newyorker--2020-08-31--Inside Bernadette Mayer’s Time Capsule

Inside Bernadette Mayer’s Time Capsule

On July 1 , 1971 , the American poet and conceptual artist Bernadette Mayer began to record one month of her life by shooting a roll of thirty-six color snapshots every day , developing them at night , and keeping a diary of her impressions .
The resulting amalgam , a “ crazy headed journal ” that she called “ Memory , ” was shown as a mixed-media installation at a SoHo gallery in 1972 : a honeycomb of more than a thousand three-by-five photographs mounted to the gallery walls , with six hours of narration playing on a loop @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” was an exploration of the layers of what a person thinks they remember firsthand .
The project follows a band of New Yorkers , led by Mayer and her boyfriend at the time , the filmmaker Ed Bowes , back and forth between the city and Massachusetts , where Bowes had a gig shooting films for the Berkshire Theatre Festival .
The exhibition of “ Memory ” operated almost as a film : viewers provided the motion as they followed the cell-like stills across the walls ; the extremely committed could even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ audio to the images .
These mini temporal dramas eddy within the larger experience of passing time .
From July 14th , Mayer gives us five shots of a game of bar pool , beginning with the break and ending when the last ball is sunk .
This spirit of transience extended to “ Memory ” itself , which for decades lived mainly in memory , surfacing every now and then in altered forms .
In 1975 , an edited version of Mayer ’ s script and a handful of photographs were published @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2017 , the whole experience was restaged in Chicago and in New York City .
This year , the project has morphed yet again : all the photographs , along with Mayer ’ s original diary , have been published by Siglio , a new and beautiful embodiment of the work that speaks uncannily to our particular time .
Nostalgia—for the carnal , improvised mood of 1971 , but also for the halcyon days of , say , last summer , before we were afraid of communal life—has become the work ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also seems ahead of its time : a database of half-captured meals , barns , bodies—a kind of analog Internet .
The visual images are underexposed , overexposed , and double-exposed .
Objects are edged half into or half out of the frame ; scenes are never complete .
The text propels you past tantalizing sights and experiences .
It ’ s all too much , in ways that seem very familiar to anyone who watches stimuli whiz by in a feed .
“ Memory ” was always a definitional project ; that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ called “ Memories.
” But its proposal for how memory works changes each time the work changes form .
Bound in a book , “ Memory ” is set free within time and space .
The Airstreams and roadsters , the delis and coffees are there whenever and wherever we want to experience them , and they can be reanimated on demand .
Reading “ Memory ” with a phone handy , I followed Mayer and her crew along the back roads of the Berkshires to Nejaime ’ s , a local liquor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stayed open this spring , deemed an essential business .
In the city , Mayer took a photograph of a New York storefront : Casa Moneo .
The business closed in 1988 , but Google reveals its old address , on Fourteenth Street , in a building that once housed Marcel Duchamp ’ s studio .
When I came across mysteries in the text—a forgotten restaurant , a long-gone landmark—I posed my questions to the Internet , and got answers from the hive mind .
Though “ Memory ” is a famous work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relatively few people : it is still a choose-your-own-adventure—uncharted , wide open .
Finding a path through “ Memory ” seems like both a highly personal lark and a spur to collaborate .
William James once distinguished between “ substantive ” and “ transitive ” states of mind : the difference between “ a feeling of blue or a feeling of cold ” and “ a feeling of if , a feeling of but , a feeling of by.
” “ Memory ” tempts you to linger on the substantive , but , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gas stations , rivers , and bridges , it ’ s really about getting somewhere .
It is happiest in the in-between , and hyperalert to its own transit from one word and image to the next .
There are many road trips ’ worth of words—often erratically , racing to catch up with memories before their vividness fades .
Syntax is stripped down , simple nouns sutured together with ampersands and commas .
A conventional English sentence works by subordinating some elements while elevating others .
But here , as on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , constant clip : “ 71 degrees ed ’ s reading in the back of the car & a truck with a turquoise thing a trailer back in it crosses the road , iroquois , two people in a sports car a neat compact close fast moving unit.
” A tragic detail , the word “ iroquois , ” zips by on the side of a truck .
That ’ s America .
It ’ s hard to quote from “ Memory , ” since its dense linguistic braid unravels when you sever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ almost comically , to guide itself along its own infinitely branching paths .
There are detailed driving directions , swimming holes you can still find on a map , step-by-step recipes , and an ad for a steak-delivery place with a once dialable phone number .
( I found the place—at 58 Greenwich Avenue—mentioned in an old newspaper online . )
As “ Memory ” approaches its conclusion , it becomes more aware of the date on the calendar , more consumed with itself—a transcript of a transcript .
“ & as I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it comes out of nowhere goes nowhere & remains , nothing leaves , ” Mayer writes .
“ E back tom .
That ’ s short 4 tomorrow this kind of writing makes it impossible to think straight.
” Mayer wanted “ Memory ” to serve as a time capsule , its meaning deferred until a future , or a range of futures , that she couldn ’ t have foreseen .
She later said she ’ d “ chosen this month in the forsythia-falling-from-branches seventies at random.
” The images she conjures @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Arcady , where capering young lovers address temporality as a series of daily jaunts .
Elegy always has a way of creeping into art that documents the once teeming , now empty past : it is almost too painful to glimpse the innocence and the freedom of Mayer ’ s summer from the point of view of our current fearful season .
It can seem a dubious advantage to have survived all those disconnected phones , defunct addresses , dead or forgotten friends .
At our moment in history , “ Memory ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suspended ( in both senses of the word ) pleasures .
“ Old cemetery we looked for a place to swim , ” Mayer writes .
“ I showed grace the insane gazebo with wooden horse & carriage.
” These pleasures are privileges , too .
Mayer and her friends are white : no Black American would feel as free trespassing in somebody ’ s woods—not then , and not now .
History can not be banished from the garden .
Mayer ’ s entry from July 4th takes her to the World @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In the early phases of assembling her own ambitious edifice , she marvels at all the rusted steel and rubble around the site .
It ’ s part of a dynamic , jackhammering New York , where destruction and progress sit side by side .
To read this day ’ s entry is to remember the look of those buildings as they came down .
A piece of prophecy is accidentally found among the shards of memory .
“ When I ’ m not driving I ’ m thinking , ” Mayer writes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ present endures not for a minute or an hour or a day but for weeks & months & years.
” The World Trade Center is a memory , but “ Memory ” is itself still being constructed , reader by reader .
You never know when the present instant will end ; sometimes it lasts thirty years .
♦

On July 1, 1971, the American poet and conceptual artist Bernadette Mayer began to record one month of her life by shooting a roll of thirty-six color snapshots every day, developing them at night, and keeping a diary of her impressions. The resulting amalgam, a “crazy headed journal” that she called “Memory,” was shown as a mixed-media installation at a SoHo gallery in 1972: a honeycomb of more than a thousand three-by-five photographs mounted to the gallery walls, with six hours of narration playing on a loop. Whatever memory is, “Memory” was an exploration of the layers of what a person thinks they remember firsthand.
The project follows a band of New Yorkers, led by Mayer and her boyfriend at the time, the filmmaker Ed Bowes, back and forth between the city and Massachusetts, where Bowes had a gig shooting films for the Berkshire Theatre Festival. The exhibition of “Memory” operated almost as a film: viewers provided the motion as they followed the cell-like stills across the walls; the extremely committed could even pace themselves in order to synch the audio to the images. These mini temporal dramas eddy within the larger experience of passing time. From July 14th, Mayer gives us five shots of a game of bar pool, beginning with the break and ending when the last ball is sunk.
This spirit of transience extended to “Memory” itself, which for decades lived mainly in memory, surfacing every now and then in altered forms. In 1975, an edited version of Mayer’s script and a handful of photographs were published as a book. In 2016 and 2017, the whole experience was restaged in Chicago and in New York City. This year, the project has morphed yet again: all the photographs, along with Mayer’s original diary, have been published by Siglio, a new and beautiful embodiment of the work that speaks uncannily to our particular time.
Nostalgia—for the carnal, improvised mood of 1971, but also for the halcyon days of, say, last summer, before we were afraid of communal life—has become the work’s dominant key. Yet “Memory” also seems ahead of its time: a database of half-captured meals, barns, bodies—a kind of analog Internet. The visual images are underexposed, overexposed, and double-exposed. Objects are edged half into or half out of the frame; scenes are never complete. The text propels you past tantalizing sights and experiences. It’s all too much, in ways that seem very familiar to anyone who watches stimuli whiz by in a feed.
“Memory” was always a definitional project; that’s why it’s not called “Memories.” But its proposal for how memory works changes each time the work changes form. Bound in a book, “Memory” is set free within time and space. The Airstreams and roadsters, the delis and coffees are there whenever and wherever we want to experience them, and they can be reanimated on demand. Reading “Memory” with a phone handy, I followed Mayer and her crew along the back roads of the Berkshires to Nejaime’s, a local liquor store, which, I learned, stayed open this spring, deemed an essential business. In the city, Mayer took a photograph of a New York storefront: Casa Moneo. The business closed in 1988, but Google reveals its old address, on Fourteenth Street, in a building that once housed Marcel Duchamp’s studio. When I came across mysteries in the text—a forgotten restaurant, a long-gone landmark—I posed my questions to the Internet, and got answers from the hive mind. Though “Memory” is a famous work, it has been experienced firsthand by relatively few people: it is still a choose-your-own-adventure—uncharted, wide open. Finding a path through “Memory” seems like both a highly personal lark and a spur to collaborate.
William James once distinguished between “substantive” and “transitive” states of mind: the difference between “a feeling of blue or a feeling of cold” and “a feeling of if, a feeling of but, a feeling of by.” “Memory” tempts you to linger on the substantive, but, with its bountiful cars, highways, gas stations, rivers, and bridges, it’s really about getting somewhere. It is happiest in the in-between, and hyperalert to its own transit from one word and image to the next. There are many road trips’ worth of words—often erratically, racing to catch up with memories before their vividness fades. Syntax is stripped down, simple nouns sutured together with ampersands and commas. A conventional English sentence works by subordinating some elements while elevating others. But here, as on a highway, language passes at a steady, constant clip: “71 degrees ed’s reading in the back of the car & a truck with a turquoise thing a trailer back in it crosses the road, iroquois, two people in a sports car a neat compact close fast moving unit.” A tragic detail, the word “iroquois,” zips by on the side of a truck. That’s America.
It’s hard to quote from “Memory,” since its dense linguistic braid unravels when you sever it. The text often tries, almost comically, to guide itself along its own infinitely branching paths. There are detailed driving directions, swimming holes you can still find on a map, step-by-step recipes, and an ad for a steak-delivery place with a once dialable phone number. (I found the place—at 58 Greenwich Avenue—mentioned in an old newspaper online.) As “Memory” approaches its conclusion, it becomes more aware of the date on the calendar, more consumed with itself—a transcript of a transcript. “& as I write all this stuff down I know it comes out of nowhere goes nowhere & remains, nothing leaves,” Mayer writes. “E back tom. That’s short 4 tomorrow this kind of writing makes it impossible to think straight.”
Mayer wanted “Memory” to serve as a time capsule, its meaning deferred until a future, or a range of futures, that she couldn’t have foreseen. She later said she’d “chosen this month in the forsythia-falling-from-branches seventies at random.” The images she conjures and captures are a kind of timeless Arcady, where capering young lovers address temporality as a series of daily jaunts. Elegy always has a way of creeping into art that documents the once teeming, now empty past: it is almost too painful to glimpse the innocence and the freedom of Mayer’s summer from the point of view of our current fearful season. It can seem a dubious advantage to have survived all those disconnected phones, defunct addresses, dead or forgotten friends. At our moment in history, “Memory” reads in part as an archive of suspended (in both senses of the word) pleasures. “Old cemetery we looked for a place to swim,” Mayer writes. “I showed grace the insane gazebo with wooden horse & carriage.” These pleasures are privileges, too. Mayer and her friends are white: no Black American would feel as free trespassing in somebody’s woods—not then, and not now.
History cannot be banished from the garden. Mayer’s entry from July 4th takes her to the World Trade Center, then under construction. In the early phases of assembling her own ambitious edifice, she marvels at all the rusted steel and rubble around the site. It’s part of a dynamic, jackhammering New York, where destruction and progress sit side by side. To read this day’s entry is to remember the look of those buildings as they came down. A piece of prophecy is accidentally found among the shards of memory. “When I’m not driving I’m thinking,” Mayer writes. “Some memories qualify where the present endures not for a minute or an hour or a day but for weeks & months & years.” The World Trade Center is a memory, but “Memory” is itself still being constructed, reader by reader. You never know when the present instant will end; sometimes it lasts thirty years. ♦


