Today it was a very enjoyable half hour on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show, taped in front of a live audience: you can listen to it here. I was paired with Jay Caspian Kang, a writer-at-large for the New York Times Magazine who wrote this piece about Pete Buttiegieg. Jay is laid back, smart and … More Mediapalooza, Part Eleventy: the Brian Lehrer Show
Those of you who follow this page haven’t seen much in a while: I’ve been busy writing a book, editing Public Seminar, and getting some cyborg tuning done. But I’m back. You’ll notice I’ve cleaned up the site: that urge I had to have everything available has dissipated. Also I am ditching pictures: too much work, … More A Hankering to Blog Again
A little more than two years ago, I launched a regular column that I named Purple Wednesday, a series that comes to a close today. The title post, “The Mo(u)rning After” riffed off the theme song for The Poseidon Adventure(1972), sung by an otherwise little-known singer named Maureen McGovern, was written a few hours after Donald … More Making America Good Again
In true old school blog style, you will have to read this post backwards, as the most recent entries will be at the top. This may cause you to want to go straight to the original, published throughout the day of November 7 2018 at Public Seminar. 10:23 p.m. NBC projects that Democrats will take the … More Election Day, 2018
This post was written two months before the general election. Was I right, or what? When Democrats go to sleep at night, they dream of sticking it to Donald Trump in November. But that’s not how you win elections — or at least, not how you should win elections. While the media outrage machine often … More Don’t Run Against Trump
Back in the 1970s, when I was leaving for college, my mother gave me a piece of advice: “Don’t sign anything.” Her skepticism was forged in the 1950s, when petitions that public figures had signed as students, and organizations they had belonged to, had sometimes destroyed their lives. In college, however, I discovered the thrill … More Why Taking a Stand on the Internet Can Turn a Problem Into a Catastrophe
It is less than ninety days until election day in the United States, when Democrats hope to achieve one of the biggest sweeps of Congressional seats in recent American history. Many of these Democratic hopefuls are veterans. As longtime political strategist Joe Trippi put it back in March, these are candidates who are new to the … More The Watergate Babies
Would someone please reconsider the prominent role of marketing in politics? Or perhaps I should rephrase that question — could we take a close look at the substitution of marketing and branding strategies for politics? I ask this question only days after the Democratic leadership, well-embarked on flipping the House of Representatives from Red to Blue, has … More What Does “For the People” Mean?
