void of

“We just are now trying to share the case for arts funding, and we need the private foundations and the individuals and our local and state agencies to step up and fill the void of what’s happening with the NEA.”

For years now, Democratic candidates have been instructed to sand off all of their sharp edges—to present as someone absent of taste—leaving them void of trait, opinion, and eccentricity.

Had Flanagan taken King’s you-only-live-once theme and presented reasonable, modern ways to put it into practice, “The Life of Chuck” might not feel like such a void of meaning.

This conflation of gender orthodoxy with American prosperity is popular for a frustratingly simple reason: A politics which refuses to engage with a rigorous economic analysis in the face of parabolic wealth and income inequality has no choice but to attribute the creeping void of American precarity to cultural explanations instead.

“I think a lot of what I read these days is void of soul and heart,” she continues.