Kathleen Geier

Yes, you read that right. Mickey Kaus — once one of those respected “even the liberal New Republic!”-type contrarian journalists, now reduced to blogging for one of America’s sleaziest right-wing websites — was a panelist at CPAC this weekend. To double the CPAC’ers pleasure, he appeared alongside the sweet-tempered and ever delightful Ann Coulter. Imagine […]

Justin Fox makes an excellent point (H/T Economist’s View). Some of our one percenters have lately indulged in drama queen hysterics over the modest political pushback that’s begun to develop over their obscene accumulation of wealth. But in the context of the vertiginous rise we’ve seen in economic inequality over the past several decades, and […]

This story has not gotten anywhere near the attention it deserves, so I’m going to highlight it in this space. The South Carolina legislature has taken upon itself to yank funding for public colleges that have assigned books by LGBT authors. The most prominent case involves the College of South Carolina, which had $52,000 slashed […]

In honor of International Women’s Day, I’m posting a video the song “Hot Topic” by Le Tigre, one of the former bands of the great Kathleen Hanna. Lyrics can be found here, in case you can’t quite make out the names of all the great women artists and activists the band is giving a shout-out […]

Today, Salon published an excerpt from a new book by writer Simon Head about Amazon’s appalling labor practices. Head has reported on workplace policies at both Walmart and Amazon. While previously he believed that Walmart was “the most egregiously ruthless corporation in America,” he now claims that Amazon is “a strong challenger for this dubious […]

The weekend edition of the New York Times includes an interesting profile of drag queen extraordinaire RuPaul Charles. Ru’s show RuPaul’s Drag Race will be kicking off its sixth season tomorrow. It’s one of my favorite TV shows and one that doesn’t seem to get the love that it deserves, at least not on the […]

The current issue of the London Review of Books contains an excellent Rebecca Solnit piece about how economic inequality created by the tech sector is destroying the social fabric of San Francisco. It’s a companion piece to a 2013 essay which explored similar themes. It’s interesting that, until recently, the tech sector hasn’t been a […]

Rosa Brooks has a great piece up at Foreign Policy that gets to the heart of one of the most troubling features of Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” philosophy. The issue, basically, is that Sandberg’s prescription of relentless workaholism, and her chirpy acceptance of the dystopic hell of a work culture that requires employees not only […]

Best Coast is an LA-based indie rock band fronted by singer/songwriter/guitarist Bethany Cosentino. They’ve released a pair of first-rate albums and their EP from late last year, Fade Away, was excellent. They have a new album due out soon, which I’m eagerly anticipating. Here’s a live in-studio performance of one of the best songs from […]