in their crusade. Logic plays no part in their decisions about what constitutes cultural blasphemy. All they know is that their insatiable gods need more sacrifices. All I know is their gods must be crazy.

How was your May Day? Mine was all right. Actually, that’s not true. It started off left, turned right, stayed right, and then went left again. I went to an OWS protest, sent out some charity T-shirts for Andrew Breitbart’s family, appeared on Red Eye, and performed at a benefit for the OWS legal defense fund.

There were rumors OWS was going to take over every bridge going into Manhattan, so I went to the Williamsburg Bridge at 8AM. Nobody was there, so I went back home and waited for an hour. Still nothing. By noon things were in full swing and a brass band was marching across the bridge with about 500 people in tow. The plan was to block the bridge and stop people from going to work, but it took so long to get their act together, everyone was already at work. Many wore suits to parody the real businessmen who had crossed the bridge actually going to work three hours earlier.

About 100 cops escorted the protestors and I asked one of them why people were marching. “I have no idea,” he responded. “I don’t even think they know what it’s about.”

When we got to the center of the bridge, the crowd stopped and refused to move. I overheard one guy in a suit he had clearly never worn before say, “We got the bridge.” He and his friend seemed surprised their plan had worked. Nobody could possibly get by. At this point, a woman behind me on a bicycle began to panic. “I have to get through,” she said aloud. “I have to hand out flyers at Bryant Park!” She and two others on bikes were on their way to occupy the park, but they couldn’t get through their own roadblock. A bearded gentleman from the group began to flip his bike upside down so the bike seat was on the top of his head. “You gonna do it?” the first girl asked. “I’m gonna do it,” he responded. Then both nodded and went into battle against their own occupation. They plowed through the crowd, pushing people out of the way. One of the girls even said, “I have a meeting!”

You know what’s nuts? I liked it. They are way off-base about many things, but their hearts were in the right place. While their peers are playing video games and masturbating to pictures on Facebook, these kids are out there trying to figure out the world.

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Around two in the afternoon I finally got to my office, where my punky 19-year-old intern from Staten Island helped me send out Andrew Breitbart “SO?” T-shirts we are selling for charity. I got into a minor argument with my coworkers about blowing off an entire day for all this crap. Then I headed to the Red Eye set.

When the cameras came on, we discussed the day’s OWS activities, specifically the young Ohio anarchists that were caught allegedly plotting to blow up a bridge. The kids were mocked as they should be. But I defended OWS in general and said we’re all ignoring the fact that terrorism works. In my homeland of Canada we still cower to French demands, and it all goes back to bombings the FLQ did in the 1960s.

I told the panelists that despite Breitbart’s screaming at OWS, he once confessed to me that he loved basking in their rage. He said, “I love these people” while undulating his arms like he was at a rave. He loved it because he believed yelling and arguing and getting your hands dirty is what brings people to the truth. The panel looked at me like I was mentally ill.

The further irony was I had to leave early to go to an OWS benefit called “99 Comedians for the 99%.” The crowd was treated to 99 comedians doing one-minute sets for the OWS legal defense fund.

My set was going well until I told the audience they would have loved Breitbart. They assumed I was joking and burst into hysterical laughter. “I’m not kidding,” I said sternly. “Sure he screamed at the OWS kids, but in a strange way he actually loved them.” As I tried to explain, the lights shut off and I was ushered off the stage. I had probably gone over my one-minute limit.

As I got off stage a comedian in a gray wig and ill-fitting suit said, “You weren’t kidding, right?” I said I wasn’t and he asked, “How old are you?” I told him I was 41 and he said, “I’m 37. I understand that he was probably an awesome guy. Kids today don’t get that. They can’t think outside the box.” We both agreed that we couldn’t think outside the box either at that age, but it’s the dogmatic youth who become the enlightened old dudes.

When a child is having a temper tantrum, you have to be very careful what you say. Even a gently concerned “What’s wrong?” can send them on a whole new tirade. The same goes with discussing abortion. If you approach a so-called “feminist” and calmly raise the topic they will yell, “I don’t believe for one second that you think a woman doesn’t have the rights to her own body!” Then they will cover their ears and storm out of the room. To them, there is nothing to discuss. Case closed. Period. End of discussion. Been there, done that. Discussing abortion is soooooo 90s!

So let’s tippy-toe lightly and take some baby steps toward this delicate subject and at least get these colicky infants to acknowledge one or two things about the subject that don’t include being raped and impregnated by your father.

1. IT’S ILLEGAL TO KILL A BABY
Can we all agree it should be illegal to let a baby starve once it’s outside the womb? OK, now that’s settled, how far back can we go? How about two months after conception? A two-month-old fetus is about an inch tall. Can we call that a human? Even if we dropped all questions about life before this point, starting the abortion debate here would be a huge step for mankind. Coloring the News shows how alarmingly common third-trimester abortions are. Is it OK to find those offensive? Most of the people who claim they have no problem with abortion couldn’t stomach to look at the Google Image results for the word, those babies.

2. YOU DON’T HAVE TO KEEP THE BABY
Abortion? Why not adoption?

3. MEN NEED TO LEARN TO WORK THEIR PENIS
Who are these moronic troglodytes ejaculating into women? Don’t they know how a penis works? Men masturbate daily and know exactly when they’re going to cum. Maybe after seeing a few friends sending child-support payments to a stranger for years, they would think twice about where they shoot their goo.

4. YOU FEEL DIFFERENTLY AFTER YOU SEE ONE COME OUT
I come from a world where abortion is birth control. My friends always bragged about it because they saw it as empowering. However, now that I’m getting older and these young pseudo-feminists have become older moms, preventing a life gets a lot more serious. I’m reminded of a friend of my wife’s who had two abortions in her youth. She has two kids now and says she doesn’t want another one. I asked her what she’d do if she got pregnant again and she said, “Probably lie on the floor and cry for three days.” In other words, she’d keep it. Once you see what they do after they come out, everything changes.

5. FREAKONOMICS WAS WRONG
Freakonomics noted that the crime rates plummeted after Roe v. Wade was passed and falsely inferred that correlation implies causation. I can smell the left’s latent classism where they don’t only want less people in the world, they want less of a certain kind of person. Most of the people I talk to look upon abortion as a real rain that’s “washing all the scum off the streets.” The important thing about Freakonomics’ abortion/crime theory is that it is completely false. They also left out the the fact that the nation’s jail and prison population balloned about tenfold since Roe v. Wade passed. That may have correlated with a drop in crime rates.

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6. WHAT’S MORE POLITICALLY INCORRECT THAN KILLING RETARDS?
Liberals hate the word “retard,” but abortion-happy liberals kill retarded fetuses! Whether you are for or against aborting fetuses that are likely to have Down syndrome, can we agree you’re not allowed to wax sanctimonious about a class of people you are trying to exterminate?

7. IF YOU DON’T WANT TO GET PREGNANT, TRY BIRTH CONTROL
Working a condom is child’s play and getting prescription birth control is even easier. Let’s stop pretending it’s so hard not to get pregnant. I’ve slept with about 300 women in my lifetime—not that I’m boasting or want to call your attention to this fact, but if you want to know the truth, that estimate may even be low—but the only time I got a woman pregnant, it was intentional. Why are we still debating second-trimester abortion? She didn’t notice she missed two periods? The fact that a woman’s body makes a fresh baby house every 28 days for her entire adult life is a miracle. How did we get to a point where women don’t even notice when Aunt Flo stops visiting? Would it be OK to ban abortion entirely if there was a morning-after pill? If some moron accidentally cums in you, pop the pill and suffer through the five hours of nausea. Period. In other words, you’ll get your period.

8. MANY CHILDLESS WOMEN ARE UNHAPPY
We’re told women don’t need kids to be fulfilled. It’s become a feminist rite de passage to give your uterus the middle finger, but I’ve seen these women over time, and wow, are they miserable. Almost every woman I grew up with focused on her career and happily aborted the idea of having kids but now that they’re 40, they are dumping tens of thousands of dollars trying to turn back the clock with in-vitro fertilization. You can tell me they love their freedom but I can hear them crying to my wife on the phone.

9. FETUSES ARE FEMALE, TOO
If you really want to see a war on women, go to China. Abortion isn’t only legal there, it’s mandatory. Since families are more likely to abort a female, 2020 is going to have 30 million men wandering around wondering what happened to all the chicks. In this situation, feminists are left in the awkward position of saying a practice that wipes out their population is good for their population.

10. MANY WOMEN ARE AGAINST ABORTION
I’m not sure why it’s a given that abortion is feminist. Almost half of American women describe themselves as pro-life. Are they sexist? Most Americans are pro-life and it can’t be as simple as them not wanting women to have rights. The women who call themselves pro-lifers are not fools and they obviously see this issue as much more nuanced than the liberal babies make it out. So let’s stop all the tantrums and start calmly discussing it.

