Category Archives: Get Over Yourself

Dylan Mulvaney Would Benefit From An Intervention

I know I’m not the first to say it, so I’ll just add to the noise. Dylan Mulvaney is not right in the head.

Here is a video of him pretending to be a 6-year-old girl:

As the pendulum continues to build momentum as it shifts from left to right, Dylan Mulvaney is going to be one hell of a loser.

New York City Teacher Does TikTok Presentation About Sexualities of Nintendo Characters, Says She Was Only Kidding

What New York calls an educator.

There’s a teacher in New York by the name of Remy Elliott (certified as Jeremy William Elliott) who decided that it would be a good idea to do a video on her TikTok account in which she assigned various gender identities to Nintendo characters, such as Mario and Princess Peach.

According to her TikTok presentation, “Mario came out so long ago most people forgot”. Not only that, she claimed that Luigi is demisexual, Princess Daisy is bisexual and polyamorous, Toad is ready to come out as a trans-girl, and Yoshi completed transition to a male, complete with breast-removal surgery that left no scars.

As I read about this, it became apparent to me that the presentation was a joke, which was something that Remy did assert. But even so, to make a presentation like this when representing your school district as an educator seems like an insanely bad move.

But just in case you doubt where this piece of work stands in the culture war, Remy claims to have a trans flag, a bisexual flag, and a non-binary flag on her desk at her work, which would be at school. She did this to show just how accepting she was of these things.

The only reservation she had concerning what she shared with her students concerned her polyamory, because that “is not in the conversation”. But she did confer with administrators, who agreed that it would be appropriate with her to speak with students about her relationships.

I disagree. A teacher’s job is to teach, preferably on the topic of the class in question. It’s certainly no place for any educator to bring up personal matters, especially not personal matters of a sexual nature, and certainly not with students who are still minors. What’s even more vexing is that the school district’s administration, after hearing of Remy’s polyamory, approved the teacher to speak of it, rather than immediately shooting it down for the repugnant idea that it was, or at least recognizing the potential for controversy and bad press.

She said: ‘This is not a conversation that conservatives are having at all. They’ve decided… like, you can’t do this at all, there’s no place for it. 

So, now we know what a depraved half-wit does when she ignores any voice of reason. She’ll upload a presentation to TikTok which bullshits about the sexual identities of Nintendo characters.

‘And that just shows such a lack of thought and care. They’re not understanding of the people. They’re children as people and where they’re at.’

And, no surprise, she’s of a mind that determines that it’s ageist to say that it’s wrong to introduce sexual deviancy to children.

Notice how she’s registered under the name “Jeremy William Elliott”? She is actually a he.

So yeah, we have yet another case of a man identifying as a woman, likely in an attempt to make it easier to approach children about sexual matters.

She added: ‘It’s also strange to point out that they have genders and sexualities, as being a cisgender heterosexual man is in fact a gender and sexual orientation.’

How he arrived at the conclusion does not follow. The fact that Mario is apparently straight does not make it unusual to talk about the genders and sexualities of Nintendo characters. In fact, there are some cases where mature, adult fans may prefer to speculate about this topic, to the end of coming to a better understanding of the characters in question. Putting aside, of course, the fact that the characters in question are seldom, if ever, sexualized in the official materials. What makes the matter unusual in Remy’s case is that he wished to publicly have the conversation as an educator, with dozens of ninth-graders presumably involved.

‘As part of my DOE employment, despite being primarily hired as an English Teacher, teaching our established and vetted sex education curriculum was not only something I was hired for, it was something I was trained and qualified in.’

That was a shitty move on the DOE’s part. After all, Remy can’t be counted on to present the sexualities of Nintendo characters in good faith. I’ve been a Nintendo fan for decades, so I can take issue with many of the claims that Remy makes.

