newyorker--2020-10-26--Are Asian Americans the Last Undecided Voters?

There are some eleven thousand nail salons in California , about eighty per cent of which are owned and staffed by Vietnamese Americans .
For many of them , Newsom ’ s announcement came as a surprise .
Janet Nguyen , a former state senator who is running for the Assembly as a Republican , tried to find out if the spread really had been traced to a nail salon .
The following day , having found no evidence to support the claim , she and a group of Vietnamese American business owners and community leaders condemned Newsom for making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ almost like ‘ I need a scapegoat , ’ ” she told me over Zoom from her kitchen , in Fountain Valley , an Orange County suburb .
Every Vietnamese American , she continued , knows someone who ’ s worked in a nail salon .
( Her mother worked in one , as did the mother of her Democratic opponent for the Assembly seat , Diedre Thu-Ha Nguyen . )
“ You ’ re going to blame us for the spread of coronavirus in the state of California ?
It was very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a target on every Vietnamese American ’ s back.
” Janet Nguyen wondered if Newsom had made the comment knowing that many Vietnamese Americans were unlikely to support him .
The community leans Republican , and it is concentrated in Orange County , a conservative stronghold within a liberal state .
For decades , Democrats saw the region as an electoral lost cause .
Political scientists tend to believe that newcomers to communities fashion their identities according to what they find when they get there .
If you arrive without strong allegiances @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to align your views with those of the people in power .
The first wave of Vietnamese Americans who moved to Orange County settled in Westminster , in the late nineteen-seventies , not long after so-called “ suburban warriors ” had turned the area into a locus of grassroots conservatism .
Many of the new arrivals were refugees , who supported themselves by opening small businesses , and they identified with Republicans ’ free-market ethos .
In addition , Saigon had recently fallen , and their hatred of Communism often made them distrustful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very , very anti-Communist , ” Nguyen said .
“ Diehard.
” She was born in Saigon in 1976 , and her family came to California in 1981 .
“ We value what America has given us .
We can live how we want to .
In Vietnam , you weren ’ t allowed to do that.
” ( In 2017 , when Nguyen was in the State Senate , she criticized the late California senator Tom Hayden for being a Communist sympathizer , and was forcibly removed from the chamber for speaking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Vietnamese refugees in Westminster spread into surrounding cities such as Garden Grove , Santa Ana , Fountain Valley , and Huntington Beach .
There are now roughly half a million Vietnamese Americans in California .
Even as “ Little Saigon ” drifted from its beginnings along Westminster ’ s Bolsa Avenue , the community retained a sense of intimacy .
Nguyen called it “ the hub where Vietnamese Americans across the country look to for political answers , for political waves , for economic answers .
Whatever has been done in Orange @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Seattle ?
” In early June , Nguyen launched a petition to immediately open all nail salons .
The state allowed them to reopen later that month , weeks after barbershops , restaurants , and hair salons had been given the go-ahead .
But many businesses closed again in mid-July , owing to a statewide spike in COVID-19 infections .
By the time nail salons were allowed to open again , with guidelines that were impossible for many of them to follow , Newsom , citing privacy concerns , still hadn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in these businesses .
In Nguyen ’ s mind , there was a clear lesson .
“ We ’ re not a community that ’ s large enough politically , ” she said .
“ We ’ re getting involved politically , but we ’ re not there in terms of being donors .
The governor sees us .
.
.
” She paused .
“ He doesn ’ t even see us.
” Vietnamese Americans in California have grown accustomed to seeking support from other people in the Vietnamese diaspora , rather @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her time in the State Senate , when she worked with other Asian Americans , some of them Democrats , on issues relevant to their broader community .
If they all someday realized their collective power , she said , they could become “ a force.
” Since 2000 , the Asian American population in the U.S. has grown by more than seventy per cent , to about twenty million .
The group now makes up six per cent of the total population .
During this time , the number of eligible Asian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rate , according to the Pew Research Center , by 2055 Asian Americans will be the country ’ s largest immigrant group .
It isn ’ t merely the speed of this growth that interests researchers and party strategists ; it ’ s where it is happening .
Natalie Masuoka , a political scientist at U.C.L.A.
, told me that Asian settlement in the past few decades has been “ the reverse of what we saw historically .
Rather than these traditional destinations ” —ethnic enclaves , such as Chinatowns , in large @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ the growth of Asian America really is in the suburbs.
” Asian Americans are moving to Arizona , Nevada , and North Carolina—the states with the fastest-growing populations .
The number of Asian American residents in Florida and Pennsylvania has grown by more than eighty per cent since 2010 .
South Asians are one of the fastest-growing demographics in Texas , where estimates show that the number of eligible Asian American voters rose by at least forty per cent between 2012 and 2018 .
In parts of the state with a high @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cast in primary elections doubled between 2016 and 2020 .
Most important , Asian Americans tend not to identify strongly with either of the major parties : nearly two in five Asian American voters aren ’ t registered as either a Democrat or a Republican .
They are the mythical “ undecided voters ” —or , in these rigidly partisan times , they remain persuadable .
Even Orange County is feeling the effects .
Years ago , Nguyen ’ s rise in local politics offered hope for Republicans looking to expand their base @ @ @ @ @ @ @ currently running for the Assembly , having lost her bid for reëlection to the State Senate , in 2018 , makes her story instructive for Democrats , too .
Slights like the one Nguyen perceived from Newsom have been common for Asians throughout their time in the U.S.
It ’ s possible that being scapegoated might constitute one of the community ’ s few shared experiences .
When Asian laborers first settled in America , in the nineteenth century , they were barred from voting or testifying in court .
There were limitations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the protections they could demand .
In Chinatowns , leaders often organized mutual-aid societies—not to participate in electoral politics but to protect their communities from politics ’ effects .
In the twentieth century , more Asian immigrants and refugees arrived , and civil rights were extended to a broader swath of Americans .
The first Chinese Americans , Japanese Americans , and Indian Americans were elected to national public office in the nineteen-fifties , often in places with established immigrant communities , such as California and Hawaii .
The term “ Asian American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by a collective of college students and activists , in a desire for political solidarity among immigrant groups with divergent histories .
The category resonates most for the people who embrace it , paradoxes and all .
But it ’ s been difficult to leverage this identity in electoral politics , which relies on groups that appear unitary and easy to appeal to .
Both major parties have failed to forge a strong relationship with Asian Americans as a whole , because they often seem too socially and linguistically fractured to effectively target @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by standing up to China , you risk losing newer immigrants from the mainland .
Expressions of Christian faith might appeal to Korean American churchgoers but could put off Hindus and Muslims from India and Pakistan .
Perhaps because of this , Asian American turnout lags behind that of whites and African-Americans ; a highly educated Asian American immigrant is less likely to vote than a white person with the same socioeconomic background .
Even in recent years , as Asian Americans have risen to governorships and Cabinet appointments , political mobilization has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Studies show that Asian American political preferences are frequently shaped by family members , with the younger generation , who are politicized outside the home , essentially translating the political process for their parents and grandparents .
The first major voter-registration drive of Asian Americans began in 1996 , when a coalition of nineteen community organizations formed the National Asian Pacific American Voter Registration Campaign .
Around this time , a former Delaware politician named S. B .
Woo started the 80-20 Initiative , which was largely a response to the “ Donorgate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ China was buying political influence resulted in Asian Americans feeling as though the Democratic Party was distancing itself from anyone with an Asian name .
Woo believed that his organization could consolidate eighty per cent of Asian Americans into a single voting bloc , which would pledge to support candidates who took on issues relevant to the Asian American community , such as discrimination and representation .
The idea never caught on nationally , and the group now pursues causes related to self-empowerment and education .

