It’s meant as a compliment. The deep gaze, head tilted just so, and then the ask. And I feel like I’ve been served up on a platter like a stuffed pig. I want to run but my legs don’t work. I’m frozen. Pinned like a bug on somebody’s display wall. I laugh. My brain is crashing, white flashes of jagged thought and shame masking as titillation as my body betrays me. Don’t make a scene. Don’t make a big deal. Don’t make him uncomfortable. Surely he knows better. It’s 2026. I should be flattered. And that’s the in. I should be flattered that I am found to be attractive enough that he can’t not say the thing. Don’t make waves. After all it was a compliment.

You know the automatic hello? You don’t like them, they don’t like you and you give each other a wide birth when there are people around but then they get you in private, within earshot of a single witness and put you on the spot just by saying hello and you automatically say hello back and then kick yourself for an hour because you did? It’s like that.

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It’s complicated. It’s been months since she and sat and talked so today is special. We love each other. And I fear we talk around things to keep it that way. Not the everyday things. Little wounds. Who you have to be to survive terrible things. We talk about the everyday things--burnout, her kid, insurance, and where to get good Pad Thai while the big gaping thing looms just on the periphery: mass graves and white phosphorous. We love each other. And I know she’s afraid. So many of us are.

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I got took: a drawer full of magical creams that promise I can buy back my 30s, I’m eyeing a sale on TikTok for a Korean skincare brand that promises glass skin and I’m thinking why not? It’s bundled. Bundled! 60% off the regular price and if I subscribe then woooohooo! SAVINGS! They even take Klarna!

Shawn Ryan looks glassy-eyed, like he got mollywhopped, not sure quite what happened. “He was independently wealthy, Megyn Kelly interrupts smiling ruefully, “so it didn’t seem like he would need their money.” But there were those sneakers! And the golden phone. And the box of steaks. And the fake university. And the watch. And the cologne and the fake charity, and apparently his pardons have erased compensation for victims of fraud and abuse to the tune of 2 BILLION dollars per analysis from the office of Gavin Newsom (https://www.gov.ca.gov/2026/03/05/trumpcriminals3/). How do you call that anything other than stupid?

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Last week on FOX’s The Five, Jesse Watters was waxing political about birth rates and fair political representation in the wake of SCOTUS’ gutting the Voting Rights Act and southern legislatures breaking their necks to eliminate democratic (aka Black, Brown, and Progressive) seats through redistricting. Watters squared to the camera, eyes twinkling, sl…

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I couldn't figure out the endgame. An entire party abandoning its power and handing it off; abdicating their responsibility, their sworn obligation to uphold not the Constitution. That's bullshit. But to their pockets. Certfiably allergic to enforcing any of the gu…

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As fashion designer and author Orsola de Castro puts it: "...To say that masculinity is having a crisis is to admit that it can only function in domination." When I look at the non-war/incursion/whatever the fuck it is we're doing illegally in I…

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“The Fire of Rome,” by Hubert Robert (1733 to 1808) (Image credit: Photo by: Pictures from History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

I’m old enough to remember when Ronald Reagan managed to reduce political correctness to a pejorative. It was the 80s, when greed was good,, the party of personal responsibility said “Just say no” and gay was a choice; they reframed the right to choose as the right to life, and Crips and Bloods, welfare queens and Willie Horton battled TV’s the Huxtables for the win. The idea of accountability for giving a thought to one’s thoughts before they left your face wasn’t just a joke. It was a bridge too far.

Cut to the 90s and the multi-cultural mindset: in intellectual circles we were beginning to wrestle with the wages of feminism a la Camille Paglia and how one could “discover” an already inhabited West (What do you mean cancel Columbus Day?) Clarence Thomas declared himself the victim of a high tech lynching but it was Anita Hill who was pilloried on national TV. And once again accountability was in the trash heap.

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The Problem With Nostalgia

I've been thinking lately about nostalgia, the concept of existential collapse (basically, the moment when one's sense of identity falls apart) and America. Remember the movie Pleasantville where siblings played by Reese Witherspoon and Tobey Maguire are transported from 1998 and their collapsing homelife into a black and whit…

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CBS chief Bari Weiss wants MAGA and she thinks Joe Rogan is just the ticket. I'm old enough to remember the TV show The Wonderful World of Disney. You reluctantly knew the show was winding down when Jiminy Cricket came on and sang:

"Curiosity, people say

Killed the kitty cat

One fine day"

It's 1979 and a cart…

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There's a disconnect. Something I can't put my finger on. “Pedophile ring. Release the files. Files released. Shut up about the files.” Two decades’ worth of shouting into the void and nothing. Now Jamie Raskin says there's even a nine year-old.

It's not a sudden surge of concern for women and girls, otherwise rape wouldn't be a thing. I get that. Nick …

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I heard the title on Joy's podcast: Joe Rigney. The premise, if I dare to wade in, is that empathy disables right-thinking Christian compassion and it's capacity to distinguish sinner from sin (thereby excusing and even enabling said sin). God said “X,” according to this thinking I guess, and anything that strays from His word and that lands the doer i…

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