No, YOU’RE The Jesus!

I haven't watched much of the Democratic debates for several reasons: (1) I don't think elections should be treated like the Super Bowl, and the debates are even more boring than football; (2) I have always preferred Elizabeth Warren and don't want to argue about why; (3) I am a registered undeclared voter, do not belong to a political party, and despise the two-party system; (4) I plan to vote against Trump in the general election even if the alternative is a turd sandwich or a Hydroflask (save the turtles!)

But last night and the followup was fucking amazing, if only because of the relatability of--as the Jewish magazine The Forward puts it--"two old Jews arguing about whose arteries are worse."

As a secular ethnic atheist New York City-born and raised Jew, I have substantial experience with just this type of argument around the dinner table among aunts, uncles, and others who try to win arguments by yelling the loudest and gesticulating the most dramatically. For example, one of my relatives (who shall remain nameless) would respond to sassy teenage exhortations of "JESUS CHRIST, [MOM/DAD/AUNT/UNCLE]!" with 

"No, YOU'RE THE JESUS!!!"

Last night's argument between secular ethnic atheist east coast-born and raised Jews Mike Bloomberg (MA) and Bernie Sanders (NYC) over income inequality had a serious ring of the familiar. It was like watching a cross between balcony muppets Waldorf and Stattler and my relatives get into it over Thanksgiving dinner or Passover. 

Let's take a simple example of how I imagine a dinner table conversation would go between Bernie and Bloomberg (also substitute any of my relatives) about their health. (picture all of this in yelling):

BLOOMBERG: So, uh, did you ever talk to my guy at Columbia?
BERNIE: What guy at Columbia?
BLOOMBERG: The CARDIOLOGIST, Goldstein! He's Shirley Sokoloff's son-in-law, very bright. Very bright kid. Graduated Stanford cum laude. One of the best in the City.
BERNIE: What with the cardiologist? I don't need a cardiologist.
BLOOMBERG: You don't see a cardiologist? You're trying to kill yourself now? My guy at NYU said I had the heart of a 29 year-old.
BERNIE: My ass a 29 year-old! You have a stent! What 29 year-old has a stent? Show me ONE 29 year-old with a stent!
BLOOMBERG: No stent! NO STENT! I just had the plaques removed!
BERNIE: Ugh, plaques schmaques, there was just a study about the plaques in the Times.
BLOOMBERG: They stopped delivering, I don't get the paper version now for some reason, I can't figure out what happened.
BERNIE: So what? Get the online version! The subscription!
BLOOMBERG: What with the subscription? Now I need to pay for the internet?
BERNIE: Whatsamattah, you can't afford $5 a month for the Times? 
BLOOMBERG: Ach, fuhgettabout it, it's a whole production with the passwords. I can never remember the goddamned passwords.

And so on. What a hoot.

Climate Change is Finally Real Because Kim Kardashian Said So ... OR IS IT?!?!

I don’t know you guys. I just don’t know who or what to believe anymore. 

2002 has jumped off to a confusing start after famous-for-indiscernible-reasons Kim Kardashian West tweeted that "climate change is real." Just two days later, however, has-been singer/songwriter Meat Loaf said climate change is a bunch of bollocks and that Greta Thunberg has sadly been brainwashed into thinking otherwise.

That leaves me, stuck in the middle, unsure which of these two eminent authorities on climate science to believe: the aspiring lawyer, ass-exhibitionist, and author of an entire book of selfies, or a 72yo named after Wednesday's school lunch who by his own admission would do "anything" for love except "that."

I mean, y’all can see how fucking real the struggle is here. 

On the one hand, Australia is a blistering inferno to the point that kangaroos are turning into flash-jerky and old ladies are practically diving into the ocean to escape encroaching flames while koala bears roast in the shell of eucalyptus trees like the whole continent is a Coleman BBQ. Alaska has also had its warmest year on record, and sea ice is getting harder to find up here than a boyfriend without a felony.

On the other hand, piles of scientific paper that have been accumulating since the early 1960s and that could at this point reach the rings of Saturn if laid end to end suggest irrefutably that earth is warming at alarming rates and that people are the reason. 

On the third hand—which I don’t have so I’ll just say ass cheek—devastating hurricanes, refugee crises, and octopi washing up in Miami parking structures suggest that Kanye’s boo has the better end of this argument. 

After all, the counterpoint is coming from an okay boomer named Meat, which again science suggests is a little bit of the problem because agriculture and cows burping methane. I guess by “doing anything for love” he actually meant “sliding back into relevance for being a moron.” What “that” is remains a mystery, however, but by deductive reasoning and process of elimination (i.e. science), we can conclude that “that” is NOT “piling on a teenager for trying to ensure her generation still has oxygen by the time they can vote.” 

Ever since Jenny McCarthy told me not to worry about polio because vaccines make autism, and Gwyneth Paltrow said underwire bras start breast cancer and that we should be shoving jade eggs up our vaginas, I’ve taken all my medical advice and scientific information from any celebrity on or above the C-list who opens their mouth. 

If you know what’s good for you, you’ll do the same.

It Always Matters: The Importance of Bearing Witness

There will be a "Lights for Liberty" vigil at the Whale statue in Juneau tonight at 7:00 p.m. This is a national action occurring in 700 cities nationwide today, to protest the inhumane conditions in detention camps at our southern border. I was asked to give a few brief remarks on why this matters.

I was asked to speak tonight on why this matters. 

I know that many of us in Alaska, particularly here in our Capital city, are acutely attuned to local politics right now. The governor's budget vetoes have left us reeling in a state of shock and uncertainty. But these two fronts of the war on American liberty, safety, and democracy have more in common than you might think.

Robert Kennedy said that "every time we turn our heads the other way when we see the law flouted, when we tolerate what we know to be wrong, when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy or too frightened, when we fail to speak up and speak out, we strike a blow against freedom and democracy and justice."

