An America Fatwa? There were two massive stories that recently emerged: the FBI’s retrieval of top secret material from Mar-a-Lago and the attempted murder of Salman Rushdie, who has had a target on his head since Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa related to his 1988 book, The Satanic Verses. Both…

This is what America is. There’s a common TV trope where shows start with the end and then spend the rest of the episode unfurling the content that took place in the hours before that “ending.” I’m going to deploy that trope now. Here’s what’s going to happen as a…

The inevitability of the end of Roe and how long a fight we’re in for. It was inevitable. Those are the first three words of one of the most notable openings in literature from Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. The same three words would make…

Seriously, Stop With the Bothsidesing A request from the managing editor to the internet I cover: Stop. Seriously, stop with the bothsidesing think-pieces about Will Smith’s slap. I’m sure Alopecia can be a traumatic condition, but this isn’t a story about Alopecia. We’re not even sure Chris Rock knew about…

It’s all connected. The years of Trump being manipulated into lauding Putin’s savvy and genius. The scene in Helsinki when Trump sided with Putin over America’s intelligence agencies. The weapons Trump withheld from Ukraine and the perfect phone call to blackmail the Ukrainian president into digging up dirt on Joe…

This is an excerpt from Dave Pell’s Please Scream Inside Your Heart, Breaking News and Nervous Breakdowns in the Year That Wouldn’t End. I came of age during the Nightline era, when Ted Koppel remade the news landscape, covering the Iran hostage crisis for 444 days. One story. The same…

The Ridiculous Seriousness of the Whoopi Goldberg Suspension ABC News has suspended Whoopi Goldberg from The View for two weeks because of remarks she made about the Holocaust that included saying, it was “not about race … it’s about man’s inhumanity to other man.” The remarks offended some people, so…

As the son of two Holocaust survivors it may surprise you that on this Holocaust Remembrance Day, I’m making the following request: Forget the Holocaust. Instead, focus on the years before the Holocaust and apply the lessons to today’s America. As a teen, my dad Joe Pell knew he’d be…

Trying to find some understanding a year after the insurrection A Thought Experiment. (This is adapted from Dave Pell’s Please Scream Inside Your Heart, Breaking News and Nervous Breakdowns in the Year That Wouldn’t End.) Today is the one year anniversary of America not doing anything to punish politicians who…