Democrats Aren’t Stuck With Joe Biden
It is the very beginning of May. The Democratic National Convention is scheduled for August. The general election is in November. Dozens of states and territories have not yet held their primary...
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How Vivian Gornick Reinvigorated Political Writing
Vivian Gornick specializes in personal narrative. Sometimes this means artful memoir: Her most admired book is 1987’s Fierce Attachments, about her relationship with her mother, and she sat for The...
View ArticleThe Federal Reserve Is Accelerating the Climate Crisis
“Climate change,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told the Joint Economic Committee last November, “is an important issue but not principally for the Fed. We’re not going to be the ones to...
View ArticleImagining a Real “Right to Work”
The best way to fix an economy devastated by a pandemic, the president and other conservatives insisted from the start, was simply to send workers back into the fray. And now, a little more than a...
View ArticleThe Cancer in the Camera Lens
In close up, on television, at a glance, with the volume down, Donald Trump can from time to time look like a president. That effect becomes less convincing the more you pay attention, though. Even...
View ArticleTwo Weeks of Democrats’ Pathetic Attempts at Opposition
On Monday, the Democratic contingent of the New York State Board of Elections decided to scuttle its own presidential primary out of concern, it insisted, for voters who might otherwise be exposed to...
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The Agony and the Ecstasy of Vintage Snooker
Sports usually inject cathartic experiences into their supporters at regular intervals, and the current shortage can’t be good for fans’ health. As an interim measure, I recommend digging into the...
View ArticleDemocrats are Losing at Political Rhetoric
On Thursday, The New York Times Magazine’s Jason Zengerle offered the latest lengthy look at the state of Joe Biden’s housebound campaign. Although the technical challenges of getting a camera setup in...
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Death of a Survivor
In the free world, Darlene “Lulu” Benson-Seay would get dressed up just to sit on a porch: matching hat, outfit, shoes, all immaculate. During her nearly seven years at Bedford Hills Correctional...
View ArticleHow Zoom Colonized Our Lives
On March 27, David “Doc” Searls, a technology writer and veteran of the ad industry, posted an entry on his blog about the newly ubiquitous videoconferencing program Zoom, calling it “creepily chummy”...
View ArticleThe Dark Search for a “Silver Lining” to the Coronavirus
Goats have taken over a tiny Welsh town. Los Angeles is free of smog. And the Taj Mahal is sparkling again. The environmental consequences of the coronavirus have been swift and, at least on their...
View ArticleWhen Blackness Is a Preexisting Condition
Ethel Freeman became famous in death, even though no one knew her name. For months, she was one of the many nameless people who lost their lives in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s deadly intersection...
View ArticleDonald Trump’s Death March
After a beautiful weekend in the nation’s capital, where hundreds flocked to the National Mall to watch big planes go zoom, it is hard not to wonder if too many people in power have concluded that it’s...
View ArticleWhy Conservatives Dismiss the Dangers of the Coronavirus
The conservative media’s coverage of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has mutated faster than the virus itself. One day, Covid-19 is an insidious Chinese weapon, the next a hoax ginned up by the...
View ArticleCan the European Union Survive a Pandemic?
There are two things a quarantined European will reliably find when he goes online for news in this age of the coronavirus: first, the clucking of local pundits at how the Trump administration has...
View ArticleI’m Teaching From Home and Don’t Know How Long We Can Keep This Up
Teachers are constantly left out of education policy and of making decisions about the things that we know best. We definitely weren’t interviewed about how we thought remote learning should go. But...
View ArticleWhy do Democrats Keep Embracing George W. Bush?
Nostalgia for George W. Bush is at an all-time high. It has been rising ever since Donald Trump launched his presidential run in the summer of 2015, and affection for one of the worst presidents in...
View ArticleThe All-Consuming White Pandemic Protester
The images are striking: A young white man in the Michigan state capitol staring blankly ahead, his bare scalp split by a mohawk, the butt of his scoped rifle resting against his carrier vest. Across...
View ArticleThe Backlash Appeal of Mrs. America
“But aren’t women really worse male chauvinists than men, I mean, most of them?” Warren Beatty asks the poet and director Sandra Hochman, a few minutes into her brilliant, anarchic docu-fantasia about...
View ArticleWhy Is the Pentagon Still Paying $10 a Gallon for Gas?
As any American who’s passed a gas station in the past two months knows, global oil markets are melting down. Even before coronavirus lockdowns led billions of people to halt their daily commutes,...
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