From TNR, a liberal education: Should academics join the government? Martha Nussbaum wonders. The intellectual as courtier: That great kissing-up sound you hear? That's a scholar flirting with a despot (and more on the perils of public intellectualizing). “Equal opportunity haters”: A profile of The eXile. What the right forgets about labor history: Busting unions gave Calvin Coolidge the White House, but it gave America the Great Depression. From The Believer, the dead chipmunk: The jokiness of a joke can be explained by the Ontic-Epistemic Theory, the surprisy, and the absence of post-Chekhovian details; and the race that is not about winning: We need a certain kind of teenage antihero to remind us that we are not alone. Robert Reich on the case for a 70 percent marginal tax rate on the rich (and a response). Dana Adam Shapiro interviewed dozens of divorced people about the end of their relationships — the result is a treasure trove of heartbreak and infidelity. Finding new life as a cult classic: “An American Hippie in Israel”, the worst Israeli movie ever, includes naked hippies and machine-gun-toting mimes. The Must See Chart: This is what class war looks like. The Queer Queen: An analysis of power and privilege within queer scholarship. The fact is that white-collar criminals are, in general, incredibly good at deluding themselves that they’re good people, even when they clearly aren’t. The Afterlife of Henry James: Stylistically, he is the antithesis of our simplistic, hyperactive age — but topically, with his focus on inequality and class stratification, he's never been more timely. Russ Baker on Seymour Hersh and the men who want him committed. Your Grandpa’s Porn: Somewhere out there, there’s probably someone turned on by Jennifer Aniston plush toys — God help them. (And here is a post from last month on Japan.)
