newyorker--2020-08-28--Review: Age Shows in Joe Swanberg’s “Build the Wall”

The prolific Joe Swanberg , whose Netflix series “ Easy ” has been occupying him for the past few years , has returned to feature filmmaking with a new movie , “ Build the Wall , ” which has nothing to do with anti-immigrant propaganda and much more to do with Robert Frost ’ s poem “ Mending Wall , ” a view of a wall and its construction which focusses on differing notions of personal relationships and the force of nature .
( The film is streaming on YouTube , under the auspices of NoBudge , a Web site @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Audley . )
“ Build the Wall ” is more than a return to features ; it ’ s a return to an aspect of filmmaking—cinematography—that Swanberg had left behind when he shifted his attention toward the filming of stars , starting with “ Drinking Buddies , ” which he shot in 2012 .
“ Build the Wall ” features three longtime collaborators of Swanberg ’ s : Kent Osborne stars as Kent , playing ( as he did in the feature “ Uncle Kent , ” from 2011 ) someone like himself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and illustrator .
Kent lives now in a comfortable but isolated house in rural Vermont , where he busies himself with a wide variety of physical chores , in order to keep active outside of his work .
With his fiftieth birthday a week away , he ’ s awaiting the arrival of a guest , a longtime friend named Sarah ( Jane Adams , who has had many major roles in Swanberg ’ s films , including “ All the Light in the Sky , ” from 2012 ) , a filmmaker @ @ @ @ @ @ @ friendship has hovered over a low flame of flirtation and , though they ’ ll be working together on a project , he thinks that her visit is also meant to resolve matters between them , to kindle or dispel the glimmer of romance .
Yet the intimacy of their week together is menaced by a well-meaning but inopportune surprise : in anticipation of Kent ’ s fiftieth birthday , a good friend named Kev ( Kevin Bewersdorf , a musician who also wrote the score for the film ) shows up unannounced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ planned birthday party , a hefty and labor-intensive gift—the wall of the title , for Kent ’ s property , to be built of stones that Kev will haul and hew .
Kent , dismayed at the surprise , explains that there won ’ t be room for Kev in the house ; Kev , undeterred , proposes to sleep in his truck , “ bathe in the brook , ” and “ shit in the woods.
” Unsurprisingly , once Sarah arrives and she and Kent gradually , awkwardly , tenderly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kev ’ s labors and presence become intrusive .
Meanwhile , a wide range of minor events come to define the potential couple ’ s ambiguous bond .
With “ Build the Wall , ” Swanberg films an intimate drama with a discerning eye for the sort of minor but grossly significant moments that prove decisive in a relationship—the kinds of emotionally tone-deaf moments that will come to mind when a couple look back , later , at what they ’ ve overcome or what broke them up .
The movie ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actors , along with Swanberg , and the collaborative spirit is evident throughout .
Adams , who ’ s one of the secret weapons of the modern cinema and isn ’ t in enough movies ( she recently co-starred , to great effect , in Amy Seimetz ’ s “ She Dies Tomorrow ” ) , brings a calm , bold lucidity and an understated vulnerability to her role .
Osborne is a phlegmatic actor who ’ s nonetheless keenly sensitive , investing his role , of a man in fear of aging @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And Bewersdorf ’ s easygoing candor is matched by a ferocious stubbornness that , along with the elemental habits and details of his character ’ s newfound passion for masonry , suggests a hidden , stifled rage .
What ’ s more , it ’ s Swanberg ’ s own cinematography that amplifies—from an observant distance—his characters ’ ( and his actors ’ ) personal infinitesimals into emotional thunder .
His restrained but precise camera work lends these fleeting events their dramatic weight , as in a remarkable scene , of Sarah taking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a mighty torrent of feeling , even more from its elisions than from its displays .
In “ Build the Wall , ” age shows : in Swanberg ’ s early films , he developed dramas that arose within his own social circle .
The extreme familiarity of the twentysomething hangouts he depicted infused his movies with a sense of his characters ’ energetic expansion into new realms of experience and of the self-doubt that plagued them with each step .
Swanberg—an old pro turning thirty-nine on August 31st—still develops films from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their florid implications .
The essence of “ Build the Wall ” is the inner turmoil of the settled life : of ownership , business , property , and of the conflict between those marks of maturation and the total absorption of romantic passion—the primal power of desire that , metaphorically , opposes a wall .
For all its poignancy and far-reaching implications , “ Build the Wall ” nevertheless omits the expansive reflections that enrich Swanberg ’ s earlier films .
Though I ’ m leery of interviews that attempt to sell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s intentions , Swanberg ’ s remarks in an exchange on NoBudge ( with Audley ) provide a glimpse of what “ Build the Wall ” could have included .
After describing a conversation with Adams that prompted him to film the movie at Osborne ’ s actual Vermont home , Swanberg adds : The prophetic foreboding of these remarks could have gone into the film , with a little more definition of the nature of the work that Sarah and Kent are doing together—a line or two , for instance , on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ side of her art and the discussion to which it would give rise .
The title “ Build the Wall ” suggests a political substance that the movie doesn ’ t deliver ; the sort of reflection and wider-ranging observation that Swanberg delivers in the interview is exactly what his earlier films have featured .
The absence of such perspective is what keeps “ Build the Wall ” just right at a fifty-seven-minute running time ; for all the power of its implications , suggestions , and observations , it ’ s as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by its substance .

The prolific Joe Swanberg, whose Netflix series “Easy” has been occupying him for the past few years, has returned to feature filmmaking with a new movie, “Build the Wall,” which has nothing to do with anti-immigrant propaganda and much more to do with Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” a view of a wall and its construction which focusses on differing notions of personal relationships and the force of nature. (The film is streaming on YouTube, under the auspices of NoBudge, a Web site run by the director and actor Kentucker Audley.) “Build the Wall” is more than a return to features; it’s a return to an aspect of filmmaking—cinematography—that Swanberg had left behind when he shifted his attention toward the filming of stars, starting with “Drinking Buddies,” which he shot in 2012.
“Build the Wall” features three longtime collaborators of Swanberg’s: Kent Osborne stars as Kent, playing (as he did in the feature “Uncle Kent,” from 2011) someone like himself in real life, a busy cartoonist and illustrator. Kent lives now in a comfortable but isolated house in rural Vermont, where he busies himself with a wide variety of physical chores, in order to keep active outside of his work. With his fiftieth birthday a week away, he’s awaiting the arrival of a guest, a longtime friend named Sarah (Jane Adams, who has had many major roles in Swanberg’s films, including “All the Light in the Sky,” from 2012), a filmmaker and performer from Los Angeles. Their friendship has hovered over a low flame of flirtation and, though they’ll be working together on a project, he thinks that her visit is also meant to resolve matters between them, to kindle or dispel the glimmer of romance. Yet the intimacy of their week together is menaced by a well-meaning but inopportune surprise: in anticipation of Kent’s fiftieth birthday, a good friend named Kev (Kevin Bewersdorf, a musician who also wrote the score for the film) shows up unannounced to make, in time for the planned birthday party, a hefty and labor-intensive gift—the wall of the title, for Kent’s property, to be built of stones that Kev will haul and hew.
Kent, dismayed at the surprise, explains that there won’t be room for Kev in the house; Kev, undeterred, proposes to sleep in his truck, “bathe in the brook,” and “shit in the woods.” Unsurprisingly, once Sarah arrives and she and Kent gradually, awkwardly, tenderly, and tentatively reawaken their dormant relationship, Kev’s labors and presence become intrusive. Meanwhile, a wide range of minor events come to define the potential couple’s ambiguous bond. With “Build the Wall,” Swanberg films an intimate drama with a discerning eye for the sort of minor but grossly significant moments that prove decisive in a relationship—the kinds of emotionally tone-deaf moments that will come to mind when a couple look back, later, at what they’ve overcome or what broke them up.
The movie’s script is credited to the three main actors, along with Swanberg, and the collaborative spirit is evident throughout. Adams, who’s one of the secret weapons of the modern cinema and isn’t in enough movies (she recently co-starred, to great effect, in Amy Seimetz’s “She Dies Tomorrow”), brings a calm, bold lucidity and an understated vulnerability to her role. Osborne is a phlegmatic actor who’s nonetheless keenly sensitive, investing his role, of a man in fear of aging, with impacted and pressurized pain. And Bewersdorf’s easygoing candor is matched by a ferocious stubbornness that, along with the elemental habits and details of his character’s newfound passion for masonry, suggests a hidden, stifled rage. What’s more, it’s Swanberg’s own cinematography that amplifies—from an observant distance—his characters’ (and his actors’) personal infinitesimals into emotional thunder. His restrained but precise camera work lends these fleeting events their dramatic weight, as in a remarkable scene, of Sarah taking part in an outdoor game—entirely alone—that elicits a mighty torrent of feeling, even more from its elisions than from its displays.
In “Build the Wall,” age shows: in Swanberg’s early films, he developed dramas that arose within his own social circle. The extreme familiarity of the twentysomething hangouts he depicted infused his movies with a sense of his characters’ energetic expansion into new realms of experience and of the self-doubt that plagued them with each step. Swanberg—an old pro turning thirty-nine on August 31st—still develops films from the merest sprigs of experience and still develops their florid implications. The essence of “Build the Wall” is the inner turmoil of the settled life: of ownership, business, property, and of the conflict between those marks of maturation and the total absorption of romantic passion—the primal power of desire that, metaphorically, opposes a wall.
For all its poignancy and far-reaching implications, “Build the Wall” nevertheless omits the expansive reflections that enrich Swanberg’s earlier films. Though I’m leery of interviews that attempt to sell a film by explaining the filmmaker’s intentions, Swanberg’s remarks in an exchange on NoBudge (with Audley) provide a glimpse of what “Build the Wall” could have included. After describing a conversation with Adams that prompted him to film the movie at Osborne’s actual Vermont home, Swanberg adds:
Also from a business perspective, because I am basically a small business owner with my film career, I was fairly certain that our economy was headed for a collapse. After the 2008 bailout I watched both Democrats and Republicans prop up the system in a way that seemed reckless and unsustainable to me. I had spent 2012–2015 having a great deal of success, or maybe luck, independently financing my films and selling them on the open market for a profit. But I had lost confidence in the model. I was extremely fearful to sink a ton of money into a film because it felt that the country was on very shaky ground and something bad was going to happen. I never could have predicted we would be dealing with a mess like this, but the writing was on the wall, and I wanted to see what it was like to make something super tiny again—in the event that I wouldn’t have other options.
The prophetic foreboding of these remarks could have gone into the film, with a little more definition of the nature of the work that Sarah and Kent are doing together—a line or two, for instance, on Sarah’s involvement with the business side of her art and the discussion to which it would give rise. The title “Build the Wall” suggests a political substance that the movie doesn’t deliver; the sort of reflection and wider-ranging observation that Swanberg delivers in the interview is exactly what his earlier films have featured. The absence of such perspective is what keeps “Build the Wall” just right at a fifty-seven-minute running time; for all the power of its implications, suggestions, and observations, it’s as marked by its absences and omissions as by its substance.


