Back Issues

Considering the amount of writing I now do each day and week, I won't lie and say that I'm going to be cranking out material around here the way I used to anytime soon. I just can't; there aren't enough hours in the day. That said, no, I'm not going to let this site die a "dignified" death simply because it's still my home even if it's been vacant recently. When the mood strikes me and I feel like I have to write something personal, this is where it's going to go -- and I promise you that will absolutely happen at some point.

While I can't guarantee that I'll have the space in my incredibly tight schedule to do it each and every time, I do plan to at least try from here on out to link anything I write at Banter over here in the name of A) keeping DXM on at least some kind of life-support, and B) taking readers who still visit this site, and shockingly there are still quite a few of you, directly to my nonsensical ramblings.

Over the past couple of weeks I've written several columns at Banter that may as well have been DXM material, particularly some of the longer-form pieces, and this makes me pretty happy.

Here are the links:

Is It Islamophobia or Just Islam?/11.1.13

Quote of the Day: Fuck You, Salon/10.30.13

The Trayvon-Zimmerman Costume Controversy: Is the Reaction Fair?/10.30.13

Glenn Greenwald and the New York Times Have at Each Other (and the Result Is Pretty Interesting)/10.29.13

None of Us Will Ever Be as Cool As Lou Reed/10.28.13

Salon Slams Russell Brand and Proves Why the Far-Left Is a Joke/10.25.13

The Mother of All Anti-NSA Ads Is Watching You/10.23.13

The Onion Draws Outrage Again, Makes Its Point Flawlessly/10.23.13

Kanye West's Big "Fuck You" To Redneck America/10.22.13

It's Just Another School Shooting/10.21.13

Is It Wrong To Tell Women To Drink Responsibly To Protect Themselves?/10.21.13

I'll try to stay on top of it, kids. It ain't easy these days.

Listening Post

The Daily Banter: Listening Post: Chvrches

Yeah, it's cheap, but at least there will be something here so the whole damn site doesn't go dark.

Pilot Error

Today's piece over at the Daily Banter takes a look at KTVU's massive screw-up and the station's reaction to it. Bottom line: It's not doing enough to make amends to the audience.

Here's the opening shot:

"As much as I want to let this story go, I can't. I just can't. I still find myself shaking my head on occasion at the sheer impossible absurdity of it, suddenly stopping whatever it is I'm doing to say out loud to nobody, "How in the hell could they have let that happen?" I sometimes wonder if I'm actually more incensed than KTVU News Director Lee Rosenthal is that his news department somehow -- for reasons no one with a brain let alone a working knowledge of a broadcast newsroom will ever fully comprehend -- allowed four obviously phony, racially insulting Asian pun names to go out over the air last Friday. Word has it Rosenthal's a good guy, but dear God, this mistake is so painfully embarrassing -- it's so far beyond anything in recent memory in terms of the systemic breakdown it exposed -- that I'm not sure he shouldn't do the honorable thing and throw himself on a nearby sword just as a matter of principle. I'm the most cynical guy in the world when it comes to an opinion of local news. With a few notable exceptions, I think it's crap, an often ineptly executed long con run by media company hustlers desperate for ratings dollars and shilled by shitty consultants who get paid a fortune to make every station in America look exactly alike. I long ago gave up expecting local news to be smart or to create anything resembling journalism. But this -- this gargantuan fuck-up confounds even my lowly expectations."

Read the Rest Here

It should be noted that someone made a really good point after the column, in the comment section, that my opinion doesn't seem to take into account cutbacks that have basically stripped most local newsrooms clean of personnel. In other words, yes, it's entirely possible that rather than going through a lot of hands and being subjected to the kinds of checks and balances an item would've been just a few short years ago, a story truly can be put on air without any real oversight these days. I've worked in a local newsroom since the 2008 crash, what led media companies to cut back on staffing for practical purposes and eventually gave them an excuse to keep cutting just to be bottom-line-hungry assholes. I know it's rough out there; it's a far cry from they way things were when I started my own local news career 22 years ago. But KTVU is still almost a top-five market station owned by Cox Media, so I have to imagine it's got at least a modicum of staffing. If it turns out, however, that the Asiana pilots' names screw-up really is due to personnel having been stripped to the bone -- with whoever's left now doing the jobs of the people eliminated and focused mainly on just getting the damn show on the air -- then I hope this is a lesson to those media companies pursuing profits above all else. It won't be a lesson, because most really don't give a crap, but a man can dream.

