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Erik Tarloff

Erik Tarloff is a novelist, screenwriter, and journalist.
  • Meg Whitman's Campaign Spots

    • Erik Tarloff
    • February 17, 2010
  • Classical Cadenzas

    • Erik Tarloff
    • February 9, 2010
  • Citizens United

    • Erik Tarloff
    • January 24, 2010
  • Sundays

    • Erik Tarloff
    • January 17, 2010
  • The Loyal Opposition

    • Erik Tarloff
    • December 27, 2009
  • Health Care

    • Erik Tarloff
    • November 23, 2009
  • In Memoriam Soupy Sales

    • Erik Tarloff
    • October 30, 2009
  • A Few Words About Coughing

    • Erik Tarloff
    • October 29, 2009
  • Eyes on the Prize

    • Erik Tarloff
    • October 9, 2009
  • Close Listening

    • Erik Tarloff
    • October 5, 2009
  • For Larry Gelbart

    • Erik Tarloff
    • September 13, 2009
  • The Unbearable Stupidity of Authoritarianism

    • Erik Tarloff
    • September 2, 2009
  • In Memoriam, EMK

    • Erik Tarloff
    • August 28, 2009
  • Lockerbie Compassion

    • Erik Tarloff
    • August 20, 2009
  • Political Sex Scandals

    • Erik Tarloff
    • August 11, 2009
  • Coup in Korea

    • Erik Tarloff
    • August 4, 2009
  • The Rehearsal

    • Erik Tarloff
    • August 1, 2009
  • And the GOP...?

    • Erik Tarloff
    • July 26, 2009
  • UCB RIP

    • Erik Tarloff
    • July 22, 2009
  • Previous

Books

  • The Man Who Wrote the Book
  • Face Time

Most Popular

  • Picture showing Donald Trump, in front of reporters, shrugging.
    Anna Moneymaker / Getty

    Trump’s Legal Problems Are Putting the GOP in a Vise

    Ronald Brownstein

    The investigations highlight all the aspects of his political identity that have alienated so many swing voters.

    The dilemma for the Republican Party is that Donald Trump’s mounting legal troubles may be simultaneously strengthening him as a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination and weakening him as a potential general-election nominee.

    In the days leading up to the indictment of the former president, which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced two days ago, a succession of polls showed that Trump has significantly increased his lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, his closest competitor in the race for the Republican nomination.

    Yet recent surveys have also signaled that this criminal charge—and other potential indictments from ongoing investigations—could deepen the doubts about Trump among the suburban swing voters who decisively rejected him in the 2020 presidential race, and powered surprisingly strong performances by Democrats in the 2018 and 2022 midterms.

    Continue Reading
  • Illustration of a raised fist holding an iPhone in a selfie stick.
    Illustration by Joanne Imperio / The Atlantic

    The Influencer Industry Is Having an Existential Crisis

    Kaitlyn Tiffany

    People who make their living by sharing content on giant social-media platforms have tried to strike, organize, and even unionize, but they don’t have much to show for it.

    Close to 5 million people follow Influencers in the Wild. The popular Instagram account makes fun of the work that goes into having a certain other kind of popular Instagram account: A typical post catches a woman (and usually, her butt) posing for photos in public, often surrounded by people but usually operating in total ignorance or disregard of them. In the comments, viewers—aghast at the goofiness and self-obsession on display—like to say that it’s time for a proverbial asteroid to come and deliver the Earth to its proverbial fiery end.

    Influencers in the Wild has been turned into a board game with the tagline “Go places. Gain followers. Get famous. (no talent required)” And you get it because social-media influencers have always been, to some degree, a cultural joke. They get paid to post photos of themselves and to share their lives, which is something most of us do for free. It’s not real work.

    Continue Reading
  • A woman eating in front of a computer
    Brian Finke / Gallery Stock

    Why Americans Care About Work So Much

    Derek Thompson

    Workism is rooted in the belief that employment can provide everything we have historically expected from organized religion.

    This is Work in Progress, a newsletter by Derek Thompson about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here to get it every week.

    Here is a history of work in six words: from jobs to careers to callings.

    Until quite recently, we had little concept of “progress” in our labor. Around the world, people hunted or harvested, just as their parents and grandparents had. They hammered nails. They assembled gears and sewed thread and patched homes. Their work was a matter of subsistence and necessity; it was not a race for status or an existential search for meaning. These were jobs. And for hundreds of millions of people everywhere, work is still work—grueling or boring or exploited or poorly paid, or all of the above.

