BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Dear Kyle Smith: I just finished reading your recent mocking (or was it simply racist) article detailing the President’s and your, shall we say, “competing” concepts of American “exceptionalism.” Anyway, Kyle, let’s get going and see what we can do about “leveling the playing field” a bit by way of a little mockery from the “port” side of America’s great racialism divide, if you get my drift. For openers, I feel compelled to inform you that in addition to reading your article, I also boned up on your schooling, and right off the bat I’m very concerned […]
COMMENTARY: Bibi’s Got A Boehner
Illustration by DONKEY HOTEY BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Having accepted “Rabbi” John Boehner’s invitation, Benjamin Netanyahu (the Israeli “state’s” senior Representative in the U.S. House of Representatives, né Prime Minister of Israel) has decided to stand by his scheduled address to the huddled faithful on March 3rd. So, aside from the fact that said speech is opposed by many top-level Israelis both here and in Israel as well as by the President of the United States, what’s really wrong with his giving it? Allow me to count the ways: 1) John Boehner isn’t tasked with initiating or carrying out the foreign policy of the United States, the President is; 2) it […]
INCOMING: Let The Wild Rumpus Begin!
CNN: Philadelphia will host the Democratic National Convention in July 2016, a source with knowledge of the selection process tells CNN. The Democratic National Committee confirmed Philadelphia’s selection Thursday morning, shortly after the news broke, using a Facebook video of chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz pulling a cheesesteak out of a refrigerator to announce the decision. New York and Columbus, Ohio, were the two other cities vying for the right to host the Democratic convention. The event is scheduled for the week of July 25, 2016. Democrats’ decision to nominate the party’s presidential nominee in Philadelphia is a major win for […]
COMMENTARY: Class War Is Over If You Want It
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY “If there’s a way for the super-rich to screw the middle and lower classes, they will find it.” So sayeth Uncle Bill Henry. Yes, but WHY do they do it, Uncle Bill? Well, according to this no doubt intellectually overrated but nonetheless venerated old fart, they do it because they can, and perhaps to a greater extent, because they can’t help it. You see, it’s extremely difficult — if not downright impossible — to have amassed extraordinary wealth in these or any other times without having inherited the sociopathy and cupidity genes (or, of course, without […]
SMUS: The Biggest Balls Of Them All!
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY I’m definitely siding with New England on this one if for no other reason than the very idea of “deflategate” is utterly stupid and outlandishly hypocritical on its face. In fact, should it turn out that the Patriots were in fact complicit, I’d support a celebratory toast to them with cups of heavily spiked Orange Pekoe! Why? Because EVERY team in the NFL CHEATS, and they do it in EVERY game they play, and contrary to this preposterous “deflategate” bullshit, that kind of CHEATING actually HAS a bearing on the outcome of games! Huh?, you […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Cracks In The Wailing Wall
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Two weeks ago, the U.N. Security Council voted down a Palestinian resolution granting it statehood status. Somewhat remarkably, the resolution was only one vote short of the nine required for passage. Guess who voted against it? “We voted against this resolution not because we are comfortable with the status quo,” said UN Ambassador Samantha Power. “We voted against it because … peace must come from hard compromises that occur at the negotiating table.” And thus did a dehumanized Palestinian mission once again take it up the ass from us and the rest of our ilk at the United Nations. […]
REWIND 2014: The Year In Questions And Answers
If armies run on their stomachs, blogs run on their big fucking mouths. We’re no exception. But we’d like to think that, on a good day, we put all that hot air to good use when interrogating visiting dignitaries in advance of their triumphant arrival into the City Of Brotherly Love. We’ve never pretended to have all the answers but we do know all the right questions. And we’ve never settled for easy answers to hard questions. Sometimes feelings get hurt and sometimes new connections are made. Sometimes painful truths emerge and sometimes we actually learn something. And sometimes we […]
SMUS: A Confederacy Of Thieves And Whores
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY You pretty much know that morality, ethics, and even the faintest of hopes for universal fairness in this country are on ventilators when one of our most “respected” newspapers becomes willingly complicit in (a) the final auction gavel on the American electoral system, and (b) facilitating a national financial crisis so cataclysmic as to make the last one look like a rent check overdraft. How interesting it is that the Boston Globe should feel that getting an omnibus spending bill passed — ANY kind of omnibus spending bill — is worth caving in to the treacherous, money-grubbing interests of America’s premier purveyors of […]
GUNS N’ ROSES: Viva La Normalización!
Artwork by SHEPARD FAIREY NEW YORK TIMES: Alan Gross was the obstacle that would not be moved — the American contractor whose imprisonment in Cuba kept relations between the United States and Cuba locked in place, as paralyzed as a seized transmission. Now, in both Washington and Havana, the obstacle has been removed as the rusty gears of Cold War diplomacy have begun to move. Mr. Gross’s release on Wednesday, in conjunction with the release of three convicted Cuban spies held in the United States, amounts to a collective break from more than 50 years of distrust, anger and inertia. […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: The Benjamin
Artwork by WORKBYKNIGHT BY WILLIAM C. HENRY On November 18th, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the complete destruction of the home of the Palestinian man who on October 22nd had driven a car into an Israeli crowd resulting in two people dead and several injured. None of the man’s surviving family members who occupied the house were in any way suspected of involvement in the attack. Who knows, maybe Elohim privately beseeched the “Minister” to add a bit of crushed brick and mortar now and then to offset all the calf and lamb fat. Too profane for your palate? Somehow I doubt the surviving family […]
BECAUSE REALITY HAS A LIBERAL BIAS: Q&A W/ Comedian & ex-Totally Biased Host W. Kamau Bell
Illustration by GARY TAXALI© BY JONATHAN VALANIA Comedian W. Kamau Bell has been fighting the good fight in the stand-up comedy trenches of San Francisco since the phat pants ’90s. It was there that Chris Rock discovered him and eventually brokered a deal with FX for Bell to have his own TV show. In 2012, Totally Biased, a much-buzzed-about late night sketch comedy show starring Bell and produced by Rock, debuted to strong reviews and a big enough viewership to justify a second season until its ill-advised migration from FX to FXX, subsequent plummet in audience share and ensuing cancellation […]
SMUS: And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
Artwork by POASTERCHILD BY WILLIAM C. HENRY The pundits all crowed that the Republicans won a sweeping victory in the just-passed mid-term election, but in fact the REAL winners on November 4th were, in no particular order: self-defeating no-nothingness, sociopathic obstructionism, irrational fear of the other, bald-faced misogyny, seething homophobia and above all else, abject racism towards the nation’s first black President and First Lady. Yep, that’s what won out on November 4th. I’d congratulate the American Kakistocratic party (you can call them Republicans if you like) if there was even the teeniest of reasons for doing so, but, uh, well, you get the […]