The Biggest American Wiener
A visit to the “Most American Pageant Ever!” and the story of a broken Jefferson statue’s quill.
Picture yourself in front of a giant wiener on a hot summer day right in the heart of Times Square. You watch a talent competition featuring a drag Melania Trump, a UPS worker dropping off boxes full of Epstein files, a "clay woman," and one of the jurors is Curtis Sliwa in his red beret. Am I making this up? No. That's what Editor-at-Large Hrag Vartanian saw at the very real The Most American Pageant Ever! and you know what, it's the sanest thing you've seen in a while.
Speaking of bizarre things happening on this country's 250th anniversary, the quill of an 1834 statue of Thomas Jefferson broke while it was being moved inside a New York museum. In an opinion piece today, scholar and activist Todd Fine calls on Mayor Mamdani to reclaim the city-owned sculpture and use it as a symbol against "MAGA and Silicon Valley authoritarianism."
Enjoy reading and Happy Friday!
—Hakim Bishara, editor-in-chief
Giant Wieners, Drag Queens, and Curtis Sliwa at “The Most American Pageant Ever!”
Watching Curtis Sliwa watch comedian Spike Einbinder — brother of Hacks star Hannah Einbinder and son of Saturday Night Live alum Laraine Newman — get shot in a comedic recreation of the former New York City Republican mayoral candidate’s infamous 1992 kidnapping and shooting was the kind of experience I’ll remember for the rest of my life. Thankfully, the other parts of the performance were just as absurd, verging on the erratic, which was pitch-perfect for The Most American Pageant Ever!, an event billed as a “renewed portrait of America,” though it often felt more like an elegy during the nation’s semiquincentennial year. | Hrag Vartanian
Read MoreNews
- The New York Foundation for the Arts awards $903,000 to 132 artists across New York State in its joint fellowship program with the New York State Council on the Arts.
- A newly shared letter reveals that alleged “racist” and “culturally insensitive” behaviors contributed to Yuko Kikuchi’s January resignation from her post as head of academic programs at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Opinions
Mayor Mamdani Should Reclaim the City’s Jefferson Statue
The fact that the quill of David d’Angers’s statue of the third US president broke during the nation’s 250th anniversary provides more than an irresistible symbolic trope. | Todd Fine
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Required Reading
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From the Archive
Celebrating James Baldwin’s Radical Beauty
In God Made My Face, artists and critics reflect on seeing themselves through the late metamorphic writer’s work. | Jasmine Weber
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