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The Pseudo Bowl of Politics
Like most revered American public traditions, presidential debates are jury-rigged miasmas. True, Monday’s feverishly hyped Hofstra University rhetorical slugfest between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican Lord of Destruction Donald Trump didn’t ...

Daily Bafflements
September 28, 2016
• Midasing, cookie-grubbing, and gish galloping are just a few of the rhetorical moves embraced by Trump, as The Week helpfully explains.   • Chris Inglis, former deputy director of the National Security Agency, has taken to NPR to dub Oliver ...

Daily Bafflements
September 26, 2016
• The video footage of the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott raises, yet again, the question of how the law keeps protecting cops who panic. Natasha Vargas-Cooper wrote about it earlier this year. • “By galloping sideways, the cat ...

Bye Bye, Blackbird
September 26, 2016
During his long life, it was said that Gore Vidal’s literary and cultural appeal stemmed from one singular feat: that he pisses from a very great height. Vidal’s rarefied, mingent corpus was disorienting and too snobbish for some, but for grown-ups, it’s a ...

Daily Bafflements
September 23, 2016
• Over at Columbia Journalism Review, Shelley Hepworth dives into the sticky situation surrounding eyewitness video. In an era where citizens with cellphones often have the first—and best—footage of news events, what is the responsibility of journalists and ...

When Goo-Goos Attack
September 23, 2016
One of the less edifying displays in this election—there are many—is the level of left-liberal and radical critique of Hillary Clinton. Whether you advocate a vote for Clinton, Stein, or nobody, the discussions of Clinton need more ideological heft than is often ...

Lies of the Times
Sit up and take notice, monitors of plain speech in our elite journalistic discourse: the New York Times has at long last elected to call a lie a lie, at least as far as Donald Trump is concerned. What prompted this long-overdue linguistic breakthrough was the barking, bigoted ...

Daily Bafflements
September 21, 2016
• In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud describes the pre-historic man as a fellow who likes to get his jollies off by pissing on fire pits. “The first person to renounce this desire and spare the fire,” Freud explains, “was able to carry it off ...

Protocols of Moron
September 20, 2016
What do you get when you combine an atomized, alienated public that possesses a deep and justifiable mistrust in institutions with a floundering press-political-entertainment complex that’s desperate to hold our nanoscopic attention spans? You get a nation of half-assed ...

Daily Bafflements
September 19, 2016
• “I explain to her that I haven’t called ahead for credentials, but that I just plan on quietly standing with the press corps, jotting down ridiculous things I see and maybe firing off some incredulous low-quality pics on Twitter.” (Thanks, ...