The Afterlife of the Death of the Author
We’re all authors now. Most of us don’t write books—but we blog, we post on Facebook, we tweet, we create TikTok or YouTube videos. Authorship is everywhere, but it’s not…
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Culture & Media
210 posts
Trader Joe’s, Racism and Cancel Culture
Four weeks ago, California high school senior Briones Bedell targeted grocery chain Trader Joe’s via Change.org, asking the company to remove “racist branding” from its international food products. The petition…
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In Defense of “Hamilton”
This isn’t really about Hamilton. This is about the ideas espoused by left-wing postmodernists and how they lead to the misery of American audiences everywhere for no good reason. The…
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The Real Reason Cancel Culture is Rejecting “Harry Potter”
The obsession of the supporters of cancel culture with J. K. Rowling stems from the fact that they can no longer comprehend—and therefore cannot accept—the darkest elements of the human…
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When “The News” Was New
The American news media has spent the past four years in a state of highly public soul-searching about its much vaunted role in maintaining a democratic society. Recent editorial conflicts…
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“A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn
Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States considers the history of the US from the perspective of the underdog: the lower classes, workers, women, immigrants, African slaves and their…
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The Spectre of Atheism: “Leaving the Allah Delusion Behind” by Ibn Warraq
The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of…
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James Baldwin’s Ambiguous Legacy
Whether it is conservatives using Martin Luther King Jr.’s colorblind principles to argue against progressive anti-racism, while ignoring his condemnations of white moderates, or leftists using the legacy of Frederick…
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A Spectacular Theory of Today’s Woke Advertising
Many companies have recently switched from aspirational to woke advertising—and a surprising number of them are engaging in self-satire and even self-abnegation as they do so. From Gillette, with its…
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Possible Conversations
Letter is a public platform for one-on-one letter exchanges. We have recently completed an Impossible Conversations competition, in which the judges—Heather Heying, Russ Roberts, John Wood jr. and our own…
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The Problem with the Concept of Cancel Culture
The phrase cancel culture has been all over the internet over the past few weeks. The publication of the Harper’s letter defending free speech and a number of high profile…
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Statue Switcheroo: Monumental Figures, Radical Politics and History
Call me a squishy centrist, but, while I think monuments to Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and King Leopold don’t deserve to stand in perpetuity, I sympathize with arguments that…
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The Historian Who Came in from the Chill
I am in the sunset of life, and I feel it to be my special mission to tell people what they are not prepared to hear.—Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Elizabeth Cady…
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Are Calls for Open Debate Too Little Too Late?
In Harper’s Magazine this past week over 150 prominent intellectuals and bestselling authors, such as Malcolm Gladwell, J. K. Rowling, Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky and others signed a letter that…
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Hip-Hop, Gangsta Rap: Das Kapital Needs You.
For around a century now, African Americans have been disproportionately prominent in world music, inventing and reinventing unlike any other population or country. They’ve given the world jazz, R&B, soul,…
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In Defense of Dick: Paying the Penis Its Proper Respect
One torrid summer day in Montreal a few years back, a high-powered publicist asked me if I wanted to go shopping with her for a vibrator.
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What Trump and JFK tell us about Kanye West
Kanye West, arguably the most influential figure in pop culture today, recently announced his intention of running for President of the United States this year. We must now realize the…
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Has Modernism Ended?
Postmodernism is a notoriously hard to define intellectual and cultural movement that has, over recent decades, become a regular topic of discussion in academic and artistic circles because it rejects…
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