Cisneros relied heavily on Nic Jordan, one of the only Asian American campaign managers working for a Democrat in a major congressional race that year. Cisneros and Jordan took the diversity within the Asian American community seriously. Chinese-speaking staffers reached out to voters on the social-media apps WeChat and Line. Korean speakers were dispatched to KakaoTalk, a platform popular in the Korean diaspora. Materials relating Cisneros’s experience as a Latino, and the opportunities that his philanthropic efforts had provided to other immigrants, were translated into Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Tagalog.
“The 39th District is one of the most diverse districts in the country, and Asian Americans played a huge role in deciding the 2018 election,” Cisneros told me in an e-mail. “I met voters where they were and turned out people who had never voted before.” He brought staffers fluent in various languages with him while canvassing. Allen Chen, who headed Asian American and Pacific Islander outreach for Cisneros, told me, “We just had to make sure that we were making as welcoming of an environment as we could.” The campaign’s approach required trusting its young staff. Chen began working for the campaign just three days after he graduated from college.
Cisneros defeated Kim by 3.2 points. “These have just been previously ignored communities that haven’t seen the same type of investments that other communities across the country have seen in terms of engaging politically and organizing them,” Chen said. “All of a sudden, if you come in with these resources, you can get a huge bang for your buck if you just work with them instead of working against them.”
That November, in Texas, Sri Preston Kulkarni was hoping for a similar upset. Kulkarni grew up in Houston, and during a career in the Foreign Service he lived in Iraq, Israel, Russia, and Taiwan. In 2017, he was serving as a diplomat in Jamaica when the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville unfolded. He told me that, as he waited to hear how Trump would respond, local Jamaicans asked him, “Is this what America is like right now?”
Kulkarni resigned and moved home to run as a Democrat for Congress, in the Twenty-second District, against the incumbent, a Republican named Pete Olson. Most people assumed that Kulkarni, who is Indian American, had no chance. Each cycle, the two major parties identify winnable races and direct their resources toward them. For Democrats, Kulkarni’s race wasn’t estimated to be in the top ninety in the country. As recently as 2014, Olson had won by almost thirty-five points. The district had previously sent Ron Paul and Tom DeLay to Washington, and DeLay had helped gerrymander it to insure a two-to-one majority of Republicans.
But immigration had changed the district, which is the fastest growing in the country. The possibility of Texas becoming a blue state hinges on large, diverse suburban districts like this one. A quarter of its residents are immigrants, but Kulkarni recalls being told that it was pointless to target them, especially those in the Asian community, “because they don’t vote.”
Kulkarni, who is forty-two, was a linguistics major in college, and he is fluent in Chinese, Hebrew, Hindi, Russian, and Spanish. He can say hello in a dozen more languages. He comes across as someone who would do well staying at a hostel. According to data collected during his campaign, seventy-two per cent of the Asian Americans whom Kulkarni’s operatives contacted had never previously been approached by the major parties.
When we first spoke, in early August, Kulkarni paused at one point, then said, “What is an Asian, right?” We agreed that the category smooths over the histories and experiences of people from dozens of countries. As he learned about all his district’s micro-communities, he realized that they were already well organized. “Once you start to map out the social networks, there’s this huge upward potential,” he explained. There is nothing innate that links these different groups. But the nature of immigration policy has created interpersonal connections that most political organizers overlook. Immigrants often come to the U.S. through links to family and friends, leading to networks in which one enthusiastic supporter is capable of reaching dozens of others. From the outside, these networks might seem clannish or impossible to penetrate. But Kulkarni’s campaign staffers recruited volunteers fluent in sixteen languages, and tried to draw on existing relationships to slowly expand their base. They trained supporters to organize their own families, cultural associations, churches, or temples.
During the race, Olson described Kulkarni as “an Indo-American who’s a carpetbagger.” But Kulkarni’s mother is white, with such deep roots in the region that Kulkarni claims Sam Houston as an ancestor. He lost by less than five points, a closer margin than anyone had predicted.
Last year, Olson announced that he would retire in 2020; Kulkarni and the Fort Bend County sheriff, Troy Nehls, are competing for the seat. This time, national Democratic Party organizations are putting considerable resources into Kulkarni’s campaign. (Chen, who helped oversee Cisneros’s campaign, is now Kulkarni’s campaign manager.) In July, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released digital ads for Kulkarni in Hindi and Chinese—a first for the D.C.C.C. The next month, A.A.P.I. Victory Fund, a major political-action committee devoted to Asian American mobilization, announced that the Texas suburbs would be one of its fund-raising priorities. Kulkarni said that other campaigns call him for insight into his relational-organizing model: “They’ll ask us, ‘Is this proprietary?’ Of course not. I want people to copy what we’re doing in Texas Twenty-two all over America.”
In North Texas, suburban Asian Americans could also help flip the Twenty-fourth District, where they make up fifteen per cent of the population, and where a Democratic newcomer, Candace Valenzuela, is running a strong campaign. “Texas is in play now,” Darwin Pham, who leads outreach to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said gleefully.
Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of public policy and political science at the University of California, Riverside, and the head of A.A.P.I. Data, told me that people have traditionally thought of Asian Americans in terms of “dim sum rather than samosas.” People from East Asia—China, Japan, Korea—have been more recognized. But the increase in the Asian American population, especially in places like Texas, has largely been fuelled by immigrants from India and Pakistan. Some of the rising stars of the Democratic Party, such as Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Raja Krishnamoorthi, who were both born in India, are progressives who won in places that aren’t majority minority. In recent years, the highest-profile politicians of Indian descent had been Republicans such as Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal. But many think that the spotlight on Kamala Harris, whose mother emigrated from India, will draw more South Asians to the Democratic Party.
Ramakrishnan said that the next census will likely show that Indian Americans outnumber Chinese Americans. “That’ll be a major moment of reckoning for the Asian American community,” he said.
A few weeks later, during the Democratic National Convention, I spoke with Kulkarni again. He was between campaign events, which were being conducted entirely on Zoom. He was trying to be positive about the lack of in-person events; his campaign had found that playing music as people entered the “room” helped ease any awkwardness. He seemed ebullient and unfazed, even when his mother walked in during our interview. “My mom is living with me,” he said, laughing. “It’s a very Asian thing.” Kulkarni was eager to hear Harris’s speech later that week. But critics of the Democratic Convention felt that too much airtime had been given to remorseful testimonials from Republicans. Instead, they said, the Convention should have worked on attracting new voters, as Kulkarni was doing.
Earlier this year, a research team at U.C.L.A. looked at participation among Latino and Asian American voters during the 2020 primaries. They noticed strong support for Bernie Sanders’s candidacy among Latino voters, owing in part to relational organizing within the community. Sanders supporters were proselytizing to friends, family, and people in their immediate orbit, who then felt accountable to one another in their shared enthusiasm for Sanders. The report concluded that it made more sense for parties to expand their base by investing in voter registration and outreach to minority groups rather than to try to persuade people on the other side. It was probably more cost-efficient, too.
“They pay the bills, but you and I basically run the place.” Cartoon by Michael Maslin Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
I asked Kulkarni if he was worried about whether the first-time voters crucial to his success would show up in November. In the 2020 primaries, Sanders had difficulty translating the enthusiasm for his candidacy into votes. Neither Kulkarni nor Nehls had a clear advantage in the polls. Kulkarni said that the polls didn’t capture the extent of his supporter network. His campaign’s approach to relational organizing meant that, months earlier, it had moved away from the traditional door-knocking model. Instead, his supporters were using apps to send out reminders to friends, family members, and neighbors. Kulkarni hoped that those voters would feel obliged to people they knew and be glad not to be badgered by volunteers they had never met. “It goes from being an electoral campaign to being a community-organizing project,” he said. “And our goal is to be the largest community-organizing project you’ve ever seen.”
Political campaigns are about more than the candidate. Participation requires the creation of an infrastructure that guarantees your community remains close to power. Neil Makhija, the executive director of Impact, an Indian American advocacy group and PAC, talked excitedly about the connections that were being forged this year. The announcement of Harris as Joe Biden’s running mate had brought a lot of attention to Impact, a group with which she had a long-standing relationship. Success wasn’t just about fund-raising or voting—Impact was building a network of influencers and power brokers, people who could move strategically between campaigns, PACs, and policy shops. Both Elizabeth Warren’s and Bernie Sanders’s 2020 Presidential campaigns were managed by Asian Americans. Makhija felt that a critical mass was forming. His father had grown up sorting spools of thread in a factory, Makhija said, and, decades later, he could give his father a tour of the White House.
Among Asian Americans on the left, there was a sense of the optimism that participation in American politics requires—an optimism that both felt disconnected to the summer of 2020 and looked far beyond it. Visibility and growing influence invariably put stress on the coherence of the community. The killing of George Floyd, for example, exacerbated divisions along lines of class and nationality. A Hmong police officer, Tou Thao, was involved in Floyd’s death. Debate within the Hmong community, which is largely working class and predominantly refugee, often takes place on radio programs and on nationwide teleconference calls, where strangers phone in and talk about issues important to them. Conversations during the summer were wary, and often explosive. Yang Sao Xiong, a professor of social work and Asian American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who studies Hmong American political participation, observed that Hmong Americans sometimes have an “uneasy” relationship to the broader category of Asian American. Their higher rates of poverty are often invoked as a “negative test case” to disprove the model-minority myth, he explained, “and that’s the only time they enter into the Asian American conversation.” In this case, other Asian Americans were particularly aggressive in disavowing Thao. “You can’t just erase these real lived experiences and expect groups to come together,” Xiong said. “They do come together, but it takes a lot of work.”
Given this friction, the fact that Asian Americans across the political spectrum can offer their success stories as quintessentially American, regardless of how far right or left they are, speaks to the malleability of Asian American identity. Many political organizers even believe that understanding Asian Americans could function as a test case for figuring out what forms of messaging work on suburban swing voters—a model minority of a different sort.
In mid-September, I spoke with Cliff Li, the head of the National Committee of Asian American Republicans, based in Washington, D.C. Li came to the United States in 1990, a year after witnessing the events of Tiananmen Square. He worked as a computer engineer, and was instantly drawn to conservative ideals: “personal merit, family values, working hard, deregulation.”
Li, who splits his time between Florida and Virginia, had an upbeat, almost mellifluous quality to his voice as he talked about his deep affection for America—how it represented the perfect intersection of conservative and Asian values. He had worked with the Republican Party for years, participating in various leadership trainings and organizing Asian Americans throughout the country. He was the chair of the Asian American outreach team for Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, and served on a Trump-campaign advisory committee with Elaine Chao, the Transportation Secretary. The establishment of the National Committee, in 2016, formalized the work he’d been doing at the grassroots level, connecting scattered pockets of newer immigrants, energized by issues like affirmative action, to the Republican Party. He felt that the Asian American conservative movement was on the verge of something major. It was organizing itself throughout the country on social media. Li believed that this was much more effective than the traditional approach of simply robocalling Asian Americans three months before an election.


