he rode a blazing saddle

The internet is filled with opinions. There is a recent trend among posts on such micro-blogger sites as X and Threads as far as opinions are concerned. That is the concept of "unpopular opinion." Users preface their unpopular opinion posts with "Unpopular opinion, but..." and proceed to offer an opinion on a particular topic. "Unpopular," however, is a relative term, depending on the circles in which you travel. Statements like "Unpopular opinion but, mustard doesn't belong on any type of sandwich." are just looking for an argument. The ones that say things like "Unpopular opinion but, Charles Manson was an awful person" are just plain stupid. Opinions on things like television shows, movies, books or food are just opinions. They can only be labeled "popular" or "unpopular" depending on who is reading the statement. I have noticed that a lot of "unpopular" opinions reflect the way I feel. So, I will venture into the realm of "unpopular opinions" and register one of my own.

"Unpopular opinion but, I can't watch Blazing Saddles anymore."

I saw Blazing Saddles in its initial theatrical release. I went to the movies with my parents. It was six months before my 13th birthday. I was familiar with Mel Brooks and his brand of comedy. I loved watching Get Smart. I loved seeing Mel and then partner Carl Reiner play out their "2000 Year Old Man" act on the Ed Sullivan Show. I loved staying up to see Mel Brooks give a frenzied interview on The Tonight Show with  Johnny Carson. I got most of the jokes in The Producers, the first Mel Brooks movie I ever saw and one of my mom's favorites. But when Blazing Saddles hit the theaters, my dad couldn't wait to see it.

My dad was a proud racist. He watched All in the Family as though it was a documentary. He spewed out ethnic epithets as part of his normal everyday conversation. He spoke the notorious "N-word" the way some people say "good morning." That word popped up regularly in dinnertime conversation. My father often peppered his rundown of the day's activities with the "N-word" when describing interactions with customers at the supermarket at which he worked. Sporting events broadcast on television were cheered on by my father with phrases like "look at that 'N-word' run!" It was only as an adult that I realized that this was so grossly wrong and — in hindsight — it should have turned my stomach the way it does now.

My father didn't stop at African-Americans. His vitriol was hurled at Asians, Italians, those of Polish extraction, the Irish, Catholics and even Jews... despite the fact that we were Jewish! So, when my dad read the early reviews of Blazing Saddles, he couldn't wait to be a part of the experience. And when we saw the film... boy! oh boy! did my dad laugh. To be honest, everyone laughed.

Yes, yes... I fully understand that Blazing Saddles was written as biting satire. I know that Mel Brooks collaborated with Richard Pryor, a pioneer in controversial comedy and himself master of topical satire. I get that the way certain words and phrases in Blazing Saddles are used was very well thought out. The jokes are always at the expense of the bigoted ignorant characters. These characters are presented as too stupid to know they are stupid. Cleavon Little, as protagonist "Sheriff Bart," is intelligent and always outsmarts the brainless townspeople. I know that Richard Pryor encouraged Mel Brooks to employ the "N-word" in an effort to "tell the truth" about how racial prejudice functions as a brutal weapon in America. Mel Brooks fought with Warner Brothers over the inclusion of the word. Brooks, whose contract explicitly gave him final content control, stood his ground, making few and insignificant changes to the script.

I get all that. But in 2026, I cringe when I hear that word.

I am reminded of a time when that word was used in sitcoms that I watched. It was used on Sanford and Son, All in the Family and The Jeffersons. It was famously used in a skit on a first season episode of Saturday Night Live, where host Richard Pryor and cast member Chevy Chase played a very racially-charged game of Word Association. I am reminded of a time when that word rolled off my father's tongue like he was asking my brother to "pass the peas" at the dinner table. The use of that word, over time, tapered off on television to the point where now, it is audibly "bleeped" and appears as a line of asterisks in closed-captioning. 

This afternoon, Turner Classic Movies is showing a selection of Mel Brooks movies in honor of his 100th birthday. Wedged between Spaceballs and Young Frankenstein is Blazing Saddles.

Happy Birthday, Mel Brooks. I still can't bring myself to watch.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

sunday will never be the same

My dad liked things a certain way.

