In his November 30 essay “Hostile Takeover,” Lewis Lapham comments on the 2016 presidential election: “It didn’t matter what Trump said or didn’t say, whether he was cute and pink or headless. The journalists on the road with the mogul’s traveling circus weren’t covering a play of ideas; like flies to death and honey, they were drawn to the sweet decaying smell of overripe celebrity, enchanted, as is their custom, by the romance of crime.”

Listen to him read his essay.