Ahh, the lost art of campaign journalism. In this New Yorker piece about the Bernie Sanders campaign, Sarah Larson nails it. The story has nuance and layers. It has spirit. The reporter’s voice is great. She’s funny and insightful and sometimes profound at the same time. She includes her own sensibilities and those of others in the story in equal measures. She talks to a ton of people. She references Bernie in relation to the other candidates, Trump, Michael Moore, his adoring... Read more
In my previous essay, I invoked “those famously fratricidal brothers, Peter and Christopher Hitchens, who published dueling books on behalf of theism and atheism within a few years of each other, brother Peter writing in his book that “’On this my brother and I agree: that independence of mind is immensely precious, and that we should try to tell the truth in clear English even if we are disliked for doing so.’” Here is the crux of the matter – the... Read more
There is a widely held (and somewhat depressing) view that most people are hedgehogs. We have One Big Idea (or, for many of us, perhaps only one little idea). At some point in our twenties, we experience a “conversion moment,” a singular epiphany about the ways of the world, which heralds some consolidation of our mature “self” and thereby opens the gates to our future. From this perspective, everything else we do after that glorious moment pretty much involves a (mostly ruminative, sometimes angry)... Read more