newyorker--2020-08-28--Joe Biden on F.D.R., and Rick Perlstein on Donald Trump

Joe Biden has been playing it safe during the coronavirus pandemic , but Evan Osnos got the chance to sit down with the Presidential nominee in person .
In a wide-ranging conversation , Biden compares his position , should he win , to that of Franklin Roosevelt : taking office during a disaster , he argues , he would have an opportunity to effect a hugely ambitious agenda , but one driven by pragmatism rather than ideology .
Rick Perlstein , the author of a four-volume history of modern conservatism , addresses the question of whether Donald Trump is an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fashion correspondent walks David Remnick through hot trends in this season ’ s must-have accessory , the face mask .
Will This Be Joe Biden ’ s F.D.R .
Moment ?
The longtime political reporter Evan Osnos sat down—in person , masked , and socially distant—with the Democratic nominee .
The fashion correspondent walks David Remnick through hot trends in this season ’ s must-have accessory , the face mask—think of it as the new handbag .
The historian , the author of a four-volume history of modern conservatism , addresses the question @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a continuation .

Illustration by Golden Cosmos; Source photograph by Tom Brenner / Getty
Joe Biden has been playing it safe during the coronavirus pandemic, but Evan Osnos got the chance to sit down with the Presidential nominee in person. In a wide-ranging conversation, Biden compares his position, should he win, to that of Franklin Roosevelt: taking office during a disaster, he argues, he would have an opportunity to effect a hugely ambitious agenda, but one driven by pragmatism rather than ideology. Rick Perlstein, the author of a four-volume history of modern conservatism, addresses the question of whether Donald Trump is an aberration or a continuation. And our fashion correspondent walks David Remnick through hot trends in this season’s must-have accessory, the face mask.
Will This Be Joe Biden’s F.D.R. Moment?
The longtime political reporter Evan Osnos sat down—in person, masked, and socially distant—with the Democratic nominee.
Rachel Syme on Hot Trends in Face Masks
The fashion correspondent walks David Remnick through hot trends in this season’s must-have accessory, the face mask—think of it as the new handbag.
Rick Perlstein on Goldwater, Reagan, and Trump
The historian, the author of a four-volume history of modern conservatism, addresses the question of whether Trump is an aberration or a continuation.


newyorker--2020-08-28--Ivanka Trump Beseeches American People: “I Can’t Get a Job Anywhere Else”

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —In an attempt to humanize her father ’ s reëlection campaign , an emotional Ivanka Trump used her R.N.C .
speech to reveal to the American people , “ I can ’ t get a job anywhere else.
” “ The past few years have been super rough for me , ever since my shoe company went south , ” she confided .
“ I thought the shoes were pretty , and I was really surprised when no one wanted to wear them .
They ’ re all in storage at Mar-a-lago , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Speaking movingly of her father , Trump said , “ He gave me a job when no one else in the world would.
” Expounding on her father ’ s benevolence , she added , “ And , while we ’ re on the subject of jobs , do you honestly think that anyone else in the world would hire Jared as a senior adviser ?
No way.
” Capping her emotional pitch , Trump said , “ I am begging you , my fellow-Americans , to please give Jared and me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ figured out .
After that , we swear we ’ ll move out and look for real jobs .
”

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In an attempt to humanize her father’s reëlection campaign, an emotional Ivanka Trump used her R.N.C. speech to reveal to the American people, “I can’t get a job anywhere else.”
“The past few years have been super rough for me, ever since my shoe company went south,” she confided. “I thought the shoes were pretty, and I was really surprised when no one wanted to wear them. They’re all in storage at Mar-a-lago, and we can’t give them away.”
Speaking movingly of her father, Trump said, “He gave me a job when no one else in the world would.”
Expounding on her father’s benevolence, she added, “And, while we’re on the subject of jobs, do you honestly think that anyone else in the world would hire Jared as a senior adviser? No way.”
Capping her emotional pitch, Trump said, “I am begging you, my fellow-Americans, to please give Jared and me four more years to get our shit figured out. After that, we swear we’ll move out and look for real jobs.”


newyorker--2020-08-28--Daily Cartoon: Friday, August 28th

Daily Cartoon: Friday, August 28th

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newyorker--2020-08-28--Trump’s Republican National Convention Was a Spectacle Fit for a Would-Be King

On Thursday night , Donald Trump stood on the South Lawn of the White House and spoke for more than an hour .
Nominally , this was the final speech of the Republican National Convention , during which Trump accepted the Party ’ s nomination for a second term as President .
( He mangled this procedural line , saying that he accepted the nomination “ profoundly , ” rather than “ proudly , ” as his script indicated . )
But Trump looked less like a candidate than like a king standing in front of his castle , flanked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of an insurgency at the gate .
The entire four-day spectacle of the Convention seemed designed to assert the existence not of a government , which begins and ends with elections , but of a Trump regime , born of a revolution and challenged by what Trump called “ anarchists , agitators , rioters , looters , and flag-burners.
” Trump ’ s use of the White House , where he appeared every day of the Convention ; the Washington Monument , illuminated by fireworks at the Convention ’ s finale ; Fort @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his speech on Wednesday ; and the U.S. government-owned Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium , where most of the Convention speeches were delivered , is , on the face of it , a violation of the Hatch Act , which bans the use of federal property for campaign purposes .
It is also an assertion of impunity : violations of the Hatch Act are punishable by removal from office , but Trump shows that he can get away with this just as he gets away with using the Presidency for personal profit and rejecting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is also a territorial claim .
Toward the end of his speech , Trump went on an apparently unscripted riff about the White House : “ The fact is , I ’ m here .
What ’ s the name of that building ?
But I ’ ll say it differently , the fact is , we ’ re here , and they ’ re not .
To me , one of the most beautiful buildings anywhere in the world , and it ’ s not a building , it ’ s a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ m concerned .
It ’ s not even a house , it is a home.
” It is his home , he seemed to say , and the “ socialists , ” as Democrats were repeatedly—and inaccurately—branded throughout the Convention , are trying to divest him of his property .
The Trump regime represents a break with the past .
Unlike at the Democratic National Convention , no past Presidents spoke at the Republicans ’ gathering ; every night was anchored by Trump ’ s family members .
The Republican Party dispensed with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entire agenda could be summed up on a single sheet of paper : the Party supports Trump .
Most speakers at the Convention talked of Trump as having wrought revolutionary change , ushering in a new political era—indicating , again , that Trumpism is not merely the governing philosophy of another Republican Administration .
It is a new system entirely .
Trump ’ s regime broadcast an image of itself as solid , established .
Speakers appeared framed by the imperial architecture of Washington , D.C .
The Democratic National Convention , pulled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ live streams , had an out-of-space , out-of-time quality to it .
Like many of us these days , D.N.C .
speakers seemed to inhabit spaces that are nowhere and everywhere at the same time , rooms that consist only of what is in front of a laptop camera .
One got the sense that the Democrats ’ cameras were angled so no one could see the bed ( or the child or the mess ) behind the speaker .
The Republicans ’ camera , on the other hand , showed the pillars @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mellon Auditorium , where speakers made grand stage entrances even though , apparently , they addressed an empty room ; most of them were in one place : Washington , D.C. On the last night , at the White House , the cameras showed a bank of American flags and , during the finale , lingered on the raised platforms , a red-carpeted arrangement that Trump apparently favors for the grandest of his grand appearances .
( After he spoke from a similar structure during the militarized festivities on July 4 , 2019 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it . )
To call things what they are , the Republicans adopted a fascist aesthetic for this year ’ s Convention .
It was in the pillars and the flags ; the military-style outfit that Melania Trump wore to deliver her speech , on the second night ; the screaming fervor with which many of the speeches were delivered ; the repeated references to “ law and order ” ; and phrases like “ weakness is provocative , ” which the Republican senator Tom Cotton offered on the final evening .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ greatness , of what Hannah Arendt , explaining the appeal of totalitarian movements , called “ victory and success as such , ” the prize of being on the winning side , whatever that side is .
The seduction of greatness may grow proportionately to anxiety : the more scared one is—of losing one ’ s job or health insurance , or of the coronavirus , of the world never going back to normal , among other worries—the more reassuring it is to say ( better yet , to scream ) that one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
One looks at people shouting triumphantly—none of them social distancing , only a few wearing masks—and one feels somehow uplifted by the fantasy of being one of them .
The Republicans offered greatness ; the Democrats , in contrast , proposed goodness .
The theme of the D.N.C .
was , in effect , that Joe Biden is a good guy : a compassionate man , a man who has experienced great tragedy , a great father , husband , grandfather , friend .
( It is remarkable that , while every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ family spoke at the R.N.C.
, including his oldest son ’ s girlfriend , none of them even attempted to make the President sound relatable in a similar way . )
The D.N.C.
’ s singular message is that Americans ought to choose to live in a country run by good people rather than callous liars .
It is a modest proposal .
To reject greatness in favor of goodness is a particularly difficult choice to make in an anxious state .
In its own way , the D.N.C .
was revolutionary in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Its homespun , scrappy feel might be fitting for an insurgent party .
Democrats , however , continued to insist that they are the true establishment .
The Party has adopted “ Build back better ” as its campaign slogan—a vague and misleading phrase .
It tells us nothing about what it would be like to live in a country whose guiding principles are mutual care , empathy , and goodness .
Americans have not , in fact , lived in such a country before .
It may be that voters have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ confidence that they will reject the siren call of greatness in favor of the amorphous promise of goodness .
But , whatever the polls may say now , it would be foolhardy to count on such an outcome .

