Cenk Uygur

Source: Wikimedia Commons

TWENTY THOUSAND “DEATHS OF DESPAIR” IN CALIFORNIA
A recent study from The California Endowment called WHY ARE DEATH RATES RISING AMONG WHITES IN CALIFORNIA? claims that between 1995 and 2014, a staggering 21,350 young and middle-aged whites in the Golden State lost their lives in what are known as “deaths of despair.”

According to a spokeswoman for The California Endowment, “The sad part of this report is these deaths are all preventable. These are not deaths from cancer—these are deaths from drug abuse, suicide.”

Due in part to the opioid crisis, life expectancy among American men has fallen for the second year in a row. On average, American women live five years more than men do—and as the joke goes, men die younger because they want to. White men have a lower life expectancy than black women, which is astonishing when one considers how oppressed the latter are.

CNN: KIDS GRAVITATE TOWARD “FASCIST” CARTOONS
The Goofiest Goddamned Article of the Week award goes to Elissa Strauss at CNN, who attempts to explain: Why kids love ‘fascist’ cartoons like ‘Paw Patrol’ and ‘Thomas.’”

Without one dandelion petal’s worth of evidence, Strauss claims that parents “want our children to inhabit a world in which identities are both mutable and equal, and imagination and empathy reign supreme!”

However, much to her displeasure, this noble task of brainwashing her children has been supplanted by the super-seductive lure of hidden “fascist” messages in Thomas the Tank Engine—which critics have condemned as one disgusting ode to corporate-totalitarian imperialist classism and sexism just because Thomas tries to do his job and not be a jackass.

Strauss—who sounds like a BALL to be around—also takes Paw Patrol to task because its protagonist, Ryder, takes his pack of dogs on rescue missions that are so heroic, they suggest he is a megalomaniac and possibly even a narcissist.

As Sylvia Plath famously said, every child adores a fascist cartoon.

D.I.Y. CIRCUMCISION KIT ABRUPTLY PULLED FROM AMAZON
Have you always wanted to save money by performing a home circumcision in the manner of the ill-fated “Home Breast-Implant Kit” craze of the early 2000s?

Well, it appears that your chance has come and gone. “Amazon pulls DIY circumcision ‘training’ kit,” reads the headline in England’s Metro, and we wish they could have used a more appropriate and less suggestive term than “pulls”—perhaps “tugs” or “jerks” would have been less problematic? According to the article:

The kit includes a model of a young boy’s genitals, with a dark or light-skinned dummy available, to perform a mock circumcision with a selection of scalpels.

But after representatives for England’s National Secular Society wrote a letter to the manufacturer warning that the kit could lead to potentially deadly home-brewed circumcisions, Amazon vigorously yanked the product from their site.

Every Monday, Jim Goad reads the previous day’s “Week That Perished” on his podcast.