Festive content with the Precariat Musings’ seal of approval!
Wondering how you will keep yourself occupied during those long, languid, work-free summer days? Wonder no longer!
I’ve devoted around 250 hours to pumping out a total of 75,000 – 80,000 words for this weekly Substack newsletter over the last 11 months. As media industry types like to say, I’ll be taking a well-earned break for the next few weeks.
(In comparison to the kind of holidays bricklayers, fishermen, garbos, miners, nurses, roofers, soldiers and truckers indulge in, any leave taken by talkback radio hosts, news anchors, Instagram influencers and, yes, Substacker blowhards is invariably richly deserved.)
But fear not. Below is a list of some of the content providers I’ve taken a shine to this year and which you can use to fill that Precariat Musings-sized hole in your Friday morning schedule between now and late January.
The up-and-comers
Wrong Side of History by Ed West
West is probably the Substack writer I’ve fallen for hardest this year. A trad Catholic who got his start in journalism working for ribald lad’s mag Nuts, West is Gen Y’s answer to Peter Hitchens. He’s got what would now be viewed as archaic views, but he expresses them in such a non-confrontational and entertaining fashion that he avoids the trap of simply preaching to the choir. I feel guilty that I haven’t yet taken out a paid subscription to his newsletter, but I think that will be my Christmas gift to myself. I did at least shell out for his drily humorous memoir-cum-conservative polemic Small Men on the Wrong Side of History, and I recommend you do likewise.
Freddie deBoer by Freddie deBoer
Despite sounding like someone who was involved in a plot to assassinate Nelson Mandela, deBoer is a Communist. One of those old-school ones who thinks and writes a lot about how class impacts people’s lives. He also thinks a lot about how IQ impacts people’s lives and has written a book on the subject – The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice. (I haven’t read it and probably never will, but I’m sure it’s excellent.)
While deBoer has spent a lot of time in academe (he has a PhD), lives in Brooklyn, New York (the global epicentre of too-cool-for-school hipsterdom) and has written for some of America’s most prestigious publications, he’s refreshingly impervious to elitist groupthink. He writes courageously about everything from the contemporary fetishisation of mental illness (he’s bipolar and has been institutionalised in the past), to labour market dynamics, to sexual politics, to YIMBYism.
Rob Henderson by Rob Henderson
I’ve been a fan of Henderson since I came across his (now much referenced) theory of ‘luxury beliefs’. That is, deeply impractical hobbyhorses, such as defunding the police or mainstreaming polyamorous relationships, that upper-middle-class individuals use to signal their status. (A non-existent thin blue line is a much less frightening prospect for members of a gated community than it is for residents of a crime-ridden ghetto. Likewise, destigmatising polycules is likely to turn out much better for high-income men than it is for low-income ones.)
Henderson has had one of those uniquely American rags-to-riches lives. His unlikely trajectory echoes that of J.D ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ Vance. Like Vance, Henderson was a working-class kid from a troubled background who enrolled in the military then improbably attended several top-tier universities (he’s currently completing a PhD at Cambridge). Accordingly, he can now speak from a place of authority about both ends of America’s class structure.
Noahpinion by Noah Smith
Smith describes himself as an “econ blogger”, which is an accurate if excessively modest descriptor. Smith focuses on the American economy. But he ranges widely enough on subjects ranging from technological breakthroughs, to geopolitics, to the downsides of introducing a racial spoils system, to the growth strategies pursued by countries in Asia and Africa to be of interest to non-American and non-economist readers.
The Superstars
The Weekly Dish by Andrew Sullivan – Sullivan was born into what I gather was a lower-middle-class Irish Catholic family on the semi-rural outskirts of London. Demonstrating his Zelig-like capabilities early on, he went to school with Sir Keir Starmer, whom he used to argue about politics with on the bus to school. (Despite or because of his identity as a gay teenager from humble origins, Sullivan was a fanatical Thatcherite-Reaganite in the 1980s.) Next came Oxford, where he socialised with Boris Johnson, then it was on to Harvard to do a PhD and pal around with members of the Kennedy clan.
He doesn’t make a big deal about it, but Sullivan got the ball rolling on gay marriage by writing an influential article advocating for homosexuals to be given the right to wed way back in 1989. Nowadays, Sullivan is one of a growing number of middle-aged commentators appalled by the excesses of both the youthful Woke Left and geriatric Populist Right, constantly swinging from indulging his Trump Derangement Syndrome to excoriating the growing censoriousness and race baiting of progressives. Sullivan is widely regarded as the most influential political writer of his generation. That influence hasn’t always been wielded wisely – Sullivan was, for a time, a rabid supporter of the Iraq War – but his elegant arguments always merit careful consideration.