On Thursday night, Donald Trump stood on the South Lawn of the White House and spoke for more than an hour. Nominally, this was the final speech of the Republican National Convention, during which Trump accepted the Party’s nomination for a second term as President. (He mangled this procedural line, saying that he accepted the nomination “profoundly,” rather than “proudly,” as his script indicated.) But Trump looked less like a candidate than like a king standing in front of his castle, flanked by members of his dynasty, warning of an insurgency at the gate. The entire four-day spectacle of the Convention seemed designed to assert the existence not of a government, which begins and ends with elections, but of a Trump regime, born of a revolution and challenged by what Trump called “anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters, and flag-burners.”
Trump’s use of the White House, where he appeared every day of the Convention; the Washington Monument, illuminated by fireworks at the Convention’s finale; Fort McHenry, where Vice-President Mike Pence delivered his speech on Wednesday; and the U.S. government-owned Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, where most of the Convention speeches were delivered, is, on the face of it, a violation of the Hatch Act, which bans the use of federal property for campaign purposes. It is also an assertion of impunity: violations of the Hatch Act are punishable by removal from office, but Trump shows that he can get away with this just as he gets away with using the Presidency for personal profit and rejecting congressional authority during impeachment proceedings. It is also a territorial claim. Toward the end of his speech, Trump went on an apparently unscripted riff about the White House: “The fact is, I’m here. What’s the name of that building? But I’ll say it differently, the fact is, we’re here, and they’re not. To me, one of the most beautiful buildings anywhere in the world, and it’s not a building, it’s a home, as far as I’m concerned. It’s not even a house, it is a home.” It is his home, he seemed to say, and the “socialists,” as Democrats were repeatedly—and inaccurately—branded throughout the Convention, are trying to divest him of his property.
The Trump regime represents a break with the past. Unlike at the Democratic National Convention, no past Presidents spoke at the Republicans’ gathering; every night was anchored by Trump’s family members. The Republican Party dispensed with a platform this year, and its entire agenda could be summed up on a single sheet of paper: the Party supports Trump. Most speakers at the Convention talked of Trump as having wrought revolutionary change, ushering in a new political era—indicating, again, that Trumpism is not merely the governing philosophy of another Republican Administration. It is a new system entirely.
Trump’s regime broadcast an image of itself as solid, established. Speakers appeared framed by the imperial architecture of Washington, D.C. The Democratic National Convention, pulled together from dozens of prerecorded clips and live streams, had an out-of-space, out-of-time quality to it. Like many of us these days, D.N.C. speakers seemed to inhabit spaces that are nowhere and everywhere at the same time, rooms that consist only of what is in front of a laptop camera. One got the sense that the Democrats’ cameras were angled so no one could see the bed (or the child or the mess) behind the speaker. The Republicans’ camera, on the other hand, showed the pillars and grand vault of the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, where speakers made grand stage entrances even though, apparently, they addressed an empty room; most of them were in one place: Washington, D.C. On the last night, at the White House, the cameras showed a bank of American flags and, during the finale, lingered on the raised platforms, a red-carpeted arrangement that Trump apparently favors for the grandest of his grand appearances. (After he spoke from a similar structure during the militarized festivities on July 4, 2019, he incessantly tweeted aerial shots of it.)
To call things what they are, the Republicans adopted a fascist aesthetic for this year’s Convention. It was in the pillars and the flags; the military-style outfit that Melania Trump wore to deliver her speech, on the second night; the screaming fervor with which many of the speeches were delivered; the repeated references to “law and order”; and phrases like “weakness is provocative,” which the Republican senator Tom Cotton offered on the final evening. The aesthetic—and the rhetoric—held out the carrot of greatness, of what Hannah Arendt, explaining the appeal of totalitarian movements, called “victory and success as such,” the prize of being on the winning side, whatever that side is. The seduction of greatness may grow proportionately to anxiety: the more scared one is—of losing one’s job or health insurance, or of the coronavirus, of the world never going back to normal, among other worries—the more reassuring it is to say (better yet, to scream) that one lives in the greatest country on earth. One looks at people shouting triumphantly—none of them social distancing, only a few wearing masks—and one feels somehow uplifted by the fantasy of being one of them.
The Republicans offered greatness; the Democrats, in contrast, proposed goodness. The theme of the D.N.C. was, in effect, that Joe Biden is a good guy: a compassionate man, a man who has experienced great tragedy, a great father, husband, grandfather, friend. (It is remarkable that, while every adult member of Trump’s immediate family spoke at the R.N.C., including his oldest son’s girlfriend, none of them even attempted to make the President sound relatable in a similar way.) The D.N.C.’s singular message is that Americans ought to choose to live in a country run by good people rather than callous liars. It is a modest proposal. To reject greatness in favor of goodness is a particularly difficult choice to make in an anxious state.
In its own way, the D.N.C. was revolutionary in its understated aesthetic and its humble message. Its homespun, scrappy feel might be fitting for an insurgent party. Democrats, however, continued to insist that they are the true establishment. The Party has adopted “Build back better” as its campaign slogan—a vague and misleading phrase. It tells us nothing about what it would be like to live in a country whose guiding principles are mutual care, empathy, and goodness. Americans have not, in fact, lived in such a country before. It may be that voters have such deep reserves of both decency and confidence that they will reject the siren call of greatness in favor of the amorphous promise of goodness. But, whatever the polls may say now, it would be foolhardy to count on such an outcome.


newyorker--2020-08-29--This Is the Internet and This Is Why It Sucks: A Children’s Book

This is Twitter .
Twitter is a place where people share their thoughts and their sandwiches and their thoughts about their sandwiches .
It can also be an important tool in revolutionary social movements .
Many famous people use Twitter .
Even the President of the United States uses Twitter !
Spelling and punctuation are hard for him .
Spelling is very important .
And proper punctuation is a lost art .
If you learn how to use a semicolon , you will go very far in life .
This is the iPad .
Apple invented the iPad .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ looks like one .
The iPad is where the Backyardigans and Thomas the Tank Engine live .
The iPad is also a way for Mommy and Daddy to neglect you and not have it be called child abuse .
This is Instagram .
Instagram is a place filled with beautiful pictures of beautiful places and beautiful people .
Everyone seems to be on vacation on Instagram .
The people cheated on their pictures .
Cheating is very bad .
No woman looks like that after she has a child , but I don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ swear .
( And I definitely would not choose having time to do yoga or to sleep in over having a child , definitely , absolutely , a hundred per cent not . )
This is Google .
Google is where people get all sorts of information , like when the Vietnam War ended or the phone number to the pizza parlor where—not that Mommy has noticed—the pizza maker looks like a young Ray Liotta and has strong , angular hands .
It is also how Aunt Jane found out that Uncle Howard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Uncle Howard did not use the Clear History option on the browser , which is an important thing to do .
This is e-mail .
E-mail is a way that people communicate , and it is how Grandpa Jake sends jokes that are offensive in all caps .
E-mail is also how Mommy discovered that Daddy was being a bad boy .
Daddy said that the detailed descriptions of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport Marriott hotel and a woman with “ slate-blue eyes ” were only his “ erotic imagination , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is Amazon .
You can buy almost anything on Amazon , and soon they will deliver things with tiny little airplanes called drones .
Amazon also forced many stores in town to close .
But the drones !
So neat !
Amazon also owns Whole Foods , where Daddy likes to buy dinner and pretend he made it .
This is Facebook .
Facebook , which is run by a mysterious manchild with a hood , is where friends and family can learn news of each other ’ s lives .
It also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mommy to look up ex-boyfriends and wonder , “ What if ?
” As in , “ What if I had known that Ayden would grow up to open an eco lodge in Costa Rica and retain all of his luscious hair , or that the constant pot-smoking and Led Zeppelin wasn ’ t actually a sign of a lack of ambition ?
” Then Facebook started selling people ’ s private information to bad companies run by men even more mysterious than the manchild with the hood .
So now Facebook is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it , and Mommy is forced to go to her college reunion and urge Daddy to stay home by saying that it will be a good bonding time for you two .
This is YouTube .
You already know YouTube !
YouTube is where some of some of your cartoons are .
There is also a video of cousin Eric ’ s bar-mitzvah reception , in which kids are doing dances called “ the worm ” or “ the robot , ” which you should never do , especially during puberty and on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me tell you—Mommy , back in the day , before you were born , could really shake her money-maker ( but I definitely don ’ t regret having you , ninety-nine per cent of the time ) .
This is Airbnb .
Once upon a time , when you went away somewhere , you stayed in a hotel , a motel , or a bed-and-breakfast run by a talkative woman with chunky jewelry .
Now you can stay in people ’ s homes .
Sometimes Mommy daydreams about Daddy moving out , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and expensive , so she rents a room to a charming couple from Australia who love you and provide free child care .
Maybe they can even pretend you ’ re theirs when Mommy needs to drink and Tinder—just at the beginning , like , the first few dates with a guy or the first few years , so , you know , the guy won ’ t get freaked out .
This is Wikipedia .
Remember when cousin John was building a fort out of books in Grandma ’ s basement at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Britannica , and they were so heavy that when one dropped on cousin Alice ’ s foot , she broke her toe and Alice ’ s father said he would sue Uncle Patrick , and Uncle Patrick said it was an accident , and Alice ’ s father said , “ Save it for the judge , bro.
” Anyway , Wikipedia replaced all those heavy books !
But there is a lot of incorrect information on Wikipedia .
If you need to know something about history or science , it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a last resort , Daddy .
This is TikTok .
TikTok is .
.
.
you know what ?
I got nothin ’ .
No idea what it is .
“ Da-da ” ?
Nope , Daddy definitely doesn ’ t know , though that wouldn ’ t stop him from mansplaining .
Mansplaining is like last week , when Daddy told us which sponges and soaps were acceptable to use on his cast-iron pan , and how they interacted with the molecular structure of the natural nonstick finish , and then Mommy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or cook with it but rather conk Daddy over the head and say , “ Is the human skull also harmful to the molecules of the cast iron ?
” This is Craigslist .
Before you were born , when Mommy and Daddy didn ’ t have much money , they got a sofa from Craigslist .
Mommy was hesitant , but Daddy said there was nothing to worry about—and , of course , he was wrong , and there were bedbugs , and we had to get the apartment fumigated , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And even though that was many , many years ago , Mommy still wonders if the fumigation is why it took you so long to learn to talk .
But that could also just be Daddy ’ s genes .

