Here at Public Seminar, where (when we are not pondering political polls) we are constantly rushing through endless digital tasks, we are now specializing in slow reading. And we want you to read slowly too.
We want you to come back to our new platform over and over again during the week, to savor the articles we have chosen for you, articles organized as a conversation about pressing issues. Go ahead: bookmark us on your device and your laptop. Now, every time you find yourself in Bushwick waiting for the L train, sitting in a meeting watching a power point and sneaking glances at your phone, waiting for a demonstration to start, or just having lunch at your desk, you can just click over to us for a nice, seven minute read, commissioned, edited, and presented – just for you.
Thought enough about #MeToo? We haven’t — and by the way, Rebecca Traister has a dynamite piece over at New York Magazine about what happened to high-profile accusers. Then we learned that one of our favorite novels about women’s sexuality, Alix Kates Shulman’s Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (1972) was being reissued by Picador Press. So we have an excerpt for you, and an interview with Shulman, where she reflects on why the first novel to come out of the women’s liberation movement, one that featured the war between men and women, was an unexpected best-seller.
This week, as Trump both admits that he has committed an impeachable offense and claims that the impeachment proceedings initiated by Congress are “witch hunt garbage,” we introduce a new pressing issue: Post-Truth. By this, we mean more than the confirmation biases that seem to characterize our political divide, and the garbage that rolls out of Twitter accounts. We are referring to an acknowledged phenomenon in which powerful entities manipulate public opinion, promoting emotions and personal beliefs as more “true” than factual information. We have two articles that explore post-truth, an excerpt from a new book by journalist Mike Taibbi – and oh yeah, did you know that Adorno was the Fifth Beatle?
Democracy 2.0 is back this week as well, leading with an article by our friend Adam Michnik, Polish journalist, historian and Solidarity activist; and Social Justice debuts this week with a Public Seminar exclusive, an urgent appeal from the women of Ecuador, protesting economic policies imposed by the Moreno government and the repression of popular protest against those policies.
It’s hard to read slow when it’s all so good – we know. And if you run finish the weekly issue, keep your eye on the left hand column, where the daily posts, podcasts and reviews you rely on us for will continue to appear all week.
