Category Culture

What D.C. Saw at Donald Trump’s Second Inauguration

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story On Monday, after Donald Trump was sworn in as President, in the Capitol Rotunda, I was leaving the building’s security perimeter when I crossed paths with an Inauguration attendee who was…

Under the Radar Keeps Rollin’ Along

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story When Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II first adapted Edna Ferber’s epic novel “Show Boat” for the stage, in the nineteen-twenties, they were the wild-eyed experimenters of their day. The American…

Donald Trump Plays Church

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story It’s usually gauche to take pictures in church. But at St. John’s, the Episcopal Church just across a sedate Lafayette Square from the White House, photography is inevitable at least once…

Till Lauer’s “Flames and Shadows”

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story For the cover of the January 27, 2025, issue, Till Lauer captured the tragic skyline in Los Angeles. The fires that have ravaged the city—burning through some forty thousand acres so…

Uncivil Defense

Sometimes, manners are just a cudgel. Featured in the December 2024 issue Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Loading the Elevenlabs Text to Speech AudioNative Player… The hall monitors of the corporate media are regular Miss Manners acolytes when Donald Trump fires…

How a School Shooting Became a Video Game

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The Final Exam, a recently released video game in which you play as a student caught amid a school shooting, lasts for around ten minutes, about the length of a real…

David Lynch’s Popularity Is a Judgment Against Us

The universal acclaim for the Montanan master of the cheap shot says more about us than about him. Credit: Drop of Light/Shutterstock The decades-long valorization and near-deification of the late filmmaker David Lynch is a sign of declining cultural standards…

The Cruel Abstraction of “Beast Games”

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story “Beast Games,” a reality-competition show currently streaming on Amazon Prime, opens with a dramatic camera shot, circling in three-sixty degrees to capture the show’s host, a skinny young man holding a…