Humpty Dumpty Derangement Syndrome
On January 31, as practically everyone who scans headlines will recall, Whoopi Goldberg, the actor, comedian, and conversationalist, waded into a racial identity tsunami. The tsunami won, though unlike many casualties of such encounters, she suffered only a drenching, from which she has now dried out. [more]
Season’s Serene Greetings to Each and All of Every Stripe and Shape and Mood and Size and Weight and Disposition and Ability and Skill Set and Temperament and Race and Sex or Gender and Belief Gestalts and Origins and Present Whereabouts with No Exclusions Intended & So On: A Template
It’s that time of year when earnest greetings arrive on every puff of air and cloud extending heartfelt wishes of good cheer and universal joy without reserve. Who could object? Who, indeed, could take offense? You’re no dummy: you’re thinking, almost anyone. Say “Happy Holidays” and parochial rabble-rousers from one corner will accuse you of vile conformity to a community-corroding agenda. Say “Merry Christmas” and straitlaced grim and grave agitators from across the room will excoriate you for divisiveness and narrow exclusivity. What’s a poor soul (inner essence, gender-proportioned self-conscious human entity at one with all humanity through their God-bestowed evolutionarily-derived individualism) to do? [more]
2021: The Year in Review
Offenses of the Month, 2021
When 2021 began, I thought it was a year destined for quiet and change, one that I could devote to other literary pursuits. All I’d need to do, I supposed, was collect the few stories of the sort of offenders of the month who typically outwit themselves. Now, with 2021 just hours from seeping away, my report. [more]
How expansile is a culture of cancel?
What would you do if you discovered that one of your good friends has been physically abusing his wife for as long as you’d known them? Or that he secretly hangs out with neo-Nazis? Or that someone with those proclivities was a famous actor, whose movies you’ve devoured for decades? Or that a famous writer whose books you adore has been unmasked as a white supremacist? [more]