newyorker--2020-08-31--“Nice White Parents,” “Fiasco,” and America’s Public-School Problem

The word “ innocent ” comes up early in the new podcast “ Nice White Parents , ” about separate and unequal education at a public school in Brooklyn .
It ’ s hosted and reported by Chana Joffe-Walt , a producer for “ This American Life.
” In New York City , as with many places in the U.S. , school segregation has long been de facto , and differences in school resources correspond closely with race ; the city , in lieu of an integration plan , has focussed on “ school reform , ” along with an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , wait lists , and parental strategizing .
In the series , Joffe-Walt , who is white , homes in on the insidious , sometimes unwitting role of white parents in perpetuating an unjust system that benefits their kids .
The innocence we hear about , you may not be surprised to learn , comes from those parents describing themselves .
The public school in question is the School for International Studies , in Cobble Hill , where Joffe-Walt lives .
She began reporting on S.I.S .
in 2015 , when the students @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Latino , and Middle Eastern , and from working-class and poor families .
Enrollment was shrinking .
The district was rapidly gentrifying , and white families tended to send their kids to the same three middle schools , which were becoming “ packed.
” S.I.S.
, like many of the underattended schools , was actively recruiting .
As the series opens , Joffe-Walt and some other white parents are being shown around local schools by administrators , usually people of color .
Most of the children they see are Black and brown @ @ @ @ @ @ @ class , which is mostly white .
No one on the tours mentions race .
The episode then reveals what happens when a group of white families , en masse , decide to send their kids to S.I.S.—and , as a kind of bargaining chip , persuade the school to start a French dual-language program .
What follows is like a farce .
At a PTA meeting , we learn that new parents have launched an aggressive fund-raising campaign , and that the French Embassy has already pledged ten thousand dollars .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even-tempered social worker , is rattled but polite ; the PTA , which allocates school funds , knew nothing about the campaign .
( “ I ’ d rather have a dinner where people of different cultures bring their food and we share together than have somebody else cater it , ” she tells Joffe-Walt .
“ That ’ s how I feel you build community.
” ) Soon , parents are planning a lavish gala in Manhattan , at the French Embassy ’ s Cultural Services center .
A new parent urges @ @ @ @ @ @ @ auction items : Knicks tickets , Coach bags , Tiffany pieces .
At the gala , a guest enthuses about her apartment in Saint-Germain-des-Prés— “ October is my saison préférée .
.
.
you wear your scarf , your foulard ” —and tells Hernandez , who is bilingual , “ It ’ s so important to learn another language.
” More money and white students begin flooding into S.I.S.
, not for the benefit of all , and subsequent episodes reveal a similar dynamic throughout the school ’ s sixty-year history .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Serial Productions , which was recently bought by the Times .
Like all podcasts in the “ This American Life ” and “ Serial ” family , it ’ s expertly crafted .
( The producer is Julie Snyder . )
The sound design features plucky but nonintrusive original music ( with a hint of Vince Guaraldi ) , incisive interview clips , and evocative archival recordings .
In the second episode , we hear audio of chanting Black and Puerto Rican protesters at Freedom Day , a mass New York City school @ @ @ @ @ @ @ teen-ager there , speaking to ABC News , who points out the armed police on horseback and says , “ All we want is equal education .
That ’ s all.
” The richness of vocal inflection is perhaps the most powerful element of the podcast form ; in that clip , the teen ’ s earnest calm contrasts with the skeptical , rat-a-tat tone of the interviewer .
Later , we hear a similar calm from a modern-day eleventh grader , Tiffani Torres , when she asks Mayor Bill de Blasio , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ city schools will be integrated .
“ Tiffani , with all due respect , I really think you ’ re not hearing what we ’ re saying to you , so I ’ ll repeat it , ” de Blasio says , with blithe impatience .
Then he tells her that a task force is studying the issue .
We hear revealing tones in surprising places , such as in interviews with white parents who advocated for the integration of Brooklyn schools in the sixties ; their voices brighten with pride as they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ private schools they actually sent their kids to .
But the most distinguishing sound of “ Nice White Parents ” is Joffe-Walt ’ s narration , which is abundant , direct , and full of zingers .
“ It happens again and again—white parents wielding their power without even noticing , like a guy wandering through a crowded store with a huge backpack , knocking things over every time he turns , ” she says .
The backpack analogy will resonate with New Yorkers , who have observed such behavior in the cramped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ town—and , in many ways , “ Nice White Parents ” seems to be speaking specifically to New Yorkers , and to well-off white ones , though it listens closely and with care to kids , parents , and administrators of color .
Joffe-Walt often uses “ white ” as shorthand for affluent and educated , and , in neighborhoods like Cobble Hill , the association is apt , but it isn ’ t so everywhere in the country , or even in New York .
The show has an astringently self-critical quality @ @ @ @ @ @ @ parents ” into taking action , but in doing so it can feel unnervingly clubby .
It can also create an impression of being told what to think , even as we agree ; when this happened in school , listeners might recall , we didn ’ t like it .
Another new series about race and education in the Northeast , “ Fiasco : The Battle for Boston , ” hosted by Leon Neyfakh , takes a different approach .
“ In September of 1974 , the city of Boston faced a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ What would happen if thousands of white and Black children living in segregated neighborhoods were forced to go to school together ?
” In an archival clip , we hear a little girl named Joanne , who is Black , tell an NBC reporter , “ When we go up there , we ’ re going to be stoned .
It ’ s not fair.
” She isn ’ t wrong .
The series tells the story of the school system , the Black activists and parents who initiated change , and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years of violence and mayhem , usually perpetrated by enraged white people : bus stonings , firebombings , threats , demonstrations , street scuffles .
Even the gangster Whitey Bulger got involved .
Neyfakh , formerly of Slate ’ s “ Slow Burn ” podcast , was a marquee hire for Luminary , “ Fiasco ” ’ s subscription-based platform , which launched in 2019 .
His work tends to focus on late-twentieth-century political scandals and the experience of living through them ; he chooses historical episodes that listeners think they know and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ starts with “ the busing crisis , ” the conflict ’ s name in much popular memory .
As Tom Atkins , the head of the Boston N.A.A.C.P .
at the time , says in an archival interview , “ ‘ Busing ’ was a nationwide code word ” for keeping Black people in their place .
“ People could run racist campaigns without making racist statements , ” he says .
Neyfakh is white , and he and his team quickly learned that “ busing ” wasn ’ t the best way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the term , potential interviewees hung up on them .

