
TV critic @newrepublic // writing DAD: A POP HISTORY (Plume 2027) // teaching @wustl // buy my book AVIDLY READS SCREEN TIME!
St Louis, MO
Joined February 2011
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Hey, I got a screenshot for you. I'm writing a cultural history of the DAD! @DuttonBooks @jillschwartzman
Phillip Maciak retweeted
Here's some of what I wrote this year that I really enjoyed: My review of Kara Swisher's (bad) memoir for @thebafflermag that touches on the limits of tech journalism informed by access journalism thebaffler.com/latest/the-mi…
When I was a kid, I used to laugh so hard at SNL that I puked. I would full-body heave so much that I would have to run into the laundry room and throw up.
Anyway, today, for the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE(!), I got to write about SNL, a show I (we) grew up with.
And here it is. Desperation is the brand. nytimes.com/2024/12/17/magaz…
I wanted to write about the state of the spin-off, so I took the occasion of DUNE: PROPHECY — a show set in the normiest nook of the freakiest cinematic universe — to do it.
For @newrepublic newrepublic.com/article/1882…
Phillip Maciak retweeted
This is an important comment. Dems listen too much to "the groups" is being coded as an anti-leftwing view, but it's about a broader culture of coalitional cowardice that often doesn't have a strong ideological view one way or the other. It just doesn't want anyone inside the tent to be too upset.
Whenever I hear about how Democrats listened too much to the left, I think often about the Loan Shark Prevention Act I worked on that AOC and Bernie introduced into Congress. It would put a 15% cap on payday and credit card loans. When we polled it, it was hugely popular everywhere but especially in red and purple districts. But even faced with these facts, none of the more establishment Democrats wanted to sign on to it.
And now Trump is proposing a 10% cap on credit cards, and if he does it, it'll be a very popular win.
My take is the problem isn't that Democrats got too left. They are just too cowardly, and that cowardice defines too much of the party. When it was less cowardly to take an unpopular 'left' position, they did. But in the majority of cases where there is an option to do nothing with no political downside, the default very often is to do nothing because that is the 'safer' thing to do.
I wrote about FX's electric IRA crime saga SAY NOTHING and the limits of ambition in the Limited Series Era, for @newrepublic newrepublic.com/article/1882…
Phillip Maciak retweeted
how can reading be a privilege when that’s what allows me to constantly see these fuck ass posts
For all my fans*
*the people who liked that one tweet I did about how Somebody Somewhere is better than Succession, but who also were only kind of tepid in their support of the actual essay I wrote about that show
Phillip Maciak retweeted
Interesting essay from @moetkacik on the Billionaire Purges, which connects the post-Gaza clampdown on protest and alignment with Trump to break the Biden admin shift in corporate enforcement.
prospect.org/power/2024-11-1…
Phillip Maciak retweeted
I see, the slogans weren't simple enough, they needed to confuse the voters—that's how you win!
Lot of stuff circulating right now about the "Manosphere" — does anybody have any reading recs for specifically the way fatherhood is talked about in those spaces?
Phillip Maciak retweeted
Walz stopped with the "weird" stuff (or radically scaled it back) because the Harris campaign was taken over by Biden alumni, who didn't like it, and they pushed Harris/Walz to run a much more centrist, Cheney-hugging, civility campaign. With the results we see before us.
The finale of Cuarón’s DISCLAIMER is like when David Brent from The Office tells a misogynist joke and then looks at the camera and says, “sexist.”
All that skill, all that acting talent, in service of the smuggest Shaggy Dog story you’ve ever heard. newrepublic.com/article/1866…
Phillip Maciak retweeted
what should the democrats do differently? for answers we’re looking to one strategist who was personally responsible for their defeat, and a conservative who wants them to lose again

















