Michelle Goldberg

Last updated

Michelle Goldberg
Michelle Goldberg at 2012 Brooklyn Book Festival panel (8024128755) (cropped).jpg
Goldberg in 2012
Born1975 (age 47–48)
Buffalo, New York, U.S.
Education University at Buffalo (BA)
University of California, Berkeley (MS)
Occupation(s)Journalist, author
Employer The New York Times
Website Official website

Michelle Goldberg (born 1975) [1] is an American journalist and author, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times . She has been a senior correspondent for The American Prospect , a columnist for The Daily Beast and Slate , and a senior writer for The Nation . [2] Her books are Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (2006); The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World (2009); and The Goddess Pose: The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West (2015).

Contents

Early life and education

Goldberg was born in a Jewish family in Buffalo, New York, [1] the daughter of Carolyn and Gerald Goldberg. [3] [4] Her father was managing editor of The Buffalo News and her mother was a math professor at Niagara County Community College. [4] Goldberg received a Bachelor of Arts degree at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She also holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. [1]

From her early teens she was active in the abortion rights cause, escorting a pregnant 13-year-old friend to an abortion clinic when she herself was 13 and participating in protests and abortion-clinic defense as a high-school senior. [5]

In an opinion column titled, "Rant for Choice", published in the student newspaper at SUNY Buffalo in 1995, Goldberg wrote of on-campus anti-abortion demonstrators, "spit at them. Kick them in the head." Goldberg later told the Buffalo News, "Just like someone who says, 'I'm going to kill you,' I didn't mean it literally. I didn't call the article 'A Call to Arms'." [6] [7]

Career

Beginning in 2002, Goldberg was for several years a senior writer for Salon . [8] [9] For approximately two years, through September 2015, she was senior contributing writer at The Nation . [10]

She worked as a senior correspondent at The American Prospect and a columnist for The Daily Beast and Slate magazine. [1] Her work has been published in The New Republic , Rolling Stone , Tablet and Glamour , [11] and in The Guardian , [1] The New York Times , The Washington Post , [2] and other newspapers.

Books

Goldberg's first book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (2006), was a finalist for the 2007 New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. [12] In 2009, she published The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World (2009), [12] which is based on her own reporting about the state of women's reproductive rights across several continents, [9] and explores what she terms the "international battle over reproductive rights." [13]

Opinions and controversies

In 2012, Goldberg criticized a column written in USA Today by Ann Romney, wife of politician and businessman Mitt Romney. Romney wrote that there was "no crown more glorious" than the "crown of motherhood." Goldberg responded that such phrases reminded her of "pronatalist propaganda of World War II-era totalitarian regimes." Conservative media outlets criticized Goldberg for the remark; she subsequently said, "I should have realized that right-wingers were going to pretend that I was saying that Romney is akin to two of the century's most murderous tyrants. ... I'm truly sorry to have given the right a pretext for another tedious spasm of feigned outrage." [14]

In 2013, in The Nation , Goldberg criticized the public and media reactions to a tweet by a woman who was fired for tweeting "Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!" She wrote, "Almost any of us could be vulnerable to a crowd-sourced inquisition." [15] In a July 17, 2020, column in the New York Times headlined, "Do Progressives Have a Free Speech Problem?" Goldberg wrote, "The mass uprising following the killing of George Floyd has led to a necessary expansion of the boundaries of mainstream speech.... At the same time, a climate of punitive heretic-hunting, a recurrent feature of left-wing politics, has set in, enforced, in some cases, through workplace discipline, including firings." [16]

In 2014, Goldberg wrote a piece for The New Yorker , titled "What is a Woman?," about the conflict between transgender women and some radical feminists. [17] It was criticized by Jos Truitt in the Columbia Journalism Review on the basis of Goldberg's support for those feminists labelled as "trans-exclusionary radical feminists" (or "TERFs"). [18]

Goldberg endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. [19]

