WASHINGTON — MOST people would be upset to be at the center of an agitated national debate about whether they were more like Hitler, Mussolini, Idi Amin, George Wallace or a Marvel villain. Not Donald Trump. He doesn’t like invidious comparisons but he’s cool with being called an authoritarian. “We…

“The first of our kind has struck fear into the hearts of America,” announced one commenter last year on the giddily offensive /r9k/ board of the notorious, anarchic site 4chan. “This is only the beginning. The Beta Rebellion has begun. Soon, more of our brothers will take up arms to become martyrs…

When I was a kid, I knew what the worst parts of me were—my hair and my mouth. My hair was nappy. My lips were big. Nearly every kid around me knew something similar of themselves because nearly every one of us had some sort of physical defect—dark skin, nappy hair, broad nose, full lips—that opened…

Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) speaks during the CNN Democratic Presidential Primary Debate with candidate Hillary Clinton in Flint. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) Bernie Sanders needed a big performance on Tuesday night. It may not have seemed like it; it may have seemed like he could scrape out a win…

Richard Linklater bid baseball farewell at Sam Houston State. He was a promising talent, but sophomore year he suddenly grew weak and dizzy. “One minute you’re a starting left fielder, batting third and hitting home runs, and the next . . .” The fifty-five-year-old director returned to spooning up a…

And What Would Make Me Support We should just call it what it is: Donald Trump is the leader of the White Lives Matter movement. Someone had to start it — they were gettin’ out of control. First, one of them became president and now they’re in the streets protesting every time a Black thug gets…

Judge Pamela Campbell, left, and Kenneth Turkel, a lawyer for Hulk Hogan, who described the video in question as “just porn.” Pool photo by Boyzell Hosey The retired wrestler Hulk Hogan was awarded $115 million in damages on Friday by a Florida jury in an invasion of privacy case against Gawker.com…

I f Donald Trump didn’t exist, Sacha Baron Cohen would have had to invent him. Not since the halcyon days of Borat and Brüno has anyone so effectively goaded Americans into revealing the anger and ignorance that burbles just beneath the surface. The frighteningly popular presidential candidate…

The dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral, better known as the Duomo, and Giotto’s bell tower, the Campanile, in Florence, Italy. Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times FLORENCE, Italy — “Do not write on the walls,” reads the message on a Renaissance stone wall in the cathedral on this…

Soon after David Bowie ’s death, many bloggers expressed unease at valorizing a man who slept with 15-year olds, pointing out that Bowie was yet another “problematic fave,” the go-to internet term that can be used to describe anything from a mild social gaffe to a history of sexual assault. Like…

Hook ups are no longer progressive and exciting. Now, we’re all ready for more than just sex. N eil Strauss was the canary in the coal mine , though I don’t blame those who ignored him. His memoir The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships , was marketed with all the finesse of his earlier…

When 10,000 concertgoers are singing along to untitled and unmastered obscurities, do reviews even matter? These days, it isn’t odd to see new albums declared classics before anyone’s even had a chance to really listen to them. Case in point: the new Kendrick Lamar album/b-side leftovers— untitled…

Shutterstock, FUSION I’ve been fascinated with sex for as long as I can remember, becoming transfixed by the topic some time between my open-minded parents teaching me about the birds and the bees and my discovery of masturbation (which, not to put too fine a point on it, was rather precocious).…

Photo: Getty Images If you want to see the biggest new movies, you have to go to the theater. This is the premise the film industry rests on: It expects — no, it knows — that enough of us will want to see a new Star Wars movie, or Batman v Superman , or any other blockbuster release badly enough…

Hillary Clinton greets supporters on Tuesday night in West Palm Beach, Florida, after prevailing in the Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina Democratic primaries. There is a growing belief among Republicans in Washington that Clinton and Donald Trump are unstoppable and that, come November, this will…

On Monday, Putin’s Administration announced that Russia would abandon the fight in Syria just as quickly as it entered the fray. Photograph by Pavel Golovkin / AP On Monday evening in Syria, Bashar al-Assad answered a ringing phone at his palace overlooking Damascus. The caller was Vladimir Putin,…

In the United States, populism is driven not solely by distress at economic malaise but also by fears inspired by racial progress. PHOTOGRAPH BY TOM PENNINGTON / GETTY The old adage holds that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but the candidacy of Donald Trump suggests an…

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images Bernie Sanders 's 2016 presidential campaign was about starting a revolution. Having lost by landslides across the South and having been defeated in New York and most of the rest of the northeast, he simply can't catch Hillary Clinton's delegate lead. But his…

Only celebrities are allowed to be pregnant and still work. They can afford nannies, and entire film shoots are scheduled around their pregnancies. Pregnant ladies in Hollywood are like spiders. The Hollywood studios scream when they see a spider and want to get rid of it, but then a good producer…

Get live updates about the Florida primary . Donald J. Trump arrived at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in April 2011, reveling in the moment as he mingled with the political luminaries who gathered at the Washington Hilton. He made his way to his seat beside his host, Lally…

