Dear friend,
The Baffler has a long history of skewering toothless liberals, gutless centrists, and the snakeoil pitchmen of modern conservatism. We’ve been shouting in the wilderness since the unholy Reagan years, so we’re well-equipped to expose the grifters and false prophets who have taken over our debauched public life.
As the third decade of the aughts approaches, The Baffler is proud to publish the sharpest writers on the left, both emerging and established. Back in the early days, our founder Thomas Frank wrote about the death of cities in the age of information; more recently, crack architecture critic Kate Wagner documented the digital and physical structures that stand to be destroyed by the whims of the market and the oncoming climate crisis.
And who is bound to survive the coming flood? Why, the wealthy and powerful, of course, whose idiotic idiosyncrasies David Mulcahey dutifully studied in our founding era, a mantle that J. W. McCormack has since taken up, examining everything from gratuitous book projects to the misappropriation of Bruce Springsteen’s discography by Republican politicians. Rick Perlstein and Brendan O’Connor have focused their attention on other perversions of the conservative wing—both the pyramid scheme of Mitt Romney heydey, and the Proud Boys who have inherited the mantle.
Writing about the sorry state of the rule of law back in the 1990s, Tom Geoghegan despaired at the collapse of unions; in a rare happy update, we are pleased to report that Kim Kelly is helping us monitor a reinvigorated labor movement, spurred by teachers’ strikes across the country. And just as Barbara Ehrenreich demonstrated capitalism’s affliction on the literal body of the body politic, Tarence Ray documents the harm the extraction economy inflicts on the places and people around it.
Speaking of neoliberalism’s complete failure to deliver on the promises of trickle-down prosperity, while Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw interpreted the liberal dreams of a post-racial society that never came to fruition, Kaila Philo examined the nightmarish broken-windows policing that punished black children trying to make an honest buck. As for the much vaunted visions of techno-utopia, those never shook out, either; Stephen Duncombe foretold twenty-first-century marketing logic back in the nineties, and these days Jacob Silverman tallies the failures and follies of our Silicon Valley elite.
The Baffler has been lucky enough, over the years, to work with culture critics par excellence; George Scialabba and Lucy Ives discuss books at the end of the academy, the end of history, the end of time; Gene Seymour and John Semley examine the scryings of futuristic cinema and nostalgic pictures with deep skepticism; and Maura Mahoney and Niela Orr unwrap the packaged entertainment industry.
Major publications are finally, finally catching on to the trends your friends at The Baffler have been wise to since the 1980s! Stick with us, and you’ll be well-equipped for all of tomorrow’s cultural and political shames, today.
Cheers,
Noah McCormack
Publisher