I grew up playing in hardcore punk bands and fighting skinheads, and the political mantra for that scene was “Anarchy and Peace.” It seems incredibly naïve in retrospect, but being into punk rock was actually great training for becoming a rational, libertarian, paleoconservative adult. Here are 10 reasons why:

1. IF YOU’RE NOT AN ANARCHIST WHEN YOU’RE YOUNG, YOU HAVE NO HEART; IF YOU’RE NOT A LIBERTARIAN WHEN YOU’RE OLD, YOU HAVE NO BRAIN
The anarcho-punk movement scoffed at the whole duopoly of right and left. We realized at a very young age that the whole idea of a political spectrum is a trick to get you to participate in their dippy game. We didn’t want anything to do with any government institution, including cops. If skinheads beat up one of us, we’d round up a posse and go get them (and often get beaten up again, but that wasn’t the point). In contrast, today’s kids ask the government for everything from paying their student loans to finding them more black friends.

2. YOU HAVE INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT DRUGS CAN DO
Conservatives sound painfully square when they talk about drugs. They seem to think pot is the same as acid is the same as heroin. That’s like saying getting a blowjob is the same as having your mind blown is the same as blowing your head off. After a prolonged and decadent adolescence, I can focus all my hatred of drugs where it matters—on heroin. Pot is a silly distraction that’s about as dangerous as bourbon. LSD gave me the ability to think light years outside the box and to this day, whenever I get hiccups I simply tell my brain, “I don’t want these anymore” and it makes them stop. But heroin is a whispering devil that hides your fear of death under a blanket while it smothers you to death with a soft pillow. Losing a dozen or so friends to it wasn’t a blast, but I can speak with authority about which drugs are bad and why.

3. A D.I.Y. YOUTH LEADS TO AN ENTREPRENEURIAL ADULTHOOD
The term “Do It Yourself” was hardcore punk’s balls-out code of honor. If you wanted a band to come to your town, you’d write them a letter, agree on a portion of the door, and plaster the city with flyers. It didn’t matter if you were only a teenager. You made it happen no matter what. At 17 I got a call from some bureaucrat at the public transit authority who said they were prosecuting me for vandalism because my show’s flyer was pasted to a bus-stop shelter. I knew they had no proof it was me so instead of confessing, I explained that the bands on the flyer have many devout followers and it must have been one of them. This is a great lesson for a future entrepreneur.

4. DRESSING LIKE A GOOF LEADS TO NOT DRESSING LIKE AN ASSHOLE
Punk and hardcore were totally against fascism except when it came to getting dressed. Your laces had to be perfectly parallel on your 14-hole Dr. Martens (no other brand allowed). Your pants had to be hemmed short, not rolled up, and decorating your leather jacket took about a month of gut-wrenching arts and crafts. It’s gauche to dress punk as an old man, but you will never catch an ex-punk wearing pajamas at the airport or baring his toes in a bar. Our suits are tailored, our pants fit perfectly, and after the age of 30, our T-shirts don’t say a damn thing.

6. SLAM DANCING TEACHES CAMARADERIE
Before it was called moshing it was called slam dancing, and the most important rule was: If anyone falls, you have to lean down and scoop him up. Preventing your buddy from getting trampled builds character and leads to adults who would never consider throwing anyone under the bus.

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7. PUNK ROCK ISN’T AS ANTI-CHRISTIAN AS YOU’D THINK
This one’s a toughie because songs such as “Jesus is Dead” were the norm, but I’d argue that punk was anti-Church back then because in 1960s Britain—when punk rockers were kids—the Church was dictatorial like the government. But after the first few waves of punk, a pro-life Christian punk movement emerged. In today’s climate, when Christians are being told they can’t pray in schools and they can’t say Merry Christmas, the punk ethos would be, “Leave them alone.” Check the volunteers at the soup kitchen. I bet you’ll find more punks and Christians than liberals.

8. THE P.C. POLICE HAVE NO POWER OVER YOU
The beauty of being a freak during your formative years is it makes you very comfortable with the idea of being an outcast. I consider myself just as liberal as I’ve always been. I’m still an anti-racist, pro-gay feminist who cares about the environment and hates big government. When the left gave a full naked body hug to political correctness, it allowed the thought police to move in and dismantle the whole operation. Now it’s considered racist to discuss the racist ways in which blacks and Hispanics act toward each other. It’s xenophobic to discuss Islam’s disgusting treatment of gays and women. Honestly talking about the ecological havoc that mass immigration wreaks is anti-Mexican, so that’s forbidden. So is criticizing a black president’s unprecedented spending. The punishment for breaking any of these semantic taboos is ostracism, but when you’ve sung for bands with names such as Anal Chinook and Leatherassbutfuk, you shrug and say, “So?”

9. YOU DON’T DISCRIMINATE
Growing up in a small town with esoteric tastes meant you couldn’t afford to cherry-pick your friends. If a fat Paki in a wheelchair had a Mohawk, he was in the band. If a forty-year-old tranny with a huge beard wanted to play bass, he’s in, too. Practicing what you preach ain’t easy and anarchy’s “anything goes” credo caused us some problems. While most kids our age were having keggers and wet T-shirt contests, we were holding anarchist gatherings where people would come from miles around to hold workshops and give lectures. Because we were anarchists, there could be no rules. Women wanted to hold rape workshops and prevent men from attending. This seemed like a rule, and it started huge arguments. We held seminars about racial equality, but everyone in the room was white. After hashing out the liberal utopia for about a decade, we began to realize we were acting like the sort of white-liberal “smiling fox” that Malcolm X warned was “more deceitful than the conservative.”

9. THE PUNK ANTIWAR ANTHEMS OF 1984 SOUND LIKE A PALEOCON MANIFESTO
If you want to hear some great antiwar arguments, skip over Daily Kos and go straight to Pat Buchanan. He isn’t merely against intervention in the Middle East; he says we shouldn’t even have participated in WWII! Neocons took the condescending “I know what’s good for you” liberal mentality and applied it to the whole world, whereas punks and paleocons want everyone to be left to their own devices.

10. YOU REALIZE THAT VIOLENCE HAS ITS PLACE
As people at New York’s Church Street boxing gym say, “Fighting solves everything.” On the streets back then, skinheads would fight you for your boots or even your Zippo lighter. Or they’d come directly to shows and attack you in the mosh pit. You couldn’t negotiate with them; the only thing that kept them at bay was a punch to the nose. We learned the hard way that you can’t reason with zealots, so when the PC left comes in demanding apologies or extremist Muslims insist you accept Sharia law, you don’t capitulate—you attack.

I walked into a bar yesterday and my neighbor was in tears. Her marriage is over and her husband is leaving her. “It just wasn’t working,” she told me while melting in her chair. “So?” I responded. This couple has a one-year-old child. HE’S ONE! Who has time to worry about their marriage when they’re getting five hours of sleep a night and constantly washing diaper shit off their hands? What’s the matter? Was the sex not steamy enough? Breaking up a marriage when you have an infant son is like turning to your fellow Marine during a firefight and saying, “I don’t want to be friends with you anymore.” Too bad! Tough tea bags, d-bag.

I’m never speaking to that guy again because he’s not a real human being, but it got me to thinking. How can women avoid choosing the wrong man? If you start dating a loser in your late twenties and he dumps you at 32, that’s it. You’re done. He just threw your ovaries in the garbage. If you managed to make a baby during that mistake, that’s even worse.

Here are ten ways to make sure you’re not shacking up with a zero:

1. DOES HE HAVE ANY FRIENDS?
In my neighbor’s case, she should have been suspicious that her husband has no friends and never has. This is because he’s simply not right in the head. All you need to sustain a friendship are a couple of inside jokes and a six-pack of beer. If he can’t handle that, he can’t handle a serious relationship.

2. DO HIS FRIENDS CHEAT?
If he hangs around cheaters, infidelity obviously doesn’t bother him. A stand-up guy will want to hang around other stand-up guys because he doesn’t want to be lecturing them all the time about what’s right. You want to surround yourself with peers who are at the same stages in their life, and screwing around is for kids. As my friend Tommy says, “I can’t hang out with guys my age who don’t have kids. It’s like, ‘Get your shit together.’”

3. DO HIS EX-GIRLFRIENDS HATE HIS GUTS?
He shouldn’t be all buddy-buddy with them. That’s gay. But he should have a somewhat civil relationship with his exes and talk to them for about 30 seconds if he sees them on the street. If they all hate him, he’s a liar. Also, mistresses: If you met him via infidelity, you are going to lose him to infidelity.

4. DOES HE HAVE CHARACTER?
This is the most important one by far, but it’s very difficult to suss out. Here’s a test: If there is a situation at work where a coworker of his is wrongly accused of something and he avoids the whole situation, dump his ass. The kind of guy who is happy to throw an innocent man under a bus is the kind of guy who will dump you for getting breast cancer.