The word “innocent” comes up early in the new podcast “Nice White Parents,” about separate and unequal education at a public school in Brooklyn. It’s hosted and reported by Chana Joffe-Walt, a producer for “This American Life.” In New York City, as with many places in the U.S., school segregation has long been de facto, and differences in school resources correspond closely with race; the city, in lieu of an integration plan, has focussed on “school reform,” along with an elaborate, choice-based system that involves testing, wait lists, and parental strategizing. In the series, Joffe-Walt, who is white, homes in on the insidious, sometimes unwitting role of white parents in perpetuating an unjust system that benefits their kids. The innocence we hear about, you may not be surprised to learn, comes from those parents describing themselves.
The public school in question is the School for International Studies, in Cobble Hill, where Joffe-Walt lives. She began reporting on S.I.S. in 2015, when the students there—middle schoolers and high schoolers—were mostly Black, Latino, and Middle Eastern, and from working-class and poor families. Enrollment was shrinking. The district was rapidly gentrifying, and white families tended to send their kids to the same three middle schools, which were becoming “packed.” S.I.S., like many of the underattended schools, was actively recruiting. As the series opens, Joffe-Walt and some other white parents are being shown around local schools by administrators, usually people of color. Most of the children they see are Black and brown, except for a “gifted” class, which is mostly white. No one on the tours mentions race.
The episode then reveals what happens when a group of white families, en masse, decide to send their kids to S.I.S.—and, as a kind of bargaining chip, persuade the school to start a French dual-language program. What follows is like a farce. At a PTA meeting, we learn that new parents have launched an aggressive fund-raising campaign, and that the French Embassy has already pledged ten thousand dollars. A PTA co-president, Imee Hernandez, an even-tempered social worker, is rattled but polite; the PTA, which allocates school funds, knew nothing about the campaign. (“I’d rather have a dinner where people of different cultures bring their food and we share together than have somebody else cater it,” she tells Joffe-Walt. “That’s how I feel you build community.”) Soon, parents are planning a lavish gala in Manhattan, at the French Embassy’s Cultural Services center. A new parent urges befuddled PTA members to help drum up auction items: Knicks tickets, Coach bags, Tiffany pieces. At the gala, a guest enthuses about her apartment in Saint-Germain-des-Prés—“October is my saison préférée . . . you wear your scarf, your foulard ”—and tells Hernandez, who is bilingual, “It’s so important to learn another language.” More money and white students begin flooding into S.I.S., not for the benefit of all, and subsequent episodes reveal a similar dynamic throughout the school’s sixty-year history.
“Nice White Parents” was made by Serial Productions, which was recently bought by the Times. Like all podcasts in the “This American Life” and “Serial” family, it’s expertly crafted. (The producer is Julie Snyder.) The sound design features plucky but nonintrusive original music (with a hint of Vince Guaraldi), incisive interview clips, and evocative archival recordings. In the second episode, we hear audio of chanting Black and Puerto Rican protesters at Freedom Day, a mass New York City school boycott in 1964, and of a teen-ager there, speaking to ABC News, who points out the armed police on horseback and says, “All we want is equal education. That’s all.” The richness of vocal inflection is perhaps the most powerful element of the podcast form; in that clip, the teen’s earnest calm contrasts with the skeptical, rat-a-tat tone of the interviewer. Later, we hear a similar calm from a modern-day eleventh grader, Tiffani Torres, when she asks Mayor Bill de Blasio, on a WNYC call-in show, when city schools will be integrated. “Tiffani, with all due respect, I really think you’re not hearing what we’re saying to you, so I’ll repeat it,” de Blasio says, with blithe impatience. Then he tells her that a task force is studying the issue.
We hear revealing tones in surprising places, such as in interviews with white parents who advocated for the integration of Brooklyn schools in the sixties; their voices brighten with pride as they describe the progressive bona fides of the private schools they actually sent their kids to. But the most distinguishing sound of “Nice White Parents” is Joffe-Walt’s narration, which is abundant, direct, and full of zingers. “It happens again and again—white parents wielding their power without even noticing, like a guy wandering through a crowded store with a huge backpack, knocking things over every time he turns,” she says. The backpack analogy will resonate with New Yorkers, who have observed such behavior in the cramped spaces we used to occupy all over town—and, in many ways, “Nice White Parents” seems to be speaking specifically to New Yorkers, and to well-off white ones, though it listens closely and with care to kids, parents, and administrators of color. Joffe-Walt often uses “white” as shorthand for affluent and educated, and, in neighborhoods like Cobble Hill, the association is apt, but it isn’t so everywhere in the country, or even in New York. The show has an astringently self-critical quality of wanting to straight-talk “nice white parents” into taking action, but in doing so it can feel unnervingly clubby. It can also create an impression of being told what to think, even as we agree; when this happened in school, listeners might recall, we didn’t like it.
Another new series about race and education in the Northeast, “Fiasco: The Battle for Boston,” hosted by Leon Neyfakh, takes a different approach. “In September of 1974, the city of Boston faced a test,” Neyfakh says. “What would happen if thousands of white and Black children living in segregated neighborhoods were forced to go to school together?” In an archival clip, we hear a little girl named Joanne, who is Black, tell an NBC reporter, “When we go up there, we’re going to be stoned. It’s not fair.” She isn’t wrong. The series tells the story of the school system, the Black activists and parents who initiated change, and the inter-district busing, which resulted in several years of violence and mayhem, usually perpetrated by enraged white people: bus stonings, firebombings, threats, demonstrations, street scuffles. Even the gangster Whitey Bulger got involved.
Neyfakh, formerly of Slate’s “Slow Burn” podcast, was a marquee hire for Luminary, “Fiasco” ’s subscription-based platform, which launched in 2019. His work tends to focus on late-twentieth-century political scandals and the experience of living through them; he chooses historical episodes that listeners think they know and upends their assumptions. Here, he starts with “the busing crisis,” the conflict’s name in much popular memory. As Tom Atkins, the head of the Boston N.A.A.C.P. at the time, says in an archival interview, “ ‘Busing’ was a nationwide code word” for keeping Black people in their place. “People could run racist campaigns without making racist statements,” he says. Neyfakh is white, and he and his team quickly learned that “busing” wasn’t the best way to describe desegregation: when they used the term, potential interviewees hung up on them.
Neyfakh creates the artful impression of subtlety. His stories always have direct, clear connections to contemporary life, but he lets listeners have the pleasure, or the illusion, of connecting the dots themselves. He has a gift for crafting memorable scenes, and his longtime executive producer, Andrew Parsons, is deft at animating them through sound design. In one scene, from April, 1968, the liberal mayor of Boston, Kevin White, has recently defeated the anti-integrationist firebrand Louise Day Hicks; he seems to be one of the only forces who can prevent the desegregation controversy from exploding into chaos. So it’s startling to learn that when he hears that Martin Luther King, Jr., has been assassinated, he’s at a movie theatre, watching “Gone with the Wind.” (“Rhett!” Scarlett says. “Where shall I go, what shall I do?”) Officials are worried about civil unrest, and the next day, when Atkins, then a city-council member, proposes a peacekeeping plan involving that night’s James Brown concert at the Boston Garden, we learn that White isn’t sure who James Brown is. These are minor but potent details, vividly evoked, as is the concert, to powerful effect.
The series’ strengths are exemplified in an episode that focusses on the image that came to define the crisis: a photograph of an anti-desegregation demonstration in 1976 in Boston’s City Hall Plaza, in which a white teen holding a huge American flag lunges at a Black man in a three-piece suit, wielding the flagpole like a bayonet. Neyfakh describes the photo with forensic precision, telling the stories of its key players. We learn about the teen, Joseph Rakes; the man in the suit, Ted Landsmark, a lawyer on his way to a meeting about affirmative action; and the photographer, Stanley Forman, from the Herald, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the image. Landsmark’s nose had been broken by a white teen; eventually a police officer helped him. “I immediately said to him, ‘I want you to let go of my arm,’ ” Landsmark says. He worried that a photograph of them would make him look like a culprit.
The sensational violence of Boston’s early busing era came to an end, but desegregation, with modified busing, lasted. Research has long shown that school integration, in Boston and far beyond, has worked, correlating with better-resourced schools and enduring academic and social benefits for students. Yet what many white people remember is the mayhem. De Blasio, who grew up near Boston in the seventies, believes that busing there “absolutely poisoned the well,” and is a model to be avoided: “I think history is on my side here.” Both “Fiasco” and “Nice White Parents” suggest otherwise. At one point, Joffe-Walt notes that her goal is to forge a “shared sense of reality” to counterbalance the innocence, or the naïveté, among white parents that she believes stands in the way of progress. Together, these two podcasts offer ample evidence of that reality, for those who choose to listen. ♦


newyorker--2020-08-31--Who Gets to Vote in Florida?

Who Gets to Vote in Florida?

