‘Friends Without Benefits’: ‘Job Creators’ Accrue More Terrifying Power
May 31, 2014 Applying for a job you need but don't really want is bad enough. But now "Zappos, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon, is going to occupy the unemployed for months with (mostly futile) attempts to become virtual 'friends' with the online shoe retailer," Noah McCormack writes at The Baffler.
David Graeber: ‘There Has Been a War on the Human Imagination’
Aug 13, 2013 American intellectuals have had plenty of cause for despair in these Roman decades of international and domestic imperialism against different ways of thought and life. At an April launch party in San Francisco for the 22nd volume of the countercultural magazine The Baffler, anthropologist and contributor David Graeber explained some of how this happened and praised a nationwide grass-roots effort to reverse the trend.
Back to Blunt the Cutting Edge
Jul 19, 2013 John Summers, editor-in-chief of the critical, satirical magazine The Baffler, appeared on Boston's WGBH News to introduce his journal to television audiences, saying that when people ask what the publication is about, he "remind[s] them that this sort of thing existed for a long time in the American cultural scene."
Let Nicholas Kristof Damage Your Mind
Jun 15, 2013 In a late 2012 PBS series called "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide," the lauded New York Times columnist and professional flake "glosses" the harmful "utopian vision" of free-market globalization sold to Americans in a 1980 television broadcast by neoliberal economist Milton Friedman, Anne Elizabeth Moore writes in The Baffler.In an October PBS series, the lauded New York Times columnist and professional flake "glossed" Milton Friedman's harmful and dishonest "utopian vision" of free-market globalization.
Modify Your Criticism, Please
Dec 28, 2012 Left-wing generationalism is on display on the pages of this month’s Jacobin as editor Peter Frase responds to Baffler contributor Thomas Frank’s criticism of the ethos of the Occupy movement.
How OWS Toppled Itself
Dec 14, 2012 Postmodern confusion about how populist movements take hold and flourish caused Occupy Wall Street to “deconstruct” itself in a frenzied obsession with nonhierarchical structures, a disdain for demands, and other trappings of “lazy, reflexive libertarianism,” author and columnist Thomas Frank writes in The Baffler.
The Working Life of a Professional Cynic
Nov 1, 2012 Thomas Frank, master of sarcasm and chief polemicist for Harper’s Magazine, is a treasure of the anxious, aggravated left. He recently made a demonstration of happy defiance in the face of accelerating social disaster in an interview with The Financial Times.
Dead End on Shakin’ Street
Jul 14, 2012 As American communities crumble under the weight of corporate capitalism, leaders attempt to convince their fellow citizens that the magical quality of “vibrancy” dwelling in arts districts—not universal health care, financial regulation or public works projects—will get their towns back on their feet.
We Told You So
May 19, 2012 Two months before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, a group of experts and I warned the Obama campaign about the likelihood of a global economic crisis. Not the slightest word came back.
My Consensus, Right or Wrong
Mar 21, 2012 With the revival of The Baffler, former WSJ columnist and current Harper’s Magazine contributor Thomas Frank reveals that success in Washington and big business has everything to do with belonging to the right pack, especially if that pack was dead wrong about the economy.
