Recognizing your own ordinariness can be hard when you’ve been raised to believe that originality is a cardinal virtue. But it’s a bitter pill that most of us have to swallow. Because we can’t all be original.
Tolerance Isn’t Tolerance Unless It Hurts
When a Christian fundamentalist decides to accept and love his gay son (and his son’s partner), I know I’m looking at real tolerance.
The Spirit of America: From Self-Reliance to Self-Storage
When did the United States go from being a country filled with proud workers who make stuff to a country filled with indebted out-of-work consumers who store stuff?
Comic Islamophobia and Tragic Islamophobia
We need to stop giving tragic Islamophobia a pass.
Anarchism and the Tyrannical Will to Rule
I was born in a hippie commune, and I have a deep suspicion of people who promise freedom from society’s rules.
Illusions of the Powerful
Men have far more illusions about women than women have about men. Because, the powerful can afford to be self-absorbed; those who lack power cannot.
Do Extroverts Make the Best Activists?
Maybe I was wrong about introverted activists.
Activists and Temperaments
Does your temperament fit your goals?
The Problem of Politics in the Age of the Actor
When I call 9-1-1 because my house is on fire, I expect real firefighters to show up, not actors playing dress-up. When I’m trying to make intelligent political choices about candidates, I expect to be hearing from a real person, not a paid actor.
The Unlikely Origins of Modern Mommy Shaming: The Health Movement of the 1970s
Striving to be an Earth Mother Goddess isn’t particularly liberating. We seem to have replaced Doctor God with an equally demanding deity: Mother Nature.
Justification for Higher Education
We are STILL paying for it.
In Praise of Authoritarian Parenting
We often force kids to apologize when they aren’t ready, then cynically chastise them for their lackluster acting job.
The Photographer as Travel Agent
Bad photographs are a corrupting influence upon the imagination. They tell us lies about the world—pernicious, photoshopped lies—which make the real world, the only one we ever really have, seem bland and boring by comparison.
Shut Up and Join the Party
We all need to achieve a balance between responsibility, pleasure, and pain—but we get to it from different directions: people on the front lines of the struggle have to keep their heads from going up in flames; privileged people like me have to keep their heads out of the sand.
Life Sucks Regardless of How Much Privilege You Have
No life is devoid of struggle and pain. Life sucks regardless of how much privilege you have. But it usually sucks less if you’re privileged.
I’ll Take It in Black
Words like “secular” and “religious” aren’t particularly useful when health-nuts and fundamentalists start seeing eye-to-eye.