On Tuesday, French iconoclast Dominique Venner blew his head off inside the Cathedral of Notre Dame to protest gay marriage. Venner is a hero who fought in the Algerian War as a teenager and ransacked the French Communist Party's office when he was 21. Like the face of the anarchist movement Guy ...
As Michael Moore so aptly pointed out in Bowling for Columbine, the root of the American dilemma lies deep within the American psyche. We are a machismo-addled culture where bullies are rewarded and “wimps” get sand in the face. We live in an age of school shootings, rape, and ceaseless ...
Whereas comedians or artists may want to ostracize a large group of people, an ad exec can lose his job for offending even one person. This makes sense, because a commercial is a short film meant to please everyone in the world. As a result, advertising agencies are drowning in capitulation. The ...
The most amazing thing about Josh Fox's anti-fracking documentary Gasland is that despite valid factual criticisms of the film, he forged ahead and made a sequel. Hollywood loves the war on fracking because at first glance, it looks like big oil getting rich by destroying farmland. Matt Damon made ...
More than half the country says they think pot should be legalized. This is due in part to a brilliant PR campaign that frames cannabis as a valuable medicinal herb instead of a party drug. "[T]he medical marijuana movement has refurbished cannabis's image," says a recent cover story in ...
Obama is in a huff this week because his gun bill got shot down like a clay pigeon. Like most of us, he was deeply affected by the massacre at Sandy Hook. Like much of the country, he seems to think emotions should drive public policy. Celebrities such as Jim Carrey agree. As I write this, some ...
Examining New York politics is like dipping a ladle into the sewer: Any random sampling will yield nothing but toxic shit water. New York City's 2013 mayoral election is seven months away, but the stench of New York politics is already intense enough to make you gag. Early this month, State ...
Women say they are sick of the impossibly high beauty standards men ruthlessly impose upon them. They are tired of having to spend hours at the gym and weeks recovering from surgery just to please men. The American Body Police now audit every increment of a lady's BMI. And the victims of this ...
If my kids turned out to be gay, I"d say, "Oh great, there go my grandchildren" and move on. But if my son turned out to be the guy at The New York Times who covered modern dance, I would lie in the bath and dig a razor blade into my wrists so deep, you"d think there were vaginas ...
With the passing of Hugo Chávez, we got a lot of crocodile tears from liberals claiming we had "lost a friend" who "lifted the poor and helped them realize their dreams." Jimmy Carter told us that he "never doubted Hugo Chávez's commitment." The Nation lamented that ...
