newyorker--2020-11-20--Five Movies About Royals to Compete with “The Crown”

Just between us , when it comes to royalty I ’ m in the off-with-their-crowns camp .
But kings and queens nonetheless do the House of Cinema proud : tales of irrational authority make for good drama—and ones of fantastic cultural absurdity make for good comedy .
The subject of monarchy is a severe test of directors ’ artistry , because the lofty royal way of life and the guarded chambers of power demand extremes of imagination as well as an analytical and unflinching confrontation with power .
For many of the greatest filmmakers , royalty gives rise to artistic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , movies about monarchs are an international counterpart to the American Western , an inescapably and essentially political genre .
Sally Potter ’ s adaptation of the novel by Virginia Woolf provides a sumptuous framework for Tilda Swinton ’ s ethereal virtuosity while showing the twists and turns of one fantastic private life that ’ s imbued and deformed by the prerogatives and caprices of royal power .
That power is first embodied in Queen Elizabeth I—played with quietly gleeful ferocity by Quentin Crisp—who , in 1600 , elevates the androgynous young man @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Orlando makes his way through the pressure cookers of the seventeenth century ’ s absolute rule—including the repudiation of an arranged marriage at court , in favor of an affair with a Russian princess ( Charlotte Valandrey ) and , in 1700 , an ambassadorial posting to Constantinople .
Orlando , lurching ahead in half centuries and centuries , never ages , but nonetheless changes : emerging as a woman in the eighteenth century , she confronts a new age of aristocratic authority and then endures its legalistic persecution until , brought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ late twentieth century , she still faces the pomp and cultural primacy of the same damned monarchy .
Potter ’ s ironies , veering between the blunt and the exquisite , the oblique and the confrontational , expose the cruel hazards of nature and the perversities of culture .
( Streaming on Amazon , iTunes , and other services . )
Kenji Mizoguchi , one of the greatest political filmmakers , affirmed throughout his career that the subordination of women was no accident of the political order but its very essence—and not only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drama , his first in color ( released the year before his death ) , set in eighth-century China , in the Tang Dynasty , is the tale of an emperor ’ s downfall .
The aging but vigorous leader , Emperor Xuanzong ( Masayuki Mori ) , was inconsolably mourning his late wife ; an aspiring courtier from the Yang clan brings a smart and beautiful but poor cousin , Yuhuan ( Machiko Kyo ) , to the Emperor ; with her display of wisdom and empathetic spirit , he falls in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his consort , brings the Yangs to the court .
But the luxuries of the new courtiers put heavy demands on taxpayers , who rise up in revolt and demand the death of the Yangs—including Yuhuan , the new Princess , now named Kwei-fei .
Mizoguchi films the imperial romance with robust ardor and delicate humor ; he delineates the cruelly punitive constraints of law that are placed on women at court with bitter clarity ; and he ruefully exalts the tragic nobility of the sacrifice that is ultimately required of the heroine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( Streaming on the Criterion Channel . )
Shakespeare was intimate with royalty , and Orson Welles was intimate with Shakespeare .
This film , the last dramatic feature that Welles completed in his lifetime ( and , I ’ d contend , his greatest film of all ) , is centered on the character of Falstaff—whom he played with self-mocking grandiosity—the saga of Prince Hal ( played by Keith Baxter ) , drawn from five of Shakespeare ’ s plays , mainly Henry IV , Parts 1 and 2 .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where Henry IV ( John Gielgud ) despairs of the prodigal Prince of Wales and joins dubiously with him to suppress a rebellion , culminates in a spectacularly furious and complex depiction of the Battle of Shrewsbury , and Hal ’ s single combat with Henry ( Hotspur ) Percy ( played by Norman Rodway ) .
Welles , working with a scant budget , assembles a cast of mighty Shakespeareans , including Margaret Rutherford , as Mistress Quickly , who runs the Boar ’ s Head Tavern , where Falstaff and friends @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the prostitute Doll Tearsheet .
Filling in the historical background with a voice-over narration from Holinshed ’ s Chronicles , delivered by Ralph Richardson , Welles blends the lusty earthiness of his own mock hero with the rarefied , highly principled , and austerely disciplined calling of a monarch ’ s legitimate rule—and , from that contrast , derives multiple dimensions of tragedy and devises a passionately vigorous repertory of images to embody it .
( Streaming on Amazon , HBO Max , the Criterion Channel , and other services . )
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the past four years , is the point of unchallenged power , and Josef von Sternberg makes the cruelty the point in his lurid and macabre spectacle about the rise to absolute power of Catherine the Great , of Russia , who ’ s played with an arachnid subtlety by Marlene Dietrich .
But , first , the empress ’ s childhood , in Prussia , where , as the Princess Sophia Frederica ( Maria Riva ) , she ’ s reminded of her courtly duties and instead expresses the wish to become @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the idiot nephew of Russia ’ s Empress Elizabeth Petrovna ( Louise Dresser ) , the bride—renamed Catherine—makes the imperial army ( and , in particular , one handsome young officer ) her ally in the patient but Machiavellian struggle for power , which is also a struggle for survival .
Sternberg , Hollywood ’ s greatest dramatic stylist of the thirties ( and there ’ s no close second ) , relies on high-contrast lighting , oddly distorting angles , images filmed through the twisted contours of gargoyles and carvings , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evil glint of swords and gems to match the luminous opacity that Dietrich maintains in portraying the aristocrat who transforms herself from a timidly submissive newcomer to a fiercely conquering heroine .
( Streaming on Dailymotion . )
Leave it to Roberto Rossellini , one of the most philosophical of filmmakers , to dramatize the very idea of monarchy and its enduring allure .
His historical drama is centered on the twenty-two-year-old Louis XIV ( Jean-Marie Patte ) , who , with the death of Cardinal Mazarin ( César Silvagni ) , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aristocracy and conceived an ingenious long-term plan to consolidate power : by means of culture .
Rather than crudely attempting to impose his authority , he decided to bestow it ; he saw to the construction of the Palace of Versailles and housed his nobles there in style ; he supervised the development of an elaborate court culture—of high fashion , high cuisine , and high art—that would put aristocrats heavily into debt that only he could forgive , and would also create jobs for craftspeople throughout the land .
Rossellini deftly and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pageantry of a fourteen-course meal and the tailoring of pants with lace thrillingly dramatize a political manifesto , and the Three Musketeers have a brief and crucial cameo as the strong arm of power as well as its public face .
( Streaming on the Criterion Channel . )

