newyorker--2020-07-21--The Force Is Still Strong with John Williams

On January 10 , 1977 , during the final days of the Ford Administration , John Williams began writing music for “ Star Wars , ” a forthcoming sci-fi adventure film created by George Lucas .
More than forty-two years later , on November 21 , 2019 , Williams presided over the final recording session for “ The Rise of Skywalker , ” the ninth and ostensibly last installment of the main “ Star Wars ” saga .
Williams scored every film in the series , and there is no achievement quite like it in movie history , or , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Williams composed more than twenty hours of music for the cycle , working with five different directors .
He developed a library of dozens of distinct motifs , many of them instantly recognizable to a billion or more people .
The “ Star Wars ” scores have entered the repertories of the most venerable orchestras around the world .
When , earlier this year , Williams made his début conducting the Vienna Philharmonic , several musicians asked him for autographs .
Williams is a courtly , soft-voiced , inveterately self-effacing man of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the extraordinary worldwide impact of his “ Star Wars ” music—not to mention his scores for “ Jaws , ” “ Close Encounters of the Third Kind , ” “ E.T.
, ” the “ Indiana Jones ” movies , the “ Harry Potter ” movies , the “ Jurassic Park ” movies , and dozens of other blockbusters—but he makes no extravagant claims for his music , even if he allows that some of it could be considered “ quite good.
” A lifelong workhorse , he resists looking back and immerses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the coronavirus period , he has been at home , on the west side of Los Angeles , focussing on a new concert work—a concerto , for the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter , which will have its première next year .
In February , I visited Williams in his bungalow office on the Universal Studios back lot—part of an adobe-style complex belonging to Amblin Entertainment , Steven Spielberg ’ s production company .
Spielberg ’ s office is nearby .
The two men first worked together on “ The Sugarland Express , ” in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ films to date—all but four of Spielberg ’ s features .
At a tribute , in 2012 , Spielberg said , “ John Williams has been the single most significant contributor to my success as a filmmaker.
” It is , however , “ Star Wars ” that anchors the composer ’ s fame .
Williams poured himself a glass of water in the bungalow kitchenette , settled into a chair in front of his desk , and addressed the topic of the “ Star Wars ” cycle .
He is a tall @ @ @ @ @ @ @ face framed by a trim , vaguely clerical white beard .
“ Thinking about it , and trying to speak about it , connects us with the idea of trying to understand time , ” he said .
“ How do you understand forty years ?
I mean , if someone said to you , ‘ Alex , here ’ s a project .
Start on it , spend forty years on it , see where you get ’ ?
Mercifully , I had no idea it was going to be forty years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I started , and I feel , in retrospect , enormously fortunate to have had the energy to be able to finish it—put a bow on it , as it were.
” In the mid-nineteen-seventies , when Williams formed links to the young blockbuster directors Spielberg and Lucas , he was already well established in Hollywood .
He was , in a sense , born into the business ; his father , Johnny Williams , was a percussionist who played in the Raymond Scott Quintette and later performed on movie soundtracks .
Williams @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , perhaps the greatest American film composer , celebrated for his scores for “ Citizen Kane , ” “ Vertigo , ” “ Psycho , ” and “ Taxi Driver.
” Williams , who sometimes joined his father at rehearsals , told me , “ Benny liked the way my father played the timpani .
‘ Old Man Williams isn ’ t afraid to break the head , ’ he ’ d say .
Benny was a famously irascible character , but in later years he was always very encouraging to me .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ I arranged ‘ Fiddler on the Roof.
’ ‘ Write your own music , ’ he said.
” The Williamses moved from the New York area to Los Angeles in 1947 , when John was fifteen .
A skilled pianist , he won notice for organizing a jazz group with classmates from North Hollywood High ; a brief piece in Time referred to him as Curley Williams .
In 1955 , he went to New York and studied at Juilliard with the great piano pedagogue Rosina Lhévinne .
“ It became clear , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could write better than I could play.
” He composed his first feature-film score in 1958 , for a race-car comedy called “ Daddy-O.
” Because of his skills as a jazz stylist and as a song arranger , he specialized at first in such comedic fare—other assignments included “ Gidget Goes to Rome ” and “ Not with My Wife , You Don ’ t !
” —but he branched out into Westerns and period dramas .
Recordings of two of his scores , for “ The Reivers ” and “ The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the young Spielberg , who was working as a writer and as a television director .
When Spielberg undertook his first major theatrical film , “ The Sugarland Express , ” in 1974 , he informed the studio that he wanted to collaborate with the composer of “ The Reivers.
” Williams told me , “ I met what looked to be this seventeen-year-old kid , this very sweet boy , who knew more about film music than I did—every Max Steiner and Dimitri Tiomkin score .
We had a meeting in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by executives .
It was very cute—you had the feeling Steven had never been in a restaurant like that before .
It was like having lunch with a teen-age kid , but a brilliant one.
” After “ Sugarland ” came “ Jaws.
” As Spielberg happily acknowledged , Williams ’ s two-note double-bass ostinato played a crucial role in that movie ’ s colossal success , particularly when mechanical-shark malfunctions left it to the composer to evoke the murderous beast at full power .
Williams went on , “ One day , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Do you know George Lucas ?
’ I said , ‘ No , I have no idea who he is.
’ ‘ Well , he ’ s got this thing called “ Star Wars , ” and he wants to have a classical ’ —his term , he didn ’ t say Romantic— ‘ classical score , and I ’ ve convinced George he should meet you , because he admired the score for “ Jaws.
” ’ I came out here one night , to Universal Studios , and met George.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been entertaining the idea of using preëxisting classical works on the “ Star Wars ” soundtrack .
The composer argued for an original score , in which newly created themes could be manipulated and developed to best serve the drama .
Lucas , through a representative , says that he never intended to use extant music in the film .
What ’ s not in doubt is that the director wanted a soundtrack with an old-Hollywood atmosphere , in keeping with the film ’ s reliance on chivalric swashbuckler tropes .
When Williams @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of January , 1977—he gave me the date after consulting an old diary—he fell back on the techniques of golden-age Hollywood : brief , sharply defined motifs ; brilliant , brassy orchestration ; a continuous fabric of underscoring .
The film-music scholar Emilio Audissino has described the “ Star Wars ” score and others by Williams as “ neoclassical , ” meaning that they draw on a sumptuously orchestrated style associated with such Central European émigrés as Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold .
“ Neoclassical ” is a better label than “ neo-Romantic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in mid-twentieth-century influences : jazz , popular standards , Stravinsky , and Aaron Copland , among others .
When he writes for a Wagnerian or Straussian orchestra , he airs out the textures and gives them rhythmic bounce .
“ The Imperial March , ” from “ The Empire Strikes Back , ” for example , has a bright , brittle edge , with skittering figures in winds and strings surrounding an expected phalanx of brass .

