Satire

'Honestly, there should be themed debates,' Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter last night. 'Doing so educates the public far more on issues & actually serves the purpose of distinguishing who knows what they’re talking about +who doesn’t. Climate debate. Foreign policy debate. Healthcare. Racial justice. Labor&Econ. Can’t hide.' While the ninth DNC debate proved livelier than the previous eight combined, Cockburn can't help but think the New York congresswoman has a point, even if she did borrow it from former candidate Jay Inslee. A single topic, chosen from one of the key tenets of the Democratic platform, would certainly add some much needed focus. But AOC's ideas for topic areas seem a bit...lame. 'Labor&Econ'? What a snoozefest.

Valentine’s Day is here again to remind us all that we are still living in a rape culture. No matter how prettily the greetings card companies attempt to dress it up, an entire day dedicated to the celebration of men stalking women is beyond reproach. If you celebrate Valentine’s Day, you are actively participating in the continued normalization of sexual assault. Think about that. The majority of cards and gifts sent today will have been sent anonymously and without prior consent. As a society we are actively encouraging ‘gift rape’. If this doesn’t already sound sinister enough to you, then strap yourself in because it’s about to get a whole lot bumpier.

Portland, Oregon A polyamorous friend recently extolled the efficacy of speed dating. Relationship-wise, I’ve had a rather long dry spell, but I must stress that I’ve crossed this sexual Sahara entirely by choice. I actively embraced celibacy to holistically detox my chakras, because chastity, like meditating on an icon of Rashida Tlaib, clears the mind of toxicity. If you assume I haven’t had sexual contact with another human being for 17 months, two weeks and four days because I have failed to attract partners, you would be embarrassingly wrong. Your racist narrow-mindedness amuses me. So, whatever. Now that I have utterly destroyed your bigoted preconceptions, perhaps I can continue my story?

I suit up most days (thank you, casual Fridays) and with the stress of New York’s walking speeds and tremendous cleanliness of its streets, the closet life of suits falls somewhere between the lifespan of a monarch butterfly and a succulent fathered by a man in his twenties, another way of saying: cherish life.So, we will call it a Tuesday of last week. I found myself either a) running from hired guns of a Memphis law firm after I had uncovered their Cayman Islands-based money laundering scheme or b) catching my pocket on the armrest of a conference room chair, when I split my dress pants down the leg.

If you put an adequate amount of effort in, you will see that racism is everywhere. I myself spend at least 30 minutes per day practicing how to interpret things white people say as racist. Thankfully, there are many other tireless activists out there who have trained their mental gymnastic skills to an impressive degree so that we may ensure that no white person gets away with saying anything we perceive to be racist. Alastair Stewart is, or should I say ‘was’ (lol), a newsreader on a British TV station. He had held this position for 40 years. As a white male, it was only a matter of time before he slipped up and revealed his hatred of brown people to the public.

‘A woman’s place is in the House and the Senate’, read the shirts assembled by slave labor in Myanmar, the messaging likely dreamed up by graduates of a small liberal arts school whose annual tuition would make a generous stimulus package for a city in any developing country. I like seeing women in the Senate, don’t get me wrong. I just see the former option, the house, as much more preferable for myself for a variety of reasons. I went through my Girl Boss phase in my late teens — my hard working immigrant parents, the descendants of a long, long line of ‘tradwives’, wanted different things for their only daughter.

Portland, Oregon A new year, whether you follow the Greek calendar or the Latinx, is like the first page in a new diary, its date set by patriarchal theocracy, its entries written in guilt. I’ve always questioned the tradition of making and then forgetting resolutions. I view them as an empty promise of redemption, like the fad diets with which late-capitalist dysmorphia tyrannizes the fat-positive. This year, however, I decided to indulge my curiosity. Yes, dear reader, I have made a resolution. ‘B-b-but how on Earth can Godfrey Elfwick’s holistically beneficial way of living xir’s best life be improved upon?’ I hear you stutter in bewilderment.

Hours after Donald Trump tweeted a threat to target ‘52 Iranian sites’, some of them ‘at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture’, Cockburn met an Iranian exile source at the Moby Dick House of Kabob, Connecticut Avenue, Washington, DC. The source took Cockburn’s order and then slipped a tiny piece of paper no bigger than a grain of rice into Cockburn’s baghali polo. As baghali polo is a rice dish, Cockburn didn’t know this until he’d eaten it. It took 24 hours to recover the message. When Cockburn read it, he realized that he was holding the president’s target list.The first five targets are listed here.