Category Archives: Drugs

‘What if God Was One of Us?’

Thousands of Mexican girls and women have disappeared into the deserts outside Ciudad Juárez, and it’s Bill Clinton’s fault. Nobody actually says so in Isaac Gomez’s play, “La Ruta,” being staged by Portland’s Artists Repertory Theatre. But the play links the murders of thousands of girls and young women in Juárez to the North American […]

‘Whitey on the Moon’

Too bad Gil Scott-Heron didn’t live to see the 50th anniversary of humans landing on the moon. He could have revisited his angry song-poem from 1970 called “Whitey on the Moon,” where he seethes about all the money being spent on America’s space program, while black Americans are trapped in housing projects: A rat done […]

This is Not a Good Life

One of the most frightening episodes of Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” was the tale of Anthony, a 6-year-old boy with mental powers that allowed him to read other people’s minds and act on them with his thoughts. Anthony could turn a cat into a rug. He could make a rat devour itself until it […]

Turning Police Into Uber Drivers

Coming soon to Portland, Ore.: A touch of Baltimore ghetto. In 2019, Portland’s white progressives can bask in the glow of Jo Ann Hardesty’s dark brown skin and let it hide their own pale provincialism. These are people who love to bemoan Portland’s whiteness – but don’t have the guts to move some place where […]

A Good Shoot or Bad Shoot?

The loss of a life isn’t always tragic. Sometimes it makes perfect sense. Take John A. Elifritz, for instance. On his last day on earth in Portland, Ore., Elifritz, 48, acted like a man with a long criminal history and a meth habit. After several hours of threatening to cut his own throat, menacing other […]

A Tax Grab For the Neediest

Everybody’s still waiting for the man with a bag. We want stuff all year long, not only during the holidays. We all want more. We’ve got a trillion-dollar national deficit and personal credit card debt, also in the trillions, to show for it. One of the most whimsical – and saddest – sounds of America’s […]

High Hopes and Sad Realities

What would Jack and Jackie make of the street scene outside the Oregon Historical Society in Portland, Ore. where there’s currently an exhibit devoted to the 35th president of the United States? President Kennedy and the First Lady might be amused by the casual under-dressing in public, the exposed flesh and the tattoos. They would […]

Men and Their Kinks

The mistrial in Bill Cosby’s sexual abuse case was as anticlimactic as his performance in bed. What kind of man needs to drug a woman to have sex with her? Especially when the man is famous and rich? As the president of the United States could have told Cosby, when you’re a celebrity some women […]

Korean Lives Finally Matter

Two years after the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, a 24-year-old black man and a 17-year-old black male walked into a liquor store in San Bernardino, Calif., where a Korean immigrant named Bruce Suh worked behind the counter. They stuck a gun in Suh’s face and told him to lie face down on the […]

Political Hands Rock the Cradle

Life begins with somebody getting screwed. Sounds cynical, but that’s how it is. Who’s getting screwed by President Donald Trump’s decision to end federal funding to organizations that provide abortions? Women and children – and, yes, some men. It’s ironic that Trump’s signature on a law targeting Planned Parenthood funding came in April, which happens […]