newyorker--2020-10-26--What Tecumseh Fought For

What Tecumseh Fought For

In 1811 , the Shawnee leader Tecumseh , anticipating the movements of Scott and Floyd , departed the Ohio Country and journeyed two thousand miles across the South , seeking to recruit tribes to a Native confederacy able to withstand the land hunger of the United States .
The stakes could not have been higher : Tecumseh ’ s effort marked the last time Native peoples would be able to mobilize in concert with a formidable European military .
His British allies—advancing their own geopolitics , to be sure—thought such a confederacy might buttress an Indian state , which , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ barrier to American expansion .
Today , one mountain , a few statues , eight towns , and several streets and schools bear Tecumseh ’ s name ; a small collection of myths and fictions tell some version of his story .
What he had hoped would be an Indian state , a consolidation of Native power , is now what Americans call the Midwest .
And Tecumseh , his alliance , and his war linger only as a trace memory .
To resurrect his story is to recognize that the United States @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” of slavery , threaded through centuries of systemic racism and extending to George Floyd ’ s death in Minneapolis , but two foundational sins , intimately entangled across geographies stretching from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi Delta .
The Shawnee homelands were the first epic battleground in the United States ’ acquisition of new territory , a process characterized by the violent plunder of Native land and its conversion into vast American wealth .
After Kentucky militiamen killed him in battle , in 1813 , Tecumseh and his dead comrades became @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sense ( the white men carried off Native belongings and carved long swaths of skin from Indian bodies to make souvenir razor strops ) , even as the forceful taking of the land came to seem like a lesser sin , a regrettable but necessary wrong justified by the expectation of American goodness .
As Peter Cozzens points out in a new joint biography , “ Tecumseh and the Prophet : The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation ” ( Knopf ) , Tecumseh ’ s geopolitical vision was unrealizable without the revitalizing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tenskwatawa , a seer and spiritual leader .
Between them , the brothers offered a full range of Native social critique—about Indian land loss , cultural degradation , infighting , and spiritual decay—while advocating a program of action aimed at the future .
It was not enough to unite against the Americans on the battlefield .
Such unity required , Cozzens suggests , “ moral cleansing and spiritual rebirth , ” personal transformations and fierce resistances that together were meant to create a new and better Indian world .
As with so many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to follow the money .
The ordinance mapped out an American territorial expansion based on white mobility and demographic growth : if a colonial territory had sixty thousand free inhabitants , it could petition for statehood .
In the meantime , the territory would be rationalized through a grid system set forth by the Land Ordinance of 1785 .
The six-square-mile township and the rectilinear forms of counties and crossroads make up its visible legacy .
The laws prescribed a national expansion based on yeoman farmsteads knit into an orderly fabric of small @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grid also made land into an abstraction , and thus a commodity ripe for speculation .
It was an opportunity grasped by many of the nation ’ s first leaders .
George Washington is today remembered as both a President and a slaveholder , an embodiment of foundational American contradictions .
He should also be remembered as one of the most aggressive landowners in the early republic , holding title , at the time of his death , to more than fifty thousand acres across several states .
In that respect , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and trade in land : the U.S. planned to pay off its Revolutionary War debt with land sales in the Northwest , positioning itself as a real-estate speculator with continental ambitions .
But the United States didn ’ t own most of the lands it hoped to flip .
In the 1783 Treaty of Paris , which ended the Revolutionary War , England recognized American sovereignty west to the Mississippi , betraying the Native allies who had supported it in the conflict .
This “ sovereignty , ” though , meant nothing to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Potawatomi , and other tribes whose territory it was .
Encroaching settlers had no respect for Indian ownership and weren ’ t willing to wait on American surveyors to parcel and sell the land .
They squatted where they wished , building frontier stations and clearing land , all the while killing Indians and being killed by them in return .
This was the world in which the Shawnee brothers grew up .
When Tecumseh was six and Tenskwatawa was still in his mother ’ s womb , their father died in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ older brother Cheeseekau raised them to be uncompromising in their resistance to the Americans .
At the age of fifteen , Tecumseh distinguished himself during a raid on American flatboats on the Ohio River .
He possessed from the start a remarkable warrior charisma .
An American officer later recalled him as “ one of the finest looking men I ever saw—about six feet high , straight , with large , fine features.
” But Tecumseh carried scars , both physical and emotional .
At the age of twenty , while on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ acquired a permanent limp .
Four years later , Americans killed Cheeseekau in a fight in Tennessee , and two years after that he watched another brother die at the Battle of Fallen Timbers .
For a decade , Tecumseh sought to live a Native life in the deepening shadow of colonial advance , marrying twice and fathering a son .
By 1810 , though , he had seen enough settlements and treaties to have developed not only a sense of urgency but also a strategic vision unmatched among his peers .
At @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out the territorial governor William Henry Harrison : “ Since the peace was made [ in 1795 ] , you have killed some of the Shawnees , Winnebagoes , Delawares , and Miamis , and you have taken our lands from us , and I do not see how we can remain at peace if you continue to do so.
” Tecumseh recognized that colonization followed a pattern that led to war : American interlopers ignored Indian territorial rights and their own government ’ s treaty agreements .
They intruded on Indian land @ @ @ @ @ @ @ racialized hatred for Native people forged through generations of colonial conflict .
Unable to handle Native self-defense , settlers called for help from the federal government , which sent troops and mobilized militias .
Military victories produced treaties of land cession or sale , which then justified the existing settlements and pushed the boundaries farther to the west .
Rapacious migrants ignored the new boundary lines and started the cycle once again .
The Shawnee brothers followed a long line of Native people of the Northwest who fought to defend their homelands from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as fifteen hundred whites during Little Turtle ’ s War , a conflict that ran for a decade after the conclusion of the Revolutionary War , ending only in 1794 , with the defeat of Native warriors at the Battle of Fallen Timbers .
Those fifteen hundred deaths were a drop in the bucket compared with the influx of new settlers .
In the first half of 1788 alone , the military leader Josiah Harmar reported , more than six thousand settlers passed into the Ohio Country .
In 1790 and 1791 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American national troops invaded Native settlements there , seeking to punish Indian resisters and force them to relinquish their lands .
Indian people had already developed successful tribal alliances .
In 1763 , a loose confederation of tribes under the leadership of Pontiac fought the British to a stalemate after the Seven Years ’ War .
When Harmar marched his shiny new American Army into the Ohio Country in 1790 , Little Turtle ’ s Western Confederacy routed his forces .
Arthur St. Clair tried again the following year , and the results @ @ @ @ @ @ @ six hundred of his command dead and a high percentage wounded .
After the defeats , George Washington tripled the size of the Army and committed five-sixths of the federal budget to subduing the Western Indians .
Anthony Wayne ’ s victory at Fallen Timbers was made possible because the Americans , out of necessity , threw everything they had at the Indian alliance .
Wayne ’ s victory set the stage for the efforts of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa to unite an even larger confederacy .
The 1795 Treaty of Greenville carved a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Indian territory to the northwest corner of the region .
Ohio quickly filled up with sixty thousand free people , and in 1803 it became the seventeenth state ( after the thirteen original colonies and Vermont , Kentucky , and Tennessee ) .
Between 1803 and 1809 , the U.S. negotiated fifteen land-cession treaties—some of which its own representatives characterized as farce—relying on handpicked Indian signatories and pushing tribes to sell land that did not belong to them .
The land entered the public domain and was then grabbed up by speculators , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ property .
The wealth of the nation , Americans have grudgingly recognized , was produced through the labor of brutally enslaved people .
But that wealth also rested upon formal systems—colonial , military , and fiscal—that alchemized the lands of an Indian continent into American property and money .
Tecumseh vehemently rejected the Ohio treaties and insisted that any Indian land cessions had to be made collectively by all Native peoples .
When Harrison threatened him with the unified power of the states—the “ Seventeen Fires ” —Tecumseh said that he planned to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strict union amongst all the fires ” of a strong Native alliance .
The only way to check the evil of American encroachment , he said , was “ for all the red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land , as it was at first , and should be yet ; for it never was divided but belongs to all for the use of each.
” If the U.S. imagined itself as an irresistible force , the brothers sought to create an immovable indigenous object , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that carried with it the further possibility of a confederated Indian nation .

