Tarantino, Chained
The release of Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained has kicked off the gnarliest round yet of a debate that never gets old. What are we supposed to make of his alternately frisky and convoluted...
View ArticleCitizen Alec
It wasn't so long ago that Alec Baldwin—his never-all-that-imposing days as a leading man well behind him—was just another Hollywood dolt with a waning grip on our attention and an apparently...
View ArticleThe Most Divisive Issue in Film: Anne Hathaway
At 31, Anne Hathaway has been appearing in movies for over a decade. That's usually time enough for people to make up their minds about an actress, even though this one is better known for adding...
View ArticleBoth "Birdman" and "Boyhood" Are Stunts. Only One Works.
Just for fun, you could say the difference between the dudes who made this year’s two leading contenders for the Best Picture Oscar starts with their names: one as eye-catching as Isadora Duncan’s...
View ArticleWhy Leonard Nimoy Came to Embrace His Long, Prosperous Life as Spock
Today, we are all Trekkies. But believe it or not, my fondest memory of Leonard Nimoy, Actor, involves Mr. Spock only inferentially. After Martin Landau bailed on the old "Mission: Impossible" series...
View ArticleA Moment of Truth for the Labor Movement
Last year, Missouri became the latest state to pass a so-called right-to-work law, which prohibits unions from collecting mandatory fees from employees of unionized workplaces. Then-Governor Eric...
View ArticleClosing the Wage Gap for Women
One day in 2012, Aileen Rizo, a math consultant in the Fresno, California, education system, overheard a recently hired male colleague talking about his salary. Rizo was “floored,” she said, to learn...
View ArticleCan Facebook Bear the Weight of Conservative Media?
A good rule of thumb in business, and in life generally, is that if you find yourself defending Holocaust deniers, you’ve probably taken a wrong turn somewhere. This week, Mark Zuckerberg found himself...
View ArticleWomen’s Media Is a Scam
This week Refinery29, a lifestyle website for women, came crashing into the public consciousness via an unpleasant installment of its “Money Diaries” column. In it, a 21-year-old HR intern making $25...
View ArticleThe 2018 Midterms Are All About Health Care
“Real change begins with immediately repealing and replacing the disaster known as Obamacare,” Donald Trump said during one of his final campaign rallies of the 2016 race. “We’re going to repeal it....
View ArticleThe War on Soy Milk
America has federal laws about milk that leave little room for interpretation: The product must be produced in sanitary environments to prevent milk-borne disease. It also must be packaged in...
View ArticleGoogle’s Chump Change
Donald Trump may not know Margrethe Vestager’s name, but he knows he doesn’t like the European Union’s competition commissioner. At last month’s fractious G-7 meeting in Quebec, Trump told Vestager’s...
View ArticleA Commander-in-Chief Who Cares Only About Himself
It’s been a seismic week for American democracy, as the nation confronts the serious possibility that the president of the United States has been compromised by Russia—or at least is being...
View ArticleWhy Do Climate Lawsuits Keep Losing in Court?
By extracting and selling vast amounts of fossil fuels, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, and ConocoPhillips contributed significantly to climate change—and profited immensely by doing so. Should they...
View ArticleMaking It in Capitalist Moscow
At the age of 23, the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy was something of a train wreck. A handsome young man of privilege, he gambled away part of his inheritance at cards. He became an accomplished drinker...
View ArticleWisconsin Regressivism
What is the opposite of sex? This is a question that admits of no answer, a kind of Zen koan that brings the reflecting mind to a standstill. So, what if we apply the question to “progressivism,”...
View ArticleIs A.M. Homes Tired of Being Nasty?
If the brief half-life of literary celebrity these days gets you down, consider A. M. Homes. Days of Awe, recently published, is Homes’s third story collection after The Safety of Objects (1990) and...
View ArticleA Courtier for the Imperial Presidency
The Supreme Court does not ordinarily hear cases during its annual summer recess, but the summer of 1974 was not ordinary. The Watergate crisis had entered its final stages. Congress and the special...
View ArticleThere Is No Silent Centrist Majority
The centrists can hear the silence.At last week’s inaugural Opportunity 2020 conference in Columbus, Ohio, one moderate Democrat after another acknowledged that all the noise in the party comes from...
View ArticleTronc’s Smash and Grab
A day after Tronc gutted the century-old New York Daily News, the paper’s new editor, Robert York, begged his remaining staff to be patient. According to CNN’s Tom Kludt, he asked “for 30 days to give...
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