In the September 17, 2017, issue of The New York Times Book Review , Goldberg published a critical review of Vanessa Grigoriadis's study of college rape, Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus, which included errors that the publication later corrected. "Michelle is free to dislike my book," Grigoriadis wrote to Book Review editor Pamela Paul. "She is not free to make demonstrably false statements that not only damage my book but my reputation and credibility as a reporter." [20] The Book Review correction read,

A review on Page 11 this weekend about "Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power and Consent on Campus", by Vanessa Grigoriadis, refers incorrectly to her reporting on the issues. She does in fact write about Department of Justice statistics that say college-age women are less likely than nonstudent women of the same age to be victims of sexual assault; it is not the case that Grigoriadis was unaware of the department's findings. In addition, the review describes incorrectly Grigoriadis's presentation of statistics from the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. She showed that there is disagreement over whether the data are sound; it is not the case that she gave the reader "no reason to believe" the statistics are wrong. [21]

Regarding the corrected review, Goldberg stated on Twitter: "Two things are true here. I made a serious error. And one of the book's major claims about its subject isn't correct." [22] She also said that she would "give a kidney and five years of my life" to retract her errors and that "This whole thing is turning into a round robin of fuckups." According to Vanity Fair , one Times source called the incident "a significant error," while another described the fallout as "humiliating". [23]

New York Times columnist

The New York Times named Goldberg as an opinion columnist in September 2017. [24]

"We have entered a period of minority rule," Goldberg declared in her debut column, "Tyranny of the Minority," published September 25, 2017. Goldberg argued that the U.S. Constitution's bias toward small states in the Electoral College and U.S. Senate, along with the gerrymandering of U.S. House seats and other factors, gives the Republican Party a structural advantage in national elections, allowing it to win control of the federal government without winning the most votes nationwide. "Twice in the last 17 years, Republicans have lost the popular vote but won the presidency, and it could happen again," she warned. "[President Donald] Trump's election has revealed many dark truths about this country. One of them is: We’re a lot less democratic than we might think." [25] Since then, many other political commentators have echoed Goldberg's critique. [26] [27] [28]

Goldberg takes a sanguine view on immigration, she feels that "America is tearing itself apart as an embittered white conservative minority clings to power, terrified at being swamped by a new multiracial polyglot majority." She contends, though, that "American voters can do to white nationalists what they fear most. Show them they’re being replaced." [29]

Goldberg was a strong critic of Donald Trump's presidency. In an October 17, 2020, column headlined "Trump’s Misogyny Might Finally Catch Up With Him", she wrote: "If Trump loses, it won’t be just because enough women recognize him as a deranged bigot, it will because he blighted too many of their lives." [30]

From 2018 to 2021, Goldberg appeared on the weekly podcast "The Argument," in which she and other columnists for the newspaper debated major national issues. [31] Much of the ideological disagreement on the podcast arose between Goldberg and conservative columnist Ross Douthat, though in their final appearance together on the show in February 2021, each reflected on how the other's arguments had influenced them. [32]

Personal life

Goldberg lives in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, Matthew Ipcar, [1] [13] in "a small apartment with small kids." [33] She describes herself in Kingdom Coming as a secular Jew. [34]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ann Coulter</span> American conservative political commentator (born 1961)

Ann Hart Coulter is an American conservative media pundit, author, syndicated columnist, and lawyer. She became known as a media pundit in the late 1990s, appearing in print and on cable news as an outspoken critic of the Clinton administration. Her first book concerned the impeachment of Bill Clinton and sprang from her experience writing legal briefs for Paula Jones's attorneys, as well as columns she wrote about the cases. Coulter's syndicated column for Universal Press Syndicate appears in newspapers and is featured on conservative websites. Coulter has also written 13 books.

