The GOP’s Rush to Suicide

The 2016 presidential primary season has kicked off with a veritable Rainbow Coalition of prospective candidates. Rubio and Cruz are all-in for the GOP, with Fiorina and Carson likely additions to the field. Add Hillary Clinton to the mix as the Democrat to beat, and perceptive observers can ...

A Troll Down Memory Lane

By the time you read this, the Memories Pizza "€œgay wedding"€ story will have gone the way of every overhyped, outrage-inducing Internet meme, relegated to the "€œyou"€™re still talking about this after two weeks?"€ graveyard of planned obsolescence. The story has completed its arc: ...

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Los Angeles

Ignorance Among Hollywood Conservatives

I could"€™ve written this column a week ago, before the National Geographic Channel's "€œKilling Jesus"€ had even aired, and still used the same opening sentence: "€œKilling Jesus killed in the ratings, scoring record numbers for the network, and delivering more viewers than any program in ...

A Factually Bereft U.S.A. Today

A good historian should be an annoyance. Most people want simple, pat answers to complex historical questions. Lousy historians give the people what they want. A genuinely competent historian can"€™t do that, even if it means raining on a merry parade or subverting someone else's ...

Dr. Michael Shermer

Michael Shermer’s Immoral Arc

Of all the people I"€™ve tussled with in my professional life, Dr. Michael Shermer, bestselling author and professional "€œskeptic,"€ draws the least amount of sympathy from me. I don"€™t know what makes me so raw when it comes to Sherm. Maybe it's that I just don"€™t think he's bright ...

The “€œMonroe Doctrine”€ to Outlaw Hate Speech

Professor Monroe Freedman of Hofstra University died last week, and the irony is, I wouldn"€™t have known about it had I not been scouring Google in an attempt to kill a rapidly-spreading phony Internet meme that indirectly pertained to his work. Freedman was a well-known figure, and an ...

Holocaust Memorial, Berlin

Fear of a Gray Planet

Seminal historian Professor Raul Hilberg chose a Maya Angelou PBS tai chi summit about rape and evil to make a shocking claim about Hitler. Do you know how giddy I was to write that? I was giddy because I know I"€™m the first person in the history of the world to string those words together as ...

Karin Friedemann

Let Us Now Praise Phony Flags

Outside the courthouse where the trial of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is slowly getting under way, one woman stands a lonely vigil. Her name is Karin Friedemann, and she's Tsarnaev's number one fan. Her devotion to the young man she calls "€œJahar, the kid"€ led to a well ...

Justifying My Existence

It is the tragic reality of my being that I"€™m forced to justify myself every time someone learns what I did in the past and what I"€™ve been thrust back into doing in the present. When I"€™m fortunate enough to be in a room with people who have no idea who I am, if I"€™m asked what I do ...

Dean Obeidallah and the Vaguely Latino Plague

¡Ay Chihuahua! According to the Daily Beast's resident Islamic apologist, it's not Muslims who are to blame for terror attacks on U.S. soil ... it's those damned Latinos! And to think: I hired my gardeners without an FBI background check (that's a joke, people, okay? In reality, I made them ...