Just add sugar

He liked dinner as soon as he came home from work. (It had better be some kind of meat.) He liked a cigarette as soon as he got out of bed in the morning — even before be brushed his teeth or changed out of his pajamas. He liked to watch certain TV shows on certain nights. The FBI was a Sunday night staple. All in the Family (a show that my father viewed as a documentary) and Kojak were loyally tracked down and viewed on the various nights and timeslots in which they were broadcast throughout the lengths of their respective runs. In the morning, my dad liked a bowl of Kellogg's Corn Flakes with the sugar equivalent of six Hershey bars sprinkled liberally on top before the milk was added. (Why didn't he just eat Frosted Flakes? Two reasons. 1. My mom ate Frosted Flakes, therefore — in the mindset of Harold Pincus — it was a woman's cereal. 2. Those pre-sweetened flakes didn't have nearly enough sugar for his liking.) 

My dad was, by no means, an example of physical fitness. As far back as I can remember, his physique was that of someone smuggling a wok under his shirt. He got little to no exercise and smoked like a chimney. Despite this, before bed each and every evening, my dad would sit down at our kitchen table with a giant glass of chocolate milk and a Tastykake Chocolate Junior (two layers of golden cake cemented together with a rich helping of chocolate frosting and blanketed on top with more of the same) from a renowned local commercial bakery and — until recently — only available in the greater Philadelphia area. And he capped this pre-bedtime snack off with a couple more cigarettes to end his day.

Sunday mornings were something special, though. On Sunday mornings, instead of breakfast cereal poured from a box, my mom would cook breakfast. She'd fire up the stove and prepare scrambled eggs or pancakes or — if she was feeling particularly ambitious — French toast. But before my mom would pull a frying pan out of a cabinet, my dad would have to run his little Sunday morning ritual errand. He had to get donuts.

You know. Donuts.

? ? ? ? ?

See that picture at the very top of this blog post? Those — as far as I knew — were "donuts." If you went to the store to get eggs, you came home with a dozen little white things in a molded cardboard container formed to protect their fragile shells. Those were eggs. They could not be mistaken for anything else and they fit into  no other category. If you were tasked to go out and return with a baseball, you better come back bearing a nine-inch round, leather-clad sphere reinforced with 108 red stitches. Anything else would not be a baseball and you would have failed your mission. For young Josh Pincus, "donuts" were a specific thing. They were round, airy cake-like pockets stuffed with an overflowing abundance of viscous sugary jelly (Maybe grape, maybe raspberry. There was no real discernable fruit flavor.) and covered in a dense coating of clumpy powdered sugar, opaque enough to obscure any hint of yellow-gold pastry beneath. The jelly would seep out of a tiny hole at one end. To avoid getting squirted with jelly, you had to strategically place your first bite where that little "fill hole" was. That, my friend — and only that — was a donut. Those round things with a hole in the middle and covered with frosting and sprinkles? I didn't know what those were, but they sure weren't donuts. 

Free,
if you look like a girl.

On Sunday mornings, my dad would venture out to a nearby bakery to buy "donuts" and he would return with a plain white box sealed with several tight wrappings of twine. Once the twine was cut and the lid lifted, there were a dozen of those things I just described and they were donuts. On rare occasions, I would go with my dad to the bakery, where one of the stout Teutonic frauen would smile at me and offer a free cookie from their stock. "Isn't she cute?!?," they'd announce with an inflection reminiscent of Marlene Dietrich. That's right! "She!" My mid-1960s locks often led to being mistaken for a girl. But, I didn't correct them, fearing it would jeopardize this and any future free cookies. Munching my justifiably earned treat, I'd watch my dad point to the donuts in the case and instruct the Germanic abeiterin to fill a box with a dozen of them. I gazed at the other baked goods on display behind the glass-paneled cases. There were strudels, cupcakes and the giant tray of cookies from which my free one was chosen, along with other sugary bounty. Of course, there were those round things with frosting and sprinkles... but I didn't know what they were. I only knew we never brought them home. We came to get "donuts" and they — most definitely — were not donuts.