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5. IS HE AMBITIOUS?
He doesn’t have to be successful. He just has to put at least 40 hours a week into something about which he’s passionate. I don’t care if his passion is something retarded such as being a photographer. If he gets up at 9AM and starts organizing contact sheets while putting the jobs that pay on the top of the To Do list, he’s a keeper. But if he wakes and bakes, he’s a loser. There’s nothing wrong with marijuana but it is not an office supply and it should only be used to make sex better and movies funnier. The only thing worse than being dumped is having your live-in boyfriend sit on the couch all day and complain about how you think less of him because he sits on the couch all day.

6. DOES HE CALL HIS MOTHER?
If he doesn’t give a shit about the matriarch, how do you think he’s going to feel about you when you become a mom? If he talks to his mother once a day, he’s a beta male, but if he doesn’t speak to either his mother or at least his grandmother once a week, you’re about to get neglected.

7. CAN HE CALL IT A NIGHT?
It’s OK to party hard occasionally. But if there’s no down time/suffering/remorse, he has an addictive personality and will be partying hard for the rest of his life. The Mötley Crüe roadies had a rule: “One day on. One day off.” Every time someone broke that rule, they ended up in rehab.

8. IS HE A PROFESSIONAL MUSICIAN OR ACTOR?
Men are only as loyal as their options, and these two professions provide an endless supply of women who are just like you, only better. The only time it’s possible to sustain a marriage when the man is gone for four months at a time is when he’s wearing a uniform and people are shooting at him.

9. IS HIS PENIS TOO SMALL?
In this modern age you get to test-drive the dick before marrying his ass, but holding endless auditions can grow tiresome. If you don’t want to take the long route to discover it’s too short, here’s a shortcut: If he’s really handsome and nice but girls keep breaking up with him, it’s too small.

10. DOES HE STILL GET ALONG WITH HIS DAD?
This one’s tricky. Around half of marriages end in divorce, so it’s not like you can rule out everyone whose parents aren’t still together (though it’s a real plus if they are). If his dad was a womanizer and your boyfriend spent a lot of time with him, the odds are pretty high you’re living with someone who sees women as fuck-buddies. However, if his father was a total deadbeat and deserted the family, he may be less likely to repeat the mistake because he knows how it feels. But studies show fatherless men tend to lack the basic parenting skills and have trouble coping, so even though most of them say they intend to be better parents, they rarely are. Therefore, if his dad’s a mensch and they have a good relationship, things are looking good. If he hates his father, you’re either really lucky or doomed.

Geez, this is harder than I thought. Sorry, ladies—you’re on your own.

I first encountered the word “hatefact” while drinking with someone—either “shock jock” Anthony Cumia at a grimy Midtown bar or VDARE’s erudite Peter Brimelow at the incurably snobby New York Athletic Club. These two characters are about as different as American men get, but they both ask a question a lot of Americans are asking: How did we get to the point where facts are offensive? This country started out with Thomas Jefferson saying, “There is not a truth existing which I fear…or would wish unknown to the whole world,” but today’s liberal-arts graduates have created an environment where anything that makes anyone uncomfortable is hate speech, even if it’s true—in many cases, especially if it’s true.

Here are 10 true statements that millions of Americans find offensive:

1. IT’S NOT QUITE HEALTHY TO BE A FAT PIG
Yes, some people are born with big bones and others have a disease called “burns less calories than they take in,” but anyone who’s visited China in the past 100 years can see that Americans have a disproportionate number of fat pigs. These whales complain that they are seen as human garbage, yet they treat their mouths like fast-food dumpsters. Please explain to me how that is different from putting on blackface and complaining about racism.

2. OVERPOPULATION AIN’T SO GREAT FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
When you’re a kid, you assume being Green is recycling coffee cups and putting old newspapers in a blue bin. After reading, I don’t know, one book, you realize there is nothing an infinite population can do to sustain itself. So you take a peek at who’s doing all the breeding. Turns out, in America at least, homegrown citizens are keeping their population at about zero growth, whereas immigrants are responsible for pretty much all of it—a phenomenon called “The Wedge.” When the Sierra Club was confronted with this inconvenient truth, they split into two groups. One side decided to accept this hatefact and the other decided to pretend it didn’t exist. The pretenders have done well with funding; the hatefact-mongers haven’t.

3. IT MAY BE A BIT HARDER TO SQUEEZE OUT A CHILD AS YOU GET OLDER
This is probably my favorite hatefact because if a guy who spent six years in medical school repeats what he learned, it’s hate speech. Sorry ladies, but your ovaries have a shelf life. At 30, the hourglass turns upside down and it gets progressively harder to have kids. By 35 the sand is all but gone and it’s incredibly difficult to breed. My wife had our first kid at 32 and she was wheeled through a hateful door that said “Geriatric Mothers” on it. As is always the case with feel-good propaganda, it ends up hurting the people it purports to help. I don’t know how many of my mid-30s female peers are stunned by how hard it is to procreate. Sexist facts could have drastically improved their lives, but they were hidden because the truth hurts.

4. PEOPLE WITH DIFFERENT SEXUAL PREFERENCES SOMETIMES ENJOY DIFFERENT LIFESTYLES
When Act Up!’s Larry Kramer criticizes the gay lifestyle and insists, “We are murderers, we are murdering each other,” he is seen as a crusader for justice. If the rest of us simply utter, “Jeepers, them gays sure do fuck a lot,” we are woefully naïve. The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart scoffed at people who assumed gays live any differently than straights by pointing out he lives in New York City, where everyone is decadent. Ahem: Jon? Circuit parties go on for three days and the attendees do so much crystal meth, they are able to fornicate nonstop throughout the entire event. This seemingly infinite amount of friction their poor bums and dinks are forced to endure has consequences. Nobody’s saying anyone deserves AIDS, but it shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone who contracts the virus at one of these parties.

5. CERTAIN GROUPS MAY NOT SHINE SO BRIGHTLY ON IQ TESTS
This one feels blasphemous to even type. Who cares if blacks score worse than whites, who score worse than Asians? We’re talking about general patterns involving millions of people. I come from a long line of incredibly stupid drunks and I feel zero shame about it because I know they’re not me. We’re told the tests are culturally biased but that doesn’t explain why Asians all over the world repeatedly outscore the rest of us. I don’t care about that, either. I feel no envy for China. This data is treated like some kind of Raiders of the Lost Ark scroll that will melt your face if you look at it, but I don’t find it disturbing at all. As is made clear in the The Bell Curve, the curves have huge overlaps showing there are thousands of blacks smarter than whites and Asians, while plenty of stupid Asians are way dumber than most of us.

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6. THERE’S A REMOTE CHANCE THAT INDIANS WERE NOT LIVING IN A HIPPIE COMMUNE WHEN WE GOT HERE
The accepted narrative for Native Americans is they were all playing Ring Around the Rosie until we blew germs on them and they all fell down. Though he had a helluva time getting it published, Lawrence H. Keeley’s War Before Civilization debunks that myth. The book describes common traditions such as mutilating a body AFTER it was killed to ensure the victim was doomed in the afterlife. We learn of mass graves with hundreds of scalped cadavers a good half-century before Columbus got there. Indian traditions have many wonderful traits, but let’s grow up a little and allow for the possibility they were simply incompatible with the modern world. For Christ’s sake, when we got here they hadn’t even invented the wheel. (Full disclosure: I’m allowed to consider this because the mother of my two children is a Native American.)

7. MEN END UP HAVING SEX WITH PEOPLE THEY DON’T WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH
The image of the huge black guy locked in a cell with the cowering white man is the fodder of many a bad joke, but doing the math gets unfunny really fast. The Justice Department recently came out with figures suggesting there were 216,000 victims of prison rape in 2008—that’s the number of victims rather than incidents, which are probably far higher. Even this conservative estimate puts America in the painfully uncomfortable position of being “the first country in the history of the world to count more rapes for men than for women.” You won’t see it on Jezebel anytime soon, but it appears it’s men who should be more offended when rape is trivialized.

8. SLAVERY DOESN’T DO MUCH FOR YOUR MORTGAGE IN 2012
The notion that the evil white man got rich stealing everyone else’s shit fits the great narrative and makes people feel better about themselves (including whites, the only group that derives pleasure from feeling bad about themselves). Here’s a hole in that argument wider than the Mason-Dixon Line: After the Civil War, the South had no wealth. The cotton money was spent. The cotton fields were burned. So even if slavery made us all plantation owners before the war—which is not the case, seeing as how a minority of Southern whites owned slaves even at slavery’s peak—we were all at a level playing field after it was done.

9. GUNS AREN’T ALL BAD
Several books have been written about this counterintuitive truth. Basically: The laxer the gun laws, the less crime. The infantilized left hears about a murder and sees it came from a gun so it says, “GUNS = BAD.” Then they pile on statistics about innocent kids playing with guns and soon we’re doing everything we can to rid the world of “the Devil’s right hand.” All this is obliterated by the countless times a criminal is deterred by the possibility of their victim being armed. We’re not only talking about the thousands of times a potential victim has brandished a weapon and said, “Not gonna happen,” but also the millions of times the perp has been forced to assume their prey may be armed. I’d hate guns too if they led to more crime, but they don’t, so I’m left to enjoy protecting my home and occasionally exploding the living shit out of a unopened can of cola using a .30-06.

