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A Cyborg Speaks of Fearness
There was a moment, late Monday night, as I read about Melania Trump’s convention speech—the passages lifted from Michelle Obama, the Rickroll some wily programmer pasted into her source code—when I wondered if I was dreaming. The catastrophe seemed too elegant ...

Daily Bafflements
July 20, 2016
• Despite Ben Carson’s best efforts to convince the Republican National Convention participants that Hillary Clinton is Lucifer, we know that if there’s one spiritual force involved in the 2016 presidential election it’s actually Loki, the Norse ...

Roger, Over and Out
It’s certainly not in character for the corporate chieftains at Fox News to keep mum during the marquee action at a Republican Nation Convention. It’s a bit like having ESPN’s Chris Berman contain himself during a home-run derby—or Bravo TV reality impresario Andy Cohen ...

Daily Bafflements
July 18, 2016
• The list of people who blame themselves for fueling Trump’s sense of self-pity, which no doubt will be on ample display in Cleveland, is ever growing. A Buzzfeed reporter, whose critical article he fears goaded Trump into running, offers a follow-up mea culpa: “Trump ...

Power Players
Just as Al Gore was once described (by Michael Kinsley) as “an old person’s idea of a young person” so is Mike Allen a corporate account executive’s idea of a politics reporter. Or, to put things in the argot to which both he and his power-elite ...

Daily Bafflements
July 13, 2016
• Over at Reason TV, Baffler editor Chris Lehmann talks The Money Cult with Nick Gillespie. On whether the prosperity gospel’s popularity is waining or not, Lehmann says: “This whole word of faith tradition is regarded with great ...

Daily Bafflements
July 11, 2016
• Over at Medium, Michelle Alexander writes: As Natasha Vargas-Cooper commented earlier this year on the Baffler blog: • In response to a Pokémon Go user “claiming” the Westboro Baptist Church using a Pokémon called Clefairy ...

Life-Hacks of the Poor and Aimless
Late capitalism is like your love life: it looks a lot less bleak through an Instagram filter. The slow collapse of the social contract is the backdrop for a modern mania for clean eating, healthy living, personal productivity, and “radical self-love”—the ...

Punk Rock and Protest
July 07, 2016
Growing up, I learned the word solidarity from a vocabulary flash card. It was not something I had ever felt until my shoe became untied in the mosh pit at a NOFX concert in the early 2000s. When I knelt to re-tie it, four strangers formed a wall around my crouching body to ...

New Conventions in Corruption
One persistent truth has held fast amid the ceaseless, unpredictable tumult of Campaign ’16: our corporate media has been utterly flummoxed by it all. Why, the pundit class wails in chorus, are American voters so goddamn angry all the time? Why can’t they make with the ...

Daily Bafflements
July 06, 2016
• “It may be odd for a Labour Prime Minister and a Republican President to have a common political interest, but we do!” wrote former British prime minister Tony Blair in a memo to president George W. Bush. With so much Corbyn bashing making the rounds, ...