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Brad Pearce and I will finish up with two stories from Stephen Crane today, “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” and “The Blue Hotel.” Also, some general thoughts on short story writing. Join us at:

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You can also find us on X, @mtaibbi or @waywardrabbler. See you soon!

Brad Pearce and I will finish up with two stories from Stephen Crane today, “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” and “The Blue Hotel.” Also, some general thoughts on short story writing. Join us at 12:30 PM ET at:

Substack

Rumble

YouTube

You can also find us on X, @mtaibbi or @waywardrabbler. See you soon!

Up Next: Live Show Thursday 8/26/26: Stephen Crane’s “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” and “The Blue Hotel”

Reminder that Brad Pearce and I will be back to discuss Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” this afternoon. Join us at 4:30 PM ET at:

Substack

Rumble

YouTube

You can also find us on X, @mtaibbi or @waywardrabbler. See you soon!

From the New York Times:

A private arbitrator has ordered The Washington Post to rehire the opinion columnist Karen Attiah, who was fired in September over her social media posts about the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. It also ordered the company to compensate her with back pay.

Sarah Miller Espinosa, the arbitrator, said in a written decision Thursday that The Post “did not have good and sufficient cause” to terminate Ms. Attiah and “violated” its labor agreement, according to a copy of the decision shared with The New York Times by Ms. Attiah’s lawyers.

“The Washington Post failed to establish the grievant engaged in gross misconduct,” Ms. Espinosa wrote.

On July 7, 2020, amid a wave of cancelations at the peak of the post-George Floyd racial “reckoning,” Harper’s magazine published an open “Letter on Social Justice and Debate” that was signed by Salman Rushdie, Cornel West, Wynton Marsalis, Malcolm Gladwell, and Noam Chomsky, among many others. Bemoaning a time when “Editors are fired for running controversial pieces” and “journalists are barred from writing on certain topics,” the signatories said “this stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time.” They added: “We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other.”

Shortly after, on July 10th, a group of writers fired back at the Harper’s letter, penning their own “More Specific Letter on Open Justice and Debate” in The Objective. They declared that what the Harper’s signatories cared about was not free speech, but stopping black and LGBTQ+ writers from impacting society. “In truth, Black, brown, and LGBTQ+ people — particularly Black and trans people — can now critique elites publicly and hold them accountable socially,” the signatories wrote. “This seems to be the letter’s greatest concern.” The signatories added:

Under the guise of free speech and free exchange of ideas, the letter appears to be asking for unrestricted freedom to espouse their points of view free from consequence or criticism.

Among the signatories of that second letter was a certain Washington Post columnist, now in the news as a free speech icon:

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Narrated by Jared Moore

Art by Daniel Medina

Text published 04/20/26:

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Thanks to the U.S. Right to Know, the Defense Intelligence Agency may be forced to explain the Pentagon’s stunning “Hypothetical Origin of SARS-CoV-2” documents

Narrated by Jared Moore

Art by Daniel Medina

Text published 08/14/26:

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I leave for a week’s vacation with my wife and children today, the first real one we’ve all taken together for some time. It’s a slow time on the calendar and I’ll be back next Tuesday, assuming I’m not eaten by a reef shark. Thanks to Racket readers for being understanding, and I hope everyone enjoys what’s left of summer.

From the BBC:

Public figures and friends of Jason Arday have called for a public inquiry into media coverage surrounding the former Cambridge professor before his death. Labor MP Diane Abbott and actress Jameela Jamil are among 30,000 signatories of a letter to the prime minister, which claims Arday’s death followed “two weeks of relentless harassment.”

The letter issued by group Good Law Project — which had been representing Arday after he stood down from his Cambridge role amid a plagiarism row — said many of its signatories had warned media outlets about the intensity of their reporting. Lord Woolley, principal of Homerton College at Cambridge, said Arday had been subjected to a “vicious witch hunt.”

Metropolitan Police admitted in early August it was a mistake to investigate reporter Jack Grove for four months just for reviewing then-Cambridge professor Jason Arday’s record. After Arday was found dead by suicide Friday, that mistake will likely be compounded by an inquiry into what London mayor Sadiq Khan called “pernicious public shaming” by media. Cambridge Chancellor Lord Chris Smith likewise said it was important to tend to questions of “academic integrity,” but also to refuse to give in to a “racist feeding frenzy.”

Al Jazeera already called Arday’s suicide “institutional murder,” and Ibram Kendi has already produced a headline in the Emancipator saying the media “lynched” him. Across the world, politicians, pundits, and activists have sounded the same note, denouncing the press for driving Arday to kill himself.

Bollocks. I’m all for beating up media, but in this case? The Arday story will be debated as a race matter, but the story is really about a deeper problem, the institutional rejection of reality itself, which at Cambridge was once celebrated in the form of Isaac Newton’s apple tree.

Once he was caught in the jaws of media scandal, Arday did become a symbol, only not of race. A strategic decision was made by politicians, pundits, and institutions like Cambridge to try to massacre fact through innuendo and sheer obstinacy. This was the dystopian beyond-arrogance of a political school whose exploding popularity around the world is rooted in a religious belief in transcendence — of science, economics, foreign policy, history, art, and a hundred other things. After centuries of agreement, we’re now being told apples can freeze in mid-air, if so ordered:

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