The Shallow “Unity” of The New York Times’ Endorsements
On Sunday, after much fanfare, The New York Times’ editorial board announced its presidential endorsement, which was actually a decision to endorse two candidates: Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar....
View ArticleCitizen K Captures the Rise and Fall of an Oligarch
The wealthiest man in the United States—and the world—built his fortune in part by strategically avoiding taxation as he established an online retail leviathan, which in turn allows him to invest in...
View ArticleWomen Can’t Have It All, Even at the Movies
It’s absolutely clear quite early on—in its second minute or so—that Like a Boss is a bad film, the sort without the decency even to be truly awful. It’s just a slipshod contraption of gags (not jokes,...
View ArticleMothers Against Vampire Real Estate
The house on 2928 Magnolia Street in West Oakland, California, is an unassuming three-bedroom with a faded-out porch and white siding gone slightly gray with time. For two years, like an estimated...
View ArticleHow Not to Write a Book Review
Lauren Groff’s review of American Dirt, Jeanine Cummins’s new novel about a mother and son fleeing cartel violence in Mexico, is one of the odder articles that The New York Times Book Review has...
View ArticleAlan Dershowitz Hasn’t Changed One Bit
Alan Dershowitz’s greatest impact on American law likely came at the beginning of his career. In 1963, Justice Arthur Goldberg tasked him to help build an argument against what had, until then, gone...
View ArticleThe Cyclical Crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
On Monday, the body of 16-year-old Crow Tribe citizen Selena Not Afraid was found a mile from the Montana rest stop where she was last seen on New Year’s Day. Before then, Not Afraid, who friends and...
View ArticleSurveillance States Are Flexing Their Muscle
Three weeks in, 2020 is already a banner year for authoritarian government surveillance. Last weekend, The New York Times’ Kashmir Hill reported that Clearview, an AI startup with connections to Rudy...
View ArticleBrazilian Conservatives Really Hate Glenn Greenwald
Last June, American journalist Glenn Greenwald presided over what appeared to be the most incendiary scoop in Brazil’s recent history, detailing a pattern of mendacity and manipulation in Operation Car...
View ArticleThe Democrats’ Airtight, Impotent Case for Impeaching Trump
Just over a year ago, hours after the new House Democratic majority was sworn in, incoming freshman Rashida Tlaib gave an impassioned speech to a crowd of revelers at an event sponsored by the...
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“Female Monthly Pills” and the Coded Language of Abortion Before Roe
Medication abortion is incredibly common in the United States; it’s also incredibly safe. And it’s because of this relative ease and safety, in fact, that conservative states are now targeting it in...
View ArticleThe Elite Media’s Amy Klobuchar Blind Spot
Last weekend, the New York Times editorial board shocked everyone and endorsed The Ladies 2020—picking both Elizabeth Warren (the “radical”) and Amy Klobuchar (a sort of backup “realist” choice) in the...
View ArticleThe New Pope’s Tireless Commitment to Transgression
In 2017’s The Young Pope, Paolo Sorrentino served up what was arguably one of the best television scenes of the last decade—namely Jude Law, as Pope Pius XIII, being dressed in his ceremonial finery to...
View ArticleThe Neocons Strike Back
There was a time not so long ago, before President Donald Trump’s surprise decision early this year to liquidate the Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, when it appeared that America’s neoconservatives...
View ArticleAdam Schiff and the End of Implausible Deniability
From time to time in the Trump era, Republican members of Congress have found themselves stricken with blindness, deafness, illiteracy, or some combination thereof. Their affliction tends to manifest...
View ArticleWhy Climate-Conscious Plutocrats Still Like Trump
For the first time in its history, the top five slots in the World Economic Forum’s annual survey of global risks all come from one category: the environment. As no shortage of marketing materials will...
View ArticleFootball Is the Villain in Aaron Hernandez’s True Crime Story
The story of Aaron Hernandez—money, fame, sex, murder—is sensational. Thus it should not surprise that the new documentary Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, which seeks to explain why this...
View ArticleWhy Tourism Should Die—and Why It Won’t
These aren’t easy days for travel touts. The class of journalists who enjoy comped experiences at Hawaiian resorts and Michelin-starred restaurants don’t normally generate a lot of public compassion....
View ArticleThe Sports World’s Blue-Collar Cosplay
Earlier this month, the New York Giants held a press conference to introduce their new head coach, Joe Judge. In between the usual football clichés about how the Giants will “play aggressive” and have...
View ArticleAmerica’s Climate Refugees Are Pleading for Help. The Government Has No Answer.
In December, as the remaining Democratic primary candidates participated in another one of the seemingly endless string of presidential debates, Senator Amy Klobuchar was asked about climate-forced...
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