What Kennedy was describing is the profound value inherent in the act witnessing. That is what we are doing right at this moment, both with respect to our State and more broadly with respect to the unconscionable, inhumane and un-American conditions in which our fellow human beings are being warehoused like animals:

Children in standing-room only cells with no blankets, soap, or toothpaste. Families separated from one another indefinitely. Toddlers representing themselves at immigration hearings. Lice and disease infestation. Sadistic border agents. A lack of basic medical care. Freezing cold or broiling hot temperatures.

Dehumanization of our fellow men, women, and children has caused the abhorrent conditions at our southern border and is a precursor of much worse to come. Those who would abet and enable this conduct aren't monsters. They are your neighbors. They walk among us. But this is nothing new. There have always been victims, bystanders, and those who refuse to be either.

We need to be the refusers. We need to say no. We need to say enough. And we need to act and implore our elected officials to act to put this to an end, lest we repeat the lessons of history--learned the hard way--again and again.

It is incumbent on each of us to witness what is happening; to refuse to tolerate what we know to be wrong; to open our eyes and ears to corruption and inhumanity; to find the time and the courage to speak up and speak out. 

It's easy to question why this matters, standing here around a whale statue in Juneau, Alaska. What good does it do, because tomorrow will be exactly the same, and it all feels futile and pointless. Again, the answer can be found in the act of witnessing and its inherent value. 

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel wrote in Night: "for the dead and the living, we must bear witness." He could not stay silent. Sharing his experience in the Holocaust was a catharsis, but also a historical record. Sometimes all we can do is make a record, so that regardless of the outcome, future generations know we did not go gently into that night.

It may not feel like much, but simply standing up, naming this for what it is, and refusing to condone it matters in and of itself.

Guess It’s Time for Me to Drop Science on Silence

So now we have “whatever you want to call them” camps in America. And they’re not the kind where you roast s’mores and make friendship bracelets, unfortunately. 

To a panel of appellate judges’ incredulity, a DOJ lawyer just argued that soap, toothpaste, and the ability to sleep aren’t part of “safe and sanitary” conditions for women and children who’ve crossed the southern border fleeing gang violence at home and find themselves in CBP custody.

Look. Every government lawyer has to make arguments they don’t like. That’s part of the job. But we can also choose what lines we draw, both professionally and morally. That line is different for every lawyer. But it can and should exist, because as Nuremberg taught us, “I was just doing my job” has a limit.

I was a government lawyer my whole career before I was fired for criticizing Trump. To those still in government under these regimes, I would say only this: think long and hard—right now—about what you’re doing and where your line is, because history shows: that line will come before you’re ready.

The difficult truth for me is that I’m not wired for silence or keeping my head down in the face of this level of devolution of democracy and humanity. I’m just not. My mom is like this and has lost jobs and friends because of it. My grandfather, her father, was sentenced to seven years in a federal prison for union organizing. America since 11/9/16 is not normal. I am congenitally unable to stop saying so. My mom says maybe that’s because we’re Jews, and we know all to well the consequences of silence.

I’d also add, however, that remaining silent in the face of what has happened to America now is the epitome—the absolute zenith—of white privilege. Many white people with no cultural history of trauma or persecution are seemingly fine saying/doing nothing because they think they will always be “safe.”

Maybe, maybe not.

I hope those who stay silent with their heads down and who keep going along to get along in order to protect and squirrel away their own little personal corner of the universe never have to face any real consequences of Trump’s atrocities. I really do. Some of us don’t have that option, and it would behoove every citizen of this country to remember that eventually, your turn comes. Either you’re a victim, a bystander, or a persecutor. Those are the three options you have if you’re not willing to say or do anything else.

The sad truth is that most people, when given a choice, will always choose self-preservation above all else. People who are hard-wired to risk self-destruction for principles are the exception, not the norm, because it’s maladaptive. Those people end up isolated, destitute, imprisoned, dead, or some combination thereof. I know it’s futile to be disappointed in human nature, and yet I am. 

Deeply.

Here’s another thing: if this post makes you mad, if you’re crying metaphorical white tears, if you feel fragile, if your first instinct is to be defensive about your self-preservation-at-all-costs mentality, then maybe it’s time to look in the mirror.  Maybe you’re mad at yourself, and that’s okay. It’s not too late to do or say something. Anything. 

Because if you think the stakes are high now, just wait.

Suggested Letter to Congress About Southern Border Detention Camps

An O.H.M. reader wrote this letter to her congressperson. I think it’s a good idea if others do the same, so I thought I’d share it:

Dear [Congress person],

I am writing to urge you to 1) educate yourself to more fully understand the depth of the mistreatment of human beings happening at the southern U.S. border while in U.S. custody, and 2) to do something about these inhuman conditions, because you are in a position of power to do so. If you have already taken steps toward #1, it is unimaginable how you could not be compelled to take steps toward #2.

Setting aside the symbolic significance of using a former WW2 Japanese internment camp in the United States to detain human beings in the 21st century, the willful, systematic mistreatment of human beings by the United States on U.S. soil is wrong. It ignores the lessons of the 20th century, learned painfully and over too much time, that it is immoral and extremely dangerous for governments to use their power against any human being, let alone innocent civilians and children, in this way. It is not acceptable to treat some human beings like they are less than human, in order to make the majority feel more comfortable. It is immoral to treat prisoners in these ways, even if they have committed terrible crimes and display anti-social behavior. 

It is therefore that much more heinous to treat people who have not committed crimes in the same way or worse, and even more so for young women, children, and babies. And it is difficult to imagine the level of trauma and pain that someone who is a refugee, fleeing a country in which they are not safe from violence on a day to day basis, that they otherwise consider home and likely did not leave without considerable reason to do so, compounded by the inhuman treatment of the country that ostensibly welcomes immigrants and was founded on the values of freedom, tolerance and opportunity, to intern human beings and then to take further steps to shield these internment camps and the mistreatment of these human beings from the press and the general public.

