Inside the Hackworld: How a Do-Nothing Became a Lame Duck

Local

It’s Primary Day, Tuesday, September 13th, and we’re feeling pretty good. Outside polling places in the Upper West Side, West Village and Park Slope, most everyone is happy to see Norman. People of all backgrounds give him high fives, smiles, thumbs up. It’s not often that voters get to pull the lever for a candidate who’s not driven by money or machines, but instead by principles. Still, we’re not starry-eyed: we’re up against an incumbent who’s got the machine, big bucks, and the city elite behind her. In addition to support, we encounter some mild hostility. A middle-aged woman on the Upper West Side looks at our pro-Norman sign and says, “Yuck!” A 40-something guy in an expensive suit walking down 7th Avenue in Park Slope sees Norman and grimaces. Norman’s politics, to be sure, are not for everyone.

March on Washington, September 24, 2005

Express

We pulled into the parking lot at 5:50 a.m. and knew we were in the right place by the improbable clutch of people huddled together in the predawn darkness. Both sexes in almost equal numbers, with their Whole Foods bags and backpacks, but most were decidedly not young. A couple who drove all the way from Massachusetts the day before. A high school social studies teacher and his artist wife, homemade signs in tow. A New York City transit worker wearing a TWU Local 100 baseball cap. Another couple, in their sixties, with matching shirts that announced “Don’t Blame Me – I Didn’t Vote for That Idiot.”

Elizabeth Murray

Art

In the midst of preparing for her upcoming retrospective, which will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art beginning October 23, 2005, Elizabeth Murray sat down with the painter Robert Storr, curator of the exhibition, and Rail publisher Phong Bui to talk about her life and work at her studio loft in Tribeca.

Siddhartha Deb with Hirsh Sawhney

Books

The mainstream media has its cyclopic eye on South Asia, broadcasting images of nerdy brown people stealing office jobs or the destitute and emaciated awaiting alms. Fortunately, writer, critic and journalist Siddhartha Deb razes such naïve notions with his boundless acumen and deft prose, which has appeared in the New Statesman, The Nation and The Guardian. His second novel, An Outline of the Republic [Ecco, 2005] was released earlier this year.

The Soul Stirrer: The Legacy of Sam Cooke

Music

If  Ray Charles caused consternation in then-Negro America by using gospel sounds as a foundation for the “devil’s music,” what some blacks pejoratively called R&B, Sam Cooke made some people damn right apoplectic.

A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

I’ve bee sitting at a different desk for the last few issues, and not a little—to say the least—has happened in that time. Here’s a brief roll call of some important names: Katrina, Rita, Michael Brown, John Roberts.