Dear Social Justice Diary – My mind is blown.  I just read Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow.  It’s about racism and the War on Drugs, all highly factual.  You can look at just two studies in the book and see a sort of “post-black” apartheid: In New Jersey, where 15% of drivers are […]

Although the Wall Street Occupation is galvanizing about 84% of the marginalized 99%, no one stops to think that it’s the New York Police Department that helps to make this possible.  If New York City cops hadn’t arrested over 700 peaceful marchers on the Brooklyn Bridge, and pepper-sprayed the unresisting eyeballs of various nonviolent protesters, […]

Dear Queer Diary — Should I get married? I mean, now that the state of New York has passed the gay marriage bill, should my girlfriend and I get really and miraculously and legally married? Or.  Should I, as a queer, reclaim my right to legal ostracism, grab my lesbo luv-muffin, and take her underground […]

(Scene: an elevator, downstage right.  Stuck inside are ROY COHN and ETHEL ROSENBERG, characters in Tony Kushner’s landmark play, Angels in America.  McCarthyite lawyer, ROY prosecuted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were accused of spying for the USSR and executed in 1953.  ETHEL now paces impatiently, pushing elevator buttons.  Above the stage, captions from recent […]

Believe it or not, heterosexuals, God loves you.  And because of His love, God told us to launch a pricey advertizing blitz, gently rebuking you on billboards and in newspapers across the country.  Unfortunately, we could only afford to rebuke you in this crummy tabloid-type publication.  But we know God will understand.  The important thing […]

Dear Mr. Stewart, Remember your “Rally to Restore Sanity” in DC last October?  I’m sorry, but my sanity remains unrestored.  In fact, I’ve been feeling increasingly deranged.  It’s like I’m speeding down Life’s superhighway at 666 miles per hour, headed for Nut City, where I am due to give my inaugural speech as Mayor. At […]

(PU) After two thousand years of looking forward to the return of Jesus Christ, Christians were extremely disappointed today to learn that their born-again Lord and Savior had died again, this time at the hands of author, talk-show host, and entrepreneur Glenn Beck.  News of the “Messiah-cide” leaked out this morning when Mr. Beck was […]

(PU) Twelve Arab civilians, dressed in native garb and riddled with bullet wounds, caused a massive power outage in the nation’s capital today when they suddenly appeared on the Ellipse in Washington, DC.  Silent and unmoving, each held a large color photo of Bradley Manning, the Army Specialist charged with sending the whistleblower website WikiLeaks […]

Marilyn Buck died on 3 August 2010, less than a month after her release from federal prison.  The interview below was first published in the July-August 2001 issue of Monthly Review.  — Ed. After years of neglect, the issue of women in prison has begun to receive attention in this country.  Media accounts of overcrowding, […]

(PU) A recently released study has found that heterosexuals can, with effort, become gay.  Eighty-six percent of a survey group of straight women and men were able, through various forms of reparative therapy, to transform their sexual orientation and achieve “good homosexual functioning.” Dr. Marvin Flabcock, of the American Psychiatric and Floral Design Association, conducted […]

Although a financial regulation bill is in the works, our economy continues to tank, and nobody can figure out what to do.  Except me, of course.  I have discovered that Western literature is a major cause of our economic crisis. You see, most people, as victims of various “liberal” arts programs, fail to notice how […]

In today’s column, our Statue of Liberty once again gasses up her torch to answer two timely letters: Dear Green Lady, I am a gay soldier, trying to have safe sex at an air force base in Nevada.  It is really rough here with that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy and all.  Also I got […]

(PU) The White House moved today to protect Americans from nuclear accidents and attack by buying up rights to alarming facts pertaining to those subjects.  Speaking to an enthusiastic audience of the unemployed, President Obama announced that, in the wake of federal approval of $8.3 billion in loan guarantees to build two new nuclear reactors, […]

(PU) In an oak-paneled conference room somewhere in Manhattan’s Goldman Sachs building, the Republican National Committee today signed over its soul to the Reverend Pat Robertson. “They had a soul?” asked a reporter at a press conference shortly after the signing.  “Oh yes,” explained RNC chairman Michael Steele.  “You see, the legal reality of corporate […]

(PU) Last night, in another embarrassing lapse of security, nine Secret Service agents were trampled to death when approximately 658,000 U.S. residents of every race, age, and sexual orientation mobbed the White House, demanding admission to a state dinner.  Most explained that their reason for crashing the dinner was to have a chance at appearing […]

You may have heard that a Pennsylvania district attorney recently dropped all charges against two anarchists who were accused of using Twitter last September at the G-20 summit protests, to keep activists informed of police arrests and surveillance. But the federal government remains on this case, in the wake of an FBI search of the […]

(Darkened stage.  Jaunty whistling and cell-phone texting is heard, along with the footsteps of Converse sneakers on a dusty, small-town road.  Suddenly, the screech of heavy tires, then a sickening thud and a groan.  Lights up on the original American Gothic couple, sitting on the porch of their dilapidated house, up the hill from the […]

Lesson One See the U.S. President.  See the U.S. President give billions of tax dollars to help failing investment firms.  See the U.S. President decide that terrorism suspects can be held without trial in “prolonged detention.”  See the U.S. President oppose gay marriage and expand the war in Afghanistan. The U.S. President is black.  Yet […]

Recently gay rights groups became seriously miffed when our new President’s own Justice Department released a legal brief upholding the Defense of Marriage Act by likening same-sex marriage to pedophilia and incest.  “What about our civil rights?” we huffed. This is a President, after all, whose life was profoundly shaped and guided by the civil […]

Dear Political Lady, Although I grew up in a community of leftwing activists who respected people of all colors and creeds, I never felt like I “fit in.” Maybe it was my wacky behavior and big red nose.  Or my garish whiteface, purple eyebrows, and bright orange hair.  Maybe it was because I shunned normal […]