Just between us, when it comes to royalty I’m in the off-with-their-crowns camp. But kings and queens nonetheless do the House of Cinema proud: tales of irrational authority make for good drama—and ones of fantastic cultural absurdity make for good comedy. The subject of monarchy is a severe test of directors’ artistry, because the lofty royal way of life and the guarded chambers of power demand extremes of imagination as well as an analytical and unflinching confrontation with power. For many of the greatest filmmakers, royalty gives rise to artistic revelations; for the cinema over all, movies about monarchs are an international counterpart to the American Western, an inescapably and essentially political genre.
“Orlando”
(1992, Sally Potter)
Sally Potter’s adaptation of the novel by Virginia Woolf provides a sumptuous framework for Tilda Swinton’s ethereal virtuosity while showing the twists and turns of one fantastic private life that’s imbued and deformed by the prerogatives and caprices of royal power. That power is first embodied in Queen Elizabeth I—played with quietly gleeful ferocity by Quentin Crisp—who, in 1600, elevates the androgynous young man Orlando to a place by her side. Orlando makes his way through the pressure cookers of the seventeenth century’s absolute rule—including the repudiation of an arranged marriage at court, in favor of an affair with a Russian princess (Charlotte Valandrey) and, in 1700, an ambassadorial posting to Constantinople. Orlando, lurching ahead in half centuries and centuries, never ages, but nonetheless changes: emerging as a woman in the eighteenth century, she confronts a new age of aristocratic authority and then endures its legalistic persecution until, brought up to speed in London in the late twentieth century, she still faces the pomp and cultural primacy of the same damned monarchy. Potter’s ironies, veering between the blunt and the exquisite, the oblique and the confrontational, expose the cruel hazards of nature and the perversities of culture. (Streaming on Amazon, iTunes, and other services.)
“Princess Yang Kwei-fei”
(1955, Kenji Mizoguchi)
Photograph from Alamy
Kenji Mizoguchi, one of the greatest political filmmakers, affirmed throughout his career that the subordination of women was no accident of the political order but its very essence—and not only in his native Japan. This historical drama, his first in color (released the year before his death), set in eighth-century China, in the Tang Dynasty, is the tale of an emperor’s downfall. The aging but vigorous leader, Emperor Xuanzong (Masayuki Mori), was inconsolably mourning his late wife; an aspiring courtier from the Yang clan brings a smart and beautiful but poor cousin, Yuhuan (Machiko Kyo), to the Emperor; with her display of wisdom and empathetic spirit, he falls in love with her and, making her his consort, brings the Yangs to the court. But the luxuries of the new courtiers put heavy demands on taxpayers, who rise up in revolt and demand the death of the Yangs—including Yuhuan, the new Princess, now named Kwei-fei. Mizoguchi films the imperial romance with robust ardor and delicate humor; he delineates the cruelly punitive constraints of law that are placed on women at court with bitter clarity; and he ruefully exalts the tragic nobility of the sacrifice that is ultimately required of the heroine to save the Emperor’s reign. (Streaming on the Criterion Channel.)
“Chimes at Midnight”
(1965, Orson Welles)
Shakespeare was intimate with royalty, and Orson Welles was intimate with Shakespeare. This film, the last dramatic feature that Welles completed in his lifetime (and, I’d contend, his greatest film of all), is centered on the character of Falstaff—whom he played with self-mocking grandiosity—the saga of Prince Hal (played by Keith Baxter), drawn from five of Shakespeare’s plays, mainly Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2. The turbulent action at the English court, where Henry IV (John Gielgud) despairs of the prodigal Prince of Wales and joins dubiously with him to suppress a rebellion, culminates in a spectacularly furious and complex depiction of the Battle of Shrewsbury, and Hal’s single combat with Henry (Hotspur) Percy (played by Norman Rodway). Welles, working with a scant budget, assembles a cast of mighty Shakespeareans, including Margaret Rutherford, as Mistress Quickly, who runs the Boar’s Head Tavern, where Falstaff and friends cavort, and Jeanne Moreau, as the prostitute Doll Tearsheet. Filling in the historical background with a voice-over narration from Holinshed’s Chronicles, delivered by Ralph Richardson, Welles blends the lusty earthiness of his own mock hero with the rarefied, highly principled, and austerely disciplined calling of a monarch’s legitimate rule—and, from that contrast, derives multiple dimensions of tragedy and devises a passionately vigorous repertory of images to embody it. (Streaming on Amazon, HBO Max, the Criterion Channel, and other services.)
“The Scarlet Empress”
(1934, Josef von Sternberg)
The cruelty, as Americans have learned in the past four years, is the point of unchallenged power, and Josef von Sternberg makes the cruelty the point in his lurid and macabre spectacle about the rise to absolute power of Catherine the Great, of Russia, who’s played with an arachnid subtlety by Marlene Dietrich. But, first, the empress’s childhood, in Prussia, where, as the Princess Sophia Frederica (Maria Riva), she’s reminded of her courtly duties and instead expresses the wish to become an executioner. Married off to Peter, the idiot nephew of Russia’s Empress Elizabeth Petrovna (Louise Dresser), the bride—renamed Catherine—makes the imperial army (and, in particular, one handsome young officer) her ally in the patient but Machiavellian struggle for power, which is also a struggle for survival. Sternberg, Hollywood’s greatest dramatic stylist of the thirties (and there’s no close second), relies on high-contrast lighting, oddly distorting angles, images filmed through the twisted contours of gargoyles and carvings, flickering torches and candles, and the evil glint of swords and gems to match the luminous opacity that Dietrich maintains in portraying the aristocrat who transforms herself from a timidly submissive newcomer to a fiercely conquering heroine. (Streaming on Dailymotion.)
“The Taking of Power by Louis XIV”
(1966, Roberto Rossellini)
Photograph from Everett
Leave it to Roberto Rossellini, one of the most philosophical of filmmakers, to dramatize the very idea of monarchy and its enduring allure. His historical drama is centered on the twenty-two-year-old Louis XIV (Jean-Marie Patte), who, with the death of Cardinal Mazarin (César Silvagni), in 1661, faced rebellious threats of the aristocracy and conceived an ingenious long-term plan to consolidate power: by means of culture. Rather than crudely attempting to impose his authority, he decided to bestow it; he saw to the construction of the Palace of Versailles and housed his nobles there in style; he supervised the development of an elaborate court culture—of high fashion, high cuisine, and high art—that would put aristocrats heavily into debt that only he could forgive, and would also create jobs for craftspeople throughout the land. Rossellini deftly and briskly turns ideas into action; the pageantry of a fourteen-course meal and the tailoring of pants with lace thrillingly dramatize a political manifesto, and the Three Musketeers have a brief and crucial cameo as the strong arm of power as well as its public face. (Streaming on the Criterion Channel.)


newyorker--2020-11-20--A Novel About Secret Families, and the Fight to Turn Georgia Blue

Georgia was a Republican stronghold , but in 2020 the state went for Joe Biden .
Now it has two @ @ @ @ @ will determine the balance of power in Washington .
The staff writer Charles Bethea explains @ @ @ @ @ the political crucible of the nation .
Plus , a début novel about the secret @ @ @ @ @ upon the writer ’ s own complicated familial history ; and Adam Gopnik dons a @ @ @ @ @ physical experience of getting old .
For a generation , Georgia has been a Republican @ @ @ @ @ In her début novel , about the daughter of a high-level politician , Sanaë Lemoine @ @ @ @ @ history .
Adam Gopnik Tries Out Being Old As the population ages , the staff @ @ @ @ @ feels like for the elderly .

Illustration by Golden Cosmos
Georgia was a Republican stronghold, but in 2020 the state went for Joe Biden. Now it has two runoff Senate races looming that will determine the balance of power in Washington. The staff writer Charles Bethea explains how the state has become the political crucible of the nation. Plus, a début novel about the secret daughter of a politician draws upon the writer’s own complicated familial history; and Adam Gopnik dons a high-tech suit to simulate the physical experience of getting old.
The Fight to Turn Georgia Blue
For a generation, Georgia has been a Republican stronghold. What changed?
A Novelist on Secret Families
In her début novel, about the daughter of a high-level politician, Sanaë Lemoine wrestles with her own familial history.
Adam Gopnik Tries Out Being Old
As the population ages, the staff writer explores what the world feels like for the elderly.


newyorker--2020-11-20--The Second Life of Princess Diana’s Most Notorious Sweater

The first time that Lady Diana Spencer stepped out in the black-sheep sweater ( or jumper , as the British would call it ) was in June of 1981 .
She was nineteen years old and a month away from the wedding that would transform her from a nursery-school assistant in Pimlico to the Princess of Wales .
Before moving into Buckingham Palace , Diana had been living with three girlfriends in a spacious flat in Knightsbridge which her parents had bought for her ; she is said to have hung a sign above her bedroom door that read “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ almost overnight , however , once Diana and Prince Charles became engaged .
From the moment she was scuttled out of her flat and into a royal car , Diana was monitored , groomed , told what to say and , more important , what not to say in the face of flashbulbs and prying tabloid hackettes .
She wasn ’ t fully muzzled , but she wasn ’ t fully free to speak her mind , either .
( Take it from Meghan Markle—no royal ever is . )
So her clothes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sweater , which Diana first publicly wore to cheer on one of Charles ’ s summer polo matches , features dozens of white-wooled creatures prancing across a cherry-red background , with one lone black sheep standing out from the flock .
It certainly did not carry back then the heavy , almost fated symbolism it would take on later , when Diana found herself at odds with the entire royal clan .
But it did seem to telegraph a certain sense of humor about the strangeness of her newfound station : the chief @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The two designers of the black-sheep sweater , Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne , of the knitwear label Warm and Wonderful ( now known as Muir and Osborne ) , still do not know exactly how Diana came to own the garment—the going theory , they told me recently , over the phone , is that the mother of one of her wedding page boys gave it to her .
The designers only found out that she owned one when they saw her photo in the Sunday paper .
The sweater , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it a second time , at another polo match two years after her wedding , became about as viral as an item of clothing could be in the era before social media , with Muir and Osborne receiving “ mail bags full of post ” after it appeared in the press .
The sweater appears again in the fourth season of “ The Crown , ” the Netflix drama chronicling the lives of the British aristocracy throughout the twentieth century , which returned last weekend .
It makes its cameo three episodes in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Corrin , an actress plucked from relative obscurity for the part , not unlike Diana herself ) is cloistered in the palace .
The shot is part of a montage that shows Diana during the bizarre , whirlwind months between her engagement and her globally televised wedding .
We see her in a rare moment of adolescent joy , roller-skating through Buckingham Palace ’ s halls while blasting Duran Duran on her Walkman ; we also see her late-night binging on puddings from the palace larder , before making herself throw up in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ giddiness she feels in answering her first royal fan mail , and also the rigidity of her ballet lessons .
She wears her sheep sweater ( one of the only original versions left , which Muir and Osborne lent to the production ) while plopped in front of the telly , watching a news segment about English schoolchildren making wedding cards for the happy royal couple .
The sweater is there and gone in a flash , not the public wink that it read as in real life but a sombre , private @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The sweater wasn ’ t typical of Diana ’ s look back then .
As a blushing fiancée , Diana wore a lot of puff sleeves , scallop-neck blouses , dainty Liberty florals , Laura Ashley-esque cottagecore pastels , pussy bows and ribbon ties and Peter Pan collars .
The look was somewhere between a librarian and an eighties sorority girl , and it cemented her image as the supportive soubrette to her besuited husband-to-be , the worldly sophisticate in herringbone , thirteen years her senior .
Post-divorce , though , Diana @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wardrobe seemed to transmit a kind of carefree abandon , a hard-earned boldness born of walking away from Highgrove .
She wore sharp menswear-style blazers and sleek sequinned gowns , and , in her less formal hours , stepped out in slim high-waisted jeans , slouchy sweatshirts , and baseball caps—looks that inspire no less admiration today than they did when Diana first wore them .
Eloise Moran , a fashion writer from London who now lives in Los Angeles , runs @ ladydirevengelooks , one of hundreds of Diana-appreciation accounts on Instagram @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s outfits , mostly from the nineties .
Moran , who is twenty-eight , is too young to remember firsthand the period her account pays tribute to .
She told me that , before starting the channel , she “ was not , like , super obsessed with Diana.
” She gained an appreciation of Diana ’ s style only a few years ago , while watching a royals documentary .
“ It was utterly anti-establishment and against this female , princessy way of dressing , ” she said .
The account @ @ @ @ @ @ @ irreverent looks ( plus an image , by a British spoof artist , of a Diana lookalike flipping off the camera ) , appeals to a new generation eager to celebrate the empowerment narrative in Diana ’ s fashion choices , how her clothes symbolize a kind of wearable middle finger wagging in the face of the monarchy and the press .
This is the same younger generation of Dianaphiles that the thirty-three-year-old designer Jack Carlson is catering to with his recent reissue of two of Diana ’ s most iconic sweaters ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) , for his preppy label Rowing Blazers .
The brand , which launched in 2017 and has gained a cult fan base among celebrities ( including Timothée Chalamet ) , makes pieces—ostentatious rainbow-stripe blazers , oversized polo shirts , and saucy corduroy and nylon hats , embroidered with phrases such as “ Are You A Preppie ?
” and “ All Is Vanity ” —that ride a delicate line between worshipping the sartorial codes of élite institutions and taking the piss out of them .
“ If there ’ s one thing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like , stuffiness , ” Carlson , who was educated at Georgetown and Oxford , and was formerly a coxswain for the U.S. national rowing team , told me .
Diana ’ s black-sheep sweater is the brand ’ s first foray into womenswear .
Carlson worked with Muir and Osborne to re-create the original faithfully .
( “ Well , it is slightly improved , ” Osborne told me .
“ The original had long strands that you could get your jewelry caught in.
” ) The sweaters , which are handmade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ninety-five dollars , went live on the Rowing Blazers site on October 8th .
They sold out within twenty-four hours .
“ ‘ The Crown ’ certainly helps , and I ’ ve had lots of people asking if we planned these sweaters to come out with the new season , ” Carlson said .
“ And the answer is no !
I ’ ve been working on this for nearly two years .
If we had had any idea at the beginning of this process how much excitement there was going to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lot more.
” For those less inclined toward wayward livestock , Carlson has also reissued a ballsy peach sweater , originally from the brand Gyles & George , that reads “ I ’ m a Luxury ” in blue lettering on the front and , on the back , “ Few Can Afford.
” Gyles Brandreth , one of the brand ’ s co-founders , told me over Zoom , from his London home , that Diana purchased the sweater sometime in the late nineteen-eighties , from the Gyles & George shop in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own shopping , ” he said .
“ It was not normal for a royal , but she was not a normal royal.
” Brandreth , a sprightly former M.P .
and game-show host , has gone a bit viral himself lately , for posting selfies showing off his own sweater collection , including an original “ I ’ m a Luxury.
” He likes to tell the story of meeting the Princess of Wales in person , some years after her purchase .
“ She said , ‘ Oh , I wear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me .
“ And I said , ‘ No , no , I wear yours.
’ ” On “ The Crown ” ’ s next season , when Elizabeth Debicki takes over the role of Diana , viewers will presumably get to see the show ’ s homage to her more liberated , post-divorce style .
In the meantime , the wedding episode re-creates Diana and Charles ’ s infamous engagement interview , during which a journalist asked the couple if they were in love and Charles brusquely answered , “ Whatever ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Diana later said that this comment “ traumatized ” her and made her second-guess her nuptials—that and her discovering that Charles never intended to stop seeing his former flame Camilla Parker Bowles .
It is strange , watching the show ’ s wrenching account of Diana and Charles ’ s crumbling union , to know that , years later , her heartbreak would be converted into a kind of girl-power shorthand that shoppers could consume .
Before she was a luxury few can afford , Diana certainly paid a price .

