Confession: I was never a Beatles girl. Put away your pitchforks, people – a lack of love doesn’t preclude appreciation. After all, without The Beatles, The Monkees wouldn’t exist. And in one of those head-to-head, “One has to go” challenges the internet is so fond of, I’d tell Ringo and the rest to kick rocks every time.

Not long ago some music purists would have called that sacrilege. Some still would, I’m sure. Bear in mind that I didn’t grow up in a household where a Beatles album ever graced a record or CD player. But we had TVs in the kitchen, the family room, and my parents’ bedroom, and that meant that on any given weekday after school, you could find me in one of those places hanging out with Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones.

I’ve had The Monkees on my mind recently because yellow buses are rolling through my neighborhood again, and because this month marks the 60th anniversary of their show’s 1966 series premiere. But I was also reminded of their cultural impact all these years later by a Rolling Stone story that came out this week titled “Seven Reasons Why You Should See Harry Styles Right Now.”

Styles is one of the 21st century’s pop supernovas whose musicianship and charisma evolve with the times – “the kind of pop spectacle that leaves feathers all over the floor and hysteria lingering in the air,” gushed the magazine’s Rob Sheffield in his May review of the performer’s tour-launching show in Amsterdam. He’s also the most successful member of One Direction, a boy band created by and for the British edition of “The X Factor.”

That show didn’t magically endow Styles with talent, but it gave him one of the world’s biggest stages to showcase his gifts. That’s similar to the way producers Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson brought together four unknowns and accidentally formed one of the last century’s most influential pop bands.

 

 

Nobody expected that, though. Schneider and Rafelson initially sought to build a show around Jones – the Harry Styles of his generation – and recruited the rest of the band with a Hollywood Reporter ad that read, “Madness!! Auditions. Folk & Roll Musicians-Singers for acting roles in new TV series. Running Parts for 4 insane boys, age 17-21. Want spirited Ben Frank’s types. Have courage to work. Must come down for interview.”

Tork, Nesmith and Dolenz were among the 437 who responded. They also happened to be talented musicians.

The once-in-a-century specialness of The Monkees, a made-for-TV creation that became a pop culture force, cannot be overstated. For example, years after “The Monkees,” NBC tried to capture some of The New Kids on the Block’s audience share with the short-lived sitcom “The Guys Next Door.”  It only takes listening to a few of their songs to realize why most people don’t remember they ever existed, which probably suits recording artist Damon Sharpe just fine. Before he became a Grammy- and ASCAP award-winning producer, songwriter and DJ, he paid the rent with this short-lived gig.

That’s nothing to be ashamed of. Many boy bands are created by enterprising producers looking to manufacture stardom using renditions of a well-worn formula of dreamboat archetypes. They are live performers first, though.  

In Schneider and Rafelson’s initial vision, Peter, Mike, Micky and Davy were simply characters living out whimsical two-dimensional adventures built around musical interludes. Ask me to describe any episode’s plot off the top of my head, and I couldn’t. But their music is forever.

“The Monkees” ran for only two seasons, from 1966 to 1968. During that period, the quartet disparagingly nicknamed the Pre-Fab Four made music history, even influencing movies with their post-TV series feature “Head,” the Jack Nicholson-written and produced film that eventually achieved minor cult status.

People still sing along to the Neil Diamond-penned “I’m a Believer,” “The Last Train to Clarksville” and “Daydream Believer,” all of which shot to No. 1 on the charts. Those interludes also foreshadow the music videos that defined the 1980s.

But the musical cuts that earned them cred as stealthy proto-punkers are “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” and Dolenz’s “Randy Scouse Git,” thrashers that had grade school kids leaping off their parents’ couches for reasons they may not have understood until many years later.

These details are crumbs of the fascinating lore surrounding The Monkees. What impresses me most is their ripple effect on TV and music. Without them, “The Partridge Family” may never have rolled out of their driveway. The Archies and Josie and the Pussycats may never have become American animation classics, with the former snagging a radio hit with 1969’s “Sugar, Sugar.”  

Much of the appeal of “The Monkees” was that its live-action stars were as animated as every other show in the after-school TV blocks that programmed it. They were eternal cool kids, which people celebrated and mourned when Jones’ sudden death in 2012 sparked a multitude of ruminations on what he and the band meant to a generation.  Tork died in 2019, followed by Nesmith in 2021, leaving Dolenz to carry the band’s legacy to this day. He’s still touring.