I ask you to reflect on your own family history: when and how did your family arrive in the United States? Did they emigrate from a country where they faced any form of persecution, lack of economic opportunity, or otherwise did not see a bright future for themselves? Mine did, from several different countries. Some of my ancestors came from Ireland, a country (and not even at that time its own country) that faced a devastating famine, and for whom the exodus of the population became a "scourge" of unwanted immigrants to the United States in the 19th century. 

Amazingly, while Irish immigrants were generally not treated well, from exclusion from work opportunities to overcrowded and unsanitary housing, they were not detained for weeks at a time and interned and denied food, heat, clothing, medical care, and other basic necessities. Perhaps the conditions at Ellis Island were comparable, particularly those who were quarantined if they were considered disease carriers. But this was also almost two centuries ago.

This needs to stop. We are on a path toward another atrocity, committed in peace time against those who do not pose a credible threat to our nation, that our children and grandchildren will struggle to understand and ask why all of us did nothing while it happened. I don't know what to do or how to stop this, so the very least I can do is express my outrage and sadness to those who are in a position to do something.

I should not have to state, but I am stating loud and clear, that I do not support internment and systematic treatment of human beings, but I am stating it now because it appears that nothing is being done, and that no one cares enough to make this stop. If we do not stop this, we will have lessened ourselves as a nation and as a people, doubly so because we did not learn the first time, when we interned our own citizens because of their race. 

The wars and atrocities of the 20th century, which we as a nation fought against but also perpetrated ourselves, should have taught all human beings on earth that mass destruction of our species is never that far away, and the worst forces in our nature must be kept in check as we continue to develop technologies and systems to commit atrocities on a grand scale.

In closing, I urge you to fully understand what is happening at the border, because to understand it even at a basic level and from a distance is sufficient information to understand that it is wrong, and it is un-American. 

Please do something. Please stop the systematic mistreatment of human beings on U.S. soil, and act more worthy of the century we live in now, to show that we have learned even one small lesson from our profound mistakes that define the 20th century.

Cedar Attanasio / AP

Don’t Look Away: Important Information on Border Atrocities

This is a twitter thread from Elizabeth C. McLaughlin put into a blog post:
IF YOU CARE ABOUT WHAT TRUMP IS DOING AT THE BORDER, you need to read and share this thread. 
@jacobsoboroff @JuliaEAinsley please read this. 
I have just gotten off the phone with a friend who is a legal volunteer in Border Patrol facilities. 
Don't look away.
My friend has done two tours now volunteering as a legal advocate inside CBP facilities. 
She passed along information about what is happening there that indicates that the Trump Administration is violating every basic human right, and is moving toward military "solutions."
So that folks understand the process: CBP has outposts on the border. Refugees seeking asylum travel hundreds of miles on foot, including with infants and small children, and turn themselves in at these outposts *on foot.* 
Here's what happens next. Don't look away.
CBP then transfers these human beings to a facility called "the Dog Pound." (Here, my friend started crying.) 
The "Dog Pound" is comprised of cages, outside and on dirt, with no protection from the elements. 
Don't look away.
There are dozens of teen moms there. 
There is no baby food. 
While there, my friend saw a CBP agent take a baby from her teenage mother, strip the baby of its clothes, hand the baby back to the mother, and send them outside to the "Dog Pound" to sleep in the dirt.
The "Dog Pound" has no running water, no covers, no tarp, no care, no safety from the elements. It is freezing at night, and deathly hot during the day. 
Everyone is sick. My friend said she saw a baby on this trip that was so sick "I thought it would be dead by morning."
Toddlers in the "Dog Pound" who had been eating solid food are given only infant formula. Moms are trying to start breast feeding again so their children don't starve. 
These moms are dehydrated, sick, & have walked miles through desert with no water. CBP gives them nothing.
It gets worse. Don't look away. From the "Dog Pound," these human beings are moved to an area called "The Freezer." 
The Freezer is kept at 55 degrees. 
Some of the refugees who are moved there are still wet from their journey, and are put in The Freezer wet.
CBP is keeping human beings in "The Freezer" for weeks at a time. WEEKS. 
Including critically ill people, disabled people, sick children, teenage mothers with babies. 
The floor of The Freezer is made of dirt or very rough concrete. There are no beds. 
Keep reading.
From "The Freezer," refugees are supposed to be moved to ICE facilities that are designed for residential care. They have beds, food, bathrooms. 
However, (keep reading) THOSE FACILITIES ARE EMPTY. 
ICE IS SHUTTING THEM DOWN. 
Don't look away.
What our government is doing instead is moving refugees to MILITARY INSTALLATIONS. 
The announcement about Fort Sill, which was used as a Japanese internment camp, is only the start. 
So why would our government be doing this?
Here's why:
These concentration camps (let's call them what they are) will be under the control of the Department of Homeland Security, but within the Department of Defense.
Unlike ICE facilities, which allow site inspectors inside, there will be no inspection of military-run camps. 
The military will be able to deny access to anyone it chooses. No media. No oversight.
Lawyers will not be allowed in. Human rights monitors will not be allowed in. 
The camps will also be protected airspace, meaning that no drones can fly over them to take pictures of what's going on inside.
The Trump administration will be able to conduct itself in whatever way it wants to without anyone knowing what's going on inside. 
Think about what that means. Think about why they would want that. 
This is happening RIGHT NOW. 
ICE facilities with beds and food are EMPTY, because the Trump administration is moving refugees into military-run concentration camps where they can do ANYTHING THEY CHOOSE without oversight, media scrutiny or advocate access.
This administration is already committing atrocities at CBP facilities. 
Border Patrol agents at the facility where my friend was working refer to these human beings as "bodies." Not people. "Bodies." 
They are denying medicine, toilets, beds, food, shelter and clothes.
My friend said that "Flores is on very tenuous ground." 
We're days away from being met with "we're not going to let you in, no matter what."
What is coming is crimes against humanity. 
America is already perpetrating mass human rights violations, and this administration is setting it up so they can do far worse, in secret, under military supervision.
Military forces are already been shifted to CBP. My friend saw *coast guard agents* (read that again) working for CBP at this facility. 
If we do nothing, there will be blood on our hands.
If Pelosi does nothing, there will be blood on her hands and the hands of every Democrat who refuses to act to end this administration's reign. 
Fascism is here. 
If this enrages you, devastates you, frightens you, share this thread. 
Then call your member of Congress and read it to them. 
Then call @SpeakerPelosi and ask her why she sits silently by as our government does this.
We're on a fast train to hell. 
There's only one way to stop it. 
Trump must be removed from power immediately, by any legal means, using every weapon in our arsenal.
This is where we are. This is WHO we are. 
Look reality in the face. 
Don't look away. 
Fight like human life depends on it. 
It does. It does. It does.
/end
PS. I have been asked to tag @AOC in this thread with an urgent plea that she read it. 
What is happening at the border mandates immediate action and revolt in the Democratic party. 
PPS. My friend has photos of the facility. This is real. It's America, right now.
Last tweet: please donate to @RAICESTEXAS. Please do it immediately and as much as you can. 
Please donate to the @ACLU. Please fight against this administration with everything you've got.