On January 10, 1977, during the final days of the Ford Administration, John Williams began writing music for “Star Wars,” a forthcoming sci-fi adventure film created by George Lucas. More than forty-two years later, on November 21, 2019, Williams presided over the final recording session for “The Rise of Skywalker,” the ninth and ostensibly last installment of the main “Star Wars” saga. Williams scored every film in the series, and there is no achievement quite like it in movie history, or, for that matter, in musical history. Williams composed more than twenty hours of music for the cycle, working with five different directors. He developed a library of dozens of distinct motifs, many of them instantly recognizable to a billion or more people. The “Star Wars” scores have entered the repertories of the most venerable orchestras around the world. When, earlier this year, Williams made his début conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, several musicians asked him for autographs.
Williams is a courtly, soft-voiced, inveterately self-effacing man of eighty-eight. He is well aware of the extraordinary worldwide impact of his “Star Wars” music—not to mention his scores for “Jaws,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T.,” the “Indiana Jones” movies, the “Harry Potter” movies, the “Jurassic Park” movies, and dozens of other blockbusters—but he makes no extravagant claims for his music, even if he allows that some of it could be considered “quite good.” A lifelong workhorse, he resists looking back and immerses himself in the next task. In the coronavirus period, he has been at home, on the west side of Los Angeles, focussing on a new concert work—a concerto, for the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, which will have its première next year.
In February, I visited Williams in his bungalow office on the Universal Studios back lot—part of an adobe-style complex belonging to Amblin Entertainment, Steven Spielberg’s production company. Spielberg’s office is nearby. The two men first worked together on “The Sugarland Express,” in 1974, and have collaborated on twenty-eight films to date—all but four of Spielberg’s features. At a tribute, in 2012, Spielberg said, “John Williams has been the single most significant contributor to my success as a filmmaker.” It is, however, “Star Wars” that anchors the composer’s fame.
Williams poured himself a glass of water in the bungalow kitchenette, settled into a chair in front of his desk, and addressed the topic of the “Star Wars” cycle. He is a tall man, still physically vigorous, his face framed by a trim, vaguely clerical white beard. “Thinking about it, and trying to speak about it, connects us with the idea of trying to understand time,” he said. “How do you understand forty years? I mean, if someone said to you, ‘Alex, here’s a project. Start on it, spend forty years on it, see where you get’? Mercifully, I had no idea it was going to be forty years. I was not a youngster when I started, and I feel, in retrospect, enormously fortunate to have had the energy to be able to finish it—put a bow on it, as it were.”
In the mid-nineteen-seventies, when Williams formed links to the young blockbuster directors Spielberg and Lucas, he was already well established in Hollywood. He was, in a sense, born into the business; his father, Johnny Williams, was a percussionist who played in the Raymond Scott Quintette and later performed on movie soundtracks. Williams père worked several times with Bernard Herrmann, perhaps the greatest American film composer, celebrated for his scores for “Citizen Kane,” “Vertigo,” “Psycho,” and “Taxi Driver.” Williams, who sometimes joined his father at rehearsals, told me, “Benny liked the way my father played the timpani. ‘Old Man Williams isn’t afraid to break the head,’ he’d say. Benny was a famously irascible character, but in later years he was always very encouraging to me. One time he got irritated was when I arranged ‘Fiddler on the Roof.’ ‘Write your own music,’ he said.”
The Williamses moved from the New York area to Los Angeles in 1947, when John was fifteen. A skilled pianist, he won notice for organizing a jazz group with classmates from North Hollywood High; a brief piece in Time referred to him as Curley Williams. In 1955, he went to New York and studied at Juilliard with the great piano pedagogue Rosina Lhévinne. “It became clear,” he says, “that I could write better than I could play.” He composed his first feature-film score in 1958, for a race-car comedy called “Daddy-O.” Because of his skills as a jazz stylist and as a song arranger, he specialized at first in such comedic fare—other assignments included “Gidget Goes to Rome” and “Not with My Wife, You Don’t!”—but he branched out into Westerns and period dramas.
Recordings of two of his scores, for “The Reivers” and “The Cowboys,” fell into the hands of the young Spielberg, who was working as a writer and as a television director. When Spielberg undertook his first major theatrical film, “The Sugarland Express,” in 1974, he informed the studio that he wanted to collaborate with the composer of “The Reivers.” Williams told me, “I met what looked to be this seventeen-year-old kid, this very sweet boy, who knew more about film music than I did—every Max Steiner and Dimitri Tiomkin score. We had a meeting in a fancy Beverly Hills restaurant, arranged by executives. It was very cute—you had the feeling Steven had never been in a restaurant like that before. It was like having lunch with a teen-age kid, but a brilliant one.” After “Sugarland” came “Jaws.” As Spielberg happily acknowledged, Williams’s two-note double-bass ostinato played a crucial role in that movie’s colossal success, particularly when mechanical-shark malfunctions left it to the composer to evoke the murderous beast at full power.
Williams went on, “One day, Steven called me and said, ‘Do you know George Lucas?’ I said, ‘No, I have no idea who he is.’ ‘Well, he’s got this thing called “Star Wars,” and he wants to have a classical’—his term, he didn’t say Romantic—‘classical score, and I’ve convinced George he should meet you, because he admired the score for “Jaws.” ’ I came out here one night, to Universal Studios, and met George.”
As Williams remembers it, Lucas had been entertaining the idea of using preëxisting classical works on the “Star Wars” soundtrack. The composer argued for an original score, in which newly created themes could be manipulated and developed to best serve the drama. Lucas, through a representative, says that he never intended to use extant music in the film. What’s not in doubt is that the director wanted a soundtrack with an old-Hollywood atmosphere, in keeping with the film’s reliance on chivalric swashbuckler tropes.
When Williams set to work in the second week of January, 1977—he gave me the date after consulting an old diary—he fell back on the techniques of golden-age Hollywood: brief, sharply defined motifs; brilliant, brassy orchestration; a continuous fabric of underscoring. The film-music scholar Emilio Audissino has described the “Star Wars” score and others by Williams as “neoclassical,” meaning that they draw on a sumptuously orchestrated style associated with such Central European émigrés as Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. “Neoclassical” is a better label than “neo-Romantic,” since Williams is so steeped in mid-twentieth-century influences: jazz, popular standards, Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland, among others. When he writes for a Wagnerian or Straussian orchestra, he airs out the textures and gives them rhythmic bounce. “The Imperial March,” from “The Empire Strikes Back,” for example, has a bright, brittle edge, with skittering figures in winds and strings surrounding an expected phalanx of brass.
The nine “Star Wars” scores make use of a vast library of leitmotifs—more than sixty of them, according to the scholar Frank Lehman. I showed Williams a copy of Lehman’s “Complete Catalogue of the Musical Themes of ‘Star Wars,’ ” which left him a bit nonplussed. (“Oh, wow,” he said, paging through it. “How exhausting.”) Talk of leitmotifs leads inevitably to the topic of Richard Wagner, with whom they are inextricably associated. Williams leaned back in his chair and smiled ruefully.
“Well, I saw the ‘Ring’ at the Hamburg Opera, years ago, and found it somewhat inaccessible, mostly because I didn’t know German,” he said. “I don’t really know the Wagner operas at all. If Mr. Hanslick were alive, I think I’d be sitting on the side of Brahms in the debate.” (The Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick campaigned for Brahms and against Wagner in the late nineteenth century.) “People say they hear Wagner in ‘Star Wars,’ and I can only think, It’s not because I put it there. Now, of course, I know that Wagner had a great influence on Korngold and all the early Hollywood composers. Wagner lives with us here—you can’t escape it. I have been in the big river swimming with all of them.”


newyorker--2020-07-21--Feds in Unmarked Van Looking for Suspicious Characters Pick Up Jared Kushner

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —In what the Department of Homeland Security is calling “ an unfortunate incident , ” federal agents in an unmarked van who were looking for suspicious characters snatched Jared Kushner off the street .
According to the agents , the van was patrolling the vicinity of the White House when they spotted a “ shifty-eyed male ” who “ didn ’ t look right.
” “ He checked all the boxes for suspicious , ” one of the agents said .
“ He definitely didn ’ t look like someone who should be anywhere @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protests of a screaming Kushner , the agents loaded him into the van and sped away to an undisclosed location .
According to White House sources , Kushner was missing for several hours before anyone in the West Wing realized he was gone .
His disappearance was finally noticed late in the afternoon , when members of the White House coronavirus task force observed that their daily meeting had gone “ more smoothly than usual.
” Speaking to reporters about the Kushner incident , the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security @ @ @ @ @ @ @ practice of picking up random people on the street and putting them in unmarked vans is a “ terrific idea , ” but acknowledged that it might need to be “ tweaked.
” “ Our agents need to be given much more explicit guidance about who qualifies as a suspicious character , or Stephen Miller could be next , ” he said .

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what the Department of Homeland Security is calling “an unfortunate incident,” federal agents in an unmarked van who were looking for suspicious characters snatched Jared Kushner off the street.
According to the agents, the van was patrolling the vicinity of the White House when they spotted a “shifty-eyed male” who “didn’t look right.”
“He checked all the boxes for suspicious,” one of the agents said. “He definitely didn’t look like someone who should be anywhere near the White House.”
Despite the protests of a screaming Kushner, the agents loaded him into the van and sped away to an undisclosed location.
According to White House sources, Kushner was missing for several hours before anyone in the West Wing realized he was gone.
His disappearance was finally noticed late in the afternoon, when members of the White House coronavirus task force observed that their daily meeting had gone “more smoothly than usual.”
Speaking to reporters about the Kushner incident, the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, said that the practice of picking up random people on the street and putting them in unmarked vans is a “terrific idea,” but acknowledged that it might need to be “tweaked.”
“Our agents need to be given much more explicit guidance about who qualifies as a suspicious character, or Stephen Miller could be next,” he said.


newyorker--2020-07-22--Male Infertility and the Meaning of Family in “The Pause”

There has been talk , during our current national calamity , of a coronavirus “ pause , ” of elements of practical and psychic life not stopped forever but temporarily ( and ever more enduringly ) frozen .
The pandemic has been a shared experience , but many such pauses are experienced in private—a crack in the stories that one tells about a life , between one momentous event and what comes after .
Richard Yeagley ’ s documentary “ The Pause : A Brief Contemplation of Scott ’ s Infertility ” follows a married couple , Scott and Jenn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ learn , following an investigative medical procedure , that Scott ’ s sperm count is not high enough to allow them to conceive a baby .
The couple have been “ contending with infertility ” for the past three years , we learn from a title card .
The phrase is at once coldly clinical and emotionally weighty , suggesting battles waged in doctor ’ s offices but also fraught discussions and solitary mental wrangling .
Jenn , guarded and composed , says that she wants to foster children or adopt .
Scott @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on his face whenever he talks about the subject , remains set on having his own biological offspring—which he now recognizes is not possible .
Yeagley , who knew Scott and Jenn socially before starting the project , filmed the couple sporadically in the course of nearly a year , from December of 2018 to the following November .
Yeagley said that he was drawn in by Scott ’ s desire to talk about infertility , and by the bare and unfinished—even harsh—nature of his thoughts .
“ He was asking a lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ask , ” Yeagley told me .
Scott talks about “ ego ” and “ legacy , ” and wanting a child “ who would show me things that very , very few people could show me.
” He laments not being able to have his “ own children , ” before correcting himself , to note that he means “ children that have my genetic material in them.
” His response to the unwanted test results is one of grief .
He is mourning the version of parenthood he had imagined for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ describes the feeling as “ a loss of someone that I would love , a loss of someone that would love me.
” Yet , despite his frequent focus on his own distress , he is able to grieve for his partner , too , recognizing that his refusal to pursue adoption or fostering will deny Jenn the experience of motherhood .
The people around Scott try to introduce more expansive ideas of parenthood .
Jenn reassures him that he ’ d make a great father , for any child .
Another couple @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of an adopted daughter , explain and clearly demonstrate that the meaning of family extends beyond biology .
The husband gently tells Scott that he needs to stop thinking about his infertility merely in terms of himself— “ you ’ re a team , ” he says of Scott and Jenn .
For a viewer , these voices offer compelling perspectives , but Scott is not yet ready to hear them .
Infertility stories are often framed as challenges that a couple confronts together ( or that a woman confronts alone ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ title suggests , this is Scott ’ s story , and , as such , it ’ s about his struggle , one that is related to but not entirely overlapping with the desire to have a baby .
The central question isn ’ t so much about whether he will follow Jenn ’ s lead and decide to foster or adopt children—nor even about what it means to want children or to be a parent , though Scott engages with those questions from several directions .
Instead , it ’ s something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ What happens when some big , ugly chunk of life comes loose and disrupts one ’ s sense of self ?
When Scott tells Jenn , “ It ’ s just not how I thought my family would be , ” he is saying , in effect , This is not how I thought the story of my life would go .
The film ’ s ending is an ambivalent turn—a sidestep for the couple away from parenthood to something else .
Yeagley described the place where we leave Jenn and Scott as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ —not all stories about making a decision end with joyous epiphanies—but he added that this was just a snapshot of the couple ’ s lives , not the final word on what form their family might take .
For now , the pause isn ’ t quite over .

