From Gamergate to “Ghostbusters” to Suicide Squad: The Problem of Fan Entitlement
Published: Salon (August 9, 2016) It’s easy to roll your eyes at the “Suicide Squad” petition. In case you’ve been lucky enough to miss the news, fans of the new movie “Suicide Squad” have created an online movement to shut down aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes for posting predominantly negative reviews of their beloved film. Cue the inevitable jokes about how nerds need to get a life. Is it...
Will Smith is right (I think)
Published: The Good Men Project (August 9, 2016) Before I get to why Will Smith is probably right, let’s dispense with why his hysterical right-wing critics are definitely wrong. At a press event in Dubai, Smith tried to find a silver lining to the dark cloud that is Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. “As painful as it is to hear Donald Trump talk and as embarrassing as it is as an American...
The Wrong Kind of Liberal
Published: The Good Men Project (August 6, 2016) I’d like to talk about a specific type of liberal – namely, the liberal who believes that his or her liberalism can be brandished as a “get out of jail free” pass for bad behavior. Based on my personal observations, this manifests itself in three ways: There is the MacFarlane type of liberal – i.e., someone who believes that because of their...
The sneaky politics of “Suicide Squad”
Published: Salon (August 5, 2016) [Note: The end of this essay contains spoilers for the ending of “Suicide Squad.”] If the critics at RottenTomatoes are to be believed, Suicide Squad is a terrible movie with “a muddled plot, thinly written characters, and choppy directing.” (Salon’s ownAndrew O’Hehir calls it “profoundly second-rate … at every level of conception and execution.”) This puts me...
The troubling and counterproductive trend of liberals policing free speech: We cannot silence those we disagree with
Published: Salon (August 5, 2016) co-authored with Mark Schierbecker When Donald Trump was asked last November to give his opinion on the student-led protests at the University of Missouri, he called them “disgusting,” adding to Fox Business News that “I think the two people that resigned are weak, ineffective people. […] Trump should have been the chancellor of that University. Believe me....
The biggest danger of a Trump victory in November is not a Trump presidency; it’s what comes next
Published: Fusion (August 5, 2016) When Rep. Richard Hanna became the first sitting Republican congressman to endorse Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump, he observed that his party had “largely alienated women, Hispanics, the LGBT community, young voters and many others in general.” While this comment wasn’t the focus of his editorial, it spoke to a larger truth about the significance of...
Jill Stein and Donald Trump are both linked to a dangerous anti-vaccine myth that just won’t die
Published: Quartz (August 3, 2016) Green Party candidate Jill Stein likes to present herself as a pro-science, more idealistic alternative to Hillary Clinton. Stein has so far managed to stay out of the media maelstrom, but a series of troubling comments are making headlines for all the wrong reasons. One of Stein’s most problematic opinions resurfaced this week when her campaign deleted a tweet...
Some Belated Respect for Ted Cruz
Published: The Good Men Project (August 2, 2016) I know this article’s topic is belated, coming as it does nearly a fortnight after the events in question. Circumstances conspired to prevent me from writing about it until now, so… here we go. On one level, it pains me to write anything positive about Ted Cruz. The Senator from Texas has devoted his political career to stripping social services...
How the Democrats’ near-perfect convention put the Republicans to shame
Published: Quartz (August 1, 2016) Watching the Democratic National Convention last week was a refreshing antidote to the bile that has contaminated American politics this election cycle. Not everyone supports the party’s nominee (see: the antics of the “Bernie or Bust” movement), of course, but there is something inspiring about a convention that focuses on the positive rather than the...
The Moral Case for Hillary Clinton
Published: Salon (July 31, 2016), The Good Men Project (July 26, 2016) “What would it take for you to vote for a third-party candidate?” This question was posed to me by a good friend who, after supporting Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign, became so disenchanted with the political process that he backed Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson in 2012 (not surprisingly, he plans on doing...
Do We Each Experience Time Differently?
Published: The Good Men Project (July 30, 2016) “It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence.” This is a quote from Albert Einstein, who offered it to explain how the past and future both co-exist in the present moment. When Einstein made this observation, he was referring...
Wise Words from the “South Park” Boys
Published: The Good Men Project (July 28, 2016) I may as well be upfront about this... I am a HUGE fan of "South Park." Although their political sensibilities don't always align with my own (see: their global warming denialism), the nineteen existing seasons of "South Park" contain some of the sharpest and boldest social commentary ever aired on television. This was especially true last season,...
Tim Kaine in the Membrane
Published: The Good Men Project (July 23, 2016) What is there to say about a vice presidential candidate like Tim Kaine? The man is so dull. To be fair, he meets the basic requirements of appearing on a presidential ticket. He hails from the swing state of Virginia, which after voting consistently Republican for more than forty years turned to Barack Obama in the last two elections. His...
How low can the bar go? Donald Trump’s RNC is historic for all the wrong reasons
Published: Salon (July 23, 2016) What we were looking for was something that would put the nation and the rank and file of the Party on the alert to the fact that our leading candidate was impetuous, irresponsible, and slightly stupid.” These words were spoken not about Donald Trump and his nomination at the Republican National Convention of 2016, but regarding Barry Goldwater, who in 1964 was...
Why I Write
Published: The Good Men Project (July 21, 2016) I feel like answering a question I’m often asked about one type of article I like to write… in no small part because I am myself curious about the answer. It’s been more than three years since I first started writing about my experiences as someone with Asperger’s Syndrome. The idea first came to me after it was reported that Adam Lanza, the mass...
Chief & I
Published: The Good Men Project (July 19, 2016) The following article was first written on my personal blog more than six years ago. Upon rediscovering it, I knew I had to publish it here. If there was ever a moment when I wished I had a camera, it was last Friday, when I found myself emotionally bonding with an unkempt bovine named Chief at the Turtleback Zoo in Livingston, NJ. My affinity for...
Avoiding the mistakes of conventions past: Can the parties steer clear of these historical pitfalls?
Published: Salon (July 16, 2016) In anticipation of the upcoming Democratic and Republican conventions later this month, it seems appropriate to brace ourselves for something historic. After all, Hillary Clinton is the first woman ever to be nominated by a major party, as well as a traditionally polarizing figure who only recently managed to win the endorsement of her chief rival, Bernie...