How High Is the Water, Mama?

"However legitimate the trio's outrage may have been, it failed to channel anger into effective art. De La Soul Is Dead took a bulldozer to the debut's glorious garden. De La Soul's lightness of touch was muscled aside in favor of churlish criticism of hip-hop's new turn toward vulgarity, which for the trio was a kind of minstrelsy. But instead of flowing above the fray, De La Soul fell into the petty snipery of the scene—the big dis, the character assassination. 3 Feet High's Day-Glo grin had twisted into a dyspeptic scowl. The group had given up the high ground, ceded the terms of the debate to its rivals. It was Dre and Snoop's world now, and De La Soul had sunk into it."

Marc Weingarten at The Atlantic discusses Marcus J. Moore's book about De La Soul, High and Rising.

"The Defendant Is Too Popular?"

"I've been known to dabble in satire, but I'm deadly serious here, just as I was last June when I recommended that Trump serve six months at Rikers (which is where New York State sends felons tried in New York City and sentenced to less than one year). Now, of course, the United States government can no longer spare Trump for six months. But it can still spare him for one week. Rikers was good enough for Trump's former chief financial adviser Alan Weisselberg, age 77, who last spring booked himself three months there after perjuring himself on Trump's behalf (in an unrelated civil fraud case, now under appeal, in which Trump was fined $355 million). Rikers should be good enough for Trump, too."

Timothy Noah at The New Republic writes: "Jail Trump for One Week."

"A Section of the Elite That Want to Keep Climbing the Ladder of Privilege but Don't Want to See Themselves as Part of the Elite"

"These works are important in helping make sense of the absurdities of contemporary politics. They explain, for instance, why the Democratic party in the US (and many social democratic parties in Europe) is increasingly a club for the rich and educated, while many working-class voters have abandoned it. They illuminate, too, our culture's obsession with the minutiae of symbolic representation and the policing of language but disregard for real material inequalities."

Kenan Malik at The Guardian discusses Musa al-Gharbi's We Have Never Been Woke.

"California Voters Rejected Progressive Policies on Crime, Housing, and More"

"Taken altogether, however, it represents a significant setback for progressive governance and policymaking in the nation's most populous state. Conservative critics often decry the state's public-policy woes even as they lament its trendsetting role in national politics. This time, however, the Golden State appeared to be in sync with a national shift to the right. The next election cycle in two years will show whether this is a transitory response or a deeper shift in how California governs itself—and leads the nation."

Matt Ford at The New Republic writes about the election results in California.

Götterdämmerung

"I know Trump voters told pollsters that it was all about the economy, and maybe it was. Eggs and milk are higher. I'm not disputing that, but people like me thought our fellow Americans recognized that the cause of that inflation, and which the Trump administration initiated and the Biden administration continued, kept the economy afloat, and that President Biden steered the nation towards the soft recovery every economist believed was impossible. People like me were wrong."

Michael Ian Black at The Daily Beast reacts to Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election.

As do David Frum and Spencer Kornhaber at The Atlantic.

As do John F. Harris, Steven Waldman, and other writers at Politico.

As do Mona Charen and Scott Conway at The Bulwark.

As do Robert Kuttner and David Dayen at The American Prospect.

As do Ed Kilgore and Jonathan Chait at New York.

As do Timothy Noah, Kate Aronoff, Greg Sargent, Jonathan Zimmerman, Eric Schmeltzer, and Michael Tomasky at The New Republic.

As does Sophie Clark at Newsweek.

As does Sam Wolfson (in an interview with Richard Reeves), Ben Davis, and John Harris at The Guardian.

As does Ashleigh Fields (in an interview with Sen. John Fetterman) at The Hill.

As do Paul Rosenberg and Jim Sleeper at Salon.

As do John West and Kara Dapena at The Wall Street Journal.

As do Jeet Heer and Joan Walsh at The Nation.

As does David Brooks of The New York Times.

As do John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira at The Liberal Patriot (who earlier argued that "the progressive moment is well and truly over").

"A Democratic Election Is the Antithesis of an Internet Transaction"

"The awkward truth for those of us who rally in defence of liberal democracy today is that it has undergone no obvious renewal since its peak at the end of the last century. We, no less than the nationalists, are imprisoned by nostalgia, wishing the future could be more like the past. And so we find ourselves constantly testing the limits of analogue protection against a virus that is digitally borne."

Rafael Behr at The Guardian argues that "a very online culture, marked by short attention spans, narcissism and impatient consumer appetites, has a more natural affinity with shallow demagoguery than with representative democracy."

"Taking a Race That Democrats Were Going to Lose and Making It Winnable"

"If Harris loses, pundits will focus on a number of decisions: her choice of running mate, her reluctance to break with Biden, her muddled message to young and Arab American voters disgusted by her administration's support for Israel's destructive war in the Middle East, her overcautious approach to both messaging and policy. But the fact remains that Harris gave Democrats a chance they did not have before. That is an accomplishment in and of itself, no matter the outcome of the election."

Alex Shephard praises Kamala Harris at The New Republic.

"Trump's Economic Plans Would Be Disastrous on a Grand Scale"

"Obama came into office in January 2009, amid a global financial collapse and recession. He did notch seventy-five straight months of job growth. Trump did sign a tax law that mostly helped corporations and the rich get richer. (He even bragged about it in those terms at Mar-a-Lago, telling wealthy friends that 'You all just got a lot richer.') That law added $1.9 trillion to the federal debt. And if Trump wins, the cycle will repeat, this time with President Joe Biden overseeing the handoff."

