With most people in media busy pivoting to podcasting or outsourcing staff jobs to freelancers, fact-checks often end up assigned to overburdened editorial assistants or inexperienced interns. Sometimes, this invaluable step is skipped altogether.
Saturday night, I exited the N train at 57th Street—Billionaire’s Row—walked half a block surrounded by some of the world’s most expensive luxury towers, and took a seat in an upscale theatre. The lights dimmed, and three commercials were shown—for Land Rover, the Bahamas, and Tiffany’s.
Donald Trump was elected President during my first semester of college. My dorm was on Fifth Avenue, and as I walked home after having spent hours glued to cable news in a crowded bar and hours more wandering the East Village hoping vaguely for a recount, I turned onto my street and was faced with Trump’s smiling mug on the side of the Empire State Building. I didn’t even know they could put faces up there, and it made me want to vomit.
Anthony Kennedy, who will leave the Supreme Court at the end of this month, has been idolized by some as the principled center of the Supreme Court because he provided the necessary swing vote for marriage equality.
Lauren Greenfield, a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker from Los Angeles, has chronicled late capitalism’s most bizarre and depressing excesses for over twenty years.