newyorker--2020-01-25--Adam Schiff and His Colleagues Did Their Duty in the Trump Impeachment Trial

On Friday night , the Democratic House managers completed their presentation to the Senate of the evidence that Donald Trump abused his office , by trying to extort the government of Ukraine into digging up dirt on Joe Biden and his son , and then obstructed justice , by ordering officials throughout the executive branch to ignore congressional subpoenas .
On Saturday morning , Trump ’ s White House legal team began its defense of the President , arguing he did nothing wrong .
If the Washington soothsayers are proved right , and they probably will be , the outcome @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : a rapid acquittal for Trump .
The Times reported on Friday that when the Senate votes again on whether to call live witnesses and view undisclosed documents , probably sometime next week , Democrats are unlikely to get the four Republican votes that they need .
Soon after that vote , this could be all over , with Trump ballyhooing and gloating over the verdict .
Such an outcome would be a victory of tribalism and power politics over jurisprudence and justice .
The Senate Republicans may well vote to acquit Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to erase the record that Adam Schiff and his colleagues laid down clearly , methodically , and meticulously over three days of arguments .
As my colleague Susan B. Glasser noted on Thursday , in one of her daily impeachment diaries , the House Democrats “ made a polished , impassioned stab at convincing their audience , dramatizing their case with an attention-grabbing presentation ( designed to keep the senators awake , perhaps ? )
that included video clips from Trump himself ; his acting chief of staff , Mick Mulvaney ; and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ House ’ s televised impeachment proceedings.
” As they went along , the House managers were also careful to point to gaps in the record that could have been filled if the President hadn ’ t prevented many key witnesses and documents from being presented to Congress .
Without being overly melodramatic , the Democratic representatives also highlighted the moral burden that rests on the fifty-three Republican senators who will determine Trump ’ s fate .
In terms of the trial verdict , this may all have been in vain .
But the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Nobody who watched even some of the House managers ’ presentation could be in any doubt that there was , indeed , an illicit scheme to coerce Volodymyr Zelensky , the President of Ukraine , into announcing an investigation into a Ukrainian company that employed Hunter Biden ; that this scheme was carried out with Trump ’ s knowledge , and at his behest ; and that the President and his staff did all they possibly could to prevent the details from emerging .
“ He tried to cheat , he got @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to cover it up , ” Representative Hakeem Jeffries , one of the House managers , noted on Friday , in a succinct summary of the case .
All seven of the House managers had their moments during the long presentation , but the undoubted star was Schiff , a former federal prosecutor who would have made a brilliant trial lawyer .
With his mastery of details , combined with an ability to explain what they mean in simple terms , plus the seemingly effortless capacity to speak extemporaneously , the fifty-nine year-old @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which even earned him some plaudits from Republicans .
( “ I have to say this , ” Senator James Inhofe , of Oklahoma , said on Friday morning .
“ Schiff is very , very effective.
” ) From the beginning and throughout the trial , Schiff urged senators not to lose sight of the bigger picture .
Late on Thursday night , he noted that Trump ’ s effort to extort Ukraine wasn ’ t a one-off : it fit into a pattern of the President putting his own interests ahead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would continue if he were allowed to remain in office .
“ You may be asking , how much damage can he really do in the next several months until the election ?
A lot .
A lot of damage , ” Schiff said .
“ This is why , if you find him guilty , you must find that he should be removed .
Because right matters .
Because right matters and truth matters .
Otherwise we are lost.
” In his closing remarks on Friday evening , Schiff repeated the argument @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Oval Office represents a threat to the country .
He also sought to offer a prebuttal of some of the Trump legal team ’ s arguments , and he called on the Republican senators sitting before him to have the “ moral courage ” to set aside partisan loyalties .
In this section of his remarks , he brought up a CBS News report that quoted a Trump confidant as saying that the Republican senators had been warned : “ vote against the president & your head will be on a pike.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republicans , who claimed that the “ pike ” story wasn ’ t true .
Be that as it may , it captured the larger reality—Trump and his supporters have intimidated most of the G.O.P .
into abject submission .
In the coming days , that reality is likely to become clearer than ever , with consequences we can only guess at .
As Schiff warned in his closing statement , an acquittal along party lines could upset the delicate balance of powers established in the Constitution and set an alarming precedent for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would be even more emboldened , more convinced that he can get away with virtually anything .
It may be that he can , at least until November , but not without pushback .
Like many courts across the country during the past three years , the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives has demonstrated that it won ’ t submit to Trump ’ s diktats and lawlessness without protest .
As public servants , Schiff and his colleagues did their duty .
So did the government officials and the former officials whose testimony formed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ case .
For this , they all deserve great credit .
It may not have been enough to drive Trump from office , but at least it showed that he hasn ’ t yet succeeded in trashing the American polity entirely .

