This is the story of how I was assaulted and given a concussion by members of the Lehigh Valley Tea Party on February 3, 2022. They never told me why, but I had been invited to the event and was attacked shortly after one of the members saw one of my Salon articles. On Feb. 3rd, 2022, I went to an event held by the Lehigh Valley Tea Party at the Starlite Ballroom in the Pennsylvania city of...
Published: Sweet Tooth Nothings (September 25, 2016), The Good Men Project (September 27, 2016) Yes, you read that correctly. This is a sincere tribute to junk food, as written for the blog of a certifiable health nut (looking at you, Ariel). I offer this without apology and only a modicum of regret. The regret, of course, is for the years of life I have irretrievably lost due to the damage...
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...
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...
Published: The Good Men Project (July 12, 2016) Wouldn’t it be great if everyone had a handicapped parking space? Obviously this can’t happen – the whole point of handicapped spaces is that they provide the physically disabled with closer proximity to buildings than the physically abled – but an equivalent is possible when it comes to social interactions. To understand what I mean, though, it is...
Published: Fusion (June 7, 2016) As someone with autism, I’ve often wondered if there’s anything I can do to make neurotypicals, the name for you folks in the non-autistic community, less unpredictable to myself. I pose this question not as an attack or criticism. It’s just that those of us with high-functioning autism—or Asperger’s Syndrome in my case—struggle every day with your seemingly...
Published: The Good Men Project (April 21, 2016) When I was a child, I had a stuffed bear named (appropriately) Mr. Bear. He went wherever I did, and whenever he was damaged or lost, I'd feel devastated. It is normal for children to anthropomorphize inanimate objects - particularly stuffed animals - because, even if on a subconscious level we know better, there is nevertheless unshakable sense...
Published: The Good Men Project (March 24, 2016) When my first article was picked up by Mic in February 2012, I thought that my dream of becoming a political columnist had finally started to come true. I wasn’t wrong, but I never anticipated one turn that my career was destined to take. Although I still love writing editorials on political and social issues, I also find that more and more often...
Published: The Good Men Project (March 12, 2016) Without question, pursuing a PhD in history was one of the best decisions of my life. Not only has it opened doors in my writing career - which, professionally speaking, is my one true love - but it has allowed me to interact with some of the most brilliant people I've ever met. The conversations that we have had both within and outside of the...
Published: Quartz (March 10, 2016) With 458 delegates under his belt so far (and counting), Donald Trump is now more than one-third of the way toward receiving the Republican presidential nomination. Although millions of Americans both inside and out of the Grand Old Party are reacting to this prospect with justifiable disgust, millions more find nothing wrong with a frontrunner reluctant to...