Magazine veteran.

New York
Joined April 2009
Michael, you are baring your heart in the way that some (of us) did in journals after a catastrophic loss. you might read Jonathan Santlofer's heartrending but excellent "A Widower's Notes." few widowers tell any story at all let alone such a powerful one. (Jonathan & I wrote our grief memoirs at the same time & often have appeared together in bookstores discussing them. mine is "A Widow's Story." our stories are unique but also universal, sadly. these losses are everywhere & seem now most vividly painful in a fragmented society.)
GRIEF MUST BE WITNESSED by Michael Whelan Sometimes I wonder if I have enough years left in my own life to learn how to carry this painful grief. Please Don't Ask Me to Be Strong. Just Sit With Me. One of the loneliest things about losing Rebecca is discovering that the world can keep spinning while mine lies in pieces on the kitchen floor. People ask how I’m doing. I understand the kindness behind the question. But how do you explain that the woman who was the grammar of your life is gone? That sometimes I turn toward an empty room to tell her something, and for one glorious, merciless second, I forget she is dead? I don't need anyone to fix this. There is no repairman for a shattered marriage of two people when one of them has died. I don't need a lecture about gratitude, strength, or how lucky I was to have loved her. I know. God, I know. That's precisely why this hurts. I need witnesses. Someone willing to hear her name without changing the subject. Someone who can sit across from me while I say the terrible things grief makes you think and not rush to clean them up. Someone who understands that I can laugh at noon and be on my knees by dusk, and neither version of me is pretending. I watched Parkinson's and dementia take pieces of Rebecca long before death took the rest. I learned how to keep her safe, how to read a face when words betrayed her, how to be brave with my hands while terror was eating me alive. And when caregiving ended, everyone saw a man who had survived. They didn't see a husband whose purpose had vanished in the same moment as his wife. Some evenings the silence isn't quiet. It has weight. It sits beside me at dinner. It follows me into bed. It wears her absence like perfume. Please don't tell me to move on. Don't mistake my ability to write about pain for proof that I've mastered it. Come sit with me. Ask me about Rebecca. Let me fall apart without trying to make it beautiful. Because grief kept hidden becomes another kind of loneliness. And love this enormous deserves something more than polite silence. It deserves to be witnessed. @mariashriver
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Sacha Baron Cohen on suspicion that the calls for a boycott of his new film, 'Ali G: Who Iz I?,' are tied to his past support of Israel: "Well, I haven’t said anything about Israel. I think people are being portrayed as things that they are not on social media and it’s problematic. We are in a world where people can’t distinguish between facts and lies, and that’s something that I’ve spent a lot of the last few years trying to fix. For example, I co-founded a group called Stop Hate for Profit with the NAACP and Color of Change and the ADL and certain other civil rights groups to stop the misinformation and incitement of racism on social media. So, I’m not surprised that prominent Jews are being targeted. I knew that this was going to happen. The level of organization is surprising, but this is a trend of Jews being portrayed in certain ways and trying to be silenced." bit.ly/4BpPgkz
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Carl Rosen retweeted
Many magazines and newspapers have long kept a list of words for their writers to avoid, including clichés, overused trendy language, and words with ambiguous meanings. So how did “iconic,” “-maxxing,” and “not my first rodeo” end up on our “banned”-words list? Our copy chief, Carl Rosen, will unpack this for you in ‘Queries,’ his newsletter about language and grammar. Sign up here: nymag.visitlink.me/8iL-Kn
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Hasan: "What do you call Crimea? I call it a part of Russian territory, bitch. That's what I call Crimea. I call it cry me a river. A Russian river."
Hasan claims he was "incredibly critical of Russia's invasion" and that Russia is as bad as the U.S.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
"What do you call Crimea? I call it a part of Russian territory, bitch. That's what I call Crimea. I call it cry me a river. A Russian river." - Hasan Piker, Feb. 15, 2022 "Crimea is an annexation that is, in my opinion, justifiable." - Hasan Piker, Feb. 17, 2022 youtu.be/1xe0yR55s8s?t=… youtu.be/YhF-10IQkeI?t=… salon.com/2026/05/02/dem… youtube.com/watch?v=BCl-u_… x.com/vatniksoup/sta… washingtonpost.com/video-games/20… vox.com/politics/48609…
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Abdul El-Sayed's response to long wait times due to his government-run healthcare plan? "sucks for them" Seriously. That's what he said. Your wait times will go up. Your taxes will go up. The quality of your care will go down. Abdul doesn't care.