This is Twitter. Twitter is a place where people share their thoughts and their sandwiches and their thoughts about their sandwiches. It can also be an important tool in revolutionary social movements. Many famous people use Twitter. Even the President of the United States uses Twitter! Spelling and punctuation are hard for him. Spelling is very important. And proper punctuation is a lost art. If you learn how to use a semicolon, you will go very far in life.
This is the iPad. Apple invented the iPad. It is not a toy even though it looks like one. The iPad is where the Backyardigans and Thomas the Tank Engine live. The iPad is also a way for Mommy and Daddy to neglect you and not have it be called child abuse.
This is Instagram. Instagram is a place filled with beautiful pictures of beautiful places and beautiful people. Everyone seems to be on vacation on Instagram. The people cheated on their pictures. Cheating is very bad. No woman looks like that after she has a child, but I don’t regret having you, I swear. (And I definitely would not choose having time to do yoga or to sleep in over having a child, definitely, absolutely, a hundred per cent not.)
This is Google. Google is where people get all sorts of information, like when the Vietnam War ended or the phone number to the pizza parlor where—not that Mommy has noticed—the pizza maker looks like a young Ray Liotta and has strong, angular hands. It is also how Aunt Jane found out that Uncle Howard was looking at videos of naked people. Uncle Howard did not use the Clear History option on the browser, which is an important thing to do.
This is e-mail. E-mail is a way that people communicate, and it is how Grandpa Jake sends jokes that are offensive in all caps. E-mail is also how Mommy discovered that Daddy was being a bad boy. Daddy said that the detailed descriptions of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport Marriott hotel and a woman with “slate-blue eyes” were only his “erotic imagination,” but Daddy is a liar.
This is Amazon. You can buy almost anything on Amazon, and soon they will deliver things with tiny little airplanes called drones. Amazon also forced many stores in town to close. But the drones! So neat! Amazon also owns Whole Foods, where Daddy likes to buy dinner and pretend he made it.
This is Facebook. Facebook, which is run by a mysterious manchild with a hood, is where friends and family can learn news of each other’s lives. It also used to be a good place for Mommy to look up ex-boyfriends and wonder, “What if?” As in, “What if I had known that Ayden would grow up to open an eco lodge in Costa Rica and retain all of his luscious hair, or that the constant pot-smoking and Led Zeppelin wasn’t actually a sign of a lack of ambition?” Then Facebook started selling people’s private information to bad companies run by men even more mysterious than the manchild with the hood. So now Facebook is bad, and many people have left it, and Mommy is forced to go to her college reunion and urge Daddy to stay home by saying that it will be a good bonding time for you two.
This is YouTube. You already know YouTube! YouTube is where some of some of your cartoons are. There is also a video of cousin Eric’s bar-mitzvah reception, in which kids are doing dances called “the worm” or “the robot,” which you should never do, especially during puberty and on camera. Speaking of dancing, let me tell you—Mommy, back in the day, before you were born, could really shake her money-maker (but I definitely don’t regret having you, ninety-nine per cent of the time).
This is Airbnb. Once upon a time, when you went away somewhere, you stayed in a hotel, a motel, or a bed-and-breakfast run by a talkative woman with chunky jewelry. Now you can stay in people’s homes. Sometimes Mommy daydreams about Daddy moving out, and the house being too big and lonely and expensive, so she rents a room to a charming couple from Australia who love you and provide free child care. Maybe they can even pretend you’re theirs when Mommy needs to drink and Tinder—just at the beginning, like, the first few dates with a guy or the first few years, so, you know, the guy won’t get freaked out.
This is Wikipedia. Remember when cousin John was building a fort out of books in Grandma’s basement at Thanksgiving? Those books were the Encyclopedia Britannica, and they were so heavy that when one dropped on cousin Alice’s foot, she broke her toe and Alice’s father said he would sue Uncle Patrick, and Uncle Patrick said it was an accident, and Alice’s father said, “Save it for the judge, bro.” Anyway, Wikipedia replaced all those heavy books! But there is a lot of incorrect information on Wikipedia. If you need to know something about history or science, it’s better to ask me or, as a last resort, Daddy.
This is TikTok. TikTok is . . . you know what? I got nothin’. No idea what it is. “Da-da”? Nope, Daddy definitely doesn’t know, though that wouldn’t stop him from mansplaining. Mansplaining is like last week, when Daddy told us which sponges and soaps were acceptable to use on his cast-iron pan, and how they interacted with the molecular structure of the natural nonstick finish, and then Mommy no longer wanted to clean the pan or cook with it but rather conk Daddy over the head and say, “Is the human skull also harmful to the molecules of the cast iron?”
This is Craigslist. Before you were born, when Mommy and Daddy didn’t have much money, they got a sofa from Craigslist. Mommy was hesitant, but Daddy said there was nothing to worry about—and, of course, he was wrong, and there were bedbugs, and we had to get the apartment fumigated, and Mommy had to burn her favorite sheets. And even though that was many, many years ago, Mommy still wonders if the fumigation is why it took you so long to learn to talk. But that could also just be Daddy’s genes.


newyorker--2020-08-29--Jonathan Rothberg’s Race to Invent the Ultimate Rapid At-Home COVID-19 Test

