Michelle Goldberg
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Michelle Goldberg (born 1975)"Michelle Goldberg". Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2016. Retrieved via Biography in Context database, January 28, 2017. is an American journalist and author, and an
op-ed An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page," is a type of written prose commonly found in newspapers, magazines, and online publications. They usually represent a writer's strong and focused opinion on an issue of relevance to a targeted a ...
columnist for ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
''. She has been a senior correspondent for ''
The American Prospect ''The American Prospect'' is a daily online and bimonthly print American political and public policy magazine dedicated to American modern liberalism and Progressivism in the United States, progressivism. Based in Washington, D.C., ''The America ...
'', a columnist for ''
The Daily Beast ''The Daily Beast'' is an American news website focused on politics, media, and pop culture. Founded in 2008, the website is owned by IAC Inc. It has been characterized as a "high-end tabloid" by Noah Shachtman, the site's editor-in-chief ...
'' and ''
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'', and a senior writer for ''
The Nation ''The Nation'' is a progressive American monthly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper ...
''."Michelle Goldberg"
''The Nation''. Retrieved January 27, 2017.
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).


Early life and education

Goldberg was born in a
Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
family in
Buffalo, New York Buffalo is a Administrative divisions of New York (state), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York and county seat of Erie County, New York, Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of ...
, the daughter of Carolyn and Gerald Goldberg. Her father was managing editor of ''
The Buffalo News ''The Buffalo News'' is the daily newspaper of the Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area, located in downtown Buffalo, New York. It was for decades the only paper fully owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. On January 29, 2020, th ...
'' and her mother was a math professor at Niagara County Community College. 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. From her early teens she was active in the
abortion rights Abortion-rights movements, also self-styled as pro-choice movements, are movements that advocate for legal access to induced abortion services, including elective abortion. They seek to represent and support women who wish to terminate their p ...
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. 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 Anti-abortion movements, also self-styled as pro-life movements, are involved in the abortion debate advocating against the practice of abortion and its Abortion by country, legality. Many anti-abortion movements began as countermovements in r ...
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'."


Career

Beginning in 2002, Goldberg was for several years a senior writer for ''
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''. For approximately two years, through September 2015, she was senior contributing writer at ''
The Nation ''The Nation'' is a progressive American monthly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper ...
''. She worked as a senior correspondent at ''The American Prospect'' and a columnist for ''
The Daily Beast ''The Daily Beast'' is an American news website focused on politics, media, and pop culture. Founded in 2008, the website is owned by IAC Inc. It has been characterized as a "high-end tabloid" by Noah Shachtman, the site's editor-in-chief ...
'' and ''
Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...
'' magazine. Her work has been published in ''
The New Republic ''The New Republic'' (often abbreviated as ''TNR'') is an American magazine focused on domestic politics, news, culture, and the arts from a left-wing perspective. It publishes ten print magazines a year and a daily online platform. ''The New Y ...
'', ''
Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. The magazine was first known fo ...
'', '' Tablet'' and '' Glamour'',"Michelle Goldberg"
''The Daily Beast''. thedailybeast.com. Retrieved January 28, 2017.
and in ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'', ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'', 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 The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress a ...
's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.Mentorship Program: Michelle Goldberg
. The Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...
. Retrieved January 27, 2017.
In 2009, she published ''The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World'' (2009), which is based on her own reporting about the state of women's reproductive rights across several continents, and explores what she terms the "international battle over reproductive rights."


Opinions and controversies

In 2012, Goldberg criticized a column written in ''USA Today'' by Ann Romney, wife of politician and businessman
Mitt Romney Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American businessman and retired politician. He served as a United States Senate, United States senator from Utah from 2019 to 2025 and as the 70th governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 ...
. 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." In 2013, in ''
The Nation ''The Nation'' is a progressive American monthly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper ...
'', Goldberg criticized the public and media reactions to a tweet by Justine Sacco, a woman who had been fired for tweeting "Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!" Goldberg wrote: "Almost any of us could be vulnerable to a crowd-sourced inquisition." In 2014, Goldberg wrote a piece for ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'', titled "What is a Woman?," about the conflict between transgender women and some radical feminists. It was criticized by Jos Truitt in the ''
Columbia Journalism Review The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (''CJR'') is a biannual magazine for professional journalists that has been published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. Its original purpose was "to assess the performance ...
'' on the basis of Goldberg's support for those feminists labelled as "trans-exclusionary radical feminists" (or " TERFs"). Goldberg endorsed Democratic candidate
Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, lawyer and diplomat. She was the 67th United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, a U.S. senator represent ...
in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. 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." The ''Book Review'' correction read, 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." 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". In a July 17, 2020, column in the ''
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' 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."


''New York Times'' columnist

''The New York Times'' named Goldberg as an opinion columnist in September 2017. "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. " resident DonaldTrump's election has revealed many dark truths about this country. One of them is: We're a lot less democratic than we might think." Since then, many other political commentators have echoed Goldberg's critique. Goldberg takes a positive view of 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."We Can Replace Them – In Georgia, a chance to rebuke white nationalism
Michelle Goldberg, New York Times, October 29, 2018
Goldberg was a strong critic of Donald Trump's first 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." 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. Much of the ideological disagreement on the podcast arose between Goldberg and conservative columnist
Ross Douthat Ross Gregory Douthat ( ; born November 28, 1979) is a conservative American author and ''New York Times'' columnist. He was a senior editor of '' The Atlantic''. He has written on religion, politics, and society. Early life and education Ross Gr ...
, though in their final appearance together on the show in February 2021, each reflected on how the other's arguments had influenced them.


Personal life

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


Bibliography

* * ''The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World'' * *


See also

* New Yorkers in journalism


References


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Goldberg, Michelle 1975 births Living people Date of birth missing (living people) MSNBC people The Nation (U.S. magazine) people New York (state) Democrats The New Yorker people People from Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn Rolling Stone people American secular Jews University of California, Berkeley alumni Writers from Buffalo, New York Journalists from Buffalo, New York University at Buffalo alumni