A new issue of Pink and Black Attack, an anti-assimilationist queer anarchist periodical, is out. Jeff Redding (SLU): Queer/Religious Friendship in the Obama Era. Is it really necessary for a submissive to gain basic permissions for bathrooms and smoke breaks and ordering what they would like, when out in public? A review of Socrates and the Fat Rabbis by Daniel Boyarin. The persistence of hope: Edmund Wilson’s masterpiece on the roots of communism — To the Finland Station — continues to have great resonance today. Political columnists think America is in decline — big surprise (and more). Economist Gary Becker returned to the University of Chicago because “I knew I would be challenged by the faculty, by the students” — he met the challenge. Why didn’t superstores colonize the Web the way they colonized suburbia? James Surowiecki investigates. From sex blogger to mom: Jessica Cutler is now a housewife in New York. From Dissident Voice, Michael Barker on the philanthropic-academic nexus within an anthropological context; and from Swans.com, an interview with Thomas C. Patterson, author of A Social History of Anthropology in the United States. Searching for Smut: Amy Werbel is hot on the trail of Anthony Comstock (1844-1915). Frog Boy: Karen Stollznow on the death of an urban legend. Any comedian knows, the quickest way to kill a joke is to study it too closely or attempt to explain it — so how can one be serious about comedy? The 21st century has opened with ten years that have seen the vast majority of Americans go backward economically; just-released Census stats tell that tale — but not the whole income story. Jean Paul Sartre may have taught us that “Hell is other people,” but his later work shows us that other people can be the source of our completion.
