by Matthew Friedman | Jul 10, 2024 | Commentary, Politics
There’s a scene about halfway through the 1972 film musical Cabaret that never fails to give me chills. The film’s hero Brian Roberts (Michael York) and his lover Max von Heune (Helmut Griem) are enjoying a glass of lager at a biergarten in the German countryside in...
by Matthew Friedman | Jul 10, 2024 | Commentary, Essays
It stopped me dead in my tracks as I was walking down Newark Ave. in Jersey City one morning in the winter of 2016, on my way to the Grove Street Path station: Someone had painted a large black swastika, surrounded by repeated instances of the doppelte Siegrune icon...
by Matthew Friedman | Jul 10, 2024 | Commentary, Essays
I laughed so hard that I passed beer through my nose. The occasion was the first episode of Saturday Night Live’s 14th season which aired just days after the High Holy Days in 1988. Hosted by Tom Hanks, whose movie Big had been a surprise summer blockbuster, with the...
by Matthew Friedman | Jul 10, 2024 | Commentary, Editorial
I had no idea when I woke up this morning that I was going to spend most of my day trying to contact an unresponsive multi-billion-dollar media corporation and trying to save The Typescript from the predations of late-capitalist corporate colonialism. I thought I...
by Matthew Friedman | Oct 8, 2023 | Commentary, Editorial
I have been watching the events in the State of Israel with horror. Hundreds, perhaps a thousand Israelis have been killed in Hamas’s attack, hundreds more Gazans have died under Israeli missiles and “bunker-buster” bombs. And the State of Israel’s Defense Minister...
by Matthew Friedman | Jun 16, 2023 | Commentary, Essays
My first impression of the United States was… not great. I remember watching scraps of paper packaging blow unobstructed down the street in the late-summer breeze, corner trash bins overflowing twice their volume, crumbling concrete, cracked bricks, and peeling paint....
