Conor Friedersdorf saw the issue as a spectacular confluence of errors combined with one disingenuous curiosity. Why, in this age of putative sexual freedom but for hysterical sexual repression, did an act of masturbation become the yank of death?

“When Occam’s Razor suggests someone humiliated himself through a combo of technological error, pandemic circumstances, bad judgment, & bad luck, it seems like we should react w/ empathy, politeness, & forgiveness, as we would want to be treated, rather than punitive mockery,” Atlantic staff writer Conor Friedersdorf tweeted. In a tweet, CNN’s Brian Stelter sympathetically clucked that Toobin had “been sidelined at a pivotal moment in the run-up to the presidential election” (despite CNN having hundreds of talking heads who could theoretically also serve Toobin’s role). Vox reporter German Lopez said in a now-deleted tweet, “Not sure someone getting caught doing something almost everyone does should be a national story”; he then, inexplicably, went on to compare the media’s treatment of Toobin to the issue of mass incarceration.

Continue reading →

Old-timers here may remember when a baby lawyer sued the internet for having widely criticized his taking on, and botching in shocking fashion, a murder trial. The case was ultimately dismissed, after thousands of pages of bizarre arguments, but ended with a whimper rather than the bench slap so many expected.

That it ended in defeat was hardly surprising. Continue reading →

Since the rise of social justice as a religion, and accelerating after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, some folks have “awoken” more than others. My old pal, Radley Balko, is one them, having had an epiphany along the way. Once the Agitator, he surprisingly, yet not at all surprisingly, took his former roomies and colleagues at the libertarian magazine Reason to task. Radley, a long-time libertarian, had a beef.

So shortly after the 2016 election, I pointed out how odd it was that the Reason homepage was dominated by stories either mocking and ridiculing the left for being fearful of what was to come, or articles about how Trump might actually be good for libertarians. https://t.co/p12e5UjFXJ

— Radley Balko (@radleybalko) November 10, 2020

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

At 5:16 am, the internet died. Not for you, perhaps, but at Casa de SJ. No reason. It was just gone, which wasn’t exactly shocking as it disappears three or four times a week, for an hour or so, regularly. It’s been this way since Altice USA purchased Cablevision in 2016.

They still call the service Optimum, but the name is aspirational. It’s not a matter of a cable company being callous toward its customers, as was the hallmark of Cablevision’s service, but that they no longer deliver. The downside of a connected world is when the company you pay to provide the connection simply fails to deliver regularly, there isn’t much to be done. Continue reading →

At the end of The Candidate, Robert Redford, playing Bill McKay, who wins an improbable election, turns to his campaign manager and asks the question, “What do we do now?” For many who spent the last four years obsessed with hating Trump, this isn’t their concern. After all, Trump lost, which was enough. For others, there’s still a nation to deal with, and among a great many concerns, we’re still in an again-increasing pandemic.

So Joe Biden, what do we do now? Continue reading →

In Great Britain, they call it “an heir and a spare,” the queen’s duty to produce two boys, just in case something bad happens to the elder. We don’t birth our spares in America. We elect them, although we do so in tandem with the main event, so unless they’re Sarah Palin, so wholly unfit for office that the spare can be an unbearable weight on maybe the last statesman in our lifetime, they are more suffered than chosen.

The other big news of Joe Biden’s election is that we elected the first woman, and as it happens, a Woman of Color, that awful phrase that obscures the person behind the identity. Continue reading →

There are good cops. There are bad cops. They are often the same cop, but not always. But there is a deeper problem embedded in cop culture, dealing with what they perceive as society’s “mutts,” and it causes cops to perceive their fellow Americans, neighbors, human beings, as something less than human.

This has been thrown around as “systemic racism,” but it’s a worthless phrase that contributes nothing to finding a solution. It reinforces, instead, the “all cops are bastards” view, which is not only wrong and simplistic, but furthers the divide between police and the public they exist to serve. Is the objective to improve the relationship between police and the public? Is the objective to remind police that we’re all citizens, humans, neighbors? Continue reading →

Eventually, the cries of the rights will peter out because they’ve already lost, they have no hope of changing the outcome and their Fearless Leader will, after instructing Stephen Miller to trash the West Wing, slink away before the Secret Service unceremoniously assists his exit. Let it go, kids. He’s gone. The war is over. Trump lost.

But the next war has already begun.

Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) went ballistic on the party’s left wing during a conference call Thursday, blaming her unexpectedly narrow reelection on calls to “defund the police” and “socialism.” “We do not need to use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again,” she said. Spanberger is right as a matter of political strategy, but she’s delusional if she thinks the party’s left is going to go quietly.

Continue reading →

Tuesday I turn 40. I’ve finally reached a point in life where I resemble my spirit animal, Terry Funk: Middle-aged and crazy.

In celebration of this occasion I’m going to indulge myself and hand out some Unsolicited Advice from a self-professed middle-aged crazy man on the Internet who you should probably never listen to.

Unless, of course, you agree with me. Continue reading →