Morning Sickness

For the next couple of days I'm going to be knee-deep in finishing up a production project I'm working on so I'll be somewhat scarce around here. With that in mind, I've taken at least a few things I was going to likely write about today and put them into the Morning Banter segment over at the Daily Banter.

I might have a little something up later, depending on how far along I am with the work I need to do.

Have a good day, kids.

The Daily Banter: The Monday Morning Banter/7.15.13

The Dog of War

Yesterday, I promised that I was going to be following up last week's quick post on the police arrest and shooting in Hawthorne, California that ended with a dog being killed with something a little more thoughtful. Well, that piece is now up over at the Daily Banter. This whole thing has been a great debate to have and I can certainly understand where everyone's passions are coming from with regard to a case of a dog being shot by the cops. But do me a favor and try to keep an open mind when reading this piece and my take on the shooting. Suffice it to say, I've been mulling the objections and the points made against my arguments over in my head throughout the past week and while I still think the police were justified, I've definitely softened my language and a few of my more absolutist statements a little.

Anyway, here's the opening:

"The coolest job I ever had I got at the very young age of 14. It was the coolest job any 14-year-old should be allowed to have, the coolest job anybody should be allowed to have, period. When I was 14, a friend of my family’s got me part-time summer work at the Broward County police academy, as an actor in its live-action police training exercises. Basically, it went like this: the instructors would set up a scenario aimed at recreating a real-life situation a cop might encounter in his or her daily routine, from something as simple as a suspicious or stolen vehicle stop to something as complex as a hostage standoff; they’d hand me a modified gun loaded with blanks which I’d slip into my waistband; then they’d basically give me one instruction — if the recruit didn’t bother to check me out, taking it for granted that I was just a kid, draw and kill that recruit the first chance I got."

Read the Rest Here

Incensed of Humor

Yesterday's column over at the Daily Banter took a look at a piece in Salon from last week that targeted Patton Oswalt. The problem, according to the author, is that Patton hasn't used his considerable forum and eloquent voice to speak out against the very serious problem of rape and "rape culture."

Here's an excerpt, and you may recognize some of it from a quickie post here on Saturday:

"Patton Oswalt didn’t do a damn thing wrong. He’s a comic. He believes in being funny. He believes in doing whatever’s necessary to ensure that he and other comics like him — male and female — continue to have the freedom to take chances when it comes to being funny, because humor is so subjective and, one more time, no one has the right to tell somebody else — or to dictate as the voice of an entire culture and for the alleged benefit of society as a whole — what is or isn’t funny, what can and can’t be poked fun at as long as there’s no genuine malice intended. Patton’s history as a comic is one of brilliance, insight, and, yes, a lack of malice toward anyone; what Molly Knefel did to him was cheap and unfair and the only person it should make look bad is her. Maybe her intentions were pure, but as she so piously lectures Patton on, intentions mean shit."

Read the Rest Here

Since being posted yesterday morning, the piece I wrote has picked up quite a bit of steam, mostly due to Patton Oswalt thanking me for it via Twitter. That of course brought out a lot of very angry women and men who took me to task for what they believe is my insulting and condescending tone and, well, my "just not getting it." Once something takes off, you tend to go back and reread it and try to see it through someone else's eyes, particularly the eyes of those having a problem with it. I did that. And I stand by what I wrote and the overall point I was trying to make.