10. FRIENDSHIPS BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN AREN’T EQUIVALENT TO SAME-SEX FRIENDSHIPS
Nobody’s saying males and females can’t be civil with each other and thoroughly enjoy a relationship devoid of boinking, but friends? You think a married man can be best buds with a woman? OK, try this on for size, guys: “Bye honey, me and Lesley are going camping for a couple of days. We’re going to get wasted and hunt small game and build a fire and probably crash in the same tent because that’s how best pals roll. You cool with that?” Yeah, right. Bringing this up inevitably leaves one open for a barrage of examples of platonic male/female relationships. Maybe one of them even survived a camping trip. Good for you. That’s called an EXCEPTION. The “hatefact” mentality assumes anecdotal evidence erases all the evidence of a general pattern. This crippling allergy to logic isn’t merely ignorant. It discourages people from learning, and that is one of the few things I truly hate.

Please share your favorite hatefacts in the comments section.

UPDATE: I’ve been getting a lot of hatetweets for hatefact, #8 particularly the words, “Level playing field.” Though there are many blacks who say they were actually better off during segregation and most of them voluntarily practice it now, that debate is a whole other ball of hatewax. The myth I was trying to focus on in #8 is strictly: America’s wealth is built on slavery. As far as the American economy goes, we were in debt after the Civil War so any money slavery made was long gone. The whole country had to start from scratch. You almost never hear this simple economic truth; hence,  it’s a "hatefact." 

When I was 13 I was looking at an old Penthouse out behind school and Dale Aiken said, “This is nothing. When you’re married, you get to see your wife’s tits anytime you want.” This seemed too good to be true. Twenty-eight years later, with a wife and two kids, I can attest that it is. This morning I asked my wife to show me her tits, and without looking up from the paper she said a very curt, “No.” When I said, “You have to show me them. You’re my wife,” she didn’t even respond.

I thought getting married was going to be like having a live-in sex slave, but it’s just as hard picking up chicks at home as it was in the clubs. However, being as tenacious as I am libidinous has led me to 10 simple tips that can help you score with even the most out-of-your-league wife.

1. WATCH HER FAVORITE TV SHOW
Bringing home flowers makes it look like you’re having an affair. Bring home a bottle of red wine instead and after the kids go to bed, open it up and watch her favorite TV show like you care. Get involved in the plot and say things like, “Is she insane? The judges hate when you take the easy route and cook what you’re known for. She’s doomed.” They seem to like incredulity a lot. After the show, she’ll be happy she has a best pal as a roommate and if you don’t move too fast, you can probably get in there.
WARNING: You are playing with fire watching these shows and if you let your guard down, it’s very easy to get hooked. I already have Stockholm Syndrome with Mob Wives, and missing an episode of Downton Abbey is as stressful as missing my period.

2. DON’T MASTURBATE
Your job as a husband is to act like you’re a fireman and your penis is the hose. If she’s in the mood on Christmas morning or an hour after your dad dies, you have to be able to drop everything and run into the flames, turgid firehose in hand. As the warden instructed the prisoners in Papillon, “Put all hope out of your mind…and masturbate as little as possible. It drains the strength.”

3. NO FARTING
Going to the bathroom with the door open or letting one rip in the living room doesn’t seem like a big deal when you’ve been living with someone for ten years, but know this: Every time you fart near your wife, a blowjob loses its wings. As Rachel Herz points out in her new book That’s Disgusting, nothing turns off a woman more than bad odors, so make sure you keep that shit as far from her nose as possible.

4. BIDE YOUR TIME
Unless someone slips her some Spanish Fly, you are not going to get laid while the kids are awake. Mothers get exhausted pretty soon after the kids go to bed, so scope out your window and only go for it when it’s open. If you’re repeating, “Wanna have sex?” all the time, you are seen as just another child that wants something from her. Actually, never say, “Wanna have sex?” You’re making love, not nachos.

5. FOOT MASSAGES ARE A GYP
Giving her a foot massage is the crack cocaine of picking up your wife. It works the first time, but then she wants more, and the next thing you know, you need a hand massage for your aching fingers. The only way massages work is when you do them in the middle of the day with no chance for sexual reciprocation. That makes it look like you’re not doing it just to get laid, which is a great way to get laid later.

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6. MAKE THE KIDS LAUGH
You’d think disciplining the kids would make her feel like she’s living with a real man who can take care of her. Yelling, “Listen to your mother!” when she calls them for dinner shows you have her back, no? Nope. It makes her think this is the same old crappy marriage everyone else has. I’ve noticed I get way more points when I make the kids giggle. If your kids are running around the house laughing hysterically like it’s a birthday party, you had better save some energy for her because you’re about to get seriously laid, my friend.

7. DON’T TALK ABOUT YOURSELF
Remember in your single days how fruitful it was to ask her about her life? Apparently, that still applies. It’s cathartic to bitch about your job when you get home, but she’s not your therapist. She’s still that girl you were trying to pick up when you first met her. To give up on that is to give up on the whole marriage. When you get home, ask her about her day and do everything you can to pay attention. I find it helps to dig your fingers into your leg or bite the inside of your cheek until it bleeds. 

8. DATE NIGHT
Our parents never had date night, but after they became our parents, our parents never got laid. Taking time out of your busy day to book a babysitter is so counterintuitive it borders on pussy-whipped, but it’s about the only sure thing a married man has left. Date night means she gets all dressed-up. That makes her feel less like a live-in maid who babysits your kids and more like the chick in that Chris de Burgh song.

9. SNUGGLE
I hate getting “comfers cozers,” as my wife puts it. I don’t even take my boots off when I get home, but married women don’t want to get banged by Lemmy in the bathroom. They want to have a sleepover with their gay friend and maybe get an “internal massage” after he leaves. That means you have to put on some stupid pajama-type clothes and sort of spoon her in front of the TV while pretending sex is the last thing on your mind. (I’m not sure why, but I find picturing Kevin Spacey’s gigantic head floating around the living room helps.) When she starts channel-surfing and getting bored, calmly turn off the TV and make your move. Her gay friend just left the building.

10. FIGHT
Fights are intense when you’re married because it’s like fighting with yourself. You know all the weak spots and can dig the knife right in just the right spot before twisting it in. I knew a heavyset urban-music producer in Vancouver who was arguing with his late-thirties girlfriend. She was just getting over a drug addiction and as he stormed out of the room she yelled, “See ya, fat wigger,” and he replied, “Goodbye, junkie spinster.” I’ve never heard more perfectly honed attacks.

Crossing the line usually means about three days on the couch, and it’s during that time you’re reminded of what life was like without her. Where the fight highlights all the worst things about a relationship, the doghouse reminds you why you got married in the first place. I don’t recommend starting a fight just for makeup sex, but the “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone” boner is so intense, it can’t not make a baby. And that’s why we’re here, after all.

Barack Obama

I just flew back from Los Angeles and boy, are my ears tired. The Obamaniacs there are even more brainwashed than their New York comrades. They have no problem with the president’s limitless spending or his warmongering lies and actually think he’s doing a great job.

At least New York liberals have lost a little faith. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald has noticed the left’s “repulsive progressive hypocrisy” and called out Obama for running as an antiwar candidate and then becoming a war president. Michael Moore did the same.

But on the other end of the country, we have California pundits such as Bill Maher who not only proudly support Obama’s policies, they think anyone who doesn’t is an asshole. Maher’s term for global-warming skeptics is “climate assholes.”

Maher has a segment on his show called GOP Bubble which features stupid Republicans stuck in a big ball, oblivious to the world around them. I watched his show while I was in a hotel not far from HBO’s studios and was confused when he stuck a picture of Mitch Daniels in the bubble and criticized the Indiana governor for scoffing at Obama’s job-creation programs. Maher didn’t mention that Daniels allowed the free market to wrench Indiana out of the Rust Belt and into a huge surplus by privatizing everything from toll roads to welfare-enrollment programs. Maher was angry that Daniels dared question the government’s ability to create jobs and claimed the president has killed about half a million public-sector jobs a year while simultaneously adding over a million private-sector ones. His guest Suze Orman agreed and just about everyone at the table thought it would be a great idea for Obama to run a campaign on his record. Maher then told us we were all better off than four years ago. “Fuck yeah, I’m better off,” he said on the show. “I mean four years ago I was shitting in my pants.”

For most of 2008, unemployment stayed under 6%. Today it’s 8.3%. Shouldn’t more unemployment cause more pants-shitting? Not everyone is employed in broadcasting. Obama claims to have created three million jobs and his fans are happy to parrot that figure, but there’s an equally strong argument that says he’s caused a net loss of 549,000 private-sector jobs.

