Apr 20, 2021 5 min read

OptOut Picks: Corporate Power, Monarchs, and Socialist Sex Ed

Here's what our participating outlets have been up to this week.

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Here’s a quick rundown of some content from last week from the independent media outlets participating in OptOut.

The Nomiki Show: Davarian Baldwin + Alex Kotch & Jordan Zakarin

OptOut participants unite! After an interview with author and professor Davarian Baldwin about how policing and universities collide, Nomiki Konst had Jordan Zakarin, author of Progressives Everywhere, and I on her show to discuss the latest developments in U.S. politics.

Check out Jordan's entry on progressive victories in New York state, including, finally, a tax increase on the wealthy and big corporations...

...and my co-authored story for Exposed by CMD about scores of ALEC politicians who are sponsoring voter suppression bills around the country.

Speaking of the wealthy and big corporations

The Daily Poster has a scoop about coal millionaire Sen. Joe Manchin and his centrist Democratic kindred spirit Kyrsten Sinema, who not only blocked the $15 minimum wage proposal this year but will headline an event on Tuesday organized by the anti-labor National Restaurant Association.

Jewish Currents: On the Nose

The cover of the Spring 2021 issue of Jewish Currents features a photograph that has proven controversial, eliciting a wide array of reactions, from disgust to accusations of antisemitism to schnoz pride. Editor-in-Chief Arielle Angel, Publisher Jacob Plitman, and Managing Editor Nathan Goldman sat down with Rachel Stern, the artist behind the photograph, to discuss the image, the response, and what it all might mean.

Read the transcript.

Pundits sometimes describe “cancel culture” in a way that implies that society (or just the political left) is getting more censorious or hostile to free speech. But history is full of examples of people trying to restrict speech they don’t like; everyone has always been hostile to everyone else’s ideas, and many employers have always been hostile to ideas in general. What’s changed is that a random person can now type into a text box and broadcast their thoughts to the world. By now, we should all know that that is a terrible idea. Every post is a time bomb sent into the future.

Matt Stoller analyzes Justice Thomas' recent statements on Google's monopoly and situates them within the current conservative movement.

The Republican Party is realigning, but it is still institutionally captured by big money, so there’s frustration at the status quo by its leaders but reluctance to do anything about it. The strain is evident across the GOP, which is trying to figure out how to address the problem of dominant big tech monopolies, but coming from a tradition of deep deference to their power.

This monarchy stuff is weird.

I mute very few terms on Twitter, but I did mute the names of some members of the British royal family a while ago.

Read Passage on how the media reinforces monarchy worship:

The Jacobin Show: Sex and the State w/ Kristen Ghodsee

Kristen Ghodsee, author of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism, joins us to discuss socialist sex education and how Eastern European state socialism helped women gain more independence from men and, by extension, have better sex lives.