There has been talk, during our current national calamity, of a coronavirus “pause,” of elements of practical and psychic life not stopped forever but temporarily (and ever more enduringly) frozen. The pandemic has been a shared experience, but many such pauses are experienced in private—a crack in the stories that one tells about a life, between one momentous event and what comes after.
Richard Yeagley’s documentary “The Pause: A Brief Contemplation of Scott’s Infertility” follows a married couple, Scott and Jenn Burkholder, from the point when they learn, following an investigative medical procedure, that Scott’s sperm count is not high enough to allow them to conceive a baby. The couple have been “contending with infertility” for the past three years, we learn from a title card. The phrase is at once coldly clinical and emotionally weighty, suggesting battles waged in doctor’s offices but also fraught discussions and solitary mental wrangling. Jenn, guarded and composed, says that she wants to foster children or adopt. Scott, whose disappointment and frustration breaks through on his face whenever he talks about the subject, remains set on having his own biological offspring—which he now recognizes is not possible.
Yeagley, who knew Scott and Jenn socially before starting the project, filmed the couple sporadically in the course of nearly a year, from December of 2018 to the following November. Yeagley said that he was drawn in by Scott’s desire to talk about infertility, and by the bare and unfinished—even harsh—nature of his thoughts. “He was asking a lot of questions that are very uncomfortable to ask,” Yeagley told me. Scott talks about “ego” and “legacy,” and wanting a child “who would show me things that very, very few people could show me.” He laments not being able to have his “own children,” before correcting himself, to note that he means “children that have my genetic material in them.” His response to the unwanted test results is one of grief. He is mourning the version of parenthood he had imagined for himself, and his impossible biological child—he describes the feeling as “a loss of someone that I would love, a loss of someone that would love me.” Yet, despite his frequent focus on his own distress, he is able to grieve for his partner, too, recognizing that his refusal to pursue adoption or fostering will deny Jenn the experience of motherhood.
The people around Scott try to introduce more expansive ideas of parenthood. Jenn reassures him that he’d make a great father, for any child. Another couple, friends from church who are parents of an adopted daughter, explain and clearly demonstrate that the meaning of family extends beyond biology. The husband gently tells Scott that he needs to stop thinking about his infertility merely in terms of himself—“you’re a team,” he says of Scott and Jenn. For a viewer, these voices offer compelling perspectives, but Scott is not yet ready to hear them.
Infertility stories are often framed as challenges that a couple confronts together (or that a woman confronts alone), but, as the film’s title suggests, this is Scott’s story, and, as such, it’s about his struggle, one that is related to but not entirely overlapping with the desire to have a baby. The central question isn’t so much about whether he will follow Jenn’s lead and decide to foster or adopt children—nor even about what it means to want children or to be a parent, though Scott engages with those questions from several directions. Instead, it’s something more simple and maybe more complicated: What happens when some big, ugly chunk of life comes loose and disrupts one’s sense of self? When Scott tells Jenn, “It’s just not how I thought my family would be,” he is saying, in effect, This is not how I thought the story of my life would go.
The film’s ending is an ambivalent turn—a sidestep for the couple away from parenthood to something else. Yeagley described the place where we leave Jenn and Scott as feeling potentially “unhappy and unsatisfying”—not all stories about making a decision end with joyous epiphanies—but he added that this was just a snapshot of the couple’s lives, not the final word on what form their family might take. For now, the pause isn’t quite over.


newyorker--2020-07-22--What Would J. M. Coetzee’s Jesus Do?

What Would J. M. Coetzee’s Jesus Do?

Coetzee refers here , I assume , to changes in Australian policies that were enacted over 2012 and 2013—contemporaneous , in other words , with the publication ( if not the writing ) of “ The Childhood of Jesus , ” though Australia ’ s use of offshore detention-and-processing centers predates these changes .
In the Jesus books , this kind of system is reproduced through Novilla ’ s own immigration-processing centers .
Since Novilla operates in the same memory-free context as everything else in the books , one of the plot ’ s curiosities is that these centers nonetheless @ @ @ @ @ @ @ everyone seemingly comes in with nothing , not even a name .
In fact , Novilla ’ s bland prosperity—the food is boring , the work is pointless , and , much to Simón ’ s dismay , nobody seems to be interested in sex—makes clear that the idea of a place beyond the influence of history is a mirage , even if it does carry on without memory .
Novilla is , almost literally , a city where man lives by bread alone and , by and large , does not mind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eros makes it in some sense more moral , if duller ; Simón can not find any women there who view sex as something they lack or even desire .
The city is all ideal , no poo—which is , as it turns out , not all that it ’ s cracked up to be .
In Estrella , the city to which Simón and Davíd flee in “ The Schooldays of Jesus , ” things are slightly different .
The people there , too , arrived without a past , but some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to form a new one .
Passionate love and the capacity for murder exist , as Dmitri , one of Davíd ’ s most devoted disciples , illustrates when he kills his mistress .
Envy and competition appear as well .
After Davíd ’ s death , Dmitri , wishing to control the boy ’ s legacy , refuses to acknowledge that he ’ s dead , and tries to persuade Simón to steal his remains .
When Simón refuses , Dmitri accuses him of having become “ beyond passion and beyond suffering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that has been dragged through the ocean so many times that all colour , all substance has been washed out of it.
” Dmitri also suggests that Davíd resented and pitied Simón and spent much of his time , after his arrival in Estrella , trying to escape him .
This is an odd turn after Novilla , where Simón was the one accusing others of lacking passion .
But , if Davíd boarded the dark horse , that would not leave a guardian much choice but to saddle the white one .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ his attempts to guide the black horse along toward maturity , presume that this is a world worth maturing in .
That is not a belief shared by Davíd , whose decline coincides with his decision not to eat living things , by which he means flesh .
Inés tells him that “ if you refuse to eat living things you will waste away and die.
” But Davíd is not choosing to die ; he is choosing , in his retreat from flesh and from language , from his parents and from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part of this world .
It is simply that the only way to accomplish this is dying .
The biggest surprise in “ The Death of Jesus ” is how much of the book remains after Davíd dies .
There is the faint expectation that something incredible will happen , something that could not have been anticipated , not a resurrection of course but something like one , a humanist reply .
But instead the book seems to continue only so that you can be sure that nothing happens , nothing will happen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Simón ’ s name is significant in two senses .
There is the old man who recognizes Christ , mentioned before .
There is also , more obviously , Simon Peter , the disciple Christ renames and then founds his church on .
But our Simón stays Simón to the end .
Upon him , nothing can be founded .
For Coetzee , the post-religious condition is the condition , the whole problem of modern man .
There was a time when humanism could plausibly replace God , but that time is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not possibly claim to provide a window to eternity .
This is why Coetzee ’ s savior , in “ The Death of Jesus , ” does not manage to leave behind a sacred text , or even an apostle .
All he leaves behind is “ Don Quixote , ” a book that is , for Simón , “ a relic of some kind.
” Two children , neither of them Davíd , have written in the back their answers to the prompt “ what is the message of this book ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ listen to Sancho because he is not the crazy one ” ; the second , “ Don Quixote died so he could not marry Dulcania.
” Both of these messages correspond to Davíd ’ s own failures as a messiah : in intelligibility , in longevity .
Jesus here not only founds no church but leaves behind no gospel , and withers and dies before reaching adulthood .
Which brings us back to : Why Jesus ?
In “ The Good Story , ” Coetzee recurs to the condition of post-Christianity frequently , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ something like therapy is merely a “ disillusioned ” substitute for the Catholic sacrament of reconciliation .
He imagines what confession must be like , then adds : “ Of course it is laughable that a five-minute confession can lift a lifetime ’ s burden from our shoulders—laughable unless there is belief in its efficacy , shared by the two participants , at an intensity we can probably no longer imagine.
” In Coetzee ’ s telling , Christianity , like counting or language , is a provider of meaning , and that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and promises .
If we could have this authentic faith , then life would no longer be a burden to us .
We would have no way of knowing that this faith was not “ reality , ” even though it would not be .
The troubles of history , the cost at which we go on living , would simply fade away .
Yet this nostalgic longing for religious belief bears little relationship to Christianity as actually practiced .
After all , somebody , somewhere , is going to confession every day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ imagine believing in the sacrament does not mean that there is a generalized “ we ” for whom this is true .
And these people go with a set of attitudes that may range from “ intensity ” to skepticism to despair .
As John of the Cross observed , being crushed by the sensation of God ’ s absence is itself a necessary spiritual experience ; in his “ dark night , ” he finds himself “ poor , abandoned , and unsupported by the apprehensions of [ his ] soul.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ yield a different way of seeing your life is not to say that such a life is no longer burdensome but rather that its burdens are interpreted differently—vertically , as it were .
Meaning can not be made ; it is there or it ’ s not .
There is no scaffolding that will work to uphold a building that doesn ’ t exist .
I do not presume that here I am telling Coetzee something he doesn ’ t know ; it is his entire problem , after all .
But neither @ @ @ @ @ @ @ particularly life unfolding through time , and life having a relationship to time is one of the things that the conceit of the Jesus books deliberately removes .
For Coetzee , Jesus can plausibly exist only as a difficult child .
One wonders how the story would have had to shift if he had been allowed to attain the real Jesus ’ s difficult adulthood .
A man in his thirties is a human being at full capacity .
If he got that far while still refusing the comforts of language and arithmetic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to remember what he has forgotten , it would be interesting to know , if it could be known , what it was he had to say .

