Shirley Jackson and the Horrors of Marriage
In 1938, the writer Shirley Jackson, along with her husband, Stanley Hyman, attended a séance at the home of their good friend Jay Williams, an actor, musician, and occult enthusiast. Williams claimed...
View ArticleThe Fall and Rise of the Guillotine
Chanting; red, white, and blue banners waving; crowds infuriated; a guillotine carried through their midst: A scene reminiscent of eighteenth-century Paris played out in Puerto Rico on a Tuesday night...
View ArticleBook Publishing’s Next Battle: Conservative Authors
Before 2024—or, God forbid, 2028—Tom Cotton will almost certainly publish a book. The Arkansas senator’s first book—Sacred Duty, published by HarperCollins’s William Morrow imprint in 2019—was a...
View ArticleSpike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods Takes On the Black Trauma of Vietnam
In the final shot of the 1989 civil war movie Glory, the corpse of Private Trip (Denzel Washington) rolls down a sand dune and comes to a stop under the armpit of his equally dead commander, Colonel...
View ArticleOne Quick Trick for Curbing the Fossil Fuel Industry’s Political Influence
We might never find out how much money the United States has handed to the fossil fuel industry under the guise of pandemic stimulus. As reported in Politico, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin plans on...
View ArticleDemocratic Veepstakes in a Time of Protest
The shortlist for the Democratic vice presidential nomination is getting shorter. “Democrats with knowledge of the process said Biden’s search committee has narrowed the choices to as few as six...
View ArticleWhy Conservatives Believe a Chinese Lab Created the Coronavirus
As the United States struggled to contain the initial onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic, a few conservatives peddled an outlandish theory to explain the origins of the disease. The virus, they...
View ArticleCan the Never Trumpers Deliver the Goods in 2020?
The Republicans dedicated to the defeat of Donald Trump—known as “Never Trumpers”—are enjoying a moment of renewed interest in their cause. They are among the president’s sharpest critics, and many...
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The Coronavirus and the Right’s Scientific Counterrevolution
If one takes Donald Trump and his administration to embody modern conservatism, it is easy to see in their response to the coronavirus pandemic the right’s final divorce from science and expertise....
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The Righteous Power of the George Floyd Mural
On May 28, a group of artists got to work on the side of the Cup Foods grocery store, on the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue South in Minneapolis. Three days earlier, George Floyd had been...
View ArticleNeil Gorsuch Just Upended the Conservative Legal Project
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids employers from discriminating against workers on multiple grounds, including their sex. On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that the sex-discrimination...
View ArticleTrump’s Antifa Derangement Syndrome
On June 4, a Buffalo police officer shoved 75-year-old Martin Gugino to the ground as his colleagues attempted to clear an area, to enforce a curfew during a Black Lives Matter protest. As with so many...
View ArticleThe Pandemic-Era Rebrand of Family Separation
After a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, the city’s police department first released a statement to the press attributing his death to an act of nature: “Man dies after medical incident...
View ArticleThe Atlantic Coast Pipeline Battle Is About People, Not Precedent
Decision day at the Supreme Court on Monday brought joy and justice for the LGBT community. But it also handed severe setbacks to others—specifically, the Appalachian and Southern communities who...
View ArticleTrump’s Potemkin Reelection Campaign
In a presidential campaign, few decisions prompt more meetings and memos than the candidate’s schedule. Time is the most irreplaceable commodity in politics—and it is folly to squander it on events in...
View ArticleA Glimpse of a Trans Future
Back in October, the evening before oral arguments in her Supreme Court case, I met Aimee Stephens and her wife at a Hyatt not far from the court. She wasn’t unprepared when her boss, Thomas Rost,...
View ArticleDon’t Just Save the Postal Service. Reinvent It.
If we’re lucky enough to see the derangements of the current era pass—such as the Trump administration and its farcical response to a once-in-a-century pandemic—the stewards of the next phase in...
View ArticleAsterix Comes to America
From inside his comic strip rectangle, one of Cleopatra’s lackeys makes a face as he tastes her snack for poison. “Yuck,” he thinks. “I hate too much pearl in my vinegar.” I loved this page of Asterix...
View ArticleThe Political Power of Protests
After three weeks of protests against police violence, the energy of the demonstrations remains undiminished. Episode 10 of The Politics of Everything explores what is motivating the actions, the...
View ArticleThe Solution to Police Murder Is Not More Money
In my neighborhood of D.C., there is a Whole Foods on P Street NW, between 14th and 15th. Prior to its ultragentrification, the neighborhood was home to one of the city’s most well-known homeless...
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