Noah Berlatsky Profile picture
he/him. Bylines: Public Notice, CNN, Prism, Atlantic, WaPo. Member CIC. Poetry collection Not Akhmatova: https://t.co/BzkAMBWmah
Chris Bugbee Profile picture Joshua Cypess Profile picture Len Grossman: a sympathetic, well-meaning, elder.. Profile picture yami Profile picture 4 subscribed
Apr 14 7 tweets 1 min read
I don't see anyone talking about it, and maybe it doesn't matter, but...one of the things Daniels said was that she slept with Trump in part because he'd promised her business opportunities which he then never followed through on. 1 he said he'd get her on the apprentice. hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/sto…
Mar 27 4 tweets 1 min read
Joe Lieberman was really a blight on the polity who devoted his time in politics to harming average people in the name of corporate profits, Islamophobia, and bipartisan elite consensus. There's just not a lot good to say about him. 1 was he the worst pol in my lifetime? I mean, no, not even close. but that's an awfully low bar.
Feb 11 7 tweets 1 min read
it's weird to have nate just screaming that he doesn't know how elections work.

People ran. Newsom was running for sure. He just got beat before votes started.

Dean Phillips is running. How is that going? like, nate silver of all people circling the drain of conspiracy theory populism *about elections.*
Dec 29, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
rereading Parable of the Talents,and Butler's vision of a christofascist America is a lot more on the nose than Atwood's. Atwood invents a new Christian cult which takes over the US in a revolution. Butler...just has a standard issue Christofascist elected president.
Dec 23, 2023 7 tweets 1 min read
I was pretty mixed on Barbie, but...like, I"m pretty sure it's a passion project. I really doubt Gerwig felt like she was selling out or that she was doing something she didn't want to do in any way. 1 Barbie is hugely popular with human beings and especially with women. Greta Gerwig is a human and a woman! It's not surprising that she'd be excited about doing a Barbie movie!
Dec 2, 2023 6 tweets 1 min read
yeah,the problem is that biden did what progressive economists have been asking for decades; prioritized lower unemployment, did big spending to ameliorate recession. and all he's getting for it is grief... like if he loses the next election, it's goign to be seen as evidence that the only thing that matters is inflation and that big relief programs are useless. that seems bad.
Oct 8, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
Newsom has been vetoing progressive bill after bill, blocking initiative *by his own party.*

I just cannot emphasize enough how much of a piece of shit he is. do not let this bigoted reactionary turd be president just because he's a glib television interview. he just vetoed a bill outlawing caste discrimination. people were on hunger strike begging him to sign it. just pointless, gratuitous cruelty.
Sep 18, 2023 9 tweets 2 min read
there's no point in interviewing trump. no, not even in a tough, prepared interviewer interviewing him. 1 we all know who trump is. we know he lies all the time. his followers know it to, or if they don't know it, it's willful. there's not going to be an "aha!" moment where you catch him in a lie.
Aug 7, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
a lot of ppl argue that Vance is smarter than, say, MTG or than Trump, and that he knows better? but is he? and does it matter? 1 fascism isn't an intellectual error that leads to a moral one. it's a moral failure that requires people to lie all the time, including to themselves.
Jul 26, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
the problem with mcconnell is that he's a fucking unfeeling, monstrous, christofascist piece of shit. his age is irrelevant. and his health is too, unless it prevents him from doing his job, at which point he should retire. 1 term limits are bad policy, and also completely useless in this case, since KY will just elect another piece of shit GOP fascist, almost certainly.
Jul 26, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Jewish person: christians are saying horrible antisemitic shit to me.
Christian person: those aren't real Christians.

this interaction happens a lot and it's basically also antisemitism? like, if you're a christian and you see a Jewish person talking about being harassed, is it really the best move to say, "the most important thing here is that Christianity isn't blamed"?
Jul 7, 2023 11 tweets 2 min read
what if—and just spitballing here—what if elite pundits like tom nichols and jon chait don't actually have their thumb on the pulse of the Democratic party either?

what if POC moderation and Tom Nichols moderation aren't very closely related at all? like I'm pretty sure, just as an example, that the "moderate" Black voters we're talking about are much more interested in voting rights than tom nichols, and much less interested in Ukraine.
May 19, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
I appreciate Chris Hayes' strong support of trans people, and framing it as an issue of parental rights has an obvious rhetorical utility in the current climate.

unfortunately, emphasizing parental rights alone isn't going to be enough to defend trans people. 1 there are a lot of transphobic parents. some new laws are designed to out children to parents against their will. that's really dangerous—but it's hard to say that if you're leaning hard into a parent's rights frame.
May 19, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
also, one thing that is pretty irritating is that anonymous internet terfs just assume people will accept that their declared gender is their gender, right? like, it's GC2395TERFBUD with an anime avatar shouting about, "HOW CAN WE JUST ACCEPT SOMEONE IS THE GENDER THEY SAY THEY ARE!" while just taking it for granted that of course people will refer to them by the gender they say they are.
May 19, 2023 9 tweets 2 min read
couple things here. but first of all, racism isn't necessarily about questioning Black people's humanity. it's more about asserting who is entitled to deference and who must stay in a subservient place, often. Kate Manne talks about this in reference to misogyny. Men's demands of women aren't the demands one makes of things or of animals. respect, reverence, certian kinds of labor; it's all pretty clearly things you want from humans. 2
May 18, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
he minister of the diaspora explaining again that Israel hates the diaspora and would just as soon see all of us dead.

Soros conspiracy theories prompted the worst antisemitic massacre in US history. If you're a Jew in the diaspora, Israel's far right government doesn't care about your safety, and would clearly prefer you were quietly erased.
May 18, 2023 9 tweets 2 min read
I'm pretty positive on the idea of using AI for writing prompts—I have a poetry ms that jumped off from AI generative text.

I'm pretty suspicious of these promises to write novels with AI where the point is people can't tell it's AI? I'm skeptical it's going to work well or produce interesting work; I'm skeptical of art where you're trying to erase your process or lie about your process.
May 18, 2023 7 tweets 1 min read
so the politico article isn't exactly a smoking gun. the least important thing is what they led with (Pelosi family working for Feinstein.) the bigger issue is that Pelosi has an interest in preventing Lee from being appointed to the seat. 1 which we kind of knew already, but this spells it out more clearly.
May 18, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Also wrote why I think we should abandon the idea of the “self-hating Jew.” Identity is always complicated & various…which means it’s pretty easy for Jewish ppl to hate other Jewish ppl, or even use antisemitism, without feeling implicated themselves.

noahberlatsky.substack.com/p/is-ben-shapi… And beyond that the idea of Jewish people as self alienated or self hating relies itself on antisemitic tropes. (Jews as having no core or no real connection to self.)
May 18, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
you look at some of the people who have these prestigious sinecures and positions and you think, you know, I'm not all that, but still, even I could do more interesting things with that kind of platform. 1 but of course the whole reason they hire such unimaginative and unambitious writers is because they don't want anything interesting done with the platform.
May 17, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
it would actually be useful for reporters to do more articles about how right wing harassment is organized, and what effect it has on targets. 1 those networks are not infrequently implicated in terrorist violence. they actively harm people in pretty extreme and terrifying ways; they're connected to major media figures and to gop politicians. they're an arm of the gop and they are meant to silence and intimidate the left.