Betty Riddle grew up in Sarasota , Florida , in a segregated neighborhood that people back in the nineteen-sixties called Black Bottom .
She was raised by her mother , Idella , in a wooden house on Central Avenue .
When she was twelve , Idella was murdered— “ killed by a woman over a man , ” Riddle recalled—and so she moved in with her aunt .
Riddle learned early how to fight .
When she was fifteen years old and seven months pregnant , she stabbed a taunting rival in the eye with a hooked knife .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a deadly weapon , and given three years ’ probation .
After she had her baby , a daughter named Leola , she turned to drugs , especially crack cocaine .
“ I saw crack in everything , ” she said .
“ Whatever I could sell , I sold.
” She had another baby by another man , but mostly forgot about her children , resorting to robbery and prostitution to pay for crack .
Riddle was in and out of prison , for drugs and for theft ; she had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Every boyfriend I ever had was a drug dealer , ” she said .
In 2002 , she was sentenced to a fifth term—ten years this time , for selling cocaine .
In the Gadsden Correctional Facility , in northern Florida , Riddle started listening to radio sermons by a pastor with a soothing voice .
At first , the sermons were just a curiosity , something other inmates listened to , but after a time the pastor ’ s gentle prodding made her examine herself .
“ I was watching @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in prison , ” she remembered .
One day , while Riddle was writing a letter to her children , the pastor came on the radio with a new message .
“ God doesn ’ t change who you are , ” he said .
“ He changes what you have become.
” The words startled Riddle .
“ I put my pen down and said , Damn , that ’ s me .
I was a good person , I used to be a leader , and I ’ ve become a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of hurting my kids.
” When Riddle got out , she and her daughter opened a food truck , called No Place Like Home , that served Southern cooking .
She began attending classes in Bradenton , one county over , to earn a paralegal degree .
Between working and studying , Riddle volunteered in the public defender ’ s office , where the staff knew her from her criminal days .
“ I ’ d cussed out the lawyers so bad , that ’ s why they remembered me , ” she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attorneys found that her patient manner put defendants at ease , and in 2016 the office hired her .
She bought a house and a car .
“ I learned I can do anything if I put my mind to it , ” she said .
But one thing she could not do was vote .
In 1877 , after Reconstruction , legislators across the old Confederacy initiated a sweeping system of laws , known as Jim Crow , that made it virtually impossible for Black people to vote .
From 1888 to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was elected to the Florida legislature .
The state ’ s constitution imposed an additional stricture : felons were banned for life from voting .
The ban survived the dismantling of Jim Crow , in the nineteen-sixties and seventies .
While many states imposed waiting periods and other restrictions on felons voting , Florida , along with a few other states , maintained a lifetime ban .
Black people are arrested at disproportionate rates for felonies , especially drug-related ones ; as recently as 2016 , the ban disenfranchised one out of every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Desmond Meade , a former felon who had earned a law degree , launched a petition to abolish the voting prohibition on all but the most violent felons .
Meade and his allies collected eight hundred thousand signatures , enough to put the question on a statewide ballot , in 2018 , as Amendment Four .
The campaign to encourage its passage began with volunteers painting logos on bedsheets , but it soon attracted significant funding , and in November the amendment was approved by nearly sixty-five per cent of Florida ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ White people , Black people , Republicans , Democrats—a whole bunch of conservatives supported us.
” More than a million people who voted to elect the current governor , Ron DeSantis , an ally of President Trump , also supported the measure .
Amendment Four represented the largest act of enfranchisement since 1971 , when the Twenty-sixth Amendment lowered the voting age to eighteen .
On March 17 , 2020 , the day of the Florida Presidential primary , Riddle rose at 6 A.M. and put on a T-shirt with an inscription @ @ @ @ @ @ @ First in Line , First Time Voting.
” At the Robert L. Taylor Community Center , she signed her name to the voting roll and , at the age of sixty-two , cast her first ballot .
“ Like a gift from Heaven , ” she said .
But , after voting in the primary , Riddle may not be able to vote in the upcoming general election .
Six months after Amendment Four passed , the Republican-dominated legislature approved a law dictating that ex-felons could vote only if they first paid all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ imposed at their sentencing .
The law may affect as many as seven hundred and seventy thousand Florida residents , about half of whom are Black .
In many cases , the totals came to thousands of dollars .
The burden was not just large but uncertain : state officials testified that they had no way of knowing how much money felons owe , or whether they have paid ; those calculations would take six years or so to complete .
The legislation gutted Amendment Four , but DeSantis claimed that he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ approved .
“ The amendment does not apply to a felon who has failed to complete all the terms of his sentence , ” he maintained .
Riddle and sixteen other former felons sued DeSantis , arguing that the requirement amounted to a poll tax , which is prohibited by the Constitution .
The case , filed with support from the A.C.L.U.
, became known as Jones v. DeSantis .
In May , a federal judge ruled against DeSantis ’ s legislation , which he described as a “ pay-to-vote system.
” DeSantis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Appeals agreed to take up the case .
The Eleventh Circuit Court is one of the country ’ s most conservative appellate panels .
Two of the judges , Robert Luck and Barbara Lagoa , were DeSantis appointees , recently elevated from the Florida Supreme Court by President Trump .
On that court , they had participated in oral arguments that resulted in an advisory decision supporting DeSantis ’ s view of Amendment Four .
By legal custom , they should have recused themselves .
They declined to do so , even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Senate Judiciary Committee wrote to remind them of the ethics breach .
The decision to hear the case pushed any final resolution closer to the voter-registration deadline , on October 5th ; even if the judgment goes in the felons ’ favor , they will have to scramble to register .
Until then , any convicted felon who wants to vote must first pay his fines—meaning , in all likelihood , that the overwhelming majority of them will sit out the November election .
Riddle figures that her bill amounts to at least @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t pay , ” she said .
She told me that she wanted to address the Eleventh Circuit herself , in oral arguments , to explain what she believes to be the real motivation behind the new Florida law .
“ It ’ s not about the money , ” she said .
“ Not all the Republicans are bad .
But they don ’ t want us to vote .
Because they think they ’ re going to lose .
”

Betty Riddle grew up in Sarasota, Florida, in a segregated neighborhood that people back in the nineteen-sixties called Black Bottom. She was raised by her mother, Idella, in a wooden house on Central Avenue. When she was twelve, Idella was murdered—“killed by a woman over a man,” Riddle recalled—and so she moved in with her aunt. Riddle learned early how to fight. When she was fifteen years old and seven months pregnant, she stabbed a taunting rival in the eye with a hooked knife.
In 1975, Riddle was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon, and given three years’ probation. After she had her baby, a daughter named Leola, she turned to drugs, especially crack cocaine. “I saw crack in everything,” she said. “Whatever I could sell, I sold.” She had another baby by another man, but mostly forgot about her children, resorting to robbery and prostitution to pay for crack. Riddle was in and out of prison, for drugs and for theft; she had two more babies by two more men. “Every boyfriend I ever had was a drug dealer,” she said. In 2002, she was sentenced to a fifth term—ten years this time, for selling cocaine.
In the Gadsden Correctional Facility, in northern Florida, Riddle started listening to radio sermons by a pastor with a soothing voice. At first, the sermons were just a curiosity, something other inmates listened to, but after a time the pastor’s gentle prodding made her examine herself. “I was watching my kids have kids and visit me in prison,” she remembered. One day, while Riddle was writing a letter to her children, the pastor came on the radio with a new message. “God doesn’t change who you are,” he said. “He changes what you have become.” The words startled Riddle. “I put my pen down and said, Damn, that’s me. I was a good person, I used to be a leader, and I’ve become a drug addict. I’m tired of hurting my kids.”
When Riddle got out, she and her daughter opened a food truck, called No Place Like Home, that served Southern cooking. She began attending classes in Bradenton, one county over, to earn a paralegal degree. Between working and studying, Riddle volunteered in the public defender’s office, where the staff knew her from her criminal days. “I’d cussed out the lawyers so bad, that’s why they remembered me,” she said. Now, though, the attorneys found that her patient manner put defendants at ease, and in 2016 the office hired her. She bought a house and a car. “I learned I can do anything if I put my mind to it,” she said. But one thing she could not do was vote.
In 1877, after Reconstruction, legislators across the old Confederacy initiated a sweeping system of laws, known as Jim Crow, that made it virtually impossible for Black people to vote. From 1888 to 1968, not a single Black person was elected to the Florida legislature. The state’s constitution imposed an additional stricture: felons were banned for life from voting.
The ban survived the dismantling of Jim Crow, in the nineteen-sixties and seventies. While many states imposed waiting periods and other restrictions on felons voting, Florida, along with a few other states, maintained a lifetime ban. Black people are arrested at disproportionate rates for felonies, especially drug-related ones; as recently as 2016, the ban disenfranchised one out of every five Black adults in the state.
Desmond Meade, a former felon who had earned a law degree, launched a petition to abolish the voting prohibition on all but the most violent felons. Meade and his allies collected eight hundred thousand signatures, enough to put the question on a statewide ballot, in 2018, as Amendment Four. The campaign to encourage its passage began with volunteers painting logos on bedsheets, but it soon attracted significant funding, and in November the amendment was approved by nearly sixty-five per cent of Florida’s voters. As Meade told me, “White people, Black people, Republicans, Democrats—a whole bunch of conservatives supported us.” More than a million people who voted to elect the current governor, Ron DeSantis, an ally of President Trump, also supported the measure. Amendment Four represented the largest act of enfranchisement since 1971, when the Twenty-sixth Amendment lowered the voting age to eighteen.
On March 17, 2020, the day of the Florida Presidential primary, Riddle rose at 6 A.M. and put on a T-shirt with an inscription that she’d devised: “First in Line, First Time Voting.” At the Robert L. Taylor Community Center, she signed her name to the voting roll and, at the age of sixty-two, cast her first ballot. “Like a gift from Heaven,” she said.
But, after voting in the primary, Riddle may not be able to vote in the upcoming general election. Six months after Amendment Four passed, the Republican-dominated legislature approved a law dictating that ex-felons could vote only if they first paid all the fines, restitution, and fees imposed at their sentencing. The law may affect as many as seven hundred and seventy thousand Florida residents, about half of whom are Black. In many cases, the totals came to thousands of dollars. The burden was not just large but uncertain: state officials testified that they had no way of knowing how much money felons owe, or whether they have paid; those calculations would take six years or so to complete. The legislation gutted Amendment Four, but DeSantis claimed that he was merely enforcing the language that voters had approved. “The amendment does not apply to a felon who has failed to complete all the terms of his sentence,” he maintained.
Riddle and sixteen other former felons sued DeSantis, arguing that the requirement amounted to a poll tax, which is prohibited by the Constitution. The case, filed with support from the A.C.L.U., became known as Jones v. DeSantis. In May, a federal judge ruled against DeSantis’s legislation, which he described as a “pay-to-vote system.”
DeSantis appealed, and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to take up the case. The Eleventh Circuit Court is one of the country’s most conservative appellate panels. Two of the judges, Robert Luck and Barbara Lagoa, were DeSantis appointees, recently elevated from the Florida Supreme Court by President Trump. On that court, they had participated in oral arguments that resulted in an advisory decision supporting DeSantis’s view of Amendment Four. By legal custom, they should have recused themselves. They declined to do so, even after the ten sitting Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote to remind them of the ethics breach.


newyorker--2020-08-31--How to Reduce Screen Time

How to Reduce Screen Time

In today ’ s hyperconnected world , it sometimes feels as though our devices are controlling us instead of the other way around .
Setting limits has become a real challenge .
So how can you manage your screen time and find a healthy balance ?
It ’ s simple .
Try Rocco .
He ’ s an unhinged ex-bouncer who smacks your devices out of your hand .
First off , Rocco is crazy big .
He ’ s got bowling-ball biceps and competes in contests where lumberjacks throw logs .
No matter how much you want to check @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t be able to get your tablet back from Rocco .
With his help , you ’ ll come to realize that sneaking one last YouTube video isn ’ t worth getting slapped off the toilet .
You may be asking , Doesn ’ t Rocco have to go home sometimes ?
No .
Not since his wife kicked him out for having an affair with the cashier at the GNC where he buys Muscle Milk .
Now he ’ s got nowhere to be but in your face , screaming at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Rocco will not leave , even if you ask him to .
That is how dedicated he is .
You don ’ t even have to pay him—he ’ s good to go as long as you put a roof over his head and you keep the chicken cutlets coming .
And he doesn ’ t even need a real bed .
He ’ s fine with just lining up the sofa cushions on the floor .
He always puts them back in the morning .
Excessive screen time can affect your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s grunting during his regular night squats .
It can also put a damper on your mood , which will already be strained by Rocco ’ s head-butting your mirrors because he ’ s mad that he ’ s let his pecs go soft .
Studies have shown that social-media usage stimulates the same regions of the brain that drugs and alcohol do .
This is insidious , and intentional .
But Rocco has your back .
Just say the word and he ’ ll burst into Facebook headquarters and start decking coders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Google ’ s brain trust .
While there are a number of “ digital wellness ” apps to help people manage their cell-phone usage themselves , their main drawback is that they won ’ t punch you in the face .
Rocco will .
It ’ s honestly all he can think about .
For any customers who are unsatisfied with the experience of using Rocco , there is always the option of upgrading to Becca .
Becca will read your Kindle over your shoulder until you get self-conscious and turn it off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ frequently ask you how to pronounce words , and her Dorito breath on your neck will turn your stomach .
Or you can switch to Garrett , who will crash your laptop by downloading pornography from shady torrent sites .
The tech repair guy won ’ t even be able to look you in the eye .
Once you ’ ve finally got your digital habits under control , you can start to rediscover the real world .
There ’ s nothing like the feeling of human connection that you get from witnessing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of your house as he thrashes and tries to bite their shins .
The ruckus will definitely alarm your neighbors .
Some of them may even stop by to ask what all that was about .
Who knows , you might just make a new friend !
And , deep down , that ’ s all Rocco ever wanted for you .
♦