That said, there is something in the column that I want to apologize for. While I may think that what comedian and writer Molly Knefel said was wrong in the sense that she was blaming Patton Oswalt for something he didn't do and was under no obligation to do -- and I'm sorry, but the "if you're not part of the solution" argument is just ridiculous since you could make that claim pertain to anything -- it was wrong of me to refer to her as a "small-time" and "quasi-professional" comic. It truly did sound petty, condescending and insulting and that wasn't my conscious intention. I don't think Molly's heart was in the wrong place and I believe she was trying to be respectful to Patton even if her overall goal of dragging him into a fight that she personally deemed should be his was more than a little questionable. I'm sorry if I personally belittled Molly Knefel; I shouldn't have.

Again, it's a damn shame that I have to say this since it shouldn't need to be said, but I'm pro-women and stand against rape unequivocally -- no hedging, no excuses, no "legitimate or illegitimate," none of it. Rape is a despicable wrong, full stop. There are rotten men working in our government right now trying to either chip away at women's rights or swing a wrecking ball at them, and I suppose that's why, in my view anyway, there are far bigger and more important battles to fight on the subject of women's sexual sovereignty and authority than raising hell over a bad joke made by a comedian or, certainly, the lack of a soapbox stand by a comic who's proven time and time again that he's a good guy and someone who espouses liberal politics in the best possible sense of the term. No, by saying this I'm not telling you what you can and can't get angry over or be offended by; I'm offering up an opinion, the same way you are, which has as much value -- or lack thereof -- as all those other opinions that people are free to shout into the ether.

The issue I've always had when it comes to call-out culture and the outrage "machine" that ramps up whenever someone finds himself or herself offended by something these days has been well-documented: Thanks to social media, indignation can now snowball until it becomes an avalanche, the resulting cacophony vastly disproportional to the original offense. Our furious quest for satisfaction can sometimes have unintended consequences and can take a toll far greater than any sane person should be hoping for. That's the danger of reacting to everything with the same level of outrage. And the way that a column that may have been written with good intentions and meant merely to start a conversation can spiral downward into a guy who didn't hurt anybody being accused of making jokes he never made and generally suppressing women through, at best, silence which a select group interprets as a tacit admission of guilt and, at worst, public displays of misogyny.

The overall fight may be a noble and necessary one, but Patton Oswalt was the wrong person to pick it with.

The Fascism and the Furious

Today's column over at the Daily Banter focuses on Ron Paul.

That's really all that needs to be said.

Here's an excerpt:

"Thankfully, Ron Paul has zero impact on the actual U.S. lawmaking process these days given that he left Congress in a giant poof of indignation and self-pity last November, leaving us all with one final 48-minute-long rant about fascism, fiat money, the erosion of our civil liberties, 'psychopathic authoritarians,' and, of course, liberty! But despite his official departure from the hallowed halls of the institution he claimed to despise, it should have been abundantly clear that he wasn’t simply going to stroll off into the sunset to dodder away his twilight years ranting at telephone poles about the dangers of functional government. Freed from the shackles of decorum, you just knew he was going to rip the gloves off and begin spouting whatever kind of insane horseshit popped into his brain in whichever direction he could. That’s the attitude that led to his first post-office op-ed, subtly titled 'You’re Not Free If You Can’t Secede from an Oppressive Government.' And that’s the attitude that no doubt led to the diatribe he threw together for his friend Lew Rockwell’s website, a piece published yesterday called 'Liberty Was Also Attacked in Boston.' (LIBERTY!)"

Read the Rest Here

By the way, every time I think of Ron Paul -- this comes to mind:

Your Argument Is Invalid

Today's Daily Banter column is all about Alex Jones and the fucking idiots who follow him like he's the pied piper of the clinically insane and the galactically stupid.

Here's a small excerpt:

"So what's the result of all this groundless conjecture, this paranoid insanity passed off as information that truly deserves to be taken seriously? The world of the conspiracy theorist, the place where ignorance and arrogance meet, since there's no bigger idiot than a guy who believes that the Boston Marathon bombing never happened, and that guy ironically always thinks he's the smartest person in the room -- what happens when that begins bleeding into the real world? Well, for some, it truly does become tough to tell what's real and what isn't anymore. It's not the government, with its supposed secret machinations and subservience to the Illuminati or whatever-the-hell, that winds up clouding reality and leaving those who only skim the news trying to figure out what's up and what's down; it's the sensational, irrational bullshit dispensed by Alex Jones and his mentally unhinged shock-troops.

