Explainer journalism: the pop culture grievance industry

Since I’m still getting hate mail that misunderstands what I think — no, I don’t want to burn every comic book — let me lay this stuff out in easy readin’ listicle format. Pop culture and (especially) geek culture are frequently represented by fans as disrespected and marginalized, but are commercially dominant and increasingly critically acclaimed. […]

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I’m as confused as you are

So some people are sending around this interview with Berkeley grad students in their Rhetoric program as they largely avoid the question of what rhetoric is. I agree that it is not very helpful to someone trying to understand what rhetoric is and why people would study it. I would just point out that Berkeley’s […]

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someday we may only have culture left

Many of my political disagreements with the broad online left can be boiled down to a rejection of the politics of cultural affinity. I think that elites have come to so closely associate their politics with their cultural branding that those domains are now totally indistinguishable. They don’t know how to think politically in a […]

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the official style

I’ve written in the past that Jacob Weisberg’s attack on Ned Lamont’s supporters is one of the worst things I’ve ever read, in the sense that it demonstrates so many of the worst instincts and presumptions of our political class. Well, Weisberg has really been covering himself with glory again, and for precisely the same […]

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