For one thing, Mario and Luigi are evidently straight. This is presumably one of the reasons behind why they go after princesses Peach and Daisy. They want some of that vertical smile. For Toad to transition to a girl would be redundant for his franchise, because his sister Toadette is already a character in those games. Then there’s Remy’s assertion that Yoshi had “top surgery”. Yoshi is a reptile. Reptiles don’t have mammaries.

She added that she only ever spoke of her personal life ‘within reasonable limits.’ 

It’s great to know that Remy is willing to draw the line somewhere, even if that line should have been placed well before telling minors that Princess Daisy is “hella bisexual”. But, who knows? Maybe Remy will do another installment where she points at Samus Aran as being trans, and Link as being a closet fairy. Yoshio Sakamoto and Shigeru Miyamoto don’t seem to be in any hurry to represent the perversity of the moment, so perhaps Remy will step forward to help them out?

Western Comics Getting Gutted By Manga and Webtoons

I grew up with the likes of Batman, so it kinda saddens me to see how things are going for the Dark Knight, and his compatriots in western comic books. But at the same time, I don’t want to see Batman succeed for the wrong reasons. And with DC and Marvel comics having become full-on woke rags, it’s pretty much necessary for those comic companies to tumble, if it means that they’ll learn a few things as it happens.

If you’ve been following along, you already know that manga has been killing the hell out of western comics. As I’ve already covered, manga sales in the year 2020 were three times that of DC and Marvel sales combined. As pointed out by Deb Aoki on Twitter, EuropeComics has posted a graph which visualizes just how much hell is being killed out of western comics:

To further highlight the mayhem:

The first four publishers on that list are manga publishers, and each one of them outsells both Marvel and DC combined, with Marvel and DC placing numbers 7 and 8 behind Korean webtoon publishers.

It looks like no one is buying western comic books anymore, and I wonder why?

Oh yeah, that’s right. It’s because Marvel and DC have gone full-on woke, with DC having started a yearly publication starring characters whose sexual preferences are the most front-facing aspects of their personalities.

Did DC really publish this with the expectation that anyone reading it would feel like they’re being taken seriously?

Now, I get it. Your boomer parents and grandparents grew up with Hanna Barbara bullshit like Hong Kong Phooey, and would therefore feel threatened by anything from across the ocean that might challenge them, which has a lot to do with why they’re among the few left who are currently providing Marvel and DC as much support as they have. I also get that they grew up in an age where it was rare for cartoons to be made for anyone besides children. Even so, the idea that children don’t deserve better products just because they’re children is just an excuse to produce inferior products, which in turn conditions children into becoming adults willing to settle for mediocrity.

Seriously.

I read manga because manga takes me seriously enough to present me with entertainment without beating me over the head with the blunt end of whatever misguided moral that the publisher wanted to push, as though they couldn’t trust me to think for myself.

If the story is about a golden-haired dude battling it out with a galactic tyrant on an exploding planet, the comic doesn’t need to do anything to further justify itself. If some cook is facing off against his dad because of some deep-seated grudge, we don’t need a PSA telling us not to pick on people who like buttsecks. If some deranged scientist performs horrific vivisections just to enhance his capacity to explore come caverns, he’s plainly the bad guy, it’s not necessary to make him a Nazi, as well.

If western comic book heroes are to succeed again at some point in the future, they’re going to have to go back to being, you know, heroes. It’s going to take a whole lot of swallowing to down all the pride needed for Batman and the Avengers to come back up from where they currently are.

But in the time it takes for them to do it, I’ve got plenty of other things to read.

Feminist Turns Tables on Men, and Men Loved It

The following cartoon was brought to us by Twitter user Fight the Patriarchy. The feminist apparently got the idea that she could take the language that men direct towards women, which feminists find annoying, and turn matters around by showing a cartoon with women directing similar compliments towards men:

  • Heard it,
  • Heard it, except just towards me,
  • Heard a variant thereof,
  • Heartwarming, but still makes me glad I’m no longer a cashier.