Admittedly, I was sheltered as a young child. The most influential people I came in contact with were my parents. But, as I got older, I began to notice things. Things I never really noticed before. I noticed that other kids' dads ate pizza. (My dad did not.) I noticed that other kids' dads drank Coca-Cola. (My dad did not.) I noticed that other kids' dads never used the same words my dad used for Asian people and Hispanic people and even that one he regularly used for black people. I eventually learned that those round things with the hole in the middle and covered with frosting and sprinkles were also donuts... just another variety. But they were donuts, just the same.

I learned a lot from my father. Most of what I learned, he didn't teach me.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

nazi punks fuck off

I think we can all agree that Nazis were awful. Following Germany's defeat in World War II and the discovery of the full extent of the Holocaust, Nazi ideology became universally disgraced and is widely regarded as immoral and evil.

Except by assholes like Steve Johnson.

Asshole.

Steve lives at 1041 Lindell Drive in El Sobrante, California, sixteen miles north of Oakland (and fuck him if he doesn't like the fact that I published his address). Recently, Steve installed a 10 foot by 10 foot black cement swastika in his front yard, not far from a flagpole on which the ol' Stars and Stripes waves proudly in the breeze coming off the San Francisco Bay. Steve's neighbors aren't so proud. As a matter of fact, they are overcome by concern and ire. A very short time after the installation was completed, local news outlets descended upon Steve Johnson's home, in search of his reason for making such a bold statement. The media, I'm sure, didn't just happen to stumble upon Steve's home renovation project by accident. Lindell Drive is not a major thoroughfare. The entire street only stretches a quarter-mile and dead-ends at another home's driveway, just behind the Pinole Vista Shopping Center – where a Sizzler Steakhouse still operates.. Obviously, one of Steve's justifiably outraged neighbors called the Bay Area newspaper The Mercury News.

Asshole's handiwork.

Reporters from the newspaper, as well as representatives from local TV stations, questioned Steve about his motivation for putting a Nazi symbol on display in front of his house. He gave wishy-washy answers that smacked of insincere innocence. He feigned misunderstanding when he countered an NBC-affiliate reporter's question with "What is a swastika?" He contained with: "It doesn’t represent anything. [It] represents me not having to pull weeds over in that part of my yard; that’s what it represents to me. What does it represent to you?"

His neighbors are furious, including one woman who has lived on Lindell Drive – near Steve – for 27 years. The neighbor, who is Jewish and rightly horrified and offended by Steve's display, said, "I was very clear with him about my feelings. I don’t agree with it. I think it’s wrong. I don’t like it, but it is his yard." She also noted that he had never done anything like this in the past.

Aerial view of an asshole's house.

But, Steve keeps changing his story. He told another reporter that it was a symbol of peace and tranquility from ancient Tibet. When asked if he was, indeed, Tibetan, Steve replied rather cavalierly, "Maybe I am."

Then suddenly, Steve gained some sort of new found knowledge about the history and significance of the symbol. However, he took a decidedly dismissive tone, when he said, "The Nazi stuff happened 80 years ago. Get over it." When a reporter pointed out a swastika sticker affixed to his motorcycle, Steve abruptly ended the conversation and ordered the media off of his property.

This is 2019. In the United States. Land of the free and home of the brave. Where any red-blooded American can grow up to be an asshole.

www.joshpincusisrying.com

the right profile

I'm gonna try to write this without editorializing. I will try to just report the events that happened without commentary. My goal is to allow you — the reader — to draw your own conclusion. This may be difficult, but I will do my best.

My wife and her father recently went to pick up a few things at a store called PJP Marketplace, a branch of which is not too far from our home. According to their website, PJP Marketplace is a local chain of "open to the public" stores that "stocks everything you need to run your foodservice establishment." They sell a wide variety of kitchen-y things from fresh and frozen food to utensils and serving pieces all the way up to commercial scales and equipment. Mrs. P and her father were looking for a large quantity of plastic quart containers in which to store the unnecessarily voluminous amounts of soup that my mother-in-law prepares for the upcoming Passover holiday. (Oops! I think I just editorialized. I'll try to watch myself.) They were also looking to buy similarly packaged disposable foil pans for the same aforementioned (and again questionable) purpose (Ugh! There I go again!)


