The Smug Technocrats who will rule Tomorrow

America should be more open than ever. Women and minorities are no longer excluded from high-earning professions and, if you are willing to take on the debt, a university education is more accessible than ever before. But if anything America is less egalitarian than it once was. The income gap between rich and poor has been growing since the 1970s. More worrying than that, a permanent class system seems to be calcifying into place: people born rich are getting richer, while the poor stay poor. America’s elite has found a way to protect and perpetuate itself within what should be an inclusive system.

Published on October 1, 2012 07:17.
Filed under: Clippings, Essays Tags: , ,

1 Comment »

  1. Jamie says:
    October 8, 2012 at 20:08

    This review was picked up Andrew Sullivan… http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/10/an-a-in-elitism.html — helps to link to these things, not that SEO for McGirk is to hard to rise to the top of, but one never knows what contenders to the James McGirk name there might be lurking out there

    Reply

RSS feed for comments on this post. / TrackBack URI

Leave a Reply

The Splashy Debut Novel is Dead—Or Is It?

Are the big publishing houses using independent presses as a farm league to scout for talent, and exiting the market for big-gamble debuts? James McGirk reports.

Published on June 13, 2013 11:24.
Filed under: Clippings, Essays Tags: , ,

The Metropolitan Trilogy

After writing a spate of reasonably successful—and very autobiographical—novels, James Ellroy and Martin Amis took the cities surrounding them and used them as test beds, experimenting with new voices and forms and populating this familiar terrain with doppelgangers and villains and foils and sexual obsessions.

Published on June 10, 2013 12:02.
Filed under: Clippings, Essays Tags: , ,

Moore, OK Tornado Reporting Credits (i.e. not bylines)

June 3rd, 2013 Cover

16 Minutes

Tornado-Ravaged Moore Takes First Steps to Recovery

Wrenching Decisions as Tornado Flattens School

Published on June 6, 2013 11:21.
Filed under: Clippings Tags: , , , ,

Constitutional Crisis

This Land Press cover

Cherokee Nation has what seems to be an unusual fixation with lawyers and writing—at least for an outsider looking in. Cherokee museums are dense with detail about treaties, newspapers, and literacy.

Published on June 5, 2013 12:44.
Filed under: Clippings, Essays Tags: , , , , ,

North Korea’s Nerve War

The Moranbong Band is best imagined as a North Korean version of Celtic Woman: an all-female ensemble band swaddled in fetching formalwear, blasting highly produced, energetic nationalist kitsch. Of course, no matter how much vigorous fiddling Chloe, Lisa, Susan and Mairead can manage, Celtic Woman is unlikely to attract as much scrutiny from intelligence agencies as the Moranbong Band’s cover of Bill Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now”, which is perhaps better known as the theme from Rocky, and was performed – complete with a video backdrop featuring cuts of Sylvester Stallone working out – for none other than Kim Jong-un, the number one of the sinister and secretive Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.  

Published on May 20, 2013 09:32.
Filed under: Essays, Interstitial Tags: , , ,

Inside the Abattoir

Chevideco, the Belgian horse meat conglomerate, touts a single story in its press section: a taste test held at a west London home was arranged by Sir Peter Bazalgette, who writes a column for the Financial Times and chairs Britain’s Arts Council.

Published on May 2, 2013 17:26.
Filed under: Clippings, Essays Tags: , , ,

Remote Viewing in the Sooner State

Assuming my issue of EYE SPY, a British glossy devoted to “The Covert World of Espionage,” can be trusted, between 1973 and 1995 the United States government (and its Chinese and Soviet rivals) spent millions hiring teams of personnel to scry photographs of enemy installations and describe their heretofore unknowable innards.

Published on April 24, 2013 11:53.
Filed under: Essays Tags: , , ,

Remembering Life in Arcosanti, Paolo Soleri’s Futuristic Desert Utopia

In 1998, James McGirk spent five weeks living and working in Arcosanti, a desert community built in the 1970s that attempts to use ornate architectural planning to help create a harmonious society. Its designer, Frank Lloyd Wright disciple Paolo Soleri, passed away this week at age 93; McGirk remembers his experiences at the location and his interactions with Soleri.

Published on April 11, 2013 17:53.
Filed under: Art, Clippings Tags: , , ,

Here is my C.V.

JAMES MCGIRK CV

PUBLICATIONS

ABOUT ME

MAILING LIST

 

Published on April 11, 2013 00:00.
Filed under: Interstitial, Uncategorized

The game of (not) life

There is no better analogy for contemporary art than Conway’s Game of Life. This is not the same thing as The Game of Life, which is played on a board and simulates the education and subsequent useful employment of a human being. Conway’s Game of Life is a math game, an evolution simulator simple enough to be played on a checkerboard, but most often encountered on a computer. In the game, three rules govern whether or not an individual “cell” lives, dies or reproduces.

Published on March 27, 2013 12:05.
Filed under: Art, Clippings, Essays Tags: , , ,