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However, in a recent interview with AARP, Dolenz emphasized that The Monkees were never a group in the conventional sense. “It was a musical comedy television series about these four guys that wanted to be a band,” he said.

He noted that on the TV show, the band never actually became famous.  “It was the struggle for success that was important, and I think helped endear it to all these kids around the world,” he said, “which does, of course, beg the question of how we could afford a Malibu beach house. But that’s Hollywood.”

Pre-Fab, but still fabulous.

 

The post The Monkees was our first boy band appeared first on Salon.com.

Early morning chaos reigned at the White House on Thursday.

In the pre-dawn hours, federal District Court Judge Timothy Kelly granted CNN, Politico and MS NOW a temporary restraining order allowing them to regain access to the White House after Donald Trump had unceremoniously yanked their press passes last Friday.

But the Secret Service and White House officials initially refused access to those reporters as the work day began, even as Trump allowed entry to Chinese state media, telling them they were friendlier than the independent Washington press corps.

Sitting In evident defiance of a court order, (he never stands for anything, unless it’s to bow to an authoritarian leader) Trump appeared ready to risk an acute constitutional crisis.

By noon he had backed down. 

So by my count that leaves First Amendment attorney Ted Boutrous, who represented the news organizations, 5–0 when pitching against Donald Trump. That’s one hell of a legacy.

If I leave a legacy, I hope it’s for something as well done. 

I imagine Donald Trump wishes the same thing. But I don’t think the president and I agree on the meaning of “well done.” That’s just the way he likes his burgers.

Trump is mired in the muck of his own making — enraged that he can’t get his way, so scared of the midterm elections that he had his supporters take an oath to “cheat like hell” and so ignorant of history that he seems condemned to repeat all its worst parts.

A source of mine from the George W. Bush administration, reflecting on Trump, told me this week, “People? They ain’t no damn good. You can’t trust ’em and can’t love ’em. No good deed goes unpunished.”

“Quoting Mellencamp?” I replied. “Lighten up, brother.” 

I understand the epic frustration Trump causes and inflicts. Some of us have been documenting his dictatorial, disruptive, divisive, dangerous and delusional escapades for more than a decade. This past week, I was forced to relive an experience covering Trump to which, until now, only one other person on the planet could relate. 

On Wednesday, Judge Kelly held a half-hour hearing on CNN, Politico and MS NOW’s request for a temporary restraining order against Trump’s snatch-and-grab of their press passes. To me, this was a case of déjà-vu all over again. Or as my longtime White House colleague Jim Acosta told me on his show Wednesday afternoon, “It ain’t over til it’s over.” Jim and I had a particular reason to trade Yogi Berra quips; we empathize with the reporters’ plight. We’re the only two reporters who’ve been through this before.

Of course, this time there was a new Trumpian twist on the narrative. On Friday, Trump simply said he didn’t like those media companies and resented their negative coverage, and then shooed the reporters away with a wave of his hand. By Monday, after Boutrous filed suit, Trump’s lawyers were making the ridiculous claim that the aforementioned media outlets were compromising national security. 

He’s used that all-purpose catchphrase before to try to get his way with the big, beautiful ballroom and his proposed massive arch. Excuse me? Why would we need snipers on the George Washington Memorial Parkway? Or drones? Or a massive arsenal of weapons and ammunition? OK, Dr. Strangelove, what’s next?

Trump based his national security claim on the actions of a handful of reporters who don’t even hold White House passes, along with one who does. He claimed that a few routine stories — some of them five months old — had somehow compromised national security. The funny thing is that until he made that claim in court, he’d never even cleared his throat on those stories. And the one reporter who holds White House credentials? She recently got them renewed after the stories were published.

Geez, is it possible that Trump was just making stuff up? Judge Kelly’s hearing was a particularly acute memory for Acosta, since Kelly was the judge in his case too.  For me it was unnerving to hear the judge, the plaintiff and the defense attorney mention “Karem v. Trump” about three dozen times in their arguments. My ears were burning, but I tried to remember that in this particular case, having my name mentioned in court was a good thing. Nobody was standing by with handcuffs. Kelly ended the hearing by promising a decision as soon as possible, and issued a 14-day restraining order in a matter of hours.

