It started innocently enough. People on the right wanted something a little stronger than National Review-style conservatism. As the most extreme elements of the racist left ballooned, metastasized, and became an intractable part of the “mainstream,” many rightists felt hamstrung by the rules ...
It’s baffling to me that some people still can’t grasp the simple notion that humor is subjective. I have friends—decent, smart people—who’ll say things like “[fill in the blank] jokes aren’t funny,” as though it’s an objective statement of fact. Sometimes the blank is “rape,” ...
Leftists have a charming habit of embarking on crusades that end up accomplishing the exact opposite of what was supposedly intended. Anti-poverty programs that not only increase poverty, but institutionalize it. School desegregation programs that end up creating more segregation, as whites flee ...
A few weeks ago, when a virginal loser with a gopher’s ass for a beard shot up the offices of a Maryland newspaper, social media was flooded with tweets from members of the press (a.k.a. America’s least trusted profession, and yes, that’s counting Indian guys who call from “Microsoft ...
I’ve spent a great deal of my life hearing from people who supposedly know what I’m thinking…people who can’t find fault with my actual words, so they claim to know my inner thoughts, my secret intent. I’ll give you an example. In 1993, The Harvard Crimson refused to publish an ad for ...
Did I ever tell you about the time I had dinner with a war criminal? It’s not exactly my funniest story, but it’s still somewhat instructive. It was September 1992. The United States was under aural assault from a multiracial triad of evil—Billy Ray Cyrus, Jon Secada, and Sir Mix-a-Lot—so I ...
Twelve years ago, when actor Michael Richards launched into his epithet-laced tirade against a loud table of black revelers at the Hollywood Laugh Factory, the line that stood out to me as the most jarring was, ironically, the only one in which the former Seinfeld star didn’t say “nigger”: ...
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the world’s chronic illness. It’s our herpes, our diabetes, our Crohn’s disease. There is never going to be a resolution. Not in my lifetime, not in this age. Maybe a hundred years from now, but not within a time frame that matters to any human presently ...
Of all the bans I’ve drawn on Facebook (yes, I’ve been on a bit of a bender about this in recent weeks, so I promise this’ll be the last mention), the oddest one I ever received was last year, after I posted a video of a gibbon playing with a hedgehog. There was no political context…I ...
Whenever I invite guests to my house for high tea, the first thing they notice is my stunningly vibrant flower garden. Indeed, fellow gardening enthusiasts are surprised to view such healthy specimens of calochortus catalinae (Catalina mariposa lily), as the soil in this part of town is not ...