This particular PJP Marketplace is located in a predominately Hispanic neighborhood just over the suburban boundary of Philadelphia. Most — if not all — of the clientele and employees are Hispanic. That is not an observation. That is a fact. My wife and my father-in-law are both Caucasian. That is also a fact.

After finding a parking spot, they grabbed a shopping cart and entered the store. They made their selections and filled their cart, then headed towards the checkout area near the front of the store. They got into one of the many checkout queues, all of which were surprisingly lengthy. A cashier was setting up behind one of the currently-closed lanes, obviously preparing to open up and relieve some of the congestion. When she finished reconciling the money in her cash register's till, she looked up and scanned the long lines, seemingly perusing her choices for who would be her first customer. She pointed to a man in line behind my wife and father-in-law. He was Hispanic. She motioned the man forward, despite the fact that my wife and father-in-law were next in line. She appeared to look right past — or through — them. (Hmmmm.... that may be borderline editorializing. Strike that from the record, please.) The man walked around my wife and father-in-law and was the first customer in the new checkout line. Mrs. P and her father waited patiently in their own line and, within less than a minute, they were placing their items on the conveyor belt for purchase.

After making payment, they gathered up their bagged purchases and made their way to the exit. At the exit, however, a man was stopping each and every customer to carefully and thoroughly check each and every receipt. The man took each receipt and, with a yellow highlighter pen, checked off each item on the paper once he identified it to be paid and in the customer's possession. He also appeared to be giving each customer an accusatory "once over."  When Mrs. P and her father came up to the man with their bag and receipt ready to be reviewed, he smiled and waved them on. "You folks can go ahead." he said, without even taking the receipt from my wife's hand.

That's it. That's my story. Draw your own conclusion.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

keep 'em separated

The events of this past week made me sad and angry. I began to think of how I was raised. I was raised to treat everyone with equal respect, regardless of race or religion. That came from my mother, a wise, progressive and open-minded woman. What she was doing with my narrow-minded, bigoted father is beyond me. Regardless, I am a product of those polar opposites. Luckily for me, I took to my mother's way of thinking.

My mother passed away in 1991. The events of this past week would have made her sad and angry, too.

Here's a story about my mother that is just as relevant now as when it actually happened in 1959. It makes me happy.

My mother's parents ran an antique store not far from their home at Fourth and Spruce Streets in Philadelphia. In the summer months, they operated a bath house on the boardwalk in the seaside resort of Wildwood, New Jersey. In addition, eighteen years separated my mother from her oldest sibling. Needless to say, "family time" was a rare event. While the three older brothers were out doing "adult things," my mother and her older sister were left in the very capable hands of Minnie Ellis, or as my mother affectionately called her "My Minnie." Minnie was technically "the housekeeper", but she was much, much more. She was cook, baby-sitter, playmate, disciplinarian, teacher and friend. With my grandparents' overwhelming responsibilities of running one business (and five months out of the year, two businesses), Minnie was the perfect parental supplement. She earned the love and respect of my mother and her family, so much so, that she was viewed as part of the family herself.

One day, my mother at around eight or nine years old, arrived home after school. She found Minnie in the kitchen preparing that evening's meal. My mother spoke right up and caught Minnie by surprise.

"You're black," my mother said.

"Am I?," answered Minnie, not at all flustered by my young mother's assertion, "Who told you that?"

"A boy at school. He said that you're black and I'm white.," my mother continued.

Minnie produced a bleached white, cotton dishcloth and draped it across my mother's arm. "Hmmm," she began and stroked her chin, "this rag is white and you don't look white. You look pink to me." 

Then Minnie took off one of her shoes and aligned it with her own arm. She continued, "I sure don't look like the color of this black shoe. I look brown."

My mother observed the demonstration and understood Minnie's message of how ridiculous the statement was. She momentarily felt ashamed, but then hugged and kissed Minnie and went on her way.

