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Not All Veterans
July 03, 2014
As a veteran, I hate it when other veterans speak for me. I also hate it when they use their veteran status as a way to promote unexamined bellicosity. This kind of appeal to veteran authority has been happening a lot lately. Most of it has been in response to the violent ...

Daily Bafflements
July 03, 2014
• Well, tomorrow is Independence Day, a day to celebrate our great nation with hotdogs and hangovers. Here’s something a little different: the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in Washington, D.C., an actor will stage a reenactment of Douglass’s 1852 speech, ...

Cigarettes and Climate Change
July 02, 2014
I am a smoker, and I am in denial. It isn’t that I don’t believe that cigarettes will kill me. I do. It isn’t that I don’t believe that I’m addicted. I know I am. Like most addicts, my denial takes the form of dissonance: I rationalize, I procrastinate, I make token ...

Daily Bafflements
July 02, 2014
• Last week the Baffler blog discussed junket journalism—but what about junket policy-making? According to National Journal, new rules in the House mean that lawmakers no longer have to include all-expenses-paid trips they receive from lobbyists or others on their year-end ...

The Village Voice Union Walkout and an Alt-Weekly Obituary
July 01, 2014
On Monday at noon, the employees of the Village Voice who belong to the union UAW Local 2110 staged a walkout and demonstration to protest the management’s new contract proposal. The new proposal would halve family leave time and increase health insurance premiums by $200 a ...

Hollywood Hijinks and the Films of Empire
July 01, 2014
As far as international incidents caused by stupid movies go, the North Korean declaration that The Interview, a new film by James Franco and Seth Rogen, is “an act of war” is probably the most newsworthy since The Innocence of Muslims kicked off anti-American riots in the ...

Daily Bafflements
July 01, 2014
• Here’s Shane Bauer on the shadowy for-profit bail industry, or, “How $550 and a five-day class gets you the right to stalk, arrest, and shoot people.” • After yesterday’s SCOTUS decision giving Hobby Lobby the ability to deny female employees health coverage, as ...

Daily Bafflements
June 30, 2014
• Wow, Googling “Facebook apologizes for . . .” sure brings up a lot of results! Here’s the latest, about secret mood-altering experiments conducted on Facebook users. We wonder if they have a full-time CAO (chief apology officer) on staff? • We’re watching SCOTUS ...

The Baffler’s Week That Was
June 27, 2014
• A highlight this week on the blog was this illustrated excerpt of Michael Duffy’s book I Can’t Recall, about the campaign to recall Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. Duffy updated it for The Baffler with the recent allegations about Walker’s involvement in a “criminal ...

Ikea and the Business Case for a Living Wage
June 27, 2014
This week, the Swedish furniture giant Ikea announced that it plans to start paying its retail workers a living wage. The new hourly minimum will be based on regional estimates derived from the MIT Living Wage Calculator. Beginning next year, the average minimum wage of Ikea ...

Daily Bafflements
June 27, 2014
• Men’s Fashion Week is really something, isn’t it? (Via Noah Schactman.) • Today in Billionaires: venture capitalist Nick Hanauer writes an open letter to his “fellow zillionaires” in Politico, warning them that “the pitchforks are coming for us plutocrats . . . ...