ArcaMax

Joe Gutman, the son of Holocaust survivors, grew up in Rogers Park with his parents but his extended family stretched through the community, a patchwork collection of other Jewish refugees who found each other in Chicago.

By coming together here, they formed something new: a family bound by loss not blood, unified by a commitment to live good ...Read more

Veronica Wolski was a believer in the deeply unhinged QAnon conspiracy theory. When it came to COVID-19, she was anti-vaccine and anti-mask, at one point standing on a pedestrian bridge over Chicago's Kennedy Expressway with a sign that read “Ax the vax.” She became a darling in the dark fringes of the internet for believing ivermectin, a ...Read more

Now listen, I’m just a mild-mannered Midwestern newspaper columnist, but after watching what happened in the California gubernatorial recall election, my manners are feeling less than mild.

We learned Tuesday night that folks in the Golden State voted overwhelmingly to keep Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in office. Once the degree of butt-...Read more

Great news, folks. I have it on good authority that “Real America” is done with COVID-19!

It’s a huge relief to know the pandemic is over for real Americans. The people currently getting sick and filling up hospital ICUs and dying by the thousands are apparently not real Americans, which I guess means we real Americans shouldn’t care, ...Read more

While many are focused on the new abortion law in Texas, which includes a $10,000 incentive for citizens to sue anyone they suspect is “aiding and abetting” an abortion, a significant American problem is being overlooked: witches.

That’s why I come before you today to present the Federal Witchcraft Prevention Act, a piece of legislation ...Read more

As we approached President Joe Biden’s deadline for withdrawing U.S. military forces from a two-decade war in Afghanistan, Americans learned that virtually everyone with a social media account or platform of any sort is an undiscovered expert on military strategy and diplomacy.

The fog of war was supplanted by the smoke screen of jibber-...Read more

I have bad news for the willfully unvaccinated: COVID-19 vaccine mandates are coming, and your world is about to shrink to the size of a tweet.

Vaccine mandates, with medical and religious exemptions, had been popping up at companies and universities even before the FDA granted full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine this week....Read more

As a VERY IMPORTANT voice in the American pundit-sphere, I would like to apologize for not offering a near-instantaneous opinion on President Joe Biden’s handling of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Under the rules by which modern-day opinion-havers are bound, the moment the situation in Afghanistan became chaotic, I had two ...Read more

I, for one, applaud Chicago officials for reinstating the city’s indoor mask mandate.

First off, as a person who struggles with IFH (Intense Face Handsomeness), I’ve long hated walking around with my visage fully exposed. It cuts into the profits at my subscription website HotHuppkeFace.com. (It’s a “Why buy the cow when you can get the...Read more

As COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths rise again across the country, there rests, on the tips of many vaccinated Americans’ tongues, an exasperated rant waiting to be set free.

It’s a rant those who have followed the rules, the science and common sense wish to direct at those willfully refusing the safe and effective ...Read more

I wish there was a way to roll a violent Chicago weekend backward, to rewind it like a film, to watch the bullets fly back into the guns that fired them and then, bit by bit, edit out the tragedies.

Chicago police Officer Ella French should be alive. Her partner should not be hospitalized in critical condition. If only we could reverse that ...Read more

After minutes of careful sociological research, I’ve discovered the reason many Americans still refuse to get the free, safe and wildly effective COVID-19 vaccine: It can’t be eaten.

To date, the vaccine is only available in liquid form, delivered (or served) via needle. That is both unpalatable and not in keeping with the American ...Read more

Through one of my well-placed (and possibly imaginary) sources, I have received this VERY NOT MADE UP text of a speech delivered this week during a Zoom meeting attended by thousands of Republican lawmakers and right-wing pundits:

Hi, everyone, and welcome to today’s GOP Talking-Point Response Planning session. Hail Trump!

(...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — It’s Sunday and there’s a respectful silence at George Floyd Square, as if people’s voices are pressed down to whispers by the gravity of the signs, the colorful murals, the pain-laden poems, the candles and flowers and the spot outside the Cup Foods store where a man’s murder under the knee of a police officer sparked a ...Read more

More than 250 bills seeking to limit the rights of LGBT people have been brought up or passed in state legislatures across the country this year.

Many target transgender youth by limiting access to gender-affirming medical care or prohibiting participation in school sports. Some seek to bar transgender people from restrooms consistent with ...Read more

As he faced the Dawn of Consequences, Paul Allard Hodgkins, a 38-year-old Florida man who carried a “Trump 2020” flag on the floor of the U.S. Senate during the Jan. 6 domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol, stood up in a federal courtroom and told the truth:

“I completely acknowledge and accept that Joseph R. Biden Jr. is rightfully ...Read more

These recent headlines tell the story of a crime:

“COVID-19 infections are rising again in parts of Illinois.”

“US COVID-19 cases rising again, doubling over three weeks.”

“Covid-19 cases are surging in 46 states.”

Hospital beds in Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama and a number of other states are again filling up with COVID-19 ...Read more

We need to talk about rich people traveling into space.

On Sunday, Virgin Galactic founder and large-amounts-of-money-having human Richard Branson rode his own rocket to the edge of space, soaring more than 50 miles above the planet then descending without jettisoning billions of dollars in cash to the people below, many of whom face food ...Read more

The following missive was transmitted to me via airborne droplets. It claims to be from “a very happy coronavirus.” I have verified its authenticity via a polymerase chain reaction assay or, in this case, essay.

Hi there, human hosts! It’s me, a coronavirus, here to thank all the unvaccinated folks in America for making my life a...Read more