Here is this week’s Update, with links to my latest work, Daily Posts from the archives (April 14-18) in case you missed them, and some interesting articles from around the internet. You can follow me on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook (I am not accepting new friends on the last platform, but you can use the “follow” option). You can find previous Updates here.
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NEW WORK!
“Read Stuart Hall.” In part an homage to someone I have always admired.
“What Is the Point of Politics without Ideology?” A response to David Hogg’s ridiculous charade of insurgency.
FROM THE ARCHIVES!
“Yes, But What’s YOUR Solution?”
“Grief.”
“First They Came for the Criminals.”
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ELSEWHERE ON THE WEB!
There’s an enormous surge of writing on a lot of matters these days, but much of it tends to be repetitive, and, in many cases cynical—so many milquetoast liberals now espousing “radical” perspectives when, in the Biden years, they were busy screaming at us on the left to just shut up. Putting such people aside: I don’t blame writers or publications for just trying to keep up: we’re all caught in the doomscroll machine, and trying to get eyes to our work. But I do worry about about what all this means for the quality of analysis and, ultimately, our political future. More on that later, but for now, here are some links, including some older work that situates us more precisely in our current time. I always encourage people to think historically, instead of assuming that everything is new and newly broken. Moving forward, I’m going to try and combine links to contemporary criticism and analysis with ones to older, historically inflected work. We cannot pretend that everything happening right now came about in November 2024.
Everyone is praising Harvard for “standing up” to the Trump administration, but the Harvard Crimson warns, “Do Not Applaud Harvard for Doing the Bare Minimum.” I love the Crimson and many other student papers: if you’re in an area with an institution of higher education, it’s worth checking out its coverage which is likely to be often quirky, often rebellious, sometimes odd, and always interesting.
Steven Salaita delivered this astonishing talk, “No Resurrection: The Life and Death of the Modern University,” at Villanova University, and it’s well worth more than one read—and should be assigned everywhere, inside and outside universities. (The title of this Update is derived from the speech.) For years, I’ve thought about the history of pro-Palestine organising within higher education and the many activists and students who were doing the lonely, often dangerous work when their cause was not as well known or supported as it is now. Salaita’s essay here is an excellent recounting of that history, and so much more. As he puts it, “It’s not always the outside world that creates distress. Campuses are now part of the hostile externalities from which students need an escape.” Read it, over and over, until you’ve memorised it.
Davarian Baldwin’s 2021 book In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities is also an essential read on the modern university, and relevant as we look at what’s going on campuses right now, especially at wealthy insitutions (which we ought not to fetishise). You can read an excerpt here.
Protestors were tased at a Marjorie Taylor Greene Town Hall. Yes, tased.
There is now strong proof of life beyond our solar system, but, alas, I suspect aliens—who have, doubtless, been monitoring us for aeons—are just making themselves known as a warning that they heard about Jeff Bezos’s plan to dump our trash in outer space. That little tidbit came to us from the now beleaguered Gayle King, who calls herself an astronaut for an 11-minute bounce into the atmosphere.
It’s unclear what to call a group of six people who were sent upwards for 11 minutes just because the boyfriend of one of them (Jeff Bezos, soon to be married to Lauren Sánchez) could make it happen. “Crew” seems too technical since all they did was make sure their hair and makeup was in place, and they had nothing to do with directing the vessel. Assemblage? Space Squad? Katy Perry, who was in the group, took a daisy with her and kissed the ground upon her return, after carefully tending to her cascading locks. The whole trip has been roasted, a lot, with even Wendy’s, yes, that Wendy’s of the burgers, getting into it.
This is a sad and depressing report about ICE impersonators and sexual abuse—it’s from February, but I worry that this problem has been ongoing from the start of the raids (immigrants under threat are much less likely to report incidents out of fear).
Lara Jirmanus writes, on MedPage, about how ICE raids threaten immigrant health, and how hospitals can prepare.
This is about the failure of leadership on COVID in Canada, but is also sadly relevant to the U.S and, I think, many other countries.
“The Rise of the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Cult,” an older and excellent piece in Current Affairs, by David Kinder, worth revisiting as we contemplate the next moves of the Supreme Court.
The Gates Foundation has lost its diplomatic immunity in Kenya.
Wait, what? The Gates Foundation had diplomatic immunity? Yup. You can read Tim Schwab on that here.
And here’s an earlier Current Affairs interview with Linsey McGoey, whose 2015 book, No Such Thing As A Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy is one of the rare critical works on the billionaire.
Joe Biden was in Chicago, to cluck about how awful it is that Trump wants to cut Social Security. Perhaps this is proof that his memory is failing, or that he hopes that ours might be because, ahem, he championed the cuts and more, over the course of his long career. (Many thanks to David Miller for the reminder on Twitter.)
Oh, and, please, let us not forget that Nancy Pelosi once declared that “Everything must be on the table…including Medicare, Social Security and entitlements,” as reported by CNBC in 2011. Nothing is new, everything has always been broken.
I miss the ocean very much, but Chicago’s lakesides, all of them with man-made beaches, are enchanting and change as rapidly as any day that’s not in June and July. Brian Bouldrey writes about them and many other topics, and you can read his work here. Check out all his books here. I reviewed his Honorable Bandit: A Walk across Corsica, and it’s excellent.
A friend introduced me to American Psycho years ago, and he was right about its brilliance. The movie, also brilliant, just turned 25, and this is a very good Salon interview with its director Mary Harron.
I survive these times by listening to the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast. I posted a link to his epic Hot Ones appearance in a previous Update, but this interview with Harrison Ford is also a classic. I can’t really describe it: just watch.
April 17 was Bat Appreciation Day, so here you go.
And here is Frida, looking especially majestic.
Stay safe, and try to check in on your friends—many of whom are living in terror. The fear eats into our collective soul, and I don’t know how we are to get beyond it, but hold on: to yourself, to your friends, to your cats. Do what you must to survive, even (or especially) if that includes watching endless reruns of whatever show you like (I’ve alighted upon The Bob Newhart Show). I will see you next week.
You can find previous Updates here.
If you like this, please consider supporting my work.
Image: Lily Allport’s 1928 linocut ‘Punta Balbianello, Lake Como’.
