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"Luke Ford reports all of the 'juicy' quotes, and has been doing it for years." (Marc B. Shapiro)
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff) LATEST POSTS:
- Tanner Greer
- Economist Tyler Cowen
- Richard Reeves: A Life in Institutions
- Jake Adelstein: The Reporter Who Became His Story
- Jim Goad (1961-2026)
- Moira Greyland
- Robert Oscar Lopez: The Inconvenient Witness
- Two Ledgers: Decoding the Gurus and the Price of Talk
- The Pervert’s Progress: Costin Vlad Alamariu and the Making of Bronze Age Pervert
- Curtis Yarvin: A Life Against Democracy
- Mark Helprin: Against the Current
- Mark Brandt: The Man Who Asked Who Else Is Prejudiced
- John T. Jost: The Psychologist of Acquiescence
- Strange Bedfellows in the Academy: Alliance Theory and the Straussian Schism
- Tournier on Desmond Ford
- The Fence and the Blessing: How Jews Have Thought About Gentiles
- Tournier on Luke Ford
- Tournier on The Nostradamus Kid
- An Alliance Theory of Antisemitism
- Tournier on Cinema Paradiso and Desmond Ford
BEST POSTS:
- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
* Centering Marginalized Voices (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
* San Francisco and Los Angeles as Rival Models of Urban Access (5-27-26)
* Social Cliques in New York, 2026 (5-25-26)
* Social Cliques in San Francisco, 2026 (5-25-26)
* The Rival Courts of Washington (5-25-26)
* The City of Private Rooms (5-25-26)
Category Archives: Los Angeles
Dennis McDougal: Dynasties, Monopolies, and Murder
Dennis McDougal (1947-2025) belonged to a generation of Southern California reporters who treated Los Angeles as a machinery of power rather than a fantasy capital. He read the city through its newspapers, studios, police departments, political dynasties, organized crime, labor … Continue reading
Posted in Dennis McDougal, Journalism, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Times
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Kevin Roderick and the Passage from Newspaper City to Platform City
Kevin Roderick (b. 1953) belongs to the transitional generation of American metropolitan journalists who carried the institutional habits of twentieth-century newspaper work into the fragmented digital order that emerged after 2000. His career tracks three developments at once: the decline … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Times
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Amy Wallace and the Migration of Elite Journalists
Amy Wallace (b. 1962) belongs to the generation of American long-form journalists who came up through the metropolitan newspaper system, moved into the prestige magazine world, and later turned to collaborative nonfiction. Her career traces a larger shift in American … Continue reading
Posted in Abuse, Hollywood, Journalism, Los Angeles, Nikki Finke
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Claire Hoffman: Chronicler of American Enchantment
Claire Hoffman (b. 1977) writes about American spiritual culture, celebrity religion, and therapeutic individualism during the decades when twentieth-century institutional life fragmented into the personalized, media-driven authority of the digital age. Her journalism and books sit at the intersection of … Continue reading
Posted in Claire Hoffman, Journalism, Los Angeles
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The Definitive Book on Jewish Affinity Networks in Los Angeles
My experience of Jewish life since 1994 is that I have seen about five times as much kindness and greatness as fraud. The accomplishments and fraud cases that I envision a potential book examines are both products of a system … Continue reading
Posted in Fraud, Los Angeles, Pico/Robertson
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NYT: ‘Commander of Iraqi Militia Accused of Plotting Attacks on Jewish Sites in U.S.’
The New York Times says: “The complaint said that Mr. al-Saadi planned to kill Americans and Jews in Los Angeles and New York City and that he had started planning an attack on a synagogue in New York City.” ChatGPT … Continue reading
Posted in Anti-Semitism, Los Angeles, Terror
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Platform, Pulpit, Archive: Three Models of MO Rabbinic Self-Presentation in Los Angeles
While surfing Rabbi Pini Dunner’s website, I learned: Mavericks, Mystics and False Messiahs NOW AVAILABLE! “A thoroughly engaging introduction to some of the most colorful episodes in Jewish history. A wonderfully enjoyable read.” – Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks “Rabbi Pini … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory, Beth Jacob, Bnai David-Judea, Los Angeles, Modern Orthodox, R. Elazar Muskin, R. Jonathan Sacks, R. Kalman Topp, R. Meir Soloveichik, R. Pini Dunner, R. Yitzchak Etshalom, R. Yosef Kanefsky
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Defensive Sophistication: The Coalition Architecture of Rabbi Yitzhak Etshalom’s Tanakh Classroom
My previous essay in this series examined Rabbi Yitzhak Etshalom as a figure who breaks the Sinai silence through pedagogy rather than polemic, teaching the evidence at full strength while refusing to close the question. That essay asked what his … Continue reading
Posted in Los Angeles, R. Yitzchak Etshalom
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The Cartographer of the Red Line: Rabbi Yitzchak Etshalom and the Pedagogy of Unresolved Tension
My previous essay in this series argued that the silence around Sinai in Modern Orthodox discourse functions as taboo enforcement rather than epistemic modesty. Rabbis have not worked through the historical-critical challenges and arrived at a sophisticated position. The language … Continue reading
Posted in Los Angeles, R. Yitzchak Etshalom
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AIDS Healthcare Foundation and the Reordering of Los Angeles
In the years before COVID-19, American public health did not merely expand its mandate. It redefined it. Under the banner of Public Health 3.0, local health officials became chief health strategists, charged with coordinating interventions across housing, transportation, education, and … Continue reading
Posted in AIDS, Los Angeles
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