Years later, when my parents were dating, my mother met her future in-laws. My paternal grandparents were two textbook bigots, pure and simple in their ignorance and disdain for all people who they saw as "different." After my parents' wedding and brief honeymoon, they visited my father's parents for the first time as husband and wife. Over dinner, they talked about the wedding and the guests. Then, my grandfather — my mother's new father-in-law — said to my mother, "How could you bring yourself to kiss that..." and he used a horrible word, one that was at one time excised from copies of Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer  but features prominently in the lyrics of many current rap songs. A word that is euphemistically known as "The N Word." A word that made my mother cringe and nearly throw up. She looked at her father-in-law, staring at him with eyes like twin lasers, and through clenched teeth, slowly and deliberately seethed, "Don't you ever speak about 'My Minnie' that way. Ever!" She pronounced each syllable as though each one was its own word. My grandfather, that ignorant man, got the point loud and clear. My mother had little to say to him (but plenty to say about him) for the remaining fifteen years of his life.

In 1959, two years before I was born, my parents and my brother drove to Miami, Florida for a vacation. They loaded their packed suitcases and traveling provisions into my father's brand new orange and white, tail-finned sedan and made their way South on Route 1. (For years, my mother joked that my brother stood up in the back seat for the entire trip.) The journey predated the sleek concrete highways of Interstate I-95. Route 1 snaked though tiny, quaint burgs along the eastern seaboard. The pre-Josh  Pincus Family eagerly sampled the simple offerings of a culture that moved at a slower pace from the big-city bustle of Philadelphia. One afternoon, they pulled the car into Jessup, Georgia, as my mother was intrigued by the promise of authentic Southern cooking advertised on a sign several miles back. Since the area of commerce was fairly small, locating the eatery was easy and the Pincuses went in and prepared for a Dixie feast. According to my mother's recollections, the "authentic" Southern cuisine consisted of small, dried-out pieces of chicken, canned vegetables and Pillsbury biscuits (recognized by Mom since she had made them countless times herself). During the meal, a large spider descended from the ceiling on a single strand of web and wiggled its many legs just inches from my mother's nose.

Her appetite ruined, my mom sought salvation in the fresh air. My father unhappily paid the tab and followed my mother and brother to a gas station across the street. Figuring he'd fill the tank, he parked the car adjacent to one of the pumps and asked the attendant to "fill 'er up". My mother spotted a water fountain by the station's office and felt a cleansing drink would wash away the remnants of the awful lunch. She pressed the button on the spout and leaned down, bringing her lips closer to the stream of water. Suddenly, a scream pierced the air.

"What are you doing???" A windburned man in overalls was rushing out of the office and yelling at my mother in a dry Southern accent.

"What am I doing?," she asked, bewildered, "I'm getting a drink."

The man pointed to the base of the fountain, specifically to two lines of words stenciled on the front. "That's for colored only," he said.

My mother stepped back and — sure enough — in large white letters, the words "Colored Only" were painted on the tank, reinforcing the same angry, hateful directive that the gas station man initiated. My mother was horrified. Horrified that this situation existed in her world. She said nothing as the man watched her back away from the fountain. She joined her family in the car and sat silently in the passenger's seat for a good portion of the drive.

These incidents stayed with my mother her entire life and she related these stories quite often as lessons to my brother and me. The most important lesson my mother taught me was not to waste time giving an audience to stupidity.

This story originally appeared on my illustration blog in 2011.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

vote for me and I'll set you free

Please forgive the rambling nature of this post. I mean more rambling than usual. I wrote this mostly for my own relief, as a carthasis after what I can only describe as a harrowing night. — JPiC

I voted in ten presidential elections and only picked the winner twice. But, honestly, a change in president has only affected my life — my personal life — once. Sure, there have been taxes and inflation, but those things would have occurred no matter who became president. You see, in 1981 under the Carter administration, I was enrolled in a four-year art school on a full, government grant for my first year. Therefore, in the first election in which I was eligible to vote, I cast my ballot for Mr. Carter for purely selfish reasons. He got trounced by Ronald Reagan, who proceeded to take the funds set aside for my art career and use them to purchase a bomb to blow up the Commie that was hiding under America's bed. With no support or encouragement from my parents, at 20 years old, I wandered into a bank and arranged for a student loan to cover my tuition for the next school year. I repeated the procedure a few more times until I graduated. I incurred a debt that I paid off, in monthly installments, over the course of ten years. So, aside from writing a check every month for $81.00, someone new in The White House really hasn't caused any upheaval in my life.

