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Towards a Politics of Delight and Desire
September 25, 2014
When Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, he was looking to expose the dangerous working conditions of the meatpacking industry and bring relief to its workers. Instead, the popular reaction to his book led to new food standards and sanitation laws. (Apparently the worst thing about ...

What “Yes” in Scotland Might Have Meant
September 23, 2014
Looking at a map of the world and seeing the number of places over which the sun of the British Empire has most definitely set, it’s difficult to imagine why, when Scotland was presented with the opportunity to leave the United Kingdom, they did not take it. It goes against ...

Rhetoric Meets Reality for Married Gay Veterans
September 22, 2014
A couple purely rhetorical statements have recently achieved the status of “bipartisan consensus.” “ISIS is barbaric” is one. “Returning veterans deserve our best treatment” is another. Unfortunately, these truisms are too vague to suggest any particular course of ...

Finally, Wall Street Gets Put on Trial
September 08, 2014
The Tea Party regards Barack Obama as a kind of devil figure, but when it comes to hunting down the fraudsters responsible for the economic disaster of the last six years, his administration has stuck pretty close to the Tea Party script. The initial conservative reaction to the ...

Think Tanks for Sale
September 08, 2014
The New York Times came out with a blockbuster exposé on Sunday about how foreign governments are buying influence in Washington through nonprofit think tanks—while lawmakers who depend on supposedly “independent” research from these organizations to set policy are ...

Labor Day Reading from The Baffler
August 29, 2014
Happy Friday, all! If you find yourself with some extra time over this long Labor Day weekend, why not take a moment to think about the reason for the season? These classic salvos from The Baffler all happen to be from issue 9 of The Baffler, a labor-themed issue we published in ...

Battered Women Behind Bars: True Stories on Stage
August 21, 2014
“Abuse is a generic term, it doesn’t mean anything,” the parole board commissioner says. “Be specific.” Helen Broker sits in handcuffs at the hearing and prepares to defend herself. Her husband had violently abused her throughout their marriage, until one day, acting ...

We Do Actually Know What’s the Matter with Kansas
August 20, 2014
A decade ago, coastal voters and the political and media elite were banging their heads on their desks with bafflement, wondering why so many Americans were voting against their economic interests. Wasn’t the Democratic Party supposed to be the party for the little guy, and ...

Rick Perlstein on America’s Nervous Breakdown
August 04, 2014
This past weekend brought bright and starry reviews for Baffler contributing editor Rick Perlstein’s new book about the tumultuous 1970s, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan, out now. Max Boot in the Wall Street Journal admires how ...

Cantor’s Next Gig, Part Two
August 01, 2014
Alrighty folks, it’s time to call this thing. Last month, after Eric Cantor’s (to many) surprising upset in the Virginia primary race, we asked you all what you thought he would do next after leaving office. We got a pretty impressive array of responses, and we ...

Tax Inversions and the Dems Who Love Them
July 25, 2014
Corporations are people, my friend. Just like human people, they will go to absurd lengths to reduce their income-tax liability, and just like human people, they can move to another country if the one they live in doesn’t suit them. So in that sense, when the generic drug ...