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Author: The Baffler

Columns

Daily Bafflements
March 08, 2016
• Say “hullo” to our thirtieth issue, a breezy look at the collective panic afflicting the nation in election year! As John Summers writes, “Sober pundits intone, how do we balance liberty and security, freedom and security? We? Balance?  The ...

Daily Bafflements
March 07, 2016
 • Today in ostriches, their heads buried in the sand: “The future is clearly coming much faster than science had expected,” writes Bill McKibben in the Boston Globe. Well, that’s a bit uncharitable, Bill. He’s concentrated on his short fingers and on ...

Donald Trump, Trickster God
March 04, 2016
The witch-doctors of the electoral season have utterly failed in their essential task; that is, to explain the alarming spectacle that has befallen the land like a sudden eclipse. Political reporters, consultants and pundits are flailing in astonishment as “the unthinkable ...

Daily Bafflements
March 04, 2016
 • In case you felt let down after price-gouging pharma bro Martin Shkreli escaped a congressional hearing after rolling his eyes and invoking his Fifth Amendment right to avoid answering even a single substantive question, fear not. As Jaya Saxena reports, some witches have ...

Your Media Future: Cheesy and Skeezy
March 03, 2016
For decades, American parents and authority figures have fretted over how the goddamn kids in their lives might be induced to pull themselves out of TV’s stupefying thrall and start really living. Now, however, media worthies are feverishly trying the opposite tack: to get our ...

Daily Bafflements
March 03, 2016
• “Just imagine this scenario: It is the first day of class and I, the professor, walk into the classroom, throw my bag on the table; the bag sags open, showing the glimmer of a concealed, holstered gun,” writes Keffrelyn Brown in Pacific Standard. It’s a ...

This Trumpzilla Cartoon Won’t Fix a Thing
March 02, 2016
Politics is hard, and we need some straightforward and literal way to handily process the ever-shifting alliances of power in an election season. To that end, The Baffler has employed expert comic mind David Rees to give a visual rendering of the day’s signature political ...

Really, Really Bad: Michael Jackson’s Bibliophilia
March 01, 2016
The British cable channel Sky Arts caused a fracas last month when they announced that Joseph Fiennes would be playing the late Michael Jackson in a one-off comedy about a road trip Jackson reportedly took with Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor to escape New York City after the ...

Daily Bafflements
February 29, 2016
• Remember when Mark Zuckerberg decided to slaughter his own food? And when he embraced thank you notes? No, we had carelessly forgotten, too. Those were the days when we all still thought he was dull and robotic, not “the aspirational ...

Daily Bafflements
February 26, 2016
• Are you a priest trying to snag rosaries in bulk, or a billionaire looking to deck out your mansion with a full array of Madonnas on the half shell? Luckily, we’ve got a trade show that’s just for you. The Italian market for religious goods is worth $5.2 ...

Getting Your Irish Up
February 26, 2016
As Ireland heads out to the polling booths today to vote in a general election, the hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising of 1916—the doomed rebellion that kicked off the war for Irish independence from England—looms, framing the struggle for economic democracy ...

Oh, the Civility!
February 25, 2016
It’s hard to know just what stage of the Kübler-Ross cycle of facing up to hard facts our media elite are currently mired in as the prospect of Donald Trump’s ascension to the GOP presidential ticket comes ever nearer—but it’s clearly a long way from ...