Rothberg was impatient to begin his external monologue wherever his internal one had been interrupted , but there was one piece of business he wanted to take care of first .
In March , the entertainment mogul David Geffen provoked understandable ill will online when he posted to Instagram a photo of his own superyacht escape .
“ Isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus , ” he wrote .
“ I ’ m hoping everybody is staying safe.
” Rothberg insisted that his family ’ s maritime isolation had been no sumptuous idyll ; he had spent most of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t petitioning his children for a moment of their attention , scanning the emerging literature for academic experts who could answer his questions as they arose .
Whenever his wife was able to be home from the hospital for dinner , the children passed their mother ’ s face in two dimensions around the table .
Rothberg was born in Connecticut , the second-youngest of seven siblings .
His father , Henry Rothberg , had made a small fortune with the invention of a breakthrough form of adhesive for the installation of ceramic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Laticrete International , is now chaired by Rothberg ’ s eldest brother , David .
Rothberg and his siblings describe an unruly but loving household ; as Rothberg likes to put it , “ My mother had seven only children.
” Henry had a chemistry lab in the basement , and from an early age Jonathan pursued his own unsupervised experiments .
Rothberg was lost to his own dreamy agenda .
He taught himself to write code on an early Texas Instruments minicomputer , then sold an inventory-management program to a local @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trusted with the house keys .
He built a half-scale T. rex , attempted to shoot mice into outer space , and later counted cards at Atlantic City blackjack tables .
He majored in chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon , where he was the first person in the dorms with his own Apple computer .
His close friend and first business partner , Greg Went , ferried him back to Connecticut for vacations .
“ Jonathan was just thinking out loud at all times , and not random thoughts but practical ones , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t really a safe thing to do , ” he said .
Rothberg pursued a Ph.D. in biology at Yale .
His doctoral adviser , Spyros Artavanis-Tsakonas , now an emeritus professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School , described Rothberg to me as “ perhaps the most original person I ’ ve met in my life , ever.
” Rothberg was an unusually wide-ranging and syncretic thinker , interested in the possibilities of “ biotech ” long before the word was in common circulation , and a businessman from his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he was giving a talk in lab meetings , Artavanis-Tsakonas said , “ he would have a little note at the bottom of the slide saying , ‘ This is proprietary information , ’ which was annoying to me but was also very funny.
” Artavanis-Tsakonas went on , “ If he had an idea he would follow it up , not like many smart people in the lab who would think of something big , would start , and then with the first difficulty would let it go.
” Rothberg founded his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of grad school .
It survived on a string of grants from government agencies , as well as from investments from his parents and siblings ; his younger brother , Michael , gave him what amounted to his life savings at the time .
The company ’ s goal was to exploit the growing understanding of the human genome for novel therapeutics .
CuraGen went public , on the Nasdaq , in 1998 .
The following year , the bull market drove the share price from five dollars to two hundred and fifty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ retire if they wanted to .
Rothberg married Gould , a graduate of Yale ’ s medical and public-health programs , in 1995 ; in 1996 , their first child , a daughter , was born with a condition that can cause seizures .
In 1999 , Rothberg and Gould had a son , who turned blue after birth and was rushed to the NICU .
In times of distress , Rothberg soothes himself with engineering problems , and as he sat in the waiting room he fixated on the fact that there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the baby ’ s condition was genetic .
He noticed a magazine cover celebrating the Pentium chip , and realized it should be possible to quicken genetic sequencing on the model of an integrated circuit .
He spent his two weeks of paternity leave sketching out designs , and when he returned to CuraGen he formed a subsidiary company , 454 Life Sciences , to develop the idea .
The result was the first major advance in genetic sequencing in the thirty years since the British biochemist and two-time Nobel laureate Frederick Sanger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Human Genome Project—the first composite map of a human genome , which was completed in 2003—had taken thirteen years and cost about three billion dollars .
In 2008 , Rothberg and a research team used his technique to map and publish the first complete genome of a single individual , the geneticist James Watson .
The project took four months and about a million dollars .
The technology was also used , by a team in Leipzig , to sequence the first complete Neanderthal genome .
In the wake of the dot-com @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fell precipitously .
The company ’ s board , which saw Rothberg ’ s high-speed-sequencing side hustle as more of a distraction than a valuable investment , fired him in 2005 ; 454 Life Sciences was sold off for a hundred and fifty-five million dollars , which Rothberg believed represented about a fifth of the subsidiary ’ s actual value .
In the next two years , a rival startup called Illumina cornered the high-speed sequencing market .
Illumina is now a fifty-billion-dollar enterprise .
Still , Illumina ’ s sequencing machines were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ floors for support—and sold for half a million dollars .
It occurred to Rothberg , in his unplanned retirement , that he could put the entire process on a silicon chip and bring the price down by an order of magnitude .
He worked on his next company , Ion Torrent , in “ stealth mode ” for two years .
At a large biotech conference in February of 2010 , during a keynote , he had his largest employee walk in from the back carrying in his arms a machine the size @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sequencer was limited , compared to its bulky predecessors , in the amount of DNA it could read at one time , but it cost only fifty thousand dollars , and promised to bring sequencing capability to labs and medical centers that couldn ’ t otherwise have afforded it .
Six months after its theatrical début , Ion Torrent was sold to Life Technologies for a total of about seven hundred and twenty-five million dollars .
Rothberg bought a boat , he told me , as night fell on the marsh and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bright neon of the Gene Machine logo , and installed a high-backed throne on the bow of the sundeck—a reminder , he says , that things tend to work out in the end .
His mind was in some Aegean port , and he didn ’ t seem to notice the vicious clouds of stinging gnats .
“ I cruise into a new place , ” he said , “ and think about how glad I was that I was fired.
” Rothberg ’ s biotech incubator , 4Catalyzer , originally encompassed four @ @ @ @ @ @ @ three more , including Homodeus .
The endeavor , which includes a popular café named after his father and a garden named after his mother , has the feel of a personal micronation .
Rothberg prides himself on his ability to identify and recruit talent from academia , finance , and the health-care industry , and in the process has essentially re-created his own jostling family under cover of startup cultivation .
Each company also has a connection to his actual family .
When Rothberg bought his eldest daughter a watch that was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ produced so many false alarms that he decided to throw it away and start his own epilepsy firm .
( He has also underwritten a variety of research labs and drug trials over the years , especially for rare diseases ; the immunosuppressant that has left his daughter particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 emerged from a development program he and his wife funded twenty years ago . )
Rothberg has come , over time , to recognize his own administrative shortcomings , and for the COVID-19 project he hired some proven mercenaries for help @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Emil Michael , best known for his role as the money man at Uber , and as C.E.O .
he enlisted the aid of a high-ranking executive at a major Silicon Valley firm who preferred that his involvement not yet be a matter of public record , leaving Rothberg free to play a more expansive , oracular role .
He prophesied a future in which his kits would be on sale at every Walgreens and CVS , a world in which self-testing has become one more morning ritual between brushing our teeth and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ You might test all visitors to your home the way he tests all visitors to his boat .
And , as he told his investors , their product had long-term post-pandemic potential : what he first called “ COVID Detect ” was quickly reimagined as Detect , a flexible diagnostic platform that could easily be retooled to identify cases of the flu , respiratory syncytial virus , and a variety of other maladies .