I admit I was a bit wary when Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992. After all, he was a young, cool guy who wore Blues Brothers shades and played the saxophone on late-night television. He was undeniably different from the forty-one stuffy men that preceded him. Those guys — the Reagans and the Nixons and the Eisenhowers — were my Dad's candidates. They were stiff, rehearsed, humorless guys whose dour visages would look right at home in the center of a piece of currency. But, Bill Clinton had a mischievous smile and a ton of charisma. He was both relaxed and commanding and, with a booming economy, he made the country feel comfortable. However, it was after Clinton's second-term win — when he defeated Bob Dole — that, I believe, things started to go to shit. Bob Dole was the ultimate sore loser. It was uncomfortable to watch Dole's "He's not my president!" behavior. But, again, it really didn't affect my day-to-day life. I still went to work. I was more concerned with the well-being of my family and, as always, just figured politics and the country would take care of itself... as selfish as that may seem.

I watched eight years of a George W. Bush presidency that evoked the good ol' backward-thinking Republican ways of my narrow-minded father and my narrower-minded grandmother. I saw the beginnings of a military conflict that was right out of the pages of George Orwell's 1984 — a battle against an unclear adversary that still rages on to this day. But, again, since a military draft had not been reinstated (besides, there was a huge amount of young men anxious to serve) and, since I was too old and my son was too young for military service, this, too, did not really affect my life on a personal level.

When Barack Obama became president, I truly believed that we had finally broken though and shaken off the clutches of the "old guard." By "old guard," of course I mean the government run by my father's old-white-guy Republican party. I figured that since, finally!, the President of the United States was a guy my own age (President Obama is exactly one week, to the day, older than I am), I was now part of the majority in the country and the president, as it had always been, was a reflection of the majority.

On Tuesday night — Election Night — I watched, in disbelief, as the progressive, visionary America that I saw blossom over the past eight years crumbled under a venomous blanket of hate, bigotry, xenophobia and unfounded fear. There was regular evidence that racism and hatred was alive and well in our country, but I was shocked that it has been allowed to be brought to the forefront by a bullying, prejudiced, uninformed, misogynist con artist. Like the Piper Piper of Hamelin, he played the right notes and stirred up the vermin that was hidden under the rocks and in the dirt. They followed his lead and they heard what they wanted to hear, ignoring the parts they didn't understand or didn't want to examine more closely. Say what you will about Mr. Trump, but the guy knows marketing. He successfully peddled his brand — a smoke-and-mirrors brand of gold-covered shit — and the right people bought it and happily ate it up.

And now the piper will be the next president, undoing everything that was accomplished over the past decade. I am thoroughly disappointed in my country.

Once again, the outcome of a presidential election may not affect me personally, but it will affect a great many people in this country — people of color, Latinos, Muslims, members of the LGBTQ community, women, immigrants, the disabled. Over the past eight years, I have met and become close to people that fall into those categories and it makes me sad for them. So, I take it back. This presidential election has affected me. In my effort to become less selfish, the results of this election makes me feel sorrow, anguish and fear on behalf of some people that I love.

Plus, it makes me embarrassed in front of the rest of the world.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

why don't you hate who I hate

If you want to pick a sports figure as an inspiration and a role model, Serena Williams is a pretty good choice. On Saturday, Miss Williams won the French Open, the latest achievement in her illustrious, title-filled twenty-year career. Making her debut at the tender age of 14, Miss Williams fought hard to emerge as a true champion in the field of professional tennis, maintaining her ability and competitive edge into an age when most of her contemporaries have retired. So how did the judgmental world of social media congratulate Miss Williams on her latest victory? Well, some took to Twitter to call her "disgusting" and "manly." Others expressed more vicious sentiment, some with a decidedly racist tone. Miss Williams has been on the receiving end of sexist and racist slurs her entire career.

