BUZZFEED: On a Sunday evening in July 1985, just hours after arriving in Paris from Los Angeles, Rock Hudson collapsed shortly after checking into the famed Ritz hotel. The 59-year-old actor was once one of Hollywood’s hottest stars throughout the 1950s and ’60s, seen as the embodiment of “the American man” — tall, dark, and handsome. A constant fixture on the big screen, he starred alongside leading actresses like Elizabeth Taylor in Giant — netting an Oscar nomination for the role — and Doris Day in a series of popular romantic comedies. By the mid-1980s, though, while still close […]
ZERO DARK THIRTY: A Q&A With Investigative Journalist & New Yorker Staff Writer Jane Mayer
BY JONATHAN VALANIA William S. Burroughs famously said “A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on.” Cold comfort for the likes of Hillary Clinton who was widely derided back in 1998 for claiming there was “a vast right wing conspiracy” leveraging its colossal wealth and powers of persuasion to bring down the Clintons and the liberal progressive agenda they had come to represent (if not quite embody). Dark Money, the latest must-read by acclaimed investigative journalist and New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer, reveals overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence that Clinton was in fact right. And then some. […]
Portrait Of The Angel Of Death As A Young Man
NEW YORK TIMES: Mr. Cruz, the most ardent death penalty advocate of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s clerks in the 1996 term, became known at the court for his signature writing style. Nearly two decades later, his colleagues recall how Mr. Cruz, who frequently spoke of how his mentor’s father had been killed by a carjacker, often dwelled on the lurid details of murders that other clerks tended to summarize before quickly moving to the legal merits of the case. “That, I think, was a special interest of his,” said Renée Lerner, then a clerk for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, […]
WORD: How The Tea Party Became The Troll Party
Artwork by CHAD WHITE EDITOR’S NOTE: Rick Wilson’s piece originally published on the Daily Beast on September 16th, but it remains the definitive analysis of the pathologies at the heart of the Trump phenomenon. Sadly, three months later, it continues to get truer every day. THE DAILY BEAST: The Troll Party’s central characteristic is an ever tightening spiral of self-reinforcing and self-referential purity tests that makes communicating with anyone beyond the febrile and furious a nearly impossible task. The people pushing for this transformation aren’t a majority yet, but when a virus infects the body politic, its minuscule size belies […]
NOTHING IS REAL, EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED: Howard Hunt & The JFK Assassination Conspiracy
Illustration by PRINT MAFIA The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt He was the ultimate keeper of secrets, lurking in the shadows of American history. He toppled banana republics, planned the Bay of Pigs invasion and led the Watergate break-in. Now he would reveal what he’d always kept hidden: who killed JFK BY ERIK HEDEGAARD/ROLLING STONE EDITOR’S NOTE: Ordinarily we would tease a few paragraphs from the story and then send you to RS’s web site, but for reasons unclear this article is no longer there. Hence we have run it here in its entirety. It originally ran in the […]
COMMENTARY: GOP’S Carnival Of Shame
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY In Houston recently Republican troglodytes voted down a proposed city ordinance that would have afforded protections against discrimination based on sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, familial status, marital status, military status, religion, disability, genetic information and pregnancy. The reason? They claimed the ordinance would have allowed Houston’s women’s bathrooms to be overrun by nefarious transgendered individuals who’d been born as men, and that said transgendered would use the toilet stalls as well as various gagging devices (or worse) — okay, I’m paraphrasing a bit here, but you get the picture — to deflower […]
COMMENTARY: Bushwhacking Benghazi
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY I just heard the Chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi state that in no way had the committee targeted Hillary Clinton intentionally or otherwise, “They’ve simply been determined to do their job and hold someone accountable for the senseless death of an American ambassador.” Folks, if you truly believe that, I’ve got a well traveled New York bridge that can be yours for mere pocket change. OF COURSE that’s their sole intent. And once they get Hillary’s noose properly sized they’re going to go directly into hearings concerning the blatant lies and flagrant […]
