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Author: David Rees

Columns

If Sec. Trump Had a Private Email Server
July 06, 2016
I spent my annual Independence Day cheeseburger hangover in a state of humid recuperation, catching up on political news and celebrating the latest achievements of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Here’s a description of a cartoon concerning one of those ...

Daily Bafflements
July 05, 2016
• When Gay Talese’s newest book, about motelier and voyeur Gerald Foos, was preemptively excerpted in a certain bastion of liberalism (and, more relevantly, fact-checking), he probably didn’t expect to have to disown it before the publication date even ...

Daily Bafflements
July 01, 2016
• Planning your summer vacation? At Montana’s Paws Up resort, wealthy vacationers can learn the skills they might need to survive the apocalypse that they are currently bringing about, for the low, low price of $1,420 per night. Don’t worry, “it’s a ...

The Political Class Struggles
June 30, 2016
“Elite opinion” is admittedly a baggy construct—whose opinion? which elite?—but thanks to the weird convulsions of Campaign 2016, we’ve been granted a precious opportunity to behold it in all its lush and fulsome glory. Seemingly as one, the lead institutions of ...

It Depends on the Meaning Of “Quo”
June 29, 2016
On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously decided to vacate the conviction of disgraced former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell. The Commonwealth’s GOP chief was convicted in Sept. 2014, along with his wife, Maureen, on federal corruption and bribery charges. The pair had ...

Daily Bafflements
June 27, 2016
• “A lot of people still think they just voted in a referendum on immigration. What’s more, they think they won,” writes Abi Wilkinson on Brexit, over at Vox. “The problem isn’t necessarily that 52 percent of  voters agree with ...

Neither Great Nor British
June 24, 2016
I went to bed smugly satisfied last night after UK Independence Party leader and charmless performative drunk Nigel Farage conceded defeat. It seemed Britain had hung together and voted to Remain in the European Union after all. I woke up to a different reality. The Leave ...

The Art of the Con
June 23, 2016
Just as in the final chapter of The Picture of Dorian Gray, the wheezing sociopath at the center of the Donald Trump campaign has revealed his true decrepit, disfigured nature at a moment when the belated appearance of the unvarnished truth likely will do zero good for any of ...

Daily Bafflements
June 20, 2016
• It’s world refugee day, the day we briefly recall the 65 million people on the planet who are displaced. Astra Taylor travelled to Greece on the day the EU-Turkey refugee deal went into effect and reported back in The Baffler, no. 31. Liberals ...

Daily Bafflements
June 17, 2016
• After you read about how Moon Juice exec Amanda Chantal Bacon eats—between dropping her toddler Rohan off at school and Kundalini yoga in Venice, that is—you may need to cleanse by reading Heather Havrilesky’s new essay on “the foodie devolution” in our ...