Skip to main content

Inside the GOP Clown Car

Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone
On the campaign trail in Iowa, Donald Trump's antics have forced the other candidates to get crazy or go home

CROW MOTHER

Linda Rodriguez Pedestal Magazine
Dedicated to Frieda Kahlo, Linda Rodriguez's poem celebrates the spirit of revenge, the immortality of the Mexican painter's suffering and triumph.

3 Poems: Targets, In Response, Reasons for Release

Morgan Christie Blackberry Magazine
This three-part poem by Canadian poet Morgan Christie addresses a violent racial encounter, the response, and the consequence once upon a time, but something that seems contemporary.

Motor City, Rusting

Scott McLemee Inside Higher Ed
Perhaps in no U.S. city is the wreckage wrought by today's capitalism better seen than in Detroit, the once mighty auto metropolis now morphed into a showcase of post-industrial abandonment. New signs of rebirth and redevelopment there are fraught with contradictions, as artists and gentrifiers engage in what Dora Apel calls "ruin lust." Here, Scott McLemee reviews Apel's take on the (former?) Motor City and post-industrial tourism and aesthetics.

The Surge Fallacy

Peter Beinart The Atlantic
Having misunderstood the Iraq War, U.S. Republicans are taking a dangerously hawkish turn on foreign policy.

Stop Stealing From Strippers

Antonia Crane The New York Times
Strip clubs have provided me and many other dancers with steady income for our entire adult lives. I’m thankful to have enjoyed decades as a paid entertainer. But we deserve the same protections and respect given to any employee in any other work force.

South Africa’s Domestic Workers Gain a Minimum Wage

Luso Mnthali Equal Times
The conditions of employment for domestic workers vary from house to house, but along with miners, domestic workers have long endured one of the most exploitative employment relationships in South Africa’s history. Although a new minimum wage is more than domestic workers have ever earned, it is still not enough -- what is needed is a living wage.

Something to Offer

William P. Jones Jacobin
Unlike many in his party, Eugene V. Debs believed the struggle for black equality was critical to realizing the promise of socialism.