My Straight Ally Manifesto

Pride is more than parties. For me it’s thinking in concrete ways about things I can do to be a true ally to the LGBTQ+ community. So I am committing to these ten concrete things:

1. Make the most of my board service on SEAGLA.

2. Use my platform to shine a light on and speak out against homophobia and transphobia.

3. Take the time to learn and respect people’s gender identity and their pronouns.

4. Vocally resist bathroom bills, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, and similar attempts to weaponize government and litigation to undermine the rights of LGBTQ+ people.

5. Raise my children to know, love, & respect LGBTQ+ as fellow equal human beings.

6. Correct homophobic and transphobic slurs each and every time I hear a person use one.

7. Remember that Stonewall was a riot and the birth of a human rights movement.

8. Credit the LGBTQ+ community for being the first to actively assert health care as a social justice issue during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

9. Offer my home as a safe space for LGBTQ+ youth fleeing persecution in their own lives.

10. Acknowledge that many LGBTQ+ still must live in fear, danger, and secrecy; work to change that forever.

I Don’t Get It.

I really don’t. I don’t get America under this despotic bullshit.

I don’t get how you can be worried about the government interfering with your guns but be perfectly fine with it interfering with the most intimate parts of your body.

I don’t get how people in power can violate the constitution, the law, and congressional subpoenas with zero pushback or consequences.

I don’t get why who you fuck or marry, or what gender you identify as, or what toilet you piss in, matters to anyone but you.

I don’t get women who cannibalize other women by tearing them down and undermining them.

I don’t get how we have a separation of church and state yet essentially live in a theocracy.

I don’t get how journalists can’t do their jobs anymore or go out in public without the risk of being assaulted.

I don’t get the buzz of trolling for the sake of trolling and abusing other people, laughing at their pain, rejoicing in their failures, mocking their appearance. I don’t get the pure and tragic sadism of that.

But most of all I don’t get the complicity or the complacency or the cowardice. I don’t get how people—smart people—put their own self-preservation ahead of almost everything else.

I don’t get how we can function in a society where the majority of people just put their heads down and keep following orders and endorsing and ignoring what these morally bereft criminals say and do.

I don’t get how people can dehumanize other people with bumper stickers that mock human death and human pain and think it’s funny. I don’t get the sociopathy of that.

I don’t get how we have candidates for the federal judiciary who won’t promise to uphold Brown v. Board.

I don’t get how I can continue to use my time and my voice when it feels like I’m wasting my time screaming into the void and all I feel is depression, alienation, and isolation.

Truly, I do not fucking get it. Not one bit.

Charles Dickens, Budget Analyst

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of mercenary budget slashers from Michigan, it was the age of interrupting their shoe shopping with a legit budget beef. 

It was the age of wisdom .... oh wait no it def wasn’t. It was the epoch of the rank amateur, it was the epoch of the excommunicated professional Deep State™️. 

It was the season of flying first class, it was the season of doing it while simultaneously kicking little old ladies out of nursing homes and off public assistance. It was the spring of filing a budget, it was the winter of not actually knowing what was in it or what it did to the people we are supposed to be serving because we give zero fucks and also math is hard.

We had everything the Petrostate had to offer, except actually we didn’t because corporate capture. We were all going to hand out six figure pretend jobs to our cronies like they were Skittles, we were going to gas ourselves up to be the off-brand bag of cereal to the Trump Administration’s Kellogg’s Froot Loops™️.

In short, the period was one in which we suggested with a straight face that our children freeze in their classrooms and lectured college professors with letters about their uselessness, all while legislators from our own party quite understandably looked at us like we were some combination of clueless and insane.

You Have Permission to Sweat Woke Ammon Bundy

If we needed any more proof that we’re living in the Upside Down (hint: we don't), Woke Ammon Bundy™️ should shift that needle to “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

‘Member Ammon Bundy? It seems like so long ago now. Like a dream from another era. 

Cast your minds back to that one time a rag-tag posse of plaid-clad militia wingnuts rumbled up to a USFS cabin in rural Oregon, where they sat for three weeks, making tearful video testimonials about the Big Mean Gov’mint and ordering coffee and Little Debbie Snack Cakes from their adoring mouth-breathing acolytes. Eventually, the martyrs got bored and climbed back in their pickup trucks and drove home. And then some of them got arrested and almost went to prison. Or did go to prison. Or went to prison and had their conviction overturned. I don’t fucking know. I don't even care enough to Google it.