The first time that Lady Diana Spencer stepped out in the black-sheep sweater (or jumper, as the British would call it) was in June of 1981. She was nineteen years old and a month away from the wedding that would transform her from a nursery-school assistant in Pimlico to the Princess of Wales. Before moving into Buckingham Palace, Diana had been living with three girlfriends in a spacious flat in Knightsbridge which her parents had bought for her; she is said to have hung a sign above her bedroom door that read “Chief Chick.” This cheeky autonomy ended almost overnight, however, once Diana and Prince Charles became engaged. From the moment she was scuttled out of her flat and into a royal car, Diana was monitored, groomed, told what to say and, more important, what not to say in the face of flashbulbs and prying tabloid hackettes. She wasn’t fully muzzled, but she wasn’t fully free to speak her mind, either. (Take it from Meghan Markle—no royal ever is.) So her clothes transmitted messages for her. The black-sheep sweater, which Diana first publicly wore to cheer on one of Charles’s summer polo matches, features dozens of white-wooled creatures prancing across a cherry-red background, with one lone black sheep standing out from the flock. It certainly did not carry back then the heavy, almost fated symbolism it would take on later, when Diana found herself at odds with the entire royal clan. But it did seem to telegraph a certain sense of humor about the strangeness of her newfound station: the chief chick reborn as a fledgling princess.
The two designers of the black-sheep sweater, Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne, of the knitwear label Warm and Wonderful (now known as Muir and Osborne), still do not know exactly how Diana came to own the garment—the going theory, they told me recently, over the phone, is that the mother of one of her wedding page boys gave it to her. The designers only found out that Diana owned one when they saw her photo in the Sunday paper. The sweater, which Diana liked so much that she wore it a second time, at another polo match two years after her wedding, became about as viral as an item of clothing could be in the era before social media, with Muir and Osborne receiving “mail bags full of post” after it appeared in the press.
The sweater appears again in the fourth season of “The Crown,” the Netflix drama chronicling the lives of the British aristocracy throughout the twentieth century, which returned last weekend. It makes its cameo three episodes in, when Diana (played by Emma Corrin, an actress plucked from relative obscurity for the part, not unlike Diana herself) is cloistered in the palace. The shot is part of a montage that shows Diana during the bizarre, whirlwind months between her engagement and her globally televised wedding. We see her in a rare moment of adolescent joy, roller-skating through Buckingham Palace’s halls while blasting Duran Duran on her Walkman; we also see her late-night binging on puddings from the palace larder, before making herself throw up in her en-suite bathroom. We witness the giddiness she feels in answering her first royal fan mail, and also the rigidity of her ballet lessons. She wears her sheep sweater (one of the only original versions left, which Muir and Osborne lent to the production) while plopped in front of the telly, watching a news segment about English schoolchildren making wedding cards for the happy royal couple. The sweater is there and gone in a flash, not the public wink that it read as in real life but a sombre, private affirmation of Diana’s gilded solitude.
The fourth season of Netflix’s “The Crown,” which was released last weekend, displays Diana’s pre-divorce style. Photograph by Des Willie / Netflix
The sweater wasn’t typical of Diana’s look back then. As a blushing fiancée, Diana wore a lot of puff sleeves, scallop-neck blouses, dainty Liberty florals, Laura Ashley-esque cottagecore pastels, pussy bows and ribbon ties and Peter Pan collars. The look was somewhere between a librarian and an eighties sorority girl, and it cemented her image as the supportive soubrette to her besuited husband-to-be, the worldly sophisticate in herringbone, thirteen years her senior. Post-divorce, though, Diana’s style transformed, and her wardrobe seemed to transmit a kind of carefree abandon, a hard-earned boldness born of walking away from Highgrove. She wore sharp menswear-style blazers and sleek sequinned gowns, and, in her less formal hours, stepped out in slim high-waisted jeans, slouchy sweatshirts, and baseball caps—looks that inspire no less admiration today than they did when Diana first wore them.
Eloise Moran, a fashion writer from London who now lives in Los Angeles, runs @ladydirevengelooks, one of hundreds of Diana-appreciation accounts on Instagram, where she posts pictures of Diana’s outfits, mostly from the nineties. Moran, who is twenty-eight, is too young to remember firsthand the period her account pays tribute to. She told me that, before starting the channel, she “was not, like, super obsessed with Diana.” She gained an appreciation of Diana’s style only a few years ago, while watching a royals documentary. “It was utterly anti-establishment and against this female, princessy way of dressing,” she said. The account, with its parade of glamorous, irreverent looks (plus an image, by a British spoof artist, of a Diana lookalike flipping off the camera), appeals to a new generation eager to celebrate the empowerment narrative in Diana’s fashion choices, a kind of wearable middle finger wagging in the face of the monarchy and the press.
This is the same younger generation of Dianaphiles that the thirty-three-year-old designer Jack Carlson is catering to with his recent reissue of two of Diana’s most iconic sweaters (including, naturally, the black-sheep number), for his preppy label Rowing Blazers. The brand, which launched in 2017 and has gained a cult fan base among celebrities (including Timothée Chalamet), makes pieces—ostentatious rainbow-stripe blazers, oversized polo shirts, and saucy corduroy and nylon hats, embroidered with phrases such as “Are You A Preppie?” and “All Is Vanity”—that ride a delicate line between worshipping the sartorial codes of élite institutions and taking the piss out of them. “If there’s one thing I hate, it’s, like, stuffiness,” Carlson, who was educated at Georgetown and Oxford, and was formerly a coxswain for the U.S. national rowing team, told me. Diana’s black-sheep sweater is the brand’s first foray into womenswear. Carlson worked with Muir and Osborne to re-create the original faithfully. (“Well, it is slightly improved,” Osborne told me. “The original had long strands that you could get your jewelry caught in.”) The sweaters, which are handmade in Portugal and cost two hundred and ninety-five dollars, went live on the Rowing Blazers site on October 8th. They sold out within twenty-four hours. “ ‘The Crown’ certainly helps, and I’ve had lots of people asking if we planned these sweaters to come out with the new season,” Carlson said. “And the answer is no! I’ve been working on this for nearly two years. If we had had any idea at the beginning of this process how much excitement there was going to be, we would have made a lot more.”
For those less inclined toward wayward livestock, Carlson has also reissued a ballsy, peach-colored Diana sweater, originally from the brand Gyles & George, that reads “I’m a Luxury” in blue lettering on the front and, on the back, “Few Can Afford.” Gyles Brandreth, one of the brand’s co-founders, told me over Zoom, from his London home, that Diana purchased the sweater sometime in the late nineteen-eighties, from the Gyles & George shop in Kensington. “She would do her own shopping,” he said. “It was not normal for a royal, but she was not a normal royal.” Brandreth, a sprightly former M.P. and game-show host, has gone a bit viral himself lately, for posting selfies showing off his own sweater collection, including an original “I’m a Luxury.” He likes to tell the story of meeting the Princess of Wales in person, some years after her purchase. “She said, ‘Oh, I wear your jumpers!’ ” he told me. “And I said, ‘No, no, I wear yours.’ ”
On “The Crown” ’s next season, when Elizabeth Debicki takes over the role of Diana, viewers will presumably get to see the show’s homage to Diana’s more liberated, post-divorce style. In the meantime, the wedding episode re-creates Diana and Charles’s infamous engagement interview, during which a journalist asked the couple if they were in love and Charles brusquely answered, “Whatever ‘in love’ means.” The real Diana later said that this comment “traumatized” her and made her second-guess her nuptials—that and her discovering that Charles never intended to stop seeing his former flame Camilla Parker Bowles. It is strange, watching the show’s wrenching account of Diana and Charles’s crumbling union, to know that, years later, her heartbreak would be converted into a kind of girl-power shorthand that shoppers could consume. Before she was a luxury few can afford, Diana certainly paid a price.


