Gosh, do I love the ’70s! America’s Weirdest Decade is always a source of entertainment, whether it’s actual culture produced by the most drugged-up people in history at the time, or the tribute-culture produced by the slightly less drugged-up people who may or may not remember it. Many of the …
If you are an organizer or an activist, think about the time you felt most effective, most powerful, most joyful in struggle. Was it alone? Was it in solitude, your face bathed in the artificial light of a telephone or a laptop screen? Was it after finding le mot juste …
One of the primary contradictions of the present moment is that unionism in the United States is enjoying its biggest surge in decades, while union membership is at one of its lowest points in history. Decades of neoliberalism, privatization, outsourcing, and the erosion of full-time direct employment have resulted in …
This weekend, in a squall of rain and a first breath of the cold months to come, we went to the Galewood Crossings AMC to see a movie. It was movie weather; the kind of weather that makes you want to spend a few hours in a warm, plush seat …
What is there to say, at a time like this? What is the point of speaking, of writing, of talking amongst ourselves, when a people who have been oppressed and harried unto death for almost a century are being obliterated on a daily basis? Why bother with such powerless pleading, …
At a time in which the ambition of most American cinema can be measured in centimeters, it seems almost unfair to judge Oppenheimer by the distance between the movie it is and the movie it’s trying to be. Based on a much-celebrated book (2005’s American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy …
Let us dispense, on this sad steaming Wednesday, with how strange it is to cry hot tears of loss and shame for someone you have never met. Let us take it as read the curious nature of fame, the odd parasocial relationships we develop with the famous, the very notion …
Let’s talk about the material analysis. Materialism is half of the brain-peelingly difficult (or quite simple, depending on who you ask) concept of dialectical materialism, and thus a cornerstone of Marxist theory and practice. Decades of cultural shorthand, including the catchy if false-consciousness-plagued #1 dance hit by Madonna in 1985, …
I had to Get Off the Internet this last couple of days because things were getting frankly ridiculous. “Things”, in this case, meant “a mystifying preponderance of liberal/left tone cops flitting around social media finger-wagging at anyone who dared to express, in however ironic a fashion, amusement or pleasure at …