Point is, the Mick Jagger of the Redneck Rolling Stones was this hot AF bae named Ammon Bundy. He might even have been called "Militia Bae," for all I know, 'cause Ammon looks like the offspring of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain 2: Return to the Mountain. (True story: I went to summer camp with Jake for three years and wrote about that shit here HELLO BRUSH WITH FAME AND GREATNESS)

Even Ammon Bundy's name sounds like a character from a $7.00 bodice ripper: "Her full lips fell open as she watched Ammon Bundy's rippling chest muscles flex in the sun. As he rode his stallion bareback into the sunset, she wondered if she would ever see Ammon again, or cry out his name in a moment of ecstasy . . . "

Well now Ammon suddenly got woke! He "broke up" with Trump because of "anti-immigrant rhetoric." I guess Ammon realized that all his compatriots in the War Against Not Easily Available Doritos actually didn't care if brown toddlers got tear-gassed and locked up in cages indefinitely for seeking asylum in the "land of the free." He decided, I guess, that it was worth the loss of love he would suffer from "warmongers" to take the side of some families fleeing violence.

So this is my gift to you, my babes and dudes. I bring to you the tidings of joy of the season, which is permission to, at long last, put Ammon Bundy in your wank tank free of guilt. As POTUS would say:

ENJOY!

Trump on Romaine Lettuce: A Disaster!

Some Romaine lettuce is OK to eat, OK? Or at least according to the Failing Fake News Media it is. Many people are saying this. I can’t tell you who, but many, MANY important people—terrific, absolutely terrific scientists—have called my office to tell me this. Even low-energy, low-ratings Fake News CNN reported these facts, by the way. I have a natural instinct for science, so I know.

The worst Romaine is from California. It’s the worst there, because California is a DISASTER. Everyone knows that. Look at what happened with the poor management of the gardens and farms in California. If the California farmers gardened like Norway, this wouldn’t have happened. I was golfing with the King of Norway last week, and he told me himself that their Romaine is clean because they scrape it with tiny little rakes that collect the germs.

The U.S. could do the same thing. We could have the cleanest lettuce. But Little Adam Schitt and Goofy Nancy Pelosi want you to sit on a toilet for 7 hours a day and bleed through your colon before they’d ever roll back their job-killing, germ-spreading regulations!

They’re saying lettuce from other parts of the U.S. and Mexico is safe to eat. That I can’t tell you. But I CAN tell you that Mexico is NOT sending its best lettuce. They’re sending Romaine full of E.Coli. They’re sending diseases. And some, I assume, is perfectly fine iceberg that tastes delicious shredded as a garnish in a Trump Grill Taco Bowl.

But we can’t be too careful. Lettuce is a very dangerous vegetable, and California has been a sanctuary state for lettuce for far too long. Maybe if the 17 Angry Democrats and Highly Conflicted Bob Mueller spent less time on the Phony Witch Hunt Collusion Hoax and more time getting to the bottom of this Very Dangerous Lettuce Situation, America could have great salad again.

I appreciate the congrats of the American people about my strong action against bacteria known to have infiltrated our borders. We may never know how many of them are here killing our jobs and our micro-biota. It’s horrible, absolutely terrible. It’s vicious and horribly unfair how long California has allowed this TREMENDOUS VEGETABLE DISASTER to continue within its borders. NOT NICE. Tell Congress to FUND THE TRELLIS NOW!

Listen to local authorities and avoid all forms of romaine lettuce, including romaine heads, hearts, and salad mixes. Rome was a very important empire and look how easily it fell. Caesar and Caligula were both terrific guys who we keep hearing more and more about and who had excellent ratings and still, look at what happened there. When is the so-called and Very Biased Centers for “Disease Control” going to actually control this disaster?

Something has to be done. Romaine is a very dangerous lettuce! Iceberg First! GET SMART, people. Make Salad Great Again!

By the way will be interviewed tonight about the Lettuce Crisis on @Foxandfriends. ENJOY!

Halloween Candy Pairings for the Trump Era

Sugar is the new tobacco, and nothing (except sugar) feels as good as a long drag off a cigarette that also hopefully contains weed. 

But when you can’t get that, you can easily access three straight months of sugar starting sometime in early October and going through Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Easter. Wai wai wait. That's actually SIX straight months of insulin shock!

During this time, we will ostensibly continue to live under the tiny thumb of our Sentient Cheeto Overlord, so it’s helpful to know what Halloween candy goes best with his lying tweets and outrageous policies.

Racism/Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups: The undisputed most delicious Halloween candy—the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup—should be reserved for Trump’s most dominant personality trait: his white creamsicle (?) supremacy! From stoking the Birther movement to calling Nazis very fine people to declaring Mexicans rapists and murderers to concocting nonexistent caravans of middle eastern terrorists to putting Honduran babies in cages while threatening to shoot their parents and making them sign away their legal rights in crayon, the smooth, rich taste of real milk chocolate and peanut butter helps that hard-core racism go down smooth.

Flat-Eartherism/Nerds: These tiny, tangy colorful candy pebbles are an aptly named compliment to Trump’s self-proclaimed “natural instinct” for science. An instinct that has led him to posit that vaccines cause autism, that global warming is a Chinese Hoax, that the climate is actually “fabulous,” and that he has the “cleanest air” and also the most corrupt and underfunded EPA in the history of the country!

Misogyny/Snickers: Snickers satisfies you and so does grabbing women by the pussy, jamming an intemperate sexual assailant onto the United States Supreme Court, and calling your former mistress—a porn star with whom you cheated on your supermodel wife while she was home nursing your infant son—“horseface.” The triple threat of peanuts, caramel, and chocolate pair wonderfully with telling the First Lady of France that she’s in “good shape,” molesting teenaged beauty pageant contestants, and joking about dating your own daughter.

Corruption/Milky Way: Creamy nougat and chewy caramel go great with reading about Trump’s latest family member to gain state security clearance for no reason, or the newest pay-to-play real estate deal his lawyers and relatives have orchestrated with shady overseas banks in exchange for sweetheart government contracts, or the daily raid on the treasury effectuated by Trump’s seven zillionth day of golfing on his own golf courses.

Attacks on Free Press/Sour Patch Kids: These tart, flavorful fruity gummies pair beautifully with the 15th tinpot dictator campaign rally this week in which Trump calls the press the enemy of the people, tweets an all-caps 180-character screed about FAKE NEWS at 3:16 a.m., or commits stochastic terrorism by inciting one of his cult members to send pipe bombs to CNN.