Too bad I didn’t draw Kelly in my case. Not that I didn’t like its outcome, since U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras and later a federal appeals court ruled that the loss of my press credentials violated due process, setting that as the precedent for all future cases in the D.C. Circuit. It’s just that I was without my press pass for nearly three weeks. Kelly worked more quickly.

Trump of course isn’t fond of Kelly. When he found out who was handling the current case, the president weighed in on Truth Social, calling Kelly “totally disloyal” and “not a particularly fair judge.”

Naturally it was Trump who appointed Kelly to the bench.

I ran afoul of Trump on July 11, 2019, during a meeting in Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden, before Trump turned it into a tawdry Miami Beach patio reminiscent of cheap hotels from the 1960s. Trump hosted an event for his favorite media influencers. They sat in seats in the Rose Garden. The rest of us stood, as usual, behind a rope line. 

Trump made a few perfunctory statements and turned to leave. I was about 10 feet away and asked him if he would stay and take a few questions. Someone who was sitting down turned and literally hissed at me: “He’s already talked to the real press.”

I chuckled and said, in my best Rodney Dangerfield voice, “Ooh, here’s a group eager for demonic possession.” That got a few laughs, but when I reviewed the tape later I was disappointed with myself. I usually do a much better Rodney impression. Ask anyone.  

Sebastian Gorka, a Trump underling who speaks like one of those beings who don’t rise until after sunset, approached me from the far side of the Rose Garden after that. He was wearing an ill-fitting suit and resembled the kid who peaked in eighth grade because he was big for his age and could grow a beard. Gorka went on to later infamy selling fish oil in commercials. He’s now back working for Trump, who hires only the best people.

He came at me stomping and yelling: I wasn’t a reporter, Gorka said, I was a punk. I replied that we could either talk here in the Rose Garden or go outside and talk all day. Nothing happened. When the ruckus, of which we were only a part, died down, we found ourselves standing nearly shoulder to shoulder as we left and went our separate ways. Without the cameras on, everything was different.

More than a month passed, and nothing more happened. Then, on Aug.16, 2019, Trump gathered at the rope line for a “chopper talk” session before leaving the White House on Marine One. He answered two of my questions, calling me “Playboy” (my previous longtime employer) as often as he called me “fake news.” I left that afternoon and two hours later, while at dinner with my wife, I got a call from my editor. My credentials had been suspended because I had been rude, crude, unruly and socially unacceptable in my earlier encounter with Gorka. Trump apparently wasn’t upset that on that particular day I had asked him if he was delusional. 

When we got to court, the Trump attorneys said that if they couldn’t throw me out of the White House for what I’d done, then how could they keep reporters from mooning the first lady. They didn’t mention mooning other reporters. Would that compromise national security? No? I guess directly mooning the president might qualify.

Judge Contreras said in his judgment, “This event was also one where jocular insults had been flying from all directions.There is no indication in the record that other offenders were reprimanded or even told to stop.”

As Kelly said from the beginning of the Wednesday hearing, the decision in Karem v. Trump affirmed and fleshed out due process, and he had to apply it as precedent, meaning the government was screwed from the outset. The reasons for pulling my pass were ridiculous, but the importance of the decision cannot be forgotten. 

While it is a privilege to get a White House press pass, that’s not the point. It cannot be confiscated without a well-defined cause. “No official can deprive Plaintiffs of those interests on a whim — with no notice, no process, and no warning — as the President did here,” Boutrous argued. Accordingly, the loss of those credentials and the “White House access” that accompanies them without due process is unconstitutional. 

I’d like to personally thank Donald Trump for his actions. By going after media organizations this time around instead of individual reporters, as you did with me and Acosta, you finally got the press to work together again — though I’m quite sure that wasn’t your intention. Still, it warms the cockles of my heart to see pool reporters finally refusing to cover the president until and unless he stops acting like an ass.

Had the press worked together so diligently when Acosta and I had our passes confiscated, or when Trump took over assigning reporters to the press pool, or when the AP ran afoul of the president over the “Gulf of America,” or when he kicked reporters out of the upper press area, then we might have avoided the latest dust-up. The only way to stand up to a bully is to push back and defend our rights. I applaud everyone who is now in the fight. As Bruce Willis put it in “Die Hard,” “Welcome to the party, pal.” I’m just pointing out that the party was sparsely populated before you got here. 