And good luck arguing with them. Trying to make someone see reason who considers it a point of pride that he's unwilling to believe anything his eyes see and his ears hear is like trying to explain how the Large Hadron Collider works to a four-year-old. If you honestly think that chem trails are for real and that 9/11 was in inside job, there's just no hope for you. Debunking your views one-by-one would be useless, since the beauty of a conspiracy theory is that it's a self-reinforcing delusion. Best to just laugh at you or call you a fucking idiot to your face and be done with it."

Read the Rest Here

We're Cursed

As has been the usual lately, this was posted last night but I'm linking it here today. The new piece for Banter takes a look at A.J. Clemente -- the kid who swore his way to fame and fortune.

Here's the opening shot:

"I truly hate who we are these days.

By now there’s a pretty good chance you know A.J. Clemente so well that it feels like he’d get an invitation to your next family reunion. Over the past few days, the guy has been everywhere — from your e-mail inbox, to your 'suggested videos' column on YouTube, to every late-night and morning show on network and cable television — all because he did something stupid in front of a camera and consequently became our country’s latest instant pop culture fascination."

Read the Rest Here

True Believers

There seems to be a pattern developing and I guess it's a good one when you consider that I can get twice the promotion by posting a pair of links instead of just one.

Last night I published a new column over at the Daily Banter and now I'm pushing it here. Today's piece once again has to do with religion, and a Philadelphia couple accused of praying over their sick child instead of getting him medical attention. You can guess what happened.

I'm not going to excerpt anything from it, just have a look for yourself. Suffice to say there's a twist to the story that will likely infuriate you, and no, it's not that this couple very likely killed their 8-month-old baby -- it's that they never should've been put in a position where they could.

Read the Story Here

The Immigrant Wrong

Today's column for the Daily Banter takes a look at the debate over the use of the term "illegal immigrant."

Here's the opening shot:

"Unfortunately, you can probably set your watches and begin the countdown to the cries of 'white privilege' showing up in the comment section or getting aimed at me on Twitter, but here goes nothing: There isn’t a thing wrong grammatically or journalistically with the term 'illegal immigrant.' Sure, I understand that some very well-meaning people find “illegal immigrant” personally offensive and feel that it shouldn’t be used by any reputable media outlet, but the issue they have with the phrase is, yes, personal and is in no way related to whether it holds up as proper English, no matter how much anyone would like to make you — or him- or herself — believe otherwise."

Read the Rest Here

Me of Little Faith

Today's column over at the Daily Banter once again has to do with religion, namely it seeks to understand why some turn to God in times of great tragedy while others, myself included, see tragedy as more reason than ever not to have turn to God.

Here's the opening:

"On the morning of September 11th, 2001, as the unimaginably horrific sight of bodies raining down from the upper floors of the World Trade Center was being beamed out across the country and around the world, my grandmother sat on the couch in my parents’ living room taking it all in. She was an elderly woman and a devout old-school Catholic, so with her eyes fixed on the televised images of the agonizing carnage unfolding in New York City, she reacted the only way she knew how. She swallowed back a despairing gasp, brought her hand up to nearly cover her mouth, and said, 'God love ‘em.'

I remember my reaction like it was yesterday."

Read the Rest Here

Quote of the Day

"When Martin Luther King Jr. called on the nation to 'live up to the meaning of its creed,' he heard an echo from a thousand pulpits. Treating black folks decently was consistent with what Christians had been taught. Dr. King was pushing against an open door. Priests and pastors marched for civil rights. Others preached for civil rights. But if the gay rights agenda is imposed, we could have priests and pastors preaching not acceptance but principled rejection. Prelates could be declaring from pulpits everywhere that the triumph of gay rights is a defeat for God’s Country, and the new laws are immoral and need neither be respected nor obeyed."