In today’s hyperconnected world, it sometimes feels as though our devices are controlling us instead of the other way around. Setting limits has become a real challenge. So how can you manage your screen time and find a healthy balance? It’s simple. Try Rocco. He’s an unhinged ex-bouncer who smacks your devices out of your hand.
First off, Rocco is crazy big. He’s got bowling-ball biceps and competes in contests where lumberjacks throw logs. No matter how much you want to check Twitter, we guarantee that you won’t be able to get your tablet back from Rocco. With his help, you’ll come to realize that sneaking one last YouTube video isn’t worth getting slapped off the toilet.
You may be asking, Doesn’t Rocco have to go home sometimes? No. Not since his wife kicked him out for having an affair with the cashier at the GNC where he buys Muscle Milk. Now he’s got nowhere to be but in your face, screaming at you to turn off “Shark Tank.”
Rocco will not leave, even if you ask him to. That is how dedicated he is. You don’t even have to pay him—he’s good to go as long as you put a roof over his head and you keep the chicken cutlets coming. And he doesn’t even need a real bed. He’s fine with just lining up the sofa cushions on the floor. He always puts them back in the morning.
Rocco needs this.
Excessive screen time can affect your sleeping patterns even worse than Rocco’s grunting during his regular night squats. It can also put a damper on your mood, which will already be strained by Rocco’s head-butting your mirrors because he’s mad that he’s let his pecs go soft.
Studies have shown that social-media usage stimulates the same regions of the brain that drugs and alcohol do. This is insidious, and intentional. But Rocco has your back. Just say the word and he’ll burst into Facebook headquarters and start decking coders. He’s itching to body-slam Google’s brain trust.
While there are a number of “digital wellness” apps to help people manage their cell-phone usage themselves, their main drawback is that they won’t punch you in the face. Rocco will. It’s honestly all he can think about.
For any customers who are unsatisfied with the experience of using Rocco, there is always the option of upgrading to Becca. Becca will read your Kindle over your shoulder until you get self-conscious and turn it off. While standing there, she will frequently ask you how to pronounce words, and her Dorito breath on your neck will turn your stomach.
Or you can switch to Garrett, who will crash your laptop by downloading pornography from shady torrent sites. The tech repair guy won’t even be able to look you in the eye.
Once you’ve finally got your digital habits under control, you can start to rediscover the real world. There’s nothing like the feeling of human connection that you get from witnessing half a dozen cops drag Rocco out of your house as he thrashes and tries to bite their shins. The ruckus will definitely alarm your neighbors. Some of them may even stop by to ask what all that was about. Who knows, you might just make a new friend! And, deep down, that’s all Rocco ever wanted for you. ♦


newyorker--2020-08-31--The Joys of Looking Out a Stranger’s Window

No matter how great the view from your window may be , haven ’ t you had enough of it ?
Even John Glenn , on his third circuit around the Earth , probably looked out the window and thought , Not Uranus again !
It was this sort of fenestral fatigue that led Sonali Ranjit and her husband , Vaishnav Balasubramaniam , two advertising executives in Singapore , to create WindowSwap , a Web site that lets you check out other people ’ s vistas .
Users record videos from their windows , which include ambient sound , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ house .
“ One day , we were on Instagram , and we saw a picture of our friend in Barcelona , who was complaining about the view from his beautiful window , ” Ranjit said , over WhatsApp , as she and her husband perched close together on a sofa .
“ We started to wonder : He ’ s bored with his view , we ’ re bored with ours ” —they look out on a huge glass apartment complex— “ what if we could swap places ?
We realized , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ places , but maybe we can swap videos of window views and pretend we ’ re somewhere else for a little bit.
” A large button on the site ’ s home page reads “ Open a new window somewhere in the world.
” Click on it , and a randomly selected snippet of cinéma vérité will appear , identified only by the first name of the videographer and the location .
The effect is mesmerizing and addictive .
You might spot six maskless teen-age boys strolling along an Amsterdam canal and then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; five badgers in Halesowen , England , fighting over food in a back-yard garden ; a white bird flying high across the pyramids of Giza , amid honking horns and whining sirens ; day turning to night in Almaty , Kazakhstan , where a stately but somewhat shabby apartment house is visible , but the man who is sneezing and laughing in the background is not ; or loose guy wires swaying in the breeze on a residential block in Hyderabad , India , while inside , on a window ledge , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ copy of Mitch Albom ’ s novel “ The Five People You Meet in Heaven , ” and a tinny speaker playing “ Christmas Time Is Here.
” Ranjit and Balasubramaniam , who spend a few hours a day going through submissions , estimate that they have roughly six thousand videos from more than a hundred countries .
( Attention , Antarcticans : they ’ d love a little something from you . )
One contributor is Simone Tengattini , who works for the Italian railway system , and whose family has a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the site is like “ looking out a train ’ s window and seeing the scenery changing .
It ’ s an invitation to participate in somebody else ’ s life.
” For others , the clips stir up feelings of homesickness , but in a nice way .
Chiara Trincia , whose view in Rome would make an art student take out his pastels—a tableau of clay-tile roofs , a bell tower , and satellite dishes , all in various shades of reds and browns—said , “ I was struck by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , where I spent my childhood .
It brought me back home in a visceral way.
” Similarly , Liu Lu , a Chinese sociology student in Japan , recalled seeing a video of Chongqing , not far from where she grew up .
“ It seemed I can smell the Yangtze River , ” she wrote .
Lu submitted a clip of her view in Tokyo ; she compared a passing train that can be seen in the background to the one that often appears in Japanese movies , convulsing the main @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by , thereby symbolizing “ the protagonist ’ s unstable life.
” Taking a Disney-er point of view , Nevin , a six-year-old in Zion Grove , Pennsylvania , according to an e-mail from his stepmother , “ wants everyone to see what he sees from his bedroom window ” —namely , the kiddie pool on his front lawn .
“ When you get a glimpse inside someone ’ s house , you see that their view might be different from yours , ” Ranjit said , “ but everyone has a messy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ music playing in the background.
” “ Sonder , ” Ranjit replied .
( The word is a 2012 neologism from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows . )
“ It ’ s the sudden realization that other people have lives as rich and complex as your own .
We ’ re all going through the same thing.
” She paused .
“ Except not everyone has a backlog of submissions to get through.
” ♦

No matter how great the view from your window may be, haven’t you had enough of it? Even John Glenn, on his third circuit around the Earth, probably looked out the window and thought, Not Uranus again! It was this sort of fenestral fatigue that led Sonali Ranjit and her husband, Vaishnav Balasubramaniam, two advertising executives in Singapore, to create WindowSwap, a Web site that lets you check out other people’s vistas. Users record videos from their windows, which include ambient sound, and, often, a peek inside the house. “One day, we were on Instagram, and we saw a picture of our friend in Barcelona, who was complaining about the view from his beautiful window,” Ranjit said, over WhatsApp, as she and her husband perched close together on a sofa. “We started to wonder: He’s bored with his view, we’re bored with ours”—they look out on a huge glass apartment complex—“what if we could swap places? We realized, O.K., we can’t swap places, but maybe we can swap videos of window views and pretend we’re somewhere else for a little bit.”
A large button on the site’s home page reads “Open a new window somewhere in the world.” Click on it, and a randomly selected snippet of cinéma vérité will appear, identified only by the first name of the videographer and the location. The effect is mesmerizing and addictive. You might spot six maskless teen-age boys strolling along an Amsterdam canal and then disappearing into the Sex Palace Peep Show; five badgers in Halesowen, England, fighting over food in a back-yard garden; a white bird flying high across the pyramids of Giza, amid honking horns and whining sirens; day turning to night in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where a stately but somewhat shabby apartment house is visible, but the man who is sneezing and laughing in the background is not; or loose guy wires swaying in the breeze on a residential block in Hyderabad, India, while inside, on a window ledge, sits a mugful of tea, a copy of Mitch Albom’s novel “The Five People You Meet in Heaven,” and a tinny speaker playing “Christmas Time Is Here.”
Ranjit and Balasubramaniam, who spend a few hours a day going through submissions, estimate that they have roughly six thousand videos from more than a hundred countries. (Attention, Antarcticans: they’d love a little something from you.) One contributor is Simone Tengattini, who works for the Italian railway system, and whose family has a house in the Alps. He said that the site is like “looking out a train’s window and seeing the scenery changing. It’s an invitation to participate in somebody else’s life.” For others, the clips stir up feelings of homesickness, but in a nice way. Chiara Trincia, whose view in Rome would make an art student take out his pastels—a tableau of clay-tile roofs, a bell tower, and satellite dishes, all in various shades of reds and browns—said, “I was struck by the video of a rainy New York, where I spent my childhood. It brought me back home in a visceral way.” Similarly, Liu Lu, a Chinese sociology student in Japan, recalled seeing a video of Chongqing, not far from where she grew up. “It seemed I can smell the Yangtze River,” she wrote. Lu submitted a clip of her view in Tokyo; she compared a passing train that can be seen in the background to the one that often appears in Japanese movies, convulsing the main character’s home as it races by, thereby symbolizing “the protagonist’s unstable life.” Taking a Disney-er point of view, Nevin, a six-year-old in Zion Grove, Pennsylvania, according to an e-mail from his stepmother, “wants everyone to see what he sees from his bedroom window”—namely, the kiddie pool on his front lawn.
“You’re telling me that you don’t have the same shoe size as anyone else on the planet?” Cartoon by Brooke Bourgeois Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
“When you get a glimpse inside someone’s house, you see that their view might be different from yours,” Ranjit said, “but everyone has a messy desk, mismatched furniture, and maybe music playing in the background.”
“What’s the word for that?” Balasubramaniam asked.
“Sonder,” Ranjit replied. (The word is a 2012 neologism from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.) “It’s the sudden realization that other people have lives as rich and complex as your own. We’re all going through the same thing.” She paused. “Except not everyone has a backlog of submissions to get through.” ♦


newyorker--2020-08-31--Slide Show: New Yorker Cartoons September 7, 2020

“ You ’ re telling me that you don ’ t have the same shoe size as anyone else on @ @ @ @