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Maybe Karem v. Trump is all the legacy I will ever get. Beating Trump three times in court? I will claim it. I leave it to history to judge its importance to the First Amendment. 

I’d prefer my legacy to be my family. That, plus a five-minute black-and-white short film of a man and a woman meeting, dancing to Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” and then walking away from each other. But you can’t have everything. I’m not picky. I’m just listening to jazz.

Ted Boutrous’ legacy will be his historic defense of free speech and due process by defeating the hackish clowns from Trump’s Justice Department who tried to peddle lies a fool could pry apart. He’s beaten Trump three times representing me, once more defending Acosta and now he’s won again.Trump will leave an unparalleled legacy of the attempted destruction of the U.S. Constitution. He too will be long remembered – though not for anything good. 

Wednesday’s decision by Judge Kelly shows that the power in the White House remains with “We the people.” Trump is just a hired hand, a temp employee whose stewardship of the republic has failed miserably. 

We’d better not forget that, because remembering and acting on it should be everyone’s shared legacy.

 

The post Years before his CNN and Politico ban, Trump yanked my press pass appeared first on Salon.com.

It wasn’t long after Braden Peters, better known as “Clavicular,” was arrested on suspicion of raping a 17-year-old girl at his family’s home in Massachusetts that his fellow MAGA influencers started complaining that he was the real victim. 

“Now we live in a climate where a 19-year-old can’t even sleep with a 16-year-old with a little alcohol involved. Absolutely insane,” said Nick Fuentes, the popular white nationalist podcaster, ignoring the fact that it has long been considered rape to have sex with someone unconscious and unable to consent, as alleged by the criminal complaint against Peters.  

Others floated conspiracy theories accusing the mysterious “they” of trying to “control” Clavicular, or claiming he is besieged with “women trying to ruin his life with rumors.” Brian Atlas of the “Whatever” podcast posted a video of the alleged victim drinking with Peters, as if it were exonerating evidence instead of bolstering the criminal case against him. Clavicular himself has been accusing the girl of fabricating her claims to get revenge for being rejected by him, an accusation echoed online by many of his fans. Right-wing commentator Richard Hanania, whose claims of reforming his racist views have drawn laudatory profiles in Vox and The Atlantic, struck out against the accuser, apparently because she didn’t cut off immediate contact with Peters after the alleged rape. (Research shows that victims often maintain contact with their assailants, especially if they’re still in denial or processing the trauma.) 

Such reactions are entirely predictable. MAGA hysteria over “cancel culture” has long provided an excuse to recast bigots as free speech martyrs on the specious grounds that being criticized for saying ugly things is a violation of their First Amendment rights. This was always pretzel logic, but the halos granted to the canceled by right-wingers has expanded beyond those who are mad because people yelled at them on social media. Actual crimes, especially violence against women, are now being excused and justified by redefining perpetrators as victims of cancel culture. As long as what you do makes progressives and feminists angry, it appears, there is no limit to how some on the right will protect and even canonize you. 

“MAGA and the right-wing have really lost the thread when it comes to their anger at cancel culture and are now just angrily fighting on the side of anyone who does like a crime,” Cody Johnston of “Some More News” noted in a recent episode. “Especially, it seems a crime against women.”

The Daily Wire, a right-wing production company founded by Ben Shapiro, openly brags how it hires actors and other talent shunned by mainstream Hollywood studios. “Thank you to the purple hairs. Please ‘cancel’ more creative geniuses,” a representative for the company said in a May 2025 press release that touted the hiring of former “Jeopardy!” producer Mike Richards as the new CEO. Richards had been slated to take over as host of “Jeopardy!” in 2021 — until The Ringer published an exposé containing accusations that he had been abusive toward female employees and “repeatedly used offensive language and disparaged women’s bodies” on his short-lived podcast. His hiring by The Daily Wire followed other prominent contracts between the outlet and canceled actors such as Gina Carano, who was fired from Disney after she equated liberals mocking her right-wing views to Nazis murdering Jews. 

The Daily Wire’s glorification of the canceled quickly expanded beyond those who had experienced consequences for hate speech, however. After coming aboard, Richards soon hired Jonathan Majors, who had been fired from the Marvel franchise years earlier, to star in an action film called “Run Hide Fight: Infidels,” a movie reportedly so terrible that even critics struggled to take its vicious Islamophobia seriously. Unlike previous high-profile hires of canceled celebrities, though, Majors wasn’t just guilty of saying terrible things. He was convicted of domestic violence in 2024. 

