Bits & Pieces
Articles with unfiltered opinions
Evolve Already!
Our contemporary existence—with its advanced medicine, high-tech communication and more convenience than mankind has ever known—is all thanks to science and engineering, not religion. It makes me laugh when fundamentalists and creationists use the Internet to disseminate their propaganda or seek advanced therapies for their illnesses, while being utterly in denial about the science...
Signs of Common Sense
Even though the last midterm elections were a disaster for America, several approved ballot measures suggest that common sense is still alive and kicking. I’m convinced the current swing to the right is mostly a problem of low turnout and too much corporate cash. It doesn’t reflect the real mood of the country. Take,...
A Year Without Religion
Get ready for the year ahead. Judging by the last one, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. One of the biggest reasons for it, in my view, is religious fanaticism, an illness that blows everything out of proportion and halts progress in its tracks. The distortion of Fundamentalist beliefs—regardless of which religion—is one...
The War On Women Rages On
I know a lot of people think this idea of conservatives waging a war on women is just a load of campaign talk. It isn’t. And it isn’t new either. Women’s rights are under serious, sustained attack, not only by the media assholes that populate Fox News and other right-wing outlets, but also by...
The Root Causes
The lessons are coming hard and fast. Despite six years of Democratic leadership in the White House under an African-American president, America’s lingering social ills remain in a critical state and are still being expressed in racial terms. With the media oversimplifying events such as the unrest in Ferguson, most people will opt for...
Four Decades of Free Speech
With this issue, HUSTLER proudly celebrates 41 years as one of America’s staunchest advocates of personal freedom, political integrity and unfettered free speech. Back in the ’70s, when we started publishing, interracial relationships were taboo, gays were strictly closeted and women were just beginning to spy the glass ceiling. Undoubtedly, there has been a...
The Femme Factor
Is the Republican War on Women just liberal PR, as Fox News wants you to believe? Well, in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling allowing employers to deny women contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act, the right-wing assault on women’s rights looks all too real. We’ve seen again and again that our...
Where Are the Jobs?
Election year is a favorite time to lament slow job growth. The vast majority of voters are at the mercy of the job market and rightfully expect their elected officials to foster a thriving economy in which they can find and maintain gainful employment. In fact, new poll data says that today’s bleak employment...
Don’t Buy the Bullshit
Unless you threw your TV out the window (not a bad idea, by the way), you know that the fights for Congress this year and the White House in 2016 are already heating up. With the Democrats and Republicans locked in a fierce struggle, the nasty chatter from the political right and the propaganda...
Dirty Tricks Alert
If you thought the campaigns against President Obama were vicious, the next national elections are shaping up to be even worse. Republican campaign strategists and activists are already rolling out deceptive tactics like phony websites to subvert Democratic campaigns and spreading disinformation to suppress the minority vote. The only way to fight the coming...
America’s Challenge
Ask a million different people what America’s number-one problem is and you’ll probably get a million different answers. But at the root of most of our troubles is one thing: lack of education. People cling to false beliefs and become susceptible to propaganda and deception when they haven’t developed the skills to critically examine...
The Unseen Obscenity
Back in 1977, I wrote an editorial proclaiming that the real obscenity of our time isn’t pornography; it’s war. That hasn’t changed. In some ways warfare has become more brutally impersonal and indecent than ever. Consider our country’s expanding policy of covert operations with military drones. Scores of civilians abroad are being killed and...
An Unhealthy Attitude
In a glaring example of how divided our nation has be come, almost half the country is still refusing to comply with the law of the land. At this writing, 21 of the states in our Union have enacted laws and measures to opt out of or oppose provisions in the Affordable Care Act....
Cruel and All Too Usual
A recent study by the American Civil Liberties Union found that over 3,200 people in this country are serving life terms without parole for nonviolent crimes. The vast majority of them have been locked up for victimless, drug-related offenses—and most of the prisoners are African American. This trend of gross injustice results from the...
Year of Reckoning
Election year 2014 is upon us, and the time has come to call our representatives to account. In 2013 Republicans in Congress delivered a shameful, unprecedented spectacle of disregard for the American people that cannot be excused or forgotten. This is no longer a matter of a few Tea Party wacko birds. The government...