“You’re telling me that you don’t have the same shoe size as anyone else on the planet?”
Cartoon by Brooke Bourgeois


newyorker--2020-08-31--Miss America’s History-Makers and Rule-Breakers

To the long-standing annoyance of people involved with the Miss America contest , which bills itself as “ first , and foremost , a scholarship program , ” the general public often confuses it with Miss U.S.A. , which freely admits to being a beauty pageant .
As annual tournaments of unmarried , childless women in their late teens and twenties , the two events have much in common .
In fact , one emerged out of the other .
In 1950 , Yolande Betbeze , a convent-educated coloratura soprano from Mobile , Alabama , entered the Miss America contest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” as her talent .
She returned to her dressing room to find the words “ Hairy sits here , ” a reference to her thick eyebrows , scrawled in lipstick on the makeup mirror .
But she won , and , newly crowned , refused to sign a contract that would have required her to tour the country in swimsuits made by Catalina , one of the pageant ’ s sponsors .
“ I ’ m an opera singer , not a pinup , ” Betbeze said .
Catalina went and started @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scrapping the talent competition and offering cash prizes instead of scholarships .
Despite the schism , Miss America endured , with a reputation as the more demure of the two franchises .
Miss America finally did away with its swimsuit competition in 2018 , in the wake of a scandal that began with male executives at the organization referring to one former winner as a “ blimp ” and to other contestants as “ cunts.
” Apart from their formats , the big difference between the two pageants is that , until 2015 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Miss Universe , were owned , in part , by Donald Trump .
Of all the things Trump could have invested in , why a beauty pageant ?
The proprietary access to young , beautiful women was surely an attraction .
As Jeffrey Toobin reported in this magazine in 2018 , Trump also used Miss Universe to drum up foreign business .
There are plenty of places to host clients , though .
Pageants , commingling ideology and entertainment , offered something extra—the French-braided forces of patriarchy , capitalism , and racism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Looking for Miss America : A Pageant ’ s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood ” ( Counterpoint ) , they have been woven into pageant culture from the start .
Participation has been declining for decades , but Miss America still commands attention , rivalling perhaps only major-league baseball in outsized nostalgia-based influence .
The pageant isn ’ t a state-sponsored ritual , but its winners are invited to meet with Presidents and to address legislative committees .
In 1995 , Hillary Rodham Clinton , at that time the First Lady , called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chat with the reigning queen .
Since girlhood , Clinton claimed , she had never gone a year without watching the pageant .
“ This is the only way I would ever , ever appear on a Miss America contest , ” she said , deprecating herself instead of the contest ’ s premise .
“ It ’ s one of those dreams deferred , but it ’ s finally coming true.
” At its peak , in the nineteen-sixties and seventies , Miss America attracted more than two-thirds of the country ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , culminating with Bert Parks , the m.c.
, crooning “ There She Is , ” amounted to a minor late-summer holiday , a reunion of the intact but dysfunctional American family .
Boys learned how to watch girls , and girls learned how to watch boys watching girls .
Philip Roth once tried to identify the primordial source of the pageant ’ s allure , “ the quirk that made me watch this thing year after year.
” All he could come up with was that his boyhood barber , a Jewish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ picture of the current winner on his scissor tray .
I remember tuning in to the pageant during the eighties with my father , who wielded the remote with ceremonious male authority .
More than the seahorsey fonts and the sherbet gowns , it was his attachment to the ritual that fostered mine .
The first Miss America pageant was held in September of 1921 , in Atlantic City .
Inspired by Asbury Park ’ s popular baby parade , city boosters invited eight “ Inter-City Beauties ” —from New York , Pennsylvania @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jersey—to participate in a two-day festival .
King Neptune , whom Mifflin describes as “ a bronzed , bearded patriarch wearing purple robes and a jeweled crown , ” ferried the ingénues around on a barge , depositing them on the shore near Million Dollar Pier for a meet and greet with the mayor .
King Neptune was played by Hudson Maxim , the inventor of smokeless gunpowder : “ He brandished his trident in his right hand , having lost the other in a lab accident.
” Mifflin is as alive to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she is to the weirdo details of its founding .
Built near a bay that the Lenni Lenape people called Absegami , Atlantic City was a segregated town that relied on Black labor : African-Americans accounted for twenty-two per cent of the population , but , according to the historian Nelson Johnson , they made up ninety-five per cent of the workforce in the area ’ s white hotels , which enabled its main industry , tourism .
After the opening ceremony at Million Dollar Pier , the contestants were escorted to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mifflin notes , “ the only African Americans to participate in Miss America festivities for the next half century.
” The pageant ’ s “ Bathers ’ Revue ” caused a sensation .
Despite an ordinance that forbade women to bare their knees on the beach , the contestants were required to wear bathing suits , establishing a confusing precedent of control and empowerment .
At the end of the festival , five male judges pronounced Margaret Gorman the most beautiful girl in America .
At sixteen years old and just over five @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Miss America ever .
We know this because contestants ’ measurements were recorded in maniacal detail .
( Newspapers congratulated the winner of the 1926 pageant , Norma Smallwood , on the twelve-inch circumference of her “ well-molded throat.
” ) Gorman , Mifflin writes , “ was not quite a woman , and she was decidedly not a ‘ New Woman , ’ by then a popular term for the enfranchised , independent , post-Victorian woman of the modern age.
” The inaugural pageant took place almost exactly one year after the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ women the right to vote .
( Mostly , white women got to exercise it . )
Dramatic pageantry , Mifflin notes , had been instrumental in the suffragist movement , in the form of silk sashes and theatrical tableaux .
“ I can only state my firm belief that a pageant has more power to convince people of the truth of our cause than any other means , ” Hazel MacKaye , a suffragist who served as the director of drama and pageantry for the Y.W.C.A.
, once wrote .
Is it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ won the vote , a repurposed form of pageantry emerged , out of the deep blue , to insure that they were voted upon ?
Throughout the twenties , the pageant was a hustle .
As its renown grew , the organizers angled for respectability , but the contest kept being thwarted by entrants who bent the rules with a madcap , Miss Hannigan-like period energy .
In 1923 , Miss Alaska , whom Mifflin describes as “ a vivacious favorite in white—swimsuit , stockings , and jazzy tam , ” was disqualified @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York resident and a married woman .
A recent immigrant from Sweden , she had “ spent all of three days in Juneau.
” In the thirties , the pageant hired Lenora Slaughter , of the St. Petersburg , Florida , chamber of commerce , to spiff up the program .
As the pageant ’ s director , Slaughter hoped to attract a “ better class of girl , ” and thus a better class of sponsor , transforming a popular entertainment into a tidy model of middle-class advancement .
She added @ @ @ @ @ @ @ created the coronation ceremony , and started pageant-momming the pageant with a genteel dauntlessness that left many of her “ girls ” in her thrall well into adulthood .