newyorker--2020-11-20--What the New Vatican Report Shows About the Church’s Failures in Addressing Sexual Abuse

There were multiple other allegations made in the course of more than three decades , of acts committed against adult men and minors , and the report , which runs to four hundred and forty-nine extensively footnoted pages , makes for deeply disturbing reading .
It includes contemporaneous memoranda from bishops detailing the allegations , excerpts from recent interviews with alleged victims and others who knew of the alleged abuses , and a series of seven anonymous and pseudonymous letters sent to and circulated among several archbishops and attorneys for the Church , in 1992 and 1993 , that called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and warned that charges against him “ will shatter the American Church.
” The report does not examine McCarrick ’ s culpability under criminal law or canon law ( he was found guilty of “ sins against the Sixth Commandment , ” in 2019 ) , focussing instead on recording the Church ’ s “ institutional knowledge and decision-making ” processes .
( McCarrick , who is now ninety , has denied any wrongdoing . )
How did McCarrick rise in the hierarchy , even as accounts of his misconduct circulated in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evidence implicating Pope John Paul II , now Saint John Paul II .
McCarrick , born in 1930 in Manhattan , was ordained in 1958 , and became a secretary to Cardinal Terence Cooke .
Adept in languages , he interpreted for Cardinal Karol Wojtyla , the Archbishop of Krakow ( and for his secretary , Monsignor Stanislaw Dziwisz ) , on a visit to New York in 1976 ; two years later , Wojtyla was elected Pope , taking the name John Paul II .
McCarrick was named an auxiliary bishop , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in 1981 , and Archbishop of Newark in 1986 .
He retained the Pope ’ s favor , leading fund-raising for a papal foundation , travelling to Eastern Europe to support the Church ’ s efforts there , and writing John Paul ( and Dziwisz ) a stream of personal letters about that work .
In the nineties , officials aware of the allegations against McCarrick counselled John Paul not to appoint him to a more prominent “ see ” than Newark .
Yet the report mentions that the Pope may have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Communist regime in Poland had used to smear clerics .
Among the officials who knew the most about the various claims regarding McCarrick in those years was one of the most prominent figures in American Catholicism : Cardinal John O ’ Connor , the Archbishop of New York from 1984 until his death , in 2000 .
O ’ Connor , a Navy chaplain and admiral , had a reputation for being a straight-talking leader undaunted by conflict .
He travelled to Rome frequently and was the Church ’ s point man @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sexual and marital matters : against divorce , premarital sex , abortion , homosexual acts , and condom use .
The new report establishes that O ’ Connor sought , as forcefully as anyone , to alert John Paul to concerns about McCarrick .
Yet the documents included in the report make clear why those efforts were unsuccessful .
The Archbishop , famously blunt when speaking to reporters , couched his concerns about McCarrick in the opaque and equivocal language of Vatican protocol , and the failure of his approach goes to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to deal effectively with clerical sexual abuse : its refusal to describe the problem in frank , clear terms .
According to the report , in 1986 , O ’ Connor—who was a member of the Congregation for Bishops , which advises the Pope on episcopal appointments—called McCarrick “ almost ‘ made to order ’ ” for the assignment of Archbishop of Newark .
Thereafter , the two men served as archbishops on opposite sides of the Hudson , had regular encounters with the Pope , and vied for the attention of wealthy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s home territory .
( “ Archbishop McCarrick is here , so sew up your pockets , ” McCarrick recalled O ’ Connor telling an audience at one event . )
In 1992 and 1993 , O ’ Connor was one of the churchmen who received several of the seven letters , most of which were postmarked in Newark , written in capital letters , and composed in language that mingled ad hominem vitriol with clerical argot .
O ’ Connor forwarded copies of the letters to McCarrick on at least two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ This stuff drives me crazy .
I hate to send it to you , but would want you to do the same for me.
” ) In the following years ( if not before ) , persistent rumors about McCarrick reached O ’ Connor : namely , that he used a beach house in Sea Girt , New Jersey , for outings with seminarians , adult men , one of whom he would compel to sleep in his bed , on the ground that there were more men than beds .
When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a phone call about those rumors , O ’ Connor said that he would “ do something about it in Rome , ” though there is no indication that he did .
Prior to John Paul ’ s 1995 visit to the United States , O ’ Connor did have a “ trusted person ” look into the rumors , lest they attract adverse publicity , and concluded that there were “ no impediments ” to the Pope ’ s visiting McCarrick ’ s archdiocese , Newark .
Those rumors were then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by another priest and conveyed to O ’ Connor by people he knew and trusted .
This priest said that , while still a seminarian , he had seen McCarrick engaging in sexual activity with another priest on a fishing trip in New York State , with the two making confession to each other afterward , and that McCarrick had made numerous sexual advances to him after compelling him to share a bed at an apartment in Manhattan—O ’ Connor ’ s own archdiocese .
O ’ Connor ’ s responses to what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over McCarrick seemed alternately protective and dismissive .
He reportedly phoned McCarrick , mentioned the beach-house accusations , and told him , “ You ’ ve got ta knock this stuff off.
” That statement , recounted to a priest by McCarrick himself , suggests that O ’ Connor may have believed at least some of the rumors .
But he stood back from the claims of the priest who said that McCarrick had made sexual advances to him in Manhattan , in part because that priest himself had a history of sexual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ priest-psychologist who had been asked by O ’ Connor to assess the matter spent time with the priest and seemed convinced that his claims were true , but O ’ Connor was not .
In 1997 , the Congregation for Bishops considered McCarrick for the role of Archbishop of Chicago .
The Congregation counselled against the promotion , noting , cryptically , that “ a less reassuring voice has surfaced that now seems to have fallen silent ” and referring to the “ flammable Chicago environment.
” McCarrick did not get the post @ @ @ @ @ @ @ O ’ Connor learned that John Paul was considering promoting McCarrick , possibly as his successor in New York .
O ’ Connor mentioned to the papal nuncio , or ambassador , based in Washington , “ some elements of a moral nature that advised against ” it .
The nuncio asked him to describe those elements in a letter .
O ’ Connor wrote the letter in October , 1999 , weeks after undergoing surgery for terminal brain cancer .
The letter is included in the report and is an exquisite piece @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ absolutely impeccable authorities , ” O ’ Connor summarizes the allegations about the beach house and that McCarrick had male visitors he called “ cousins ” come to the Archbishop ’ s residence in Newark , to have supper and then spend the night—usually “ they shared a bed.
” He then quotes the authorities as saying , “ It is reliably reported that the various events and behavioral activities described above have changed completely , and that no similar events have occurred in recent times.
” He suggests that McCarrick may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” because he had “ no living relatives ” and had grown close to a “ well-adjusted family , ” and might perhaps have referred to men in this family that way .
He says he did not find his discussion with the priest-psychologist or the findings of the psychiatrist regarding the priest ’ s claims to be “ definitely persuasive , ” but adds that he could not dismiss them , “ because of the gravity of the allegations.
” Of the seven letters ( he attached four ) , he says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these letters would be severe indictments.
” Concluding , he advises against promoting McCarrick , citing the “ grave scandal ” the rumors would bring if they became public .
But he shows no similar concern about the “ moral nature ” of McCarrick ’ s actions as such , or for people McCarrick might have harmed and might still have been harming .
According to the report , O ’ Connor ’ s letter was sent to Rome , and the summaries of the allegations , as he presented them , were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did consult four bishops who had served in New Jersey ( one of whom O ’ Connor had suggested he contact ) , and , according to the report , three of the four “ provided inaccurate and incomplete information.
” Indirection and equivocation are , of course , typical tools of the Church bureaucracy , serving to protect powerful people and shelter the institution from legal action .
Yet O ’ Connor bears some personal responsibility ; a prince of the Church , at the end of a storied career , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fear from anyone in the hierarchy .
Early in his tenure as Archbishop , he warned Catholic politicians that they risked excommunication by supporting legal abortion ( an act “ precisely the same ” as the Nazis ’ murder of Jews ) , and of the peril of homosexuality generally .
In opposing a city gay-rights ordinance , he was quoted as saying that he would “ close all my orphanages , rather than employ one gay person.
” Later , he denounced some rock music as “ a help to the Devil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Baseball for scheduling a game on Good Friday .
Yet , when it came to assessing the “ unfortunate allegations ” about McCarrick and presenting them for the Pope , O ’ Connor equivocated .