Sorry, I got distracted with some fond memories.

The above comic was posted to social media with the idea that it would pwn teh pAtRiArChY, but something different happened. The idea of being complimented like that was something that men loved.

And really, who wouldn’t?

It would seem as though the answer to that question would be feminists, whose distrust of other people is so extreme that they assume a subtle sexual proposition in mere small talk.

Even if such a proposition were present, where’s the controversy? Just like men, women have the capacity to express disinterest at any point in any interaction, and to do so is a trivial social inconvenience.

When one person complains about an experience as a person of one gender, it seems to be the tendency of people to assume that there must always be an equivalent experience for the other gender.

But that’s not always the case, because men and women are different. Many of those differences are obvious, such as the fact that women can get pregnant, and when that happens, they spend nine months giving of their energy and nutrients to help develop the life that’s growing inside them. This being the case, women have a tendency to proceed with more caution in the courtship process, considering that the outcome would be a significant investment of their time and energy.

Though, from what I’ve seen, women have a tendency to take initiative. But I understand that not everyone has had the same experiences as me.

Men and women are different. And those differences should be understood and embraced as beneficial for society, rather than a reason to complain about oppression and play the victim, as the tendency of certain people is.

But even with those differences, I think society would be better still if a certain subculture, feminists specifically, were to learn a few things about taking compliments without assuming ulterior motives. But considering that the typical feminist is characterized by a distrust of those they perceive to be in the outgroup, they’re well set up to surpass expectations.

Bulbagarden Founder Posits Theory That New Gym Leader Is Trans and Non-Binary, Gets Debunked Less Than 24 Hours Later

It seems like with every new major media release, someone from the questionable sexuality community will come forward with speculation (often stated as fact and foregone conclusion) that a character depicted represents their favorite flavor of sexuality.

As Bounding Into Comics points out, this time around, the speculator is Liam Pomfret, the founder of Bulbagarden, who posits his theory that the newly-revealed gym leader in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Iono, is non-binary and transgender.

Here is the promo video featuring Iono:

Upon what is Liam basing his theory? The initially ambiguous use of pronouns, and her choice of hair dye:

Image from Bounding Into Comics

One would expect the use of such flimsy inferences from an undiagnosed schizophrenic who believes that their TV is communicating secret messages specifically for them, not a Doctor of Philosophy. Our education system is fucked, isn’t it?

Because he was tripping over himself to find trans representation in a Japanese game marketed towards anyone in the family, he looked at the soft blue and pink hair (kinda looks lavender to me) and immediately thought of the trans kid flag, rather than the recurring red/blue coloration of Pokémon’s flagship games, Scarlet and Violet included.

Less than 24 hours later, Nintendo dropped supplemental promotional material concerning Iono. It’s the kind of thing that looks like it would have been released simultaneously with the promotional video that originally featured Iono, so maybe it was hastily thrown together after the fact.

The promo specifies Iono as having the feminine pronoun of “her”. Iono is female. Because we’ve already established that speculation is fun, maybe Nintendo threw this out there because they knew what Liam Pomfret was saying, and were all like “Nope. We’re not having that.”

If “Bulbagarden” sounds familiar, then you’ve been following along back when I pointed out how inappropriate it was that they used their Pokémon fan platform to soapbox about an immigration policy that they blamed on Trump (the problem was actually Obama’s fault, and Trump resolved the matter through an executive order).

This was Bulbagarden’s forum header at the time:

Fucking creepy.

And a fantastic opportunity to warn parents out there that there are some predatory actors in fan communities who use their positions in their respective communities to pressure younger members. Oftentimes, their activities involve performing “favors” over video chat. Of course, there are many ways that bad people can take advantage of children online.

That PSA aside, it can also be pointed out that there is a certain obsession with pointing to Japan’s status as a relatively advanced, orderly, and peaceful society. Oftentimes, someone on the radical left will attempt to glom onto a form of Japanese media, in a sad attempt to make the case that the Japanese are actually just like them.