Marvin Olasky is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute and an affiliate scholar at the Acton Institute. He also chairs the Zenger House Foundation, serves as a Zenger Prize judge, and is the author of 29 books. From 1992 through 2021, he edited World.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonah Goldberg</span> American political writer and pundit

Jonah Jacob Goldberg is an American neoconservative syndicated columnist, author, political analyst, and commentator. The founding editor of National Review Online, from 1998 until 2019, he was an editor at National Review. Goldberg writes a weekly column about politics and culture for the Los Angeles Times. In October 2019, Goldberg became the founding editor of the online opinion and news publication The Dispatch. Goldberg has authored the No. 1 New York Times bestsellerLiberal Fascism, released in January 2008; The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas, released in 2012; and Suicide of the West, which was published in April 2018 and also became a New York Times bestseller, reaching No. 5 on the list the following month.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michelle Malkin</span> American political commentator (born 1970)

Michelle Malkin is an American conservative political commentator. She was a Fox News contributor and in May 2020 joined Newsmax TV. Malkin has written seven books and founded the conservative websites Twitchy and Hot Air.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kay Granger</span> American politician (born 1943)

Norvell Kay Granger is an American Republican politician from the U.S. state of Texas serving as the U.S. representative for Texas's 12th congressional district since 1997. She became chair of the United States House Committee on Appropriations in 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Beinart</span> American columnist, journalist, and political commentator

Peter Alexander Beinart is an American liberal columnist, journalist, and political commentator. A former editor of The New Republic, he has also written for Time, The New York Times, and The New York Review of Books among other periodicals. He is also the author of three books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jake Tapper</span> American journalist, author, and cartoonist (born 1969)

Jacob Paul Tapper is an American journalist, author, and cartoonist. He is the lead Washington anchor for CNN, hosts the weekday television news show The Lead with Jake Tapper, and co-hosts the Sunday morning public affairs program State of the Union.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michelle Obama</span> First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is an American attorney and author who served as the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, being married to former president Barack Obama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kellyanne Conway</span> American political consultant and pollster (born 1967)

Kellyanne Elizabeth Conway is an American political consultant and pollster, who served as Senior Counselor to the President in the administration of Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020. She was previously Trump's campaign manager, having been appointed in August 2016; Conway is the first woman to have run a successful U.S. presidential campaign. She has previously held roles as campaign manager and strategist in the Republican Party, and was formerly president and CEO of the Polling Company/WomanTrend.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Wolff (journalist)</span> American writer (born 1953)

Michael Wolff is an American journalist, as well as a columnist and contributor to USA Today, The Hollywood Reporter, and the UK edition of GQ. He has received two National Magazine Awards, a Mirror Award, and has authored seven books, including Burn Rate (1998) about his own dot-com company, and The Man Who Owns the News (2008), a biography of Rupert Murdoch. He co-founded the news aggregation website Newser and is a former editor of Adweek.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judith Shulevitz</span> American journalist

Judith Anne Shulevitz is an American journalist, editor and culture critic. She has been a columnist for Slate, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Republic. She is a contributing writer for The Atlantic.

Jennifer Rubin is an American political commentator who writes opinion columns for The Washington Post. Previously she worked at Commentary, PJ Media, Human Events, and The Weekly Standard. Her work has been published in media outlets including Politico, New York Post, New York Daily News, National Review, and The Jerusalem Post.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kevin D. Williamson</span> American journalist (born 1972)

Kevin Daniel Williamson is an American conservative political commentator. He is the national correspondent for The Dispatch. Previously, he was the roving correspondent for National Review.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maggie Koerth</span> American science journalist

Maggie Koerth, formerly known as Maggie Koerth-Baker, is an American science journalist. She is a senior science editor at FiveThirtyEight and was previously a science editor at Boing Boing and a monthly columnist for The New York Times Magazine. Koerth is the author of the 2012 book Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Sullivan (journalist)</span> American media columnist

