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...moreCook’s portraits are usually accompanied by texts distilled from interviews she conducts with her subjects (afterward, she says, because she prefers the shoot itself to remain as meditative as possible). This provides her, and her audience, with a verbal layer of insight not normally accessible to photographers.
Has the US turned into a satire of itself? Consider how quickly Congress has gone from championing Freedom Fries to chastising President Obama’s absence from the Paris peace march. Over at the LA Times, David L. Ulin looks at why Americans are choosing irony over satire:
...moreIs it coincidence, then, that the rise of postmodernism in the 1970s overlaps almost exactly the decline of satire?
1. Mitt Romney convincingly portrayed a sympathetic human being.
...moreFor weeks now, the Romney campaign has run ads claiming that President Obama has gutted the work requirement for welfare recipients.
The response has varied. Fact checkers Politifact and the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler have called this attack what it is–a lie.
...moreTo almost no one’s surprise, last night North Carolina became the 31st state to ban same-sex marriage. This is the second time North Carolina has done this–the first time was just a state law; this one was a Constitutional amendment. This Constitutional amendment, though, does more than simply ban same-sex marriage.
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I am going to tell you my favorite story of how a flower acquired its name. It’s the story of the ranunculus.
...moreThis last year Ishmael Reed published a book of satirical essays targeting the current American media: Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the Nigger Breakers.
Despite being a MacArthur Fellow, a critically-acclaimed author of nine novels and numerous other volumes of poetry, essays and criticism, Reed, a long-time resident of Oakland, CA had to go to a Canadian publisher to publish this book.
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Can a resuscitated left-wing publication—a print publication!—thrive in the hostile economic conditions of 2010? The editors of The Baffler are betting it can.
A memoir of the war in Afghanistan asks questions about war and responsibility and what it means to be an American after 9/11.
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