The Best of Discourse Blog: 2023 Edition
Our favorite work of the year.
Another year has come and gone, and Discourse Blog is somehow still here, and still blogging. Like every other year, 2023 mostly sucked. But we did some of our strongest work ever, and we are proud to bring that work to you every day.
Here are our favorites from 2023. Thank you for everything.
—Discourse Blog (Aleks, Caitlin, Cros, Jack, Katherine, Rafi, and Sam)
These are in chronological order from the beginning to the end of the year, with the exception of the first and last entries.
Everything we’ve written. Free Palestine.
“The 10 Dumbest Congressional Caucuses — Ranked,” by Rafi
I would pay good money to hear each member of these three separate caucuses explain how they’re different from one another. Bonus points if they can do it without actually using the words “Entrepreneurship” and “Innovation.”
“Fiona Apple’s Court Watch Advocacy Rules,” by Caitlin
While artistic fury is one of the pillars of being an alluring, magnetic musician, the kind of fury that results in actual work and care and activism is much more hardcore, a lot more important, and frankly, a hell of a lot cooler.
“When Hell Freezes Over, Again,” by Sam
I’ve lived in Texas for most of my life, but even after watching the 2021 storm destroy decades-old trees around my childhood neighborhood, I’ve never seen anything quite like the destruction the ice left behind.
“Shame on the New York Times,” by Katherine
Until the paper treats the lives of trans people in this country with a degree of empathy and seriousness, rather than reflexive loathing, its coverage will always be horribly blinkered.
“Bari Weiss Is Full of Shit,” by Katherine
When some actual reporters examined the deeply alarmist, one-sided story Weiss was pushing, they found it to be total nonsense. It’s just the latest in a long pattern that proves one incontrovertible fact: Bari Weiss is completely full of shit, and you shouldn’t trust a thing she publishes.
“FOWL HYSTERIA 2023,” by Discourse Blog
Welcome to the world's first-ever bird-themed bracket tournament!!!!!!!!!
“The Sinister Origin Story of the Oscars,” by Caitlin
To truly love the Academy Awards is to have a deep awareness of their failings and keep coming back anyway. And one of the show’s biggest failings actually rests in its founding principle, which originated with movie mastermind Louis B. Mayer.
“Succession Sick Fuck of the Week,” by Discourse Blog
In which we decide which member of our favorite group of sickos leaped ahead of the pack to earn the coveted title of Sick Fuck of the Week.
“Maybe We Should Believe Trans Kids Instead of the Assholes Who Hate Them,” by Caitlin
This entire debacle is further proof that to truly understand trans healthcare and trans experience, the testimony has to come from trans youth and adults. Anything else is an exercise in willful ignorance or sheer malice.
“Buying Concert Tickets Is a Crucible of Death Now,” by Katherine
Whatever your flavor, if you hope to see a national touring act of a certain upper tier of performers, gird your loins and prepare to drop a month’s rent.
“The Gerontocracy Must Die,” by Cros
There is nothing wrong with getting old — it will happen to all of us — but there’s a reason we pull people’s driver’s licenses when they can no longer see past the windshield. Politicians are, in effect, the drivers of cars carrying millions of lives, and far too many of them are effectively asleep at the wheel.
In this, Carlson’s ignominious fall from… well, not “grace” exactly?…is a microcosm of American conservatism itself: a place where you can make a small fortune as the most irredeemable garbage person imaginable—just so long as you don’t hurt the feelings (or the bottom line) of the suits who make their significantly larger fortunes off you. That’s capitalism, baby!
“The Bosses Want to Destroy Us,” by Jack
We are not doomed to this way of living, and they are not guaranteed perpetual supremacy. Ordinary people have changed the world many, many times before, and they can, and will, change it again. The bosses want to destroy us, but this May Day, let’s vow to destroy them instead.
“You Can’t Just Kill Someone on the Subway,” by Cros
For years now, the mass media’s obsession with crime and the demonization of homeless and mentally ill people has created a culture of fear and tacitly authorized extreme violence as a response.
“You Can’t Expect a Company to Have Morals,” by Cros
The secret is that Target and the Dodgers and every other for-profit corporation in the U.S. does not care whether it is Nazi or not. It cares whether or not being Nazi will sell more stuff.
“What a Year Without Roe Has Done,” by Sam
Mostly, when I think about all of these people, and myself, I am furious. But all I feel today is grief. Tomorrow's anniversary feels like a day of mourning, an all-consuming reminder of what we lost to the Supreme Court and what we never had to begin with—like iron-clad abortion protections, or the support of Democrats to actually give us iron-clad abortion protections.