Why Jesus? This is the inescapable question presented by J. M. Coetzee’s “Jesus trilogy,” which began in 2013 with “The Childhood of Jesus,” continued in 2016 with “The Schooldays of Jesus,” and now, with “The Death of Jesus,” reaches its inevitable conclusion.
Good novels have, of course, been written about Jesus, whether straight on or allegorically—the Greek novelist Nikos Kazantzakis managed both with “The Last Temptation of Christ” and “Christ Recrucified,” respectively. But it’s never really clear in what sense Coetzee’s books are “about” Jesus at all. Coetzee does not, for instance, feel bound to observe the beats of the Gospel story in any clear way, but almost everyone in the books, particularly the first, is loaded up with a significant name. When, at the end of “The Childhood of Jesus,” a car containing a man named Simón (evoking the man who recognizes the child Jesus in the Gospel of Luke), a boy named Davíd (the house from which Jesus is purportedly descended), and a woman named Inés (“virgin”) flee a city and search for a place to stay—a room at the inn, as it were—well, it’s a lot.
On the other hand: Why not Jesus? In “Disgrace,” perhaps Coetzee’s most prominent book, the professor David Lurie surveys his classroom and thinks that he “has long ceased to be surprised at the range of ignorance of his students. Post-Christian, posthistorical, postliterate, they might as well have been hatched from eggs yesterday.” Lurie, not in any sense a character to be taken as a mouthpiece, nonetheless articulates a tension in Coetzee’s relationship to Christianity in particular. As he tells his daughter, who runs a shelter for dogs, a little later in the book, “to me animal-welfare people are a bit like Christians of a certain kind. Everyone is so cheerful and well-intentioned that after a while you itch to go off and do some raping and pillaging.”
She is subsequently both raped and pillaged, and he is set on fire, so presumably he wishes he had worded this thought a little differently. Still, his students’ illiteracy, for Lurie, seems linked to their post-Christianity; it is just that if they were religious students, he would find them bores in their own way. Much like “Disgrace,” the Jesus books deal with social banality, extreme sexual violence, and what it means to lack a history, if such a thing is even possible. If they are frustrating books—and they are—it is surely in part because they were written in a spirit of frustration, restlessly hitting the same questions over and over, like a wasp stuck in a window.
Everyone in the Jesus trilogy is a refugee, seemingly from history itself. In the first book, travellers are carried by ship to a camp outside the town of Novilla, where they are assigned names and ages and can remember little, if anything, about their life beforehand. Here, we meet Simón, who has taken over the care of five-year-old Davíd and promised to help him find his mother. Eventually, the two encounter Inés, a single woman who lives with her brothers at a luxury resort. Davíd, somewhat arbitrarily, identifies Inés as his mother, and Inés, after some reluctance, accepts the role. The three form a family, if an uncomfortable one.
Davíd, an intelligent child, rebels against the formal schooling of Novilla. He is curious and capable—he teaches himself to read through a battered copy of a children’s “Don Quixote”—but pretends not to be. The city responds by sending him to a kind of detention center for difficult children, and eventually Simón, Inés, and Davíd all flee for nearby Estrella, where they start over. Davíd is enrolled in an Academy of Dance where he becomes friends with an older, somewhat unstable man named Dmitri, but Dmitri rapes and murders the headmistress of the Academy and is subsequently sentenced to psychiatric care. The Academy shuts down, restarting only in a greatly diminished form. This is where “The Death of Jesus” begins.
As in the previous two books, Davíd is once again removed from his adoptive parents’ care through institutions; first, an orphanage, which deduces that Davíd is truly an orphan; and then, when the boy becomes mysteriously ill, the local hospital. Here, Davíd will sicken and, eventually—not to give anything away—die. Simón ends the book on his own, “Don Quixote” in hand. He pours out his loneliness to a nurse, only for her to become uncomfortable and leave. When we last see him, he is much the same as he was when we first met him, and filled with the loss of a boy around whose memory a cult is steadily beginning to form.
One’s experiences of the books will largely hinge on your tolerance for Davíd, who is, to put it frankly, a pill, though perhaps not more so than actual precocious children. (While I was reading “The Schooldays of Jesus,” I asked myself if any child had ever sounded like this, and then logged on to Twitter, where a parent had posted an exchange with her son which might as well have come straight from the book.) Davíd is volatile and dogmatic, and utterly unwilling to accommodate adults. The immense devotion he attracts from nearly everyone around him is perhaps the trilogy’s most puzzling feature. Even Coetzee toys with Davíd’s proclamations of his own genius, allowing him small, inexplicable miracles—he causes a ferocious dog to sleep peacefully next to a lamb—only to immediately deflate them. (The dog eats the lamb as soon as the boy falls asleep.)
Davíd is most distinguished not by any special powers but by his inability to generalize. In “The Childhood of Jesus,” Simón comes to the realization that his charge does not understand counting, but he does understand number:
Put an apple before him and what does he see? An apple: not one apple, just an apple. Put two apples before him. What does he see? An apple and an apple: not two apples, not the same apple twice, just an apple and an apple. . . . Lying in bed in the middle of the night, I could sometimes swear that I too was falling—falling under the same spell that grips the boy. If getting from one to two is so hard, I asked myself, how shall I ever get from zero to one? From nowhere to somewhere: it seemed to demand a miracle each time.
This dilemma, how to go from one to two, is an ancient one; as is the question of whether language, in taxonomizing and sorting, flattens its objects into types and thus creates untruths. Most of the Jesus trilogy consists of long, flat dialogues between David and the adults around him, in which these questions and others—“What is counting?,” “What is being a person?,” and, most of all, “Why?”—appear with a circular intensity, framing the text but never quite unlocking it.
These dialogues mimic Plato’s philosophical dialogues, particularly in their simultaneous preoccupation with mundane objects and abstraction. (“We partake of the ideal but we also make poo,” Simón tells Davíd.) But the attributes have been scrambled. Davíd, as the frequent question-asker, is in some ways like Coetzee’s Socrates. But his resistance to the whole idea of “category” also pits him against some of Socrates’s suggestions about how we might recognize the world around us as a world.
The dialogue that most echoes Coetzee’s trilogy, perhaps, is “Parmenides,” in which we meet Socrates before he’s Socrates as we’ll know him, and still, like Davíd, a young man. Excited to try his wits against Parmenides, Socrates spins out a theory that abstract ideas have “forms,” such as Likeness and Unlikeness. Parmenides, amused, asks him “about those things that would seem to be laughable, such as Hair and Mud and Dirt or any different thing that’s very worthless and lowly?” Socrates says “no,” but admits that he doesn’t know why:


newyorker--2020-07-22--What Joe Biden’s Climate Plan Really Signals

Subscribers to The Climate Crisis newsletter received this piece in their in-boxes .
Sign up to receive future installments .
When Joe Biden issued his extensive climate plan last week , there were endless analyses , including mostly positive reviews like those from the energy expert Julian Brave NoiseCat , who called it “ a Green New Deal in our view , substantively , ” and the Sunrise Movement , which had graded Biden ’ s primary-season plan an F , but now says that he ’ s “ talking the talk , ” and that a post-election mobilization will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the walk.
” The main opposition came from President Trump , who insisted that Biden , in his zeal for energy efficiency , had called for abolishing windows .
I don ’ t want to go deeply into the details of the plan here , because chances are that few of the proposals will get enacted in their precise form , but they seem a truly useful compendium of the mainstream and obvious ideas for an energy and conservation transition .
And they provide a good roadmap by which to steer , even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ areas of the debate .
( The plan is especially quiet about the efforts that will be necessary to limit mining and drilling for fossil fuels . )
The best way to understand them , I think , is as a loud signal in the ever-louder conversation among élites about the trajectory and the pace of that transition .
Non-élites—members of activist movements and renewable-energy engineers—have built the pressure .
Assuming that Trump exits next year , and that high-level climate denial goes with him , that pressure will do what pressure does @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A big signal comes from the investment community , where banks have started announcing major losses in the hydrocarbon sector .
Wells Fargo , for instance , said that forty-seven per cent of its nonperforming corporate loans last quarter were in the three per cent of its deal book devoted to oil and gas .
News like that dramatically ups the odds that , say , a Federal Reserve under Biden might increase capital requirements for oil loans .
Indeed , earlier this week , a consortium of investors with nearly a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to “ explicitly integrate climate change across your mandates , ” in particular , by providing more information about the financial risks that global warming now presents .
On Monday , Morgan Stanley announced that it would rate all its investments for their climate impact—on the one hand , that puts off the necessary end of those investments , but it ’ s probably also a first signal of acquiescence to reality .
And , of course , as big money starts to edge away from the industry , politicians feel less need @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ ve already reached the point where it ’ s clear that real change is finally coming , and that fossil fuel ’ s main hope is to slow and shape that change .
( Above all , as I wrote last week , the industry is hopeful that natural gas has a future , though new scientific findings and technologies seem to be closing in on even that facet of the business . )
The crucial job of activists , then , is to always be demanding that we move faster @ @ @ @ @ @ @ signal , one came last week from Teen Vogue , which published an op-ed encouraging young people to not open accounts with banks that are reckless with the planet .
( The authors ’ “ Not My Dirty Money ” pledge can be found here . )
Meanwhile , Greta Thunberg and fellow climate strikers sent an open letter to the European Union .
( I am among the tens of thousands of people who signed onto it . )
It says , “ You must stop pretending that we can solve the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a crisis.
” Just the right signal , reminding politicians that a devastated climate is not merely an excuse for a jobs program , and at just the right volume .
And if signals don ’ t replace action they do usually precede it—so consider this season a relatively hopeful one .
Passing the mic is difficult for me this week , because I can barely even sit up in bed .
I fell off my two-wheeled , low-carbon transit device on Thursday , and managed to break six ribs and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ separated shoulder .
I ’ ve been in the hospital since , and that ’ s why this newsletter is shorter than usual .
I am enormously grateful for all the get-well e-mails ; they are a surprisingly good anesthetic .
And , although it ’ s a pretty self-absorbed thing to do , perhaps I can refer you to a letter that I sent my colleagues in the climate movement last week , explaining my plans to do more mic-passing in the years to come .
Important news from Al Gore , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the tech world behind plans for Climate TRACE , which stands for Tracking Real-time Atmospheric Carbon Emissions .
The platform “ will leverage advanced A.I.
, satellite-image processing , machine learning , and land- and sea-based sensors to do what was previously thought to be nearly impossible : monitor G.H.G .
emissions from every sector and in every part of the world .
Our work will be extremely granular in focus—down to specific power plants , ships , factories.
” That data will be incredibly powerful : think C.S.I .
for carbon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hears from people contending that the “ real cause ” of climate change , and all other troubles , is overpopulation .
The thinking is sometimes racist , but almost as often , I think , it ’ s rooted in a leftover understanding of demographic trends .
Given a choice , women in most parts of the world are deciding to have far fewer kids than they used to , and the new projections for population circa 2100 are fascinating .
It won ’ t be easy for policymakers to deal with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ size , but doing so shouldn ’ t be impossible , either .
Japan , after all , was half its present size less than a century ago .
Even though writers hate to admit it , sometimes a picture ( from a really talented photographer ) is worth more than words .
I ’ d read often that the enormous Lake Chilwa , in Malawi , is drying out more frequently because of climate change , but it took this image from reader Chris Dawe to really drive that reality home .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ some uplift .
That must be why Bill Withers recorded his concert at Carnegie Hall , in 1972 .