“ Fuck Donald Trump !” I’ve been outside the UIC Pavilion for about 10 minutes when I first hear someone shout it from a passing car. It’s about 2 p.m. on Friday afternoon. The heckler, in a silver sedan, has come to a rolling stop to yell at the line of rally attendees — now long enough to snake…

IN 1984 Ronald Reagan ran a re-election ad on the theme of “It’s Morning Again in America”. Today’s presidential hopefuls ought to run a follow-up called “It’s Almost Midnight”. Donald Trump laments the loss of America’s greatness. Bernie Sanders says the country is being wrecked by greedy…

The Economist explains AS SURELY as the sun rises in the east, a major American political party could never nominate Donald Trump for president. Such was the certainty of “data” and “explanatory” journalists at sites like Vox (“Here’s Why [Trump] Won’t Win”), FiveThirtyEight (“Dear Media, Stop…

Judged by favorability ratings, Donald Trump is far from the most popular Republican, and is the least popular candidate in the presidential race, period. Ethan Miller/Getty Images With three victories behind him and even more on the horizon, Donald Trump has a clear path to the Republican…

West Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 15. Jim Young/Reuters Photo from "Postcards From America" by Mark Power/Magnum Photos “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win,” goes the line attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. Typically, you’ll find this pearl adorning a classroom or…

Photo: Victoria Stevens On FX’s The Americans , our heroes are constantly changing, but ever so glacially. It’s Martha Hanson — the FBI secretary Philip (Matthew Rhys) married to gain access to classified secrets — who perhaps best captures the show’s emotional urgency. Played to devastating effect…

There are many nauseating aspects of the new reality TV series, "America Picks a Prez ," which airs around the clock on every single channel on earth: the cynical, open-air conspiracy between our Fourth Estate and Donald “Ratings Viagra” Trump. Ted Cruz uttering the word " while not exploding into a…

I’ve been to my fair share of parties. I don’t mean the plastic-cup-and-pizza apartment hang-outs, or the police-baiting all-night warehouse raves — I mean vaulted ceilings, black tie dress code, and free champagne. Parties where I leant on neoclassical statues while distant arty bass droned on,…

It’s 2016. Bearing this in mind, go play a shooter from 2010. Or a sports game. Or, well, anything else from 2010. Look how (relatively) basic it is! Notice how advances in game design and technology have rendered so many of these former classics obsolete. Now go and play Civilization V . I’ll see…

Short Profile Name: Bret Easton Ellis DOB: 7 March 1964 Place of Birth: Los Angeles, California, USA Occupation: Author Mr. Ellis, have you ever seen a dead body? Yes, certainly. Growing up in L.A. I have driven past car accidents with a dead body that had not been covered yet. I have seen a dead…

Everyone seems to be betting big on music discovery. What if they’re wrong? T hese days, it seems like everyone has an opinion of the best way to discover music. Apple focuses on human curation with intricate playlists and Beats1 Radio. Google thinks that’s all elitist nonsense and that machine…

Photo: Quirky One of the start-up world’s favorite words, in addition to disrupt , pivot , and on-demand , is community . Kickstarter identifies as “a community of people committed to bringing new things to life.” “The heart and soul of Etsy,” begins the About Etsy page, “is our global community.”…

The importance of Donald Trump Far from destroying our democracy, he’s exposing all its phoniness and corruption in ways as serious as he is not. And changing it in the process. Photo-illustration by Bobby Doherty. Trump photograph by Michele Asselin/Contour by Getty Images; Wig Styling by Sharelle…

Credit: Todd Kranin Attacks on birthright citizenship are back in the news. At last week's GOP presidential debate, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump led the charge in favor of eliminating the practice. "A woman gets pregnant. She's nine months, she walks across the border, she has the baby in the…

Illustration by Tom Bachtell After the seventy-third ballot had been called, to no effect, at the Democratic National Convention on July 5, 1924, in the old Madison Square Garden, a delegate from Oklahoma named A. H. Ferguson rose with an idea for breaking the deadlock. According to the Times ,…

Amir Taaki and Cody Wilson are cruising north through Texas on Interstate 35 in the 4:30 am predawn darkness. One of the headlights on the aging BMW Wilson's driving is burned out, and he’s wearing sunglasses. “They’re prescription,” he says drily. It’s May Day, every anarchist’s favorite holiday,…

Wilfred Rose, 58, spent a career studying the pants pockets of New Yorkers, always on the lookout for “a nice stiff wallet” full of cash, or better yet, the fainter outline of a dozen folded bills. When he describes sizing up a promising mark, his eyes stop blinking and he leans forward. “When they…

Share Many say arcades are dead. We check out a handful of locations that are keeping them alive. When arcade game manufacturers produced cabinets in the '80s, they made them to be placed in all sorts of arcades, malls and other areas of young-skewing entertainment. Fast forward to 2015, and while…