noahberlatsky

The Long War Between Highbrow and Lowbrow

Pop culture is making us dumber, crasser, more immoral, and, especially, less adult. Such, at least, has been the claim of many a cultural critic. At Slate, Ruth Graham skewered YA fiction as catering to "escapism, instant gratification...

Complexity as a Weapon of War

Discussions of global war and violence often come with pleas for nuance, for context, and for historical literacy. That’s reasonable and even commendable. You can’t understand the present without understanding the past; it’s wise to try to learn as much as possible about the contours of conflicts in other countries and other cultures before weighing in. If you’re going to take part in p...

This Week's Writing 11/04/23

A year ago Gusgus wasn’t even a thing. Now look at him!

This week was the anniversary of my first year on substack! Pretty cool. Thanks again to all of you who have signed up to read and support me. If you’re not a paid subscriber, consider becoming one so I can keep writing her...

The GOP war on budgeting is also a war on democracy

House Republicans this week passed a $14.3 billion Israel aid package which included $14.3 billion in cuts to the IRS.

I don’t think US should be providing unconditional aid to Israel given indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza. But the cuts to offset the aid are also bad. The money from the IRS budget  is supposed to offset the spending, rendering the bill budget neutral. Bu...

When Evil Lurks Makes Evil Smart. Too Smart.

Hey, it was Halloween yesterday! I celebrated by watching a horror film, and reviewing it. A bit late, but you know, for horror fans, Halloween is all year.

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I liked When Evil Lurks, but I didn’t love it. That’s somewhat out of sync with the critical consensus,which has been fairly ecstatic. I think that’s because of the subgenre. Most people have identified this a...

Intent Is Central to the Definition of Genocide. But Should It Be?

Image: Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide” and was instrumental in establishing the UN genocide convention.

Experts consulted by the UN have said that there is currently “a r...

This Week's Writing 10/28/23

Hello all! Another week come and gone; thanks for sticking with me. And here’s what I published!

If you read one thing by me this week, read:

“Don’t Say,” a collage of made of LGBT writers’ words about silence. (2023-10-28 12:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post

GOP Chaos Is Not A Trump Plot. The Party Is In Fact Fucked.

Tom Emmer, the latest doofus being chewed up in the House Speaker debacle.

“Why did Donald act friendly to Emmer and then throw him under the bus?” Allison Gill, aka Mueller, She Wrote, asked on twitter. Her answer: “Because trump is a fascist and he doesn't want a speaker...

Can Superheroes Do Without Prisons? Invincible Says...Sort Of!

Most superheroes are in the business of foiling criminals and then putting them in jail.  With the occasional arguable exception of a Suicide Squad film here or there, superheroes are usually on the side of the cops and the prison guards. They don’t question whether prison, or mass incarceration, is a good idea.

One odd exception which tests the rule is the Robert Kirkman/...

The Super Powers mini-series and the villains who control creativity.

Jack Kirby is best known as the creator of beloved Marvel characters like Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, and the Fantastic Four in the 1960s. Twenty years later, though, at the end of his career, he was making promotional comics for DC’s new line of toys.

The 1984-85 Super Powers comics, as they were called, were not Kirby’s, or really anybody’s, best work. They’re inte...

This Week's Writing 10/21/23

The blog is coming to the magnificent end of its first year (much like the magnificent tail of the kitty.) I’ve almost got 5000 subscribers; hoping to hit that before the 30th, which will be the official anniversary (more or less.) Consider sharing if you’d like to help me reach this arbitrary goal!

In the meantime, here’s what I wrote this week.

If you read one piece by me t...

2023-10-21 12:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post

The 1973 War and the 1973 Peace

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, 1980.

The Hamas attacks and the subsequent Israeli response have led commenters to a couple of historical comparisons. The first is 9/11. The second is the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

The parallels here are clear; the Hamas attacks, 9/11, and the 1973 war all involved devastating, traumatic surprise attacks, frightening death tolls, and a subseque...

