'The less students are listened to, the louder their shouting must become.'

chronicle.com/article/why-st…

To reporters: don't ask about parallels to 1968-70. Get off your asses and talk to the people protesting on all sides, cultivate leakers among police/security/admin, find policy documents, follow the money, etc, etc, etc. Figure out what's happening NOW. Later, we can talk.

This Pecker testimony has me reminiscing about 1998 at the LBJ Library ,puzzling out memos that appeared to concern founder of the National Enquirer attempting to donate six figures in exchange for an ambassadorship. (He never became an amassador.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generoso_….

One of my fave pieces, with coauthor Ricky Kreitner, on the political work done by the 'outside agitator' trope. nybooks.com/online/2020/07…

If you, like me, feel some dread about what's at the edges of these protests, remember that every protest ever has been garlanded by fools & high emotion, that before social media you'd be seeing only the principle, & the principle is sound.

As partial moral repair for misleading about the extent of police violence pre-9/11, I'll l lift up this excellent, if incomplete Wikipedia page. It was routine to murder strikers before labor organizing became a right. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_w…

Was taken to be naively minimizing pre-9/11 thuggery. My fault for unclarity. I'm talking about decelopments like, as someone just told, realizing his 11-year-old ndidn't even know there was a DIFFERENCE between cops and military.

Instructive:

Incredibly disturbing footage out of Texas where authorities appear to be barring any pro-Palestinian protest at all in open outdoor areas of campus — not just disruptive ones. This appears to be a blatant violation not just of the First Amendment but S.B. 18 which requires these…

Kids probably have no idea, it's practically History Book stuff by now, but riot cops thugging out at the first sign of public disorder is basically (at least when it comes to white people) wasn't a thing before 9/11. In my book, I call it the emergence of Bed-Wetter Nation.

Speaker Johnson about Columbia U: 'If this is not contained quickly and if these threats and intimidation do not stop, there is an appropriate time for the National Guard.'

Barely a dog whistle, from the media elite's new Winston Churchill. May 4, just around the corner...

Lordy. Mark Meadows. Maybe our institutions are up to the task after all. A patriot can dream... washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

Didn't know he was fash-adjacent.

Marshall Steinbaum 🔥 David Dayen Rick Perlstein

Andreessen: “Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential.”

Perlstein: (The residents of Nagasaki and Hiroshima might once have wished to disagree.)

Rick on billionaires.

prospect.org/power/2024-04-…

I spill the tea about Silicon Valley's finest. prospect.org/power/2024-04-…

Four years ago today, Trump told Americans to inject bleach on national television

With David Pecker testifying in the Trump hush money trial, this piece of mine on how the National Enquirer worked as a tool of his 2016 campaign, entirely out of the notice of mainstream media, and the history of celebrity gossip as a right-wing genre. washingtonspectator.org/trump-national…