The Charmed Life of Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda, who died this week at the age of 90, was small and loved to wear polka dots. In later years her signature bowl cut became a monk-like two-toned affair, with white roots and maroon ends....
View ArticleThe Green New Deal Should Include Reparations
Environmental justice activist Anthony Rogers-Wright lives full-time in Seattle, Washington, but just happened to be in Massachusetts last weekend when he heard that Senator Ed Markey was holding a...
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Sally Rooney’s Great Expectations
Toward the end of Sally Rooney’s new novel, Normal People, Connell, an aspiring writer, assures his girlfriend, Marianne, a politics student, that the woman he was speaking with at a party the night...
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The Plague Years
In August, the most important Islamic religious council in Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, issued a public health opinion. The Indonesian Ulama Council, known as the MUI,...
View ArticleThe Answer to Ukraine’s Problems Is...a Comedian?
Last night was hardly Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s first time on stage. And, after advancing to the second round of Ukraine’s presidential elections with a double-digit lead over the incumbent president, it...
View ArticleAre the Democrats Too Boring?
Kamala Harris wants to increase teacher pay by $13,500. Cory Booker is proposing “baby bonds” to close the racial wealth gap. Amy Klobuchar has a $1 trillion infrastructure plan. Kirsten Gillibrand...
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The Dean
Architecture is a notoriously egotistical profession. One person, usually an older man, often takes credit for a lengthy and multifaceted process of planning and construction. It does not help that...
View ArticleThe Supreme Court’s Twisted Devotion to the Death Penalty
Supreme Court justices like to project an image of collegiality and sobriety to the American public. But that comity often breaks down when the court debates the death penalty. The latest example is...
View ArticleThe Media’s Dumb Avocado Hysteria
America would run out of avocados in three weeks if President Donald Trump were to make good on his recent threat to close the border with Mexico. If you hadn’t heard that by now, congratulations. You...
View ArticleThe Enduring Power of Neoconservatism
What is, or was, “neoconservatism?” Recently, military historian and columnist Max Boot, who previously self-identified as neoconservative, argued in The Washington Post that Americans need to “retire”...
View ArticleThe Border Wall Is Trump’s White Whale
In Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab lusts for vengeance against the titular white whale for biting off his leg in an earlier voyage. His hatred overwhelms his senses so completely that he...
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Valeria Luiselli’s Impossible Novel
“Perhaps the only way to grant any justice” to the refugees who have died in the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts, or anywhere on their journey toward a dignified life, Valeria Luiselli wrote in her 2017...
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MSNBC’s Wild Ride
On January 31, Rachel Maddow, the eponymous host of The Rachel Maddow Show, returned from a commercial break. In the previous segment, she had interviewed Betsy Woodruff, a Daily Beast reporter, who...
View ArticleBernie Sanders Is the Frontrunner. Obviously.
The race for the Democratic nomination began in earnest over the past couple of weeks, or at least it feels that way. After flirting with a run for months, Beto O’Rourke finally made his move by...
View ArticleWhen the Cool Uncle Becomes the Creepy Uncle
Not that long ago, “Uncle Joe Biden” was a term of endearment rather than an epithet. “Since 2008, Biden’s reputation as a wise elder has evaporated into the reputation of a cool uncle,” Philip Bump,...
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Why Thousands of Colombians Are Blocking the Pan-American Highway
The air is almost opaque from tear gas, lingering like heavy, burning perfume. Every few minutes, a warning shout echoes from up the highway—“Corre!” (“Run!”)—sending a cascade of people fleeing from...
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Never Sorry
In England, listeners Start the Week with the BBC radio program of that name, a superior chat show about new books and whatnot. On Monday, June 9, 1997, one of the guests was Eric Hobsbawm, who was by...
View ArticleIs Mexico on the Brink of a Labor Revolution?
On a Wednesday afternoon in late March, dozens of striking metalworkers gathered outside the gates of a steel factory three miles south of the Texas border. “Get out corrupt unions!” a banner read. The...
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It’s Not Just Pork: Trump Is Also Letting Nuclear Plants Regulate Their Own...
Nobody wants to deal with salmonella poisoning. Not you, not me, and certainly not the pork industry. Companies know that if their meat is contaminated with the disease-causing bacteria, they might...
View ArticleJerry Nadler Was Born to Battle Trump
Jerry Nadler and Donald Trump have a history. As Michael Daly has recounted in The Daily Beast, Trump approached Nadler in the 1980s, when Nadler was still a state assemblyman, and asked to build a...
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