Allow me to introduce Casanova Nobody Frankenstein.
Whose Tears of the Leather-Bound Saints has just issued.[i]
And that is his real name.
Legally, since 2013.
In homage to the evil genius of Mystery Men comics.
(Forgive me if you knew this.)
Nation
Burning Down the House? Ben Carson and U.S. Housing Policy
MAGA-ites have leaned on Ben Carson’s bland invocations of color-blindness in the wake of George Floyd’s murder so it’s a good time to re-up on Brendan Williams’ lucid account of Carson’s deplorable record at the Department of Housing and Urban Development…
First Day Out (A Blue Sky Day Turns Grey)
Like a lot of New Yorkers, I’m missing the outside.
Inequality & Two Cheers for Capitalism
In these days of pandemic isolation, as the world reels from one gut punch to the next, the future looks anything but rosy. While the monied float on their yachts and in their two million dollar isolation rentals in the Hampton’s, the rest of us live in fear and anxiety.
Alter Cocker
Even after this crisis is over, I will never stop feeling old. That’s what I’ve learned from the coronavirus. Old is not wise. Not just archaic. It is susceptible, assailable, penetrable—vulnerable.
The Pharisee and the Coronavirus
I’ve been thinking about the Old Testament prophets lately. I distrust end-is-nigh-ism; that “end” is often just the destruction of some solipsistic fantasy. Life goes on in whatever seemingly hobbled form. The fundamentalists I grew up with understood those OT doom-sayers quite literally. The surreal omens promised a real-world destruction always five minutes from a moment exactly like now. But that now never comes.
Virus-Apocalypse
More notes on now from the author’s Facebook page…
Sociology of Coronavirus by the Sea
It’s a sociologist’s brilliant, brutal dream to witness societal shifts of this magnitude; we see the good, the bad and the ugly, unfiltered.
Letter to an Editor: On NYRB’s “Liberal in Trump Land”
Your editor linked Nathan Osborne to this recent piece in New York Review of Books detailing a liberal local journalist’s experience in an upstate New York town full of Trump fans. Osborne replied as follows…
National Create A Vacuum Day (A Message from Iowa)
National Create A Vacuum Day on February 4th explores spaces void of matter. On this day, we are challenged to create one.
Hunger for Justice
Three asylum seekers of South Asian origin remain on a 90+ day hunger strike at the LaSalle Detention Center, an ICE processing facility in Jena, Louisiana.
Warren vs. Sanders: a Clash of Classes
Now comes Hillary Clinton, adding gravy to Elizabeth Warren’s beef with Bernie Sanders by suggesting that he has a pattern of disparaging female opponents. One of them, former Vermont governor Madelyn Kunin, says Sanders called himself a better feminist then she and “urged people not to vote for me just because I was a woman.” Ouch! On the other hand, NOW has a history of endorsing men over women who don’t support their issues, and Sanders’ record has been good enough to earn him a 100 percent rating from the group. So, should you cast your ballot on the basis of Clinton’s assertion? Four years ago, I did.
The Y of It
Real talk in real time on the Warren/Sanders rift…
Patriarchal Prerogative
Why don’t people get that the conversation is bigger than “Did Bernie say it or didn’t he,” and that pointing to videos where he said encouraging things about their political ambitions to school girls 30 years ago does not address or resolve the issue?