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 ...

Last month, I drew a 30-day Facebook ban because I posted a column that had the word “tranny” in the title (full disclosure: it was my own damn column). Thirty days of being unable to promote my work on Facebook (which is pretty much all I use that arthritic platform for these days). I’ll ...

During his 61 years on this earth, Adam Parfrey was called a fascist, a commie, a Nazi, a misogynist, a right-wing conspiracy nut, a left-wing conspiracy nut, a satanist, a warmonger, and a peacenik. If there’s a divisive term, he was called it. The legendary independent publisher, who passed ...

The dream has finally been realized: America now has a national lynching memorial, and if you’re like me, you bought your tickets way in advance (take my word for it—get your tix online; the scalpers outside the venue are brutal). Marvel sure chose a lousy time to release Avengers: Infinity ...

As I’m sure you’ve heard, two black dudes went into a Starbucks last week and claimed a table without ordering anything. And then they (yes, apparently both of them at the same time) decided to use the bathroom. Because that’s what guys do in coffee shops with tiny one-toilet bathrooms—they ...