    Continue Reading
  • a baby, a hand, an overwhelmed woman
    Nikos Economopoulos / Magnum

    Childbirth Is No Fun. But an Extremely Fast Birth Can Be Worse.

    Sarah Zhang

    “It felt like being hit by a truck and dragged along behind,” one mother said.

    When Tess Camp was pregnant with her second child, she knew she would need to get to the hospital fast when the baby came. Her first labor had been short for a first-time mother (seven hours), and second babies tend to be in more of a hurry. Even so, she was not prepared for what happened: One day, at 40 weeks, she started feeling what she thought was just pregnancy back pain. Then her water broke, and 12 minutes later, she was holding a baby in her arms.

    Needless to say, she didn’t make it into the hospital in time. But the first contraction after Camp’s water broke at home had been so intense—“immediate horrific pain; I could barely talk”—that she and her husband rushed into the car. He drove through town like a madman, running red lights. They were turning into the ER when she saw the baby’s head between her legs. Her husband tore out of the car, yelling for help. A security guard ran over to a terrified Camp in the passenger’s seat, and in that moment, her son slipped out and into the security guard’s hands. His umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. An ER nurse finally appeared to take the baby—still blue and limp—and resuscitated him right on the curb.

    Continue Reading
  • Three hands holding three of the same bags
    Illustration by Daniel Zender / The Atlantic. Source: Getty

    Something Odd Is Happening With Handbags

    Amanda Mull

    Where do shoppers turn when an industry built on novelty runs out of new ideas?

    This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.      

    Nearly half a decade has elapsed since I last worked in the fashion industry, but one thing from my previous career remains a compulsion to this day: I look at people’s purses. In the brain space that might otherwise be occupied by dear childhood memories or the dates and times of future doctor appointments, I tend to an apparently undeletable mental spreadsheet of who is carrying what. Bottega Veneta Cassette, green padded leather, Soho, 20-something woman. Louis Vuitton Pochette Métis, logo canvas, Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway stop, 40-ish woman. For 10 years, these data points informed my obsessive, detailed coverage of the luxury-handbag market. Now they just accumulate. Rarely do I see something I can’t place.

    Continue Reading
  • A photo of Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump
    Carlos Barria / Reuters

    Trump’s Republican Rivals Are Missing an Obvious Opportunity

    Mark Leibovich

    Now is an ideal moment for Republicans to free themselves from the former president. They’re not exactly taking advantage of it.

    After his historic indictment was announced Thursday night, former President Donald Trump reacted with his characteristic cool and precision: “These Thugs and Radical Left Monsters have just INDICATED the 45th President of the United States of America.” Presumably this was a typo, and he meant INDICTED. But the immediate joining of arms around the martyr was indeed a perfect indication of precisely who the Republicans are right now.

    “When Trump wins, THESE PEOPLE WILL PAY!!” Representative Ronny Jackson of Texas vowed.

    “If they can come for him, they can come for anyone,” added Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona—or at least come for anyone who has allegedly paid $130,000 in hush money to a former porn-star paramour (and particularly anyone who allegedly had unprotected sex with her shortly after his third wife had given birth).

    Continue Reading
  • Baby in a crib with a mother's shadow over it
    Illustration by Daniel Zender / The Atlantic. Source: Getty

    A Tale of Maternal Ambivalence

    Daphne Merkin

    A new novel, The Nursery, explores the mix of unexpected emotions—including rage, regret, and loneliness—that new motherhood can bring on.

    Motherhood has always been a subject ripe for mythmaking, whether vilification or idealization. Although fictional accounts, from antiquity until today, have offered us terrible, even treacherous mothers, including Euripides’s Medea and Livia Soprano, depictions of unrealistically all-good mothers, such as Marmee from Little Women, are more common and provide a sense of comfort. Maternal characters on the dark end of the spectrum provoke our unease because their monstrous behavior so clearly threatens society’s standards for mothers. They show that mother love isn’t inevitable, and that veering off from the expected response to a cuddly new infant isn’t inconceivable.

    If motherhood brings with it the burden of our projected hopes, new mothers are especially hemmed in by wishful imagery, presumed to be ecstatically bonding with their just-emerged infants as they suckle at milk-filled breasts, everything smelling sweetly of baby powder. The phenomenon of postpartum depression, for instance, a condition that affects 10 to 15 percent of women, has been given short shrift in literature and other genres when not ignored entirely. This is true as well when it comes to the evocation of maternal ambivalence, the less-than-wholehearted response to the birth of a child, which is mostly viewed as a momentary glitch in the smooth transition from pregnancy to childbirth to motherhood instead of being seen as a sign of internal conflict.