The ghosts of forgotten histories haunt America’s heartland, begging to be remembered and exorcised. George Floyd’s Minneapolis, as we have lately come to understand, has never been a harmless Midwestern town of grains and lakes. The enslaved Dred Scott’s eighteen-thirties sojourn at Fort Snelling (now part of the Twin Cities) and his subsequent return downriver to Missouri gave rise to the nation’s most notorious Supreme Court decision, Dred Scott v. Sandford, which ruled that Black Americans—slave or free—had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Floyd, who died choking on that assertion, was from North Carolina by way of Houston, and the string of memorials following his death sent a mourning cry out of Minnesota back along Dred Scott’s path, downriver to the South before turning east toward the Atlantic and the distant memory of Africa.
In 1811, the Shawnee leader Tecumseh, anticipating the movements of Scott and Floyd, departed the Ohio Country and journeyed two thousand miles across the South, seeking to recruit tribes to a Native confederacy able to withstand the land hunger of the United States. The stakes could not have been higher: Tecumseh’s effort marked the last time Native peoples would be able to mobilize in concert with a formidable European military. His British allies—advancing their own geopolitics, to be sure—thought such a confederacy might buttress an Indian state, which, in turn, could serve as a barrier to American expansion. Today, one mountain, a few statues, eight towns, and several streets and schools bear Tecumseh’s name; a small collection of myths and fictions tell some version of his story. What he had hoped would be an Indian state, a consolidation of Native power, is now what Americans call the Midwest. And Tecumseh, his alliance, and his war linger only as a trace memory.
To resurrect his story is to recognize that the United States confronts not a singular “original sin” of slavery, threaded through centuries of systemic racism and extending to George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, but two foundational sins, intimately entangled across geographies stretching from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi Delta. The Shawnee homelands were the first epic battleground in the United States’ acquisition of new territory, a process characterized by the violent plunder of Native land and its conversion into vast American wealth. After Kentucky militiamen killed him in battle, in 1813, Tecumseh and his dead comrades became fetishes of conquest in the most literal sense (the white men carried off Native belongings and carved long swaths of skin from Indian bodies to make souvenir razor strops), even as the forceful taking of the land came to seem like a lesser sin, a regrettable but necessary wrong justified by the expectation of American goodness.
As Peter Cozzens points out in a new joint biography, “Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation” (Knopf), Tecumseh’s geopolitical vision was unrealizable without the revitalizing religion preached by his younger brother, Tenskwatawa, a seer and spiritual leader. Between them, the brothers offered a full range of Native social critique—about Indian land loss, cultural degradation, infighting, and spiritual decay—while advocating a program of action aimed at the future. It was not enough to unite against the Americans on the battlefield. Such unity required, Cozzens suggests, “moral cleansing and spiritual rebirth,” personal transformations and fierce resistances that together were meant to create a new and better Indian world.
The Native homeland that Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa fought to protect—the Americans called it the Northwest Territory—encompassed five future U.S. states and the most pressing issues facing the new republic. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed by the Confederation Congress, tried to address those challenges. It prohibited the extension of slavery into the new territories while introducing a fugitive-slave provision that protected Southern property rights in human beings. It outlined an orderly structure through which undisciplined westward colonies could fully join the American empire. It assumed that the land would inevitably become part of the United States, but hypocritically promised to treat American Indian people with “utmost good faith.”
As with so many American laws, it also prompts us to follow the money. The ordinance mapped out an American territorial expansion based on white mobility and demographic growth: if a colonial territory had sixty thousand free inhabitants, it could petition for statehood. In the meantime, the territory would be rationalized through a grid system set forth by the Land Ordinance of 1785. The thirty-six-square-mile township and the rectilinear forms of counties and crossroads make up its visible legacy. The laws prescribed a national expansion based on yeoman farmsteads knit into an orderly fabric of small towns and local schools. But the grid also made land into an abstraction, and thus a commodity ripe for speculation. It was an opportunity grasped by many of the nation’s first leaders. George Washington is today remembered as both a President and a slaveholder, an embodiment of foundational American contradictions. He should also be remembered as one of the most aggressive landowners in the early republic, holding title, at the time of his death, to more than fifty thousand acres across several states. In that respect, he exemplified the connection between American national expansion and trade in land: the U.S. planned to pay off its Revolutionary War debt with land sales in the Northwest, positioning itself as a real-estate speculator with continental ambitions.
But the United States didn’t own most of the lands it hoped to flip. In the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War, England recognized American sovereignty west to the Mississippi, betraying the Native allies who had supported it in the conflict. This “sovereignty,” though, meant nothing to the Miami, the Shawnee, the Potawatomi, and other tribes whose territory it was. Encroaching settlers had no respect for Indian ownership and weren’t willing to wait on American surveyors to parcel and sell the land. They squatted where they wished, building frontier stations and clearing land, all the while killing Indians and being killed by them in return.
This was the world in which the Shawnee brothers grew up. When Tecumseh was six and Tenskwatawa was still in his mother’s womb, their father died in a 1774 battle with Virginia militiamen. Their older brother Cheeseekau raised them to be uncompromising in their resistance to the Americans. At the age of fifteen, Tecumseh distinguished himself during a raid on American flatboats on the Ohio River. He possessed from the start a remarkable warrior charisma. An American officer later recalled him as “one of the finest looking men I ever saw—about six feet high, straight, with large, fine features.” But Tecumseh carried scars, both physical and emotional. At the age of twenty, while on a raid, he shattered a thighbone and acquired a permanent limp. Four years later, Americans killed Cheeseekau in a fight in Tennessee, and two years after that he watched another brother die at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.
For a decade, Tecumseh sought to live a Native life in the deepening shadow of colonial advance, marrying twice and fathering a son. By 1810, though, he had seen enough settlements and treaties to have developed not only a sense of urgency but also a strategic vision unmatched among his peers. At a parley, he rose to call out the territorial governor William Henry Harrison: “Since the peace was made [in 1795], you have killed some of the Shawnees, Winnebagoes, Delawares, and Miamis, and you have taken our lands from us, and I do not see how we can remain at peace if you continue to do so.”
Tecumseh recognized that colonization followed a pattern that led to war: American interlopers ignored Indian territorial rights and their own government’s treaty agreements. They intruded on Indian land, bringing with them violence and a racialized hatred for Native people forged through generations of colonial conflict. Unable to handle Native self-defense, settlers called for help from the federal government, which sent troops and mobilized militias. Military victories produced treaties of land cession or sale, which then justified the existing settlements and pushed the boundaries farther to the west. Rapacious migrants ignored the new boundary lines and started the cycle once again.
The Shawnee brothers followed a long line of Native people of the Northwest who fought to defend their homelands from American invasion. Indians killed as many as fifteen hundred whites during Little Turtle’s War, a conflict that ran for a decade after the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, ending only in 1794, with the defeat of Native warriors at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Those fifteen hundred deaths were a drop in the bucket compared with the influx of new settlers. In the first half of 1788 alone, the military leader Josiah Harmar reported, more than six thousand settlers passed into the Ohio Country. In 1790 and 1791, supported by state militias, the first American national troops invaded Native settlements there, seeking to punish Indian resisters and force them to relinquish their lands.


newyorker--2020-10-26--The Mischievous Irreverence of “The Good Lord Bird”

Mercifully , the new Showtime miniseries “ The Good Lord Bird , ” a reimagining of the militant abolitionist John Brown ’ s doomed ride to Harpers Ferry , is not “ woke.
” Instead , it has an impish spirit of contrivance that is largely missing from contemporary antebellum historical fictions .
Among its finest moments of cultural sacrilege is a sex farce starring Frederick Douglass , whom Brown ( Ethan Hawke ) insists on calling “ the King of the Negroes.
” Douglass , in a canny bit of casting , is played by Daveed Diggs , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Marquis de Lafayette in Lin-Manuel Miranda ’ s Broadway phenomenon , “ Hamilton , ” a retelling of American history that marked the apex of Obama-era artistic liberal agitprop .
“ The Good Lord Bird , ” though , is not concerned with supplanting the mess and the mystery of history with upbeat coherence .
Diggs ’ s Douglass is a playboy dandy flushed with Cognac , nesting on a couch at his Rochester mansion between his Black wife , Anna , and his German mistress , Ottilie .
Credit for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ McBride , whose 2013 novel of the same name has been adapted with deep , sometimes stubborn fidelity by Mark Richard and Hawke , who are both , along with McBride , executive producers on the show .
The novel is an idiosyncratic critique of history-making , an account of the prelude to emancipation told from the point of view of an eccentric , elderly man who likes to wear dresses .
Henry ( the Onion ) Shackleford , born into slavery , recounts how , as a child , he came under @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” John Brown and his ragtag army as they planned to take over a strategic U.S. military arsenal to hasten the holy war on the peculiar institution .
McBride ’ s fictive Black witness allows him to rewrite Brown ’ s final , righteous exertions as tragicomedy .
The show is narrated by a young Henry ( played by the newcomer Joshua Caleb Johnson ) , who , in the opening episode , launches into what sounds like a tall tale .
In Osawatomie , Kansas , in 1858 , a white stranger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Henry , wearing a sack , sits at the stranger ’ s feet , shining his shoes .
The stranger and Henry ’ s father bond over the good word , as the stranger recites Biblical passages with increasing fervor and starts to loudly preach the gospel of abolition .
When Henry ’ s master arrives , and hears the stranger , he balks , asking the stranger to pledge his fidelity to the cause of slavery .
The stranger—who is revealed to be John Brown—refuses , and opens fire .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is accidentally killed , and Brown , as he flees , scoops up our narrator , pronouncing the child freed .
But Brown has misheard Henry ’ s name and mistaken his sack for a dress ; he calls him Henrietta .
Our narrator , a quippy angel of history , trails the “ nigger-stealing ” Brown and his troops as they provoke violent skirmishes with slaveholders , rich and poor , dumb and heralded , across the West and the East , and finally , fatefully , in Harpers Ferry , Virginia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dyad of Huck Finn and Nigger Jim is warped .
To Henry , freedom is , at first , too new to compute—and , besides , isn ’ t traipsing around the backlands of Kansas with a bearded white man and his motley company just another kind of bondage ?
Master fed him well and didn ’ t beat him much .
Brown is inscrutable to Henrietta ( or Little Onion , the nickname the child earns after eating the strange man ’ s good-luck charm ) .
With Brown , Henry can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nature , ” as he puts it ; bereft of identity and of family , he wordlessly accepts a new dress that Brown gives him , living as the girl Brown mistakes him for .
“ Much of colored life was an act , ” Henry says .
“ And the Negroes that did what they was told and kept they mouth shut lived the longest.
” “ The Good Lord Bird ” makes a sly joke of the Christian notion of prophetic vision : so enraged is Brown by the enslavement of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can not see that his new daughter is a son .
No measure of good intention , or of spilled blood , can bridge the distance between the white ally and his Black comrades .
This can be to the Negro ’ s benefit .
Act like the white man ’ s idea of the nigger and you can cheat death .
“ Everybody got to make a speech about the Negro , except the Negro , ” Henry observes while watching one of Brown ’ s thunderous addresses to a group of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cluelessness of white people fuels many gags in the series .
Every Black person Henry encounters—the freemen and the enslaved who reluctantly join Brown ’ s camp , the historical figures such as Douglass and Harriet Tubman—immediately notices his lie .
These are the characters who furnish and expand his world view .
As Tubman ( Zainab Jah ) teaches him , “ slavery has made a fool out of a lot of folks.
” “ The Good Lord Bird ” roots for Brown , but it has no patience for hagiography .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ interpretation of the man who , as the Kansas muralist John Steuart Curry once wrote , “ went about wreaking good on humanity.
” At one moment , he is a holy-roller Rambo , drawing twin pistols from their holsters ; at the next , he is a long-winded preacher , comically protracting his prayers .
Certain skitlike scenes are thrillingly reminiscent of Monty Python ; the series is like a cross between “ Masterpiece Theatre ” and a particularly elaborate episode of “ Drunk History.
” Hawke alternately stars and recedes into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lord Bird ” swings nimbly from pulpy proto-Western to surreal , somewhat anachronistic social satire .
Henry ’ s skewering of the self-satisfied white abolitionist crowd doubles as a critique of the contemporary white ally .
Frederick Douglass serves as a crucible in which stereotypes about the noble race man are burnt .
The comedy of “ The Good Lord Bird ” is bawdy and dry , but the show is bighearted .
Some of the most affecting moments draw on the dynamic between Brown , whose perspective on the world is ferociously @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just trying to survive and , if possible , have a little fun .
It takes a while for Henry to sign on to Brown ’ s freedom project .
In Episode 2 , scared off by the fanaticism of Brown ’ s army , Henry runs away and takes a job at a brothel , where he becomes a bit of a drunk .
Still dressed as a girl , he crosses paths with Sibonia ( the excellent Crystal Lee Brown ) , an enslaved woman who is feigning insanity in order @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Pie ( Natasha Marc ) , a light-skinned prostitute who sells Sibonia out .
Pie ’ s brutal betrayal and Sibonia ’ s unshakable selflessness provide a lesson that Brown could never have taught him .
The show ’ s characterization of Brown would be a good topic for a white-studies class .
As his band approaches Virginia , Brown grows more zealous .
Far from descending into madness , he rises into a blazing , all-encompassing , possibly suicidal lucidity .
Comforting Henry the night before he is hanged , Brown @ @ @ @ @ @ @ man in the world.
” To approach death is to make progress ; only annihilation will precipitate the great war .
Brown fails and dies so that others may fail and die after him—perhaps ad infinitum .
Brown ’ s was never a hero ’ s journey , and , in this series , Brown is not the white savior , because the white savior does not exist in Henry ’ s imagination .
“ He ain ’ t gon ’ save us , ” a Black porter says to his master .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” ♦

