Political Currents

Last week, the New York Timesreported that just seven Black students were admitted to Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. This was the Times’ focus for a story that also noted that a mere 10 percent of students who are Black and Hispanic were admitted into city specialized high schools overall. For the Times, the Stuyvesant figure seized the headline, because the statistics were so dramatic.

The twenty-first century began, definitively, on September 11th, 2001. As time hurries us away from that cataclysm and more generations are born with no memory of two towers smoldering and collapsing on live television, it becomes apparent that no single moment so horrifically and neatly inaugurated a new era.

Of late, I haven’t written here as much as I’d prefer—and certainly not at the length I’d like. Some of my favorite pieces for this Substack, Political Currents, have been the big ones: on Japan, the history of liberalism, Bret Easton Ellis, the Beach Boys. The politics stuff, of course, is fun too, and I know that’s why many of you are here.

First, an update on the Writers’ Project! Here are job listings that were sent my way. Keep them coming. The New York Immigration Coalition is looking for a Senior Manager of Development. The University of Miami is looking for a Professor of Creative Writing. CAMBA is looking for a Senior Grant Writer. The New York Times is looking for a reporter on their Well Desk. MarketWatch is seeking a reporter for their retail and consumer beat.

On Friday, I made my inaugural visit to P&T Knitwear, the glossy Manhattan bookstore owned byBradley Tusk, to see Will Leitch, the author and sportswriter who is out with his latest novel, The Time Has Come. Will was there for a stop on his book tour, and conversed for nearly an hour with Adam Moss, the former editor chief of New York Magazine. Will and Adam talked about the new novel, their love of film, the craft of writing and editing, and what it takes to do a novel in the first place.

On Monday, I wrote for New York about the possibility of Helen Gym, a proud progressive, becoming the mayor of Philadelphia. Gym, a former city council member and schoolteacher, was pitted in a competitive Democratic primary against a number of strong contenders, including a former colleague on the city council, Cherelle Parker, and the ex-city comptroller, Rebecca Rhynhart.

The market out there, for writers and journalists, is never especially robust in the United States. But even with the rise of plagiaristic A.I. programs, I’ve found there’s still a demand for people who can write well. It’s just about finding the opportunity. What’s cool about this newsletter is the community that’s been built. There are many readers from a wide array of industries.

A few weeks ago, Maureen Dowd, a celebrated columnist for the New York Times, published a much-discussed column on the newsrooms of yore. Dowd lamented the rise of remote work and the emptying out of the classic newspaper office, which was once a very spirited place. Dowd reminisced about the , a newspaper where she got her start in the 1970s, a riotous place where hot tips, gossip, and many a joke were traded. Electricity was everywhere. Eccentricity abounded.

Three years ago, in the depths of the pandemic, I decided to start a newsletter on this platform, Substack. I knew few people who were doing it but figured it might be a fun place to share my unvarnished voice and, maybe, talk a few people into paying for what I do. At the time, this newsletter was called the Cuomo Files and it was dedicated to holding Andrew Cuomo, then the governor of New York, to account for his mishandling of the pandemic and his cover-up of nursing home deaths.

Some recent reading: I was in New York writing on how Joe Biden should campaign on the public option again. And here are my Crain’s columns, which are published every week. Before Jordan Neely was choked to death in a New York City subway car, I was going to write about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the recent bump in NYPD pay. There was, I believed, something curious about the progressive and socialist left furiously converging around the issue of a unionized workforce receiving a pay increase.