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  • A couple dancing at their wedding
    Jim Goldberg / Magnum

    Marriage Isn’t Hard Work; It’s Serious Play

    Nina Li Coomes

    Yes, love requires some labor. But that shouldn’t define the relationship.

    Marriage is work: I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard that saying. In my personal life, I heard it from youth pastors at Bible camp, from well-meaning aunts at bridal showers, even from the woman who threaded my eyebrows the week before my wedding. In popular culture, I’ve seen the adage espoused on Martha Stewart’s website and by Ben Affleck on the Oscars stage. The idea has the sheen of a proverb, timeless and true.

    So after my wedding a few years ago, I attempted to be the best marriage worker I could be. I scheduled biweekly budget meetings and preached the benefits of the “I” statement in an argument. I analyzed my husband’s working style to optimize how we could divide unloading the dishwasher and vacuuming the kitchen. At its best, this attitude gave our marriage the clean hum of a caffeinated, productive morning at the office—every task checked off, every email replied to. At its worst, I felt resentful, exhausted, and miserly with my affection, like I could dole it out only after one of us had completed a job. Viewing marriage as labor never made me feel more connected to the man I had chosen to partner with.

    Continue Reading
  • Illustration of Twitter bird fading into pixels on black
    Illustration by Arsh Raziuddin

    The Twitter I Love Doesn’t Exist Anymore

    Virginia Heffernan

    At its best, the platform was a reminder that there are quick-witted and even wise people in the world with ideas to share.

    This is a sentimental story about Twitter, a little Twitterbilly elegy. I spilled tears, heavy Patsy Cline tears, for the platform for the first time a few weeks ago, during a walk with Amanda Guinzburg, a writer and photographer I’d long followed on Twitter for her excellent tweets about American politics and photos of libidinous flowers.

    Guinz—her Twitter handle—and I had never met face-to-face, but with the arsonous new management torching the platform’s vibe, we had decided to stroll together in Brooklyn Bridge Park and slag Elon Musk. Before Musk took over, you went to Twitter to satirize the high-hats, while also learning and teaching. But Musk seemed to think Twitter was chiefly for propaganda, self-aggrandizement, and enemy-smiting. He never took the time to loiter and banter and approach new subjects with equanimity, curiosity, amusement. Yes, he had long waxed anti-vax and hammered away at edgelord palaver, but what did it (for me, anyway) came on October 30, when he amplified some truly twisted and false cruelty implying that Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, had solicited sex from the QAnon-promoting intruder who cracked his skull with a hammer.

    Continue Reading
  • A close-up shot of the video-game character Leon Kennedy from the remake of "Resident Evil 4"
    CAPCOM

    The Throwback Hero That Video Games Needed

    David Sims

    Resident Evil 4 might not be an elevated story, but it sure is an entertaining one.

    The “next-gen remake” is the latest and safest cash cow in video gaming. Take a hit title that came out a decade or more ago on a prior console, spiff it up with updated graphics, controls, and maybe even some new content, and sell it at full price to a nostalgic audience. Since its 2005 debut on the Nintendo GameCube, Capcom’s Resident Evil 4 has been lightly reconfigured for a dozen different devices. But the most recent edition is a soup-to-nuts revamp, meant to bring in a new generation while still satisfying longtime players like me who are just looking to relive the glory days.

    I was introduced to Resident Evil 4 in college, and I’ve replayed it countless times over the years as it’s been “ported” to new consoles. When it was first released, the game marked a departure from the rest of the Resident Evil series, in which the player navigates the fictional Raccoon City during a viral zombie outbreak. The first Resident Evil pioneered the “survival horror” genre, asking players to conserve ammunition, solve puzzles, and withstand jump scares as enemies swarmed from every dark corner. The best-selling horror franchise spawned rival series such as Silent Hill and Left 4 Dead, but by 2005, the Resident Evil formula had grown creaky, having gained sequels and prequels for almost a decade to diminishing returns.

    Continue Reading
  • The Happiest Animal

    Emily Buder

    Venture to an island off the coast of Australia to meet the quokka, the world’s smiliest mammal.

    Watch Video
  • ‘My Past Has Caught Up to Me’

    Emily Buder

    All his life, Justin managed to escape his own story—until now.

    Watch Video
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