The people I spoke to in LA acted as if they had never considered the possibility that the president wasn’t kicking ass. They accepted as Gospel truth that the government can create jobs and that Obama created three million of ’em with one magical wave of his pen. They also pointed out that unemployment is down, adding that most economists agree the stimulus worked. Unemployment has stopped skyrocketing, but that’s only in the past year. When I showed them an unemployment graph of the past ten years they blamed the previous nine years on Bush. They also don’t see the similarities between the stimulus and Bernie Madoff. If a dozen economists analyzed his victims’ portfolios before he was caught, they’d be impressed. They’d say 10% a year is a fantastic return and the future looks bright—but at what cost? Waterworld seemed like a good idea to somebody at first, too, but it cost $235 million. As the head of the American Action Forum said, “If you throw nearly a trillion dollars at the economy, it has to have an impact.” Sure, doing things such as letting people stay on unemployment for longer enables them to buy more stuff, but that’s not strengthening an economy, it’s fabricating one.

The only time a government can create jobs is when they throw themselves on the funeral pyre and let capitalism’s invisible hand do its thing. In June of 2011, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s policies helped create 12,900 jobs—over half of all jobs created nationally that month. Walker hates big government as much as everyone in Madison hates him.

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The president has a knack for oversimplifying very complex issues and in a city where nobody is ashamed to read Us Weekly, this suits them just fine. When Obama says he’s cut trillions in tax they smile and assume anyone who has a problem with that must be racist. The truth is that he only cut trillions from his projected spending spree. It’s still unprecedented spending. John Stossel described it as the president on a diet bragging that he only put on ten pounds. When questioned Obama would explain, “Without the diet, I would have put on fifty pounds.” Using White House logic, he lost 40 pounds.

Margaret Thatcher was accused of losing Britain millions of pounds and it’s true that unemployment soared after she got into office. However, economics is a complicated beast and before you go putting her in a stupid GOP Bubble, find out what kind of jobs were lost. If they were government bureaucrats, I’m glad they lost their jobs. Judging by how the British economy was thriving when she left in 1990, I’m guessing the jobs she lost were slowing everything down.

Obama is the opposite of Thatcher. He’s coming into office and “creating” employment. This doesn’t bode well and it’s not likely we will see an economy that looks like 1990 Britain when Obama finally steps down. This is because government cannot create jobs. I thought everyone knew this, but I didn’t find one person in California who had even considered the possibility. No wonder this is where Scientology is headquartered.

When Obama hurled money to “rebuild the roads” and “rebuild this nation” as the vice president put it, the fake jobs he created were gone soon after. You can pay someone to dig some troughs and then fill them back up again, but that’s not something a worker can take pride in, and it certainly isn’t a job that will last. Everyone knows this. Even the government’s own studies confirm this. 

I’d go even further than the studies and say government kills jobs. When South Carolina tries to get out from oppressive unions and keep the factories alive by lowering wages, the government sues them. When Arizona tries to stop illegal aliens from milking taxpayers, Obama sics the Justice Department on them. Why are they getting involved? The vast majority of employed Americans are non-union, and only a tiny fraction of them get paid minimum wage. They get paid more because they’re worth more. As Thatcher said in 1988 at the Church of Scotland when she was invoking St. Paul, “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.”

When the left coast hears “create jobs,” that’s all they hear. I’m from the right coast and when I hear those words I say, “I ain’t buyin’ it.” Then the government says, “Yes you are” and takes half my wages to pay for it. Busy work that politicians invented using other people’s money to sustain it doesn’t count. The only jobs that matter are those the market created. If the government made them in a bubble, they’re bound to burst.

It’s stressful to be hated. It goes against our instincts. We want to be loved. But Andrew Breitbart was different. He relished his enemies and laughed when they threatened him. He wasn’t scared of conflict. He thought it was fun. He was, as Greg Gutfeld put it, “The bravest person I ever met.”

When I was on Greg’s show Red Eye with Breitbart we were asked what we thought of Trump sponsoring a GOP debate. Greg and I had the knee-jerk reaction of scoffing at the whole thing. When Breitbart asked us what was so funny we said, “Well, it’s obviously just some rich guy showboating.” Then he taught me a word I never really paid attention to before: “So?”

This word defines Breitbart to me more than any other. At a bar one night I was whining about the allegation that all libertarians are funded by the Koch brothers. “So?” he replied. Andrew didn’t play the PC left’s game. Libertarians don’t get magical checks from the Koch brothers, but so what if they did? George Soros spends billions paying people he likes. There’s nothing wrong with that, either.

Another evening we were both arguing with someone who still believed government can create jobs. She was from Madison and like all liberals there, she saw Governor Scott Walker as a union-busting thug who hated the working man. I explained that Walker’s privatization created way more jobs than the government did and she said, “Yeah, but they were all just tourism jobs.” Breitbart ended the whole argument with, “So?”

What a word. It’s only two letters but it shows the PC left they’ve never thought past the silly hysteria that surrounds their accusations. Oil companies have had record profits this year. So? That’s what they’re supposed to do. Up in Canada, my father has been fighting with the local schoolboard because they are hiring fundamentalist Muslims as guidance counselors. The trustee in charge of the program said my father’s comments could be construed as anti-Islamic and I was surprised to see him explain why they are not. “You need to learn Breitbart’s magic word,” I said in an email. “When she calls you anti-Islamic, say, ‘So?’” This was yesterday.

I once asked Andrew where it all came from. Where did he get the hubris to take on the whole world? “I woke up one day,” he told me, smiling with a drink in his hand (despite accusations, he didn’t do drugs), “and I said, ‘What Would Andrew Do?’ From that day forward I did whatever I wanted and said exactly what was on my mind.” His boldness was contagious. Days after meeting him you catch yourself strutting down the street with your chest puffed-out yelling, “So?” at everyone who has a problem. 

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This is precisely why he was so popular. He made us all feel fearless. For all the petty enemies who called him everything from a homophobe to a faggot, there were a hundred supporters inspired by his bravery. I never saw him even slightly bothered by accusations and even flattery left him unfazed. Once, when a sycophantic colleague parroted Breitbart’s feelings on some random subject, Andrew shrugged and said, “And? You want me to say something glib now?” This made me laugh so hard I convulsed and hit my head on the table because it was totally unexpected. Who calls bullshit on flattery?

The only time I saw him care what anyone thought was when his daughter was mad at him. He was in trouble because he left on a business trip without telling her exactly when he was leaving and exactly when he was coming back. That was one of her rules and he had broken it. “It’s different being in the doghouse with a kid,” he told me before calling her to beg for forgiveness. “With an adult, even your wife, you think, ‘Yeah, go ahead be mad at me, I don’t care.’ Even when you’re wrong. You can’t be like that with a kid.” Then he left the room and talked to his daughter for so long I almost left. When he came back, I asked him how it went and he said, “I think we’re good” while pensively staring at his phone.

Thomas Paine once wrote, “He who dares not offend cannot be honest” and as far as I’m concerned, that’s what Andrew Breitbart was all about. When a journalist accused him of carefully editing an NAACP speech to make a black woman look racist, Andrew relentlessly hammered the guy and proved it was the media who had cherry-picked the quote. When the liberal media was hemming and hawing about rape accusations at OWS, Breitbart ran up to the protestors and screamed, “STOP RAPING PEOPLE” in their faces. You don’t forget a guy like that.

I was on an anarchist hippie farm this summer and was surprised to see Oriana Fallaci books on the shelf. She was a conservative, but she was also a crusader for truth. Henry Kissinger famously said talking to her was “the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press.” It’s not her politics that has her sitting on bookshelves four decades after that interview, it’s her courage. I talked to Breitbart about this on Dennis Miller’s radio show and we both agreed history best remembers the ones who had it worst. I told him he would be remembered forever because he made sure he had a tough time. He ended the interview with, “I hope you’re having a tough time, too,” and I’d like to add that I hope we all are. If there’s one thing we can learn from this man, it’s that the tough have to get going. He inspired us all to stop living in a culture of fear and fight for what’s important: our families, our country, and our culture. I am proud to have known Andrew for the brief moment I did, and his children should be proud of the legacy he left in such a short time.

Tonight, I’m not going to mourn him. I’m going to go out with friends, get drunk, and talk about all his accomplishments. You don’t act defeated when someone such as Andrew Breitbart dies, you fight.

(UPDATE: Gavin has designed and is selling “SO?” T-shirts and is giving 100% of the proceeds to Andrew Breitbart’s family.)

This week, NATO personnel accidentally burned a pile of Korans while trying to dispose of incendiary propaganda. One account says the two workers who set the fire “were oblivious to the significance of what they were doing.” Although accidental, the fires of Afghan rage were fanned. So long as blasphemy has been committed, intent seems irrelevant in Islamic culture. They live in a culture of fear. Obama sent an apology to their president and made it clear that those responsible will be held “accountable.”