Margaret M. Sullivan is an American journalist who is the former media columnist for The Washington Post. She was the fifth public editor of The New York Times and the first woman to hold the position. In that role, she reported directly to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. as the "readers' representative". She began her tenure on September 1, 2012, joining The New York Times from The Buffalo News, where she had been editor and vice-president. Her first column in The Washington Post ran on May 22, 2016. On Nov. 2, 2023, Sullivan was named the executive director for the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maggie Haberman</span> American journalist (born 1973)

Maggie Lindsy Haberman is an American journalist, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and a political analyst for CNN. She previously worked as a political reporter for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and Politico. She wrote about Donald Trump for those publications and rose to prominence covering his campaign, presidency, and post-presidency for the Times. In 2022, she published the best-selling book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angela Nagle</span> Irish writer and academic

Angela Nagle is an American-born Irish academic and non-fiction writer who has written for The Baffler, Jacobin, and others. She is the author of the book Kill All Normies, published by Zero Books in 2017, which discusses the role of the internet in the rise of the alt-right and incel movements. Nagle describes the alt-right as a dangerous movement, but she also criticizes aspects of the left that have, she says, contributed to the alt-right's rise. Since 2021, she has been publishing articles on a wide range of personal, political and cultural topics via the online publishing platform Substack.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Martin (journalist)</span>

Jonathan Martin is an American political journalist. He is Politico’s politics bureau chief and senior political columnist, the co-author of the 2012 book The End of the Line: Romney vs. Obama: The 34 Days That Decided the Election, and the co-author of the 2022 book This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future.

Jean Carolyn Guerrero is an American investigative journalist, author, and former foreign correspondent. She is the author of Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir, winner of the PEN/FUSION Emerging Writers Prize, and Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda, published in 2020 by William Morrow. Guerrero's KPBS series America's Wall won an Emmy Award. Her essay, "My Father Says He's a 'Targeted Individual.' Maybe We All Are", was selected for The Best American Essays anthology of 2019.

