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Benghazi Fever and the Battle of the Branches
June 10, 2014
For the past year or so, left-wing Twitter’s favorite running gag has been to invoke right-wing Twitter’s bizarre fixation on Benghazi—or, rather, on #BENGHAZI—the seemingly unkillable non-scandal which evolved out of the 2012 terror attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya. ...

Daily Bafflements
June 10, 2014
• Today in Billionaires: billionaire Carl Icahn is excited about his investment in the dollar-store industry, and is discussing “strategies to enhance shareholder value.” How kitschy! • In somewhat related news, Alex Park reveals the moment in history when hobby shops ...

Racial Inequality and the Economics of Reparations
June 09, 2014
In The Atlantic this month, Ta-Nehisi Coates has a powerful essay making the case for reparations. Coates’s piece doesn’t dwell on the specifics of how a reparations policy would work. His aim, instead, is to launch a broader public consideration of the lingering impact of ...

Zombie Statistics on Sex Work
June 09, 2014
As a former escort, I can say with confidence that nearly everything you know, or think you know, about the money involved in sex work is wrong. And as a former statistician, I know the numbers definitely are. Last month the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) released ...

Daily Bafflements
June 09, 2014
Stop. Your priorities are all wrong. / Photo by Horia Varlan. • New York’s state legislature only has two weeks left this session, and probably won’t have time to consider new laws on the minimum wage or campaign finance issues. Newsday reports that ...

The Baffler’s Week That Was
June 06, 2014
Cartoon by P. S. Mueller • This week, we had occasion to re-visit two great pieces from the archives: Hussein Ibish’s appreciation of Marquis de Sade’s political legacy (for Sade’s 274th birthday, obviously), and Jim Newell’s salvo about ...

Silicon Valley’s Office Politic
June 06, 2014
The workplace has played a fraught role in America’s pop cultural life as of late, particularly as refracted through the lens of popular television. We’ve had the banal cubicle hilarity of The Office and Workaholics contrasted with the austere eros and thanatos of ...

Daily Bafflements
June 06, 2014
This face-cheese doesn’t make itself, you know. / Photo by Claire P. • From The Baffler’s own Chris Lehmann in In These Times, a look at Whole Foods’s “artisanal union-busting” in Chicago. • Glenn Greenwald writes at First Look that ...

Bowe Bergdahl: Hero, Victim, Traitor
June 05, 2014
Back when conservatives were outraged that Bowe Bergdahl hadn’t yet been released, Bowe was called a hero. Because his ongoing captivity was a mark against the Obama administration, it was convenient for Bergdahl to be cast in the role of POW. Bergdahl was the simple and ...

Polarizing Plutocracy: Our Broken Higher Education System
June 05, 2014
The American political system is broken, and one unmistakable sign of it is our inability to bring down soaring levels of student debt or to regulate predatory for-profit colleges. The best solution the Obama administration has been able to propose in this area is a college ...

Daily Bafflements
June 05, 2014
• San Francisco’s “Bespoke Donuts” offers donuts in unusual flavors (which are, we hope, served by these bow-tied and suspendered fellows)—flavors like pulled pork, herb and hummus, and chicken pot pie. How unappetizingly hip. • High-cost lenders are finding ways to ...

The Hope and Despair of the Mansplain
June 04, 2014
I have just sat down to dinner with my female friend and her two male friends she brought along, neither of whom I’ve met before. They are both programmers, and when my friend goes to the bathroom pretty much immediately upon arrival, they begin grilling me on my knowledge ...