As Johnston notes, MAGA leaders like Tesla CEO Elon Musk have also been championing “Citizen Vigilante,” an independently produced and intensely racist film starring Armie Hammer as a former Army officer on a killing spree against immigrants. Hammer has been accused by multiple women of sexual and emotional abuse, with at least one woman claiming he raped her. Although he has consistently denied the charges, he did admit in an interview with Air Mail in 2023 to having “used people.”

“They could have been happy to just be with me and would have said yes to things that maybe they wouldn’t have said yes to on their own,” he said. Hammer was dropped by his agency and lost acting jobs, and he now contends he had no idea “Citizen Vigilante” would be so “disgusting.”

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Even the right-wing influencer Andrew Tate, who has twice been arrested on charges of rape and sex trafficking, has long benefited from the glow-up one gets in MAGA circles after claiming status as a victim of cancel culture. The laundry list of allegations against him grew so long that the Trump administration, after seeming to help him escape justice in Romania, finally acceded to the United Kingdom’s request to extradite him and his brother Tristan. Still, it took years before powerful people on the right finally started to inch away from the Tates. Their close relationship with MAGA influencers — and with Trump’s son Barron — have reportedly left the brothers with hope that the administration will intervene on their behalf. 

In retrospect, the shift from exalting those canceled for words to championing those canceled for alleged criminal behavior was inevitable. The First Amendment prevents government censorship, but one reason there are social penalties, including criticism, shunning and firing for hateful rhetoric, is that it is not, in fact, harmless. The discourse around so-called cancel culture has itself been warped, coming to imply that the problem is not bigoted language but liberal reactions to it. The insinuation is that such statements are “just words,” and to have any strong reaction to them is hysterical and overblown.

In fact, there is a direct line between misogynist rhetoric and violence against women. Men who listen to and repeat the idea that women exist to serve them — and should be punished if they reject that duty — are often likely to attempt to enforce that belief with violence. Degrading language aimed at women online often becomes the justification for vile behavior toward them in the real world. Creating social accountability for men who say misogynist things isn’t about feminists being overly sensitive; it’s about preventing those words from turning to action.

Clavicular’s arrest is a perfect example of this issue. He rose to fame as a “looksmaxxer,” which is a spin-off of the larger incel community. Incels believe that men are entitled to women’s sexual attention, and that feminism is an aberration because it allows women to live independently of men, instead of having to trade sex for survival. Looksmaxxers like Clavicular take it a step further, trying to game out strategies to reassert sexual dominance over women. Like Andrew Tate, a lot of the looksmaxxer discourse skirts the law by focusing on manipulating and tricking women into sex. But the implication of overt coercion is always bubbling beneath the surface. After all, if you feel that you are owed sex by women, rape becomes less like a crime and more like recompense. 

To be fair, conservatives aren’t the only ones who have fueled years of panic over “cancel culture.” The hysteria has normalized and promoted by centrist pundits in publications like The Atlantic and The New York Times, helping to obscure what should have been obvious: that bad words lead to bad actions.

Bigoted chatter online isn’t just trolling or trying to get a rise out of liberals. It’s dehumanizing actual people, and it makes violence against them easier to justify. By all accounts, Clavicular was enjoying his rising fame, engaging in laudatory interviews in popular venues like Barstool Sports and the “All In” podcast, outlet that treated his misogyny as mere theatrics. The rape charges against him should be a reminder to us all: Sometimes people actually act on their beliefs. 

The post Clavicular’s charges shows the real danger of MAGA manhood appeared first on Salon.com.

Elizabeth Warren’s job doesn’t need to be this hard.

The Democratic senator from Massachusetts is leading a cadre of largely left-of-center lawmakers in reviving the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, legislation that would curtail the worst tendencies of private equity firms. These investment firms frequently buy struggling companies in leveraged buyouts, foisting the debt of the purchase back onto the business being bought. The firms downsize staff and sell off parts of the purchased company to create dividends, all while charging the purchased corporation management fees for their trouble. When the companies frequently fail to service all this new debt, they are forced into bankruptcies that allow the private equity ownership group to walk away. 

