Too long; do not read.
The notion of a non-fiction noir isn’t hard to understand — the resonance of noir fiction, after all, comes from how easily we recognize the patterns of spiraling violence, inescapable fate, and the darkness of the human soul from our real lives — but it’s rather difficult to find examples of. True crime …
What makes you think anyone’s taking care of the girl? I wouldn’t be lifting a finger — not one finger — if I could make myself believe she was still alive. I don’t believe it. Not for ten minutes after they grabbed her. (Inspector Donnelly) Beginning like a classic Paramount …
“I’m not lecturing,” I said, “but you ought to change your attitude. On the level. It affects everybody you come in contact with. Take me, for example: before I met you I didn’t see how I could miss succeeding. I never even thought of failing. And now — “ “Who …
So, here we are. After years of ambiguity over the direction Barack Obama was taking as president, after months of nausea at the repulsive tactics his Republican opponents and the inexplicable support for Mitt Romney (the most worthless presidential candidate of my lifetime), after weeks of stress headaches whenever there …
Mmmm! What’s that devilish flavor, Midge? It’s got a base of frowning judge and overtones of cold marble and concrete, sprinkled with arbitrary traditions and with subtle hints of collective punishment! Wait, I know — it’s austerity! Yes, it’s the hot new lifestyle trend that’s sweeping Europe, and it’s coming to America, …
Of all the issues over which Republicans and Democrats have butted heads in recent elections, none have proven as shockingly polarizing as health care. When President Obama managed to pass a health care reform bill, it so enraged the opposition — despite the fact that it was a monstrously compromised …
Most Americans — and I hope to excuse the broadness of this claim by absolutely, unreservedly including myself — are really, really bad with money. This is not to say that they are simply stupid about their finances, or that when they are, it’s their fault. As has been widely …
The recent cultural fisticuffs over Amanda Palmer’s initial decision to hire local musicians to play for her in exchange for the non-negotiable instruments of “beer and hugs” has rippled far beyond Palmer herself, becoming a talking point in a larger conversation about what it means to be an artist in …
One of the great losses of the Internet age is the legendary quality of the you-had-to-be-there moment. Once upon a time, it was possible to evoke the unrepeatable glory of some event, some concert or performance or speech, and assure your audience that it was a thing of transcendent greatness, …
Blame is a tricky thing in politics. For one thing, you have to be particularly careful about the entire notion of blame — for blame, after all, implies agency and power, which can easily backfire. People who say that the current administration is responsible for all the woes of the …
I am not the first, and may not even be the one millionth, person to point out that a lot of voters approach politics as something about halfway between a sports fandom and a religion. In every election, there are massive numbers of people who treat the process not as …
I was adopted when I was two days old. I never met my birth parents, and my adoptive family is the only one I have ever known. But I know a few things about the couple who conceived and bore me: my mother was a white American, who married quite …
Elections, as people on the losing end of them are painfully used to being reminded, are as much about personalities as they are about politics. A candidate can have the most reasonable, sensible policies imaginable, but doesn’t stand a chance of winning office if, as they say, the dogs don’t …
An angel came down from heaven and give me twenty dollars, so I rolled my bones out to the picture show. My plan was to see the evening screening of The Dark Knight Rises, perpetual Batman mark that I am, but I had plenty of time to kill before it started, …
There are a number of symptoms of rot amongst the “New Democrats” — the dominant aggregation of technocratic centrists who have given us the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — that keep progressives and leftists from doing our party-bound duty to embrace new realities of forced austerity and …