The report that the Vatican released last week, on allegations against Theodore McCarrick, the former Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, is unlike any other public document the Church has ever produced. Pope Francis ordered McCarrick removed from the ministry in 2018, after a man, in a claim to a victims-compensation program established by the Church, accused McCarrick of committing acts of criminal sexual conduct against him, beginning in 1971, when McCarrick was a priest in New York City and the man was sixteen. Other allegations followed, including one from a man who, in an interview with the Times, accused McCarrick of abusive behavior that started in 1969, when the man was just eleven, and escalated over many years. McCarrick resigned from the College of Cardinals, and, in 2019, he was defrocked.
There were multiple other allegations made in the course of more than three decades, of acts committed against adult men and minors, and the report, which runs to four hundred and forty-nine extensively footnoted pages, makes for deeply disturbing reading. It includes contemporaneous memoranda from bishops detailing the allegations, excerpts from recent interviews with alleged victims and others who knew of the alleged abuses, and a series of seven anonymous and pseudonymous letters sent to and circulated among several archbishops and attorneys for the Church, in 1992 and 1993, that called McCarrick “a consummate sex offender” and warned that charges against him “will shatter the American Church.” The report does not examine McCarrick’s culpability under criminal law or canon law (he was found guilty of “sins against the Sixth Commandment,” in 2019), focussing instead on recording the Church’s “institutional knowledge and decision-making” processes. (McCarrick, who is now ninety, has denied any wrongdoing.)
How did McCarrick rise in the hierarchy, even as accounts of his misconduct circulated in the Church? News reports have seized on evidence implicating Pope John Paul II, now Saint John Paul II. McCarrick, born in 1930 in Manhattan, was ordained in 1958, and became a secretary to Cardinal Terence Cooke. Adept in languages, he interpreted for Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, the Archbishop of Krakow (and for his secretary, Monsignor Stanislaw Dziwisz), on a visit to New York in 1976; two years later, Wojtyla was elected Pope, taking the name John Paul II. McCarrick was named an auxiliary bishop, then Bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, in 1981, and Archbishop of Newark in 1986. He retained the Pope’s favor, leading fund-raising for a papal foundation, travelling to Eastern Europe to support the Church’s efforts there, and writing John Paul (and Dziwisz) a stream of personal letters about that work. In the nineties, officials aware of the allegations against McCarrick counselled John Paul not to appoint him to a more prominent “see” than Newark. Yet the report mentions that the Pope may have been leery of indirect allegations, which the Communist regime in Poland had used to smear clerics.
Among the officials who knew the most about the various claims regarding McCarrick in those years was one of the most prominent figures in American Catholicism: Cardinal John O’Connor, the Archbishop of New York from 1984 until his death, in 2000. O’Connor, a Navy chaplain and admiral, had a reputation for being a straight-talking leader undaunted by conflict. He travelled to Rome frequently and was the Church’s point man in the United States for teachings on sexual and marital matters: against divorce, premarital sex, abortion, homosexual acts, and condom use. The new report establishes that O’Connor sought, as forcefully as anyone, to alert John Paul to concerns about McCarrick. Yet the documents included in the report make clear why those efforts were unsuccessful. The Archbishop, famously blunt when speaking to reporters, couched his concerns about McCarrick in the opaque and equivocal language of Vatican protocol, and the failure of his approach goes to the root of the Church’s inability to deal effectively with clerical sexual abuse: its refusal to describe the problem in frank, clear terms.
According to the report, in 1986, O’Connor—who was a member of the Congregation for Bishops, which advises the Pope on episcopal appointments—called McCarrick “almost ‘made to order’ ” for the assignment of Archbishop of Newark. Thereafter, the two men served as archbishops on opposite sides of the Hudson, had regular encounters with the Pope, and vied for the attention of wealthy Catholics in New York City, McCarrick’s home territory. (“Archbishop McCarrick is here, so sew up your pockets,” McCarrick recalled O’Connor telling an audience at one event.) In 1992 and 1993, O’Connor was one of the churchmen who received several of the seven letters, most of which were postmarked in Newark, written in capital letters, and composed in language that mingled ad hominem vitriol with clerical argot. O’Connor forwarded copies of the letters to McCarrick on at least two occasions, with personal notes. (“This stuff drives me crazy. I hate to send it to you, but would want you to do the same for me.”)
In the following years (if not before), persistent rumors about McCarrick reached O’Connor: namely, that he used a beach house in Sea Girt, New Jersey, for outings with seminarians, adult men, one of whom he would compel to sleep in his bed, on the ground that there were more men than beds. When a priest talked to O’Connor in a phone call about those rumors, O’Connor said that he would “do something about it in Rome,” though there is no indication that he did. Prior to John Paul’s 1995 visit to the United States, O’Connor did have a “trusted person” look into the rumors, lest they attract adverse publicity, and concluded that there were “no impediments” to the Pope’s visiting McCarrick’s archdiocese, Newark.
Those rumors were then bolstered by specific accusations about McCarrick made by another priest and conveyed to O’Connor by people he knew and trusted. This priest said that, while still a seminarian, he had seen McCarrick engaging in sexual activity with another priest on a fishing trip in New York State, with the two making confession to each other afterward, and that McCarrick had made numerous sexual advances to him after compelling him to share a bed at an apartment in Manhattan—O’Connor’s own archdiocese. O’Connor’s responses to what another archbishop called the “cloud” over McCarrick seemed alternately protective and dismissive. He reportedly phoned McCarrick, mentioned the beach-house accusations, and told him, “You’ve gotta knock this stuff off.” That statement, recounted to a priest by McCarrick himself, suggests that O’Connor may have believed at least some of the rumors. But he stood back from the claims of the priest who said that McCarrick had made sexual advances to him in Manhattan, in part because that priest himself had a history of sexual misconduct. A psychiatrist and then a priest-psychologist who had been asked by O’Connor to assess the matter spent time with the priest and seemed convinced that his claims were true, but O’Connor was not.
In 1997, the Congregation for Bishops considered McCarrick for the role of Archbishop of Chicago. The Congregation counselled against the promotion, noting, cryptically, that “a less reassuring voice has surfaced that now seems to have fallen silent” and referring to the “flammable Chicago environment.” McCarrick did not get the post. But, two years later, O’Connor learned that John Paul was considering promoting McCarrick, possibly as his successor in New York. O’Connor mentioned to the papal nuncio, or ambassador, based in Washington, “some elements of a moral nature that advised against” it. The nuncio asked him to describe those elements in a letter.
O’Connor wrote the letter in October, 1999, weeks after undergoing surgery for terminal brain cancer. The letter is included in the report and is an exquisite piece of clerical indirection and equivocation. Citing “absolutely impeccable authorities,” O’Connor summarizes the allegations about the beach house and that McCarrick had male visitors he called “cousins” come to the Archbishop’s residence in Newark, to have supper and then spend the night—usually “they shared a bed.” He then quotes the authorities as saying, “It is reliably reported that the various events and behavioral activities described above have changed completely, and that no similar events have occurred in recent times.” He suggests that McCarrick may simply have called the men “cousins” because he had “no living relatives” and had grown close to a “well-adjusted family,” and might perhaps have referred to men in this family that way. He says he did not find his discussion with the priest-psychologist or the findings of the psychiatrist regarding the priest’s claims to be “definitely persuasive,” but adds that he could not dismiss them, “because of the gravity of the allegations.” Of the seven letters (he attached four), he says: “If verifiable, obviously, these letters would be severe indictments.” Concluding, he advises against promoting McCarrick, citing the “grave scandal” the rumors would bring if they became public. But he shows no similar concern about the “moral nature” of McCarrick’s actions as such, or for people McCarrick might have harmed and might still have been harming.


