Новости за 21.04.2021

There might not be anything more embarrassing than getting scolded by Fox News host and reckless driver Jeanine Pirro on national television. But that’s what happened to Greg Gutfeld, himself the host of what is the network’s most embarrassing show.

A few hours after a jury found Derek Chauvin guilty of three charges in the murder of George Floyd, Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, announced his sympathy and support for the outcome. “Today’s verdict is a step forward in acknowledging painful truths and for the continued cause of defeating racism and fighting discrimination,” tweeted Smith, linking to a brief company statement: “Our company remains committed to the continued path ahead.”

In the days to come, there will be plenty of commentary on the implications of Tuesday’s guilty verdict in Derek Chauvin’s trial for the broader police reform agenda, but at least one proximate and relatively straightforward matter has been languishing in Congress for months now.

Walter Mondale, who died Monday at 93, was the last presidential nominee to tell the truth about taxes. This experiment was judged a failure, and no nominee of either party ever attempted it again. We can best honor the former vice president’s memory by acknowledging that Americans send too little of their hard-earned wages to the Internal Revenue Service.

This year’s slate of nominees for the Academy Awards brings Amiri Baraka to mind. In his 1965 essay “The Revolutionary Theatre,” Baraka called for Black productions that might “stagger through our universe correcting, insulting, preaching, spitting craziness … but a craziness taught to us in our most rational moments.” One wonders what Baraka—who insisted upon the importance of the theatrical arts to the Black radical tradition—might make of this moment, with the Academy recognizing Black films like Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom... Читать дальше...

What we grow determines how we eat, and what we eat determines how we live and die. These simple but overlooked truths drive the work of the longtime food writer Mark Bittman, whose new book, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, From Sustainable to Suicidal, takes an ambitious look at the flaws of the industrialized food system and the politics of transforming it. On Episode 29 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with Bittman about the difficulty of eating ethically... Читать дальше...

German scandals are not like other scandals. The bouquet of a classic German scandal contains unmistakable notes: a rabbit-hole impenetrability, the implication of an entire guilt-ridden society, and, most importantly, a sense that the controversy says something essential about Germany as a whole. German scandals are collectivized. They are about a belief in German difference, for good or ill. 

Over the past two weeks, a scandal has enveloped Western climbing circles. At its center is a 36-year-old military veteran, Richard Gilbert, who, as of last week, has admitted to and apologized for vandalizing a series of Indigenous petroglyphs with climbing bolts.

Minnesota’s Walter Mondale, who died Monday night at 93, was the embodiment of a strand of full-throated liberalism that defined the Democratic Party for much of the last half of the twentieth century.

At 4:10 p.m. local time on Tuesday, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was remanded into custody, his bail revoked, guilty on all three counts of the murder of George Floyd. The state has prevailed in defining his acts as criminal, with guilt meant as accountability. But they can’t offer justice, not when their case rested on drawing a weak contrast between Chauvin’s death-dealing and the everyday violence of policing. And in truth, the guilty verdicts are unlikely to produce anything like safety. Читать дальше...