In the News and Trends section, Sarah Seltzer issues a call to arms. Or pens. Entitled “Writers, Editors Resist,” she explores the deeply troubling question of how writers can possibly write during a Donald Trump presidency. By resisting, of course! The Federalist readers are well acquainted with the hilariously self-declared Resistance. Somehow, after the November election, the sky fell and Chicken Little survives to bash our heads about it.
Like most conservatives, I cannot turn on the television, open a newspaper, read a magazine, or “consume” (what are we, cybervores?) Internet media without learning about another March for _____, Hollywood stars denouncing fascist Trumpers, and Hillary Clinton sightings. Progressive politicization of bedrooms and bathrooms is nothing new. Nor is it new in the literary world. But the pathetic fragility of writers shouting hysterically to the rest of the planet that nebulous resistance is the way forward is something recent.
Seltzer quotes fiction writer Paula Whyman describing the morning-after pill many people had to swallow following Clinton’s defeat. Whyman said, “I had a lot of questions in my mind about what would happen to fiction and how we would go on working. Does it really matter now?” Luckily we don’t have to wait to find out. Seltzer informs us that Whyman launched a new international online journal “intended to foster artistic expression in the face of political repression and fear.”
Yep. Not because of Bashar Assad in Syria, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, or Vladimir Putin in Russia. But because of Trump in America. Whyman and her journal co-founders even went beyond the page to gather in the lobby of Trump International Hotel in Washington DC to read aloud selections from Emma Lazarus, Claudia Rankine, and James Baldwin.
I Bought Poets And Writers Magazine And All I Found Was This Lousy Resistance
Like most conservatives, I cannot turn on the television, open a newspaper, read a magazine, or “consume” (what are we, cybervores?) Internet media without learning about another March for _____, Hollywood stars denouncing fascist Trumpers, and Hillary Clinton sightings. Progressive politicization of bedrooms and bathrooms is nothing new. Nor is it new in the literary world. But the pathetic fragility of writers shouting hysterically to the rest of the planet that nebulous resistance is the way forward is something recent.
Seltzer quotes fiction writer Paula Whyman describing the morning-after pill many people had to swallow following Clinton’s defeat. Whyman said, “I had a lot of questions in my mind about what would happen to fiction and how we would go on working. Does it really matter now?” Luckily we don’t have to wait to find out. Seltzer informs us that Whyman launched a new international online journal “intended to foster artistic expression in the face of political repression and fear.”
Yep. Not because of Bashar Assad in Syria, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, or Vladimir Putin in Russia. But because of Trump in America. Whyman and her journal co-founders even went beyond the page to gather in the lobby of Trump International Hotel in Washington DC to read aloud selections from Emma Lazarus, Claudia Rankine, and James Baldwin.
I Bought Poets And Writers Magazine And All I Found Was This Lousy Resistance
