I’ve been working the “Hollywood apartheid” beat since before it was hip. Four years ago I reported on the USC Annenberg School’s push to force Hollywood to insert “inclusion riders” (“diversity” casting guarantees) in all industry contracts, and I predicted that soon enough those ...

One of my favorite YouTube channels is called Fascinating Horror. It’s a British dude who narrates tales of little-known mass-casualty events over the centuries. I like the channel because occasionally he’ll dredge up an incident I’ve never heard of (and I’m pretty well-versed in historical ...

Three years ago I wrote about a girl I dated in the 1990s who slowly but inexorably fell to paranoid schizophrenia. The hardest part of the end-stage of that relationship was seeing the sudden shifts from lucidity to insanity. They’d come quickly and unexpectedly. We’d be enjoying a day at a ...

So you invite a Covid “mRNA scientist” on your show and the segment that goes viral involves not science but history. How the hell does that happen? Last week, when Joe Rogan hosted social media exile Dr. Robert Malone, the phrase that rightists came away repeating like Pollys wanting ...

Time for my annual Jan. 1 housecleaning of unused ephemera I wish I could’ve included in the previous year’s columns. The Lonely Norwegian In February, socialist Norwegian parliamentarian Petter Eide (dumb name, dumber ideology) nominated BLM for a Nobel Peace Prize. When asked how he could ...

Left and right are equally vulnerable to bullshit, but in contrasting ways. And it pays to know the difference. Far-right has a susceptibility to nonsensical “sleuthing.” Byzantine “theories of everything.” That’s why QAnon hit so hard; rightists love going to the whiteboard to ...

Did I ever tell you about the time my doctor almost killed me? From childhood I’ve been troubled by acid reflux. And before you write that email offering your amazing cure (“drink five cups of vinegar, spin around ten times, then eat one basil-covered radish”), spare me; I’ve heard ’em ...

Throughout my life, I’ve often been accused of lacking empathy. It’s a critique that goes back to high school, when I was a compassionless bully. And I’ll admit, I do have an empathy problem, but only when it comes to imbeciles. I just can’t muster sympathy for the stupid. I don’t hate ...

Why do some attempts at social engineering and racial apartheid work, while others don’t? It often comes down to whether the machinators choose to acknowledge human nature or ignore it. So let’s take a look at the first industry-wide attempt to make Hollywood less white, and we’ll reason out ...

Meet Chicago Democrat Party official (and amateur musician) Mary Lemanski. On the evening of Nov. 21, following the mass murders at the Waukesha Christmas parade, as the bodies of Darrell Brooks’ victims were still warm, and while victim No. 6, an 8-year-old child, was still barely clinging to ...