Marty Beckerman is an alternative journalist, humorist, and author known for his works Death to All Cheerleaders, Generation S.L.U.T., and Dumbocracy. He was born January 23, 1983 in Anchorage, Alaska. Becerkman is an only child born to two only children, resulting in a lack of relatives his own age. He wrote his first novel at the young age of 17 and graduated from American University with a degree in journalism in three years.
Marty Beckerman started his career at the Anchorage Daily News, which published his weekly humor column for 70,000 readers during his freshman and sophomore years of high school. He famously lost the $15 per week gig after asking a female cheerleaderduring an unapproved, unprovoked interviewhow it feels "to be a urine stain on the toilet seat of America." Neither the girl's parents nor Beckerman's long-suffering editor found this question amusing. In 2000 Beckerman collected many of his columns into Death to All Cheerleaders: One Adolescent Journalist's Cheerful Diatribe Against Teenage Plasticity. He sold a thousand copies of the book from his parents basement. The ensuing publicity led to a deal for Generation S.L.U.T.: A Brutal Feel-Up Session with Todays Sex-Crazed Adolescent Populace (sexually liberated urban teens), which MTV Books / Simon & Schuster published in 2004. The book was translated into numerous languages. HBO Films optioned the movie rights, but the option has since expired.
S.L.U.T. propelled Beckerman, still a junior at American University, to the national and international stage. He has been featured by The New York Times, the New York Post, The Guardian, ABCNews.com, MSNBC, Salon.com, Fox News Channel, and National Public Radio. He has written for Playboy, Discover, Radar, Reason, The Huffington Post, New York Press, GetUnderground.com, Jewcy.com, AintItCoolNews.com, and The Daily Beast. Beckerman's best-known journalistic achievements include taking a prostitute to his senior prom (S.L.U.T.), provoking the wrath of punk rock star Henry Rollins (Cheerleaders), getting sodomized with a dildo, and interviewing gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who called him a "morbid little bastard." Beckerman considers this the greatest compliment of his career. The Disinformation Company published Beckerman's third book, Dumbocracy: Adventures with the Loony Left, the Rabid Right and Other American Idiots, in September 2008.
Politically, Beckerman has ricocheted between positions. According to an article he wrote for Salon, he was initially a "passionate liberal" upon entering college. He rebelled against other strong liberals in college, however, such as professors who pushed "utopian and hypersensitive politics" and a very liberal girlfriend who dumped him. Beckerman became a strident hard-right conservative for a time, notably when writing and promoting Generation S.L.U.T. Beckerman says that he also acquired "a finger-wagging puritan bent, which made absolutely no sense for a 20-year-old guy who was getting laid and intoxicated on a steady basis." After disputes with friends and family, and a long running email conversation with a psychologist, he moderated his position to a more laid-back liberalism by 2008, however.