Treason/M&Ms: Whether he’s yelling about a WITCH HUNT, maligning the FBI and his own Department of Justice, or obstructing justice with impulsive firings, the milk chocolate candy that melts in your mouth and not in your hand tastes pretty good when you’re sitting there reading irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling in American elections at Trump’s behest or benefit and wondering if Robert Mueller will ever turn the President from an “unindicted co-conspirator” to an indicted one.

Senile Inept Illiteracy/Tootsie Roll Pops: How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop? Good question! At least as many as there are embarrassing and bizarre moments for any sane adult human, much less the leader of the free world. Using scotch tape as a tie clip, being incapable of closing an umbrella, boarding Air Force One with toilet paper on your shoe, misspelling “hereby” and “counsel” almost every time you type the words, and screaming playground insults at your political foes before threatening to jail them as you continue to use the Constitution for toilet paper all taste amazing with these flavorful little suckers.

The Apollo 11 Landing of Self-Owns

I wish I’d come up with the title of this blog post myself, but that honor belongs to one of my readers from Cardiff, Wales named Phil Dore (YES, O.H.M. is WORLDWIDE, BITCHES!) And it could not be more perfect, because who Jacob Wohl is, what Jacob Wohl did, and how spectacularly Jacob Wohl failed at doing it is a feat of rocket science that only NASA could actualize.

Obviously, I spend entirely too much time trolling the President of the United States on Twitter (oh hi, 2018!), so I knew who Jacob Wohl was and hated his smarmy ass long before last week when he flew, Icarus-like, too close to the cyber-sun and melted his little alt-right wings trying to take down Robert Mueller. And how did he do that? Welp, by allegedly paying women to make false allegations of sexual assault against Mueller via a website linked to . . . wait for it . . . . HIS ACTUAL MOM’S PHONE NUMBER.

This is what passes for good news these days, Fam.

A 20 year-old Alex P. Keaton-meets-Logan Paul-meets your-straight-out-of-central-casting-young-federalist-MAGA-troll-dickweed trying to--and ACTUALLY BELIEVING--that he can frame one of the most experienced, serious, respected, ethical, and talented prosecutors in America with bullshit pussy blackmail traceable to his fucking MOM.

Madeleine Aggeler over at The Cut has a good breakdown of the entire sad, sordid story of the baby-faced hedge fund wunderkind whose main talent and raison d'etre is groveling at Trump on Twitter, self-promotion, and falling ass-backwards into a federal criminal investigation because YA DONE FUCKED UP THIS TIME, SON!

One of the things I find most amazing about wee little MAGAs like Jacob Wohl--whose most difficult life experience is a tie between losing Call of Duty to a girl and a dropped WiFi connection in his aforementioned mom’s basement—is how little they actually know compared to how much they THINK they know. 

Whether you’re talking about science, economics, elections, or blackmailing one of the smartest men in America with a slug of Trumpian lies generated in a dark web test tube with a half liter of Mountain Dew by your side, the gulf between those two metrics is wider than the distance between planet earth and the titular moon landing of this blog post.

Indeed, the moon is about 238,900 miles from the broiling little rock we call home. Coincidentally, this is the same distance between the IQ and competency of Jacob Wohl and that of Robert Mueller and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to which Jacob Wohl’s seventh grade-level prank has now been referred. 

An alternate headline for this scandal is “Bitch Who Thinks He’s Playing Three-Dimensional Chess is Actually Playing Candy Land and Just Got Sent Back to Start.”

This stunt is legitimately one step above a kid I knew back in the day who slashed the tires of a school bus and thought he wouldn’t get caught, because . . . No school bus, no school! GENIUS, RIGHT?! Same deal. Mueller grabs pussy during the MeToo era, Trump stays out of trouble! Like that’s the basic logic-level of the jackass we are dealing with here.

So when you look at the moon rise over the horizon tonight, I implore you to gaze up at it and smile as you remember the biggest, roundest, brightest self-own of the week.

Safety First! Checking Your Privilege

Check your privilege. BLAH BLAH BLAH. That’s all anyone ever says anymore! We’ve gotten so politically correct in this country that you can’t do anything without offending someone! Too many people are told to “check their privilege." That's why I put together this little safety/privilege check to see if you might be someone who needs to do that:

1. When you leave work to walk to your car in an empty parking garage at night alone you:

a. Carry your keys in your hand for use as a weapon
b. Keep your head down and walk as quickly as possible
c. Go into fight or flight mode when you hear footsteps behind you
d. What are you talking about I’m listening to music and texting my girlfriend.

2. When you’re driving down the highway and you hear a police car pull up behind you, you:

a. Question whether you will emerge from this transaction with a bullet in your head
b. Quickly try to determine what broken headlight or expired tag has led to this moment
c. Hope that dude's body cam is working and put that cell phone on video just in case
d. Wonder if the cop is your kid’s soccer coach and plan how to small talk your way out of a speeding ticket.

3. When you wave to your neighbors in the morning you:

a. Wonder if they would hide you in a barn or loot your house and make a lamp from your dead body
b. Wonder if they think you killed Jesus
c. Contemplate whether they believe that maybe you have horns
d. Forgot that you told them you’d get their mail while they were out of town.

4. At Halloween, you like to:

a. Wear blackface because you love Michael Jackson
b. Dress up like a Geisha because you love Japanese culture
c. Dress up like an Injun because you loved cowboys and Injuns when you were a lad!
d. All of the above, why the fuck is everyone so sensitive now?!

5. At work, you don’t get a promotion and are convinced it’s because:

a. Reverse sexism
b. Reverse racism
c. You weren’t qualified
d. Both a and b.

6. When you’re shopping and you hear someone behind you, you automatically assume:

a. You’re about to be accused of stealing
b. You’re about to be called a racial slur
c. Someone complained about the sound of your voice and/or called store security on you
d. A helpful sales clerk is about to ask if you’ve found everything okay.

