Shalmaneser

Ezra, thanks for doing this. Love your work, really, and envy your job.

Anyway: I always thought you were fairly lefty (don't want to say liberal, as I hate it as a descriptive term) until I saw you present a Maddow show and claim you were a libertarian-cum-technocrat, or rather words to that effect. This bugged me a bit, because from what I could previous discern of your politics, this didn't chime at all. You seem pro-single payer, for instance.

My question, then, is: what are your actual political leanings? Where do you stand on the compass? Please go into as much detail as you like, it would fascinate me.

An American politician...who uttered the words 'working class'.

Wow.

Is there even any point in people who want to be writers wanting to be writers? I ask this as a commissioning editor who has to try not to dash the hopes of hundreds of student writers, all of whom want to be journalists, none of whom will. They'll all just produce crappy articles for free exposure, forever.