Subscribers to The Climate Crisis newsletter received this piece in their in-boxes. Sign up to receive future installments.
When Joe Biden issued his extensive climate plan last week, there were endless analyses, including mostly positive reviews like those from the energy expert Julian Brave NoiseCat, who called it “a Green New Deal in our view, substantively,” and the Sunrise Movement, which had graded Biden’s primary-season plan an F, but now says that he’s “talking the talk,” and that a post-election mobilization will insure that he’ll “walk the walk.” The main opposition came from President Trump, who insisted that Biden, in his zeal for energy efficiency, had called for abolishing windows.
I don’t want to go deeply into the details of the plan here, because chances are that few of the proposals will get enacted in their precise form, but they seem a truly useful compendium of the mainstream and obvious ideas for an energy and conservation transition. And they provide a good roadmap by which to steer, even if that map avoids the most controversial areas of the debate. (The plan is especially quiet about the efforts that will be necessary to limit mining and drilling for fossil fuels.) The best way to understand them, I think, is as a loud signal in the ever-louder conversation among élites about the trajectory and the pace of that transition.
Non-élites—members of activist movements and renewable-energy engineers—have built the pressure. Assuming that Trump exits next year, and that high-level climate denial goes with him, that pressure will do what pressure does: finally start to make things pop. A big signal comes from the investment community, where banks have started announcing major losses in the hydrocarbon sector. Wells Fargo, for instance, said that forty-seven per cent of its nonperforming corporate loans last quarter were in the three per cent of its deal book devoted to oil and gas. News like that dramatically ups the odds that, say, a Federal Reserve under Biden might increase capital requirements for oil loans. Indeed, earlier this week, a consortium of investors with nearly a trillion dollars in assets urged the Fed to “explicitly integrate climate change across your mandates,” in particular, by providing more information about the financial risks that global warming now presents. On Monday, Morgan Stanley announced that it would rate all its investments for their climate impact—on the one hand, that puts off the necessary end of those investments, but it’s probably also a first signal of acquiescence to reality. And, of course, as big money starts to edge away from the industry, politicians feel less need to do its bidding.
I think we’ve already reached the point where it’s clear that real change is finally coming, and that fossil fuel’s main hope is to slow and shape that change. (Above all, as I wrote last week, the industry is hopeful that natural gas has a future, though new scientific findings and technologies seem to be closing in on even that facet of the business.) The crucial job of activists, then, is to always be demanding that we move faster.
If you want a really powerful signal, one came last week from Teen Vogue, which published an op-ed encouraging young people to not open accounts with banks that are reckless with the planet. (The authors’ “Not My Dirty Money” pledge can be found here.) Meanwhile, Greta Thunberg and fellow climate strikers sent an open letter to the European Union. (I am among the tens of thousands of people who signed onto it.) It says, “You must stop pretending that we can solve the climate and ecological crisis without treating it as a crisis.” Just the right signal, reminding politicians that a devastated climate is not merely an excuse for a jobs program, and at just the right volume. And if signals don’t replace action they do usually precede it—so consider this season a relatively hopeful one.
Passing the Mic
Passing the mic is difficult for me this week, because I can barely even sit up in bed. I fell off my two-wheeled, low-carbon transit device on Thursday, and managed to break six ribs and a shoulder blade, and incurred a severely separated shoulder. I’ve been in the hospital since, and that’s why this newsletter is shorter than usual. I am enormously grateful for all the get-well e-mails; they are a surprisingly good anesthetic. And, although it’s a pretty self-absorbed thing to do, perhaps I can refer you to a letter that I sent my colleagues in the climate movement last week, explaining my plans to do more mic-passing in the years to come.
Climate School
Important news from Al Gore, who has rallied a bunch of hard-chargers in the tech world behind plans for Climate TRACE, which stands for Tracking Real-time Atmospheric Carbon Emissions. The platform “will leverage advanced A.I., satellite-image processing, machine learning, and land- and sea-based sensors to do what was previously thought to be nearly impossible: monitor G.H.G. emissions from every sector and in every part of the world. Our work will be extremely granular in focus—down to specific power plants, ships, factories.” That data will be incredibly powerful: think C.S.I. for carbon.
From time to time, one hears from people contending that the “real cause” of climate change, and all other troubles, is overpopulation. The thinking is sometimes racist, but almost as often, I think, it’s rooted in a leftover understanding of demographic trends. Given a choice, women in most parts of the world are deciding to have far fewer kids than they used to, and the new projections for population circa 2100 are fascinating. It won’t be easy for policymakers to deal with a Japan that is half its present size, but doing so shouldn’t be impossible, either. Japan, after all, was half its present size less than a century ago.
Scoreboard
Even though writers hate to admit it, sometimes a picture (from a really talented photographer) is worth more than words. I’d read often that the enormous Lake Chilwa, in Malawi, is drying out more frequently because of climate change, but it took this image from reader Chris Dawe to really drive that reality home.
Photograph by Chris Dawe
Warming Up
There are weeks when one really needs some uplift. That must be why Bill Withers recorded his concert at Carnegie Hall, in 1972.


newyorker--2020-07-22--Thomas Chatterton Williams on Race, Identity, and “Cancel Culture”

On July 7th , Harper ’ s Magazine published what it called “ A Letter on Justice and Open Debate , ” which quickly became part of the conversation around the subject of “ cancel culture.
” The letter , which has been signed by more than a hundred intellectuals , academics , and authors , noted that “ the forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump , ” and argued against an “ intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.
” The letter continued , “ While @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the radical right , censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture : an intolerance of opposing views , a vogue for public shaming and ostracism , and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.
” It went on to say , “ The restriction of debate , whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society , invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation .
The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure , argument , and persuasion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wish them away.
” The letter was signed by the novelists Martin Amis , J. K. Rowling , and Salman Rushdie , leftists such as Noam Chomsky and Gloria Steinem , and journalists , including several New Yorker contributors .
Among the signatories was Thomas Chatterton Williams , a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Harper ’ s , who also had a hand in writing the letter .
Williams is the author of two memoirs , “ Losing My Cool ” and “ Self-Portrait in Black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ struggles with racial identity as a teen-ager and as an adult .
The son of a Black father and a white mother , he describes himself in his second book as “ an ex-black man.
” He is known for his critique of Ta-Nehisi Coates , whom Williams believes overemphasizes race and racism , creating “ a fantasy that flattens psychological and material difference within and between groups.
” I recently spoke by phone with Williams , who was at his office in France , where he lives .
During our conversation , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clarity , we discussed what the Harper ’ s letter aimed to accomplish , whether cancel culture has always existed in various forms , and his concerns about Black Lives Matter and the media ’ s focus on COVID-19 mortality rates among people of color .
What was the genesis of the letter ?
It ’ s no secret .
No one is trying to be evasive , but it came out of conversations that the five of us— [ the Atlantic staff writer and former New Yorker staff writer ] George Packer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of humanities ] Mark Lilla , [ the journalist ] Robert F. Worth , and [ the historian and professor of journalism ] David Greenberg—started on an e-mail chain five or six weeks ago , talking about something that I ’ ve been talking about with some of them for years .
A mood or climate seems to have set in , especially in the past almost four years , with the intensity that Trump brings to every topic , and social media—the growth of the importance of social media can ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re talking about .
I remember I was on Facebook and other things more , but Twitter has become all-consuming , especially if you work in the media or in academia , and so it feels like Twitter has taken on this invisible , impersonal force that works through people but no one in particular , that sweeps through and enacts public humiliation and punishment , and has become another figure in all of our lives , like the spectre of Trump hanging over us .
At some point , we decided to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ letter .
We really didn ’ t even know if anybody would pay attention .
The five of us started talking about who we might be able to reach out to and see if they might sign it .
We went through multiple drafts on our own , and then about a month ago , we started sending it out to other people , and we got yeses and nos , and some of the people that said yes and some of the people that said no had really smart responses , with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and incorporated it , so like twenty people contributed writing to it .
Did you do more of the writing than anyone else ?
No , I wouldn ’ t say that , even .
I contributed in an early draft .
I was very involved , and then it was a real collective .
This is a document that doesn ’ t have an author , but it has the hands of over twenty people , and especially the hands of five people .
What did you say when you reached out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that this is something that we didn ’ t realize we would get anybody interested in .
Some of the people that we knew the best said that they were uncomfortable or afraid of the backlash or couldn ’ t get involved , and some of the people we didn ’ t know very well stepped in , so we didn ’ t have a way of gauging .
Everybody knew some names and began contacting them on their own , with their own language .
Sometimes I was texting people three lines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ letters full of tons of evidence of why the people might want to sign .
Nobody that any of us contacted was , like , “ Let me see who else is signing , and then I ’ ll get back to you.
” Not a single person .
I don ’ t think any of us have ever done this before , so it didn ’ t even occur to us that that could be a critique down the road .
How important was racial or gender or ideological diversity , especially @ @ @ @ @ @ @ know you have previously said that the letter started out more focussed on the sins of the left .
There was always disagreement .
There was never one way that the letter was conceived .
There was always some feeling that Trump should be more important and some feeling that in a short letter you have to focus on the kind of culture that ’ s coming in our own industry , which Trump doesn ’ t actually fully control .
Then there was a feeling , after talking to more and more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ really do have to acknowledge the fact that nothing exists in a vacuum outside of Trump .
You said , “ The critique is against censoriousness and so after realizing that the letter would be incomplete by solely focusing on the left , we felt it was necessary to be absolutely clear that Trump is the canceller-in-chief.
” Right , exactly .
We all talked for quite a while about how we can ’ t really think of someone who has been more cancelled in American culture recently than Colin Kaepernick .
We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pittsburgh who was unable to cover the protests because of a tweet .
We are against Twitter being involved in your office decisions and your H.R .
department .
Do you see what I ’ m saying ?
It was interpreted in a different way .
It was a constant conversation of “ Let ’ s always be thinking of ways that we can make this as ideologically diverse as possible , ” and , also , we know from our own lives that you can ’ t predict how people think based @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or gender identity , or any of that .

