Dr. Michael Shermer

Michael Shermer’s Immoral Arc

Of all the people I"€™ve tussled with in my professional life, Dr. Michael Shermer, bestselling author and professional "€œskeptic,"€ draws the least amount of sympathy from me. I don"€™t know what makes me so raw when it comes to Sherm. Maybe it's that I just don"€™t think he's bright ...

The “€œMonroe Doctrine”€ to Outlaw Hate Speech

Professor Monroe Freedman of Hofstra University died last week, and the irony is, I wouldn"€™t have known about it had I not been scouring Google in an attempt to kill a rapidly-spreading phony Internet meme that indirectly pertained to his work. Freedman was a well-known figure, and an ...

Holocaust Memorial, Berlin

Fear of a Gray Planet

Seminal historian Professor Raul Hilberg chose a Maya Angelou PBS tai chi summit about rape and evil to make a shocking claim about Hitler. Do you know how giddy I was to write that? I was giddy because I know I"€™m the first person in the history of the world to string those words together as ...

Karin Friedemann

Let Us Now Praise Phony Flags

Outside the courthouse where the trial of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is slowly getting under way, one woman stands a lonely vigil. Her name is Karin Friedemann, and she's Tsarnaev's number one fan. Her devotion to the young man she calls "€œJahar, the kid"€ led to a well ...

Justifying My Existence

It is the tragic reality of my being that I"€™m forced to justify myself every time someone learns what I did in the past and what I"€™ve been thrust back into doing in the present. When I"€™m fortunate enough to be in a room with people who have no idea who I am, if I"€™m asked what I do ...

Dean Obeidallah and the Vaguely Latino Plague

¡Ay Chihuahua! According to the Daily Beast's resident Islamic apologist, it's not Muslims who are to blame for terror attacks on U.S. soil ... it's those damned Latinos! And to think: I hired my gardeners without an FBI background check (that's a joke, people, okay? In reality, I made them ...

“€¨So Moses and Mohammed Walk Into an Open Mic …

"€œI love Anne Frank humor as much as the next guy"€ is a line I could never get away with. Fortunately, I"€™m not the one who said it. The quote is courtesy of Jill Soloway, one of the hottest names in TV right now. Soloway is the creator and producer of the Amazon hit Transparent, a new ...

Alfred Hitchcock

Sublime Recapitulation: Alfred Hitchcock’s “€œNew”€ Holocaust Film

But of our work, the work of our order and in particular the work of this monastery, a part"€”indeed, the substance"€”is study, and the preservation of knowledge. Preservation of, I say, not search for, because the property of knowledge, as a divine thing, is that it is complete and has been ...

Hate Speech Derby: Mohammed vs. Auschwitz

In June 1949, LIFE magazine ran a piece about the forced confession of Nazi propagandist Hans Fritzsche at the hands of Soviet interrogators. Written by anti-Nazi author Konrad Heiden, "€œWhy They Confess"€ compared Fritzsche's treatment by his Soviet captors to his treatment by the Western ...