New York magazine

Why women are walking away from the New Right

Sam Adler-Bell recently published a profile in New York magazine about women who have left, or are quietly leaving, the New Right. Alex Kaschuta, an influential writer and former host of the podcast Subversive, publicly split with the movement after years of genuine intellectual engagement that included interviewing many of its architects, from Curtis Yarvin to Darryl Cooper. Another woman, a mother and former true believer who wrote for right-wing outlets and worked for conservative institutions, requested anonymity because she fears for the physical safety of herself and her children. Both describe a movement that once promised women a place at the table and now openly treats them, in the anonymous source’s words, as “subhuman: subrational, non-agentic, cattle.

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When women exit stage right

At the event Melania Trump hosted for Women’s History Month, the ladies in the audience had perfect blowouts and wore pastel dresses. But the speakers who took the stage were tough. They included an Olympic athlete, a single mother who worked as a waitress and Melania herself. Most of the women honored were notorious for being abrasive: among them Pam Bondi and Karoline Leavitt. The women in the crowd didn’t clap politely but cheered and hollered, as if the East Room chairs were bleachers at a football game. Rumor on the street is Leavitt, who is pregnant, will only receive three weeks of maternity leave from her role as White House press secretary.

Donald Trump’s Project 2025 problems

Project 2025 problems Despite Donald Trump’s best efforts, Project 2025 isn’t going anywhere. Its former director, Paul Dans, made the media rounds this week, where he attacked the leadership of the Trump campaign in a New York Times interview, while simultaneously telling CNN that “Trump has nothing to do with Project 2025.”Dans, who stepped down from Project 2025 over the summer, accused top Trump aides Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles of “malpractice” for scheduling a presidential debate so early that it allowed President Joe Biden enough time to drop out. He is, however, excited at the involvement of Corey Lewandowski, Ben Carson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Andrew Sullivan searches for spirituality

It was daunting preparing to meet Andrew Sullivan, considered one of the cleverest, most fearless journalists of his generation. There is the academic pedigree: the scholarship at Oxford — where he was also president of the union and a celebrated actor — followed by the PhD in political theory at Harvard, where he produced an iconic treatise on the work of British mid-century philosopher Michael Oakeshott, performed the entirety of Hamlet all by himself — "a whacked-out mid-1980s" version — and modeled for Gap. And there is the journalistic firepower. At twenty-eight, in 1991, Sullivan became the youngest ever editor of the New Republic, America's most august political magazine.

Dad’s the word

My partner has taken to calling his favorite podcast host ‘Dad’. ‘Can I put Dad on?’ he asks when we get into the car. I’ve fallen into the habit too. ‘Does your dad have a new episode today?’ I don’t know how much he actually agrees with Dad — Scott Galloway, the NYU professor and business expert whose podcast properties include Pivot with Kara Swisher and The Prof G Pod — as he is yet to invest in Galloway-approved stocks or repeat Dad’s opinions as his own. I also don’t think he aspires to be like Galloway, with his clearly nonexistent work-life balance and tragic dad jokes.

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Extra, extra — read all about us!

Instead of telling us about America, or even the world outside, American journalists now tell us about other American journalists. The dirty laundry of America’s journalists is aired hourly on Twitter, where it stinks the place out. None of it is news and nobody will remember any of it in 10 months, let alone 10 years. It’s amazing to watch adults setting their emotional temperatures by palace intrigues at the New York Times. A series of laughably esoteric conflicts have consumed the industry in recent days. Each has generated thousands of self-referential tweets, articles, think pieces and podcast episodes.

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Why isn’t Andrew Sullivan allowed to write his column?

What has happened to New York media? Just as the New York Times was experiencing its own Inner Mongolia Moment over the now notorious Sen. Tom Cotton ‘Send in the Troops’ op-ed, the Maoists at New York magazine were going after their best columnist, Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan revealed on Twitter yesterday that his column wouldn't be appearing. The reason? His editors are not allowing him to write about the riots. https://twitter.com/sullydish/status/1268564124423933953 Presumably Sullivan’s editors are frightened that he might make the radically bourgeois point that looting and violence are wrong.

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Katie Hill’s rehabilitation tour is a failure of media ethics

Former congresswoman Katie Hill is currently engaged in one of the biggest public gaslighting campaigns ever seen outside of Trumpworld. And she has the willing assistance of the mainstream media. Since her resignation last October, Hill has been under the cloud of an ethics investigation for abusing her position to have affairs with junior staff members and then using congressional resources to cover her sins up. This includes the payment of a $5,000 bonus to her own campaign finance director, with whom she was also having an affair. Yet somehow, even in the #MeToo era, Hill has become a media darling, both on and off the air. It helps that she’s not a man. In her resignation speech, she blamed a culture of misogyny and bigotry. She blamed a lack of tolerance for bisexuality (Sen.

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Michael Wolff is working on ‘nothing’

This article is in The Spectator’s December 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. New York ‘What are you working on?’ is a standard and annoying question often asked of creative types. Finally, I have a good answer: ‘Nothing.’ That was my response at a recent New York dinner party at the home of the Italian journalist Mario Platero and his British wife, Ariadne. The Plateros have been entertaining the New York media class for decades and many of their long-time guests are even older than I am. But they are all still announcing projects. More power to them. They are fighting obsolescence. I’m embracing it. For one thing, it is hard not to be fatalistic if you are a journalist.

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Would the Democrats rather win in 2020, or eat themselves alive?

Do Democrats want to win the 2020 election? Do they understand why they lost in 2016? I’m increasingly unsure. It seems like every time a relatively reasonable candidate or undeclared candidate gets a little buzz, the Democratic base tries to derail any possible momentum. It happened with Amy Klobuchar who is apparently a hardworking hard-ass. So what? I want a president who is tough enough to run the country. Being nice isn’t a qualification for the job. Neither is being in tune with the most recent sensitivities of the tribe of the politically correct. Throughout his many years in public service, we’ve all seen the myriad photos and videos: Joe Biden is touchy. Very touchy. Sometimes bizarrely so.

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Andrew Sullivan’s false gods

Reading Andrew Sullivan reminds me of a Latin tag the novelist Iris Murdoch favored: corruptio optimi pessima: the corruption of the best is the worst. Sullivan is an intelligent and well educated man. He is capable of writing quite movingly about religion, especially about the challenges our media-saturated age — we really are, as T. S. Eliot put it, ‘distracted from distraction by distraction’ — pose to that reservoir of quiet thoughtfulness that any spiritual life worth the name requires. Back in 2012, Sullivan wrote a little paean to St Francis, a well-to-do young man, who sold everything he had and devoted himself to a life of poverty and renunciation, practices that Sullivan described as the ‘core’ of Jesus’s message.

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What’s wrong with Lena Dunham?

It is very easy to hate Lena Dunham. Very easy. Trivially easy. There are men and women people find it easier to hate but most of them are lawyers, real estate agents and autocrats. Right-wingers hate her shrill commitment to ‘social justice’, her obsessive fangirling on behalf of Hillary Clinton, her incessant crassness, her habitual nudism and her smearing of an innocent man as a rapist. Left-wingers hate her apparent white privilege, her un-PC comments, her astonishing wealth and her defense of a friend who was accused of rape. The left and the right can bond over their mutual hatred of her ubiquity. ‘In an era of hyperpartisanship,’ said the left-wing writer Sean McElwee, ‘Lena Dunham’s ability to...

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