To the long-standing annoyance of people involved with the Miss America contest, which bills itself as “first, and foremost, a scholarship program,” the general public often confuses it with Miss U.S.A., which freely admits to being a beauty pageant. As annual tournaments of unmarried, childless women in their late teens and twenties, the two events have much in common. In fact, one emerged out of the other. In 1950, Yolande Betbeze, a convent-educated coloratura soprano from Mobile, Alabama, entered the Miss America contest and performed an aria from “Rigoletto” as her talent. She returned to her dressing room to find the words “Hairy sits here,” a reference to her thick eyebrows, scrawled in lipstick on the makeup mirror. But she won, and, newly crowned, refused to sign a contract that would have required her to tour the country in swimsuits made by Catalina, one of the pageant’s sponsors. “I’m an opera singer, not a pinup,” Betbeze said.
Catalina went and started its own contest, Miss U.S.A., scrapping the talent competition and offering cash prizes instead of scholarships. Despite the schism, Miss America endured, with a reputation as the more demure of the two franchises. Miss America finally did away with its swimsuit competition in 2018, in the wake of a scandal that began with male executives at the organization referring to one former winner as a “blimp” and to other contestants as “cunts.” Apart from their formats, the big difference between the two pageants is that, until 2015, Miss U.S.A. and its international offshoot, Miss Universe, were owned, in part, by Donald Trump.
Of all the things Trump could have invested in, why a beauty pageant? The proprietary access to young, beautiful women was surely an attraction. As Jeffrey Toobin reported in this magazine in 2018, Trump also used Miss Universe to drum up foreign business. There are plenty of places to host clients, though. Pageants, commingling ideology and entertainment, offered something extra—the French-braided forces of patriarchy, capitalism, and racism. As Margot Mifflin demonstrates in “Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood” (Counterpoint), they have been woven into pageant culture from the start.
Participation has been declining for decades, but Miss America still commands attention, rivalling perhaps only major-league baseball in outsized nostalgia-based influence. The pageant isn’t a state-sponsored ritual, but its winners are invited to meet with Presidents and to address legislative committees. In 1995, Hillary Rodham Clinton, at that time the First Lady, called in to a pre-competition press conference to chat with the reigning queen. Since girlhood, Clinton claimed, she had never gone a year without watching the pageant. “This is the only way I would ever, ever appear on a Miss America contest,” she said, deprecating herself instead of the contest’s premise. “It’s one of those dreams deferred, but it’s finally coming true.”
At its peak, in the nineteen-sixties and seventies, Miss America attracted more than two-thirds of the country’s television viewers. The annual telecast, culminating with Bert Parks, the m.c., crooning “There She Is,” amounted to a minor late-summer holiday, a reunion of the intact but dysfunctional American family. Boys learned how to watch girls, and girls learned how to watch boys watching girls. Philip Roth once tried to identify the primordial source of the pageant’s allure, “the quirk that made me watch this thing year after year.” All he could come up with was that his boyhood barber, a Jewish immigrant from Turkey, kept a framed picture of the current winner on his scissor tray. I remember tuning in to the pageant during the eighties with my father, who wielded the remote with ceremonious male authority. More than the seahorsey fonts and the sherbet gowns, it was his attachment to the ritual that fostered mine.
The first Miss America pageant was held in September of 1921, in Atlantic City. Inspired by Asbury Park’s popular baby parade, city boosters invited eight “Inter-City Beauties”—from New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey—to participate in a two-day festival. King Neptune, whom Mifflin describes as “a bronzed, bearded patriarch wearing purple robes and a jeweled crown,” ferried the ingénues around on a barge, depositing them on the shore near Million Dollar Pier for a meet and greet with the mayor. King Neptune was played by Hudson Maxim, the inventor of smokeless gunpowder: “He brandished his trident in his right hand, having lost the other in a lab accident.”
Mifflin is as alive to the pageant’s historical grotesqueries as she is to the weirdo details of its founding. Built near a bay that the Lenni Lenape people called Absegami, Atlantic City was a segregated town that relied on Black labor: African-Americans accounted for twenty-two per cent of the population, but, according to the historian Nelson Johnson, they made up ninety-five per cent of the workforce in the area’s white hotels, which enabled its main industry, tourism. After the opening ceremony at Million Dollar Pier, the contestants were escorted to a float by Black residents in slave costumes—as Mifflin notes, “the only African Americans to participate in Miss America festivities for the next half century.”
The pageant’s “Bathers’ Revue” caused a sensation. Despite an ordinance that forbade women to bare their knees on the beach, the contestants were required to wear bathing suits, establishing a confusing precedent of control and empowerment. At the end of the festival, five male judges pronounced Margaret Gorman the most beautiful girl in America. At sixteen years old and just over five feet tall, Gorman was the smallest Miss America ever. We know this because contestants’ measurements were recorded in maniacal detail. (Newspapers congratulated the winner of the 1926 pageant, Norma Smallwood, on the twelve-inch circumference of her “well-molded throat.”) Gorman, Mifflin writes, “was not quite a woman, and she was decidedly not a ‘New Woman,’ by then a popular term for the enfranchised, independent, post-Victorian woman of the modern age.”
The inaugural pageant took place almost exactly one year after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the right to vote. (Mostly, white women got to exercise it.) Dramatic pageantry, Mifflin notes, had been instrumental in the suffragist movement, in the form of silk sashes and theatrical tableaux. “I can only state my firm belief that a pageant has more power to convince people of the truth of our cause than any other means,” Hazel MacKaye, a suffragist who served as the director of drama and pageantry for the Y.W.C.A., once wrote. Is it any surprise that, just as women won the vote, a repurposed form of pageantry emerged, out of the deep blue, to insure that they were voted upon?
Throughout the twenties, the pageant was a hustle. As its renown grew, the organizers angled for respectability, but the contest kept being thwarted by entrants who bent the rules with a madcap, Miss Hannigan-like period energy. In 1923, Miss Alaska, whom Mifflin describes as “a vivacious favorite in white—swimsuit, stockings, and jazzy tam,” was disqualified on the ground that she was a New York resident and a married woman. A recent immigrant from Sweden, she had “spent all of three days in Juneau.”
In the thirties, the pageant hired Lenora Slaughter, of the St. Petersburg, Florida, chamber of commerce, to spiff up the program. As the pageant’s director, Slaughter hoped to attract a “better class of girl,” and thus a better class of sponsor, transforming a popular entertainment into a tidy model of middle-class advancement. She added the talent competition, instituted scholarships, created the coronation ceremony, and started pageant-momming the pageant with a genteel dauntlessness that left many of her “girls” in her thrall well into adulthood.
Using a “whack-a-mole approach to controlling the obstreperous beauties,” as Mifflin writes, Slaughter established a pattern of reactivity that plagues the Miss America Organization even now. Winner absconds with her chauffeur on the night of her coronation? Assign a society matron to escort each contestant twenty-four hours a day. Palomino nearly falls into the orchestra pit? No more animals in the talent competition. Slaughter is remembered as the pageant’s great reformer, but there were brittle limits to her progressivism, which placed education alongside, but never above, marriage as a pathway to fulfillment.
Miss America positions itself as a meritocratic institution—a congress of self-improving strivers pulling themselves up by their spaghetti straps. Its quasi-legislative structure, with each state and the District of Columbia sending a delegate, implies that Miss America not only reigns over the nation but also represents it. Demographically, she clearly doesn’t. In the course of a century, the pageant has had one Native American winner, in 1926, and one Latina winner, who was born in Paraguay to Mormon missionaries; it has never had a Muslim, trans, or openly gay winner.
The shame of Slaughter’s thirty-two-year regime was Rule Seven, which appeared sometime in the forties and stipulated that contestants must be “in good health and of the white race.” To Slaughter, “of the white race” seems to have meant pretty much anything but Black. For newly arrived Europeans, the contest served as a portal to whiteness, turning immigrants into Americans. In 1945, pageant officials pressured Miss New York, Bess Myerson, of the Sholem Aleichem Houses, in the Bronx, to Anglicize her name. (“ ‘Betty,’ or whatever, ‘Merrick’ or something,” Slaughter advised.) Myerson refused and won the contest, becoming the first and only Jewish Miss America.
Even in the sixties, as consciousnesses levitated across the country, the pageant remained a bastion of conservatism. In 1968, the feminist collective New York Radical Women organized “a day-long boardwalk-theater event,” in Atlantic City, to coincide with the pageant. As part of the protest, they filled a “Freedom Trash Can” with cosmetics, steno pads, floor wax, hair curlers, undergarments, and other such “woman-garbage.” Writing about the demonstration in the Washington Post, the humorist Art Buchwald concluded, “There is no better excuse for hitting a woman than the fact that she looks just like a man.” Reading Buchwald now, one realizes that Trump’s tone of cruel appraisal is at least partly pageant-watcher-speak, the snap judgment of the Nielsen patriarch accustomed to rating bodies the way he rates shows.
As feminists protested on the boardwalk, the first Miss Black America was being crowned at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, four blocks away. The contest, sponsored by the regional N.A.A.C.P. and the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, was, Mifflin writes, “a pivot from pressuring Miss America to integrate,” which had already been attempted, with “pitiful results.” Miss America’s famous theme song dealt in superlatives (“she is fairest of the fair”), but the Miss Black America serenade, by Curtis Mayfield, offered a collective vision of victory (“You’re such wonderful people / And so beautifully equal”). As the sociologist Maxine Leeds Craig has written, “while Women’s Liberation protested the racism of the contest as one of the specific ways it oppressed women, the N.A.A.C.P. sought to fight that racism by having a black woman win the crown in the name of all black women.” An immediate success, Miss Black America exerted transformative pressure on traditional pageants and on the definition of beauty that they presupposed. At the end of last year, Black women held the crowns of five major beauty pageants: Miss America, Miss U.S.A., Miss Teen U.S.A., Miss Universe, and Miss World.


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newyorker--2020-08-31--January Jones’s Very Un-Betty Draper Quarantine

