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 ...

Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles

Dave of the Locust

Hollywood simply cannot conceal its massive butthurt over Donald Trump winning the election. With awards season in full swing, expect a slew of Meryl Streep moments from now through the Oscars. Showbiz types are a uniquely repulsive species, and I say that having mixed with them for the better part ...

One of the Good Ones

Jazz great Louis Armstrong, one of the most influential figures in the history of American music, kept a spoken-word diary via a reel-to-reel tape recorder he"€™d take with him on the road. When the recordings were first made public in their entirety in the early 2000s, I remember being struck by ...

The Alt-Right Gets a Wedgie

Ah, Israel, the ultimate wedge issue for people on the right. Nothing can queer an alliance between mainstream conservatives, paleoconservatives, and white nationalists quicker than Israel. There's so much we all agree on! Affirmative action and antiwhite racism? Blech! Illegal immigration? Phooey! ...

Doggie in the Gay Bar: A Christmas “€œTail”€

Yeah, that's right"€”I went there. No, I don"€™t mean the gay bar (although I did go there, too). I mean I used "€œtail"€ instead of "€œtale"€ because the story I"€™m telling involves a dog, a pun so tired and hackneyed it's beneath even the most banal of writers. But by this time ...

Hacking Up Bloodlust

It's very sad to watch the Democrats these days. I mean, this is a party that has, in the past, shown itself to be exceptionally skilled at getting people fired up over going to war. Justifiably or not, Dem presidents took us to war in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, not to mention ...