Across the pond, an insider tells me a Chinese website ran into some internal trouble recently when a story’s first draft used images of concentration-camp prisoners to illustrate a stripe trend during fashion week. I can’t verify it but I’m told their boss (who is American) flew over to China to fire them all but was stunned to discover they didn’t know what they had done. These twenty-something Chinese computer students were only using Google Images to find pictures of people wearing stripes. Their boss found himself in the awkward position of having to explain what the Holocaust was before firing someone for trivializing it. Instead of letting them go, he let it go.

The question of intent also surrounds a controversy over a movie poster for The Little Mermaid. There are a few versions of this story, but it appears the artist did not intend to draw one of the towers surrounding the Little Mermaid as a penis. He didn’t see it as a big deal either way, and Disney agreed (though today the poster is decidedly less phallic than the artist’s first draft).

ESPN editor Anthony Federico recently used the colloquialism “Chink in the armor” in a headline discussing Asian basketball sensation Jeremy Lin. Despite his apparent innocence, Federico begged for forgiveness but still lost his job.

Should a person be fired for mere obliviousness? The word “Santorum” is known to Google as the disgusting sludge that comes from anal sex, yet some genius decided it would be prudent to feature presidential candidate Rick Santorum in an ad covered in wet mud. It’s hard to think that was intentional. Should heads roll?

It’s easy to say people shouldn’t be fired or persecuted for innocent gaffes, but what if someone was doing it on purpose? What if a New York Post editor used the headline, “Obama’s Cuts Not Nearly Niggardly Enough” knowing that it would offend people? Should he be fired?

The answer is “yes” if it can be proved beyond doubt that some internal saboteur is trying to destroy your company. Dozens of urban myths surround Disney’s artists, and it’s been confirmed that employees have snuck in naked ladies, the word “sex,” and even Michael Eisner’s home number.

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But the answer is “no” if a person is merely speaking their mind and special-interest groups are pressuring you to kowtow to the control-freak tendencies that emerge from their eternally bruised feelings. Appeasing extremists with apologies only encourages them. We don’t let heads roll for such trifles—that’s not how we roll in the West.

I have a hard time thinking of circumstances where anyone should be fired for being offensive. If someone sneaks pornography into your kid’s movies then yes, they’re gone. However, if an American adult decides he is offended by a word that’s in the English language or a nonviolent action such as burning a book, that’s his problem.

Back in 2001 when I first met Sarah Silverman, she was in trouble with the Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) for saying, “I love Chinks.” The line was in a joke where she said she chickened out of portraying herself as a racist to get out of jury duty and replaced “hate” with “love.” The head of MANAA said comedians should consult with his group first before making such jokes. Silverman wasn’t falling for it. “Well, I’m not afraid to say something if I think it’s funny,” she said, “even if it’s harsh or racist.” More people should have her attitude.

I don’t like any rules that start with, “What were they thinking?” because it reminds me of the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s crusade against Ezra Levant. After being legally harassed for republishing the infamous Muhammad cartoons, he stared his inquisitor right in the eye and told her it didn’t matter what he was thinking.

I’m offended every day I walk around New York City. I don’t sue anyone for it because I’ve known since kindergarten that only sticks and stones can break my bones. That’s what I love about what’s left of the Western world. If you’re at a Glaswegian comedy club and you talk about Braveheart having sex with toddlers (Princess Isabelle would have been four if that movie was accurate), you get uproarious applause. This is what separates the West from the rest—our ability to take it on the chin.

But if you make a cartoon of a cartoon drawing a cartoon of Muhammad in a bear costume, terrorists try to kill you. By kowtowing to intolerant extremists both here and abroad we are submitting to Islam’s worst characteristics. When I heard high-school students in Utah were told their team’s cougar mascot is sexist, I was reminded of the Taliban confiscating kids’ stuffed animals because they were considered blasphemous.

I say we shouldn’t be bowing to Islamic or PC-extremist tantrums by apologizing for and censoring everything that offends them. By second-guessing everything we do, we more than appease and empower the enemy—we do their job for them. Why is every comment on the Internet shrouded in anonymity? That’s not “the land of the free.” As writer Lisa Carver put it:

The self-love, the bravery, the in-your-facery that made America great in the way it was great….Walt Whitman, Anne Sexton, flappers, expatriates, talk shows—that all came from the boldness of being a nation on the ascent. This is the descent, and we don’t know how to do it; we don’t have the manners that helped the Brits retain grace while losing their empire. Confused, we look for enemies…who did this to us? This is how the police state begins. From within.

It’s a natural impulse to want to censor things that make you uncomfortable, but to give into it is to surrender our culture. That is more than a waste of time; it’s the beginning of the end.

Nicki Minaj

When Nicki Minaj flailed around satanically onstage in front of a scared fake priest at the Grammys last week, the Catholic Church was understandably upset. “Whether Minaj is possessed is surely an open question, but what is not in doubt is the irresponsibility of the Recording Academy,” Catholic League president Bill Donohue wrote. “Never would they allow an artist to insult Judaism or Islam.”

Donohue is right. Christians—but especially Catholics—are the last bastion of people you can comfortably offend. Piss Christ wins awards sponsored by the National Endowment of the Arts, but when Van Gogh’s great-grandson makes an arty film about Islam, he gets a rapier in his chest. Racism is even more sacrilegious. Can anyone even conceive of a Piss MLK winning awards? What about a Shit Oprah? I’m annoyed by the Get Out of Jail Free Card that Catholic-bashers and nonwhites get, but Minaj’s performance reminded me of an even less talked-about victim: dads.

That’s right: dads.

Insulting the American dad is more than acceptable; it’s viewed as laudable. Minaj wasn’t insulting her dad, because she doesn’t really have one. Minaj was mimicking Madonna’s relentless taunting of the Catholic Church. Madonna’s motive for her blasphemous imagery was a reaction to her oppressive Catholic father. I realize that saying Minaj’s bizarre performance made me feel bad about dads is a bit of a stretch, but I needed a segue. Plus, I’m a dad and our feelings are valid, goddamnit! We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!

When did saying, “Fuck you, dad” become a symbol of strength and independence? Why is depicting the American father as a retard a comedic mainstay? I’m not talking about deadbeat dads or all the self-indulgent boomers who trade in your mom for a younger model when her looks start fading. I’m talking about shoe salesmen such as Al Bundy in Married…With Children—men who stick by their family and are the only breadwinner in the house. He has stinky feet stuck in his face all day so his family can have a roof over their heads. Ha ha ha, what a nobody.

Homer Simpson isn’t simply dumb. He is less capable than someone with Down syndrome, but if the nuclear power plant he works at ever experiences a China Syndrome, he’s the only family member in danger. Ha ha, what a loser.

The Irish Catholic dad in Family Guy is equally useless, though he works in shipping at a brewery, one of the more dangerous jobs in America. Ha ha ha, he got crushed under a forklift while paying the bills. Black dads such as Bill Cosby tend to be a heartwarming combination of humor and wisdom, but if you went by American pop culture alone, you’d think us white dads lose all our brain cells when we ejaculate and as soon as we get our wives pregnant, we become the baby.

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My kids were watching a show called The Amazing World of Gumball the other day and I got annoyed by their pink rabbit dad who is so dense, he thinks breaking into school and doing a Mexican drag queen dance will earn him a sausage. So I put in a DVD of 1964’s Mary Poppins. Although the father figure in that movie isn’t as dumb as Gumball’s dad, he is at least seven times shittier. He vows there shall be no laughing in the house and gets angry every time someone starts having fun. The kids get him fired from his job at the bank, and the only time he appears human is when he laughs at his boss for doing it. Wait, dads can’t do that. We need to be polite if we get fired because we need a reference to get another job. We may not know who Nicki Minaj is, but we do know how to make sure you are all safe and taken care of at all times. Even as we sleep. That’s why there’s a baseball bat under the bed.

My wife recently tried to switch sides with me on our bed. I explained that I had to stay on this side because it was closest to the door and if we ever had an intruder, I have to be the first one there. She never thought of that, nor had she noticed the bat—a mainstay under all dads’ beds. How many of us have leapt out of bed in the middle of the night after hearing a strange sound? Just about every dad in this country has been in the kitchen at 4 AM, dressed like Piglet with just a T-shirt and nothing else, heart pounding with adrenaline, Louisville Slugger in hand, planning the first strike while saying, “Who’s there?” in the deepest voice possible. Then we go back to bed and say nothing of the false alarm. Do you know how hard it is to go back to sleep when you were prepared to murder some teenage junkie mere seconds ago—in the nude!?

Though we never complain about it, us dads always have a Sword of Damocles dangling over our heads. As I’ve always said about men wearing flip-flops, “What if someone slaps your girl and you have to chase them?” What if a car cuts into the pedestrian lane and almost hits your pregnant wife? We are the ones who have to bang the hood and threaten to kill the guy, no matter how huge he is. Dads have to be ready to fight to the death every waking moment. We have to make sure everyone at home is taken care of, even after we’re dead. Why are we the bad guy? A man’s home used to be his castle. Today everyone sits around the castle laughing at TV’s court-jester dads.

