This morning, Monday morning, March 29, 2021, I woke up in Castiglion Fiorentino as usual and was still thinking about a column I published on Salon.com just over fifteen years ago titled, “What’s the Best Method for a Painless Suicide?”. I still to this day receive an occasional letter about that column, both from people who find solace in it and people who call me mean names...
The Massage Parlor Murders: What can you do?
This is not an advice column. This is commentary. Robert Aaron Long, 21 years old, of Woodstock, Georgia, was arrested Tuesday in the murders of eight people, six of whom were women of Asian descent working in massage parlors. Initial media reports indicated that he claimed he did it because he was a sex addict. Sex addiction is not a trivial matter. But right now his claim feels like a...
Finding the Faith to Act on Conscience
How do you reach a point where your conscience is overwhelming and you must make the leap?
How do you get to that point?
… where the conscience … blooms, and all the fear subsides, and the conscience floods the spirit, floods the mind, floods the brain, and gives one the courage to just do the right thing. Just fucking do the right thing!”
Full podcast:
Be a poll worker! Save democracy! Make a tiny amount of money!
Being a poll worker was one of the best things I’ve ever done. If you’ve ever thought about doing it, here’s my advice: Give it a shot! Poll workers were under attack four years ago and they’ll be under attack this election too. It’s a hard, complicated, sometimes boring but wonderfullly rewarding experience. Democracy doesn’t work without poll workers...
I’m a white guy but I’m not a bad guy
Dear Cary, I am a 67-year-old bald white man who wears glasses. Recently, I’ve been around people who assume that because I look like Mitch McConnell, I think like Mitch McConnell. I don’t look THAT much like a GOP senator, but… you get the idea. It’s very sad to have spent a lot of my adult life working against racism and get lumped in with the KKK and the GOP. I...
Trump Holds Up a Bible. America Does a Collective Spit-Take
Every now and then in his reality show called “The President,” Donald Trump tries a gag that fails. The idea probably came to him in the wee hours when he stews and sweats and tweets. It had a glow, it felt right, the idea of getting up there with a goddam Bible on the church steps, shaking that Bible at people like a stick, that Bible must have looked good to him, this square black bomb made of...
The Knee on the Neck: Watching from a Distance
Tears come out of my eyes and wet my cheeks and go into my mouth and taste salty. I watch Atlanta’s mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms tell the citizens of Atlanta to go home and I get it. This is no way to blah blah blah I get it, I hear the reason born of pain and oppression and I get it but I would be there too, wouldn’t I, if I were there. I would also be feeling that enough is enough, fuck it, burn...
Minneapolis
I have lived so long with America, with its promise and its shame, with its beauty and its tragedy. I have lived so long now with America’s numbness to its own pain, its impotence, its blindness to its own shame and its own crimes. I have lived so long with this! I am in tears! I am in tears with all the rest of us who have lived with this for so long and have protested and written and spoken and...
I’m filled with rage
A classic column from TUESDAY, SEP 27, 2005 It’s political, it’s personal — I just wanna clobber the people in charge! Dear Cary, I have an emotional problem. I walk around with a rage inside me that I don’t know how to address. I fantasize about things that, were I to describe them to you, I would be visited by black-suited men at my apartment one night and, if not taken away, at least...
I hate that Net Neutrality is being gutted. Hate it hate it hate it
#NetNeutrality is an issue that will affect every single person here. It is not a partisan issue. We will never go back to a free internet.
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) November 21, 2017