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Baffler Archives: Salvos

Columns

High Church Hustle
Crisis is the stock-in-trade of the news-gathering business. Even in its present conglomerated state, American journalism lives or dies for scoops. In this competitive climate, you should be able to count on any news organization to report a world-shaking calamity in its ...

Oh, the Irony!
In the long-ago time of the nineties, tech markets boomed and day traders roamed the far horizon. Neoliberal trade policies flattened the globe; centrist Third Way statesmen rolled up budget surpluses and doled out tax cuts. The pop-cultural soundtrack to this cheerful abundance ...

The Missionary Position
Most critics have regarded Ridley Scott’s Prometheus in much the same way that Arthur Miller probably thought of Marilyn Monroe—gorgeous, but intellectually way out of her depth. No one denies the film’s visual glory, which begins the moment a giant chalk-white alien ...

Cities of Night
In 2009, the American economist Paul Romer took to the prestigious forum of the TED Talks (that would be “technology, entertainment, design,” for you unfortunate creative-class have-nots) to explain how to solve world poverty. Where old-economy governments once sowed ...

Anything for the Libor Boys
On a Tuesday evening last July, I was walking south across the Thames over the Millennium Bridge. The entrance to the Tate Modern was blocked off with police tape, and a blue tarp was spread across the ground. Under it was the corpse of someone who’d jumped from the members’ ...

Call of the Wild
After so many decades spent languishing in the shadows of depopulation and deindustrialization, Detroit is finally ready for its close-up. It’s become one of the most filmed places on earth, a tableau, in the words of a Time magazine photo essay, of “beautiful, horrible ...

Who’s the Shop Steward on Your Kickstarter?
The Baffler’s own Kickstarter campaign took place last spring, attracted 308 backers and $20,761. We raised our funding goal. For details, check out the graphic at the bottom of this essay. —The editors At least twice a week I get an email asking for support for a new ...

The Lying Game
March 03, 2014
On September 9, 2009, Congressman Joe Wilson, who had represented South Carolina’s Second District since 2001, shouted “YOU LIE!” at President Barack Obama while he was delivering a speech before a joint session of Congress to boost support for his then-foundering health ...

Face Value
Cable news ratings peak during an election season, and networks add as much political content as possible to capitalize on the nation’s always fleeting interest in the process. The demand for pundits increases along with that interest. I know because I’m one of them. In the ...

Dead End on Shakin’ Street
February 14, 2014
My hometown is vibrant. Its status as such is certified, official, stamped on both sides. There was a time, though, when it wasn’t, when my friends and I would laugh at Kansas City’s blandness: its harmless theater productions, its pretentious suburbs, its private country ...

Cash-and-Carry Aesthetics
February 13, 2014
For years now the art world has been unpredictable, fragmented, disorienting, like a hair-raising rollercoaster ride. The economic situation in the galleries and the auction houses reaches dizzying heights followed by equally bewildering depths. And new artists and art markets ...