Jair Bolsonaro Is Not the New Trump. He’s Worse.
Scarcely a week into Jair Bolsonaro’s tenure as president of Brazil, protections for the environment and indigenous and LGBTQ populations have been removed, and both the neoliberal economic policies...
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The Painful Price of Becoming Jackie Chan
There are many ways to tell the story of Jackie Chan. He is the heir to Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, the comic grace of his movements leaving audiences in laughing wonder. He’s also the heir to...
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Kristen Roupenian’s Power Dynamics
When Kristen Roupenian’s New Yorker short story “Cat Person” became a five-alarm sensation late last year, critics rushed to explain its popularity in terms of its relatability and quality. In its...
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In True Detective, Mahershala Ali Plays the Moody Brooder to Perfection
The third season of HBO’s True Detective is a return to the first season’s template. This is a response to the errant season two, a much-derided foray into urban policing, corruption, and masculinity....
View ArticleJoe Biden’s Presidential Delusions
Joe Biden is yet again on the verge of announcing a presidential run. Despite twice falling far short of the Democratic nomination, in 1988 and 2008, the 76-year-old Biden is convinced not only that he...
View ArticleTrump’s Impeachment Trial Is Already Underway
Rashida Tlaib, a newly elected Democratic representative from Michigan, began her tenure in Congress by saying what most members of her party are merely thinking. “When your son looks at you and says,...
View ArticleHow About Some Candor in Middle East Policy?
Cairo seems to be the place where American administrations declare their intentions toward the Middle East. Just shy of a decade ago, President Barack Obama stood in the city, outlining a “new...
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Elwood, Illinois (Pop. 2,200), Has Become a Vital Hub of America’s Consumer...
It’s hard to find anyone who will admit to it now, but when the CenterPoint Intermodal freight terminal opened in 2002, people in Elwood, Illinois, were excited. The plan was simple: shipping...
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After South Africa’s Trump
I didn’t expect, when I first moved to South Africa in 2009, how much it would feel like America. Every place does, more and more; or every place feels increasingly like every other place, a globe of...
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A Series of Selves
Every so often a book comes along and changes the way you see a classic of literature. The Diary of Virginia Woolf, published between 1977 and 1984, came out decades after Woolf’s death in 1941, and...
View ArticleMillennials Don’t Have a Monopoly on Burnout
Several years ago, instead of getting up to go to my well-paid, secure job as a tenured college professor, I would lie in bed for hours, repeatedly watching the video to “Don’t Give Up,” Peter...
View ArticleA Commons Problem
In his 2015 book The Republic of Conscience, former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart identifies what may be the central dynamic of American political and economic history: the struggle...
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Television Learned the Wrong Lessons From The Sopranos
The elderly Uncle Junior is in his armchair, facing down a disloyal male relation. In the next episode, Junior will get his hand stuck in the garbage disposal for six hours, but for now he has the...
View ArticleIt’s Not a National Emergency. It’s Also Not the Dawn of Dictatorship.
What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? The unstoppable force declares a national emergency to go around it.That option appears to be President Donald Trump’s endgame to...
View ArticleWe Need to Acknowledge
the weight of certain news on the phone that makes the receiver heavier makes it fall from my hands the pointless weight of certain things: metal pieces in abandoned lots the curved posture of my...
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The Exhausting Minimalism of Tidying Up
The coupled protagonists of Georges Perec’s materialist parable Things, Jerome and Sylvie, are 24 and 22 years old, both conductors of marketing interviews. Their dearest dream is to live in a Parisian...
View ArticleDoes Your Box of “Ugly” Produce Really Help the Planet? Or Hurt it?
“I’m an environmental journalist, not an environmentalist.” I’ve said this countless times over the course of my career, usually to make a distinction between myself and the people I write about. But...
View ArticleParable of Beauty & Privilege
As for the ingrate blue jay inherently dapper dappled in Brooks Brothers plumage whose wing wicked resplendent lit in a freak fir fire involving one rosy-cheeked waddling...
View ArticleRepublicans Have Learned Nothing From the Midterms
Ahead of last year’s midterms, President Trump telegraphed his electoral strategy. “Hard to believe that with thousands of people from South of the Border, walking unimpeded toward our country in the...
View ArticleWhat Israeli Airstrikes Say About Trump’s Middle East Policy
The series of strikes shaking Damascus and its southern countryside last Friday night now appear to have been the most extensive wave of airstrikes by Israel against Iranian-linked targets in Syria...
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