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Baffler Archives: Outbursts

Columns

Another Country
The long crisis that was the Middle Passage and slavery gave rise to dreams of a black republic in the New World that date as far back as the seventeenth century. In Brazil, enslaved people fled their masters and formed fugitive communities as early as 1605; by 1630, they merged ...

The Gray Zone Lady
“The New York Times was a timeless blend of past and present, a medieval modern kingdom within a nation with its own private laws and values and with leaders who felt responsibility for the nation’s welfare but were less likely to lie than the nation’s statesman and ...

Replacement-Level Billionaires
March 09, 2020
Major League Baseball’s hothouse economy is not any more logical or predictable than the broader one from which it is carved out by a federal antitrust exemption, but then, any marketplace that includes the New York Mets is by definition not a rational one. Baseball’s ...

The Topeka Fools
I think I debated Ben Lerner in high school. I’m almost positive of it. He’s only a year younger than me, and my school definitely went to the same tournaments as the Topeka team. If we did go head to head, he most likely won. He was, after all, a 1997 national forensics ...

Dinner with Schmucks
Welcome to TAK Room. Take a seat right here, in one of our cushioned banquettes. Settle in. Let your eyes wander out onto Hudson Yards—our view of The Vessel simply can’t be beat. Have a flute of blanc de blancs while the jazz band tunes up and you look over the menu. You ...

Networked Up
January 06, 2020
One morning last year I woke up in my van. It was late November, and I was parked in a sun-bleached lot in Santa Cruz, California. I had tried to keep pace with T-shirt weather as it crawled down the coast, but my insulation was shit, and the tip of my nose felt like frost. I ...

The Fox News Theory of Art
In the universe of Fox News, the most famous living artist in America isn’t Jeff Koons or Richard Serra or Cindy Sherman, but a fifty-five-year-old painter based in the Atlanta suburbs named Steve Penley. His paintings—bright, brushy renderings of American flags, the Statue ...

Sinclair Stole My Stash
November 04, 2019
On a Thursday morning in March of last year, television viewers in Baltimore who tuned into WBFF Fox 45 were treated to a cheery report on medical marijuana. “Cannabis dispensaries are opening up in Maryland,” morning-show anchor Tom Rodgers noted. “One of those centers is ...

America’s Legion
November 04, 2019
In February 1958, Army Master Sergeant James B. Stanley responded to a posted notice at his base in Fort Knox, Kentucky. The flyer sought volunteers for a military trial to study and improve chemical warfare methods. “Here is your big chance to assist not only the Army, but ...