7. When someone tells you they’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted you:

a. Instantly believe them.
b. Offer words of support
c. Give them information for a Rape Crisis hotline
d. Lecture them on the burden of proof, the rules of evidence in a criminal trial, and tell them to chill the fuck out.

8. Every July 4, you:

a. Google various immigration processes so you know where you can maybe go the shit goes down
b. Realize it doesn’t matter because the world is so globalized now
c. Feel like you’re thisclose to having your citizenship revoked
d. Deck out your pickup truck with bald eagles and flags and scream WHOO HOO AMERICA FUCK YEAH!

9. When you go to a restaurant with your partner you:

a. Wonder if you’re going to be called a homophobic slur
b. Make a calculated decision about what bathroom to use for fear of harassment
c. Take a careful account of your surroundings before holding hands
d. Order the chicken Ceasar salad because that’s what you always get here.

Hint: if you answered (d) to any of these questions, you passed the safety test and must check your privilege on the remainder!

The Barn Test

The morning after the 2016 election, I remember having this thought distinctly: Who is going to shelter my family in a barn, and who's going to just turn their back on us and loot our house when I get hauled off to a concentration camp in a few years? 

I knew I was being ridiculous and hyperbolic and hysterical. But that's honestly what I thought. And I cried, because I knew when I went into work that morning that there were people IN MY OFFICE who had voted for Trump and who had therefore failed, to my mind, the Barn Test. They walk among us, I thought and wrote that day.

The woman that raised me, a Romanian Jew, lived the first five years of her life with her mother and two older sisters in a concentration camp in Eastern Europe. All of her stuff was gone when they finally returned home (their neighbors had taken it). My husband's grandmother fled the Nazis and hid in a barn in Poland at age 17. I, on the other hand, had the good fortune to be born and raised in the United States with white skin during a period of relative peace and prosperity, and I was told my whole life that it couldn't last forever.

Of course, not everyone who voted for Trump viewed their vote through the same lens of white supremacy that I did. 

White women voted for him in droves because his misogyny could be excused and ignored in light of his elevation of White Power. Some people thought he'd make us all rich. Others hated Hillary. But for me, it was very black and white, and it felt like a betrayal. A vote for Trump, it felt to me at the time, was a vote to sign my death warrant and that of so many other marginalized people. The presence of two Court Jews in Trump's family didn't make me feel any better. Not one bit.

After awhile, I abandoned my resentment of "Trump Voters.™ I realized that they had been conned and that resenting my fellow citizens, arguing with them on the internet, allowing hate to infiltrate my heart was both a waste of time, a stain on my soul, and the dirty work of fascism. I set it aside and practiced using my time and voice in affirmatively positive ways. 

I now genuinely harbor zero ill will towards people who voted for this mess because it's a waste of my time and energy and it doesn't change anything.

After yesterday's synagogue shooting--really just one more and particularly heinous affront in two years of newly-bold affronts against women, immigrants, LGBTQ people, people of color, and indigenous people--I came back to the Barn Test.

Fortunately, it's pretty easy to know who passes and fails the Barn Test. 

FAIL: A lot of people on the internet, especially community Facebook pages and comment boards. The girl who lived in my dorm at an Ivy League college and asked my freshman roommate if Jews had horns and questioned her decision to date a Jewish boy because their children would be devil children. People who proudly display confederate flags on their vehicles and wear MAGA hats in public.

PASS: People who come out and stand for hours in the rain to defend immigrant families staying together. Strangers who engage with people on my social media pages about these things because they know I lack the capacity to do it. The women from Alaska who I met in DC lobbying Senator Murkowski on Kavanaugh. My friends who show up for me in ways big and small in my everyday life.

There are a lot of depressing things about 2018 America, but because Trump has given everyone the permission to "speak their minds," at least now I know where people stand. I know who I can count on, and who I should just shrug my shoulders and give up on.

There is serious value in the Barn Test.

Apparently Trump Has Michael Bolton on the Brain So I Rewrote this Classic Song for Him

When a man hates a woman
Can't write his tweets ‘bout nothin' else
He'll grab her by the pussy
And move on her like a bitch
If she’s a five, he will say it
He’ll call her horseface or a pig
Turn his back on his first wife
For a second or third

When a man hates a woman
Spend his very last dime
Trying to win the Presidency
He'd give up all his comforts
And sleep in that dump the White House
If Putin said that's the way
It ought to be

When a man hates a woman
He’d give it everything he’s got
Trying to put Biff the Boofer

On the Supreme Court 
(Baby please don't “inadvertently kill” me)!

When a man hates a woman
Deep down in his soul

He can bring her such misery
If he sues her for breaching an NDA

And incites violence all the time 
He’ll pretend it never happened 

Cuz he’s crazy

Yes when a man hates a woman
Trump knows exactly how you feel
'Cause baby, baby, baby
He’s gaslighting misogynist trash
When a man hates a woman

Feminist Tableware Line?!?!?!?!

*CLEARS THROAT*

O.H.M. turns four this month, and if it’s one thing I’ve learned in 1,460 days of writing this blog, it’s that “putting yourself out there” will pay unforeseen dividends. Some of these—like meeting new friends and making new connections in the world—are wonderful. Others—like being called a hideous, reprehensible cunt who deserves to be raped and should commit suicide—are less so. 

Diamonds and turds is what you can expect, my friends. Diamonds and turds. (Fun fact for Trivia Night: Diamonds and Turds was the original title of the Prince song, Diamonds and Pearls).

Por ejemplo, just yesterday, someone whom I believe generally agrees with the four basic premises of this blog--(1) Trump is an asshole; (2) Parenting is hard; (3) Nutella is good; (4) Alaska is cool—called me a “back-stabbing mean girl” who is “angling for viral status daily” and who “thinks I’m funny” because I questioned the wisdom of Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test (and subsequently conceded I should probably have kept my big fat mouth shut about that).