What is the root of liberal rage? It seems so hyperbolic and illogical. They can’t possibly mean what they say. They hate Wall Street but have no idea how the country would function without it—nor do they care to investigate. They claim race is a lie and proudly tell the world we’ll all be brown soon, yet barely 3.5% of them marry outside of their race. They proudly state gays live the same lifestyle as straights and if you think otherwise you have a mental disorder. Yet they know that statement is false because they know what a circuit party is. Liberals tell us abortion is an empowering form of birth control, though I have yet to meet a mom who, after seeing what babies are like when they come out, would ever consider getting an abortion again. I believe liberals adopt their beliefs not because they actually believe them but because it makes dad mad. Patriarchs are an easy villain and antagonizing them has become a political doctrine in itself. The left’s entire raison d’être is nothing more than a teenager puffing his chest out and saying to his father, “Oh yeah?”

Moms can make humans come out of their genitalia. This is a miracle that deserves an almost religious reverence. The fact that it’s seen as some kind of medical side effect is a whole other article. Moms deserve respect and for the most part, they get it. But dads are a joke at best. I’m not sure exactly what begot this universal lack of respect. Maybe the father figure is the only one who doesn’t believe our bullshit and has the audacity to tell us to grow up. Maybe liberals feel guilty their father spent tens of thousands of dollars getting them a Master’s Degree in Native American Pottery. While these kids were studying Dadaism, they should have been studying dadism. It’s probably the most prevalent but least-talked-about prejudice there is.

I recently joined this cool new social-networking site called “Facebook” because my publishers told me I had to use it to promote my book. I was reluctant to join because every time I checked my wife’s page, it showed some person she barely knows telling the world he favorited a YouTube video. So what?

Now, I had never opposed Facebook out of some misguided moralfag outrage; I just thought it seemed “mind-numbingly dull,” as writer Matt Labash put it. But after trying it for a few days, I see it’s like everything else on the Internet—as useful as you want it to be. Most of the criticism surrounding the site now seems like a combination of entitlement, self-obsession, and technophobia.

After telling a fellow Facebookophobe I had caved, he became incensed and sent me an article by proud Luddite Tom Hodgkinson entitled “Log off!” We are both fans of Hodgkinson. His books How to Be Free and The Freedom Manifesto are required reading for anyone who leans more to the anarchy side of libertarianism. However, as I was reading Tom’s article I thought, “Fuck this guy.” He is so anti-consumerism he’s actually anti-capitalism, and as far as I’m concerned that’s anti-freedom. Even if it was a joke, his article went over like a Ludd balloon.

Hodgkinson uses the adjectives “terrifying” and “sinister” to describe Facebook’s plan to monetize their user’s announcements with programs such as Sponsored Stories. But what are they doing that’s so evil? They’re not selling pictures of your kids to pedophiles. They’re not even touching your private data. All they’re doing is allowing sponsors to put a logo and a link next to a post that mentions their product. What’s the matter with that?

Business Week’s Ben Kunz says he thinks they should go even further and sell all the data, and I’m inclined to agree. The users willingly put info on Facebook’s site for free and someone wants to turn that garbage into a profit? It’s like making money out of thin air. Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt refused Kunz’s advice and told him, “people share so freely on Facebook, in part, because they trust that we’re not going to sell their information. We don’t have any interest in violating that trust.”

Despite Facebook’s refusal to sell information, users are still outraged at Sponsored Stories. Politicians are piggybacking the outrage. How audacious. This has nothing to do with the government. Facebook costs nothing, and I’m not forced to post anything on there. If I thought a picture of myself in high school was some kind of precious commodity worth millions, I wouldn’t share it. If my favorite Jamaican restaurant wants to put up a link after I tell my friends I had a delicious meal there, that’s irie with me. The only time I get sanctimonious about my privacy is when the government is involved. Businesses want my money and if they don’t get it, they say, “Geez, he’s not interested. I must be doing something wrong.”

The government, on the other hand, demands about half my salary, couldn’t care less what I think about it, and if I don’t pay them, I go to jail. Hodgkinson doesn’t see the difference and describes Facebook as “Orwellian.” Big Brother isn’t Big Brother if he can’t punish us for not obeying him. Facebook is only trying to generate revenue. Why does that bother Tom so much? Is he jealous?

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In Hodgkinson’s article, he claims Google uses “pawtracks” to tell big business about your search history. This is false. You only get cookies when you’re on a site that puts them there. They can only track your activity when you’re on their site and if you have a problem with that, you should only frequent restaurants where the waiters are blindfolded. The only way someone can see what sites you’ve been Googling is when they get on your computer and manually click the “history” button. The only entity with the authority to do this against your will is the government, and even they need a subpoena first. If you want to Google “how to murder your wife” and “tax evasion,” go bananas. But if you announce your affection for these topics on Facebook, that’s a different story. Only a mental defective would post something publicly like that and hope nobody noticed.

I don’t want to murder my wife, so I wouldn’t have a problem with Google selling my information even if they did. Although I found no hard evidence that Google sells your cookie history, their email service Gmail may be another story. Jezebel.com writer Tracie Morrissey was incensed by some ads in Gmail that told her where she could sell her engagement ring. She had been emailing a friend about a fight with her fiancé and a spambot picked up on it. I introduced Tracie to her fiancé and although I understand why she’d be frustrated with him, I didn’t know why she was mad at the robot. She was using Gmail’s software for free. In return, an algorithm tried to help her. Using someone else’s email technology is not our right and even if it was, being introduced to a vendor who wants to help wouldn’t count as a violation of that right.

Capitalism has such a bad rap these days, simply encouraging the invisible hand to merge supply with demand is seen as spooky. I like being target-marketed so much, it almost gives me a tingle. I have very esoteric tastes and have no problem watching businesses struggle to please me. I recently got some spam announcing the new GG Allin Throbblehead dolls are out. Thank you for that. I’m one of the 37 people in the world who wants one. Do you care that the new Bad Brains documentary is debuting at SXSW? No? OK, well, we won’t waste your time with announcements about it. Targeted marketing is showing you something you might like while you look at other stuff you like, for free. FOR FREE! When I go to Taki’s Mag I see my own face advertising a porn domain. That’s not sinister. It’s amusing.

While Tom Hodgkinson plays his vinyl records in private and swears they sound better than MP3s, I took Andrew Breitbart’s advice and subscribed to Spotify, where a seemingly infinite number of songs appear every time I type something in the search bar. If I feel inclined, I can have the songs I listen to appear on Facebook. Right now I’m listening to Nicki Minaj and I don’t want anyone to know that, so I clicked the “private session” button. I want Facebook to register my choices and I want it to tell me if a band I listen to a lot is releasing a box set. I use Facebook to check in on old friends, hear about things I might want to buy, and even—brace yourself—sell stuff. If they think they can turn a profit by documenting this harmless behavior, they are obligated to do so.

The privacy backlash at Facebook isn’t about big business violating our rights. It’s about a nation of spoiled brats so used to getting something for free, they think it’s their inalienable right. I wish they would direct their anger at the government, which is working hard to not only monitor our behavior but restrict it.

Companies that try to sell you something aren’t trying to ruin your life. They’re trying to enrich it. Entrepreneurs create jobs and make our lives better. They are the reason the average lifespan has been climbing steadily since we began recording it. Billionaires shouldn’t disgust you; they should inspire you. Two-thirds of them started out with nothing. The billions that Facebook is making came out of nothing. The world is moving forward no matter what, and the Luddites can either come aboard or get the hell out of the way.

Mob Wives

When MTV’s The Real World debuted in 1992, people saw it for what it was: a silly bit of voyeurism for a bunch of stupid kids. Twenty years later, the genre it hatched is dominating prime time, and the audiences are a helluva lot older than 18. VH1’s Mob Wives owns the female 18-49 demographic, but with 3.5 million combined viewers for this season’s debut (including the encore performance), that has to include some stupid old men. Anthony Hopkins has admitted he’s one of them.

Shouldn’t Hopkins be joining the 4.2 million people who watched the debut of Downton Abbey? It hurts when we lose a BAFTA Fellow to the hordes. How can grown men watch this program? It’s a curse-laden freak show of foul sluts attacking each other, gossiping about their inconsequential lives in bastardized English, and spewing inanities such as, “Archenemy is a highly educated word.” When did this become an adult’s idea of entertainment?

Former VH1 impresario, reality-TV scion, and current Atlantic contributing editor Michael Hirschorn tries to defend the genre, saying it’s an affordable and “real” way of unapologetically dealing with uncomfortable topics. He claims his The White Rapper Show “turned into a running debate among the aspiring white MCs over cultural authenticity—whether it is more properly bestowed by class or race.”

