The Right’s Purity Pissing Contest

If there's one thing I hate, it's an inscrutable Asian. Not because of the inscrutability, mind you, but rather because I despise seeing people conform to shopworn stereotypes. Last week, L.A. Times "€œinvestigative arts reporter"€ David Ng played the role of unreadable Asian to perfection. Ng ...

My Mild 1970s Anti-Racism

Comedian Louis C.K. does a routine about growing up in the 1970s, a decade he describes as "€œvery racist."€ C.K. claims that anyone who grew up during that period is by definition racist to some extent, and the best that one can hope for is to have only "€œmild racism."€ I"€™m not ...

This Week in Jewish Self-Harm

Somebody get the naltrexone; the Jews are cutting again. Jews have a baffling tendency to resort to self-harm during times of crisis. Mind you, all professional victim groups have a self-defeatist streak. Black kids demand affirmative action so they can attend prestigious universities, only to ...

Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau

Holmes or Clouseau? Who Cares”€”Trump Wins Again

There's a scene in the 1976 film The Pink Panther Strikes Again in which the nations of the world send their top assassins to eliminate Inspector Clouseau. One by one the assassins take their best shot, and time and again Clouseau survives (and the assassins die) due entirely to pure luck on the ...

Sarah SIlverman

The Media and Relevance: A Slow Fade-Out

There was something deeply satisfying about watching Sunday's Academy Awards show end in unmitigated disaster. It was the perfect capper to a very bad year for our beloved Hollywood elites. Trump's victory, Hillary's defeat, Obama's farewell, the GOP claiming both houses of Congress and an ...

Los Angeles River

Ghost Inside Your Haunted Head

In my column several weeks ago, I took a swipe at certain types of Christian conservatives, suggesting that their belief in the reality of "€œdemonic possession"€ leads them to accept wild notions about how the entertainment industry can magically influence the voting preferences of average ...

Hurty Words, Killy Words

The hellstorm of protests that greeted Milo Yiannopoulos on the UC Berkeley campus wasn"€™t nearly as disheartening as the flood of pro-censorship op-eds that poured from the pages of the Daily Cal newspaper in the days that followed. The anti-Milo riots could (in theory) be dismissed as the work ...

Mario Savio Plaza, Berkeley

Berkeley’s Fickle Fascists

Ace Backwords doesn"€™t recognize Berkeley anymore. Sure, some of that can be attributed to his admitted drinking problem. But in a more figurative sense, the local icon and popular "€œunderground"€ cartoonist no longer sees in present-day Berkeley even a small trace of the ostensibly ...

Our Bodies! Our Lives! Our Right to Imbibe!

What a genocidal racist Donald Trump is! Last week, as proof of his desire to rid the world of nonwhites, he resuscitated the so-called Mexico City Policy, which withholds U.S. funding from international NGOs that perform or promote abortions. And the same leftists who"€™ve accused Trump of being ...

Los Angeles, CA

The Right’s Phantom Menace

When it comes to how the right should deal with Hollywood leftism, Andrew Breitbart, much as he did on the night of his passing, took the long way home. He advocated a complex battle-plan to deal with a problem that, it turns out, has a deceptively simple solution. During his life, he worked ...