“The ‘Multiverse’ is a Goddamn Mess,” by Katherine
The message ends up being: throw it all into the movie and let audiences contort themselves trying to figure it out, even when there’s nothing to really figure out. And if they can’t figure it out, you just say: “It’s the multiverse!”
“I Hate Threads and So Should You,” by Rafi
It sucks. It sucks hard. It is a bad app. It demands everything while offering nothing. It looks like ass. It is full of the most uninteresting people you’ve ever scrolled past on Instagram, and they’re all shouting at you at the top of their caps-locked lungs.
“An Ode to Unlucky Birthdays,” by Sam
I have a friend who shares a birthday with Donald Trump (which is also Flag Day), and who has annually been confronted with that reality (which he also reminds his friends of, consistently) since 2015. A former coworker of mine shares a birthday with Hilary Clinton (which, in 2015, did not seem so bad at the time, but I imagine in retrospect hangs over her head like a cursed omen).
“No You Crypto Freaks Cannot Have My Eyeballs,” by Rafi
What do they want with your eyeballs? To charge you to use their “iris-based system as an alternative to security technologies like CAPTCHA, the photographic test that is used to sort humans from spam accounts.” Put another way, they are asking you to please submit to the orb if you are unable to identify which of these pictures contains a bicycle. Just go right on ahead and pour that slurp juice directly into your eyeballs, human. It’s the only way we can know if you truly exist.
“Stop Calling This a ‘Natural Disaster,’” by Jack
What, precisely, is “natural” about any of this? Virtually every facet of this tragedy has some connection to human activity. Human beings systematically created the conditions for the fire to happen. Human beings systematically created the conditions for the fire to rage so indiscriminately. Human beings systematically took a beautiful, balanced ecosystem and tampered with it so destructively that it has now lost its mind.
“GOP Presidential Candidates Matched With What Drugs I Think They Were On Last Night,” by Cros
Meatball Ron was deep in a K-hole the entire night. I’m sorry. There’s no other way to say it. The man glitched out before his closing speech and almost forgot to answer. When he did talk he sounded like he was barely conscious. He knew he had to talk about the wokes and sure he tried but we know his mind was way off in Disneyland for half of this debate. Get that man a pudding cup and put him to bed.
“Bird of the Week: Cock-of-the-Rock,” by Caitlin
Folks, this week we’re talking about TWO birds: The Guianan cock-of-the-rock and the Andean cock-of-the-rock. Two cocks for the price of one. Ahhhhhhhh!
“No More Conservative Folk Heroes Please,” by Rafi
It’s hard to find real folk heroes these days — especially when the “folks” you’re hoping to appeal to are an increasingly insular nugget of directionless anger. Fortunately for Republicans, there’s no need to “find” folk heroes when they can just make them up whenever they want.
“The Moral Panic Over Retail Theft is Out of Control,” by Caitlin
As a practice, we should be suspicious of entities that have an incredible amount of influence, cash, and power, and be wary of the stories they’re trying to tell us about why we should feel bad for them. And we should be suspicious of the media outlets that seem to function as a mouthpiece for those parties, parroting them without interrogating their claims, and serving to feed the eternal flame of overblown crime panic.
“Oppo Research,” by Discourse Blog
Every episode of the podcast about the sins and scandals of your least favorite politicians.
“Media Is a Fuck, Part 2349863,” by Katherine
It all makes me think of the tagline for 1974’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre: “Who will survive and what will be left of them?” More and more, the answer seems to be: almost no one, and no one of any real use or sense of moral clarity.
“Henry Kissinger Is Right There: Henry Kissinger Edition,” by Jack
In unrelated news, 100-year-old war criminal Henry Kissinger is, like, RIGHT THERE. Wait a minute. No he’s not. That fucker is dead!!!!!!!!!!
“The Ghosts of Websites Past,” by Cros
I’ll let the people at Jezebel and Deadspin and Gawker and the Outline and the Awl and the Hairpin and Mic and Death and Taxes and BuzzFeed News and so many others tell their own stories. For now, at least, those of us who were at Splinter will keep telling ours, right here, on our little island of a website, for however long it lasts.
More bird tournaments in 24.
SBIC's Best Of Discourse 2023: Anything making fun of Bari Weiss.
More in 2024 please!