The People, No
An introduction from our founding editor
Thomas Frank
Thomas Frank is a political analyst, historian, journalist and columnist for Salon. He is a former columnist for the Wall Street Journal, authoring “The Tilting Yard” from 2008 to 2010, and a founding editor of The Baffler. He is the author of a number of books, most notably What’s the Matter with Kansas? (2004). His newest book is Listen, Liberal.
The Revolution Will Not Be Curated
“The era of the curator has begun,” declared the prominent art critic Michael Brenson in 1998. The figures who assembled artworks into galleries, he reasoned, were now “as essential” to exhibits as the artists themselves. Curators were a species of universal genius who ...
Anthem for Bummed Youth
June 8, 2016
As the Democratic primary campaign comes to a close, let us recall how strange and improbable it has been all along. Hillary Clinton started out as her party’s hand-picked standard-bearer, the baddest and brightest of the nation’s dominant political faction. No ...
Withering on the Vine
A tale of two democracies.
Three Cheers for George Scialabba
November 3, 2015
John Summers
When the balance of trade between George Scialabba’s pension plan requirements and his age came to an agreement, and his long dreamed-of chance to break free of his day job at last presented itself, he retired from Harvard University, where he had served with ...
For Whom the Phone Rings
September 29, 2015
A version of this essay was published at Salon.com in 2014.
It’s genius season again. From NPR to the New York Times, they’re talking about where people were when they found out they had won the MacArthur Fellowship, our society’s most prestigious honor. Twenty-one of ...
Finally, Wall Street Gets Put on Trial
September 8, 2014
The Tea Party regards Barack Obama as a kind of devil figure, but when it comes to hunting down the fraudsters responsible for the economic disaster of the last six years, his administration has stuck pretty close to the Tea Party script. The initial conservative reaction to the ...
Veiled Pensioners of the Mystic Sofa
The George Washington Masonic National Memorial in Alexandria, Virginia, is a towering structure, a replica of the ancient lighthouse of Alexandria, Egypt—or, at least, a replica of what people used to think the ancient lighthouse looked like. It features a colossal statue of ...