On July 7th, Harper’s Magazine published what it called “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” which quickly became part of the conversation around the subject of “cancel culture.” The letter, which has been signed by more than a hundred intellectuals, academics, and authors, noted that “the forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump,” and argued against an “intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.” The letter continued, “While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.” It went on to say, “The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.”
The letter was signed by the novelists Martin Amis, J. K. Rowling, and Salman Rushdie, leftists such as Noam Chomsky and Gloria Steinem, and journalists, including several New Yorker contributors. Among the signatories was Thomas Chatterton Williams, a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Harper’s, who also had a hand in writing the letter. Williams is the author of two memoirs, “Losing My Cool” and “Self-Portrait in Black and White,” which recount his struggles with racial identity as a teen-ager and as an adult. The son of a Black father and a white mother, he describes himself in his second book as “an ex-black man.” He is known for his critique of Ta-Nehisi Coates, whom Williams believes overemphasizes race and racism, creating “a fantasy that flattens psychological and material difference within and between groups.”
I recently spoke by phone with Williams, who was at his office in France, where he lives. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed what the Harper’s letter aimed to accomplish, whether cancel culture has always existed in various forms, and his concerns about Black Lives Matter and the media’s focus on COVID-19 mortality rates among people of color.
What was the genesis of the letter?
It’s no secret. No one is trying to be evasive, but it came out of conversations that the five of us—[the Atlantic staff writer and former New Yorker staff writer] George Packer, myself, [the Columbia professor of humanities] Mark Lilla, [the journalist] Robert F. Worth, and [the historian and professor of journalism] David Greenberg—started on an e-mail chain five or six weeks ago, talking about something that I’ve been talking about with some of them for years. A mood or climate seems to have set in, especially in the past almost four years, with the intensity that Trump brings to every topic, and social media—the growth of the importance of social media can’t be taken away from anything we’re talking about. I remember I was on Facebook and other things more, but Twitter has become all-consuming, especially if you work in the media or in academia, and so it feels like Twitter has taken on this invisible, impersonal force that works through people but no one in particular, that sweeps through and enacts public humiliation and punishment, and has become another figure in all of our lives, like the spectre of Trump hanging over us.
At some point, we decided to see if we could draft an open letter. We really didn’t even know if anybody would pay attention. The five of us started talking about who we might be able to reach out to and see if they might sign it. We went through multiple drafts on our own, and then about a month ago, we started sending it out to other people, and we got yeses and nos, and some of the people that said yes and some of the people that said no had really smart responses, with incredible feedback. We then came back and incorporated it, so like twenty people contributed writing to it.
Did you do more of the writing than anyone else?
No, I wouldn’t say that, even. I contributed in an early draft. I was very involved, and then it was a real collective. This is a document that doesn’t have an author, but it has the hands of over twenty people, and especially the hands of five people.
What did you say when you reached out to people?
You need to understand that this is something that we didn’t realize we would get anybody interested in. Some of the people that we knew the best said that they were uncomfortable or afraid of the backlash or couldn’t get involved, and some of the people we didn’t know very well stepped in, so we didn’t have a way of gauging. Everybody knew some names and began contacting them on their own, with their own language. Sometimes I was texting people three lines. Sometimes David was writing beautiful long letters full of tons of evidence of why the people might want to sign. Nobody that any of us contacted was, like, “Let me see who else is signing, and then I’ll get back to you.” Not a single person. I don’t think any of us have ever done this before, so it didn’t even occur to us that that could be a critique down the road.
How important was racial or gender or ideological diversity, especially getting people on the left? I know you have previously said that the letter started out more focussed on the sins of the left.
There was always disagreement. There was never one way that the letter was conceived. There was always some feeling that Trump should be more important and some feeling that in a short letter you have to focus on the kind of culture that’s coming in our own industry, which Trump doesn’t actually fully control. Then there was a feeling, after talking to more and more people that we respected, that we really do have to acknowledge the fact that nothing exists in a vacuum outside of Trump.
You said, “The critique is against censoriousness and so after realizing that the letter would be incomplete by solely focusing on the left, we felt it was necessary to be absolutely clear that Trump is the canceller-in-chief.”
Right, exactly. We all talked for quite a while about how we can’t really think of someone who has been more cancelled in American culture recently than Colin Kaepernick. We were talking about the Black reporter in Pittsburgh who was unable to cover the protests because of a tweet. We are against Twitter being involved in your office decisions and your H.R. department. Do you see what I’m saying? It was interpreted in a different way. It was a constant conversation of “Let’s always be thinking of ways that we can make this as ideologically diverse as possible,” and, also, we know from our own lives that you can’t predict how people think based on their color category, religion, or gender identity, or any of that.
You mentioned ideological diversity and the importance of it. As far I could tell, there were no open Trump supporters who signed the letter. Did you feel that it was important to not have signers beyond a certain level of conservatism in part because then critics could say you don’t really care about liberalism? Trump has the support of more than forty per cent of the country, so aren’t we all drawing our own lines somewhere about ideological diversity?
There was a lot of discussion of that. It was not something that we didn’t know would be a point of contention, but we also basically made the decision that we have to be as idealistic as possible within the bounds of understanding that we have to be pragmatic too, and rhetorically effective. You simply cannot have a document that was as successful as ours, I believe, at this moment, with throwing every single viewpoint in. Even one person who I reached out to, who isn’t, I don’t think, a Trump supporter, said, “No, I won’t sign this because I don’t believe that Trump is the greatest threat in the nation.” We were kind of skeptical that you could have a defense of liberal values, a serious defense of liberal values, with someone who was really a diehard Trump supporter, too. We also felt that if you got somebody who was, you might very well lose some other people that you need to make this a rhetorically effective document.


newyorker--2020-07-22--Trump Returns to the Coronavirus Daily Briefing and Still Refuses to Face Reality

