Why do journalists go easy on Sam Altman?
OpenAI’s leader is a terrific huckster and self-promoter, in a league with Trump and Musk
John R. MacArthur
John R. MacArthur is the publisher of Harper’s Magazine.
Tuesday
Tuesday
Why Trumpism won’t fix Clintonomics
The President likes cheap labor
Thursday
The federal-state collisions looming over New York
Liberals offended by Trump’s war on DEI should learn from my YMCA pick-up basketball game on West 14th Street
Sunday
True-blue New Yorkers are bracing themselves for Trump’s return
From our UK edition
Fleeing the United States ahead of a ‘fascist takeover’ by Donald Trump on 20 January has been the talk of liberal circles, and nowhere more than in deep-blue New York City. A New York Times story revealing that tech billionaire and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman was ‘weighing a move overseas’ because he feared ‘retribution’ from the next president
Wednesday
Why Donald Trump won and the real reason Kamala Harris lost
From our UK edition
33 min listen
Donald Trump has won the election and will be 47th President of the United States after winning the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia. ‘America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,’ the Republican candidate told supporters. ‘This is a magnificent victory for the American people, that will allow us to
Monday
Is the last minute momentum really with Kamala Harris?
From our UK edition
36 min listen
As the 2024 US election goes into the final day, a poll giving Kamala Harris a lead in the historically Republican state of Iowa has bolstered the Democrats. Is momentum really with her? And what appears to be the most important issue to voters – the economy, or abortion rights? Guest host Kate Andrews speaks
Tuesday
The journalist’s journalist: the irrepressible Claud Cockburn
From our UK edition
No one should be put off reading Patrick Cockburn’s remarkable biography of his father by its misleading subtitle. ‘Guerrilla journalism’ doesn’t do justice to its subject. The suggestion of irregular warfare from the left underrates Claud Cockburn’s great accomplishments in mainstream politics and journalism and doesn’t begin to embrace the romantic and daring complexity of
The age of consultancy journalism
At the New York Times , the practice has been honed to a science
Monday
How — and why — the Democrats ignored the will of the people… again
Only the rarest breed of politician will risk his or her career for the good of the country
Tuesday
Why do neoliberals get let off the Iraq War hook?
There are prominent liberal hawks who have somehow escaped condemnation for helping promote the invasion
Tuesday
Our strangled language on Israel and Gaza
We shouldn’t be surprised given the terrible examples our students have to follow
Monday
What liberal America gets wrong about Trump supporters
From our UK edition
Hillary Clinton normally speaks in carefully crafted bromides, so when I read in the New York Post about her risqué suggestion during a televised interview with CNN that ‘maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members’ supporting Donald Trump, I took notice. Had the grimly platitudinous former secretary of state suddenly developed a
Thursday
Why ‘woke’ doesn’t have the moral high ground
Woke’s belief in universal principles of justice is highly colored, often extremely self-interested and sometimes morally reprehensible
Lucien, the best bar in New York for writers
Establishments where writers and reporters liked to drink hold for me a privileged position
Wednesday
Meet the aristocrat plotting Macron’s downfall
From our UK edition
Vitry-le-François Can a modern revolution emanate from the political centre or, more unconventionally, from the heart and mind of an aristocrat who places republican values above factional allegiance? This was the question that propelled me more than a hundred miles east of Paris – while another day of mass demonstrations unfolded in the capital and
Wednesday
America’s woke assault on English
From our UK edition
Each time an American institution commits a new corruption of the English language in the name of ‘social justice,’ US wire services, assisted by the internet, circulate the latest absurdity to the four corners of the world. Nearly everyone I know has commented on the University of Southern California School of Social Work’s recent ban on the use of ‘the field’ when
Tuesday
Randi Weingarten isn’t going anywhere
I’m pretty sure that nobody I observed on November 7 was ready to give up fighting. Not Randi Weingarten, of course
Thursday
Will Mélenchon upend the French political establishment?
From our UK edition
Paris In his memoirs, Charles de Gaulle famously wrote that he had always possessed ‘a certain idea of France’, a phrase that evoked a mystical past of grandeur and glory, as well as an ‘eminent and exceptional destiny’. In French it is a lovely expression, but it’s doubtful the great man had in mind the
Friday
Free speech folly at the New York Times
The paper has done great damage to democratic debate — and its own employees
Thursday
The descent of New York
From our UK edition
New York When Will Smith strode to the stage and slapped Chris Rock, I was surprised by how many of my friends thought the violence had been staged to rescue the Academy Awards from its years-long ratings decline. I instantly recognised it as authentic rage, not because I know anything about Hollywood or Will Smith,