What these attempts overlook is how Japan as a society got to be as advanced as it is. Japan is a heavily structured and stratified society that favors family, career, merit, and respect. To further reduce that, Japan is conservative. In fact, it’s one of the most conservative societies in the world.

Sometimes, a weeaboo pops up who thinks of Japan as being their kind of society, probably because they got ideas as to what it’s like from anime and manga. The fact is, Japan is a society of norms. If you move to Japan, you’re expected to conform to the norms. If you don’t want to, then you don’t belong in Japan. It’s as simple as that.

Red light districts aside, Japan is an advanced, peaceful, and orderly society. If your thinking is different from theirs, that might have a lot to do with it.

Iono is pretty far from the first character from Japanese media to have gotten this kind of attention. It wasn’t long ago that Shiver from Splatoon 3 came under scrutiny as possibly non-binary, but it turned out she was female. Nanachi from Made In Abyss is a frequent target of this, because author Akihito Tsukushi prefers to leave Nanachi’s sex as unknown. Or, more famously, there’s Bridget from Guilty Gear, who is male.

That’s not to say that there are no “non-binary” characters in Japanese media. However, such characters are seldom portrayed as sympathetic. But why would they, when there is something obviously wrong with their thinking?

Iono is merely a character in a work of fiction. She’s just made up, therefore nothing about her has any bearing on the reality of any matter. It doesn’t matter whether she represents anything, except maybe in the deluded thinking of those who lack the ability to parse reality without the assistance of a fictional construct. If this describes you, then you need to seek help. And get over yourself, while you’re at it.

Webcomic Review: Momlife Comics

At first, I wasn’t going to comment on these. One-panel comics aren’t usually worth talking about, and these seemed little more than the meanderings of a woman who is bitter about one thing or another. Then these comics blew up, so I was like, “fine, I’ll acknowledge their existence and write up a review.”

For the setting, try to imagine a curious land in which most people don’t have to grow their own food, but meals are already fully prepared and delivered to peoples homes. Not only is rape illegal, there are no roving rape gangs on the prowl in rusty pickup trucks. What’s more, the homes are crisp and cool inside in the summer, and when there’s snow on the ground in the winter, the homes are warm inside, and glowing display screens deliver limitless free entertainment on demand.

But, there’s a catch: human nature remains mostly the same. The human adaptation to conflict that has been cultivated over the course of aeons still remains. Therefore, the people started questioning their idyllic peace and halcyon luxury. Then, grumblings came, acknowledging first world problems as though a prize awaited the cynics: “My coffee is too hot”, “thirty seconds is too long for an initial boot up”, “my delivery was delayed until tomorrow”.

At the center of this maelstrom of abject ingratitude is one housewife and her adversarial relationship with her husband. That’s right, we’re reviewing Momlife Comics.

Momlife Comics was written by Mary Catherine Starr, who gives us the first hint of her politics by listing her pronouns in her bio. Because her pronouns apparently weren’t already evident from the fact that she’s a mom. She also made a BLM statement, so you know that she’s not racist.

Wow, how stunning and brave, considering the current political zeitgeist!

Mary’s IRL husband is aware of the comics, and is okay with them, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he did a Jack Murphy and wrote up an article touting the benefits of cuckolding.

Let’s start this review off with the most famous cartoon in the series so far:

Both are valid uses of the peach, and the one who gets to it first decides what happens to it. But notice that the build-up is the woman thinking about someone other than herself. How dare that man want to eat something that he paid for, from a table he paid for, in a house he also paid for!

Wow! Look how much more work that woman is doing! Patriarchy and such mushuggunah!

The missing context: the woman took all the bags, leaving the man to bring back just one. Was she aware that she could take multiple trips to the car? She’s likely to smoosh something if she tries carrying in that much at once.

