Welcome back to our regular look at the week’s subscriber-only content! It’s great to be here with you.
There was an extra-special reason to be signed up this week: our subscribers got an exclusive 25 percent discount on annual subscriptions to David Sirota’s TMI newsletter. Plus, they got to read some good blogs.
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OK, let’s get to this week’s subscriber-only blogs!
In “Why They’re Not Calling It a Strike,” Katherine Krueger wrote about why the elite media was so eager to describe the wildcat strikes that tore through the sports world this week as “boycotts” instead of what they really were:
That’s why we hear so much noise about boycotts: If, say, supporting Black Lives Matter is as simple as shopping at this grocery store as opposed to another one, it’s within your personal power to feel like you’re influencing politics. True boycotts can be powerful, but framing political change as a consumer choice rather than something we must forcefully demand from our elected officials conveniently lets them off the hook when they do nothing. It also further atomizes us when solidarity is what we need most.
In “The Left Deserves Better Than Aaron Coleman,” Jack Crosbie wrote about the 19-year-old Kansas candidate whose history of abuse prompted deep divisions on the left:
The argument generally follows that children should have a chance at a full adult life, in which they can demonstrate growth and genuine remorse for the pain they caused while underage.
This is true. Coleman’s behavior as a minor should not disqualify him from running for public office, and indeed it has not: technically, he is still the Democratic candidate for the seat, and right now appears to be still actively campaigning. (Kansas’s Republican party, which did not even register an opponent to the Democratic primary winner, is now looking to put someone on the ballot if Coleman withdraws.) But it’s a perfectly valid reason to not vote for him. Public office is something that is earned, not an inherent right.
In our weekly subscriber-only Office Hours chat, we talked about…well, a lot, but mostly the Republican Party’s cultish devotion to Donald Trump this week:
There’s a lot of bullshit thrown around about how much Trump has “changed” the GOP (it was a white nationalist demon factory long before him!) but he has undoubtedly created a highly successful cult of personality around himself. For example, I can’t stop thinking about the sight of Kimberly Guilfoyle just losing it at the Republican National Convention. It was objectively very funny—she was, like, extremely shouting to nobody—but it was also fascinating, because she worked herself into the kind of ecstatic frenzy you typically only see just before people either start speaking in tongues or offer up their firstborn as a sacrifice to the leader.
And, in his weekly “Man, What the Hell?” newsletter, Rafi Schwartz wrote about, among other things, this:
SomeBODY once told me
Fresh off their iconic stint as likely disease vectors during this year’s massive Sturgis motorcycle rally in North Dakota, bread-hating nostalgia-plumbers Smash Mouth are facing the scorn of an (aging) fan-base who aren’t thrilled with the decidedly un-biker-ish band’s blasé “fuck that COVID shit” stance.
Did you see “late 90s radio-friendly pop band becomes the flashpoint in a biker-fueled culture war over a global pandemic” coming? Me either.
Ask not for whom the mouth smashes. It smashes for thee.
OK, that’s it for this week! And remember, if you want to read all of these blogs, as well as our complete archive, all you have to do is subscribe.
Have a great weekend!