On the same Saturday, Mrs. Pincus and I attended a wedding. Aside from the bride and her parents, we didn't know any other guests. After a lovely and traditional ceremony in an historic rural church, we gathered at the outdoor pavilion of a nearby country club for the celebratory reception. Amid the open seating, Mrs. P and I chose an empty picnic table and chatted and watched as other guests filed in. A couple, slightly older than my wife and me, approached and asked to join us. We smiled, offering a gesture of welcome. As we enjoyed our dinner, we made informal small talk with the couple, touching on the usual subjects of jobs, relationship to the bride, the weather and travel. We mentioned that we had just returned from a cruise. We spoke briefly about our trip before they began tell us of a cross-country drive that they recently took. The gentleman spoke about some of the unusual things they encountered and happily reported (with a sardonic tone) about a hotel they visited that was — and I quote a man that we had only met twenty minutes prior — "filled with blacks." My wife and I were silently horrified.

My son is a disc jockey on a local Philadelphia radio station. In addition to other responsibilities, he hosts an all-request show every Saturday afternoon. In the current age of technology, requests are submitted via Twitter, Facebook and email, as well as the good ol' telephone. On this very same Saturday, he received a call by way of Katie, the young lady who sometimes answers the phone for him. A woman phoned to ask: "The guy that's on the radio right now... Is it E. Pincus?" Katie, the phone-answerer, replied, "Yes." The caller continued the line of questioning. "Is that his real name? Or is it a name he uses just for the radio?" Having no clue where this inquisition was headed, Katie answered, "That is his real name. Is there a song you'd like to hear?" She tried to get the caller back on track. But, the caller persisted, "Is he Jewish or does that question make me a bigot?" Katie immediately disconnected the call and shook her head in disbelief.

My friend Randi works for the local office of the Anti-Defamation League. She often organizes and facilitates in-person seminars about tolerance. Her presentations discuss bullying, antisemitism, racism and other topics to help educate the uneducated. She travels city-wide, to schools, to youth groups, to senior centers — anywhere that is willing to assemble an audience and willing to open their minds. Whenever I see Randi I tell her that, based on what I regularly witness, she will have job security for a long, long time.

I can't wait to tell her about Saturday.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

fight the power

It was all over the internet, and by "internet," I mean Facebook. You saw it. Everybody saw it. Guido Barilla, the 55-year-old chairman of the Barilla Pasta Company, one of the largest pasta manufacturers in the world, gave an interview on the Italian radio show La Zanzara. During the interview, Mr. Barilla, placed his semolina-encrusted foot in his mouth, and stated, "We won’t include gays in our ads, because we like the traditional family. If gays don’t like it, they can always eat another brand of pasta."

Holy shit, Mr. Barilla! Did you celebrate this narrow-minded proclamation by treating yourself to lunch at Chick-fil-A?

My wife numbered herself among those offended nationwide. Even though the Barilla Company exercised a little (very little) damage control by tweeting this message late in the day:

it was too late. Mrs. Pincus was incensed. She ransacked our kitchen cupboard searching for boxes of the insular pasta. Shoving several cans of soup aside, she extracted a single box of rotini emblazoned with the Barilla name. She then called her mother and explained Mr. Barilla's newly-revealed agenda. Mrs. P said she was coming over to take all of their Barilla products back to the supermarket. My wife was livid and on a mission.

Minutes later, we were raiding my in-laws' pantry. We succeeded in finding four boxes of the bigoted noodles. We headed out to our local Acme Market to take a stand.

We parked our car and stomped across the lot with a vengeance, a plastic shopping bag of Barilla pasta in hand. We burst through the doors and beat a path straight to the Customer Service area. Mrs. P was ready to give an earful when asked "Reason for return?" She planned to launch into a tirade about equal rights, human decency, prejudice, poor business practices, alienating customers, antiquated beliefs and anything else she could think of.

However, this evening's customer service was being offered by a disinterested young lady who was absent-mindedly poking at the lottery machine. As my wife approached, the young lady looked up with heavy-lidded eyes and asked, "Can I help you?" Forming the words seemed like an effort. 

Mrs. P sunk. Her proposed lecture crumbled, stifled before it began. The young lady obviously didn't give a shit. About anything. My wife pushed the five boxes of pasta in the young lady's direction and said "I'd like to return these." And the conversation ground to an abrupt halt. The young lady scanned the items one-by-one and silently issued us a store credit for five dollars.

As we left the store, a dejected Mrs. P turned to me and said, "I guess they don't have a separate line for politically-charged returns." 

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