One day in June , the actress January Jones posted a picture of herself on Instagram , standing in her swimming pool , wearing an oversized straw bucket hat , cat ’ s-eye sunglasses , and a two-piece Lemlem swimsuit the color of ripe cantaloupe .
She is waving at the camera over her shoulder , flashing a broad , toothy smile .
There is nothing unusual about the image , or even the caption : “ Series : ‘ Out of work actor needs attention.
’ ” Many actors have found themselves unemployed during the coronavirus pandemic , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fodder .
But coming from Jones , who is best known for playing the frosty , platinum-bobbed , depressed , and often desperate mid-century housewife Betty Draper on the AMC television drama “ Mad Men , ” the image produced a certain welcome kind of whiplash .
Betty Draper , as a character , was a glutton for attention , and she was consistently starved of it .
A former fashion model , she hated being stuck in the suburbs while her husband , the charismatic but damaged advertising executive Don Draper , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ job and his clandestine , bohemian lovers .
She became increasingly petulant and vain in her isolation .
She was aloof , manipulative , more or less disinterested in her children , addicted to nicotine and melancholia .
In the first season , Betty gets Don to help her start modelling again , and she looks elated when given a fresh chance to sit in front of flashbulbs .
When the modelling gig ultimately falls apart , she quietly walks out onto her lawn , in a white housedress , carrying a rifle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a neighbor ’ s nattering pigeons .
The scene is iconic ( and , these days , much memed ) : a bored , beautiful , Hitchcockian blonde with a cigarette dangling from her lips , wreaking havoc in a place she can not escape .
An out-of-work model badly in need of attention .
Jones seems to cherish , and even sometimes milk , her lasting connection to Betty Draper in the cultural imagination .
Although she has worked steadily since “ Mad Men ” wrapped ( she appeared in sixty-three episodes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Man on Earth ” and recently starred in the Netflix figure-skating soap opera “ Spinning Out ” ) , Jones ’ s Instagram feed seems honest about—one might even say fixated on—the outsized shadow of the role that made her famous .
In early 2019 , she put up a picture of herself as Betty in restrictive mid-century lingerie , with the caption “ Just put on your fucking girdle and go grab Wednesday people.
” Later that year , she posted a screenshot of Betty on her beloved puffy , pink Victorian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wish I let myself faint more .
.
.
really dramatic fainting spells need to be socially acceptable again.
” She will often post grainy clips from “ Mad Men ” that she films directly from her television , implying that she regularly rewatches herself in the show , just for kicks .
Like many wives from the height of the prestige TV drama , Betty was an unloved character in “ Mad Men ” ’ s heyday ; she seemed so emotionally limited , so frigid , so nihilistic , narcissistic , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ children got into a minor car accident , in Season 1 , Betty ’ s first concern was that her daughter Sally walked away with her beauty intact .
“ I keep thinking , ” she tells Don , “ not that I could have killed the kids , but .
.
.
worse , Sally could have survived , and gone on living with this horrible scar on her face.
” Eventually , Betty musters the courage to divorce Don and move on with a new marriage , but she continues to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sense of human warmth .
She gains weight and sinks further into despondency ; when she learns that she has advanced lung cancer , she forgoes treatment .
The last time we see Betty in the series , she is chain-smoking in her kitchen , thumbing through a magazine .
Other women on the show have heroic arcs—Peggy Olson becomes a star copywriter , Joan Holloway starts her own film-production company—but not poor , stifled Betty .
Jones ’ s affection for her onscreen avatar is unsurprising , given that Jones endured her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the show .
Gawker once described her as a “ human ice luge , ” accusing her of “ mugging woodenly ” rather than acting .
When Ruth La Ferla profiled Jones in the Times , in 2013 , she wrote that “ you could be forgiven for confusing Ms. Jones with her starchy alter ego.
” Jones , for her part , told the press that “ Mad Men ” fans would walk up to her and be “ mean on the street.
” The negative public perception seems only to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her character .
“ I ’ m sort of sick of defending her , ” she said of Betty , in one interview .
“ I love her and I ’ m sad I ’ ll never get to speak for her again.
” A scroll through Jones ’ s Instagram feed in recent months debunks the shallow notion that she ’ s Betty ’ s diffident doppelgänger .
She is not an inaccessible ice queen but a hammy , capricious goofball .
On March 18th , just as lockdowns were beginning in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in which she stands in her bathroom , in a glittery caftan and a clay mask , describing her science-fair-esque bathtub ritual of “ making human stew ” using baking soda and vinegar .
She quickly followed up with a video of herself dancing around in a neon-red L.E.D .
mask while drinking Coors Light through a straw .
She hula-hoops , tap-dances , gives a “ Grey Gardens ” -esque tour of her rosebushes , sweeps her floor in a Venetian theatre mask , choreographs a solo synchronized-swimming routine , smiles with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ selfies in a variety of outfits that can only be described as Norma Desmond meets Samantha Stephens .
I ’ ve written before that quarantined celebrities are better off being kooky clowns than righteous pundits .
For some—Patti Lupone , Leslie Jordan—we wouldn ’ t expect anything less than crazed karaoke and baton-twirling monologues .
For Jones , the wackiness is a breaking out , a surprise reinvention .
While still riffing on her role as Betty , she ’ s left her behind ; her videos have a whipped lightness to them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In these pandemic days , Betty Draper ’ s struggles are suddenly more relatable ( which , for better or worse , when it comes to female characters , is still synonymous with likable ) .
She was trapped all those years inside her house , bored and lonely ; of course she threw tantrums .
Recently , Jones posted a video of herself playing with dolls alone in her walk-in closet .
She has an eight-year-old son , but this is not parental bonding time , nor is it an eerie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Lonely Doll ” tableaux made by Dare Wright , another suppressed blond bombshell .
Instead , it was a one-woman “ Punch and Judy ” show , deadpan but unbridled .
The dolls are both past versions of Jones : a plastic action figure of the “ X-Men ” heroine Emma Frost , whom Jones portrayed in 2011 ’ s “ X : First Class , ” and a rare Betty Draper Barbie .
Jones perches the dolls on a navy-blue fur pillow and pantomimes a cat fight between them : “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ silly bitch , ” she says , as Betty , in a wispy voice .
“ I am powerful ; I can turn into a diamond !
” she growls , as Frost .
They duke it out , and then , clinching Betty ’ s victory , Jones delivers one of the character ’ s more famous lines about how she is consistently undermined : “ I ’ m not stupid ; I speak Italian !
”

One day in June, the actress January Jones posted a picture of herself on Instagram, standing in her swimming pool, wearing an oversized straw bucket hat, cat’s-eye sunglasses, and a two-piece Lemlem swimsuit the color of ripe cantaloupe. She is waving at the camera over her shoulder, flashing a broad, toothy smile. There is nothing unusual about the image, or even the caption: “Series: ‘Out of work actor needs attention.’ ” Many actors have found themselves unemployed during the coronavirus pandemic, and poolside swimsuit photos are standard Hollywood social-media-feed fodder. But coming from Jones, who is best known for playing the frosty, platinum-bobbed, depressed, and often desperate mid-century housewife Betty Draper on the AMC television drama “Mad Men,” the image produced a certain welcome kind of whiplash.
Betty Draper, as a character, was a glutton for attention, and she was consistently starved of it. A former fashion model, she hated being stuck in the suburbs while her husband, the charismatic but damaged advertising executive Don Draper, dashed off to his glamorous Manhattan advertising job and his clandestine, bohemian lovers. She became increasingly petulant and vain in her isolation. She was aloof, manipulative, more or less disinterested in her children, addicted to nicotine and melancholia. In the first season, Betty gets Don to help her start modelling again, and she looks elated when given a fresh chance to sit in front of flashbulbs. When the modelling gig ultimately falls apart, she quietly walks out onto her lawn, in a white housedress, carrying a rifle, which she uses to shoot at a neighbor’s nattering pigeons. The scene is iconic (and, these days, much memed): a bored, beautiful, Hitchcockian blonde with a cigarette dangling from her lips, wreaking havoc in a place she cannot escape. An out-of-work model badly in need of attention.
Jones seems to cherish, and even sometimes milk, her lasting connection to Betty Draper in the cultural imagination. Although she has worked steadily since “Mad Men” wrapped (she appeared in sixty-three episodes of the Fox comedy “The Last Man on Earth” and recently starred in the Netflix figure-skating soap opera “Spinning Out”), Jones’s Instagram feed seems honest about—one might even say fixated on—the outsized shadow of the role that made her famous. In early 2019, she put up a picture of herself as Betty in restrictive mid-century lingerie, with the caption “Just put on your fucking girdle and go grab Wednesday people.” Later that year, she posted a screenshot of Betty on her beloved puffy, pink Victorian fainting sofa, writing, “I wish I let myself faint more . . . really dramatic fainting spells need to be socially acceptable again.” She will often post grainy clips from “Mad Men” that she films directly from her television, implying that she regularly rewatches herself in the show, just for kicks.
Like many wives from the height of the prestige TV drama, Betty was an unloved character in “Mad Men” ’s heyday; she seemed so emotionally limited, so frigid, so nihilistic, narcissistic, and preening. When she and her children got into a minor car accident, in Season 1, Betty’s first concern was that her daughter Sally walked away with her beauty intact. “I keep thinking,” she tells Don, “not that I could have killed the kids but . . . worse, Sally could have survived and gone on living with this horrible scar on her face.” Eventually, Betty musters the courage to divorce Don and move on with a new marriage, but she continues to struggle to express herself or generate any sense of human warmth. She gains weight and sinks further into despondency; when she learns that she has advanced lung cancer, she forgoes treatment. The last time we see Betty in the series, she is chain-smoking in her kitchen, thumbing through a magazine. Other women on the show have heroic arcs—Peggy Olson becomes a star copywriter, Joan Holloway starts her own film-production company—but not poor, stifled Betty.
Like many wives from the height of the prestige TV drama, Jones’s “Mad Men” character, Betty Draper, was unloved in the show’s heyday. Photograph by Michael Yarish / AMC
Jones’s affection for her onscreen avatar is unsurprising, given that Jones endured her share of ungenerous treatment during her run on the show. Gawker once described her as a “human ice luge,” accusing her of “mugging woodenly” rather than acting. When Ruth La Ferla profiled Jones in the Times, in 2013, she wrote that “you could be forgiven for confusing Ms. Jones with her starchy alter ego.” Jones, for her part, told the press that “Mad Men” fans would walk up to her and be “mean on the street.” The negative public perception seems only to have enhanced Jones’s bond with her character. “I’m sort of sick of defending her,” she said of Betty, in one interview. “I love her and I’m sad I’ll never get to speak for her again.”
A scroll through Jones’s Instagram feed in recent months debunks the shallow notion that she’s Betty’s diffident doppelgänger. She is not an inaccessible ice queen but a hammy, capricious goofball. On March 18th, just as lockdowns were beginning in Los Angeles, she posted a video in which she stands in her bathroom, in a glittery caftan and a clay mask, describing her science-fair-esque bathtub ritual of “making human stew” using baking soda and vinegar. She quickly followed up with a video of herself dancing around in a neon-red L.E.D. mask while drinking Coors Light through a straw. She hula-hoops, tap-dances, gives a “Grey Gardens”-esque tour of her rosebushes, sweeps her floor in a Venetian theatre mask, choreographs a solo synchronized-swimming routine, smiles with spinach in her teeth, and takes selfies in a variety of outfits that can only be described as Norma Desmond meets Samantha Stephens. I’ve written before that quarantined celebrities are better off being kooky clowns than righteous pundits. For some—Patti Lupone, Leslie Jordan—we wouldn’t expect anything less than crazed karaoke and baton-twirling monologues. For Jones, the wackiness is a breaking out, a surprise reinvention. While still riffing on her role as Betty, she’s left her behind; her videos have a whipped lightness to them that Mrs. Don Draper could never muster.
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In these pandemic days, Betty Draper’s struggles are suddenly more relatable (which, for better or worse, when it comes to female characters, is still synonymous with likable). She was trapped all those years inside her house, bored and lonely; of course she threw tantrums. Recently, Jones posted a video of herself playing with dolls alone in her walk-in closet. She has an eight-year-old son, but this is not parental bonding time, nor is it an eerie adult play session, like the haunting “Lonely Doll” tableaux made by Dare Wright, another suppressed blond bombshell. Instead, it was a one-woman “Punch and Judy” show, deadpan but unbridled. The dolls are both past versions of Jones: a plastic action figure of the “X-Men” heroine Emma Frost, whom Jones portrayed in 2011’s “X: First Class,” and a rare Betty Draper Barbie. Jones perches the dolls on a navy-blue fur pillow and pantomimes a cat fight between them: “You’re so classless, you silly bitch,” she says, as Betty, in a wispy voice. “I am powerful; I can turn into a diamond!” she growls, as Frost. They duke it out, and then, clinching Betty’s victory, Jones delivers one of the character’s more famous lines about how she is consistently undermined: “I’m not stupid; I speak Italian!”
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