newyorker--2020-11-20--The Coup Stage of Donald Trump’s Presidency

Democratic procedure had triumphed .
Americans made fun of their President on Twitter .
But something had changed .
The unimaginable , once again , had happened—and even though it was quickly reversed , we now knew that it was possible .
The next day , the Wayne County Republican commissioners asked to “ rescind ” their votes certifying the election results .
According to Robert Costa , who has been reporting on the election for the Washington Post , the debacle in Michigan is consistent with the strategy of Trump ’ s personal election lawyer , Rudy Giuliani .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , NV , other states—is for the vote to not be certified , ” Costa tweeted .
“ Their end game : try to force it to the House.
” Giuliani and his team know that no number of recounts can give Trump the votes ; their goal is to throw wrenches in the works .
On Thursday , Trump invited Michigan Republican leaders to the White House , presumably to discuss ways to decertify election results , and Giuliani convened another unhinged press conference , in which he made a slew of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Michigan and elsewhere .
Across a reassuringly wide political spectrum , observers hold that Trump ’ s refusal to concede the election results is not tantamount to a coup attempt .
In the Washington Examiner , Timothy Carney wrote , “ Trump is a con man , and his insistence that he can overturn the election is his latest grift.
” In The Nation , Jeet Heer argued that , while Trump ’ s behavior is concerning , “ it is very different than a coup .
It is more accurately viewed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump is “ interested in keeping his con game afloat.
” My colleague Susan Glasser posed the question “ Is it a coup or a con ?
” to a dozen of her smartest Washington sources , and they , too , tilted the needle closer to “ con.
” They are probably right .
Then again , we in the media don ’ t have a great record for recognizing coups when they are staring us in the face .
One of the best critiques of American journalism , still taught today @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after its publication , is an essay by Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz , “ A Test of the News , ” which analyzed the Times ’ failure to cover the Russian Revolution .
But Russian journalists missed it , too .
On October 25 , 1917 , my great-grandfather , Arnold Gessen , wrote a long article for Petrograd ’ s Birzheviye Vedomosti ( Stock Market News ) —the Wall Street Journal of its time and place .
He had been serving as the paper ’ s parliamentary correspondent since the Russian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ earlier .
Great-grandpa Arnold explained that the Bolsheviks ought not to be taken seriously , because they were a bunch of grifters with no political plan .
His article was printed the following day—November 8 , 1917 , on the Western calendar—in what turned out to be the last issue of Birzheviye Vedomosti : it was promptly shuttered by the Bolsheviks , who had seized power .
“ Con versus coup ” might be a false dichotomy .
A coup is a power claim made illegitimately , often but not always with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sometimes within the bounds of a constitution .
A con is a mushy term : it can be a criminal act or simply an unethical one , perhaps just wily and manipulative .
A con , in other words , is an illegitimate act of persuasion .
A coup always begins as a con .
If the con is successful—if the power claim is persuasive—then a coup has occurred .
You can see it better with failed coups .
In August , 1991 , the leadership of the Russian K.G.B .
and some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ house arrest and declared themselves in charge of the country .
On the second night of their coup , they held a press conference .
Journalists who had for a few years enjoyed unprecedented freedom seemed to fall in line and accept the coup plotters ’ power claim ; they asked questions about , say , plans for rejuvenating the command economy .
Then a twenty-four-year-old reporter named Tatyana Malkina rose and asked , “ Do you realize that last night you committed a coup d ’ état ?
” Something shifted in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coup plotters with more combative questions , and the plotters themselves suddenly looked like lost , hungover men in ill-fitting suits .
They ended the press conference , which state television had broadcast in its entirety , and in less than forty-eight hours the coup collapsed .
We may never know what else was going on out of public view , but this is how many Russians remember it : the brave reporter in a frilly dress , the trembling hands of crooks and hustlers who didn ’ t believe in their own @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , 2016 , a faction of the Turkish military attempted a coup .
The government thwarted it within hours .
The instant end of the coup was televised : people the world over saw tanks on bridges in Istanbul and immediately began speculating that the coup was merely a pretext for the larger crackdown that followed .
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ’ s government arrested tens of thousands of people and fired many more , mostly on suspicion of belonging to the Hizmet movement , led by the émigré cleric Fethullah Gülen .
Gülen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the coup and suggested that it might have been staged by Erdoğan himself .
Skeptics pointed to the holes in the coup plotters ’ plans : they failed to secure total control of the media , they didn ’ t manage to arrest Erdoğan , they were poorly coördinated .
Were they even serious ?
Similar conspiracy theories still circulate about the 1991 Russian coup : the plotters didn ’ t close the airports or turn off the Russian President Boris Yeltsin ’ s home phone .
What kind of coup is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coup plotters don ’ t do everything right , either .
No aspiring dictator can commandeer enough military power to be able to dominate an entire country that refuses to recognize him .
No coup plotters can close every channel of communication and stop all movement .
No one usurping power can force people to forget that different norms and expectations existed as recently as yesterday .
What successful coup plotters do is con enough people into thinking that they have already taken power .
No one can fully predict when such a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the coup stage of his Presidency , Trump has continued to be Trump : he has shown no ability to plan or plot , but plenty of resolve and willingness to act .
He fired military brass and the chief of election cybersecurity , Chris Krebs , for daring to contradict him .
He garnered more than seventy million votes .
He has showcased considerable power , in other words , but so far it doesn ’ t seem to be enough to persuade Americans that he will keep it .
For now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doomed .
But , as is his way , Trump is succeeding even as he fails .
His project all along has been to destroy the political order as we have known it .
An overwhelming majority of Republican elected officials are hedging their bets on the coup attempt—whether in order to humor Trump or appease his base , they have neglected to recognize the results of the election .
The Tuesday-night incident at the Wayne County election board showed that at least some election officials will do Trump ’ s bidding .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ favored channel of communication with the world , has tried meekly to address the issue of Trump ’ s lies .
It did not flag Trump ’ s false claim that Michigan failed to certify the election .
It has flagged other Trump tweets about election fraud by attaching the label “ This claim about election fraud is disputed ” —as if it were a matter of debate , as if election fraud in the U.S. were an observable phenomenon about which good people can disagree .
Whenever Trump tweets that he won @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Multiple sources called this election differently , ” as though we didn ’ t know enough to say instead , “ Trump lost.
” Trump ’ s bad con continues to show how easy it would be to stage a good one .
Then we would call it a coup .

A little after 9 P.M. on Tuesday night, Donald Trump issued a victorious tweet that, unlike most of his other statements about the Presidential election, had a traceable relationship to the truth: “Wow! Michigan just refused to certify the election results!” In fact, the elections board of Wayne County, which contains Detroit, had deadlocked after its two Republican members claimed suspicions of irregularities. The crisis was over quickly, however; the board reversed itself and certified the results. In a public comment, a Michigan businessman, Ned Staebler, debunked the Republican members’ arguments and told them that “the Trump stain, the stain of racism . . . is going to follow you throughout history.” The address went viral, passing two and a half million views in three hours.
Democratic procedure had triumphed. Americans made fun of their President on Twitter. But something had changed. The unimaginable, once again, had happened—and even though it was quickly reversed, we now knew that it was possible. The next day, the Wayne County Republican commissioners asked to “rescind” their votes certifying the election results. According to Robert Costa, who has been reporting on the election for the Washington Post, the debacle in Michigan is consistent with the strategy of Trump’s personal election lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. “What they want—in MI, PA, NV, other states—is for the vote to not be certified,” Costa tweeted. “Their end game: try to force it to the House.” Giuliani and his team know that no number of recounts can give Trump the votes; their goal is to throw wrenches in the works. On Thursday, Trump invited Michigan Republican leaders to the White House, presumably to discuss ways to decertify election results, and Giuliani convened another unhinged press conference, in which he made a slew of false and bizarre claims about the election in Michigan and elsewhere.
Across a reassuringly wide political spectrum, observers hold that Trump’s refusal to concede the election results is not tantamount to a coup attempt. In the Washington Examiner, Timothy Carney wrote, “Trump is a con man, and his insistence that he can overturn the election is his latest grift.” In The Nation, Jeet Heer argued that, while Trump’s behavior is concerning, “it is very different than a coup. It is more accurately viewed as a cover-up,” adding that Trump is “interested in keeping his con game afloat.” My colleague Susan Glasser posed the question “Is it a coup or a con?” to a dozen of her smartest Washington sources, and they, too, tilted the needle closer to “con.”
They are probably right. Then again, we in the media don’t have a great record for recognizing coups when they are staring us in the face. One of the best critiques of American journalism, still taught today because it remains relevant a hundred years after its publication, is an essay by Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz, “A Test of the News,” which analyzed the Times’ failure to cover the Russian Revolution. But Russian journalists missed it, too. On October 25, 1917, my great-grandfather, Arnold Gessen, wrote a long article for Petrograd’s Birzheviye Vedomosti (Stock Market News)—the Wall Street Journal of its time and place. He had been serving as the paper’s parliamentary correspondent since the Russian parliament had been formed, twelve years earlier. Great-grandpa Arnold explained that the Bolsheviks ought not to be taken seriously, because they were a bunch of grifters with no political plan. His article was printed the following day—November 8, 1917, on the Western calendar—in what turned out to be the last issue of Birzheviye Vedomosti: it was promptly shuttered by the Bolsheviks, who had seized power.
“Con versus coup” might be a false dichotomy. A coup is a power claim made illegitimately, often but not always with the use of force, sometimes illegally but sometimes within the bounds of a constitution. A con is a mushy term: it can be a criminal act or simply an unethical one, perhaps just wily and manipulative. A con, in other words, is an illegitimate act of persuasion. A coup always begins as a con. If the con is successful—if the power claim is persuasive—then a coup has occurred.
You can see it better with failed coups. In August, 1991, the leadership of the Russian K.G.B. and some Politburo hardliners placed President Mikhail Gorbachev under house arrest and declared themselves in charge of the country. On the second night of their coup, they held a press conference. Journalists who had for a few years enjoyed unprecedented freedom seemed to fall in line and accept the coup plotters’ power claim; they asked questions about, say, plans for rejuvenating the command economy. Then a twenty-four-year-old reporter named Tatyana Malkina rose and asked, “Do you realize that last night you committed a coup d’état?” Something shifted in the room. Journalists started bombarding the coup plotters with more combative questions, and the plotters themselves suddenly looked like lost, hungover men in ill-fitting suits. They ended the press conference, which state television had broadcast in its entirety, and in less than forty-eight hours the coup collapsed. We may never know what else was going on out of public view, but this is how many Russians remember it: the brave reporter in a frilly dress, the trembling hands of crooks and hustlers who didn’t believe in their own legitimacy, the end.
In July, 2016, a faction of the Turkish military attempted a coup. The government thwarted it within hours. The instant end of the coup was televised: people the world over saw tanks on bridges in Istanbul and immediately began speculating that the coup was merely a pretext for the larger crackdown that followed. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government arrested tens of thousands of people and fired many more, mostly on suspicion of belonging to the Hizmet movement, led by the émigré cleric Fethullah Gülen. Gülen denied that he had anything to do with the coup and suggested that it might have been staged by Erdoğan himself. Skeptics pointed to the holes in the coup plotters’ plans: they failed to secure total control of the media, they didn’t manage to arrest Erdoğan, they were poorly coördinated. Were they even serious? Similar conspiracy theories still circulate about the 1991 Russian coup: the plotters didn’t close the airports or turn off the Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s home phone. What kind of coup is that? A failed one.
Successful coup plotters don’t do everything right, either. No aspiring dictator can commandeer enough military power to be able to dominate an entire country that refuses to recognize him. No coup plotters can close every channel of communication and stop all movement. No one usurping power can force people to forget that different norms and expectations existed as recently as yesterday. What successful coup plotters do is con enough people into thinking that they have already taken power. No one can fully predict when such a claim will succeed or fail.
In the coup stage of his Presidency, Trump has continued to be Trump: he has shown no ability to plan or plot, but plenty of resolve and willingness to act. He fired military brass and the chief of election cybersecurity, Chris Krebs, for daring to contradict him. He garnered more than seventy million votes. He has showcased considerable power, in other words, but so far it doesn’t seem to be enough to persuade Americans that he will keep it. For now, Trump’s coup attempt seems doomed.
But, as is his way, Trump is succeeding even as he fails. His project all along has been to destroy the political order as we have known it. An overwhelming majority of Republican elected officials are hedging their bets on the coup attempt—whether in order to humor Trump or appease his base, they have neglected to recognize the results of the election. The Tuesday-night incident at the Wayne County election board showed that at least some election officials will do Trump’s bidding.
Meanwhile, Twitter, Trump’s favored channel of communication with the world, has tried meekly to address the issue of Trump’s lies. It did not flag Trump’s false claim that Michigan failed to certify the election. It has flagged other Trump tweets about election fraud by attaching the label “This claim about election fraud is disputed”—as if it were a matter of debate, as if election fraud in the U.S. were an observable phenomenon about which good people can disagree. Whenever Trump tweets that he won the election, Twitter adds, “Multiple sources called this election differently,” as though we didn’t know enough to say instead, “Trump lost.” Trump’s bad con continues to show how easy it would be to stage a good one. Then we would call it a coup.


