Freddie deBoer, Freelance Journalist Profile

Articles

If Everyone Has Trauma, Everyone Has Trauma

5 days ago | freddiedeboer.substack.com | Freddie deBoer

This weekend I read Jamie Hood’s new book Trauma Plot: A Life. The book combines memoir and literary criticism, using real horrific experiences to examine how we should think about the deployment of such experiences in our narrative art and criticism.I struggle to define exactly how I feel about it, as a book, because it’s so openly meta-discursive - that is to say, it’s a book written to be in conversation with the culture, in part by being about the conversation.
John Fetterman and "Nothing is Allowed to Just Be Bad" Culture

1 week ago | freddiedeboer.substack.com | Freddie deBoer

I recently appeared on the podcast of the excellent addiction & recovery newsletter The Small Bow, check it out. Awhile back a reader sent me this commercial for Parkinson’s disease. I know that sounds weird, a commercial for Parkinson’s, but it honestly plays as exactly that, an advertisement fora devastating, degenerative neurological condition that not only robs people of their mobility but also is known to induce dementia and severe depression.
I Guess Jameis Winston Gets the Grandfather Clause, Too

1 week ago | freddiedeboer.substack.com | Freddie deBoer

Last year I wrote a piece pointing out that our arts & culture media has a very, shall we say, selective set of standards when it comes to the consequences of accusations of sexual misconduct. We are told that there are important rules of public morality that we have to bring to bear on our artistic tastes - we are not allowed to “separate the art from the artist,” or so says TikTok - and yet those rules shift constantly depending on who the moral guardians like and don’t.
Apparently Jane Pratt Doesn't Actually Read Books; Does the Staff at New York Magazine?

1 week ago | freddiedeboer.substack.com | Freddie deBoer

This is just a little headache of a post that most people will likely call an overreaction or similar. But it absolutely does point to a series of frustrations I have with this dying industry I’m in - its insiderism, its lack of rigor, and its addiction to lumpen anti-psychiatry. Feel free to skip if you choose.
LeBron James Should Seek the Democratic Party Nomination for President of the United States in 2028

2 weeks ago | freddiedeboer.substack.com | Freddie deBoer

The Democratic party has faced an existential crisis since its election night flameout back in November, when despite a prognosticator consensus of a close election the Republicans picked up every swing state in the presidential election along with a federal trifecta thanks to Congressional elections. And while Donald Trump’s very Donald Trumpy behavior since then has eroded his approval ratings, the Democrats have not come up with anything resembling a coherent plan for taking power back.
Call for Subscriber Writing, May 2025

2 weeks ago | freddiedeboer.substack.com | Freddie deBoer

Please forgive the modest delay. Five-week old baby and unplanned five week stay in the hospital still have me reeling. btw PREORDER MY NOVEL. It’s good, it’s short, it’s zippy, it’s an antidote to the romanticization of mental illness. It’s that time again! This is a call for submissions for my bimonthly roundup of subscriber writing, where I publish links to the written work my subscribers want to share. All submissions should be made via the Google Form.
If "The Personal is Political," Why Are You All So Fucking Sensitive?

2 weeks ago | freddiedeboer.substack.com | Freddie deBoer

The idea that “the political is personal” has proven to be one of the worst intellectual developments in the history of the left. I would argue that, more than any other ideological influence, this idea has underpinned the social justice turn in American liberalism, which has transformed the language and norms of contemporary left-of-center people and briefly the politics of the Democratic party.
AI Has No Noticer

3 weeks ago | freddiedeboer.substack.com | Freddie deBoer

I asked Google’s Gemini AI for a list of the richest municipalities in Connecticut; this is what its generative AI returned. I’ll forgive you for not understanding the problems that are apparent to a local. First, Old Greenwich and Riverside are not distinct municipalities at all but rather villages within Greenwich. I suppose you can argue that they should be ranked separately, as they have their own ZIP codes, but I explicitly asked for municipalities and villages/neighborhoods don’t qualify.
Private Schools Don't Want an All-Private-School-Voucher Future

3 weeks ago | freddiedeboer.substack.com | Freddie deBoer

An NYT piece on the relentless march of Republican-powered “school choice” states the obvious: In campaigning for the bill, supporters did not dwell on old arguments that promoted choice’s potential to improve public education through competition, or on the belief that academic achievement would improve in private schools. Instead, Gov. Greg Abbott and allies emphasized parental rights and personalized learning.
Woke & Anti-Woke, A False Dialectic

4 weeks ago | freddiedeboer.substack.com | Freddie deBoer

Subscribers, the call for subscriber writing goes out next week. Thank you for your patience as we continue to deal with the anti-sleep terrorist cell in my home. In 2016, a group of student activists attempted to get the campus paper defunded at Wesleyan University, where I grew up.