PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected] and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
PJ Grisar
By PJ Grisar
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Fast Forward In first-ever interview, Alexander Vindman warns that authoritarianism threatens America
Alexander Vindman is very, very familiar with authoritarianism. In his childhood, he fled communist Ukraine as a refugee. As an adult, serving as the National Security Council’s Director for European Affairs, strongman regimes were his specialty. Now, in his first-ever interview with the press, Vindman is hoping to warn the American public that Trump’s distortion…
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Culture Would Tevye vote for Trump or Biden? 25 fictional Jews weigh in.
The 2020 voter faces the ballot box during a season of unprecedented challenges — not least of which is the act of voting itself. In addition to the usual gerrymandering and voter suppression, a nationwide pandemic is poised to overwhelm an underfunded postal service. As if that weren’t enough, the president, repeating long-debunked claims of…
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Culture 7 questions for ‘The Secrets We Keep’ director Yuval Adler
In the winter of 2018, Yuval Adler, the Israeli philosopher, mathematician, visual artist and Ophir award-winning filmmaker, received a series of messages from the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Well, the actor who played her at least. Noomi Rapace, who originated the role of vigilante hacker Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s…
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Culture ‘Borat 2’ is coming. Can it still be funny in Trump’s America?
My wiiife. If you read that in the voice of the fictional Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev, British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s most celebrated creation, you’re not alone. While we last saw Borat nearly 15 years ago, his elongated reference to his spouse has clung to our brain’s language centers with the tenacity of Gorilla Glue….
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Culture David Graeber, Occupy activist and anthropologist, dies at 59
David Graeber, the anthropologist who played a pivotal role in Occupy Wall Street and devoted his academic career to the study of societal inequality and “bullshit jobs,” died September 2 at the age of 59. Graeber’s death was confirmed on Twitter by his wife, Nika Dubrovsky, who said he died at a hospital in Venice,…
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Culture Meet Antisemitism Cow, the cow who moos at Jew hatred on Twitter
In journalism school, Gay Talese’s 1966 profile “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” is required reading as an example of a “write-around.” A write-around is a story in which the reporter has limited access or an uncooperative source (in Talese’s case it was Old Blue Eyes). In hands like Talese’s, a write-around can be masterful and…
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Culture Trump’s word stew aside, Jews have been weaponizing soup for centuries
As America shudders under the weight of nationwide protests against injustice and a race for a vaccine harkens back to the days of Jonas Salk, President Trump has reminded us of the original Jewish penicillin: soup. In now viral remarks that Trump made to the National Association of Police Organizations Leadership, the president was heard…
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Fast Forward 17 women now accuse porn star Ron Jeremy of assault
On Monday, porn star Ron Jeremy was charged with the sexual assault of 13 more women, including one who was a minor at the time of her alleged incident. In June, Jeremy, whose real last name is Hyatt, was charged with raping three women and sexually assaulting a fourth between between 2014 and 2019 The…
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