DEATH IN THE CLASSROOM: Phawker Interns Weigh In On Campus Shootings, Ben Carson, Self-Defense, Gun Control & Gun Madness
EDITOR’S NOTE: At one point in Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic, aging playboy oceanographer Steve Zissou, aka Bill Murray, asks aloud, “Do the interns get Glocks?” Not at Phawker, Steve. But they do get the microphone and a chance to voice their opinion from time to time — this being one of them. In the wake of the unspeakable slaughter of nine college students in Roseburg 12 days ago, and presidential candidate Ben Carson’s remark afterwards that the students should have rushed the gunman (“I wouldn’t have just stood there,” he said.), I asked the interns — Temple students one […]
COMMENTARY: Sound & Fury Signifying Nothing
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY The latest American butchery in Afghanistan (a hospital for Christ’s sake?!) is but a replay of yesterday and the day before and the decade and a half before that. And, for all the blood and treasure expended, we’ve accomplished little or nothing unless you’ve become sufficiently jaded to accept the enriching of every Afghan politician, tribal leader, and a bevy of enterprising plain old Afghan citizens beyond their wildest dreams as a victory for the benevolence of good old-fashioned American capitalism. This time we “accidentally” bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital killing and maiming dozens including patients and staff. Never mind […]
FACT: When The Pope Met Kim Davis Jesus Wept
Artwork via JEREMYBINNS.COM BY WARREN LIPKA As you may have heard, the pope met in secret with Kim Davis some time before he came to Philly. Jesus H. Christ! That’s like the pope meeting with the bus driver that told Rosa Parks to stand up or get off the bus. What’s next, the pope met with George Zimmerman? We are not but three days out from all the peace, love and understanding of #popeadelphia and now I’m picturing Kim Davis, red-faced, crying her eyes out, mouth open fish-like, holding hands with the pope. Jesus Chysler! I just threw up in […]
COMMENTARY: The Pro-Life Jihad On Planned Parenthood Is Actually A Racist War On The Poor
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY So, the phony, gutless, misogynist Congressional Republicans want to defund Planned Parenthood. Well, isn’t that just swell. The bottom feeders haven’t the cojones — let alone the common decency — to take on a monstrously bloated, unconscionably inept, disgustingly wastrel Pentagon, but yet they can somehow muster the cowardice to shove critically important family planning services, life-saving cervical and breast cancer screenings, vital Pap and HPV testing, as well as a host of other extremely worthwhile women’s reproductive health and family planning educational services up the crotch of America’s opposite sex. Congratulations, you cretinous, pandering […]
COMMENTARY: No Justice No Peace
Artwork by SWOBODA BY WILLIAM C. HENRY With apologies to Woody Guthrie and especially all Palestinians: This land ain’t your land, this land is my land From the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea waters From the Lebanon cedars to the Sinai sand dunes This land was made for me not you Could easily be the first stanza of Israel’s national anthem, right? Certainly the words reflect the aspirations and sentiments of Israelis over the last 70 years, no? All right, let me make something perfectly clear up front: I don’t hate Zionists per se — at least not in a […]
COMMENTARY: The Mayor Of Asshole City
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY On the contrary, Donny Boy, it’s not the undocumented who “have to go,” it’s moronic, silver-spooned, misogynistic, uber-pandering, racist, megalomaniacs such as yourself. And, coincidentally, given the fact that some 25% of the Republican “base” (the definitive term? you betcha) appear to be in lock-step with your imbecilicly simplistic — not to mention, ungodly immoral — solution to such an intractably complex problem as out-of-control illegal immigration, I’m wondering if you could have possibly, maybe inadvertently, misidentified the “who” it is that really “have to go”? Just speculating. “I’ll deport them all. They have to go. Period.” Has a certain “ring” to it, doesn’t it, Don? […]