Mercifully, the new Showtime miniseries “The Good Lord Bird,” a reimagining of the militant abolitionist John Brown’s doomed ride to Harpers Ferry, is not “woke.” Instead, it has an impish spirit of contrivance that is largely missing from contemporary antebellum historical fictions. Among its finest moments of cultural sacrilege is a sex farce starring Frederick Douglass, whom Brown (Ethan Hawke) insists on calling “the King of the Negroes.” Douglass, in a canny bit of casting, is played by Daveed Diggs, who originated the roles of Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway phenomenon, “Hamilton,” a retelling of American history that marked the apex of Obama-era artistic liberal agitprop. “The Good Lord Bird,” though, is not concerned with supplanting the mess and the mystery of history with upbeat coherence. Diggs’s Douglass is a playboy dandy flushed with Cognac, nesting on a couch at his Rochester mansion between his Black wife, Anna, and his German mistress, Ottilie.
Credit for the series’ mischief is due to James McBride, whose 2013 novel of the same name has been adapted with deep, sometimes stubborn fidelity by Mark Richard and Hawke, who are both, along with McBride, executive producers on the show. The novel is an idiosyncratic critique of history-making, an account of the prelude to emancipation told from the point of view of an eccentric, elderly man who likes to wear dresses. Henry (the Onion) Shackleford, born into slavery, recounts how, as a child, he came under the wing of the “old coot” John Brown and his ragtag army as they planned to take over a strategic U.S. military arsenal to hasten the holy war on the peculiar institution. McBride’s fictive Black witness allows him to rewrite Brown’s final, righteous exertions as tragicomedy.
The show is narrated by a young Henry (played by the newcomer Joshua Caleb Johnson), who, in the opening episode, launches into what sounds like a tall tale. In Osawatomie, Kansas, in 1858, a white stranger comes to his father for a shave. Henry, wearing a sack, sits at the stranger’s feet, shining his shoes. The stranger and Henry’s father bond over the good word, as the stranger recites Biblical passages with increasing fervor and starts to loudly preach the gospel of abolition. When Henry’s master arrives, and hears the stranger, he balks, asking the stranger to pledge his fidelity to the cause of slavery. The stranger—who is revealed to be John Brown—refuses, and opens fire. In the chaos, Henry’s father is accidentally killed, and Brown, as he flees, scoops up our narrator, pronouncing the child freed. But Brown has misheard Henry’s name and mistaken his sack for a dress; he calls him Henrietta.
Our narrator, a quippy angel of history, trails the “nigger-stealing” Brown and his troops as they provoke violent skirmishes with slaveholders, rich and poor, dumb and heralded, across the West and the East, and finally, fatefully, in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. In this picaresque tale, the dyad of Huck Finn and Nigger Jim is warped. To Henry, freedom is, at first, too new to compute—and, besides, isn’t traipsing around the backlands of Kansas with a bearded white man and his motley company just another kind of bondage? Master fed him well and didn’t beat him much. Brown is inscrutable to Henrietta (or Little Onion, the nickname the child earns after eating the strange man’s good-luck charm). With Brown, Henry cannot live according to his “true nature,” as he puts it; bereft of identity and of family, he wordlessly accepts a new dress that Brown gives him, living as the girl Brown mistakes him for. “Much of colored life was an act,” Henry says. “And the Negroes that did what they was told and kept they mouth shut lived the longest.”
“The Good Lord Bird” makes a sly joke of the Christian notion of prophetic vision: so enraged is Brown by the enslavement of his Black brothers and sisters that he cannot see that his new daughter is a son. No measure of good intention, or of spilled blood, can bridge the distance between the white ally and his Black comrades. This can be to the Negro’s benefit. Act like the white man’s idea of the nigger and you can cheat death. “Everybody got to make a speech about the Negro, except the Negro,” Henry observes while watching one of Brown’s thunderous addresses to a group of white abolitionists in the Northeast. The cluelessness of white people fuels many gags in the series. Every Black person Henry encounters—the freemen and the enslaved who reluctantly join Brown’s camp, the historical figures such as Douglass and Harriet Tubman—immediately notices his lie. These are the characters who furnish and expand his world view. As Tubman (Zainab Jah) teaches him, “slavery has made a fool out of a lot of folks.”
“The Good Lord Bird” roots for Brown, but it has no patience for hagiography. Hawke’s is a folklorically outsized interpretation of the man who, as the Kansas muralist John Steuart Curry once wrote, “went about wreaking good on humanity.” At one moment, he is a holy-roller Rambo, drawing twin pistols from their holsters; at the next, he is a long-winded preacher, comically protracting his prayers. Certain skitlike scenes are thrillingly reminiscent of Monty Python; the series is like a cross between “Masterpiece Theatre” and a particularly elaborate episode of “Drunk History.” Hawke alternately stars and recedes into the background, as “The Good Lord Bird” swings nimbly from pulpy proto-Western to surreal, somewhat anachronistic social satire. Henry’s skewering of the self-satisfied white abolitionist crowd doubles as a critique of the contemporary white ally. Frederick Douglass serves as a crucible in which stereotypes about the noble race man are burnt.
The comedy of “The Good Lord Bird” is bawdy and dry, but the show is bighearted. Some of the most affecting moments draw on the dynamic between Brown, whose perspective on the world is ferociously fixed, and Henry, who is just trying to survive and, if possible, have a little fun. It takes a while for Henry to sign on to Brown’s freedom project. In Episode 2, scared off by the fanaticism of Brown’s army, Henry runs away and takes a job at a brothel, where he becomes a bit of a drunk. Still dressed as a girl, he crosses paths with Sibonia (the excellent Crystal Lee Brown), an enslaved woman who is feigning insanity in order to carry out an insurrectionist plot, and Pie (Natasha Marc), a light-skinned prostitute who sells Sibonia out. Pie’s brutal betrayal and Sibonia’s unshakable selflessness provide a lesson that Brown could never have taught him.
The show’s characterization of Brown would be a good topic for a white-studies class. As his band approaches Virginia, Brown grows more zealous. Far from descending into madness, he rises into a blazing, all-encompassing, possibly suicidal lucidity. Comforting Henry the night before he is hanged, Brown declares, “I am the luckiest man in the world.” To approach death is to make progress; only annihilation will precipitate the great war. Brown fails and dies so that others may fail and die after him—perhaps ad infinitum. Brown’s was never a hero’s journey, and, in this series, Brown is not the white savior, because the white savior does not exist in Henry’s imagination. “He ain’t gon’ save us,” a Black porter says to his master. “He’s tryna save you.” ♦