Donald Trump spent much of his coronavirus press briefing on Tuesday trying to persuade Americans that the coronavirus has little to do with them , or with him , except as a cause for self-congratulation .
Within the first two minutes , he had referred twice to “ the China virus ” ; he then immediately emphasized the advanced age and preëxisting illnesses of those who had died—most young adults “ won ’ t even know they ’ re sick ” —suggesting that we now know , as if we didn ’ t before , who “ the vulnerable ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the country can go back to doing other things .
Other issues , such as COVID-19 ’ s ability to ravage the health of even those who survive it , the many ways that people of all ages can be vulnerable , and the difficulty of sheltering anybody when infections are rampant , were shunted aside .
Most of all , Trump wanted everyone to know that we are winning .
“ We ’ re leading the world , ” he said , which is true only if the destination is off a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ billed as his return to heading coronavirus-task-force briefings ; those appearances were more or less discontinued in late April , as part of Trump ’ s effort to pretend that the crisis was over .
In contrast to those early appearances , Trump was alone , with no public-health officials to answer questions or provide a modicum of realism .
When a reporter asked , “ Why are your doctors not with you here today ?
Where ’ s Dr. Fauci , Dr. Birx ?
” Trump replied , “ Well , Dr. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quickly called on someone else .
( Deborah Birx , the coördinator of the task force , stayed outside ; Anthony Fauci told CNN that he wasn ’ t invited to the briefing . )
The reason for the renewal is obvious : the number of new confirmed infections has grown to more than sixty thousand a day , and the charts of the number of cases in states in the South and West , led by Arizona , California , Florida , and Texas , show increasingly sharp rises to precipitous heights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is engaging in something akin to deciding to let his constituents die by trying to block local governments from mandating masks , is also registering alarming numbers .
( Last week , when Keisha Lance Bottoms , the mayor of Atlanta , defied him , Kemp sued to stop and silence her ; that litigation is pending . )
In all those states , hospitals are filling up .
Increased testing does not explain the numbers ; the percentage of tests that are coming back positive is above ten per cent in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ current numbers , is far too high for epidemiologists to be confident that most cases are being caught .
( Roughly speaking , in the current circumstances , a lower positivity rate means that fewer marginal or asymptomatic cases are missed ; testing is not confined to those who show up at hospitals .
In New York , the current positivity rate is around one per cent . )
Around the time that Trump spoke , the daily tally of deaths exceeded a thousand for the first time since late May , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the United States now exceeds a hundred and forty thousand—almost a quarter of the planet ’ s total COVID-19 fatalities .
Trump , though , still thinks he ’ s doing great .
At the briefing , he displayed a chart claiming that the “ case fatality rate ” —generally , deaths per laboratory-confirmed cases—for the United States was lower than for a string of other countries and the world as a whole .
But , in the absence of comprehensive testing , that number is not viewed as the most reliable measure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The chart for deaths per hundred thousand inhabitants would look different .
By that measure , according to Johns Hopkins University ’ s numbers , the United States is among the worst affected , with forty-three dead per hundred thousand .
Some European countries have fared worse than the United States , such as the United Kingdom , Belgium , Italy , Spain , and Sweden .
( Others have done far better : Germany and Denmark have lost just under eleven people per hundred thousand ; for Canada and Mexico , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . )
But those European countries now have their outbreaks relatively under control , with tallies of new daily cases in the hundreds , not the thousands or tens of thousands .
As the United States adds many more fatalities to its total , its relative position will only get worse .
We are now , basically , in a race to the bottom with Brazil .
Trump is very wrong about how the United States is doing relative to the rest of the world .
And yet even arguing the point misses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ When large numbers of Americans are dying , how much of a consolation , when it comes down to it , is the worse fatality rate for Belgium meant to be ?
Trump seems to believe that Americans would be satisfied , or even pleased , to hear that even more people in places they are unfamiliar with are dying , and to be frustrated that that message isn ’ t getting through .
“ If you watch American television , you would think the United States is the only country involved with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he complained in the briefing .
( Blaming the media comes even more naturally to Trump than blaming China . )
The larger failing is that he doesn ’ t offer a conception of winning that goes beyond being able to claim that countries or populations his voters don ’ t identify with are doing worse than they are .
( This is a domestic issue , too , rather than just a matter of xenophobia : one of the shocking aspects of the pandemic has been how willing many Americans—especially , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ write off “ the vulnerable.
” ) Another vision of winning might involve a true engagement in the international effort to contain the pandemic .
In that respect , Trump never seems to get tired of losing .
There were moments when Trump acknowledged that the picture was not entirely rosy .
“ It will probably unfortunately get worse before it gets better , ” he said .
And he can not be entirely blind to the polls that show him falling further behind Joe Biden , the presumptive Democratic nominee .
Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tweeted a picture of himself wearing a mask , and during the press conference he pulled one from his pocket .
There was no contrition , of course , regarding his fatal mockery of masks for much of the pandemic .
Instead , the President who recently summoned crowds to hear him speak in Oklahoma and Arizona claimed that he has been a voice for social distancing .
He thought that he might have saved millions of lives .
He certainly wasn ’ t to blame : “ It ’ s a nasty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ allowed to escape China , but it did.
” When a reporter pressed him on his earlier prediction that the virus would “ disappear , ” and whether he was responsible for the fact that the trajectory has been very different , he said , “ Well , the virus will disappear .
It will disappear.
” He launched into a disjointed soliloquy about how good his relationships with various governors are and how wise his own decisions have been , and he repeated that “ China should have stopped it.
” The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about another topic—Ghislaine Maxwell , a former associate of Jeffrey Epstein ’ s , who was arrested earlier this month and is facing charges related to the sexual abuse of girls .
( She has pleaded not guilty . )
Trump said that he hadn ’ t been following the story , but that he knew Maxwell from Palm Beach .
“ I wish her well , whatever it is.
” His good wishes seem , to say the least , misdirected .
An optimist might think that his lack of focus on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mean that he was , at last , paying more attention to Florida ’ s hospital capacity than to the Palm Beach social scene .
An optimist would be wrong .
• The coronavirus vaccine is on track to be the fastest ever developed .
• What the coronavirus has revealed about American medicine .
• Recommendations for maintaining social distancing as the U.S. reopens , from socializing and using public bathrooms to wearing masks .
• Why remote work is so hard—and how it can be fixed .
• Seattle leaders let @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the coronavirus .
New York leaders did not .
• The long crusade of Dr. Anthony Fauci , the infectious-disease expert pinned between Donald Trump and the American people .
• What to read , watch , cook , and listen to under quarantine .

Donald Trump spent much of his coronavirus press briefing on Tuesday trying to persuade Americans that the coronavirus has little to do with them, or with him, except as a cause for self-congratulation. Within the first two minutes, he had referred twice to “the China virus”; he then immediately emphasized the advanced age and preëxisting illnesses of those who had died—most young adults “won’t even know they’re sick”—suggesting that we now know, as if we didn’t before, who “the vulnerable” are, and so the rest of the country can go back to doing other things. Other issues, such as COVID-19’s ability to ravage the health of even those who survive it, the many ways that people of all ages can be vulnerable, and the difficulty of sheltering anybody when infections are rampant, were shunted aside. Most of all, Trump wanted everyone to know that we are winning. “We’re leading the world,” he said, which is true only if the destination is off a cliff.
Trump’s appearance was billed as his return to heading coronavirus-task-force briefings; those appearances were more or less discontinued in late April, as part of Trump’s effort to pretend that the crisis was over. In contrast to those early appearances, Trump was alone, with no public-health officials to answer questions or provide a modicum of realism. When a reporter asked, “Why are your doctors not with you here today? Where’s Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx?” Trump replied, “Well, Dr. Birx is right outside,” then quickly called on someone else. (Deborah Birx, the coördinator of the task force, stayed outside; Anthony Fauci told CNN that he wasn’t invited to the briefing.) The reason for the renewal is obvious: the number of new confirmed infections has grown to more than sixty thousand a day, and the charts of the number of cases in states in the South and West, led by Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas, show increasingly sharp rises to precipitous heights. Georgia, where Governor Brian Kemp is engaging in something akin to deciding to let his constituents die by trying to block local governments from mandating masks, is also registering alarming numbers. (Last week, when Keisha Lance Bottoms, the mayor of Atlanta, defied him, Kemp sued to stop and silence her; that litigation is pending.) In all those states, hospitals are filling up.
Increased testing does not explain the numbers; the percentage of tests that are coming back positive is above ten per cent in the worst-affected states, which, given the current numbers, is far too high for epidemiologists to be confident that most cases are being caught. (Roughly speaking, in the current circumstances, a lower positivity rate means that fewer marginal or asymptomatic cases are missed; testing is not confined to those who show up at hospitals. In New York, the current positivity rate is around one per cent.) Around the time that Trump spoke, the daily tally of deaths exceeded a thousand for the first time since late May, and the total number of confirmed deaths in the United States now exceeds a hundred and forty thousand—almost a quarter of the planet’s total COVID-19 fatalities.
Trump, though, still thinks he’s doing great. At the briefing, he displayed a chart claiming that the “case fatality rate”—generally, deaths per laboratory-confirmed cases—for the United States was lower than for a string of other countries and the world as a whole. But, in the absence of comprehensive testing, that number is not viewed as the most reliable measure of the pandemic’s toll. The chart for deaths per hundred thousand inhabitants would look different. By that measure, according to Johns Hopkins University’s numbers, the United States is among the worst affected, with forty-three dead per hundred thousand. Some European countries have fared worse than the United States, such as the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Sweden. (Others have done far better: Germany and Denmark have lost just under eleven people per hundred thousand; for Canada and Mexico, the numbers are twenty-four and thirty-two, respectively.) But those European countries now have their outbreaks relatively under control, with tallies of new daily cases in the hundreds, not the thousands or tens of thousands. As the United States adds many more fatalities to its total, its relative position will only get worse. We are now, basically, in a race to the bottom with Brazil.
Trump is very wrong about how the United States is doing relative to the rest of the world. And yet even arguing the point misses how sordid his basic position is. When large numbers of Americans are dying, how much of a consolation, when it comes down to it, is the worse fatality rate for Belgium meant to be? Trump seems to believe that Americans would be satisfied, or even pleased, to hear that even more people in places they are unfamiliar with are dying, and to be frustrated that that message isn’t getting through. “If you watch American television, you would think the United States is the only country involved with suffering from the China virus,” he complained in the briefing. (Blaming the media comes even more naturally to Trump than blaming China.) The larger failing is that he doesn’t offer a conception of winning that goes beyond being able to claim that countries or populations his voters don’t identify with are doing worse than they are. (This is a domestic issue, too, rather than just a matter of xenophobia: one of the shocking aspects of the pandemic has been how willing many Americans—especially, but not exclusively, Republican politicians—have been to write off “the vulnerable.”) Another vision of winning might involve a true engagement in the international effort to contain the pandemic. In that respect, Trump never seems to get tired of losing.
There were moments when Trump acknowledged that the picture was not entirely rosy. “It will probably unfortunately get worse before it gets better,” he said. And he cannot be entirely blind to the polls that show him falling further behind Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee. Trump has, in the past week, tweeted a picture of himself wearing a mask, and during the press conference he pulled one from his pocket. There was no contrition, of course, regarding his fatal mockery of masks for much of the pandemic. Instead, the President who recently summoned crowds to hear him speak in Oklahoma and Arizona claimed that he has been a voice for social distancing. He thought that he might have saved millions of lives. He certainly wasn’t to blame: “It’s a nasty horrible disease that should never have been allowed to escape China, but it did.” When a reporter pressed him on his earlier prediction that the virus would “disappear,” and whether he was responsible for the fact that the trajectory has been very different, he said, “Well, the virus will disappear. It will disappear.” He launched into a disjointed soliloquy about how good his relationships with various governors are and how wise his own decisions have been, and he repeated that “China should have stopped it.”
The next reporter Trump called on asked him about another topic—Ghislaine Maxwell, a former associate of Jeffrey Epstein’s, who was arrested earlier this month and is facing charges related to the sexual abuse of girls. (She has pleaded not guilty.) Trump said that he hadn’t been following the story, but that he knew Maxwell from Palm Beach. “I wish her well, whatever it is.” His good wishes seem, to say the least, misdirected. An optimist might think that his lack of focus on the latest in the Epstein-Maxwell story might mean that he was, at last, paying more attention to Florida’s hospital capacity than to the Palm Beach social scene. An optimist would be wrong.
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-07-22--New York’s Primary-Vote-Count Chaos Signals Trouble for November

