It’s 1998. Sushi restaurants are the height of cosmopolitanism. The color palette of every café interior is putty, mocha, moss, and merlot. People are snickering about Monica Lewinsky and dabbling in cybersex. Across the nation, they’re parking between Borders and Gap and striding through outdoor malls, Tic Tacs and Nicorette rattling in their leather shoulder bags, into brand-new Regal Cinemas to see the Nora Ephron romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail.

To me, there is hardly any movie more comforting. When it comes to mind, I can almost taste candy apples and milky-sweet Starbucks. For that reason, I have watched this quintessential, late-’90s film many times. But it was only on this last viewing that I finally caught its drift. If you squint past the brownstone facades and cashmere turtlenecks and twinkle-lit shop windows, You’ve Got Mail reveals itself to have politics. Or, more accurately, it has anti-politics, and in abundance.