newyorker--2020-10-26--Curtis Sittenfeld on Politics and Ambiguity

There are two reasons I set the story in 2017 .
The first is that it ’ s not now—that depicting events in a time clearly before the pandemic means the characters can do things that once seemed unremarkable , like meet for lunch inside restaurants , without those actions needing to be explained .
The second reason is that when Irene , the protagonist , refers to “ an article about Mike Pence that got a lot of attention , ” there ’ s a specific article I had in mind : it ran in the Washington Post on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ written by the journalist Ashley Parker ; and the headline was “ Karen Pence is the vice president ’ s ‘ prayer warrior , ’ gut check and shield ” ( yes , it was actually a profile of Karen Pence ) .
Parker ’ s article refers to a 2002 article in another publication , The Hill , revealing that Pence “ never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won ’ t attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side.
” I believe that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into the wider cultural consciousness .
Irene sets about having lunch alone with various men to ask them their thoughts about the Mike Pence rule , and to have them fill out questionnaires about whether they spend time alone with women .
These lunches give the story its structure .
Is it a relief to light upon that kind of organizing pattern ?
Or does it feel somehow constraining ?
Well , constraints can actually be a relief .
The story ’ s structure is , indeed , very simple—though possibly misleading in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that imposed additional constraints .
I decided to give information about the protagonist only as needed , rather than preëmptively , and I decided to reveal central facts within dialogue , which is often considered taboo by writers .
Or , even worse , it ’ s considered cheesy , the kind of crutch employed by , say , a soap opera : “ Bernard , how can I run away with you when you ’ re the man who burned down my mansion and tried to run over my cousin ?
!
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ supposed rules .
This is , in its oblique way , a political story .
Much like two of your novels , “ American Wife ” and “ Rodham , ” it uses political facts and narrative to go off in its own direction .
What repeatedly draws you to politics as a source for your writing ?
Are there novels or stories that you look to as examples of the form done really well ?
In general , I ’ m interested in the discrepancies between our public selves and private selves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dramatic and intense in politics , which feature literal popularity contests .
There ’ s just so much pressure on politicians , and those close to them , to act a particular way .
I suppose I ’ m also drawn to fiction about politics because there ’ s an idea ( that perhaps no one believes ) that , in the political realm , personality is peripheral and policy is what ’ s being sold , debated , et cetera .
But , of course , this pretense just makes personality more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that are done well , “ The Line of Beauty , ” by Alan Hollinghurst , is pretty perfect .
An irony of Irene ’ s project is that maybe Mike Pence is right .
There ’ s a sense , though , that , even if Pence is right , that ’ s not the worst thing in the world .
Tell us more about the ambiguity of that ending ?
Perhaps the point of ambiguity is that it ’ s ambiguous ?
And a story should speak for itself ?
With @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I definitely , unequivocally don ’ t think Mike Pence is right .
I can ’ t imagine any adult disputing the fact that sometimes some individuals who are in monogamous relationships are attracted to people other than their partners .
But that ’ s not Mike Pence ’ s insight any more than America was Columbus ’ s discovery .
The part specific to Pence , Graham , et cetera .
is how to behave in reaction to that fact .
And their choice is wrong for a bunch of reasons , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ imposing their will on other people in a way that ( professionally and financially ) disadvantages the others .
They ’ re also ignoring the existence of anyone who isn ’ t heterosexual .
Even as she tries to dismiss the Billy Graham rule , Irene is implicitly giving credence to it rather than simply ignoring it—and perhaps her inability to ignore it is due to her being a married heterosexual woman .
But I actually don ’ t think the salient question is whether adhering to the Billy Graham rule achieves its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Maude reminds her at the end , that ’ s one way to live a life , but there are many others .

Photograph by Colin McPherson / Getty
In “A for Alone,” your story in this week’s issue, Irene comes up with a kind of conceptual art project based on Mike Pence’s credo that, if you’re a married man, you don’t spend time alone with another woman. The story is set in the fall of 2017. What is significant about that time period, and what does working with recent history allow you to do, narratively?
There are two reasons I set the story in 2017. The first is that it’s not now—that depicting events in a time clearly before the pandemic means the characters can do things that once seemed unremarkable, like meet for lunch inside restaurants, without those actions needing to be explained. The second reason is that when Irene, the protagonist, refers to “an article about Mike Pence that got a lot of attention,” there’s a specific article I had in mind: it ran in the Washington Post on March 28, 2017; it was written by the journalist Ashley Parker; and the headline was “Karen Pence is the vice president’s ‘prayer warrior,’ gut check and shield” (yes, it was actually a profile of Karen Pence). Parker’s article refers to a 2002 article in another publication, The Hill, revealing that Pence “never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won’t attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side.” I believe that the Post article brought the Billy Graham rule into the wider cultural consciousness.
Irene sets about having lunch alone with various men to ask them their thoughts about the Mike Pence rule, and to have them fill out questionnaires about whether they spend time alone with women. These lunches give the story its structure. Is it a relief to light upon that kind of organizing pattern? Or does it feel somehow constraining?
Well, constraints can actually be a relief. The story’s structure is, indeed, very simple—though possibly misleading in the first half—and I made two choices that imposed additional constraints. I decided to give information about the protagonist only as needed, rather than preëmptively, and I decided to reveal central facts within dialogue, which is often considered taboo by writers. Or, even worse, it’s considered cheesy, the kind of crutch employed by, say, a soap opera: “Bernard, how can I run away with you when you’re the man who burned down my mansion and tried to run over my cousin?!” Naturally, I enjoyed flouting these supposed rules.
This is, in its oblique way, a political story. Much like two of your novels, “American Wife” and “Rodham,” it uses political facts and narrative to go off in its own direction. What repeatedly draws you to politics as a source for your writing? Are there novels or stories that you look to as examples of the form done really well?
In general, I’m interested in the discrepancies between our public selves and private selves, and those discrepancies can be particularly dramatic and intense in politics, which feature literal popularity contests. There’s just so much pressure on politicians, and those close to them, to act a particular way. I suppose I’m also drawn to fiction about politics because there’s an idea (that perhaps no one believes) that, in the political realm, personality is peripheral and policy is what’s being sold, debated, et cetera. But, of course, this pretense just makes personality more intriguing. As for overtly political novels that are done well, “The Line of Beauty,” by Alan Hollinghurst, is pretty perfect.
An irony of Irene’s project is that maybe Mike Pence is right. There’s a sense, though, that, even if Pence is right, that’s not the worst thing in the world. Tell us more about the ambiguity of that ending?
Perhaps the point of ambiguity is that it’s ambiguous? And a story should speak for itself? With that disclaimer out of the way, I definitely, unequivocally don’t think Mike Pence is right. I can’t imagine any adult disputing the fact that sometimes some individuals who are in monogamous relationships are attracted to people other than their partners. But that’s not Mike Pence’s insight any more than America was Columbus’s discovery. The part specific to Pence, Graham, et cetera. is how to behave in reaction to that fact. And their choice is wrong for a bunch of reasons, foremost among them that they’re imposing their will on other people in a way that (professionally and financially) disadvantages the others. They’re also ignoring the existence of anyone who isn’t heterosexual. Even as she tries to dismiss the Billy Graham rule, Irene is implicitly giving credence to it rather than simply ignoring it—and perhaps her inability to ignore it is due to her being a married heterosexual woman. But I actually don’t think the salient question is whether adhering to the Billy Graham rule achieves its goal. As Irene’s friend Maude reminds her at the end, that’s one way to live a life, but there are many others.


newyorker--2020-10-26--Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Briefly Noted Book Reviews

The Next Great Migration , by Sonia Shah ( Bloomsbury ) .
Countering the perception that today ’ s human and nonhuman migrations represent a global crisis , this engrossing book draws on history , interviews , and a wide range of scientific research to show that migration is “ an unexceptional ongoing reality.
” Shah deftly traces the influence of the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus , whose commitment to the Christian idea of a static , divinely ordered world led him to dismiss the reality of natural migration , and whose bigotry led him to reject the possibilities of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She shows how Linnaeus ’ s ideas formed the basis for centuries of so-called race science , eugenics , racist state structures , and xenophobia .
Max Jacob , by Rosanna Warren ( Norton ) .
The poet , painter , and astrologer Max Jacob embodies both the euphoric inception and the tragic demise of European modernism in this lively literary biography .
A friend of Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire , and a mentor to Jean Cocteau , Jacob was a Zelig of Paris ’ s bohemian demimondes , but Warren also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his ecstatic prose poems and cabaret verse , which appear in her own deft translations .
As the aesthetic conflicts between Symbolism and Cubism , Surrealism and Dada give way to the advent of real violence , Warren ’ s account takes on an elegiac tone .
Jacob , a devout Catholic who converted from Judaism , died in an internment camp in 1944 , two days before his scheduled deportation to Auschwitz .
Silence Is My Mother Tongue , by Sulaiman Addonia ( Graywolf ) .
Caught up in the conflict between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ teen-age protagonist of this enigmatic novel , has been forced to flee to a Sudanese refugee camp with her brother and mother .
The siblings ’ bond sustains them as they navigate the camp , a place of friendship and rough justice , of rigid tradition and sexual awakening .
For the refugees , “ life itself was suspended , quietly churning like milk in a goatskin , ” Addonia writes .
“ Soon it would curdle.
” When Saba , who had wanted to become a doctor , is pushed into marriage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her far from her brother , believing all the while that “ dreams for a woman are no longer inherited but created.
” The Cold Millions , by Jess Walter ( Harper ) .
Set primarily in Spokane , in 1909 , this masterly novel dramatizes the free-speech riots led by the Industrial Workers of the World , and features such historical figures as the labor organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and John Sullivan , the police chief who put her in jail .
The plot centers on two brothers who join “ this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Shifting perspectives and sharp plot twists contribute to the richness of the story , bringing a tumultuous time in American history to life .
Walter illustrates how injustice can galvanize young men but also wreck them .
“ We were flies buzzing around the heads of millionaires , ” one of the brothers observes .
“ Fooling ourselves that we had power because they couldn ’ t possibly swat us all .
”