The same thing happened when I dared to question the wisdom of non-retaining judges for bad but legal decisions, to the point that I had to delete stuff due to a relentless fusillade of shit-posting from people whom I know for a fact actually agree with me most of the time, but for some reason demand a bizarre level of irrational ideological purity or else hell hath no fury. Which in part is why, some might argue, that the left wing of this country can’t have nice things.

Anyway, I clarified on Twitter that I definitely think I’m Kanye West-level funny and shamelessly angle for viral status on the daily, but I don’t think I’m a mean girl. And the reason I point this out, is because I think some things MUST be mocked, which doesn’t make me mean or “shaming,” per se. But the thing of it is, fam, if you’re going to “put yourself out there,” you’re asking for it. I’m asking for it. DAILY. And I certainly can take what I dish out.

So if you’re putting yourself out there in the real estate section of the New York Fucking Times, bragging about your gigantic East Village closets and your FEMINIST TABLEWARE LINE you should rightly anticipate a wee bit of shit to come drifting your way. Because truly, you are BEGGING ON BENDED KNEE in full genuflection for a flotilla of shit. 

And that is where I come in.

Alleged “mean girls” like me derive no small modicum of satisfaction from dragging lawyers who publicly defend the honor of superyacht owners and well to-do, trust fund babies who work at Facebook, spend $7,000+ a month on a Manhattan apartment, insist on profiling themselves in the New York Times about it, and therefore have approximately zero self-awareness. 

It’s not what Kendra and Jared have. It’s how Kendra and Jared talk about what they have. And how Kendra and Jared talk about what they have can be helped. And—I hate to say this—if it can be helped, it can be shamed. And should be. In short: I simply cannot resist giving Kendra and Jared their internet comeuppance, and if that makes me a mean girl, so be it.

But I just cannot with this.

This is a Cinderella story of a young couple who made the brave pilgrimage from the depths of a basement apartment in the Mission District of San Francisco (near where they also own a $700,000 “fixer-upper” somehow) to a brand new apartment building in the East Village. In the same neighborhood, I believe, where my family first landed in a tenement off the boat from the pogroms of Eastern Europe to pluck chickens and let karp swim around in a bathtub, but where now stands a half-empty luxury apartment complex built by Russian oligarchs and rented for $7,000 a month by a couple-plus-their-roommate with a French Bulldog named PacMan who has back problems and a Peloton bike next to their salvaged drift wood headboard.

Despite being born and raised in New York City, I don’t live there anymore, and Kendra and Jared are just two of many reasons why. 2018 NYC is laughably unaffordable, teeming with insufferable douchebags, and gentrified to the point that every bodega is now an artisanal mayonnaise co-op or a Bikram yoga studio. 

And every time I go home to my parents’ cluttered, vaguely depressing, senior-citizen outer borough ninth floor apartment packed to the rafters with 45 years’ worth of old newspapers and coffee mugs full of decommissioned subway tokens, I tell them it’s time to do Swedish Death Cleaning. And all I can think about is who in Williamsburg will redecorate their loft with this quirky crap when they die and I unload it in an estate sale; and will I hate whoever it is enough to just decide to burn it all anyway? Or will these subway tokens end up underneath a sheet of glass on an “upcycled” coffee table in SoHo?

Kendra and Jared (those are their names, if I didn't make that clear) first looked at a “pristine and lovely two-bedroom floor-through in a charming three-story brick townhouse” in Little Italy for $6,500. “But the stairs were a deal-breaker for Pacman.” 

DEAL-BREAKER.

I don’t even know what a “floor-through” is, but Kendra and Jared ended up foregoing one. Instead, they moved into a brand-new building called “EVBG” which stands for “East Village’s Greatest Building.” 

With its “boutique industrial aesthetic,” EVBG is meant to be a “nod to the storied rock club CBGB,” but actually sounds like something Donald Trump himself named on his Twitter feed (WE HAVE THE GREATEST BUILDINGS)! Ironically, the vast majority of East Village dive bars like CBGB, where I spent most weekends in high school, can’t afford their rent anymore because of Kendra, Jared, and EVGB.

But the best paragraph of this article by far is where Kendra brags that “as conservationists, they decorated almost exclusively with secondhand furniture.” And the large closets are “the biggest I’ve had in my life” with "enough storage space for craft materials she uses for her FEMINIST TABLEWARE LINE."

M'kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

So here we get to the point of this profile, which I think, was to compare Kendra’s life history of closet sizes and low-key promote her “feminist tableware line,” oddities, which aims to “elevate your meal time conversations with female anatomy, original art, and upcycled dinnerware.” I checked it out and these are plates and bowls with boobs and vaginas on them which, cool cool cool. I’m here for that. I’m totally going to get some of this and wear my $900 vulva scarf by Fendi to dinner.

The article wraps up by noting that “the building has more amenities than [Kendra and Jared] can use, including a 19,000 square-foot roof deck and a two-level gym.” Kendra “bought goggles, thinking I’d be all about the pool,” and she “intends to use the sauna on weekends” but always forgets. I guess she’s got titty-plates on the brain? Kendra and Jared do, however, somehow remember to “make use of the bocce court on the roof.”

For perspective, the last time we lived in Brooklyn, we made use of the fuse box in the basement of my aunt’s old rental in Prospect Heights to avoid getting electrocuted, and jury-rigged the shower with dental floss so that you didn’t have to choose between hot OR cold and could maybe sometimes get warm. 

We’d also sometimes call the landlady—Mrs. Daniels—when the radiator clanged in at top heat in mid-August. She’d answer, sometimes, in a thick Trinidadian accent, “BUT IT’S DA SUMMAH! DA HEAT NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ON!” And I would say yes, that’s the problem. Also mice. Also a drunk homeless guy wandering up to my front door late at night and teetering in my doorway. Also old Fudgecicle sticks my aunt left behind on the loft bed. We bought quarters, because we spent a lot of time in a laundromat, and also a tie-dyed sheet for a “door” between the bedroom and the living room which was actually just one big small room without the sheet.

So Kendra and Jared, I’m sorry to shame you for “living big,” as you call it, but honestly, you asked for it.