Warren has been fighting for a while to hold private equity firms responsible for the well-being of the companies they own. In fact, this is her third attempt at pushing the legislation, which she first introduced in 2019. The act would close loopholes that shield these investment companies from the debts of the newspapers, hospitals and department stores they purchase, and would also limit the amount that could be extracted from a private equity-owned company. 

“Private equity takeovers are legal looting that make a handful of Wall Street executives very rich while costing thousands of people their jobs, putting valuable companies out of ­business, and in the case of health care, is literally a matter of life and death,” Warren said in a statement of an earlier version of the bill. 

Facing one of the most money-friendly presidencies in history and Republican control of the White House and Congress, the bill starts to look like a hard sell. Add in the public’s aversion to barring businesses from doing anything, along with the fond feelings many Americans have for the words “private” and “equity,” and it’s easy to feel hopeless. 

But there is a way to shape public opinion on this issue: Warren and her allies in Congress could simply point Americans toward an iconic redhead with pigtails. In recent years, Wendy’s has taken heat for an alleged decline in food quality. The flood of negative reviews of the fast-food chain, coupled with widespread closures of its restaurants, led Slate to ask in April “What the Hell Happened to Wendy’s?”

The logic behind connecting fast food to private equity takeovers is straightforward. Citizens who aren’t likely to notice when their local newspaper becomes a bit more bare-bones, or that the already byzantine healthcare system becomes slightly harder to navigate, will definitely notice when their lunch gets worse — and could well inspire widespread pushback against murky financial operators.

At least that’s what Stavros Halkias believes. The comedian and actor who made his name on an unprintable dirtbag-left-adjacent podcast made the case for tying private equity to bad sandwiches during a recent interview with sports journalist Pablo Torre.

“I think it’s clear that what’s f**king us up is private equity . . . taking over products that are awesome,” he said. “The one that I’ve actually latched onto recently . . . is fast food.”

Halkias pointed to the fast food chain’s recent adoption of shredded lettuce on its chicken sandwiches as a cost-slashing maneuver typical of private equity-owned restaurants.

“Everybody understands that Wendy’s has gotten s**ttier,” he said. “The spicy chicken sandwich now uses shredded lettuce. Right there, that is private equity. That is someone saying ‘We don’t want a fresh head of lettuce that costs more money. So, we’re going to give you bagged sh**ty lettuce. I know in the grand scheme of things it’s not a big deal, but people will notice.”

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Wendy’s is not fully owned by a private equity fund, but Trian Fund Management and its CEO, Nelson Peltz, own nearly a quarter of the chain restaurant’s stock. Peltz has launched multiple bids to take over the chain, most recently in February and August, before deciding he would wait to see if Wendy’s newest CEO, Bob Wright, could turn the flagging operation around. Still, with a buyout looming over the company’s head and its largest investor grumbling, it’s hard to see cost-cutting measures as entirely free from the influence of private equity firms.

Another fast-food chain, Jersey Mike’s, offers a more straightforward example. After the sandwich company was purchased by Blackstone in January 2025, customer complaints about declining quality and rising prices have dogged it ever since. 

“Some f**khead who’s never spread mayo in his life decided instead of a sandwich this is now a commodity,” Halkias said. “By turning the consumer experience shittier, some d**khead who’s never made a sandwich gets a billion extra dollars.”

Halkias sees fast food and professional sports as the two arenas most likely to turn opinion against private equity and investment firms more generally. “I do think if one of these billionaires ruins a franchise, you might have goombah football fans reading Karl Marx,” he said. “If they destroy the Lakers, guys with Kobe back tattoos are going to start the proletariat revolution. I think that the closest we’re getting to class consciousness is fast food and sports teams.”

Halkias gets paid to be funny, and his stand-up career was boosted by a YouTube algorithm that appreciated his talent for crowd work. While Warren and the bill’s co-sponsors shouldn’t lean too hard on an extemporaneous riff from a podcaster, the germ of a promising strategy is there. 

Private equity is abstract by design; the role of these firms is hard to figure for anyone outside of the C-suite. To draw the line between funds with boring names and the everyday services that have been eviscerated by bean-counters, Warren and the supporters of the Stop Wall Street Looting Act will first have to first meet people where they are. And where they are is eating lunch in their cars.

The post The private equity backlash could start at the drive-thru appeared first on Salon.com.