Pattern established: Woman imagines some rule, but doesn’t tell man about it. Woman then gets angry at man for breaking the rule he didn’t know about.

Another pattern established: Woman gathers everything to herself, leaving nothing for the man to do. Woman then complains that she does everything.

Mary also does comics where she reverses the gender roles, which is supposed to be clever because she leaves us to determine the irony without beating us over the head with the obviousness of the point that she’s trying to make.

Get it? Because men are generally more career-focused, and women tend to be more family focused? Though it’s hard to say definitively whether Mary intended to throw shade on the fact that men and women are different, and that because of these differences they tend towards different life choices. It might be that she’d prefer a world where they made similar choices, even if that meant less excuse to hear the sound of her own voice, complaining.

I wouldn’t put it past her to complain about the rain as though she’s blaming someone for it.

Mary is such a victim in her own mind that she even sees herself at fault for bringing her own children fast food. Or are her children the only ones in the universe who would complain about fast food? Sure, it’s garbage, but kids don’t know that.

It was my intention to review this webcomic, but I instead feel tempted to psychoanalyze the author, as her comics have given a window into the soul of a troubled woman. It’s obvious that from an impressionable age, someone was able to sell her a victimhood narrative, and this resonated with her life in the hard streets of sheltered suburbia.

Since her webcomic got noticed, she produced this comic in an answer to the trolls:

Along with a notice that she’ll block trolls. Which is a mistake, because it’s a reaction that trolls look for, and they’ll take any that is any indication that they’re getting to someone. And the above comic accomplishes this masterfully.

As far as art quality goes, Mary is evidently of the opinion that if you only do one thing right, you’ve got a comic. In Mary’s case, that one thing is body proportions. Aside from that, everything is wrong. The thick, inconsistent line art, the lack of facial features, everything is just wrong. Maybe Mary can draw better than a toddler. But bring elementary school students into it, and she’s out of her league.

Okay then, let’s grade this pile. Momlife Comics gets a score of 2.6 out of 10.

Gentlemen, I know that the dating game is flawed. But tread carefully. Getting hitched to the wrong woman can be quite taxing.

One of the classic signs of an abusive relationship is joking at the expense of one’s spouse in public. These comics give ample cause for concern.

Don’t Like a Piece of Art? Here’s a Flow Chart to Assist You.

Waterhouse_Hylas_and_the_Nymphs_Manchester_Art_Gallery_1896.15

Back in 2018, a #MeToo campaigner complained to an art exhibit to have a work removed because the person was triggered by it. Shortly afterwards, the work was reinstated after public outcry. The work in question was the one pictured above, a Victorian era painting titled Hylas and the Nymphs.

Great work guys, you censored a work of art from over a century ago that took inspiration from a fable thousands of years old just to satisfy a blowhard belonging to a fad movement.

It’s because of things like this that people don’t take feminism seriously. And it backfires when people become ashamed to identify as feminists,  as indicated by this note left for the curator:

feminist note to curator

If you spend time looking at art, you’re bound to find something that’s objectionable to you. If you dislike a work of art, your solution is simple: If you don’t like it, don’t look at it.

If this process comes off as novel and confusing, I’ve provided a simple flow chart to assist you:

art flow chart

That pretty much lays it out. If you’re still unable to follow, then you shouldn’t have been able to operate an automobile all the way to an art exhibit without causing an accident. Learn to drive.

And while you’re at it, stop assuming that every artistic expression of nudity and sexuality somehow demeans women. Nudity is the natural state of the human body, and is not inherently evil. Sexuality is one of the most human traits, and is a universal part of the human experience. An expression of either one doesn’t devalue women. Or anyone, for that matter.

And if, after considering all this, you still don’t like a work of art, just don’t look at it. I doubt that you fill the Pictures directory of your computer with images you don’t like, so why go out of your way to personally view a piece that only makes you upset? Just move on. Calling yourself a feminist doesn’t give you permission to decide for everyone else what art they have access to. Stop assuming that the rest of us can’t handle what we see.