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Carl Rosen retweeted
What happened to me: I was invited by the Israeli embassy to Israel because of my advocacy and went from 8-15 June last year. A prevent referral was made because I was “over identified” with Israel (bought bagels and hummus that week) The paperwork sent with my redacted SAR shows that they had rightly said there was no legal reason to investigate me since going to Israel isn’t a terrorist act and caring about Jews isn’t worthy of investigation. On 23 June my NHS records were changed to declare me a vulnerable adult which is someone with cognitive impairment who by virtue of their severe impairments is at risk of coercion and exploitation. The implication being that the Israelis were exploiting me. This was done without my knowledge and with no assessment or evaluation. My NHS GP records were then made unavailable to me. This label was removed on 18 May this year also without my knowledge or any assessment. The prevent people came to my door and asked me about my trip to Israel and whether I’d ever visited Auschwitz, they asked who I knew in Israel and whether I’d ever return. The reason they could do that and look into me is because they’d designated me an incompetent and the reason they could do that is because I have what used to be known as Asperger’s and (real, not the modern variant) ADHD. They used my health issues to make me medically vulnerable in order to investigate me for legally travelling to Israel on an embassy visit because I thought killing 1200 innocent people in the name of a KGB inspired propaganda creation “Operation SIG” was wrong. The fact I had longstanding friendships with Jewish people and would help anyone didn’t matter. I have been labelled an incompetent by the state in order to allow monitoring by prevent because I support Israel. When I did the 7.10 speech at the JSOC at Durham University two uniformed police attended to monitor the event for hate speech. It was a memorial to murdered people, I was honouring THEM. I find it all disturbing and terrifying. It wouldn’t be so bad if I had not for my entire life been treated like scum by teachers, doctors, midwives and the state because I have Asperger’s and a chronic pain condition. The truth is I’m a highly competent woman who has always managed genuine health challenges with resilience and determination and I am affronted by the state thinking they can just label me mentally incompetent because I’m a Zionist. I found this out by accident. As I said my GP notes have been made unavailable to me but I’ve put in requests and complaints to all the relevant organisations because you cannot use my personal data maliciously in order to target me for caring about Jews and Israel. Zionism is a protected philosophical belief and I am a Holocaust scholar. You cannot on one hand have psychological reports from 2021 showing I have verbal reasoning and logical reasoning in the gifted range and call me a mental incompetent. This is political targeting and I will not go quietly into that good night and eat my paste like a placid subject. You’ve done me dirty and I’m deeply aggrieved. The harm that has been done to me over decades by the services meant to protect citizens is a disgrace. I am a good woman. I am never hateful, I am not incompetent and I will not stop using facts to counter lies. If you want me to go away then pay for me to leave the country
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Carl Rosen retweeted
So yeah, the Democrats nominated a race scientist who studied the hazards of Arab outgroup mating, with family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, for Senate. Will Michigan voters elect him?
Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s scientific research is…odd. Arab mothers who engage in “interethnic mating” have worse birth outcomes than those who mate with Arab men? Also: Genetics, black race, and interracial mating? Why research this?  WTF?
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The biggest foreign policy achievement of Russia since the Russian Revolution was the election of Donald Trump.
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Carl Rosen retweeted
🚨 I’ve been warning about this “professor” for years. In two days, on October 14... University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, sister of Abdul El-Sayed, is scheduled to appear in Cook County court on two felony counts of aggravated battery and two misdemeanor counts of resisting arrest. In October of 2025, she attended an anti-ICE protest at the Broadview ICE Detention Center outside of Chicago. After screaming her brains out and accusing the police of being Nazis, she grew violent and repeatedly spit on police officers and federal agents. She also sought to have the white judge removed from her case, alleging racial bias and claiming she couldn't receive a fair trial. 😂 Despite Abdul El-Sayed’s denials of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, his big-mouthed sister has publicly discussed her family’s history with the dangerous Islamist organization, including their mother’s activism during the 1970s. Terror support runs in this family. On the morning of the October 7 slaughters, the professor celebrated online by tweeting, “Good morning, freedom.” After the massacres, she began calling for violent student uprisings on the streets of America: “Let Palestine break this country wide open. Long live the student intifada.” Her social media is flooded with antisemitic garbage, anti-American propaganda, and littered with support for Hamas and Marxism. If Abdul El-Sayed wins the Senate seat in November, Professor Abdelhadi will have powerful access and influence to a U.S. senator, who is her brother. "F*CK the University of Chicago. I work at one of the biggest employers in Chicago. A place with thousands of people I could potentially organize. This is where I need to build power." @EDSecMcMahon @SecScottBessent @FBI H/T @LauraLoomer
This is Abdul El-Sayed’s sister. @kwelkernbc let Abdul lie his ass off during their interview yesterday when Abdul said he and his family have zero ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
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BREAKING: This new ad outlines where Abdul's money is actually coming from. Money out of politics unless it’s from corporate PACs and Islamic groups. Abdul is a liar and a fraud.
