A Valentine’s Day PSA for Single Ladies… and Single Gents
Published: Good Men Project (February 13, 2015) co-authored Tillie Adelson Fashion blogger Tillie Adelson joins Matthew Rozsa in writing about the different ways men and women experience Valentine’s Day. ___ By Tillie Adelson and Matthew Rozsa It isn’t uncommon for single women to receive encouraging missives when Valentine’s Day rolls around. In that vein, I posted the following musing earlier...
Don’t blame atheists for the Chapel Hill shootings
Published: Daily Dot (February 12, 2015) The Chapel Hill shootings are a wake-up call for American atheists. Although there is still uncertainty about Craig Stephen Hicks’ motives for murdering three Muslim students at the University of North Carolina, much attention has been drawn to his outspoken atheism. “The man’s bigotry clearly had a role in this, and the source of that bigotry was...
Why ISIS and Republican zealots have more in common than you think
Published: Daily Dot (February 11, 2015) If there is one thing we can learn from the Christian Right’s continued response to President Obama’s National Prayer Breakfast speech, it is that religious prejudice isn’t limited to any specific religion. Ironically, the online effort by social conservatives to rebut Obama’s most controversial point—namely, that we “remember that during the Crusades and...
Soul-Searching of an American Insomniac
Published: Good Men Project (February 10, 2015) I am an American and an insomniac … and that link is not coincidental. ___ My insomnia is a distinctly American trait. Obviously I’m not arguing that only Americans suffer from insomnia, but as a nation we are undeniably prone to it. Studies reveal that roughly 60 million of my countrymen have a hard time going to sleep at night, with roughly 22...
3 Reasons Obama should make it illegal not to vaccinate your children
Published: Daily Dot (February 5, 2015) “The science is, you know, pretty indisputable.” Those were President Obama’s words in an interview with NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie earlier this week during which he urged parents to get their children vaccinated. While it’s tempting to praise the president for standing on the side of science, he has been inexcusably reluctant to fulfill his constitutional...
Why It’s Ethically Wrong Not to Recognize Man-Made Climate Change
Published: Good Men Project (February 5, 2015) Matthew Rozsa reminds us that man-made global warming is a fact, and we as a species need to grow up and take responsibility. ___ The Paris climate summit is showing the early signs of failure. “2C is an objective,” insisted Miguel Arias Canete, the European Union’s climate chief, referencing the dangerous threshold of having the average global...
5 Ways Rosa Parks Showed Us #BlackLivesMatter
Published: Daily Dot (February 4, 2015) As we celebrate the 102nd anniversary of Rosa Parks’ birthday, it is useful to compare and contrast the civil rights movement in which she fought sixty years ago with the one developing in America today. While there is a world of difference between the challenges facing the Montgomery bus boycotters and those confronting the Twitter activists who turned...
The 5 Most Unappreciated Lessons From Super Bowl XLIX
Published: Good Men Project (February 3, 2015) Matthew Rozsa discusses what the Super Bowl can teach us about gay rights, common sense, and more. ___ Super Bowl XLIX: What a fitting conclusion to the great American sports story, as set in the NFL circa 2014-2015. This statement is not meant as a compliment, of course, but it isn’t entirely derogatory either. For all of the ongoing controversy...
You can have black, gay, or Jewish friends and still be a racist bigot
Published: Daily Dot (February 2, 2015) Prospective Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is well-known for his opposition to same-sex marriage and other LGBT rights causes, so recently he decided to protect himself from accusations of bigotry by relying on a popular fallacy. "People can be my friends who have lifestyles that are not necessarily my lifestyle," he insisted. "I don't...
What the debate over Kim Kardashian’s race says about the changing face of America
Published: Daily Dot (January 30, 2015) America’s obsession with celebrities has a tendency to reveal the complex depths of our social and cultural prejudices. In the case of Kim Kardashian, one observation becomes very clear: Americans need to stop seeing race as a black-and-white issue, and on the Internet, people clearly have no idea what to do with her....
Be a Good Guy, Not a Nice Guy: A Lesson From History
Published: Good Men Project (January 29, 2015) co-author: Liskula Cohen Liskula Cohen and Matthew Rozsa discuss the difference between being a nice guy and being a good one. ___ There is a difference between being a nice guy and being a good guy. It’s easy to forget this, especially as the cliché that “nice guys finish last” is reaching a fever pitch among Men’s Rights Activists and...
The Pros and Cons of Workaholism
Published: Good Men Project (January 24, 2015) Being a workaholic has its advantages and disadvantages. Matt Rozsa takes a look at both. — I am a workaholic. And if you think that statement is anything to be proud of, you might be one too. For a very long time, I secretly aspired to workaholism. If you threw a penny at me six years ago, I probably would have been struck while sitting alone in a...
Don’t hate on critics of ‘American Sniper’ – criticize its racist hero
Published: Daily Dot (January 22, 2015), Republished on MediaREDEF (January 23, 2015), Salon (January 28, 2015) This article is not about American Sniper. It is about Chris Kyle. That’s an important distinction because, as American Sniper continues to break box office records, many of its fans are having trouble separating the flesh-and-blood human being from his celluloid counterpart. This was...
Thoughts on Jewish Identity in a Post-Charlie Hebdo World
Published: Good Men Project (January 22, 2015) Matthew Rozsa explores the divided politics of the American Jewish community. ___ Although I recall a great deal about the day I was nearly murdered, my conscious memory has suppressed the few minutes during which my head was held under water and my 6th grade classmates chanted “Drown the Jew!” Like a scratched DVD, it skips from the moment right...
The 5 most important takeaways from Obama’s State of the Union address
Published: Daily Dot (January 21, 2015) The gist of President Obama’s State of the Union speech can be found in one sentence: “The shadow of crisis has passed and the State of the Union is strong.” This was not the address of a president whose party suffered a historic shellacking in the most recent set of midterm elections, but one whose approval rating has reached 50 percent and is emerging as...
Confessions of a Former Football Nerd
Published: Good Men Project (January 20, 2015) Can sports fans be nerdy—in that good nerdy way? Matt Rozsa thinks so. ___ I’m not sure if I can be considered a Green Bay Packers fan anymore. It isn’t simply that I missed the NFC Conference championship on Sunday, which by all accounts was a spectacular game. It’s that I didn’t particularly care about missing it. Indeed, were it not for a...
A Guide to Online Etiquette – and Basic Human Decency
Published: Good Men Project (January 20, 2015) Matthew Rozsa offers a set of rules to give us a kinder, gentler Internet. ___ My first experience with Internet flaming occurred more than a decade ago, when I was still an undergraduate at Bard College. The 2004 presidential election had just ended, and although I’d staunchly supported John Kerry (more on that in a moment), I’d openly disapproved...