On the morning of March 7th, the inventor and entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg announced, on Twitter, that he’d been thinking through the possibility of “a low cost easy to manufacture home test kit for #Coronavirus.” Attached to the tweet was a photo of a clean-swept desk before an orderly collection of curious desktop appliances, backlit, through a large picture window, by the sun’s reflection in an azure surf. Rothberg lives and works in Connecticut, where his holdings include a biotech incubator, a vineyard, and a full-scale near-replica of Stonehenge, made of Norwegian granite and modified for celestial alignment with his children’s birthdays, but for the moment he was at sea. He, his wife, and three of their five children had just arrived in the Bahamas, where they had planned to take the M/Y Gene Machine, their hundred-and-eighty-foot superyacht, on a spring-break cruise to Atlantis. Fortunately, the ship had been outfitted with Rothberg’s demiurgic propensities in mind. One luxury broker and charter operator told me that Rothberg is venerated, in the small, gossipy world of superyacht owners, as “the mad scientist with his state-of-the-art lab.” The broker continued, “It’s well known in the industry that Rothberg does his best thinking on the ship, where his mind is clear and free of distractions.”
Rothberg’s “best thinking” generates new ideas at a berserk pace, often without regard for immediate feasibility, but his ambitions are warranted by a long history of unlikely successes. At various points in his career he’s considered a return to academia; in each case he has found himself haunted by a practical problem of some personal urgency, and has relapsed into commercial enterprise. At fifty-seven, he presides over seven sibling companies, most of which are organized around the principle of scale: he likes to take existing technologies and make them faster, smaller, cheaper, and more readily available. His portable MRI sells for fifty thousand dollars, his home ultrasound for two thousand. He is most widely known, however, as a pioneer of “next-generation sequencing,” a major advance in the speed with which a genome could be read. The consequences of this breakthrough for personalized health, forensic investigation, and the study of human prehistory, to take only a few examples, have been breathtaking; in 2016, President Barack Obama bestowed upon him the National Medal of Technology and Innovation for his achievement.
Rothberg’s original plan for 2020 had been to use one of his newer companies, Homodeus, to trawl for genetic evidence of “panspermia,” the not entirely disreputable idea that life on earth arrived in the form of ancient space dust. But the problem of coronavirus testing—the need for reliable diagnosis of an unprecedented sweep—was a high-stakes contest of immediate appeal. Rothberg thought the team’s background work in custom enzyme production was well suited to the contrivance of a COVID-19 diagnostic that did not rely on cumbersome and expensive machines. In February, Rothberg had been dumbstruck by the U.S. government’s failure to marshal its resources in preparation for a comprehensive clinical-testing regime. He’d assumed that the people in charge would get their act together before long, but he swore to himself that he would face the next pandemic with a simple diagnostic platform of his own devising. By the time he boarded the Gene Machine, he felt that he could not afford to tarry.
The closest thing we have to a gold standard of pathogenic diagnosis is the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method, which registers even trace amounts of the virus’s nucleic acid. Such “molecular” tests can be calibrated for an unimprovable specificity: false positives are exceedingly rare. (Their sensitivity, or rate of false negatives, is less certain.) The process, however, is embedded in a vast infrastructure: labs depend on complex supply chains for materials and reagents, and samples must be collected and distributed throughout a network of depots for processing. Optimizing this system requires a good deal of centralized coördination and oversight. Other countries rose to the occasion, and were able to use widespread PCR testing to track and manage their outbreaks. But, even if the U.S. government had acted with alacrity and competence, there are limits to what such a system can do. A streamlined operation might be able to complete thousands of tests at once, but trucks can only carry so many samples and move so quickly, and the turnaround time for a result is almost never less than a day.
Rothberg was not alone in his belief that America would continue to fail this test—and that a day’s turnaround could still not guarantee a return to ordinary life. In university labs, small startups, and large life-sciences companies, researchers improvised, drawing upon a variety of techniques to compensate for the lack of national leadership. Rothberg told his core staff not to worry about competitors—he expected that most of them would be focussed on antibody tests, which can only diagnose in retrospect and have often proved untrustworthy, or antigen tests, which register the presence of viral proteins. These can be quick and inexpensive but aren’t generally as accurate as molecular tests, which indicate not the presence of a viral proxy, like a protein, but of the virus itself. Rothberg’s predictions were almost immediately confirmed: a small Massachusetts startup, E25Bio, soon announced that they had raised millions of dollars of venture capital, and anticipated approval for their fifteen-minute at-home antigen test within two months.
Rothberg was committed to the development of a molecular nucleic-acid test as accurate as PCR, as fast and simple as a home pregnancy test, and as inexpensive as an antibody or antigen option. A standard PCR test normally costs about a hundred dollars, though the price is often subsidized; he wanted his available for ten. With such a device, Rothberg wrote on Twitter, “read-out would be in minutes - timer in App - read by camera in your smart phone. No other machines.” Over the next forty-eight hours, Rothberg live-tweeted the creation of a new enterprise, tracing his “thought experiment” with a steady but haphazard accretion of technical detail, earnest self-promotion, and preëmptive networking. He tagged researchers at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania. By the end of the first day, he’d received an e-mail from a “great manufacturer.” On day two, he reported that he’d made “some general progress on the sample collection.” He asked his followers, in a poll, whether they thought he should continue, and, for reasons that were not fully clear, he tagged the Gates Foundation.
On March 9th, he convened, via Zoom, a handful of people, drawn from Homodeus and its kin companies, and told them he thought they could produce a device, secure the Food and Drug Administration’s go-ahead, and ramp up to mass production in only three months. His optimism was, according to his employees, characteristic; Owen Kaye-Kauderer, a co-founder of Homodeus and one of the many bright, industrious twentysomethings with whom Rothberg regularly collaborates, told me that Rothberg’s ideal company featured “one domain expert surrounded by seven kids who don’t know that what they’re trying to do can’t be done.” At the same time, Rothberg’s suspicion that by the beginning of the summer there would still be an urgent need for his intervention betrayed a realism, even a pessimism, about the likelihood of a competent centralized response. His instincts also highlighted a fundamental distinction between those who coveted the hope that the pandemic might inspire a renewed commitment to collective action on a federal scale, and those who accepted as a fait accompli that America was a nation in which each looked after only his or her own. In another age or another society, a man of Rothberg’s background and expertise—not only in science and technology but in manufacturing, logistics, and sales—might have been summoned to help organize a public solution. As it was, he immediately began to write patents.
A few days later, his wife, Bonnie Gould Rothberg, a physician and epidemiologist, was recalled to her post at Yale New Haven Hospital. Rothberg told his eldest son, a Yale junior studying abroad in London, to pack his bags and head directly for Heathrow; the young man flew through Miami, picking up one of his cousins in transit, and joined his father and siblings on the Gene Machine. Rothberg’s eldest daughter falls into a high-risk category—she takes immunosuppressant drugs—and nothing was safer than a naval quarantine. (The word itself is derived from the forty days of isolation imposed by the Venetian authorities on incoming ships.) Rothberg settled into dockside life in the Bahamian port of Albany with six children between the ages of nine and twenty-four, an eight-pound Pomeranian named Versace, a crew of about a dozen, and the hope that the F.D.A. would grant his test an emergency approval by June.
The various processes that comprise a regular molecular test—loosening the virus from the swab, cracking open the virus’s protein shell to free the RNA inside, converting the viral RNA to DNA, and then amplifying that DNA to a detectable concentration—are normally done as a series of discrete steps, each at a different temperature, in a minimum of two test tubes. Rothberg wanted to abbreviate all of this commotion. It was clear to many scientists, Rothberg among them, that the best bet for a cut-rate but exacting diagnostic technology was “loop-mediated isothermal nucleic acid amplification” (LAMP), which was patented by a Japanese pharmaceutical company twenty years ago, and has primarily been used to meet diagnostic needs in low-resource places, for tropical diseases like Zika and dengue fever. In February, a company called New England Biolabs published a preprint of a LAMP-based COVID-19 protocol—not a test, per se, but a relatively simple lab procedure—that had been validated by Chinese collaborators with patient samples from Wuhan. It was a promising advance, but Rothberg wanted to go further: to contain the entire mechanism in a single vial. Kaye-Kauderer told me that Rothberg’s instructions to his team were “no pipetting, no nasopharyngeal swabs, no refrigerated enzymes, no liquid transfer—we had to keep the whole thing hermetically sealed, end to end.” Christopher Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell, in New York, and a member of Homodeus’s scientific advisory board, told me that such “one-pot solutions” are tricky—other scientists, he said, have tried and failed. Rothberg was known, however, for his intransigence in the face of technical challenges.
Rothberg was equally concerned with a host of smaller details. The long nasopharyngeal swabs used in most tests, for example, had been widely unavailable. Moreover, as Rothberg’s wife told him over video chat, there was no way users would give themselves what felt like cranial defilements. Rothberg was reassured by a paper indicating that the virus could be reliably detected in the lower nostrils, and moved on to swab design. After a study by the Gates Foundation showed that swabs should be flocked, or tipped with tiny bristles, rather than spun on the model of a Q-tip, Rothberg’s supply-chain managers—who were, as often as not, also his engineers—immediately began to negotiate with a Taiwanese vender to produce small flocked versions for their exclusive use. Another issue had to do with the LAMP process, which does not require the complex thermocycling of a PCR machine but does require some heat. Rothberg recognized that the average person was generally able to make tea, and his first thought was that the test tube could be placed into a cup of boiled water. The F.D.A. was open to innovative measures, but his team told him that miniature heaters were cheap enough to manufacture that it wasn’t worth a regulatory provocation. With the exception of the heater, which Rothberg planned to do away with eventually, the design made good on everything he considered crucial.
After six weeks in the Caribbean and Florida, the Gene Machine began to head north, taking up a berth at a marina in Savannah, Georgia, where Rothberg could more easily receive deliveries of the tools and matériel—3-D printers, for example, that worked with biocompatible resins—he required for prototyping. He had promised his youngest child, a nine-year-old, that they could spend the odd hours of the summer constructing a small hoverboard, and among the boxes disinfected and carted aboard each day were sets of ducted fans and microcontrollers. In late May, he told me that I was welcome to join the ship in port, as long as I was prepared to arrive by car rather than by plane. Though he had confidence in his prototypes, he stipulated that I get tested before I arrived. New York and New Jersey had the nation’s highest confirmed caseloads at the time, but the dozens of testing sites I called advertised a three-to-five-day wait for results—if, that is, they accepted asymptomatic customers at all. In late March, President Trump had proclaimed that the approval of the country’s first rapid-test kits, developed by Abbott Laboratories for use with their I.D. NOW machine, represented “a whole new ballgame.” Almost twelve weeks into the New York metropolitan area’s lockdown, however, the machine, which costs thousands of dollars, remained a scarce commodity. (A subsequent study, conducted by independent researchers at N.Y.U., indicated an accuracy of barely fifty per cent. Abbott said that the findings were “not consistent with other studies,” and the White House continued to rely on them.) On June 1st, I visited a strip-mall clinic in the Meadowlands of New Jersey, one of the very few local venues to offer the service, and texted Rothberg a photo of my all-clear.
I stopped as little as possible on the thirteen-hour drive to Savannah, but it was difficult to miss the abrupt shift in rest-stop mask prevalence in the stretch between Richmond, Virginia, and Rocky Mount, North Carolina. The Gene Machine was moored at a distance from the other resting vessels, on the perimeter of a basin adjacent to the marina’s active shipyard, where rusty fishing charters and stocky catamarans hung suspended in drydock. I stepped on a disinfectant mat, removed my shoes, and climbed the stairs to the main deck’s exterior corridor. The superyacht’s captain, Matt Gow, had been on board for the entirety of the pandemic to date, and, unfamiliar with the radical revision of landed customs, extended his hand in greeting. Rothberg himself was more cautious, ushering me up to the breezy expanse of the sundeck, where we took our places opposite each other on long weatherproof settees and he gave drink orders to a uniformed crewmember wearing an unobtrusive headset. Rothberg is a tall, lanky, guilelessly charismatic man with a broad, wind-chapped face and a boyish mop of windblown brown hair. He lifted his clunky black wraparound sunglasses up and to the side, rested them askance on the frames of his prescription pair, and gestured to his marine habitat. Over the past six weeks, he’d left the boat only for short tours of the estuary, and for afternoon pedal-boarding for exercise in the tidal marshes. They’d seen dolphins and the occasional alligator. The shipyard was still for the day, and only the occasional police helicopter overhead broke the lush crepuscular silence. The world and its crises felt keeningly distant.


