The O. J. Simpson Trial as the Rorschach Test of the Decline of American Culture

By Michael A. Kahn

In Bailey’s version of the trial—as the subtitle of his book declares—he was the master strategist and courtroom impresario while Robert Shapiro was the bumbling and increasingly envious knucklehead who blew the preliminary hearing, believed O.J.’s best option was to seek a plea deal to manslaughter, and, when he learned that the jury had reached a verdict, made a panicked call to Alan Dershowitz to prepare the appeal.

Reviews

The Poet as Trail Guide to a Kind of Truth, We Think

By Eddie Silva

The poet is the kind of trail guide to whom you ask, “How did we get here?” You may retrace your steps to find an answer, although you are more likely to find other questions, or step onto other trails you had not observed before.

Reviews

My Mother the Book

By John Griswold

Her strength was both poise and pose, and her independence had to be on her own terms, because no one else cared about her terms but me. She had no standing, within a few years of my birth, socially, financially, professionally, or personally. Truth is, she may have felt a kind of freedom in not working for years, not having to deal with people, puttering in her ruined house and curating her family junk.

Essays

The Thunder and Gold of Horses Running Free

By Jeannette Cooperman

We have used horses to do our work, fight our battles, race for us, carry us. It is the few that still run wild, though, that send a thrill down our spines. We have no claim on them, yet a long and regrettable history has placed us in a position where we must “manage” them. Now, like newlyweds, we have to learn how to be part of their lives without changing who they are.

Essays

Aspic, Really?

By Jeannette Cooperman

Within its cool glop sit pieces of meat or fish, eggs or veggies. The original idea was to preserve them, sealing out air and bacteria. A liver pate, for example, turns crusty when exposed to air, but encase it in aspic and it will stay as fresh as a mummy.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

There Be Demons

By Jeannette Cooperman

In modernity, that external force crawled into our skull; we speak of inner demons, including addictions, compulsions, and voices of doom or self-mockery. The shift is not as dramatic as it seems: in the second century, Clement of Alexandria was already noting how easily we can be possessed by our own appetites.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

Has Life Ceased to Be Fun?

By Jeannette Cooperman

Craving fun is a miserable experience; you feel boring and old and bogged down. But realizing what I am craving and why—that is already helping.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

The Difference Between Incels and Femcels

By Jeannette Cooperman

And now there are femcels, with their own online community and a symmetrical loathing of the men who do not want them.Would it be better to return to the stigma of “spinsters” and “old maids”? Hardly.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

On the Vagina, Whose Ownership Is Currently in Question

By Jeannette Cooperman

Basic sex-ed should have straightened us out, but instead it took writers and artists to scrub off the shame. Half a century ago, Judy Chicago threw her now-legendary dinner party in honor of thirty-nine strong, famous women, designing porcelain plates with vulva and butterfly forms for the installation.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

The Complex Fate of Being a Proud American

By Gerald Early

We were proud to be Americans, “groomed to it,” to use a phrase. I do not regret this at all, for as I recall I think most of us were happy as children. Our circumstances were not such that we thought, I suppose, that it was self-evident that we should be unhappy. I do not think, for quite a while in my childhood, I really knew what unhappiness was and certainly did not know what racial grievance was or what it was to be unhappy as a Black person.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

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