Who’s Afraid of The Prodigy?
In 1997, Keith Flint was very confused. After a long youth dancing in English rural barns (literally—his local club in Essex was called The Barn), the band he sang for was breaking America. With its...
View ArticleWinning the White House Won’t Fix Our Democracy
There are 14 prominent Democrats who believe they ought to be next president of the United States. As many as a dozen more may join them. But not Eric Holder. Obama’s first attorney general announced...
View ArticleWhy a Coup Is Unlikely in Venezuela
For the first two years of his administration, Donald Trump couldn’t seem to decide what country he wanted to invade and overthrow more. One day Iran was in the crosshairs, the next North Korea, then...
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How Eve Babitz Found Home
In Los Angeles, in 1947, 14-year-old Susan Sontag would take the trolley to the “enchanted crossroads” of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue to listen to records and read Partisan Review,...
View ArticleMaking Georgia’s Bad Elections Even Worse
After Brian Kemp suppressed enough votes and stirred up enough bigotries to get himself elected governor of Georgia last November, you might have expected him to hit the ground running with some...
View ArticleIn the Future, No One Deserves an Oscar
Last month’s Academy Awards almost marked the beginning of a new era in movie history. Having changed film and television viewing forever, Netflix had just one world left to conquer: The Oscars. To...
View ArticleThe Shameful Campaign to Silence Ilhan Omar
History has been curling back lately in the most uncomfortable ways. Nearly 125 years ago, a French military court convicted the artillery captain Alfred Dreyfus of treason for handing military secrets...
View ArticleIlhan Omar’s Victory for Political Sanity
Would House Democrats censure one of their own for daring to suggest that the deep-pocketed fossil fuel lobby buys influence in Congress? What about a member who said the same about Big Pharma? And...
View ArticleA Small Party Started Brexit. Is a Small Party the Antidote?
In 1988, Austrian philosopher Karl Popper argued in The Economist that the two-party system is the most democratic: Proportional representation, which encourages minority and coalition governments,...
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In Search of Brooklyn’s Queer Past
When I moved to New York, it was to Brooklyn, like a good millennial queer, in part in search of a sexual community I felt I was missing. But the job I’d found was in Manhattan and I began to explore...
View ArticleWith Michael Jackson, It’s Different
On the fifth anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death, a quote from Nas appeared in a Rolling Stone piece by the writer Touré: “When I got the news, the weather around me immediately changed...
View ArticleHow Regime Change Breeds Demagogues
In 1989, citizens rose up and tore down the Berlin Wall. As the people toppled statues of Communist leaders in cities across Eastern Europe and rallied in their central squares, world leaders declared...
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The Universe According to Hilma af Klint
In January 1906, Hilma af Klint was offered an unusual commission. For years, the Swedish artist had been meeting with four female friends to pray, meditate, and hold séances, in which they attempted...
View ArticleThe Trudeau Scandal Happens All the Time in America
The most acute political scandal in North America—the one with the greatest chance of toppling a head of state anytime soon—is occurring not in the United States, but Canada. Prime Minister Justin...
View ArticleWhy France Is Losing the War on Anti-Semitism
In the first weeks of 2019, French authorities discovered 96 tombs desecrated in a Jewish cemetery in eastern France, the word “juden” scrawled across a bagel shop in Paris, and swastikas marring a...
View ArticleThe Branding of Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo loved hot pink lipstick, the color of crushed hibiscus blossoms, of flor de Jamaica, of bougainvillea vines crawling over stucco walls. Her chosen shade, at least later in her life, was...
View ArticleThe Weak Case for Packing the Supreme Court
The Trump era is giving Democrats a bruising lesson in the distribution of American political power. Thanks to the Electoral College, the Senate, and gerrymandering, Republicans have enjoyed outsized...
View ArticleThe Reality Behind Trump’s Coalition for Regime Change in Venezuela
In the early 1970s, a handful of Sandinistas were in the mountains of Nicaragua fighting to overthrow the 40-year U.S.-backed, brutal dictatorship of the Somoza family. When a powerful volcanic...
View ArticleCan American Foreign Policy Be Greened?
In the 1977 novel Edith’s Diary, by the great crime writer Patricia Highsmith, Edith is the mother of a dipsomaniacal good-for-nothing who records in her diary not the truth about her son but, instead,...
View ArticleThe Netherlands’ Burgeoning Free Speech Problem
In 2014, Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch far-right populist Party for Freedom (PVV), asked a roomful of supporters a very on-brand question: “Although actually I’m not allowed to say this … Do you...
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