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Wow… Abdul’s sister rails against capitalism and even the school she works for, U Chicago, because she wants political power. "F*** UChicago... but it’s my best shot at power." Sound familiar?
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I know Abdul well as a result of my own 2018 governor run. His response to me pointing out his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood at a May 2018 gubernatorial forum before 150 members of the MI Press Association was to say to me “You may not hate Muslims, but Muslims definitely hate you”. youtu.be/4IGYP6_YxrY(Last 0:30) Here a "starter's kit" of Abdul's ties to the Muslim Brotherhood: Abdul signed a petition of support for the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Mohammed Morsi (See attached). Abdul was VP of Muslim Students Association at the University of Michigan michigandaily.com/uncategori… Muslim Students Association Pledge: "Jihad is my spirt...I will die to establish Islam" youtube.com/watch?v=wRNCYRBB… Muslim Brotherhood in America Strategic Plan: Explanatory Memorandum shows that Muslim Students Association is a "friendly" organization archive.org/details/explanat… Designation of Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization whitehouse.gov/presidential-… Plus, significant financial ties to Muslim Brotherhood aligned organizations such as CAIR. @seanhannity
NBC: “Can you set the record straight about whether you or your family have any ties to the Muslim Brotherhood?” Abdul El-Sayed: “No.”
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Chait goes to the heart of what’s dangerous about Piker: not his language but his commitment to the century-old communist strategy of subversion. His stated intent is to take over the Democratic Party and then like some parasite leave it as a dead husk, replacing it with the kind of authoritarian communist/socialist regime he openly admires: China, North Korea, Cuba, the Soviet Union. Like his forebears going back to Lenin and Castro he explicitly does not believe in democracy - except as a temporary means to power. theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1…
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We were the first to call on Democrats to reject Hasan Piker. We have taken an immense amount of grief for that, as have allies like @shannonrwatts and @neeratanden. But we are right, as Jonathan Chait makes crystal clear in this must-read piece.
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BREAKING: Mike Rogers just put a new ad out detailing the terrorist connections that Abdul El Sayed has. These are shocking…
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As I prepared for the interview by researching his commentary, I realized that Piker is right to complain that the handful of frequently repeated controversial statements fail to accurately represent his worldview. In fact, it’s much worse than those quotes suggest. theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1…
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Carl Rosen retweeted
The WSJ is out with a list of the big donors funding the far left and the anti-Israel movement: ➡️Mohammad Waqas ➡️Omer Hasan ➡️Sam Mahrouq ➡️Afaq Ahmed ➡️Idris Mokhtarzada ➡️Nasser Barghouti ➡️Nazar Khan ➡️Moiz Ali ➡️Mehak Jamil ➡️Haroon Mokhtarzada
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She is literally complicit in the #UyghurGenocide. Please have her lift her diplomatic immunity so victims of that genocide can sue. I kept receipts.
The #NobelPeacePrize for 2026 goes to a person who with exceptional courage and integrity has led the way towards a more comprehensive global legal order. This year’s laureate Navi Pillay has been instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted. #NobelPrize
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Kasparov: Ukraine is under the heaviest bombardment one can imagine. On CNN you see Gaza, Gaza, Gaza. If Israel did to Gaza for 24 hours what Putin does to Ukraine, there would be no Gaza. Russia's bombing of Ukraine is much worse than carpet bombing. 1/
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Carl Rosen retweeted
Maybe next year they’ll give the Chemistry prize to a Hamas bomb maker.
The Nobel committee chair says they have "great faith" in Navi Pillay's integrity, but whether the Hamas-Israel war can be called a genocide is for the ICJ to decide, not them. Then why give the Peace Prize to the person whose commission already decided it, with no authority to do so? This is the same Navi Pillay who: 🚩 Signed a 2020 statement calling on governments to "Sanction Israel," then was appointed a year later to chair the UN inquiry into Israel without disclosing it 🚩 Defended a fellow commissioner who said social media is "controlled largely by the Jewish lobby," calling him "deliberately misquoted." He later apologized for his antisemitism himself 🚩 Ran the 2009 Durban conference that Ahmadinejad opened with an antisemitic speech, after dismissing Jewish groups' warnings as a "lobbying campaign" 🚩 Criticized the US in 2014 for funding Iron Dome to protect Israeli civilians from rockets, with no mention of Hamas firing them They handed her the world's most famous honour two days after the October 7 anniversary and then said they're not taking a position on what she's known for. So what do they mean by "peace"?
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