Feminists have a very negative view of the general population, and this is what guides their attempts to decide for us what media that we have access to. Museum goers did a good job of not letting them. Very well done, keep it up.

Cenk Uygur, Get Over Yourself

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks is no stranger to drama. He is the most prominent mouthpiece of a leftist YouTube program that named itself for the guilty party behind the Armenian Genocide, an event that Cenk denies ever occurred.

Since his program has gone full-on corporate, Cenk himself is pretty much in golden handcuffs, and has since gone increasingly unhinged, snapping at other commentators such as Tim Pool and Alex Jones, who just wanted to talk to him.

Just days ago, MisterM proceeded to milk the drama cow on Twitter, daring Cenk to call Joe Rogan a “loser” to his face, enticing him with a $1000 donation to either his “trash network” or a charity of his choice.

A real grownup would have ignored the dare, but Cenk instead drew the line where he felt more comfortable.

Being the grown-up that he is, Cenk not only took the dare, he also escalated the rhetoric to imply physical violence, then made the claim to be able to “end” the trained fighter, in spite of his own lack of experience (and conditioning).

Natch, Cenk decided to accept the $1000 for himself, rather than to a charity.

While Cenk made the hilarious claim that he’d “end” Rogan in a fight, Cenk’s optimism isn’t backed up much in the realm of reality, putting aside the remote possibility that Cenk could benefit from either a freak accident or copious amounts of interference.

While there is no such thing as an MMA black belt, Joe Rogan does have a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and has become a Taekwondo Grand Champion, and apparently has kickboxing experience. He eventually became a UFC commentator.

As for Cenk, he made the claim to have been fighting for his whole life. If this was the case, his fighting experience is not publicly-available information. Cenk’s claim to be “larger”, comes off as an inappropriate boast in his lack of physical conditioning.

I honestly have no idea why fat people have as much confidence as they do in their bulk. They may be big, but they’re also soft, and simply moving about is a chore for them. An overweight person started a fight with me before, and he went to the floor quick.

If Cenk did get in a fight with Rogan, he’d likely just find out how fast-paced and callous that fights really are, and come out the other side of the experience more closely resembling a blueberry muffin. Of course, a professional UFC match is a more strategic affair, but Cenk’s historical inability to retain his cool would ensure that within the structure of an officiated match, Cenk’s likelihood of winning would only further decrease.

I get being macho, but I still think I’m being manly when I point out that if I were to get into a fight with Joe Rogan, I’d likely get my ass beat. There’s a lot that can be said about not letting your arrogance get the better of you.

Cenk has a lot of problems, but because he’s rich and famous (enough so that he should consider it low-brow to take dares for money), many of his problems are of the sort that people would rather have. Yet, he has more problems than he otherwise would if it weren’t for his egotism. Therefore, Cenk is among the many people who can quickly make the world a better place, at least for himself, if he were to take the simple advice: Get over yourself.

Howard Stern, Get Over Yourself.

Howard Stern’s remaining audience largely consists of boomers who mistakenly remember a time in which Howard Stern was cool, and Gen Xers who started listening because the boomers did.

While it’s obvious that Stern’s best days are behind him, he’ll sometimes fire off his mouth in an attempt to stay relevant. I’d have no idea what he had to say if it weren’t passed along by new media, which is pretty sad considering his history of proclaiming himself as “King of All Media”. That’s a ballsy thing to proclaim one’s self, but he didn’t use any of that to make the following statement about those who refused the COVID vaccine by reason of their personal freedom:

“Fuck them. Fuck their freedom. I want my freedom to live. I want to get out of the house. I want to go next door and play chess. I want to go take some pictures.”

