News / culture
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1 min read
Ideas Man
Read more . . . →They labeled the briefcase IDEAS so you’d stop asking what’s in it. Shot like a film noir, which tracks. A man in a hat hands a briefcase to a suit in a marble corridor with the Capitol dome visible at the end. Another figure walks away in the background, presumably carrying his own briefcase to the next office. The word on the leather is doing heavy lifting. If it said CASH the composition would be identical and nobody would be confused. They put the quiet part right on the handle, in block letters, and called it democracy.
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Ribbon Ceremony
Read more . . . →He’s cutting the ribbon over a pothole that will outlive his term. Red ribbon, gold scissors. The crowd smiles because the cameras are here, and the cameras are here because a ceremony is cheaper than asphalt. Fifty years of progress and the pothole is still the only thing in the frame that’s real.
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The Building Is a Hostage
Read more . . . →The Kennedy Center has been closed since July. The National Symphony Orchestra is scattered across six venues in the DC suburbs because its home is shuttered for a renovation that Congress approved $257 million to pay for. And this week, Trump said the renovation won’t happen unless the courts let him carve his name into the building. When a judge blocked the inscription for the second time, calling the board’s efforts “linguistic gymnastics,” Trump was photographed with a poster reading “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED” and told reporters the place could be “ripped down” if he doesn’t get “recognition.” Congress funded the...
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Bipartisan Handshake
Read more . . . →Reached across the aisle. The aisle was a mirror. An oil painting of a man shaking hands with his own reflection, hung in the kind of marble hallway where nothing useful has happened in decades. The flag tie and the gilt frame tell you everything about who paid for the mirror. He ran on bipartisanship and found the one partner who never pushes back. Somewhere a constituent is on hold while their representative closes the most productive meeting of his career. The handshake looks firm. He’s had practice.
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Strawman Bonfire
Read more . . . →The town is on fire. The town is also thrilled, because they finally got the scarecrow. Somebody built the enemy out of straw and the whole square turned out to watch it burn. Behind them every house is already gone. Nobody looks back, because looking back means admitting the scarecrow never lit a single match.
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In Loving Memory
Read more . . . →Grief used to be a private thing. Now it’s a post, and the lighting is good.
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