TK News by Matt Taibbi
Any writer who can come up with a line such as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money” to describe Goldman Sachs deserves respect and Taibbi has long had mine. It appears Taibbi is one of those Gen X journos expunged from an iconic publication (Rolling Stone, in this case) by Maoist Millennial colleagues. I’m sure Taibbi’s Substack newsletter makes for compelling reading. However, unlike almost everybody else on this list, he reserves most of his content for paying subscribers. So, you’ll need to pony up US$5 a month or US$50 a year if you want access to the great man’s insights on America’s political and media landscapes. If, like me, you’re not inclined to pay for US-centric content, at least watch Taibbi going mano a mano with Malcolm Gladwell in a recent Munk Debate.
The Free Press (née Common Sense) by Bari Weiss – I relayed Weiss’s Substack origin story in last week’s effort. So, I won’t repeat myself here. Except to say her new digital “newspaper for the 21st century”, which is the flagship product of “a new media company built on the ideals that were once the bedrock of American journalism”, seems worth supporting.
The Aussies
Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps
Szeps is a prophet without honour in his own land. He had quite the career during the decade or so he spent in New York but hasn’t attracted the attention he deserves since moving back to Australia a couple of years ago. He now flits around the ABC (he’s currently the host of ABC Radio Sydney’s afternoon program) and has a podcast (Uncomfortable Conversations). Periodically, he jets back to the US to do things such as appear on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Szeps recently set up shop on Substack. At the time of writing, he’s only produced one newsletter. I’m not sure if he’s planning on pumping out written content as well as the audio variety in 2023, but it’s worth subscribing for the podcast alone. (Presumably thanks to the contacts he made during his American sojourn, Szeps regularly lands big-name guests such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Tyler Cowen, Jonathan Haidt, Sam Harris, Eddie Izzard, Douglas Murray and Louis Theroux.)
Alien Sideboob by John Birmingham
Like many a Gen Xer, I’m a massive fan of He Died with a Falafel in His Hand. It was quite a thrill for me when I got to interview JB early on in my journalistic career and he’s been unfailingly gracious whenever I’ve interacted with him in the subsequent years. Birmingham remains one of Australia’s funniest and most insightful writers. These days, presumably for financial reasons, he spends most of his time churning out Tom Clancyesque airport novels. But he does leverage Substack to indulge in some gonzo op-ed writing around once a week. Like Tim Dunlop (see below), Birmingham is a one-eyed leftist given to frequent and vicious jeremiads against Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton, Rupert Murdoch and “rightwing shitfuckery” in general, but he’s a skilled enough wordsmith to do so without becoming repetitive and predictable.
The Future of Everything by Tim Dunlop
If you’re anywhere to the right of Adam Bandt, you’re likely to find Dunlop gratingly earnest, if not outright pompous. That’s unfortunate because his analysis is often spot on. Unlike most of the other Substackers mentioned here, Dunlop doesn’t appear to possess a sense of humour. Nonetheless, he writes knowledgably about Australian and global politics, neoliberalism, activism, economics and the media. He’s recently published a book – The Future is Workless – which is one of the many tomes I’m hoping to get through during my upcoming break.
Unmade - media & marketing through an Aussie lens by Tim Burrowes
As you’ll no doubt be aware if you work in the media or marketing industries, Burrowes was the man behind Mumbrella. A couple of years ago, he sold out of Mumbrella, wrote a book – Media Unmade: Australian Media’s Most Disruptive Decade (it’s well worth a read) – and got handed a wad of cash by the bigwigs at Substack to create a newsletter to report on “what’s important in the Australian marketing and media world”.
As far as I know, Burrowes is the only Australian writer to score an advance from Substack, which provides some insight into how influential he’s considered in media circles. Now the Substack coin has run out, it seems Burrowes is taking the Taibbi approach of reserving most of his content for paying subscribers. But if you have a professional or personal interest in remaining au courant with media and marketing industry goings-on, it may be worth shelling out A$65 a month or A$338 a year. Especially if you can claim it on tax.
Last words
At this point, anyone of note is more likely than not to have a Substack. So, if there is anybody you’re a fan of, it’s worth Googling their name followed by ‘Substack newsletter’.
Once again, thanks to all of you who have taken the time to read and support Precariat Musings in 2022. I hope you’ll get the opportunity to forget about work, recharge your batteries and spend plenty of time catching up with friends and family in the coming weeks.
See you on the other side.