Skip to content

Daily Bafflements

• If you passed by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on Monday, you likely would have heard the clamor of protestors raising a fuss about the long-dead French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Donning signs reading “God Hates Renoir” and Treacle Harms Society,” protestors called for the MFA’s curators while asserting “Other art is worth your while! Renoir paints a steaming pile!” The struggle may seem slightly dated—after all, impressionism is a nineteenth century art movement. But as our friends at Dangerous Minds noted, citing a Baffler salvo from issue no. 8, our propensity to fawn over the movement has created a quite profitable scam. It keeps museum prices high while providing art so dull it’s appealing to the crowd that most artists seek to agitate: the bafflingly boring. 

• Don’t let the fact that torts have empowered a whole class of insufferable personal injury lawyers fool you. Torts, emphasizes Ralph Nader, are the “weapon of the weak”—and not because some shady firm with a catchy 1-800 number has predatory business practices. In fact, it’s because of torts’ protection of the downtrodden, the less fortunate, that Nader has opened the United States’s first tort museum in Winsted, CT

• Today, in the distant 2016 election that already has birthed too many takes: why the Washington Post thinks Hillary is more progressive than Bernie in one sentence and how to make your own Donald Trump-style hat

• Happy birthday President Putin! We at The Baffler bet you’ll just love these pieces of content