JoJo Rabbit’s Satire Fail
Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 military sci-fi film Starship Troopers—about an interstellar war between a league of human soldiers from Earth and an extraterrestrial race of arachnid-like invaders—ends on a...
View ArticleImagining a World Without Prisons
If you’re part of the ballroom scene in New York, you may have known the name of the young, trans, Afro-Latina performer Layleen Cubilette-Polanco Xtravaganza, even before her death at Rikers Island in...
View ArticleCome On, LeBron
There were many things LeBron James could have said earlier this week when asked about the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. He could have, like Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey,...
View ArticleAmerican Farming Runs on Exploitation
On Tuesday, Politico published a feature on the Department of Agriculture’s failure to prepare the nation’s farmers for climate change. Of the USDA’s $144 billion budget, Politico reported, just 0.3...
View ArticleThe Public Option Bait and Switch
Many dark and miserable months into the 2020 Democratic primary, the nation is still enduring the sight of the candidates having the same fights over health care, like an exhausted married couple whose...
View ArticleTrump’s Legal Immunity Has a Countdown Clock
This week’s most intriguing news about President Donald Trump didn’t come from the House’s impeachment inquiry. It came from a ProPublica report on unusual discrepancies in the Trump Organization’s...
View ArticleThe Freshman Democrat Who’s Making Conservatives Squirm
Unlike some of her fellow freshmen, Representative Katie Porter of California has managed to escape the ire of the current occupant of the White House. While she isn’t exactly rushing to take part in...
View ArticleOligarch of the Month: The Sacklers
Not so long ago, the Sackler name was stamped across the most rarified perches in Manhattan—in the psychobiology department at Columbia University, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and at the Museum...
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On Amazon, a Show About Modern Love
Modern Love is based on the long-running New York Times column of the same name. The show is a collaboration between the Times (once called a newspaper, now a font of all manner of content) and Amazon...
View ArticleThe Easiest Impeachment Inquiry of All Time
President Donald Trump had a pretty bad week. Multiple current and former officials defied his defiance of the House’s impeachment inquiry to give damaging testimony about his Ukraine scheme. Rudy...
View ArticleChasing Court-Packing Could Derail Democrats’ Big Plans
The 1936 election was a stunning victory for the Democrats. President Franklin D. Roosevelt routed Republican Alf Landon, winning the popular vote by 24 points and all but two states in the Electoral...
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The Transformation of Condé Nast
Condé Nast was actually a person—a fact that might come as a surprise to readers who know the name only from the magazine publishing corporation, a company so monumental that it’s practically...
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Moments Without Truth
Six months ago, when I first started writing this piece, things were simple. I wanted to write about The Discourse—the loose set of reflexes and affronts that function as the invisible lingua franca of...
View ArticleIndian Country Deserves a Better Hero Than Richard Nixon
You only need one hand to count the number of American presidents who could be considered vaguely positive, progressive partners for Indian Country.Most of those lauded for defining the upper limits of...
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The New MoMA Is More of a Good Thing
The Museum of Modern Art was born almost a century ago, though it wasn’t until the 1930s that the place had a building to call its own. Edward Durrell Stone and Phillip L. Goodwin’s handsome edifice...
View ArticleCould Betsy DeVos Cost Trump the Election?
In 2016, Darrin Camilleri was 24 and teaching at a Detroit charter school 20 miles from where he grew up, when Michigan lawmakers took up a measure to implement more rigorous oversight of the city’s...
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The Forgotten Christian Terror Cult That Presaged Trump’s Memes
Last Christmas, I found myself alone, stoned, and poolside at the Trump National Doral Miami wearing a “Fake News” T-shirt under a fluffy white Trump robe. Before the noon checkout, I’d gone to catch...
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The White Cliffs of Brexit
The small, seaside town of Dover, where little more than 30,000 people live, has an outsized significance in Great Britain’s national psyche. The sprawling eleventh-century castle that overlooks the...
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Deborah Levy’s Time Warp
Deborah Levy’s The Man Who Saw Everything begins with a subtle instant of subversion. It is September 1988 and a 28-year-old man named Saul Adler has come to London’s Abbey Road to have his photo taken...
View ArticleIndigenous Voters Need a Reason to Care About Canada
Canada voted Monday to elect its new prime minister and House of Commons. The Liberal party lost the majority it had enjoyed the past four years but managed to maintain a minority advantage over the...
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