What’s really driving reality television is the price tag. Following cougar Guidettes around Staten Island with a handheld camera has to be cheaper than recreating WWI England in all its aristocratic glory. Hirschorn claims that reality TV is anywhere from 50% to 75% less expensive to produce than scripted TV. Where scripted television requires writers and editors and plots that must be tied up in a bow at the end of every episode, unscripted television is a malleable ball that can turn on a dime. That’s not to say it is strictly unscripted. I know people who work on Mob Wives and many other reality shows, and they claim the major players often have earpieces on them and are fed dialogue to help ramp up the drama when things get dull. (Sources say the show’s creator and executive producer Jenn Graziano is one of these Svengalis.)

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Insiders tell me this mutiny began with Tony Soprano. Back in 2003 when James Gandolfini demanded $1 million per episode for The Sopranos, producers at Law & Order said their boss Dick Wolf went ballistic. They claim he saw this demand as the end of scripted television and faxed everyone in the TV industry a one-page note that said, “IT’S THE WRITING, DUMMIES” in angry black marker. The endlessly breeding scourge of reality television proves Wolf right. The actors’ egos eventually got so big, the free market gave up on them and decided to harness the huge supply of wannabe celebrities that a 24-hour-a-day TV industry with countless channels demands. When the Writers Guild strike hit in 2007, reality TV got another huge boost.

But Mob Wives? Half of them aren’t even the wives of mobsters. I mean, sure, Drita and Carla lost their wise guys to the pen, but Karen Gravano and Renee are Mob Daughters. And where does Ramona get off talking shit about Drita’s Albanian heritage? Ramona’s a Mob Granddaughter. She married out of the mob! And before we all start getting tattoos of Big Ang, let’s not forget she’s nothing more than a Mob Niece.

The only thing more infuriating than the fact that men watch this show is how Renee reacts to her ex-husband’s Hector “Junior” Pagan’s constant philandering. He always claimed to love her father like his own and says the only reason he and Renee divorced was her “controlling” nature, but we see the texts! We see him flirting with other girls even after he and Renee move back in together. Not a single viewer was surprised to read in the paper last week that Junior was only pretending to want her back and was actually using her to gain her father’s trust so he could throw him back in jail. Of course—Junior’s a rat! It was right under our noses. The feds observed that every time Renee’s father T. G. Graziano got out of jail, he happily resumed his duties as consigliere. They hadn’t been happy since T. G. got out in April last year, so when Hector saw himself staring at another bid behind bars, he did what all rats do—he rolled on his family. We weren’t surprised, but Renee “Blind as a Bat” Graziano was so shocked, she had a panic attack and had to be rushed to the hospital. Can you believe her sister’s the show’s Svengali?

With the last few episodes showing Renee starting to lean toward team Drita, Junior’s betrayal will probably solidify the deal. Drita was one of the few bitches who kept it real and warned Renee about this scumbag. She’s a brawler, that Drita, and she rubs a lot of the other women the wrong way, but in the end, she’s not bullshittin’. She’s tellin’ you the fuckin’ troot.

It’s not easy to guess where it’s headed. We can’t say anything for certain until this Sunday at 9 PM when the new episode airs, but if things keep heading in the same direction, Carla’s going to keep pretending she cares about her friendship with Karen, Ramona’s going to keep talking out of her ass, Renee’s going to keep fucking up, Drita’s going to keep fighting for what’s right, and Big Ang? Well, she’s just Big Ang. Whaddaya gonna do?

Have you noticed a strange undertone of snark on 60 Minutes every time they feature an entrepreneur? When Lesley Stahl interviewed the founder of Groupon last week, she felt the need to needle him with, “Here’s some of the adjectives that were used to describe you….Thin-skinned, impetuous, and childish.”

Conversely, they grovel at the feet of pompous bureaucrats. When they interviewed the head of the IMF, they came up with lines such as: “The IMF…sits on a fund of $842 billion. But that’s not nearly enough….”

This represents a deep divide in the American psyche. The right sees entrepreneurs as job machines who create wealth for everyone, and they view the government as a parasite thwarting both rich and poor. The left, in turn, portrays entrepreneurs as the parasites. In this instance, the left is wrong and I think it’s because they don’t understand the pie analogy. They think a rich person has taken more than his slice of the pie, which leaves less for the rest of us. They didn’t take math in college and don’t understand that “greedy” entrepreneurs keep creating more pies. While the left scoffs at the idea of more than one pie, they have no problem with Obama trying to synthesize the process by printing more money. They don’t mind the government having infinite cash, but when it comes to an individual having money to burn, they’d rather torch it all.

Big Business and Big Government, who still haven’t officially announced that they’re married, have been seeking to get even bigger lately. They’d been trying to push a bill called SOPA—the Stop Online Piracy Act—that empowered Wall Street and the White House to decide who gets to do what on the Internet. But the Big Biz/Big Guv tag-team wrestling duo suffered a smackdown. In protest of SOPA, huge sites such as Wikipedia blacked themselves out for a day on January 18th.

In retaliation, the Justice Department chose the wealthy but charisma-challenged Kim Dotcom (né Kim Schmitz, AKA Kimble, AKA Kim Tim Jim Vestor) to represent all that is evil about Internet piracy on January 19th. Cooperating with the FBI, authorities in New Zealand invaded his home, confiscated his belongings, and threw him in jail a day after the SOPA blackout. He was deemed a flight risk and is still incarcerated.

Upping the ante after the feds shut down Dotcom’s site Megaupload, the online “global brain” that calls itself Anonymous hacked an array of government and corporate websites.

The escalating antics mirrored Dotcom’s countersuit from December after Universal Music Group tried preventing him from using their artists to promote his file-sharing software. UMG claimed they had the right to prevent rappers on their roster from promoting certain brands, and Dotcom sued them for lying. UMG lost, and after seeing the groundswell of support the anti-SOPA movement got, it looks like Big Business and Big Government are going to lose again. I hope.

Again, we have two sides: Us and Them. The other side says Megaupload cost Hollywood and record companies hundreds of millions of dollars by allowing users to send each other copyrighted content. Megaupload had a reported 50 million unique visitors a day and was responsible for an estimated 1% of all Internet traffic in North America. (Kim Dotcom himself bragged that it was 4%.) That’s a lot of data and a lot of profits.

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Critics note that Kim has a history of committing hacking crimes going back to the late 1990s when he was arrested for stealing credit-card numbers. They claim the only recourse for a repeat offender like this is 50 years in prison. Bill Maher calls Kim’s crimes “Caucasian looting.”

But this assumes that people who downloaded Maher’s film for free are the same ones who would have happily paid $11.98 for it. We believe the people who downloaded Maher’s film aren’t the same ones who would have bought it online. They are new customers, people who wouldn’t have otherwise seen the film. In that sense, Kim Dotcom has increased the size of the pie. Maher should be thanking Megaupload. And he should realize that unestablished artists far less famous than he is need social networking to survive. As tech writer Tim O’Reilly famously put it, “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.” Kim Dotcom has enabled more music and movies to get to more people. If anything, he has stimulated the industry. It’s this kind of innovation that made America a superpower. When an old model isn’t working it gets pushed aside for something more innovative. Filesharing is a perfectly legitimate business that even companies such as Microsoft use.

This is all covered in Matt Mason’s brilliant book The Pirate’s Dilemma. Mason points out the term “Yankee” comes from Janke, which is Dutch slang for “pirate.” A huge part of America’s wealth came from disregarding European intellectual copyrights on tools and machinery. Europe had the same contempt for our piracy that we now have for China’s.

Mason also talks about Hollywood’s origins, where rebellious entrepreneurs such as William Fox fled to the Wild West after being fed up with all the taxes and regulations required to make movies in New York. Ironically, the company that is his legacy—20th Century Fox—is now employing movie stars to encourage people to obey all taxes and regulations.

Online “piracy” isn’t looting. It’s capitalism. It forces dinosaurs to evolve or become extinct. The music and movie industries are in denial, mistaking progress for criminal activity. In fact, they’ve already benefited from piracy’s kick in the ass. Music piracy sites such as Napster forced an antiquated model to reinvent itself, and today we have solutions such as iTunes at a dollar per song and Spotify’s monthly subscription rate. These new systems didn’t kill the music industry; they saved it.

The same thing has happened with films. Though Americans are going to theaters 10% less than they did in 1999, profits are up. Why? Because Hollywood came up with new ideas such as creating 3-D versions with a higher ticket price. We’re told Kim Dotcom cost the movie business $600 million, but who came up with this number? It’s not easy to prove Megaupload practiced due diligence in preventing people from sharing copyrighted material, but it’s even harder to prove it caused the industry monetary damage.

Kim Dotcom is bombastic, arrogant, fat, hedonistic, and reckless. He laughs in authority’s face and taunts both corporations and bureaucrats. He isn’t a villain. He’s a hero. What’s more, he is one of us. If Kim Dotcom loses this fight, it will mean Big Government and Big Business run this country and a big part of what made us great is now dead.