Power
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Anthony Edwards Is Preparing to Take the Baton July 24, 2024
Just one day after Team USA lost the bronze-medal game to Canada in the 2023 FIBA World Cup, reports began circulating about which stars would join forces for the 2024 Olympics. LeBron James was interested, and he soon placed a phone call to discuss ...
Power and Corruption July 24, 2024
Lord Acton said that great men are almost always bad men. Their greatness, he thought, contributed to their wickedness: power corrupts, and more power is all the more corrupting. This is taken for a truism in the Western world today, and many of our ...
The Peculiar Legacy of E.E. Cummings July 23, 2024
hen and why did the work of E.E. Cummings become marginal? In the 1920s and ’30s, he was a clear standout among the many experimental writers and artists who constitute what we now call modernism. He published in the most influential “little magazine...
How Elvis Became the King of Las Vegas Weddings July 22, 2024
Even if he weren’t dressed in a black jumpsuit studded with gold sunbursts, even if his thick black hair wasn’t combed back, a single strand hanging roguishly across his forehead, Collins’ voice would still be instantly recognizable. The Nashville-bo...
Goodbye to the Hamilton Decade July 19, 2024
How did Alexander Hamilton—champion of capital, skeptic of democracy—come to be seen as a hero by progressive America? This past spring, journalist Matthew Zeitlin suggested on X (the app formerly known as Twitter) that the musical Hamilton had sketc...
What Shapes Our Desires? July 19, 2024
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure Luke Burgisis the only person to have graduated from both NYU’s Stern School of Business and the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome.I first encountered him through his book Wanting: The Power of Mime...
Please Exile Me from Katy Perry’s ‘Woman’s World’ July 19, 2024
Katy Perry recently released the song “Woman’s World” as a preview to her upcoming album that is scheduled for release in September. The lyrics — if they can be dignified with that word — are merely a collection of girl-power inspired catchphrases. H...
The Paradoxical Paradise of the Garden July 19, 2024
The reader of “Paradise Lost” encounters the Garden of Eden at the same time that Satan does. Having leapt over the garden wall, Milton’s athletic antihero flies up into a tree to survey his new surroundings. “Beneath him with new wonder now he views...
How Cancel Culture Lost Its Power July 19, 2024
On July 16, three days after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the founder of the Right-wing X account “Libs of Tiktok” announced she was dedicating “ALL OF LIBS OF TIKTOK’S RESOURCES” toward “EXPOSING the Radical Left fantasizing about kill...
Meet One of the Most Prolific People on Yelp July 19, 2024
People have extraordinarily strong opinions on just about everything, and since 2004, Yelp — the site that aggregates user-written reviews — has provided a platform to exercise our first amendment right to criticize, exalt, and qualify. Yelp’s court ...
Barbie’s Girls and Hannah’s Children July 12, 2024
When I was a young girl in the early 2000s, “career Barbie” ruled the world. The doll, released in the late 1950s, had developed beyond domestic concerns and now followed the prevailing cultural message that girls could be anything. Barbie defined th...
The Inside Out Message of 'Inside Out 2' July 12, 2024
There’s little doubt that, cinematically speaking, Inside Out 2 is a good movie. Like its predecessor, it’s entertaining, hilarious, poignant, and beautifully made. The writing is sharp, and the voice actors mostly do a wonderful job—new additions Ma...
The Limits of Liberation July 09, 2024
“Fantasy love,” claimed Andy Warhol, “is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting…Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets anyway.” He lamented that social and scientific progress led to b...
From ‘Unforgiven’ to the ‘Horizon’ July 09, 2024
Look, I’m not going to lie: My favorite Fourth of July movie is Independence Day, the schlocky sci-fi actioner about America using its military and technological might to exit the post-Berlin Wall, pre-9/11 vacation from history, unite the world, and...
The Power of Chicken Soup for the Anti-Woke Soul July 09, 2024
Nellie Bowles recently appeared at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco to promote her new book Morning After the Revolution. I was in the audience that night, sitting near the front of the relatively small room. It felt like a mildly rebellious ac...
The Phone, the Girl, the Computer July 08, 2024
The algorithm has our attention. It befuddles and bewilders, surprises and preoccupies, sucking us in like a vacuum, and spitting us out like a blowhole. Dayna Tortorici understood and articulated this better than many of us ever could in her hugely ...
Hollywood’s Most Gifted Scribe July 05, 2024
There are many screenwriters in the annals of Hollywood who have believed that they are infinitely more talented than the hacks and cowboys who have ruined their perfectly conceived scripts. Some might even have a point. Yet it is decidedly rare for ...
The Politics of the Heart on Stage July 05, 2024
“The chief glory of a woman is not to be talked about,” notes Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase in Our American Queen, the new play by Thomas Klingenstein (at the Flea Theatre through June 29). Chase is directing his comment, or warning, at his daug...
Juliet Escoria Isn’t Afraid of the Dark July 01, 2024
Juliet Escoria isn’t afraid of writing monstrous characters. One story in her new collection, You Are the Snake, is about a bipolar woman and abuse survivor who goes on to abuse her own child. In another, a restaurant cashier wishes for her co-worker...