Howard Stern

If Howard wants so badly to do those things, he can just do them. That’s what those who appreciate their freedoms have been doing with those very freedoms. If Howard himself has been vaccinated, he’d face no risk of getting COVID, if the vaccine were as effective as other vaccines. And if he weren’t (by reason of medical exemption), he’d be taking a risk intrinsic to living life, comparable to catching the flu.

That’s how it goes, sometimes, you don’t have the same kind of health that someone else has, and that makes your choice of activities more narrow than theirs. Fact of life.

Howard, who once upon a time was marketed under the pretense of being shocking and anti-establishment, is now taking a pro-establishment position with no risk of retaliation on the part of advertisers. And over what? He wants everyone else in the world around him to get a vaccine they might not even want, just so he’ll feel safer going outside and doing stuff.

And we’re supposed for feel bad for him after he spent the better part of his life as a multi-millionaire who made bank by contributing nothing to society except firing off his mouth on the radio, and making a movie that no one cares about.

Not everyone can understand why anyone would watch videos on YouTube about people playing video games or eating food, when people can just do these things themselves. I wonder how many of these same people listen to a radio show about a rich man who goes to night clubs and talks about seeing anatomical features that half of all people have?

Another point one can make about Stern is that he talks as though he thinks we’re still consuming the same old news stories that were going around at the early part of the pandemic:

“The other thing I hate is that all these people with COVID who won’t get vaccinated are in the hospitals clogging it up.”

Howard Stern

Remember back when they opened stadiums up with hospital beds, to prepare to treat an expected influx of patients? Remember when they closed those makeshift treatment centers down because, as it turns out, they didn’t need them? What hospitals is he going to that he couldn’t get in because of all the COVID patients?

What’s more, Howard is blowing his stack, saying that people who refused the vaccine should be denied medical care, overlooking the fact that people can refuse the vaccine for some compelling reasons, such as the suspicion that it hasn’t been sufficiently tested before being released to market, or due to concerns over spike proteins.

It’s easy to see past all the bluster and realize that the real reason why Howard is so salty is because we’re going to be the ones writing the history books, by reason of the fact that we’re the ones going out and living life and procreating.

What’s really sad about this is that we lived to see the day that Howard used his platform to proclaim the following:

“Fuck their freedom.”

Howard Stern, whose entire career is owed to free expression and the private ownership of the means of production, is apparently selective when it comes to what freedoms are applied, and how.

Because Howard Stern (and leftism in general) is out of touch with reality, they lack the cognition that freedom is not granted by human government, it’s axiomatic in a similar sense to natural law. Everyone has a right to their own sincere convictions. Everyone, when attacked, has a right to defend themselves. Everyone has a right to their own property, without it being unjustly or unfairly extracted. If any humanly devised system ignores these axiomatic fundamental rights, they still exist, and the system itself is in the wrong. Whether you’re a celebrity, radio personality, or king, if you ignore or act contrary to these rights, you are wrong.

But no one has a right to a life that’s free from risk. Risk, including the risk of getting sick, or getting attacked by an animal, or ending up impaled on something, is an intrinsic element of the reality that we live in. Attempts to alleviate those risks are usually reasonable, but sometimes not. Attempts to eliminate those risks are often wrongheaded.

If COVID is something you’re concerned about, you can plan accordingly for yourself. What you can’t do is limit another person’s freedom of movement or bodily autonomy. Whatever choices you make for yourself, you do with the possibility of whatever consequences that follow as a result.

While Howard Stern is free to have his own opinion, that includes his right to a misinformed or misguided opinion, a right he’s done nothing to waive. While Harlan Ellison may not like it, people do have a right to be ignorant.

But if you’re one of the few people left who still listen to Howard Stern, you should ask yourself what you’re listening to. When you listen to a rich man with a radio show hobnob with strippers and ruthlessly lampoon members of his own cast, is it really because there’s nothing else to listen to? As a person who gets up early in the morning, goes to work, comes home to eat poor people food, and usually barely pays the bills, it’s easy for me to say that Howard Stern doesn’t speak for me.