The Next Great Migration, by Sonia Shah (Bloomsbury). Countering the perception that today’s human and nonhuman migrations represent a global crisis, this engrossing book draws on history, interviews, and a wide range of scientific research to show that migration is “an unexceptional ongoing reality.” Shah deftly traces the influence of the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, whose commitment to the Christian idea of a static, divinely ordered world led him to dismiss the reality of natural migration, and whose bigotry led him to reject the possibilities of human migration and of shared ancestry. She shows how Linnaeus’s ideas formed the basis for centuries of so-called race science, eugenics, racist state structures, and xenophobia.
Max Jacob, by Rosanna Warren (Norton). The poet, painter, and astrologer Max Jacob embodies both the euphoric inception and the tragic demise of European modernism in this lively literary biography. A friend of Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire, and a mentor to Jean Cocteau, Jacob was a Zelig of Paris’s bohemian demimondes, but Warren also makes a case for the importance of his ecstatic prose poems and cabaret verse, which appear in her own deft translations. As the aesthetic conflicts between Symbolism and Cubism, Surrealism and Dada give way to the advent of real violence, Warren’s account takes on an elegiac tone. Jacob, a devout Catholic who converted from Judaism, died in an internment camp in 1944, two days before his scheduled deportation to Auschwitz.
Silence Is My Mother Tongue, by Sulaiman Addonia (Graywolf). Caught up in the conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia, Saba, the teen-age protagonist of this enigmatic novel, has been forced to flee to a Sudanese refugee camp with her brother and mother. The siblings’ bond sustains them as they navigate the camp, a place of friendship and rough justice, of rigid tradition and sexual awakening. For the refugees, “life itself was suspended, quietly churning like milk in a goatskin,” Addonia writes. “Soon it would curdle.” When Saba, who had wanted to become a doctor, is pushed into marriage, she makes a choice that carries her far from her brother, believing all the while that “dreams for a woman are no longer inherited but created.”
The Cold Millions, by Jess Walter (Harper). Set primarily in Spokane, in 1909, this masterly novel dramatizes the free-speech riots led by the Industrial Workers of the World, and features such historical figures as the labor organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and John Sullivan, the police chief who put her in jail. The plot centers on two brothers who join “this army of the poor and broken.” Shifting perspectives and sharp plot twists contribute to the richness of the story, bringing a tumultuous time in American history to life. Walter illustrates how injustice can galvanize young men but also wreck them. “We were flies buzzing around the heads of millionaires,” one of the brothers observes. “Fooling ourselves that we had power because they couldn’t possibly swat us all.”


newyorker--2020-10-26--About Our Excerpt from President Obama’s Forthcoming Memoir

This week , The New Yorker is publishing a long piece by Barack Obama about the ferocious battle over his most transformative piece of legislation , the Affordable Care Act .
In “ A President Looks Back on His Toughest Fight , ” which is adapted from his forthcoming memoir , “ A Promised Land , ” the forty-fourth President grapples with the ongoing American debate over health care : the root of the problem , the countervailing interests , the ambitions , the setbacks , the politics— “ the art of the possible , ” as Obama describes the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more relevant : as the election approaches , and as Americans continue to suffer from the pandemic and the systemic failures it has exposed , health care is at the center of everyone ’ s attention .
Meanwhile , Donald Trump , having failed repeatedly to kill the A.C.A .
in Congress and , so far , in the courts , continues to promise that he will replace it with something far better .
Soon .
Very soon .
President Obama ’ s approach is by turns committed , self-questioning , and meditative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the day-to-day job of being President , and writes with a keen concentration on detail , episode , and dialogue .
It ’ s this unique point of view , a particularly writerly President writing about the Presidency , that makes this excerpt so valuable .
The Presidential memoir is ordinarily a literary meal somewhat less delicious than library paste .
Former inhabitants of the Oval Office generally leave that quiet , intimidating room prematurely aged , worn out , and defensive .
The bone-weary ex is in no mood for self-doubt or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with enticing tales of early days—the tall tales of youth and years of becoming—but once we cross the threshold of the White House , the story becomes guarded , bland , a desk diary : “ And then we met the Sultan of Brunei .
.
.
” Sometimes , the author ’ s disengagement from the book project can be crippling .
Reviewing Ronald Reagan ’ s autobiography , “ An American Life , ” Hendrik Hertzberg came to suspect that the putative author , buoyed by a “ thoroughly professional team @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , did not likely read his own book , much less write it .
O.K.
, maybe that ’ s not fair , Hertzberg conceded .
Because Reagan did produce an abridged audio edition—reading , by Hertzberg ’ s reckoning , thirty-two thousand words of the two-hundred-and-sixty-thousand-word text—Hertzberg kindly allowed that the former President had read “ at least 12 percent of his book .
Trust , but verify.
” Countless critics , including Matthew Arnold , Gertrude Stein , and Edmund Wilson , praised Ulysses S. Grant ’ s memoir as outstanding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ poured his last energies into that remarkable book .
Ailing with throat cancer , Grant wrote at a rate of up to fifty pages a day ; he died just five days after finishing .
But his book , which was published by Mark Twain , did not cover his White House years ; its main episodes were on the battlefields of the Mexican-American War and the Civil War .
The clarity and intimacy of his prose , exemplified by his account of Lee ’ s surrender at Appomattox Court House , set @ @ @ @ @ @ @ course , has already written about his early struggles with identity and his coming of age , in “ Dreams from My Father.
” His new book , which will be published by Crown , on November 17th , gets to the work of the Presidency quite quickly .
As you will see in The New Yorker ’ s excerpt , he is neither gossipy nor vindictive ; there are few bite-sized “ takeaways.
” Instead , Obama is insistently Obamian : serious , poised , wry , unabashedly proud of the advances @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican leadership that was hellbent on thwarting his Presidency from the very first .
The writing did not come easily .
In the summer of 2019 , I met with President Obama and he made it plain that the book was proving far more stubborn than he had hoped .
Like many authors , he was not without help in research and fact checking , but he wrote the book himself , by hand , on yellow legal pads .
Despite the familiar frustrations , the manuscript grew .
At a certain point @ @ @ @ @ @ @ publisher was willing to wait a few more years and publish a binding-busting tome , he ’ d be better off dividing the memoir into two volumes .
“ A Promised Land ” ends with the rise of birtherism and Donald Trump and the killing of Osama bin Laden .
( The second volume will come when it comes . )
We ’ re pleased to publish President Obama ’ s account of the A.C.A .
in this year ’ s Power Issue , which also features Hua Hsu on the Asian-American vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Republican Party , Luke Mogelson on Antifa and the radical right , fiction by Curtis Sittenfeld , and a great deal more .
We thank you for being a reader and hope you enjoy it all .
And , yes , please don ’ t forget to vote .

This week, The New Yorker is publishing a long piece by Barack Obama about the ferocious battle over his most transformative piece of legislation, the Affordable Care Act. In “A President Looks Back on His Toughest Fight,” which is adapted from his forthcoming memoir, “A Promised Land,” the forty-fourth President grapples with the ongoing American debate over health care: the root of the problem, the countervailing interests, the ambitions, the setbacks, the politics—“the art of the possible,” as Obama describes the process. His subject could not be more relevant: as the election approaches, and as Americans continue to suffer from the pandemic and the systemic failures it has exposed, health care is at the center of everyone’s attention. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, having failed repeatedly to kill the A.C.A. in Congress and, so far, in the courts, continues to promise that he will replace it with something far better. Soon. Very soon.
Read the Excerpt President Obama on his most enduring—and most contested—legacy.
President Obama’s approach is by turns committed, self-questioning, and meditative. He also provides a look at the day-to-day job of being President, and writes with a keen concentration on detail, episode, and dialogue. It’s this unique point of view, a particularly writerly President writing about the Presidency, that makes this excerpt so valuable.
The Presidential memoir is ordinarily a literary meal somewhat less delicious than library paste. Former inhabitants of the Oval Office generally leave that quiet, intimidating room prematurely aged, worn out, and defensive. The bone-weary ex is in no mood for self-doubt or hard thinking. The book might begin with enticing tales of early days—the tall tales of youth and years of becoming—but once we cross the threshold of the White House, the story becomes guarded, bland, a desk diary: “And then we met the Sultan of Brunei . . .”
Sometimes, the author’s disengagement from the book project can be crippling. Reviewing Ronald Reagan’s autobiography, “An American Life,” Hendrik Hertzberg came to suspect that the putative author, buoyed by a “thoroughly professional team” of about two dozen literary helpers, did not likely read his own book, much less write it. O.K., maybe that’s not fair, Hertzberg conceded. Because Reagan did produce an abridged audio edition—reading, by Hertzberg’s reckoning, thirty-two thousand words of the two-hundred-and-sixty-thousand-word text—Hertzberg kindly allowed that the former President had read “at least 12 percent of his book. Trust, but verify.”
Countless critics, including Matthew Arnold, Gertrude Stein, and Edmund Wilson, praised Ulysses S. Grant’s memoir as outstanding among those of all ex-Presidents. Grant poured his last energies into that remarkable book. Ailing with throat cancer, Grant wrote at a rate of up to fifty pages a day; he died just five days after finishing. But his book, which was published by Mark Twain, did not cover his White House years; its main episodes were on the battlefields of the Mexican-American War and the Civil War. The clarity and intimacy of his prose, exemplified by his account of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House, set a high mark.
Obama, of course, has already written about his early struggles with identity and his coming of age, in “Dreams from My Father.” His new book, which will be published by Crown, on November 17th, gets to the work of the Presidency quite quickly. As you will see in The New Yorker’s excerpt, he is neither gossipy nor vindictive; there are few bite-sized “takeaways.” Instead, Obama is insistently Obamian: serious, poised, wry, unabashedly proud of the advances he was able to make despite a Republican leadership that was hellbent on thwarting his Presidency from the very first.
The writing did not come easily. In the summer of 2019, I met with President Obama and he made it plain that the book was proving far more stubborn than he had hoped. Like many authors, he was not without help in research and fact checking, but he wrote the book himself, by hand, on yellow legal pads. Despite the familiar frustrations, the manuscript grew. At a certain point, Obama decided that, unless his publisher was willing to wait a few more years and publish a binding-busting tome, he’d be better off dividing the memoir into two volumes. “A Promised Land” ends with the rise of birtherism and Donald Trump and the killing of Osama bin Laden. (The second volume will come when it comes.)
We’re pleased to publish President Obama’s account of the A.C.A. in this year’s Power Issue, which also features Hua Hsu on the Asian-American vote, Nicholas Lemann on the future of the Republican Party, Luke Mogelson on Antifa and the radical right, fiction by Curtis Sittenfeld, and a great deal more. We thank you for being a reader and hope you enjoy it all. And, yes, please don’t forget to vote.