Jill Lawrence at The Bulwark writes, "Trump Wants to 'Fix' Our Booming Economy. Don't Let Him Near It."

October 2024 Acquisitions

Books:

S.A. Cosby, All the Sinners Bleed, 2024.

Paul Dini et al, Harley Quinn and the Gotham City Sirens, 2024.

Frank Herbert et al, Dune: The Graphic Novel, Book 1, 2020.

John Lewis et al, March: Book Two, 2015.

Music:

Archies, Sugar, Sugar..., .

Leon Bridges, , 2024.

Dare, What's Wrong with New York?, 2024.

Decemberists, , 2024.

Neil Diamond, Classics, .

Eric Dolphy, Out to Lunch, .

Heavy Heavy, , 2024.

Hermanos Guiterrez, , 2024.

Lemon Twigs, A Dream Is All We Have, 2024.

Wes Montogomery, , .

Offspring, , 2024.

Thee Sacred Souls, , 2024.

Velocity Girl, , .

Tom Waits, Used Songs, .

Who, Live at Shea Stadium 1982, 2024.

Who, Odds & Sods, .

Various, Atlantic R&B, .

Various, Bluesmasters Vol. 2, .

"But They Disliked Democracy and Taxes and Regulation Far More"

"The aura of evil around the Nazis can make everything associated with them seem exotic and remote. It may be hard for us to imagine how respectable business leaders could enthusiastically support Hitler's election campaign. But their motives were mundane and familiar: pragmatism with a dash of ideological conviction."

Benjamin Hett at The New Republic argues that "[n]early a century later, many of our business leaders are blithely repeating the experiences of their German predecessors."

"Homeowners, She Said, Are Concerned About Property Values and Are Resistant to Policies They Believe Might Adversely Affect Them"

"'There are a lot of homeowners in L.A. who lean left, are sympathetic to the problem of homelessness and are generally supportive of these solutions,' Thomas said. 'But on a neighborhood block, they're incentivized quite differently.'"

Liam Dillon in the Los Angeles Times reports on a survey of homeowners and renters about housing.

"The Gradual-And-Then-All-At-Once Slide Into Our Strange Digital Present"

"For those who expect American politics to conform at least somewhat to the past two and a half centuries of history, the 2024 campaign cycle seems unsettling, an even stranger and more radical break than we've seen before. But if you look at what's driving these changes—a transformed media landscape, the increasingly tenuous link between policy and public sentiment, a sea change in how pollsters track the American public—you can see that it's not quite a break, but the emergence of a future that some have been living in for years."

At Politico, Derek Robertson writes that "[y]es, this is the future of politics."

"Amphetamines, Jean-Paul Sartre and John Lee Hooker"

"Early Mods could 'pass' between work and play without changing their suits, which is perhaps one of the reasons they were never sent up in the culture at large. Think back to 1960s and 1970s low comedy: no TV sketch show or sitcom or kitschy horror film was complete without its parade of subcult Aunt Sallies–hippies, ton-up boys, skinheads, punks. Rockers had shivs, skinheads had bovver boots, hippies might dose you–what was a Mod going to do? Make you listen to Otis Redding? Force you to buy a decent pair of trousers?"

In a 2013 London Review of Books article, Ian Penman reviews Richard Weight's Mod: A Very British Style.

"So: Read, Agree, Disagree, Argue, and Pass Them Along to Uncle Stan in Aliquippa. Unless You Calculate That It'll Just Make Uncle Stan Like Trump More."

"Some were just embarrassing. Many were horrific. All of them should disqualify him from another four years in the White House."

Michael Tomasky at The New Republic presents "The 100 Worst Things Trump Has Done Since Descending That Escalator."

And at The Bulwark, Cathy Young adds "101 MORE Reasons Trump Is Unfit to Be President."

""What, Me Worry?' Was the Slogan of a Holy Fool, Wiser Than the Know-It-Alls, and Forever Young"

"By 1960 MAD had conquered the teenage market. According to some estimates, it was read by most American college students and almost half the country's high school students (at least the male ones). Believe it or not, MAD would become even more popular in the next dozen years."

Tablet runs an excerpt from David Mikics's The MAD Files: Writers and Cartoonists on the Magazine that Warped America's Brain!

"Welcome to Autumn, Fuckheads!"

"I may even throw some multi-colored leaves into the mix, all haphazard like a crisp October breeze just blew through and fucked that shit up. Then I'm going to get to work on making a beautiful fucking gourd necklace for myself. People are going to be like, 'Aren't those gourds straining your neck?' And I'm just going to thread another gourd onto my necklace without breaking their gaze and quietly reply, 'It's fall, fuckfaces. You're either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you’re not.'"

McSweeney's reposts Colin Nissan's "It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers."

"Democrats Must Offer Material Improvements to the Lives of Working-Class Americans, not Just Ironic Camouflage Trucker Hats"

"But the subjects of Shenk's narrative aren't the not-so-great men at the end of history. Rather, they are the insiders, standing behind those men, out of the spotlight: strategists Stan Greenberg and Douglas Schoen, 'political Zeligs' who emerge, again and again, on the scene of left-liberal parties' fabulous failures across the globe, hopping from ship to sinking ship over the past 30 years. But Greenberg and Schoen were no chameleons. They brought with them dueling ideas on how to reverse the losses wrought by dealignment. And through their rivalry, Shenk contends, we can understand the real story of dealignment, and how we might reverse it."

Ben Metzner at The New Republic reviews Timothy Shenk's Left Adrift: What Happened to Liberal Politics.