I neglected to mention in my previous post that a January 2005 press release issued by the No Name-Calling Week Coalition stated: "Results from 2004 bullying surveys in schools indicated that students reported a significant decrease in the amount of bullying and harassment in school after taking part in the...

Arnold Schwarzennegger announced his candidacy for governor on the Tonight Show. John Edwards announced his candidacy for president on The Daily Show. And now Sarah Palin has in effect announced her candidacy for president in 2012 by denouncing Late Show host David Letterman for a joke about her daughter--the wrong,...

Whereas President Barack Obama ordered that Stephen Colbert be given a military shaved head on his visit to Iraq, the Treasury Department ordered that President Thomas Jefferson's image on the nickel be given a haircut.

You'll notice that he's gone from a left-side profile in 2004 to facing right in...

In a recent blog on HuffPost, Dennis Perrin criticized Jon Stewart for apologizing the day after he agreed with a guest that President Harry Truman was a war criminal. He wrote that "Stewart did what well-regarded mainstream entertainers do when expressing an unpopular opinion. He groveled for forgiveness....When an American...

I thought that some of you might enjoy this Q&A with me in The Sun magazine, an oasis in the desert of gossip mongering

And while I'm here in Blogsville, I'd like to thank Arianna publicly for writing an introduction to my upcoming book, Who's to Say What's Obscene?

The economic crisis has made its way into the nation's syndicated comic strips.

A few have included references to companies going bankrupt.

In "Rex Morgan, MD," Rex's family is on a cruise. In the ship's library, his wife June asks, "Is there a rental fee for the books?"

"You can...

In a recent Los Angeles Times Op-Ed piece about San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, Josh Getlin perpetuated a myth when he wrote that Dan White "shot the mayor four times, twice in the head as he lay on the floor of his private back office. Standing astride the body,...

The Denver Police Department is facing several lawsuits over confrontations with protesters at the Democratic National Convention. The officers had conducted mass arrests and detentions of 154 individuals before and during the convention. One cop, for example, was videotaped pushing a woman to the ground with his baton as he...

Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine is an important and accessible book--not heavy on academic jargon, but rather lively and engaging, like a true detective novel--with a broad appeal to those interested in the medical potential of cannabis, an end to the drug war and grass roots activism. I...

Referring to the Ronald Reagan presidency, Neal Gabler has written about "the triumph of entertainment over political ideology of any sort." And Kurt Andersen labeled Bill Clinton the "Entertainer-in-Chief." The voters are the audience, conditioned to fear and superficiality in commercials for erectile dysfunction and political campaigns alike, both...

Oh, no! That New Yorker cover is going to ruin everything for Obama. This is the tipping point. Now he'll never get elected. I'm so disappointed. I had such great hopes. What can I do? Cancel my subscription to the First Amendment?

Fear. It's all about fear. I've always been...

Hi, my name is Paul. I'm a barista at Starbucks -- or I should say that I was a barista -- but I still feel that I am one, even though I've been given my walking papers, my pink slip, whatever you want to call it, I've been fired from...

In December 1962, when Lenny Bruce was arrested for obscenity at the Gate of Horn in Chicago, the police broke open his candy bars, looking for dope. They checked the IDs of audience members, including George Carlin, who told the cops, "I don't believe in IDs." Then they arrested him...

I was slightly stunned at the irony of this paragraph in your endorsement of Barack Obama:

"Finally, I want to say a word about the basic decency I have seen in Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton continues to throw the Rev. Wright up in his face as part of her mission...

Now that there's a commemorative stamp honoring Ruben Salazar, it's appropriate to recall the context in which he was killed.

No wonder conspiracy researcher Mae Brussell was so excited. The attempted burglary of Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in June 1972 had suddenly brought her eight-and-a-half years of dedicated...

Progressive sex author Susie Bright had some questions for me:

Q. Paul, what's the story of the first "dirty picture" you ever saw?

A. When I was 11 or 12, my older brother, George, had somehow obtained nude photos of movie stars, like Rita Hayworth and Burt Lancaster.

"What are...

In 1960, the U.S. State Department was financing counterrevolutionary broadcasts to Cuba from a radio station on Swan Island in Honduras. Program content ranged from telling Cubans that their children would be taken away to warning them that a Russian drug was being added to their food and milk which...

A recent obituary in the Los Angeles Times began: "Bernie Boston, the photojournalist who captured the iconic image of a young Vietnam War protester placing a flower in the barrel of a rifle held by a National Guardsman died...The photo known as 'Flower Power' became Boston's signature image and...

[A small independent publisher, Ronin, has just released a new edition of my tale of a Japanese-American man who goes to a summer camp for gurus. Below is my preface to the book.]

In 1971, after reading Ed Sanders' book about the Charles Manson mini-cult massacre, "The Family," I began...