<i>Kill All Normies</i> 2017 nonfiction book by Angela Nagle

Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right is a 2017 non-fiction book by Angela Nagle published by Zero Books. It describes the development of internet culture, the nature of political correctness, the alt-right and the election of Donald Trump. Nagle offers a left-wing critique of contemporary liberalism, arguing that it helped create the alt-right movement.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Michelle Goldberg". Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2016. Retrieved via Biography in Context database, January 28, 2017.
  2. 1 2 "Michelle Goldberg". The Nation. Retrieved January 27, 2017.
  3. ↑ Watson, Stephen T. (September 6, 2017). "Amherst native Goldberg is named New York Times opinion columnist". The Buffalo News . Goldberg lives in Brooklyn with her husband. Her father, Gerald, is a former managing editor of The Buffalo News.
  4. 1 2 Light, Murray B. (May 28, 1998). "Goldberg A Perfect Fit In New Role As Leader of Editorial Page". The Buffalo News . Goldberg lives in Williamsville with his wife Carolyn, a math professor at Niagara County Community College. Daughter Michelle, a University at Buffalo graduate, is arts editor for the San Francisco Metropolitan, and son David just finished his freshman year at Oswego State College.
  5. ↑ Nicole Peradotto; et al. (March 17, 1996). "Crossfire: With a Huge Protest Looming, two UB Students Hold Firm in the Abortion Debate". Buffalo News. Retrieved April 2, 2021.
  6. ↑ "N.Y. Times columnist reportedly urged violence against pro-life students: 'Kick them in the head'". The Washington Times. Retrieved November 5, 2020.
  7. ↑ Nicole Peradotto; et al. (March 17, 1996). "Crossfire: With a Huge Protest Looming, two UB Students Hold Firm in the Abortion Debate". Buffalo News. Retrieved March 17, 2021.
  8. ↑ "Michelle Goldberg". Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2016. "Salon.com, New York, NY, senior writer, beginning in 2002". Retrieved via Biography in Context database, January 28, 2017.
  9. 1 2 Jose, Katharine P. (March 31, 2009). "Our Bodies, Our Hells". The New York Observer (review of Michelle Goldberg, The Means of Reproduction). Archived from the original on December 2, 2010. Retrieved January 27, 2017. Ms. Goldberg, a former senior writer for Salon.com, ...
  10. ↑ "Masthead". The Nation. March 24, 2010. Archived from the original on September 10, 2015. Retrieved January 27, 2017.
  11. ↑ "Michelle Goldberg". The Daily Beast. thedailybeast.com. Retrieved January 28, 2017.
  12. 1 2 "Mentorship Program: Michelle Goldberg". The Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. New York University. Retrieved January 27, 2017.
  13. 1 2 "About the Author". Michelle Goldberg. Retrieved January 28, 2017.
  14. ↑ Goldberg, Michelle (May 14, 2012). "Michelle Goldberg on the Ann Romney Hitler Tempest". The Daily Beast. Retrieved May 15, 2012.
  15. ↑ Goldberg, Michelle (December 23, 2013). "Sympathy for Justine Sacco". The Nation. ISSN   0027-8378 . Retrieved November 5, 2020.
  16. ↑ Goldberg, Michelle (July 17, 2020). "Do Progressives Have a Free Speech Problem?". The New York Times. Retrieved April 2, 2021.
  17. ↑ Goldberg, Michelle (July 27, 2014). "What Is a Woman?". The New Yorker.
  18. ↑ "Why The New Yorker's radical feminism and transgenderism piece was one-sided". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved November 5, 2020.
  19. ↑ Goldberg, Michelle. Hard Choices: I used to hate Hillary. Now I’m voting for her., Slate.com. February 10, 2016.
  20. ↑ Wemple, Erik (September 15, 2017). "New York Times publishes eye-popping correction on campus-sexual-assault book review". The Washington Post blogs.
  21. ↑ Goldberg, Michelle (September 7, 2017). "Shining a Light on Campus Rape". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved October 25, 2017.
  22. ↑ "Michelle Goldberg (@michelleinbklyn) | Twitter". twitter.com. Retrieved October 25, 2017.
  23. ↑ Pompeo, Joe (September 21, 2017). "'Humiliating': Inside the Latest Controversy to Roil The New York Times". Vanity Fair.
  24. ↑ Watson, Stephen T. (September 6, 2017). "Amherst native Goldberg is named New York Times opinion columnist". The Buffalo News . Retrieved September 8, 2017.
  25. ↑ Goldberg, Michelle (September 25, 2017). "Tyranny of the Minority". The New York Times. Retrieved April 2, 2021.
  26. ↑ Klein, Ezra (September 25, 2020). "RBG, minority rule, and our looming legitimacy crisis" . Retrieved April 2, 2021.
  27. ↑ Owen, Kenneth (December 2, 2020). "Minority Rule Cannot Last in America" . Retrieved April 2, 2021.
  28. ↑ Berman, Ari (March 1, 2021). "The Insurrection Was Put Down. The GOP Plan for Minority Rule Marches On" . Retrieved April 2, 2021.
  29. ↑ We Can Replace Them – In Georgia, a chance to rebuke white nationalism, Michelle Goldberg, New York Times, October 29, 2018
  30. ↑ Goldberg, Michelle (October 17, 2020). "Trump's Misogyny Might Finally Catch Up With Him". The New York Times. Retrieved April 2, 2021.
  31. ↑ "'Jane Coaston named new host of The Argument'". November 6, 2020. Retrieved April 2, 2021.
  32. ↑ "'I've never hated anything as much as I hate this'". The New York Times. February 3, 2021. Retrieved April 2, 2021.
  33. ↑ Goldberg, Michelle (December 22, 2020). "Opinion | Who Can Endure the Loneliness Required of This Moment?". The New York Times.
  34. ↑ Goldberg, Michelle (2006). Kingdom coming: the rise of Christian nationalism. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Co. p. 21. ISBN   978-0-393-06094-2 . Retrieved July 18, 2023– via Internet Archive.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.