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We promise you'll never regret your Current Affairs subscription! Buy one today and get the world's most beautiful, least unreadable magazine in your mailbox! http://currentaffairs.org

Why it's better to talk about cultural exploitation than cultural "appropriation"...

The trouble with Elvis’s version of “Hound Dog” is not that it is bad. It’s that it doesn’t make any goddamn sense. Big Mama Thornton’s original 1952 version of the song is sleazy and defiant. In a bluesy growl, she tells off the low-down guy who keeps “snooping round her door.” It’s a declaration o...
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"Verrit," a media startup recently endorsed by Hillary Clinton, illustrates the tendencies the Democratic Party needs to rid itself of...

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton took to Twitter to deliver an important message to the American public: “I’m excited to sign up for @Verrit, a media platform for the 65.8 million!” Clinton wrote. “Will you join me and sign up too?” It was a somewhat baffling thing for her to choose to say to her 17 milli...
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SWOTI added 4 new photos.

The WRONG ON THE INTERNET AWARD for August 30th goes to Bari Weiss at The New York Times. She wrote a very very "bad take" re Cultural Appropriation that manag...es to miss the mark in every conceivable way.

https://www.nytimes.com/…/opin…/cultural-appropriation.html…

Luckily! Brie wrote a piece in this month's print edition of Current Affairs that addresses every thought question and concern raised about the topic. It defends it where it needs defending and draws hard lines and rules to help delineate instances of overreach. (*Cough, Taylor Swift cough*).

I'll let you boos know when it's online, but I can't emphasize enough how #worthit it is to subscribe to Current Affairs. I'm giving you a taste below, but there's so much more!

Also, revisit Episode 18, where we have the conversation that led Brie to write the article. And when your friends try to step to you re cultural appropriation, hit them with this handy SWOTI guide to parsing what is and isn't #problematic.

https://soundcloud.com/…/…/stats/plays/2017-08-24/2017-08-30

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No matter how bad you think Joe Arpaio is, he's worse...

If you are a Trump supporter, the president has just pardoned “America’s toughest sheriff,” a man who was willing to fight illegal immigration using any means at his disposal. If you are a liberal, Trump has pardoned a despicable racist, a man who spent decades casually violating the civil liberties...
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How corporations exploit progressive moral values for profit...

It should be obvious that having large for-profit media institutions operate yields disastrous results. As with other markets, if a journalistic institution is out to make money, it will sell what people can be convinced to buy rather than what will actually do them any good. And since we are all we...
currentaffairs.org

How corporate media exploits progressive moral outrage...

It should be obvious that having large for-profit media institutions operate yields disastrous results. As with other markets, if a journalistic institution is out to make money, it will sell what people can be convinced to buy rather than what will actually do them any good. And since we are all we...
currentaffairs.org

Why Vacuous Platitudes Are Actually Great...

Nobody likes a platitude. Or at least, cool people don’t like platitudes. Writers grimace at a platitude. It gives them physical pain. I have seen it on their faces. I have felt it myself.
currentaffairs.org

The left should think carefully before embracing tactics that might lead to catastrophe...

When it comes to neo-Nazis, the most important thing is to stop them from gaining power. We know that, as brutal as they are are when wandering the streets beating black men with metal poles, if Nazis ever again achieved control of a powerful state, the consequences would be inconceivably horrific f...
currentaffairs.org

The media should be careful how it covers white supremacists, so as not to flatter them, romanticize them, or inflate their significance.

Richard Spencer is a PR flack. He’s not the best, but he does have some tricks. He knows, for example, how to flummox a journalist with a “reasonable” tone. He knows how to get the press to write long profiles of him, complete with fashion photography.
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We're proud to announce that Current Affairs has completed its pivot to video.

“Current Affairs has finally completed its PIVOT TO VIDEO!!! All our editors have been replaced with machine learning. The future has arrived https://t.co/Q5AVYnB1KN
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A short play about the thinkers and entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley, set in a nursery.

Elon Musk: …and THEN I’ll build a castle on Mars, with domes and malls and oxygen tanks, and everyone will fly there on my special rockets. I’ll be a very good king. Everyone will agree with my ideas and we won’t have any fights. And there will be an endless series of blonde princesses who love me,…
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You can now pre-order our paperback essay collection, "The Current Affairs Mindset," in the Current Affairs online store. Dozens of our best pieces of writing in one book! http://currentaffairs.org/store

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How "identity" has been cynically misused in order to silence criticism from the left and erase leftist people of color...

Having an “identity politics” is incredibly beneficial. Identity politics, which emphasizes the unique concerns of different communities and demographic groups, shows how historical inequities have been distributed across different races, genders, religions, abilities, and sexualities. In doing so,…
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What's the best way to convince climate change skeptics to accept the scientific consensus? https://www.currentaffairs.org/20…/…/teaching-climate-change

With the uplifting news that Martin Shkreli has been convicted of fraud, a good time to revisit our essay on him...

Writers are scrambling to explain why the detested pharmaceutical executive is Not As Bad As You Think. But he’s precisely as bad as you think. Possibly worse.
currentaffairs.org