Journalist – Historian – Speaker
Ever since “political correctness” jumped into mainstream public discourse as first a threat against higher education, then against free speech everywhere, and – with Trump’s campaign – a threat against the very security of our nation, I’ve been making one argument: Power matters. Mostly, it’s not a problem when marginalized people ask for others to …
Donald Trump is an erratic man with poor impulse control, a temperament that belong nowhere near the White House, and self-centered to a degree unusual even among politicians. He lies routinely. But does he lie pathologically? Are his lies related to a mental health condition which makes it difficult for him to tell the truth? …
In my second piece for Playboy (safe-for-work but might mention the existence of sex in the click throughs), I wrote about the details of Clinton’s disability policy. I wrote: When Donald Trump took to the stage in South Carolina last November and made fun of a disabled New York Times reporter, he won my vote…for Hillary …
Superhero (and related) comics are packed full of disability narratives, both good and bad, whether it’s the analogy between mutation and disability within the X-Men (not Professor X, but mutation as disability) or characters who have “real” disabilities of various sorts, though they often deal with them in high-tech ways. I wrote about Daredevil and …
Content Notes: Abuse of an Autistic Individual On Monday, a police officer shot Charles Kinsey, a black therapist who was trying to help his client – a young Latino man named Arnaldo Rios – not get shot. Rios had walked away from his group home and someone called 911, claiming that a man was suicidal …
I have a new piece up at CNN on the shooting of Charles Kinsey, protected a Latino autistic man named Arnaldo Rios [Edit: See below for correction information] and the intersections of racism, ableism, and the #CultOfCompliance. Kinsey later told reporters, “I was really more worried about him than myself. I was thinking as long …
Yesterday, this New York Times story went around on Trump’s plans to empower his Vice-President. ‘One day this past May, Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., reached out to a senior adviser to Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who left the presidential race just a few weeks before. As a candidate, Kasich declared in March …
Last night, a new story in the ever evolving evidence for the #CultOfCompliance and the dangers it poses to marginalized people when they encounter police went viral. A police officer in the Miami area shot a black man lying on his back with his hands in the air. The man, Charles Kinsey, is a mental …
There’s a disability-related twist in the Wisconsin Senate race. Ron Johnson, as I understand it, has advocated both for special-ed private-school vouchers and keeping the federal government from inspecting such programs. Russ Feingold is against vouchers and, if we’re going to have them, at least advocates for them being regulated. Wisconsin U.S. Senate campaign rivals …
By now you’ve heard about Melania Trump plagiarizing Michelle Obama. Omissions are as telling as inclusions. Consider the following: Here’s Michelle Obama. Absences highlighted, instead of copying. “Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond …