Megan Garber
The Phantom Reckoning
From Les Moonves to Louis C.K. to so many others implicated in #MeToo, there have been many performances of accountability theater. But those in power have repeatedly proven themselves unwilling to make amends.
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Klara Auerbach / The Atlantic The Bittersweet Lessons of Law & Order: SVU
Twenty years into its run, the show has fallen prey to a revealing paradox: As it has grown in relevance, it has lost its urgency.
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Erin Scott / Reuters Why Isn't a Rape Allegation Worth an Impeachment Inquiry?
On the selective accountabilities of the Trump hearings
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Andrew Kelly / Reuters Fox News Covered the Impeachment Hearings in the Fox Newsiest Way Possible
The network that helped put Donald Trump into power is now showing how insistently it will work to keep him there.
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Jacquelyn Martin / AP The Sexism Is Getting Sneakier
Is Elizabeth Warren overly “angry”? The media are just asking questions.
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Carlos Barria / Reuters Why the Assault Allegations Against Trump Don’t Stick
E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit against the president pushes up against an obdurate truth: His very ubiquity has afforded him a kind of impunity.
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Chloe Scheffe Sorry, Not Sorry
Why public figures stopped apologizing
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Larnce Gold / Getty Two Tales of Booing. Two Very Different Views.
Harvey Weinstein’s detractors were told to “shut up.” Donald Trump’s hecklers were dismissed as “un-American.” What are the men’s defenders so afraid of?
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Boston Globe / Getty James Foley’s Mother Is Grateful Baghdadi Is Dead
The journalist wanted to understand Syrians who had no voice. ISIS murdered him.
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Photography Tristan Brazier / Getty The Ongoing Horror of #MeToo
She Said, Catch and Kill, and other new books tell stories of monsters brought to account. But their defining mood is not exultation—it’s terror.
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Peter Kramer / HBO The Bodily Horrors of Succession
Infestation. Insects. Ointment. This is not the stuff you might expect from a work of prestige TV that takes extreme wealth as its subject.
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Mario Anzuoni / Reuters The James Franco Lawsuit Has a Point to Make About ‘Comfort Zones’
The allegations that the actor exploited women students echo a broader assumption: that discomfort in a professional setting is a liability.
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Ali Smith / Guardian / eyevine / Redux The Paradox at the Heart of Know My Name
Chanel Miller’s memoir, like the show Unbelievable, is a reminder of the painful alchemy that turns trauma into art.
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Danny Feld / NBCU Photo Bank / Getty C. J. Cregg and the Illusions of The West Wing
Twenty years ago, the fictional press secretary was the heart of Aaron Sorkin’s political drama—and the embodiment of a time when news sold the myth of an ordered world.
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Jonathan Ernst / Reuters How Brett Kavanaugh Got the Last Laugh
Far beyond the news it breaks, The Education of Brett Kavanaugh is a grim reminder: Many Americans still doubt the seriousness of sexual-misconduct allegations.
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Dave Bjerke / NBC / NBCU Photo Bank ... On Chandler Bing’s Job
Twenty-five years ago, Friends anticipated a time that would both romanticize and mistrust the culture of work.
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Shannon Stapleton / Reuters The Plan to Make Harvey Weinstein a Hero
She Said, the behind-the-scenes telling of one of #MeToo’s most consequential journalistic stories, treats villainy as a systemic proposition.
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Stephanie Keith / Getty The Myth of the ‘Underage Woman’
One more shameful truth Jeffrey Epstein symbolized: a culture that continues to write girls out of its stories
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Aggie Kenny / AP ‘Epstein Is Gone, but Justice Must Still Be Served’
Of all the questions that hover around the sex offender’s death, the most urgent is this: What shape will accountability now take for his accusers?
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Paul Ratje / AFP / Getty Images The Art of Giving a Damn
Anger is the ethic of the moment. Campaign-trail language is reflecting that.
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John Locher / AP How Trump Obscures Mass Shootings With Doublespeak
In discussing the El Paso and Dayton massacres, the president and his fellow politicians are taking refuge in the convenience of abstraction.
