Новости за 31.05.2017

Consider the myth of the regular guy politician. He’s an outsider. He gets results precisely because he doesn’t understand the point of ordinary political entanglements—of lobbyists, polls, or slick consultants. He speaks his mind and his mind is always on the interests of regular guy Americans who are just like him.

The Trump wars are still raging among conservative intellectuals. Indeed, the divide between Never Trump writers and broader pro-Trump conservatives remains as wide now as it was during last year’s elections. In National Review on Tuesday, syndicated columnist Dennis Prager argued that this battle isn’t over the president himself, but competing visions of America. Whereas pro-Trump conservatives “believe that America is engaged in a civil war, with the survival of America as we know it at stake,”... Читать дальше...

In 1980, the conceptual artist Lorraine O’Grady created an alter ego and named her Mademoiselle Bourgeoise Noire. She wore a dress composed of 180 pairs of white gloves and carried a white cat-o-nine tails constructed of sail rope and white chrysanthemums, as she invaded various art museums and galleries around New York City. When O’Grady’s character entered a room, she would throw down her whip and shout out poems with forceful lines such as “Black art must take more risks!” and “Now is the time for an invasion!” Other times... Читать дальше...

The American Health Care Act has managed to become the least popular aspect of the Trump government despite the fact that the ethical and legal scandals surrounding the president himself have largely obscured something remarkable: The central justification for the Republican health care bill is a lie.

The legend of F. Scott Fitzgerald has flourished for so long that we forget how much of it was the creation of Fitzgerald himself, with help from some of the highest cultural priests of midcentury America. Foremost among them was Edmund Wilson, a friend since their Princeton years, who shepherded Fitzgerald’s final, uncompleted novel, The Last Tycoon, into publication in 1941, and then assembled the pieces of The Crack-Up, which included the classic title essay on Fitzgerald’s nervous breakdown in the mid-’30s. Читать дальше...

The world is full of secret places. Behind a cupboard door, concealed by a secret panel, at the bottom of the sea—undiscovered treasures wait. Some are so damaged that they melt into dust at the slightest touch, while some are silt on the ocean floor. Many others became ash and smoke centuries ago. But some survive.