Leif Weatherby Journalist Profile

Articles

The Fame Game | Andrew Schenker

3 weeks ago | thebaffler.com | Dennis Hogan |Andrew Schenker |Leif Weatherby |Abe Beame

This past winter, the forty-nine members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Selection Committee faced a difficult task: they were asked to reconsider the case of Jim Tyrer. In the 1960s and early 1970s, Tyrer ranked high among the league’s dominant linemen. From his position as left tackle for the Kansas City Chiefs, he protected Hall of Fame quarterback Len Dawson’s blind side for 180 games straight, a team record at the time.
Knowers of Ball | 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.
Who Lost Texas? | Dave Denison

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.
Trump is losing the humor war

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.
Trump Is Losing the Humor War

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.
Defending 'Keffiyeh Karen' and research without near-term uses

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.
Think capitalism is terrible? This economist says it’s already dead.

Mar 10, 2024 | msn.com | Leif Weatherby

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Review | Think capitalism is terrible? This economist says it’s already dead.

Mar 10, 2024 | washingtonpost.com | Leif Weatherby

People walk past an Apple Store in New York. Yanis Varoufakis is among those who argue that the emergence of tech giants such as Apple, Meta, Microsoft and others has changed capitalism. (Justin Lane/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)Review by Leif WeatherbyMarch 10, 2024 at 9:00 a.m. EDTIn the not-too-distant past, many Marxist philosophers were weighed down by a shared despair. Capitalism, they feared, had become so totalizing, so all-consuming, that there was no longer any possibility of overthrowing it.
Artificial Intelligence and the Significance Crisis

Feb 26, 2024 | chroni.cl | Leif Weatherby |Alex Williamson

The digital humanities disappeared right when we needed it most. The last real fight about “DH” happened in 2019. In that year, the literary scholar Nan Z. Da published an audit of “computational literary studies” (CLS) in Critical Inquiry in which she argued that statistical methods for literary interpretation either produced banal results or, if the results were interesting, were not reproducible or robust.
Artificial Intelligence and the Significance Crisis

Feb 26, 2024 | chronicle.com | Leif Weatherby |Alex Williamson

The digital humanities disappeared right when we needed it most. The last real fight about “DH” happened in 2019. In that year, the literary scholar Nan Z. Da published an audit of “computational literary studies” (CLS) in Critical Inquiry in which she argued that statistical methods for literary interpretation either produced banal results or, if the results were interesting, were not reproducible or robust.