-- Pat Buchanan, warning of possible civil disobedience by the religious and religious leaders if gay marriage becomes legal across the United States

This is exactly what I was talking about in the Daily Banter column on religion that I wrote over the weekend. A person's supposed right to adhere to the tenets of his or her faith -- which, if that person is a voter, often winds up being inflicted upon the rest of us -- is in no way equal to the right of living, breathing human beings to be treated the same. Or at least it shouldn't be equal. I don't care whether you feel discriminated against because the law is siding with what gay men and women want over what your imaginary friend wants, but reality should win in any case where it collides with faith.

Also, how much do you love Pat Buchanan pretending to give a shit about black people?

Ripped Apart

Today's Daily Banter column wonders whether we'll ever be able to truly come together as a nation again. Because while there are plenty of people who are trying to remember what the tragedy in Boston is really all about, there are so many others for whom this is yet another excuse for hucksterism, partisan hackery, and conspiratorial lunacy.

Here's the opening shot:

"I always feared this day because I always feared being proven right. A couple of times since the election of Barack Obama and the consequent collective freak-out of the American Right — a freak-out so mind-boggling and profound that the extent and potency of its shockwaves continue to surprise, despite how used to it we should be by now — I’ve openly wondered how our nation might react if we were hit with another terrorist attack."

Read the Rest Here

Also, very worth mentioning here is Cesca's column at Banter today, on the despicable ridiculousness of Alex Jones, who of course hijacked and exploited this horrific event, using it as an excuse to spew his special brand of horseshit all over his delusional acolytes. One of those acolytes, Dan Bidondi, turned yesterday's Deval Patrick press conference into a circus by shrieking about "false flag" terrorism and how our civil liberties are being threatened, or something, and you'll be interested to know that he's also responded to Cesca's piece in the comments section. The results are -- entertaining.

The Cuban Visit Crisis

Tonight's Daily Banter column takes a look at Jay-Z and Beyoncé's trip to Cuba and the completely predictable reaction to it by those in Washington who represent the hardline anti-Castro Cuban exile community in my hometown of Miami.

The whole thing is a lesson in counterproductive insanity -- as usual.

Here's the opening shot:

"Back in 1997, after a few years out west working for KCBS, I was approached by NBC-owned WTVJ in Miami about the possibility of returning to my hometown. During negotiations with the station over a producer position, I went into pretty good detail about my reservations when it came to going back to Miami. Granted, the job I had at the time was anything but fulfilling — in truth, working at KCBS was like a daily gangbang of sociopathic debasement and stupidity — but there were elements of growing up in South Florida that I still couldn’t get out of my head and which I wasn’t sure I wanted to willingly return to. And so I brought some of these concerns up to my potential new bosses at WTVJ — and I didn’t hold back, certainly not about what I felt was one inescapable fact about life in Miami that I simply didn’t want to have to deal with at any point in my life again.

'This is gonna sound crappy, I know, but I’ve really enjoyed not hearing the name Fidel Castro even once over the past couple of years,' I said, bluntly putting it out there."

Read the Rest Here

Mama Don't Let Your Cowboys Grow Up To Be Babies

For today's Daily Banter column I actually sat through every second of Brad Paisley's hilariously self-pitying new song, Accidental Racist.

Here's the beginning of what I came up with in response to it:

"Let’s be honest: Country songs aren’t exactly written with repeated playings at Mensa meetings in mind. With a few very notable exceptions, country music 'artists' tend to eschew analogy and subtext in favor of just coming out and saying whatever the hell it is they’re trying to get across. When the guy who won this year’s Academy of Country Music Award for Entertainer of the Year sings 'Rain Is a Good Thing,' he’s not talking about a metaphoric rain that will wash away his pain so that a bright new day can dawn; he’s talking about rain. Rain that makes corn, which makes whiskey, which makes his baby feel frisky. And that’s, you know, a good thing. There’s not much depth to country music, and when a Hail Mary pass at profundity is attempted, it usually winds up sounding like the kind of thing you’d imagine coming from a frat boy who’s had too much to drink and is suddenly unleashing some of the sad poetry he secretly writes on you at 3am.

Which brings us to the new song by Brad Paisley. It’s called Accidental Racist and it’s about — get ready for the surprising wordplay — accidentally being viewed as a racist."

