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Author: Emmett Rensin

Columns

Waiting in Line at the DNC Barricades
July 26, 2016
Here is how the majority of marches taking place at the Democratic National Convention this week will go: Participants will mill around a predetermined meeting place while organizers figure out what they didn’t prepare for. They will practice some call-and-response. They will ...

Who’s Afraid of a Few Little Boos?
July 26, 2016
Chaos in Philadelphia! Unity shattered before the Democratic National Convention could begin! A fight brewing, a convention divided, a Revolt on the Convention Floor! Hot off a contentious weekend that saw Debbie Wasserman Schultz resign her position as DNC chairwoman, the ...

Daily Bafflements
July 25, 2016
• As the DNC kicks off in Philadelphia, Talia Lavin investigates the 2016 presidential race’s, uh, racier underbelly, the fan-fiction sites where you’re “likely to read about a romantic connection between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz—a pairing popular ...

All Protests Look Alike, and Other DNC Myths
July 25, 2016
There is nobody else on the media sign-in sheet but two kids from a school paper. It’s Saturday, two days before the opening of the Democratic National Convention, and we are at Temple University in northern Philadelphia, where the PowerShift Network, part of the Energy Action ...

Roger, Over and Out
July 20, 2016
It’s certainly not in character for the corporate chieftains at Fox News to keep mum during the marquee action at a Republican Nation Convention. It’s a bit like having ESPN’s Chris Berman contain himself during a home-run derby—or Bravo TV reality impresario Andy Cohen ...

Daily Bafflements
July 18, 2016
• The list of people who blame themselves for fueling Trump’s sense of self-pity, which no doubt will be on ample display in Cleveland, is ever growing. A Buzzfeed reporter, whose critical article he fears goaded Trump into running, offers a follow-up mea culpa: “Trump ...

Power Players
July 14, 2016
Just as Al Gore was once described (by Michael Kinsley) as “an old person’s idea of a young person” so is Mike Allen a corporate account executive’s idea of a politics reporter. Or, to put things in the argot to which both he and his power-elite ...

Don’t Peter (Pan) Out
July 13, 2016
Welcome to The Baffler’s agony corner, YOUR SORRY ASS, where Amber A’Lee Frost dispenses bossy, judgmental advice on how to live your life fairly, kindly, and with good humor. Send us your rants and pleas, please: [email protected].  Dear Your Sorry ...

Daily Bafflements
July 11, 2016
• Over at Medium, Michelle Alexander writes: As Natasha Vargas-Cooper commented earlier this year on the Baffler blog: • In response to a Pokémon Go user “claiming” the Westboro Baptist Church using a Pokémon called Clefairy ...

Life-Hacks of the Poor and Aimless
July 08, 2016
Late capitalism is like your love life: it looks a lot less bleak through an Instagram filter. The slow collapse of the social contract is the backdrop for a modern mania for clean eating, healthy living, personal productivity, and “radical self-love”—the ...

Punk Rock and Protest
July 07, 2016
Growing up, I learned the word solidarity from a vocabulary flash card. It was not something I had ever felt until my shoe became untied in the mosh pit at a NOFX concert in the early 2000s. When I knelt to re-tie it, four strangers formed a wall around my crouching body to ...

New Conventions in Corruption
July 07, 2016
One persistent truth has held fast amid the ceaseless, unpredictable tumult of Campaign ’16: our corporate media has been utterly flummoxed by it all. Why, the pundit class wails in chorus, are American voters so goddamn angry all the time? Why can’t they make with the ...