newyorker--2020-11-20--Trump’s Clown Coup Crisis

Trump’s Clown Coup Crisis

Except , of course , there ’ s nothing routine about any of this .
We ’ ve been getting used to painful truths for so long that the awful enormity of the situation doesn ’ t hit us in the way it should when the predicted bad things happen , which is the story of the entire Trump Presidency .
But history will not remember this as a slow news week , not at all .
In fact , it has been a week of crisis—grave if slow-motion crisis—in which Trump ’ s effort to subvert the election results @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He is no longer merely pursuing spurious lawsuits in state courts ; in recent days , he and his lawyers have confirmed publicly that Trump now is trying to directly overturn the election results and the will of the American people by pressuring Republican state legislators to appoint electors who will vote for Trump in the Electoral College instead of Biden .
The fact that Trump is almost certain not to succeed in actually remaining in office past January 20th does not in any way make this less alarming .
There is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anything like what Trump is doing right now .
Meanwhile in America , this is the week that the U.S. passed the grim milestone of two hundred and fifty thousand deaths in the pandemic , many of them due to the Trump Administration ’ s botched response to the disease .
This spring , such an outcome was all but unthinkable : when Dr. Anthony Fauci predicted that the U.S. could see a hundred thousand to two hundred and forty thousand COVID-19 deaths by this fall , few believed that this would come @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are , living another Trump scandal of unfathomable magnitude .
This is a stark contrast to the two weeks before the election , which were among the loudest of his short career in politics .
With three , four , even five rallies a day , Trump held forth on everything from the perfidy of the Democrats to the awfulness of the weather .
One theme was consistent wherever he appeared : the forthcoming “ rigged ” election , in which only one result—his own victory—could possibly be legitimate .
Since the end @ @ @ @ @ @ @ result in that victory , Trump has engaged in what I ’ m increasingly certain history will record as one of the worst offenses of his Presidency : a systemic attack on the integrity of the election itself .
This escalated dramatically this week , as his first wave of lawsuits began collapsing under the scrutiny of skeptical judges and nonexistent evidence .
Rather than retreat , however , Trump has redoubled his efforts in key states , such as Georgia , Michigan , and Arizona , publicly pressuring local Republican officials not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Georgia , this ploy appears to have failed , with the Republican secretary of state , Brad Raffensperger , openly feuding with the President and denouncing Trump ’ s efforts to undermine the vote count .
On Thursday night , after a hand recount , Georgia officials said that Biden had once again emerged as the winner in the state—the first Democrat to do so since 1992—and that Raffensperger will certify the results on Friday .
In Michigan , however , Trump appears to have had more success .
Two Republicans on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to certify the Presidential election results for the county , which includes the heavily Democratic city of Detroit , before an outcry caused them to reverse their votes a few hours later .
Trump himself then intervened , calling the two officials , who late on Wednesday said that they wanted to change their minds again .
It may have been too late to reverse the Wayne County action , but , on Monday , the Michigan board of canvassers is set to meet to certify the election results in the state , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a hundred and fifty thousand votes .
However , the board is made up of two Democrats and two Republicans , and one of the Republicans said , on Thursday night , that he is inclined to audit and delay his vote to certify , citing the baseless fraud claims raised by Trump ’ s lawyers .
If the board deadlocks and the results are not certified , Trump seems to hope that the Republican-controlled state legislature will just go ahead and appoint pro-Trump electors , voters be damned .
In another unprecedented @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Michigan legislature to a private meeting with him in the White House , on Friday .
This dubious , and remarkably brazen , strategy was on display in a not-to-be-believed-except-it-actually-happened press conference on Thursday , by Trump ’ s lawyer Rudy Giuliani .
Trump would have won Michigan , Giuliani insisted , if you just don ’ t count Wayne County and , in effect , Detroit .
And that was only one of the bonkers things he said .
With an unidentified brown liquid streaking down his face as he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the movie “ My Cousin Vinny ” ; insisted that he had “ direct evidence ” of vote fraud in cities like Detroit , Atlanta , and Philadelphia , while producing none ; and claimed that there was a vast conspiracy with roots in Venezuela to somehow rig the entire U.S. election .
How bizarre was the performance ?
Christopher Krebs , the Trump-appointed director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency—whom Trump fired , on Tuesday , after the agency issued a statement saying that “ there is no evidence that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , changed votes , or was in any way compromised ” —offered a succinct verdict .
Giuliani ’ s press conference , Krebs tweeted , was “ the most dangerous 1 hr 45 minutes of television in American history .
And possibly the craziest.
” The fact that Trump and Giuliani ’ s campaign is utterly crazy , however , does not mean that it ’ s not working .
In fact , a Monmouth poll this week found that seventy-seven per cent of Republicans now believe the election was tainted by fraud @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Republican leaders on Capitol Hill , meanwhile , have refused to denounce Trump ’ s increasingly unhinged and undemocratic actions , and , while privately conveying acknowledgements of Biden ’ s victory , have publicly remained silent .
The G.O.P .
leadership , which has tolerated so many abuses by Trump , is now openly complicit in his worst one yet .
A few individual Republicans have spoken up .
“ It is outrageous , ” Larry Hogan , the Republican governor of Maryland , said on CNN .
“ It is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ added .
“ It ’ s bad for the Republican Party.
” Late on Thursday evening , Mitt Romney , the Utah senator who was the only Republican to vote to convict Trump in his impeachment trial , earlier this year , issued a statement that might well have been the toughest I have ever seen about a President from a member of his own Party .
“ Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law , the President has now resorted to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election , ” Romney said .
“ It is difficult to imagine a worse , more undemocratic action by a sitting American President.
” By speaking out , Hogan and Romney underscored just how shocking it is that their fellow-Republicans had thus far failed to join them .
Last week , I wondered in this column about just what Trump was up to in challenging the results : Was it an attempted coup , or just another Trump con ?
The past few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and not a reassuring one .
The truth is that even if Trump ’ s would-be coup looks like a con , even if it seems to be a clown show that ’ s surely doomed to fail , it must still be taken seriously as long as it is happening .
Look at how far Republicans have gone along with Trump ’ s folly after an election that was decisively won by Biden , a contest in which he beat Trump by more than five million votes and garnered three hundred @ @ @ @ @ @ @ landslide ” that Trump secured in 2016 .
Republican excuses have grown increasingly pathetic : We ’ re just giving him time .
We ’ re just letting the process play out .
He ’ s entitled to pursue his claims in the courts .
In explicitly demanding that Republican state officials disregard the will of the voters , Trump has , once again , made his Party ’ s leaders out as stooges and patsies .