newyorker--2020-10-26--The Comedy Writers Who Try to Make Cuomo Cool

Andrew Cuomo isn ’ t known for his cool factor with young people , or for his comedy chops .
But , last month , New York ’ s governor tweeted out a video that covered both bases : a public-service announcement imploring millennials to wear masks , starring Paul Rudd .
“ Yo , what up , dawgs ?
Paul Rudd here , actor and certified young person , ” the fifty-one-year-old begins , wearing skater gear .
“ A few days ago , I was talking on the iPhone with my homie Governor Cuomo , and he ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ millennials need to wear masks.
” Rudd goes on to mangle youngster slang ( “ Masks—they ’ re totally beast ” ) , beatbox , and pretend to call Billie Eilish ( “ You ’ re wearing your mask ?
Man , I want to stan you ” ) .
The video has been viewed more than eight million times .
The P.S.A.
, part of Cuomo ’ s “ Mask Up America ” campaign , is the work of Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw , who are , in fact , certified @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are the youngest writers on the “ Tonight Show , ” where they were hired after graduating from Yale , in 2018 .
Their specialty is writing sketches for politicians , like a slow-jamming segment for Bernie Sanders .
“ That was a special one , ” Shaw said recently , at the apartment she shares with Kronengold , in Chelsea .
The two have been dating since their freshman year .
They met in Washington Square Park , at an event for accepted students .
“ This woman walked by who had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like , forty pigeons on her arms , ” Shaw recalled .
“ Ben turned to the group and said , ‘ Do you think she knows ?
’ It just made me laugh so hard.
” At Yale , they joined rival comedy troupes , the Fifth Humour and Red Hot Poker , and secretly edited each other ’ s sketches .
“ We were realizing how much we liked making comedy together , ” Shaw said .
During their senior year , they created , for the Yale Symphony Orchestra ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Bulldog and the Beast , ” for which they wrangled cameos from Allison Williams , Sarah Jessica Parker , and Liev Schreiber .
Their breakout hit was a two-hander graduation speech , in which Shaw pretended to dump Kronengold at the podium .
Hillary Clinton , the Class Day speaker , cracked up in a seat behind them .
“ She asked us afterward what our plans were after graduation , ” Shaw said .
“ I think it was one of the first times we really put into words ‘ We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ YouTube video of the speech rocketed past five million views , and the couple used it to get an agent .
Shaw said that , a few months ago , “ we got a call from our agent , saying , ‘ Do you guys want to get on the phone with Paul Rudd ?
He was asked by Governor Cuomo ’ s office to film some sort of P.S.A.
, and he wants to riff some things out with some sketch comedians.
’ ” They filmed the sketch at the Governor ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only note from Cuomo ’ s staff was to cut an expletive . )
Now that it had gone viral , they ’ d arranged to pitch more ideas .
On a Monday night , the pair sat on a couch , with a labradoodle named Milo , for a brainstorming session .
Cuomo ’ s team had suggested three messaging topics .
First : masks .
Kronengold proposed a serious , straight-to-camera shot , in which a good-looking celebrity ( Ryan Reynolds ? )
talks about how mask-wearing has robbed the world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We feel bad .
We ’ re depriving you in a way , ’ ” he riffed .
Shaw laughed .
Could it work for Scarlett Johansson ?
Timothée Chalamet ?
“ Any hot New York celebrity would work , ” she said .
Kronengold had another idea : a comedian ( Amy Poehler ? )
has been tasked with finding a vaccine .
“ You could see her pouring beakers .
It ’ s just a shitshow mess .
You see , like , a pig wandering in the background with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
At the end , the turn is ‘ Don ’ t worry , guys .
I ’ ve got this .
But just in case .
.
.
wear a mask.
’ ” “ I would definitely click something like that , ” Shaw said .
Next : New York has a contact-tracing app , COVID Alert NY .
How to convince young people that it won ’ t track their movements ?
Maybe Chris Rock ranting , “ We ’ re not stealing your fucking data .
Chill out !
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , say , Will Ferrell is explaining how to use the app and he gets an alert that he ’ s been exposed to the virus ?
“ He ’ s , like , ‘ I don ’ t have the fortitude for this !
I know it ’ s going to take me !
’ ” Finally : voting in a pandemic .
Kronengold pictured a celebrity telling New Yorkers their options .
“ ‘ I don ’ t want to leave the house.
’ ‘ Great !
Absentee !
’ ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Election Day.
’ ‘ Early voting !
’ And then , like , ‘ I want to be piggybacked to the polls by John Cena , and I won ’ t accept anything less.
’ ” “ I like that a lot , ” Shaw said .
They put it down as an idea for Tina Fey .
♦

Andrew Cuomo isn’t known for his cool factor with young people, or for his comedy chops. But, last month, New York’s governor tweeted out a video that covered both bases: a public-service announcement imploring millennials to wear masks, starring Paul Rudd. “Yo, what up, dawgs? Paul Rudd here, actor and certified young person,” the fifty-one-year-old begins, wearing skater gear. “A few days ago, I was talking on the iPhone with my homie Governor Cuomo, and he’s just going off about how us millennials need to wear masks.” Rudd goes on to mangle youngster slang (“Masks—they’re totally beast”), beatbox, and pretend to call Billie Eilish (“You’re wearing your mask? Man, I want to stan you”). The video has been viewed more than eight million times.
The P.S.A., part of Cuomo’s “Mask Up America” campaign, is the work of Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw, who are, in fact, certified young people. At twenty-four, they are the youngest writers on the “Tonight Show,” where they were hired after graduating from Yale, in 2018. Their specialty is writing sketches for politicians, like a slow-jamming segment for Bernie Sanders. “That was a special one,” Shaw said recently, at the apartment she shares with Kronengold, in Chelsea. The two have been dating since their freshman year. They met in Washington Square Park, at an event for accepted students. “This woman walked by who had been feeding the birds, with, like, forty pigeons on her arms,” Shaw recalled. “Ben turned to the group and said, ‘Do you think she knows?’ It just made me laugh so hard.”
“And no one else,” Kronengold added.
At Yale, they joined rival comedy troupes, the Fifth Humour and Red Hot Poker, and secretly edited each other’s sketches. “We were realizing how much we liked making comedy together,” Shaw said. During their senior year, they created, for the Yale Symphony Orchestra’s Halloween show, a film called “Bulldog and the Beast,” for which they wrangled cameos from Allison Williams, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Liev Schreiber. Their breakout hit was a two-hander graduation speech, in which Shaw pretended to dump Kronengold at the podium. Hillary Clinton, the Class Day speaker, cracked up in a seat behind them. “She asked us afterward what our plans were after graduation,” Shaw said. “I think it was one of the first times we really put into words ‘We want to write comedy.’ ” A YouTube video of the speech rocketed past five million views, and the couple used it to get an agent.
Shaw said that, a few months ago, “we got a call from our agent, saying, ‘Do you guys want to get on the phone with Paul Rudd? He was asked by Governor Cuomo’s office to film some sort of P.S.A., and he wants to riff some things out with some sketch comedians.’ ” They filmed the sketch at the Governor’s offices in midtown. (The only note from Cuomo’s staff was to cut an expletive.) Now that it had gone viral, they’d arranged to pitch more ideas. On a Monday night, the pair sat on a couch, with a labradoodle named Milo, for a brainstorming session. Cuomo’s team had suggested three messaging topics. First: masks. Kronengold proposed a serious, straight-to-camera shot, in which a good-looking celebrity (Ryan Reynolds?) talks about how mask-wearing has robbed the world of his beautiful face. “ ‘We feel bad. We’re depriving you in a way,’ ” he riffed. Shaw laughed. Could it work for Scarlett Johansson? Timothée Chalamet? “Any hot New York celebrity would work,” she said. Kronengold had another idea: a comedian (Amy Poehler?) has been tasked with finding a vaccine. “You could see her pouring beakers. It’s just a shitshow mess. You see, like, a pig wandering in the background with a ‘No. 4’ on it. At the end, the turn is ‘Don’t worry, guys. I’ve got this. But just in case . . . wear a mask.’ ”
“I would definitely click something like that,” Shaw said.
Next: New York has a contact-tracing app, COVID Alert NY. How to convince young people that it won’t track their movements? Maybe Chris Rock ranting, “We’re not stealing your fucking data. Chill out!” Or, Kronengold said, what if, say, Will Ferrell is explaining how to use the app and he gets an alert that he’s been exposed to the virus? “He’s, like, ‘I don’t have the fortitude for this! I know it’s going to take me!’ ”
“Really funny, but too dark.”
Finally: voting in a pandemic. Kronengold pictured a celebrity telling New Yorkers their options. “ ‘I don’t want to leave the house.’ ‘Great! Absentee!’ ‘I’m going to be busy on Election Day.’ ‘Early voting!’ And then, like, ‘I want to be piggybacked to the polls by John Cena, and I won’t accept anything less.’ ”
“I like that a lot,” Shaw said. They put it down as an idea for Tina Fey. ♦