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, June 1, 2015

Daily Bafflements

Gerard Depardieu stars in United Passions, the revisionist FIFA history hitting US screens this Homeownership Month. / Phillipe Freyhof
Gerard Depardieu stars in United Passions, the revisionist FIFA history hitting US screens this Homeownership Month. / Phillipe Freyhof
Gerard Depardieu stars in United Passions, the revisionist FIFA history hitting US screens this Homeownership Month. / Philippe Freyhof

• Happy first of National Homeownership Month! Celebrate with this new survey by the American Institute of CPAs, which finds that retirement has replaced home ownership as the touchstone of the American dream: “The US homeownership rate has now reached a 20-year low,” writes Mechelle Dickerson, in The Atlantic.

• The stars have aligned in a most disappointing configuration, to spell “FIFA.” Then, the stars aligned a second time, more confidently, to spell “UNRULY CATS.” The FIFA bribe-taking scandal hid in plain sight for twenty years, taking its capricious time to unravel. But who would have hoped to dream it would do so the same week as the FIFA-apologist movie United Passions hits US screens, starring, among others, the tax-dodging Obelix Gerard Depardieu? 

• The designer of Obama’s “Hope” poster has lost faith in his subject. (Via. Esquire.)

• Billionaires Poised for Wave of Giving: Again! Rhonda Lieberman wrote on philanthropy in Baffler, No. 24.