In a way, we are ending the week where we began it: Donald Trump still did not win the 2020 Presidential election, and he is still, on Friday as he was on Monday, holed up in the White House, challenging Joe Biden’s victory. The coronavirus pandemic is still spreading at an alarming rate across all fifty states, and Congress and the White House are still doing nothing new about it. This is, in a horrible, stressful way, what passes for our current normal.
Except, of course, there’s nothing routine about any of this. We’ve been getting used to painful truths for so long that the awful enormity of the situation doesn’t hit us in the way it should when the predicted bad things happen, which is the story of the entire Trump Presidency. But history will not remember this as a slow news week, not at all. In fact, it has been a week of crisis—grave if slow-motion crisis—in which Trump’s effort to subvert the election results has been made explicit and unmistakably clear. He is no longer merely pursuing spurious lawsuits in state courts; in recent days, he and his lawyers have confirmed publicly that Trump now is trying to directly overturn the election results and the will of the American people by pressuring Republican state legislators to appoint electors who will vote for Trump in the Electoral College instead of Biden. The fact that Trump is almost certain not to succeed in actually remaining in office past January 20th does not in any way make this less alarming. There is simply no precedent for a President doing anything like what Trump is doing right now.
Meanwhile in America, this is the week that the U.S. passed the grim milestone of two hundred and fifty thousand deaths in the pandemic, many of them due to the Trump Administration’s botched response to the disease. This spring, such an outcome was all but unthinkable: when Dr. Anthony Fauci predicted that the U.S. could see a hundred thousand to two hundred and forty thousand COVID-19 deaths by this fall, few believed that this would come to pass. And yet here we are, living another Trump scandal of unfathomable magnitude.
Perhaps the one genuinely surprising thing about this culminating controversy of the Trump era is how publicly quiet the voluble President has become. Sure, he has still been tweeting out inflammatory and untrue statements. “We won!” he said, more than once. And: “Mortality rate is 85% down!” And: “Republicans must get tough!” But his public schedule has been almost entirely empty since the election, and he has appeared before the press just once, at a brief news conference, last week, to announce progress toward a vaccine; he took no questions. He has cancelled his Thanksgiving trip to Mar-a-Lago.
This is a stark contrast to the two weeks before the election, which were among the loudest of his short career in politics. With three, four, even five rallies a day, Trump held forth on everything from the perfidy of the Democrats to the awfulness of the weather. One theme was consistent wherever he appeared: the forthcoming “rigged” election, in which only one result—his own victory—could possibly be legitimate.
Since the end of this campaign, which did not result in that victory, Trump has engaged in what I’m increasingly certain history will record as one of the worst offenses of his Presidency: a systemic attack on the integrity of the election itself. This escalated dramatically this week, as his first wave of lawsuits began collapsing under the scrutiny of skeptical judges and nonexistent evidence. Rather than retreat, however, Trump has redoubled his efforts in key states, such as Georgia, Michigan, and Arizona, publicly pressuring local Republican officials not to certify the election results.
In Georgia, this ploy appears to have failed, with the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, openly feuding with the President and denouncing Trump’s efforts to undermine the vote count. On Thursday night, after a hand recount, Georgia officials said that Biden had once again emerged as the winner in the state—the first Democrat to do so since 1992—and that Raffensperger will certify the results on Friday. In Michigan, however, Trump appears to have had more success. Two Republicans on the Wayne County board of canvassers initially refused to certify the Presidential election results for the county, which includes the heavily Democratic city of Detroit, before an outcry caused them to reverse their votes a few hours later. Trump himself then intervened, calling the two officials, who late on Wednesday said that they wanted to change their minds again.
It may have been too late to reverse the Wayne County action, but, on Monday, the Michigan board of canvassers is set to meet to certify the election results in the state, which Biden has won by more than a hundred and fifty thousand votes. However, the board is made up of two Democrats and two Republicans, and one of the Republicans said, on Thursday night, that he is inclined to audit and delay his vote to certify, citing the baseless fraud claims raised by Trump’s lawyers. If the board deadlocks and the results are not certified, Trump seems to hope that the Republican-controlled state legislature will just go ahead and appoint pro-Trump electors, voters be damned. In another unprecedented step, Trump summoned the Republican leaders of the Michigan legislature to a private meeting with him in the White House, on Friday.
This dubious, and remarkably brazen, strategy was on display in a not-to-be-believed-except-it-actually-happened press conference on Thursday, by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Trump would have won Michigan, Giuliani insisted, if you just don’t count Wayne County and, in effect, Detroit. And that was only one of the bonkers things he said. With an unidentified brown liquid streaking down his face as he spoke, Giuliani quoted the legal wisdom of the movie “My Cousin Vinny”; insisted that he had “direct evidence” of vote fraud in cities like Detroit, Atlanta, and Philadelphia, while producing none; and claimed that there was a vast conspiracy with roots in Venezuela to somehow rig the entire U.S. election.
How bizarre was the performance? Christopher Krebs, the Trump-appointed director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency—whom Trump fired, on Tuesday, after the agency issued a statement saying that “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised”—offered a succinct verdict. Giuliani’s press conference, Krebs tweeted, was “the most dangerous 1 hr 45 minutes of television in American history. And possibly the craziest.”
The fact that Trump and Giuliani’s campaign is utterly crazy, however, does not mean that it’s not working. In fact, a Monmouth poll this week found that seventy-seven per cent of Republicans now believe the election was tainted by fraud and are not certain that Biden won. Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, have refused to denounce Trump’s increasingly unhinged and undemocratic actions, and, while privately conveying acknowledgements of Biden’s victory, have publicly remained silent. The G.O.P. leadership, which has tolerated so many abuses by Trump, is now openly complicit in his worst one yet.
A few individual Republicans have spoken up. “It is outrageous,” Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland, said on CNN. “It is an assault on democracy,” he added. “It’s bad for the Republican Party.” Late on Thursday evening, Mitt Romney, the Utah senator who was the only Republican to vote to convict Trump in his impeachment trial, earlier this year, issued a statement that might well have been the toughest I have ever seen about a President from a member of his own Party. “Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the President has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election,” Romney said. “It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President.” By speaking out, Hogan and Romney underscored just how shocking it is that their fellow-Republicans had thus far failed to join them.


newyorker--2020-11-21--I Believe That Marriage Is a Sacred Union

I believe that marriage is a lasting partnership between one person without health insurance and one person who gets pretty good coverage through work .
I believe that marriage is an unbreakable bond between one person with citizenship and one person who is tired of renewing their visa and living in perpetual fear of removal by the government on the whim of a xenophobic tyrant .
I believe that marriage is an infallible pairing of one person with an O.K .
last name , like “ Stevenson , ” and one person who has to write something like “ Dickensheets @ @ @ @ @ @ @ believe that marriage is an enduring knot tied between one person who Googled “ income tax brackets ” and realized that being married would cut their joint tax rate by eight per cent and another person who was , like , “ Can we get to city hall tonight ?
!
” I believe that marriage is a holy hand-holding between one person whose family won ’ t get off their fucking case about it and one person who ’ s , like , “ Jesus , fine .
I was going to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” I believe that marriage is a time-defying life braid between one person who was walking by the window of a jewelry store and said , “ That ’ s a nice ring , ” and one person who responded , “ Oh , do you want it ?
” and then bought it and joked , “ Guess that means we ’ re engaged , ” and the other person said , “ Guess so , ” and then they just kind of went with it .
I believe that marriage is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ person who accidentally called their partner “ my fiancé ” at an office Christmas party and one person who just smiled ominously and said , “ No take-backs.
” I believe that marriage is a perpetual milkshake with two straws shared between one person who said , “ If we ’ re not married by the time we ’ re forty , let ’ s just marry each other , ” and one person who agreed and then turned forty without being romantically attached to anyone .
I believe that marriage is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a loner , who walked the streets alone each night , drawing stares and pity from the young and old alike , and one person who rode into town seeking adventure but would soon come to understand that love is the greatest adventure of all .
I believe that marriage is a timeless three-legged race between one person who is under a witch ’ s spell that keeps them forever unable to leave their secluded tower in the woods until the release of true love ’ s kiss and one person who hears @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forest and quickly bestows the prophesied release-kiss .
I believe that marriage is a permanent tandem-bike ride between one person who is next in line to inherit all the land to the north of the great river and one person they ’ ve never met who boasts the rightful claim to the mountains of the east .
I believe that marriage is a bolted-down two-seater bench between one person who left everything behind after a traumatic event to find themself and start over in a strange city and one person who inhabits that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the local terrain , and proves once and for all that we can not love others until we love ourselves .

I believe that marriage is a sacred union between two people who decide that one life lived together holds more value than two lived separately.
I believe that marriage is a lasting partnership between one person without health insurance and one person who gets pretty good coverage through work.
I believe that marriage is an unbreakable bond between one person with citizenship and one person who is tired of renewing their visa and living in perpetual fear of removal by the government on the whim of a xenophobic tyrant.
I believe that marriage is an infallible pairing of one person with an O.K. last name, like “Stevenson,” and one person who has to write something like “Dickensheets” on all official documents.
I believe that marriage is an enduring knot tied between one person who Googled “income tax brackets” and realized that being married would cut their joint tax rate by eight per cent and another person who was, like, “Can we get to city hall tonight?!”
I believe that marriage is a holy hand-holding between one person whose family won’t get off their fucking case about it and one person who’s, like, “Jesus, fine. I was going to wait till your birthday, but—here!”
I believe that marriage is a time-defying life braid between one person who was walking by the window of a jewelry store and said, “That’s a nice ring,” and one person who responded, “Oh, do you want it?” and then bought it and joked, “Guess that means we’re engaged,” and the other person said, “Guess so,” and then they just kind of went with it.
I believe that marriage is a never-ending Chinese finger trap between one person who accidentally called their partner “my fiancé” at an office Christmas party and one person who just smiled ominously and said, “No take-backs.”
I believe that marriage is a perpetual milkshake with two straws shared between one person who said, “If we’re not married by the time we’re forty, let’s just marry each other,” and one person who agreed and then turned forty without being romantically attached to anyone.
I believe that marriage is a forever double-kayak piloted by one person, a loner, who walked the streets alone each night, drawing stares and pity from the young and old alike, and one person who rode into town seeking adventure but would soon come to understand that love is the greatest adventure of all.
I believe that marriage is a timeless three-legged race between one person who is under a witch’s spell that keeps them forever unable to leave their secluded tower in the woods until the release of true love’s kiss and one person who hears a beautiful voice while riding through the forest and quickly bestows the prophesied release-kiss.
I believe that marriage is a permanent tandem-bike ride between one person who is next in line to inherit all the land to the north of the great river and one person they’ve never met who boasts the rightful claim to the mountains of the east.
I believe that marriage is a bolted-down two-seater bench between one person who left everything behind after a traumatic event to find themself and start over in a strange city and one person who inhabits that city, makes intricate crafts related specifically to the local terrain, and proves once and for all that we cannot love others until we love ourselves.