newyorker--2020-08-29--College Football’s Messy, Bumpy, Worrisome Return

In early August , the rumors started to build : college football would be cancelled .
Or maybe not .
Or only in some places .
President Trump took up the issue , and , with his Midas touch , turned the discussion to shit .
He tweeted about it .
He spoke with the Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence , who had said that he wanted to play .
He called into a friendly sports-radio show and lied to its listeners about the virus ’ s effects .
( “ It just attacks old people.
” ) Meanwhile , Lou @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his years at Notre Dame , in the eighties and nineties , went on Fox News and , not for the first time , compared playing the upcoming season to storming the beaches of Normandy .
( This week , Holtz spoke at the Republican National Convention . )
The Republican Senator Ben Sasse , who was once the president of a small college , wrote an open letter to Big Ten presidents , urging them not to cancel the season .
“ Life is about tradeoffs , ” he wrote .
Medical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effects of COVID-19 on the heart , effects that could be worsened by exercise , and there were varying reports on the access that players had to coronavirus testing—not to mention the turnaround times for the tests ’ results .
Schools were cancelling other sports , bracing for lost revenue .
The National Collegiate Athletic Association announced that each athletic conference could make its own decisions—effectively admitting the obvious , that the N.C.A.A .
has limited power over the major football schools and that , in any case , it lacks the fortitude @ @ @ @ @ @ @ players said that they wanted to decide for themselves whether or not to risk their health—and , by extension , the health of others .
Other players pointed out the myriad ways that the student-athlete system is exploiting them , now more than ever .
There were also those who said that they felt safer within their football programs than outside of them .
And then the parents got involved .
College football is a small universe consisting of local pride and gigantic television contracts , of real idealism and flagrant hypocrisy , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Why should a pandemic make it any less shambolic ?
And so we ’ re left with a partial and patchwork season , divided and subdivided like the rest of the country .
Those divisions are partly political and partly connected with relative levels of risk aversion ; all of it is connected with money .
The economic consequences of a cancelled season are catastrophic , even for smaller schools , some of which are paid large sums of money to be beaten by bigger ones .
On Saturday , Central Arkansas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Austin Peay , of the Ohio Valley Conference , will kick off the season .
We now face the eerie prospect of empty stadiums on October Saturdays , and the even eerier prospect of stadiums with fans in them .
“ I feel like the Titanic , ” Carlos del Rio , a professor at the Emory University School of Medicine and an adviser to the N.C.A.A.
, said after some conferences reaffirmed their decision to play football and other sports in the fall .
“ We have hit the iceberg , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of what time should we have the band play.
” The Big Ten was the first of the big Power Five conferences to push its season back to spring .
The Pac-12 quickly followed and , when announcing its decision , released the detailed conclusions of its medical advisers , who had highlighted emerging information about the threat of serious cardiac complications , even in mild cases of the coronavirus , as well as inadequate testing capacity and unchecked community spread as students returned to campus .
The case levels and positivity rates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which infectious disease and public health officials deem safe for group sports , ” the advisers wrote .
The Big Ten was not as forthcoming about its decision-making process , and there was more evident division in its ranks—some coaches and schools seemed ready to revolt .
Nebraska ’ s coach , apparently with the support of the school ’ s administration , even talked about going their own route and scheduling games .
( This week , eight Nebraska players filed a lawsuit against the Big Ten , claiming breach of contract @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been held before the season was postponed . )
The Ohio State running back Justin Fields started a petition asking the conference to reverse its decision , and it received hundreds of thousands of signatures .
Randy Wade , the father of Ohio State cornerback Shaun Wade , flew from Jacksonville to Rosemont , Illinois , and organized a rally at Big Ten headquarters , demanding answers .
The other Power Five conferences—the Big 12 , the Atlantic Coast Conference , and the Southeastern Conference—reaffirmed their decision to play limited schedules .
Many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( On Friday , ESPN reported that the Big Ten is discussing starting the season in January or possibly as early as Thanksgiving . )
“ You can ’ t tell me that running onto a football field is supposed to be a zero-risk environment , ” Cameron Wolfe , an infectious-disease specialist at Duke who chairs the A.C.C.
’ s medical-advisory team , told Sports Business Daily .
“ Look at all of the regular sporting injuries that we accept as a certain level of risk as part and parcel of football @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have to accept a little bit of COVID risk to be a part of that.
” It ’ s true that football players are accustomed to risk .
Physical danger is fundamental to the game—there is a reason that a blitz is called a blitz and that football coaches are forever confusing D Day against Hitler with game day against Wisconsin .
Then again , a torn A.C.L .
won ’ t create an infectious cluster , and a concussion won ’ t kill your grandmother .
Everyone knew that cases would jump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those in favor of football pointed out that players were less likely to contract the virus on the field than in a frat house , which is almost certainly true .
“ I do believe you can sufficiently mitigate the risk of bringing COVID onto the football field or into the training room at a level that ’ s no different than living as a student on campus , ” Cameron Wolfe , the A.C.C .
adviser , has said .
Football players slobber all over one other , but they are being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ team arguably gives them additional incentive to be careful—to wear masks and avoid parties .
But N.C.A.A .
rules mean that athletes are not allowed to be sequestered .
Those with in-person classes have to attend , whether or not it means sitting next to the guy who spent the weekend barhopping , and live in proximity to students who are eager to resume some semblance of a social life .
Students , after all , aren ’ t being brought back to campus because it is the safest place to be—they are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because universities need their student fees .
On Wednesday , North Carolina State announced that its upcoming game against Virginia Tech was being delayed two weeks after a coronavirus cluster was detected within the school ’ s athletic department .
That same day , the school ’ s chancellor said that campus housing would soon be mostly closed , because “ the rapid spread and increasing rate of positive cases have made our current situation untenable .
”

In early August, the rumors started to build: college football would be cancelled. Or maybe not. Or only in some places. President Trump took up the issue, and, with his Midas touch, turned the discussion to shit. He tweeted about it. He spoke with the Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence, who had said that he wanted to play. He called into a friendly sports-radio show and lied to its listeners about the virus’s effects. (“It just attacks old people.”) Meanwhile, Lou Holtz, a coaching legend thanks to his years at Notre Dame, in the eighties and nineties, went on Fox News and, not for the first time, compared playing the upcoming season to storming the beaches of Normandy. (This week, Holtz spoke at the Republican National Convention.) The Republican senator Ben Sasse, who was once the president of a small college, wrote an open letter to Big Ten presidents, urging them not to cancel the season. “Life is about tradeoffs,” he wrote.
Medical experts were becoming increasingly concerned about the effects of COVID-19 on the heart, effects that could be worsened by exercise, and there were varying reports on the access that players had to coronavirus testing—not to mention the turnaround times for the tests’ results. Schools were cancelling other sports, bracing for lost revenue. The National Collegiate Athletic Association announced that each athletic conference could make its own decisions—effectively admitting the obvious, that the N.C.A.A. has limited power over the major football schools and that, in any case, it lacks the fortitude to make decisions for them. Some players said that they wanted to decide for themselves whether to risk their health—and, by extension, the health of others. Other players pointed out the myriad ways that the student-athlete system is exploiting them, now more than ever. There were also those who said that they felt safer within their football programs than outside of them. And then the parents got involved.
College football is a small universe consisting of local pride and gigantic television contracts, of real idealism and flagrant hypocrisy, pageantry and violence, talent and mediocrity. Why should a pandemic make it any less shambolic?
And so we’re left with a partial and patchwork season, divided and subdivided like the rest of the country. Those divisions are partly political and partly connected with relative levels of risk aversion; all of it is connected with money. The economic consequences of a cancelled season are catastrophic, even for smaller schools, some of which are paid large sums of money to be beaten by bigger ones. On Saturday, Central Arkansas, of the Southland Conference, and Austin Peay, of the Ohio Valley Conference, will kick off the season. We now face the eerie prospect of empty stadiums on October Saturdays, and the even eerier prospect of stadiums with fans in them. “I feel like the Titanic,” Carlos del Rio, a professor at the Emory University School of Medicine and an adviser to the N.C.A.A., said after some conferences reaffirmed their decision to play football and other sports in the fall. “We have hit the iceberg, and we’re trying to make decisions of what time should we have the band play.”
The Big Ten was the first of the big Power Five conferences to push its season back to spring. The Pac-12 quickly followed and, when announcing its decision, released the detailed conclusions of its medical advisers, who had highlighted emerging information about the threat of serious cardiac complications, even in mild cases of the coronavirus, as well as inadequate testing capacity and unchecked community spread as students returned to campus. The case levels and positivity rates in many conference locations “exceed levels which infectious disease and public health officials deem safe for group sports,” the advisers wrote. The Big Ten was not as forthcoming about its decision-making process, and there was more evident division in its ranks—some coaches and schools seemed ready to revolt. Nebraska’s coach, apparently with the support of the school’s administration, even talked about his team going its own route and scheduling games. (This week, eight Nebraska players filed a lawsuit against the Big Ten, claiming breach of contract and questioning whether a formal vote had been held before the season was postponed.) The Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields started a petition asking the conference to reverse its decision, and it received hundreds of thousands of signatures. Randy Wade, the father of Ohio State cornerback Shaun Wade, flew from Jacksonville to Rosemont, Illinois, and organized a rally at Big Ten headquarters, demanding answers. The other Power Five conferences—the Big 12, the Atlantic Coast Conference, and the Southeastern Conference—reaffirmed their decision to play limited schedules. Many smaller programs have done the same. (On Friday, ESPN reported that the Big Ten is discussing starting the season in January or possibly as early as Thanksgiving.)
“You can’t tell me that running onto a football field is supposed to be a zero-risk environment,” Cameron Wolfe, an infectious-disease specialist at Duke who chairs the A.C.C.’s medical-advisory team, told Sports Business Daily. “Look at all of the regular sporting injuries that we accept as a certain level of risk as part and parcel of football. Now the reality is that we have to accept a little bit of COVID risk to be a part of that.” It’s true that football players are accustomed to risk. Physical danger is fundamental to the game—there is a reason that a blitz is called a blitz and that football coaches are forever confusing D Day against Hitler with game day against Wisconsin. Then again, a torn A.C.L. won’t create an infectious cluster, and a concussion won’t kill your grandmother.
Everyone knew that cases would jump once students came back to campus; those in favor of football pointed out that players were less likely to contract the virus on the field than in a frat house, which is almost certainly true. “I do believe you can sufficiently mitigate the risk of bringing COVID onto the football field or into the training room at a level that’s no different than living as a student on campus,” Cameron Wolfe, the A.C.C. adviser, has said. Football players slobber all over one another, but they are being regularly tested, and being on a team arguably gives them additional incentive to be careful—to wear masks and avoid parties. But N.C.A.A. rules mean that athletes are not allowed to be sequestered. Those with in-person classes have to attend, whether or not it means sitting next to the guy who spent the weekend barhopping, and live in proximity to students who are eager to resume some semblance of a social life. Students, after all, aren’t being brought back to campus because it is the safest place to be—they are being brought back, in part, because universities need their student fees. On Wednesday, North Carolina State announced that its upcoming game against Virginia Tech was being delayed two weeks after a coronavirus cluster was detected within the school’s athletic department. That same day, the school’s chancellor said that campus housing would soon be mostly closed because “the rapid spread and increasing rate of positive cases have made our current situation untenable.”
A.C.C. and S.E.C. schools may be able to afford to test players multiple times a week—but what about the people who gather in bars, in living rooms, at tailgates, or even in stadiums to watch? (Many schools are planning on allowing smaller crowds—often around twenty to twenty-five per cent of capacity.) It’s possible that playing football is only somewhat riskier than usual for the athletes. But watching football, which is not typically a dangerous activity, now carries its own risk factors anywhere that the virus is spreading. In one week, the University of Alabama reported more than five hundred positive tests. Within weeks of students returning to the University of North Carolina, most of them were sent home, after several COVID-19 clusters appeared. But the athletes stayed. Turning a college campus into a bubble for college football effectively underlined what had already become evident: the players were being treated as essential employees, except they weren’t being paid.
And they are essential, in many ways. The gigantic television contracts depend on them, and so do the enormous coaching salaries and the bloated athletic administrations. Stanford, a Pac-12 school, has already cut eleven other sports—and that was before the football season was suspended. After the Big Ten postponed the fall season, Iowa cut four sports. George Washington, Dartmouth, Boise State, Cincinnati, and several other schools have cut programs—with more surely to follow. And the effects will be felt far beyond athletic departments. Football is the economic engine of some small college towns. Its loss will mean the loss of jobs, not just Saturdays in front of the TV. And its absence will cause many to feel genuinely bereft. College football matters to many people in a way that most sports don’t. It binds communities. Which is, of course, part of the risk in playing: it brings people together.
A previous version of this piece misidentified Justin Fields’s position.
More on the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-08-29--The Lived-In Grace of Chadwick Boseman

