Two new campus comedies raise the question: Have TV writers ever been to college? by Noel Murray

Writing for AV Club, Noel Murray uses an evaluation of two recently debuted television series, Rooster and Vladimir, as a springboard for more generally pondering how the medium has usually botched depictions of higher education. As someone who is forever grateful for my time as an undergraduate and has spent approximately half of my professional life on college campuses, I fully recognize the disconnect that Murray traces here. I genuinely think a fascinating book-length treatise could come out of a examining why art created by people who attended college does such a woeful job of accurately documenting the experience.

That time we had authoritarianism in Minnesota during World War I by Greg Gaut

I’ve been reading a lot of history books lately, maybe because I’m a middle-aged, white, cisgendered male and a cliche. Regardless, it’s been weirdly soothing to be reminded that there are actually precedents for most of the hideous transgressions against democracy being perpetrated by Republicans in thrall to a lifelong criminal whose also a historically unpopular U.S. president. The nation has been through assaults on fundamental freedoms before, and a sort of justice, flawed as it might be, has always reasserted itself. For Minnesota Reformer, historian Greg Gaut writes about a early–twentieth century instance of aggrieved tycoons banding together to impose authoritarian policies on the people, ostensibly in response to geopolitical crisis but really due to pique over progressive movements such as labor organizing. Same as it ever was.

Firm That Planned Trump’s Jan. 6 Rally Received No-Bid Contracts by David A. Fahrenthold and Andrea Fuller

Of course, the fact that current affronts against the citizenry are echos of rotten ethics that have been a national mainstay all the way back to when protestors were dumping tea into New England estuaries doesn’t mean we should temper our outrage at each new despicable action. The New York Times this week published a story with a fresh example of the colossal corruption of the current White House. They are abusing established processes for ensuring equity in the distribution of government contracts to shovel money at an event planning firm so sycophantically devoted to the current president that the company’s website is littered with photos of him and his ego-stroking gatherings. Add it to the long list of crimes that should someday be prosecuted. The piece is reported by David A. Fahrenthold and Andrea Fuller.