Langston Hughes, Of His Time

Image: Langston Hughes by Carl Van Vechten, 1936

I just read M.L. Rosenthal’s 1967 New Modern Poetry anthology, which focused on postwar poetry. It’s a fun time-capsule. Way back in the mid-60s, important poetry looked substantially different than it does now. Robert Lowell was more important than Elizabeth Bishop, and Ted Hughes was somewhat more important than Sylv...

Israel and American Jewish Identity

The violence in the Middle East has led numerous Jewish people to explain what it means to be Jewish in this moment. This is entirely understandable. It’s also, for me, been somewhat alienating.

One person on social media said that Jewish identity is built around the Holocaust, and that Jews in the diaspora found the Hamas attack so personally traumatizing because we’re all waiting fo...

This Week's Writing 10/14/23

Hello again! Comforting pic for what’s been a pretty horrible week.

Not as much writing as sometimes, but still a bunch published this week. If you’re not a paid subscriber, consider becoming one so I can keep scribbling? Also you’ll get to see my music track of the week, which can be fun if you like music and weeks.

If you read one thing by me this week, read:

Illinoi...

The Economic Anxiety Explanation of Fascism Is Wrong, and Worse, Fatalist

Image: Jacob Lawrence, The Legend of John Brown (1941/1977), no. 6: “John Brown formed an organization among the colored people of the Adirondack woods to resist the capture of any fugitive slave” [source]

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Fascism is caused by ...

Death in Paradise, Violence in the Colonies

Death in Paradise is a completely unremarkable British detective series set in the Caribbean. Its first episode is a typically breezy nothing—except that, almost by the way, it directly confronts the series’ mostly ignored colonial dynamics. That confrontation isn’t particularly honest or insightful. But its very lack of honesty and insight serves as a kind of unintentional criti...

This Week's Writing 10/7/23

Here’s what I wrote this week.

If You Read One Thing By Me This Week, Read

Find editors who like you. (Litmag News)

Politics

Stop debating whether Christian nationalism is “really” Christian. (<...

No Happy Ending: Steven Universe as Bleak Parable

When a completed, beloved television series spins off a film, the result is going to be, one way or another, an exercise in nostalgia. At worst, you get Star Trek: The Motion Picture, where the bulk of the movie is characters staring mournfully into the distance to remind you that you too, are supposed to be suffused with sentiment. More successfully, as in 2023-10-02 12:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post

This Week's Writing 10/1/23

Here’s what I published last week:

If You Read One Thing By Me This Week, Read:

Why I’m okay with being called a content creator. (EIH)

Politics

Biden is presiding over a labor renaissance. (2023-10-01 12:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post

It’s Okay to Criticize Feinstein

California Senator Dianne Feinstein died yesterday. She was 90 and in ill health, and there had been increasing calls for her to step down. Her death also raises major questions for the 2024 California Senate contest. Whoever California Governor Gavin Newsome appoints to the seat is going to have a major advantage in the primary.

Inevitably, therefore, her death touched off a standard iss...

Chris Arnade and The Limits of Real America Reporting

After the rise of former President Donald Trump, there was a deluge of what might be termed "Real America Reporting," whereby journalists seek out supposedly typical middle-American voters—generally white, generally rural, often eating in diners—in order to conduct sympathetic interviews and glean political insights. Claire Galofaro at the Associated Press went into Kentucky in 2017 and 2023-09-28 12:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post

Why I’m Okay With Being Called a ‘Content Creator’

“To hear people talk about ‘content’ makes me feel like the stuffing inside a sofa cushion,” Emma Thompson told an audience of drama students last week. “You don’t want to hear your stories described as ‘content’ or your acting or your producing described ...

This Week's Writing 9/23/23

Eustacia and Ecgwynn, reminding us they are litter mates. Awww.

Here’s what I published this week while not staring at kitties.

If you read one thing by me this week, read:

Empathy doesn’t make you less racist. (2023-09-23 12:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post

Empathy Doesn't Make You Less Racist

How do you solve racism and bigotry? One common answer is empathy. If oppressors could put themselves in the place of the oppressed, the argument goes, they could recognize the humanity of the marginalized, and they would reject oppression.

Scholar Saidiya Hartman isn’t so sure that empathy is a solution. In her classic 1997 examination of slavery and the persistence of oppression, ...