"Look, goddamn it, I’m homosexual, and most of my friends are Jewish homosexuals, and some of my best friends are black homosexuals, and I am sick and tired of reading and hearing such goddamn demeaning, degrading bullshit about me and my friends." - Merle Miller.
In 1970, two years after Stonewall,
Joseph Epstein wrote a cover story for Harper’s Magazine,
Homo/hetero: The struggle for sexual identity, that came to chilling conclusions: "I would wish homosexuality off the face of this earth." His incendiary language prompted author/journalist/writer Merle Miller to come out of the closet in the New York Times Magazine, with an angry and poignant plea for dignity, understanding and respect: "What It Means to Be a Homosexual." 40 years later,
that essay helped inspire the launch of the "It Gets Better" campaign. Via [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Oct 17, 2012 -
62 comments
"Institutions of learning should be devoted to the cultivation of curiosity and the less they are deflected by considerations of immediacy of application, the more likely they are to contribute not only to human welfare but to the equally important satisfaction of intellectual interest which may indeed be said to have become the ruling passion of intellectual life in modern times." -
Abraham Flexner, in his 1939 Harper's Article "The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge" (available at
Harper's for money or in
PDF from the IAS for free)
posted by BlackLeotardFront
on Jul 16, 2012 -
7 comments
After an inquisitive prison inmate challenged his notions of poverty and its solutions, Earl Shorris embarked on a project to share the humanities with poor students in New York City. In
this article for Harper's Magazine, he remembers his struggles and triumphs with funding, material, and the students. As income inequality in the US continues to rise, other well known figures have
different ideas. Shorris died recently this year, and obituaries appeared in
The New York Times,
The Daily News and
The Nation. A full archive of his articles for Harper's can be found
here.
posted by sophist
on Jun 21, 2012 -
10 comments
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is pumping out a pile of podcasts that have covered
the importance of offensive comics to Art Spiegelman,
600 bands over 54 shows,
Captain America versus the American government,
Amy Sedaris and geekdom,
the journey of young immigrants,
French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut and Harper's publisher John MacArthur discussing Europe and America perspectives since 9/11,
the after life,
sex with monkeys,
what radio producers do,
the french word "corps",
Bonnie Fuller's "The Joys of Much Too Much: Go For the Big Life — The Great Career, The Perfect Guy, and Everything Else You've Ever Wanted (Even If You're Afraid You Don't Have What It Takes)",
Veteran Washington reporter Helen Thomas and some other bits & bobs [Breakdown inside]
posted by boost ventilator
on Jun 5, 2006 -
25 comments
Harper's Magazine Yearly Review for 2005 - Yep, it's yet another year-end encapsulation of all that went before. This one's special though. It's
Harper's.
Okay I know, just read the damn page!
Seriously, I'm posing this because I like Harper's, and I've always liked the juxtaposition of the big and serious in these summaries, like Hurricane Katrina, with the laughably trivial, like how an increasing number of Americans are now heating their homes... with corn.
posted by JHarris
on Jan 1, 2006 -
32 comments
Indeed, all over the world, millions of born-again Christians have vanished into the mystical ether--leaving behind their clothing, their eyeglasses, even their dentures--along with every child under the age of twelve. Airplanes are crashing, automobiles are veering driverless and out of control, and fetuses are disappearing from their mothers' wombs, as the born-again and the unborn alike are abruptly "raptured" to heaven.
Harper's Magazine reviewer Gene Lyons discusses apocalyptic entertainment.
posted by iamck
on Mar 11, 2005 -
48 comments
"My country, right or wrong. If right, to be kept right, if wrong,
to be put right."
--
Carl Schurz
Those of us opposed to this war have made our positions known, and when the dust of bombs and combat has settled, we can be mildly cheered in knowing that although we could not stop the march to war, our vigilance has not gone entirely unheeded and has perhaps averted more harm than would otherwise have come. Now that the war is upon us, all of us, especially we who have identified ourselves as anti-war, run the risk of
truly failing in our efforts if we cannot harness our energies to make certain that those embroiled in this conflict do not suffer in vain. However unjust the means of this invasion have been, it is now our responsibility to attempt to ensure that the ends uphold the ideals we have been trying to safeguard.
It's time to check our fears about what has been done and look ahead to
what must be done.
posted by grrarrgh00
on Mar 23, 2003 -
15 comments
Gaza Diary by Chris Hedges It's generally not the best idea to post links about the Palestine/Israel conflict, as each day's news can be debated ad infitum by various sides. However this Gaza Diary is a stunning personal look into the ravages of war and occupation. Written by the
New York Times Mideast Bureau Chief, and published in Harper's in October, it's a meditative reflection on the ways the human spirit can be twisted by conflict, and how a reporter (even a seasoned one) responds to the demons of war. Well worth your time.
posted by cell divide
on Nov 16, 2001 -
6 comments
Talking the talk: An interview with John McWhorter Speaking of
linguistics and whatnot, I've been thumbing through the new-look
East Bay Express. I read this, and I feel like
McWhorter's never gotten over some black people wrongly labeling him as an Oreo cookie (never had someone assure him, in response to epithets like those, that there are 35 million ways of being African-American -- and that many of them involve fluency in "totally ass-kicking SWE," to reference
David Foster Wallace's essay on Bryan Garner's new usage book in Harper's a couple of months ago).
I appreciate his iconoclasm (hell, like myself, he voted for Nader) and I'm willing to concede points of his basic argument and that I agree with him on some (the whole "niggardly" thing; the Ebonics controversy) points.
But after reading this, I wound up feeling irritated with him -- and especially put off by allowing himself to be
misrespresented marketed as a conservative and, despite his vaunted speaking ability and academic credentials, his inability to get his points across in the media.
posted by allaboutgeorge
on Jul 6, 2001 -
13 comments
