The inaugural issue of Jacobin is out, including an introduction; an interview with Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and Things I've Been Silent About; Bhaskar Sunkara on why we loved the Zapatistas; let them eat diversity: An interview with Walter Benn Michaels (see Bookforum for more); a review of Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? by Thomas Geoghegan; and a demand for less work and more free time could be the thing that activates the formation of a new collective political subject with the capacity to pursue a class politics appropriate for the 21st century. In the season premier of The Simpsons, where Lisa and her friends are watching the Nobel Prize announcements, they announce Jagdish Bhagwati as the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, but then they flash to their betting pool of nominees. From New York, a special issue on Who Runs New York? From The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell on why the revolution will not be tweeted. Ezra Klein interviews experts on how to kick-start job creation, including Andy Stern, Dean Baker, Mark Zandi, Heather Boushey, Michael Lind, an anonymous (ex-)hedge fund manager, Rep. Paul Ryan, David Walker, and Rob Shapiro. This is what you need to know: Very Serious People have no special monopoly on wisdom; and in times like these, when the usual rules of economics don’t apply, they’re often deeply foolish, because the power of conventional wisdom prevents them from talking sense about a deeply unconventional situation.