The Lived-In Grace of Chadwick Boseman

In an era that prizes and praises actors ’ conspicuous exertion ( like Joaquin Phoenix , in “ Joker , ” and Leonardo DiCaprio , in “ The Revenant ” ) , Chadwick Boseman never wrestled the bear , never turned acting into stunt work for the sheer self-congratulatory pride in effort .
He also , at a time when technical skill is venerated , never flaunted his own formidable acting technique .
Boseman , who died on Friday , at the age of forty-three , never won an Oscar—was never even nominated .
True , he had only a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ won overwhelming and justified acclaim for each of them .
Yet he didn ’ t sufficiently impress his award-granting peers in the industry , perhaps because his style of acting set him apart from—and in crucial ways , above—the customs , habits , and conventions of the profession .
Boseman ’ s talent had never been in doubt ; what had largely gone unrecognized was his originality .
His breakthrough came in that most accursed of genres , the bio-pic , in “ 42 , ” which was released in 2013 , when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , alongside the enormous historical responsibility that the role of Jackie Robinson ( the first Black player in major-league baseball ) imposed , Boseman had a hard script to contend with .
It ’ s a movie written and directed with 20/20 hindsight regarding progress in American race relations .
Boseman ’ s solution to the dramatic and technical problem of conveying Robinson ’ s supremely controlled bearing and the passion that roiled beneath it was to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of bio-pic performances : he neither reinvents the role to fit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other notables who ’ ve won Oscars for performances in the genre ) nor does he impersonate the character of Robinson with sheer virtuosity .
Rather , Boseman incarnates Robinson , catches an element of physical bearing that comes not from imitation but identification , from a profound empathy that goes beneath the skin and seemingly takes on not merely the character ’ s actions and experiences but also the subconscious , the automatic aspect .
That sense of lived-in spontaneity born of imagination is both the source of Boseman ’ s profound @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not been hailed as other actors have been .
His method puts his own bearing severely to the test , and that bearing is supremely graceful : he makes the extreme difficulty of embodying Robinson ( and , then , James Brown , in “ Get On Up ” ) look effortless , and makes his distinctive and unusual craft look like second nature rather than like the actorly modernism that it is .
In “ Marshall , ” Boseman plays Thurgood Marshall ( in a story of Marshall ’ s work as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he became a Supreme Court Justice ) with a similarly inhabited air—an expansive power that ’ s the opposite of haunted or theatrical .
Boseman ’ s performance is grandly dialectical , but his way with the word conveys , above all , the intellectual power and the historical undercurrent that gives rise to the word ; here , too , his virtuosity is subordinated into a physical presence that virtually bursts through the screen with a startling immediacy that nonetheless seems to be entirely that of Marshall .
Boseman was an extraordinarily @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his generation .
His ability to generate enormous power with the appearance of minimal strain is both an art and a mark of personality , of a devotion and a humility that Hollywood values even less for its authenticity , its sincerity .
In the role of T ’ Challa , in “ Black Panther , ” Boseman dons the royal mantle with a serenity that reflects a clear and principled sense of purpose—and that again wears lightly the burden of responsibility that comes with it .
The movie , for all its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ identity of superheroic characters and of American pop culture at large , while also joining American Blackness to the heritage of African culture .
The movie , through the creative efforts of its director , Ryan Coogler ( who wrote the script with Joe Robert Cole ) , takes on a responsibility far greater than that of any other film in the Marvel cycle , greater perhaps than any work of mass entertainment in recent years—and Boseman , at its center , carries that responsibility with an understated grandeur that , once more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ What ’ s more , Boseman , for all that he achieved , did so quickly but belatedly .
He had only a handful of starring and major roles ; though he died at forty-three , he was really only just getting started .
He had only begun to work with the leading directors of the time ; his art and his style , though fully formed , had only begun to reveal their immense , historic possibilities .
Boseman ’ s role in Spike Lee ’ s “ Da 5 Bloods , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ troop commander who , while fighting in Vietnam , was also a virtual mentor in Black history and politics to the men serving under his command , is similarly imbued with the responsibility and the weight of history .
The role , despite its brevity , is the fulcrum of the movie , the source of emotional energy and of ideas that propel the drama .
The casting in Lee ’ s film is apt : here , Boseman , while inhabiting the role fully , is also , in a way , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ history , for properly redefining the cultural record to reflect the centrality of Black lives and achievements .
This , too , is part of Boseman ’ s gracefulness and devotion—his performances suggest that the only thing that ’ s remarkable about such an effort is the distressing fact that it is , today , still necessary .
It is , perhaps , this very sense of history , of responsibility , of implicit but intensely personal political commitment , that also inhibited the acclaim , while Boseman lived and worked , from @ @ @ @ @ @ @

Boseman brought to his roles a sense of history, responsibility, and implicit but intensely personal political commitment. Photograph by Magdalena Wosinska / NYT / Redux
In an era that prizes and praises actors’ conspicuous exertion (like Joaquin Phoenix, in “Joker,” and Leonardo DiCaprio, in “The Revenant”), Chadwick Boseman never wrestled the bear, never turned acting into stunt work for the sheer self-congratulatory pride in effort. He also, at a time when technical skill is venerated, never flaunted his own formidable acting technique. Boseman, who died on Friday, at the age of forty-three, never won an Oscar—was never even nominated. True, he had only a handful of leading roles, but he won overwhelming and justified acclaim for each of them. Yet he didn’t sufficiently impress his award-granting peers in the industry, perhaps because his style of acting set him apart from—and in crucial ways, above—the customs, habits, and conventions of the profession.
Boseman’s talent had never been in doubt; what had largely gone unrecognized was his originality. His breakthrough came in that most accursed of genres, the bio-pic, in “42,” which was released in 2013, when he was thirty-six years old. There, alongside the enormous historical responsibility that the role of Jackie Robinson (the first Black player in major-league baseball) imposed, Boseman had a hard script to contend with. It’s a movie written and directed with 20/20 hindsight regarding progress in American race relations. Boseman’s solution to the dramatic and technical problem of conveying Robinson’s supremely controlled bearing and the passion that roiled beneath it was to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of bio-pic performances: he neither reinvents the role to fit his own art (as do some other notables who’ve won Oscars for performances in the genre) nor does he impersonate the character of Robinson with sheer virtuosity. Rather, Boseman incarnates Robinson, catches an element of physical bearing that comes not from imitation but identification, from a profound empathy that goes beneath the skin and seemingly takes on not merely the character’s actions and experiences but also the subconscious, the automatic aspect.
That sense of lived-in spontaneity born of imagination is both the source of Boseman’s profound art and the reason that he had not been hailed as other actors have been. His method puts his own bearing severely to the test, and that bearing is supremely graceful: he makes the extreme difficulty of embodying Robinson (and, then, James Brown, in “Get On Up”) look effortless, and makes his distinctive and unusual craft look like second nature rather than like the actorly modernism that it is. In “Marshall,” Boseman plays Thurgood Marshall (in a story of Marshall’s work as a civil-rights attorney, set decades before he became a Supreme Court Justice) with a similarly inhabited air—an expansive power that’s the opposite of haunted or theatrical. Boseman’s performance is grandly dialectical, but his way with the word conveys, above all, the intellectual power and the historical undercurrent that gives rise to the word; here, too, his virtuosity is subordinated into a physical presence that virtually bursts through the screen with a startling immediacy that nonetheless seems to be entirely that of Marshall.
Boseman was an extraordinarily graceful actor—perhaps the most graceful one of his generation. His ability to generate enormous power with the appearance of minimal strain is both an art and a mark of personality, of a devotion and a humility that Hollywood values even less for its authenticity, its sincerity. In the role of T’Challa, in “Black Panther,” Boseman dons the royal mantle with a serenity that reflects a clear and principled sense of purpose—and that again wears lightly the burden of responsibility that comes with it. The movie, for all its Marvelous artifice, both asserts the Black identity of superheroic characters and of American pop culture at large, while also joining American Blackness to the heritage of African culture. The movie, through the creative efforts of its director, Ryan Coogler (who wrote the script with Joe Robert Cole), takes on a responsibility far greater than that of any other film in the Marvel cycle, greater perhaps than any work of mass entertainment in recent years—and Boseman, at its center, carries that responsibility with an understated grandeur that, once more, conveys a sense of humility.
What’s more, Boseman, for all that he achieved, did so quickly but belatedly. He had only a handful of starring and major roles; though he died at forty-three, he was really only just getting started. He had only begun to work with the leading directors of the time; his art and his style, though fully formed, had only begun to reveal their immense, historic possibilities. Boseman’s role in Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods,” as Stormin’ Norman, the troop commander who, while fighting in Vietnam, was also a virtual mentor in Black history and politics to the men serving under his command, is similarly imbued with the responsibility and the weight of history. The role, despite its brevity, is the fulcrum of the movie, the source of emotional energy and of ideas that propel the drama.
The casting in Lee’s film is apt: here, Boseman, while inhabiting the role fully, is also, in a way, emblematic of his own artistic passion for history, for properly redefining the cultural record to reflect the centrality of Black lives and achievements. This, too, is part of Boseman’s gracefulness and devotion—his performances suggest that the only thing that’s remarkable about such an effort is the distressing fact that it is, today, still necessary. It is, perhaps, this very sense of history, of responsibility, of implicit but intensely personal political commitment, that also inhibited the acclaim, while Boseman lived and worked, from his timid and stumbling Hollywood milieu.