Nation

Hillary Clinton’s shot and a beer in Scranton reminded me of that old X song “The Have-Nots” — “How does it feel to have your own bottle of booze behind the bar, how does it feel?” Hillary, the $109 million dollar woman, doesn’t want to know yet she’s once again fabulating a felt connection with … Read more

What follows are remembrances of Amiri Baraka by First writers and readers (new and old). While there’s nothing official about this tribute, everyone who contributed hopes it might serve as a comfort and/or calmative to Baraka’s wife Amina and his sons and daughters. Baraka was a brick for the bunch who started First of the … Read more

The NBA playoffs—from the high drama of the early series to divine low-downs of Charles Barkley—show what happens when African Americans get to compete on equal terms. But the sweetness of their play shouldn’t be an excuse for the treacle of that State Farm ad set in the 1920s(?) where Chris Paul’s proprietorial “twin” pitches … Read more

This Sunday the New York Times Book Review will publish Michael Kinsley’s review of Glenn Greenwald’s No Place To Hide. The review has been available on line since May 22nd, where it immediately provoked confidently scornful replies—“rebuttals” doesn’t really capture the intellectual content of this genre—from a number of people, many of them journalists, along … Read more