In theory , the New York Democratic primary took place on June 23rd , but the resolution of one race remains too close to call .
The contest is a source of maddening uncertainty to the candidates and their supporters , but the bumbling vote-counting process also serves as a warning for what the whole nation faces in November .
The congresswoman Carolyn Maloney has represented a district that now includes Manhattan ’ s East Side and pieces of Brooklyn and Queens since 1993 .
She ’ s rarely confronted serious political opposition , but this year she faced a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ young activist and entrepreneur .
In June , about thirty-nine thousand people cast their ballots at voting machines , and the count on Election Night put Maloney ahead by six hundred and fifty-one votes , or 1.6 per cent .
But that total did not include more than sixty-five thousand votes that were cast by mail , and the local Board of Elections has been struggling to tabulate those ballots ever since .
There hasn ’ t been much progress .
Election officials say that they will probably have a final result on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just an estimate .
It could be later .
What has taken so long ?
The problems begin with volume .
Patel also challenged Maloney in the Democratic primary in 2018 , and only forty-four thousand people voted in total .
There has been a surge of interest during this Presidential year , and the coronavirus pandemic in particular has driven unprecedented numbers of voters to cast absentee ballots .
( In a typical New York election , about ninety-five per cent of voters cast their ballots on voting machines , which are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appears that between forty and sixty per cent will vote absentee . )
“ This wasn ’ t a surprise , ” Patel told me .
“ Everyone knew that there would be a huge number of absentee votes .
But the Board of Elections said , ‘ Our staff is our staff , and we can ’ t hire anyone else.
’ ” The vote count is being conducted in three warehouse-size spaces , one each in Manhattan , Brooklyn , and Queens , where staffers are laboriously going over each ballot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gaze of election watchers from the Maloney and Patel campaigns .
In New York , votes are tabulated by Assembly district , each of which includes about a hundred election districts .
The Assembly districts don ’ t match up with the congressional districts , so the first challenge is to identify all the ballots cast in the Maloney-Patel race .
“ The first thing that took so long is sorting the ballots by district , ” Martin Connor , a former New York state senator who is now a lawyer representing the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they have to look up each voter on the Election Day poll books , to make sure they didn ’ t vote in person .
Then they have to check that they didn ’ t vote in a different district .
Then inspect the ballot .
It ’ s a very time-consuming process.
” Not surprisingly , the vote count has generated controversy and a lawsuit .
According to Patel , the Board of Elections should simply be removing the ballots from the envelopes and feeding them into the counting machines .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the vote-counters are insisting that the return envelopes bear postmarks of Election Day or before , even though the Brooklyn post office chose not to stamp postmarks on any ballots .
Thus , the Board is disqualifying all Brooklyn ballots that arrived after Election Day , even though some were clearly mailed before .
“ That may be as many as twelve hundred votes right there , and that ’ s my margin , ” Patel said .
According to Connor , from Maloney ’ s campaign , “ The courts have said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election , not a perfect one.
” ( A judge will begin to address the case this week . )
Because of the pandemic , it ’ s clear that there will be a substantial increase in voting by mail in November , notwithstanding President Trump ’ s repeated denunciations of the practice .
What ’ s less well known is that people who vote by mail have a much better chance , especially in New York , of having their ballots voided .
So far in the Maloney-Patel race , about twenty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been rejected .
Many were voided because the voters did not sign the outer envelope that they returned with their ballots .
“ When you have that many people failing to file correctly , that ’ s not their fault , ” Patel said .
“ That ’ s a design flaw .
It ’ s a disgrace to disenfranchise people because of what the Board of Elections did wrong in the first place.
” The problem , of course , isn ’ t unique to New York ; mailed-in ballots are being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
As the general election approaches , Democrats have expressed understandable fears that Republicans will attempt to suppress the vote , through such measures as purges of voter lists and intimidation at polling places .
But Democrats control the state government of New York , and they are responsible for creating the fiasco that is unfolding now—and that is certain to get worse in November .
Based on prior results , it seems likely that about three times as many people in Maloney ’ s congressional district will vote in the general election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pandemic likely still raging in the fall , this suggests that there could be at least three times as many absentee ballots cast in a system that can ’ t even handle the number from the primary .
At a minimum , this means widespread delays in vote-counting , which brings its own possibilities for mischief and worse .
“ I find it utterly terrifying to think what someone like Donald Trump will do with this kind of delay , ” Patel told me .
“ What we are seeing here in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people with bad motives can do to game the election , and that is going to happen unless someone does something about this.
” At the moment , though , New York has no plans to expand funding or support to local officials .
By November , the slow-motion resolution of the Maloney-Patel race may look like the good old days .

In theory, the New York Democratic primary took place on June 23rd, but the resolution of one race remains too close to call. The contest is a source of maddening uncertainty to the candidates and their supporters, but the bumbling vote-counting process also serves as a warning for what the whole nation faces in November.
The congresswoman Carolyn Maloney has represented a district that now includes Manhattan’s East Side and pieces of Brooklyn and Queens since 1993. She’s rarely confronted serious political opposition, but this year she faced a major challenge from Suraj Patel, a young activist and entrepreneur. In June, about thirty-nine thousand people cast their ballots at voting machines, and the count on Election Night put Maloney ahead by six hundred and fifty-one votes, or 1.6 per cent. But that total did not include more than sixty-five thousand votes that were cast by mail, and the local Board of Elections has been struggling to tabulate those ballots ever since. There hasn’t been much progress. Election officials say that they will probably have a final result on August 4th, but that’s just an estimate. It could be later.
What has taken so long? The problems begin with volume. Patel also challenged Maloney in the Democratic primary in 2018, and only forty-four thousand people voted in total. There has been a surge of interest during this Presidential year, and the coronavirus pandemic in particular has driven unprecedented numbers of voters to cast absentee ballots. (In a typical New York election, about ninety-five per cent of voters cast their ballots on voting machines, which are now optical scanners; this year it appears that between forty and sixty per cent will vote absentee.) “This wasn’t a surprise,” Patel told me. “Everyone knew that there would be a huge number of absentee votes. But the Board of Elections said, ‘Our staff is our staff, and we can’t hire anyone else.’ ”
The vote count is being conducted in three warehouse-size spaces, one each in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, where staffers are laboriously going over each ballot to determine its validity, under the gaze of election watchers from the Maloney and Patel campaigns. In New York, votes are tabulated by Assembly district, each of which includes about a hundred election districts. The Assembly districts don’t match up with the congressional districts, so the first challenge is to identify all the ballots cast in the Maloney-Patel race. “The first thing that took so long is sorting the ballots by district,” Martin Connor, a former New York state senator who is now a lawyer representing the Maloney campaign, said. “Then they have to look up each voter on the Election Day poll books, to make sure they didn’t vote in person. Then they have to check that they didn’t vote in a different district. Then inspect the ballot. It’s a very time-consuming process.”
Not surprisingly, the vote count has generated controversy and a lawsuit. According to Patel, the Board of Elections should simply be removing the ballots from the envelopes and feeding them into the counting machines. But, according to the Patel lawsuit, the vote-counters are insisting that the return envelopes bear postmarks of Election Day or before, even though the Brooklyn post office chose not to stamp postmarks on any ballots. Thus, the Board is disqualifying all Brooklyn ballots that arrived after Election Day, even though some were clearly mailed before. “That may be as many as twelve hundred votes right there, and that’s my margin,” Patel said. According to Connor, from Maloney’s campaign, “The courts have said you’re entitled to a fair election, not a perfect one.” (A judge will begin to address the case this week.)
Because of the pandemic, it’s clear that there will be a substantial increase in voting by mail in November, notwithstanding President Trump’s repeated denunciations of the practice. What’s less well known is that people who vote by mail have a much better chance, especially in New York, of having their ballots voided. So far in the Maloney-Patel race, about twenty per cent of the absentee ballots have been rejected. Many were voided because the voters did not sign the outer envelope that they returned with their ballots. “When you have that many people failing to file correctly, that’s not their fault,” Patel said. “That’s a design flaw. It’s a disgrace to disenfranchise people because of what the Board of Elections did wrong in the first place.” The problem, of course, isn’t unique to New York; mailed-in ballots are being rejected at high rates across the country.
As the general election approaches, Democrats have expressed understandable fears that Republicans will attempt to suppress the vote, through such measures as purges of voter lists and intimidation at polling places. But Democrats control the state government of New York, and they are responsible for creating the fiasco that is unfolding now—and that is certain to get worse in November. Based on prior results, it seems likely that about three times as many people in Maloney’s congressional district will vote in the general election as did in the primary. With the pandemic likely still raging in the fall, this suggests that there could be at least three times as many absentee ballots cast in a system that can’t even handle the number from the primary.
At a minimum, this means widespread delays in vote-counting, which brings its own possibilities for mischief and worse. “I find it utterly terrifying to think what someone like Donald Trump will do with this kind of delay,” Patel told me. “What we are seeing here in New York is a blueprint for what people with bad motives can do to game the election, and that is going to happen unless someone does something about this.” At the moment, though, New York has no plans to expand funding or support to local officials. By November, the slow-motion resolution of the Maloney-Patel race may look like the good old days.