Read the Rest Here

Holy War

Today's Daily Banter column is a bit of a monster. It's pegged off of an e-mail exchange between Sam Harris and Glenn Greenwald.

Here's the opening shot:

"I'm a fan of Sam Harris. A very big fan, in fact, despite not agreeing with him across the board. His 2004 book, 'The End of Faith,' is just about the seminal guide to refuting faith-based religion through bulletproof fact and near-flawless argumentation. If you're an atheist, it's basically, well, your Bible. Harris prides himself on his intellect and on an absolute reliance on reason, which means that he's a formidable foe to debate simply because his logic is generally made of concrete and titanium. I admit that while Harris himself dislikes having to constantly defend himself against the same ridiculous attacks on his beliefs over and over again -- typically from those who either misunderstand statements he's made perfectly clear or who feel like they need to purposely twist his arguments to serve their own ends -- I enjoy watching him rip those who go up against him to shreds. He does it with such confidence but, provided the adversary in question isn't just being an asshole, with such respect that it makes you glad people like him exist to act as intellectual super heroes when our culture needs them.

One of the more ludicrous accusations that's been leveled at Sam Harris throughout the years has to do with his supposed tendency toward 'Islamophobia.' As with his contemporaries in the "new atheist" movement, people like Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, Harris believes that radical Islam represents an especially insidious and dangerous form of faith simply because it often manifests itself in physical violence aimed at both non-believers and believers alike. It may be politically incorrect to say that Islam is the most pervasive and immediate religious threat our world is facing at this moment in its history, but it's not necessarily factually incorrect."

Read the Rest Here

All or Nothing

Today's Daily Banter column takes a look at last night's debut of All In With Chris Hayes on MSNBC.

Here's the opening shot:

"As a guy who’s been married and divorced three times I obviously have no problem admitting when I’m wrong. And I was certainly wrong about what Chris Hayes’s new MSNBC show, All In, would look like. When I wrote about the audacious, revealing choice MS was making by casting Hayes as the new bedrock of its prime-time a couple of weeks ago, I figured that the network was going to, at the very least, tinker with the Chris Hayes morning show format so that while Hayes’s personal depth and wonkishness would travel to weeknights, 8PM, the profoundly cerebral nature of the program as a whole would stay safely behind on the weekends.

Well, MSNBC apparently has much bigger balls than I thought."

Read the Rest Here

This Magic Affair

I posted this yesterday as a Sunday afternoon piece but I may as well link it here. The new Daily Banter column from yours truly details my fanboy love for My Chemical Romance, and spells out why I'm going to miss them.

Here's the opening shot:

"I’m way past the point in my life where the break-up of any band should provoke much of a reaction from me. I’ve got day-to-day concerns right now that are a hell of a lot more pressing than whether a bunch of people whose music I happen to like will continue making music that I happen to like. And yet My Chemical Romance were never just another band for me. Maybe it’s fitting that I feel the way I do about their recent break-up given that I was always willing to admit to one of my favorite things about them as a band: they made me feel like a kid again."

Read the Rest Here

The Weeping Angels

Today's Daily Banter column looks at the collective freak-out the Christian right is having over gay marriage and how evangelicals and the like now want us to believe that they're the persecuted ones.

Here's the opening shot:

"It’s always entertaining to watch the right, particularly the Christian right, whine about victimization. As Steve Benen over at the Maddowblog says today, no one’s raised self-pity to a melodramatic art form the way America’s conservative Christians have, regardless of their particular political or denominational bent. To hear Pat Robertson, or William Donohue of the Catholic League, or Bill O’Reilly, or many, many others tell it, you’d think Christians were still being thrown to lions, maybe along the Capitol Mall, and a date with the cross awaited anybody who dared to slap a Jesus fish on the back of his car. If the Sodom-and-Gomorrah-esque anti-God dystopia Christians complain exists in American society really did exist, Tim Tebow would’ve been burned alive years ago rather than be allowed to become a guy who gets paid an obscene amount of money to be a shitty quarterback."

Read the Rest Here