Leif Weatherby

Oct 23, 2024 | thebaffler.com | Leif Weatherby

The Why is Everything: A Story of Football, Rivalry, and Revolution by Michael Silver. W. W. Norton, 448 pages. 2024. Innovation has come for the NFL, America’s most popular sports league. As the writer Chuck Klosterman once pointed out, football presents itself as conservative but is incredibly liberal in terms of the competition’s evolution: the introduction of the forward pass, nearly 120 years ago, remains one of the biggest rule changes to any modern sport.

Sep 3, 2024 | thebaffler.com | Dave Denison |Leif Weatherby

Over the last half century, Texas has become the most important stronghold of the Republican Party in the United States. The Lone Star State hasn’t given its huge haul of electoral votes to a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter won in 1976. It went twice for Ronald Reagan and gave the nation two presidents named George Bush. Since then, it has produced a steady stream of ever-more reactionary politicians who make the Bush tradition look moderate.

Aug 20, 2024 | sltrib.com | Leif Weatherby

Over the past decade, there's one truth that liberals have been loath to admit: Donald Trump is funny. This aspect of his appeal prompts far less commentary than his far-right positions, his venality or his mogul's bravado. But when you watch him at a rally, you can see he's playing for laughs: jabbing at his opponents, doing crowd work, even being self-deprecating, sort of. Cicero could write a treatise on Mr. Trump's use of irony, as he's proved himself a master of humorous misdirection.

Aug 17, 2024 | nytimes.com | Leif Weatherby

Over the past decade, there's one truth that liberals have been loath to admit: Donald Trump is funny. This aspect of his appeal prompts far less commentary than his far-right positions, his venality or his mogul's bravado. But when you watch him at a rally, you can see he's playing for laughs: jabbing at his opponents, doing crowd work, even being self-deprecating, sort of. Cicero could write a treatise on Mr. Trump's use of irony, as he's proved himself a master of humorous misdirection.

May 15, 2024 | bostonglobe.com | Leif Weatherby

On April 29, shortly after protesters occupied Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall, they held a press conference and asked the university to provide — or at least allow the peaceful provision of — food and water for the occupiers. A short video of the event quickly went viral, and the speaker, PhD student Johannah King-Slutzky of Columbia’s English and comparative literature departments, was called “Keffiyeh Karen” — to cite only one of the less offensive terms — in the conservative press.