Tag: public consciousness
Madonna Is Always One Step Ahead
We like our female icons, as they age, to go quietly—to tiptoe backwards into semi-reclusion, away from our relentless curiosity and our unforgiving gaze. Tina Turner managed this arguably better than anyone else, holed up for the last decade of her life in a gated Swiss château with an adoring husband and a consulting role on the hit musical about her life, watching a younger performer step nimbly into her gold tassels. Joni Mitchell retreated to her Los Angeles
Why Don’t Biden’s Political Wins Register With Voters?
Objectively speaking, President Joe Biden has presided over some significant, even historic, accomplishments: a massive vaccine rollout, the biggest infrastructure investment since the Eisenhower administration, the lowest unemployment rate in over 50 years. Yet, when voters are asked about these things, their responses are perplexing. Poll after poll show that voters have never heard of these programs, are annoyed the media isn’t reporting about them more, or they just don’t care. Why don’t Biden’s political and legislative victories penetrate the
Harriet Tubman, Outdoorswoman – The Atlantic
When I was a child, my father took me to the river—the mighty Ohio—so I could walk on water. It was January 1977, the second-coldest winter on record in Cincinnati. Twenty-eight days below zero led to a river freeze 12 inches thick. The river became a bridge between regions we have named Ohio and Kentucky, the North and the South. The Ohio froze more commonly in the 19th century than in the 20th, and the last time was more than
Coachella Defeated My Cynicism About Music Festivals
In an ill-fated attempt to hype myself up for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, I went on YouTube to look at an inflatable blue gorilla—a stage prop for the hip-hop act Brockhampton, who had announced that Coachella would be the group’s last booking ever. The festival unfolds in two identical three-day lineups over consecutive weekends; I was attending the second weekend, and I wanted a taste of how the first one had gone. In the video I
‘Phoenix Rising,’ Marilyn Manson, and the Abuses of Art
One of the visual conceits of Phoenix Rising—a new two-part HBO documentary about the actor Evan Rachel Wood’s allegations of abuse at the hands of the rock musician Marilyn Manson—is a series of animated sequences that portray Wood as a cherubic, Alice-like doll and Manson as a macabre monster whose darkness infects and imprisons her. It’s a curiously heavy-handed choice, as though Wood’s raw testimony weren’t enough. In reality, her recounting of the things she says Manson did to
Ivermectin Shows That Not All Science Is Worth Following
Ivermectin is an antiparasitic drug, and a very good one. If you are infected with the roundworms that cause river blindness or the parasitic mites that cause scabies, it is wonderfully effective. It is cheap; it is accessible; and its discoverers won the Nobel Prize in 2015. It has also been widely promoted as a coronavirus prophylactic and treatment.
This promotion has been broadly criticized as a fever dream conceived in the memetic bowels of the internet and as a
Is Boris Johnson a Liar?
A few months ago, I saw Boris Johnson recount a story about his life that I’d never heard before—and he said something that was not, strictly speaking, true.
With most politicians, hearing a new tale can be unremarkable, but with Johnson—the subject of at least two biographies, countless newspaper and magazine articles, and someone who has been at the center of British political life for decades—almost everything that can be known about him is already known. Revelations that
America’s Drug-Approval System Is Unsustainable
The byzantine world of pharmaceutical regulation has recently broken into the public consciousness, causing a bit of a panic. Aducanumab—the first new Alzheimer’s treatment in nearly two decades—was approved by the Food and Drug Administration on June 7 despite scant evidence of benefit, and against the nearly unanimous advice of the agency’s expert advisers. Op-eds called the decision, which could trigger billions of dollars in new government spending, a “false hope,” “bad medicine,” and “a new low.” (FDA officials have