On Friday night, the Democratic House managers completed their presentation to the Senate of the evidence that Donald Trump abused his office, by trying to extort the government of Ukraine into digging up dirt on Joe Biden and his son, and then obstructed justice, by ordering officials throughout the executive branch to ignore congressional subpoenas. On Saturday morning, Trump’s White House legal team began its defense of the President, arguing he did nothing wrong.
If the Washington soothsayers are proved right, and they probably will be, the outcome of the impeachment trial has been predetermined: a rapid acquittal for Trump. The Times reported on Friday that when the Senate votes again on whether to call live witnesses and view undisclosed documents, probably sometime next week, Democrats are unlikely to get the four Republican votes that they need. Soon after that vote, this could be all over, with Trump ballyhooing and gloating over the verdict.
Such an outcome would be a victory of tribalism and power politics over jurisprudence and justice. The Senate Republicans may well vote to acquit Trump, but they will not be able to erase the record that Adam Schiff and his colleagues laid down clearly, methodically, and meticulously over three days of arguments. As my colleague Susan B. Glasser noted on Thursday, in one of her daily impeachment diaries, the House Democrats “made a polished, impassioned stab at convincing their audience, dramatizing their case with an attention-grabbing presentation (designed to keep the senators awake, perhaps?) that included video clips from Trump himself; his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney; and many of the key witnesses from the House’s televised impeachment proceedings.”
As they went along, the House managers were also careful to point to gaps in the record that could have been filled if the President hadn’t prevented many key witnesses and documents from being presented to Congress. Without being overly melodramatic, the Democratic representatives also highlighted the moral burden that rests on the fifty-three Republican senators who will determine Trump’s fate. In terms of the trial verdict, this may all have been in vain. But the verdict of history will be very different.
Nobody who watched even some of the House managers’ presentation could be in any doubt that there was, indeed, an illicit scheme to coerce Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, into announcing an investigation into a Ukrainian company that employed Hunter Biden; that this scheme was carried out with Trump’s knowledge, and at his behest; and that the President and his staff did all they possibly could to prevent the details from emerging. “He tried to cheat, he got caught, and then he worked hard to cover it up,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries, one of the House managers, noted on Friday, in a succinct summary of the case.
All seven of the House managers had their moments during the long presentation, but the undoubted star was Schiff, a former federal prosecutor who would have made a brilliant trial lawyer. With his mastery of details, combined with an ability to explain what they mean in simple terms, plus the seemingly effortless capacity to speak extemporaneously, the fifty-nine year-old California congressman gave a virtuoso performance, which even earned him some plaudits from Republicans. (“I have to say this,” Senator James Inhofe, of Oklahoma, said on Friday morning. “Schiff is very, very effective.”)
From the beginning and throughout the trial, Schiff urged senators not to lose sight of the bigger picture. Late on Thursday night, he noted that Trump’s effort to extort Ukraine wasn’t a one-off: it fit into a pattern of the President putting his own interests ahead of the country, a pattern that would continue if he were allowed to remain in office. “You may be asking, how much damage can he really do in the next several months until the election? A lot. A lot of damage,” Schiff said. “This is why, if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. Because right matters and truth matters. Otherwise we are lost.”
In his closing remarks on Friday evening, Schiff repeated the argument that Trump’s continued occupation of the Oval Office represents a threat to the country. He also sought to offer a prebuttal of some of the Trump legal team’s arguments, and he called on the Republican senators sitting before him to have the “moral courage” to set aside partisan loyalties. In this section of his remarks, he brought up a CBS News report that quoted a Trump confidant as saying that the Republican senators had been warned: “vote against the president & your head will be on a pike.” This citation angered some of the Republicans, who claimed that the “pike” story wasn’t true. Be that as it may, it captured the larger reality—Trump and his supporters have intimidated most of the G.O.P. into abject submission.
In the coming days, that reality is likely to become clearer than ever, with consequences we can only guess at. As Schiff warned in his closing statement, an acquittal along party lines could upset the delicate balance of powers established in the Constitution and set an alarming precedent for future Presidents. Trump, doubtless, would be even more emboldened, more convinced that he can get away with virtually anything.
It may be that he can, at least until November, but not without pushback. Like many courts across the country during the past three years, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives has demonstrated that it won’t submit to Trump’s diktats and lawlessness without protest. As public servants, Schiff and his colleagues did their duty. So did the government officials and the former officials whose testimony formed the basis of the House Democrats’ case. For this, they all deserve great credit. It may not have been enough to drive Trump from office, but at least it showed that he hasn’t yet succeeded in trashing the American polity entirely.


newyorker--2020-01-25--Fairway and What We Mourn in a Store

Fairway and What We Mourn in a Store

Eulogies for passing enterprises are hard to entertain , not because the enterprises are not significant in our lives but because they are entirely so—though in ways that are more mystically atmospheric than easily analyzed .
What the city lost when , say , Bonwit Teller closed , or when Bendels shuttered , can ’ t be calculated the way that we calculate , or register in a single frame , the loss of a neighborhood , or even of a building—a Penn Station or a Singer Tower .
Given the ongoing bottom line of money in and goods out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a closing department store or a lost hardware store is taking place somewhere else—online , more likely than not .
So what is lost is not the transaction but the civic ritual , the sense of place , the shared common space , the special scent and sweat—the feeling , if you like—that surrounded it .
This produces something like a paradox of possessiveness , a contradiction of consumption .
We know that a transaction of money for goods is simply that , but at the same time we feel the passing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as something far more than a material loss .
It is no accident , to use a locution favored by the Marxists that John Updike , in detailing the last days of his echt-American character Harry ( Rabbit ) Angstrom , made one of final epiphanies the realization that the Christmas displays in the Kroll ’ s department store , in his mangy but beloved home town of Brewer , were merely commercial come-ons , to be discarded as soon as they stopped paying profits to the store ’ s owner—that what , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been “ those otherworldly displays of circling trains and nodding dolls and twinkling stars in the corner windows as if God Himself put them there ” were not that at all .
They were merely “ a shabby set of temporary arrangements rigged up for the time being , all for the sake of the money .
.
.
.
If Kroll ’ s could go , the courthouse could go , the banks could go .
When the money stopped , they would close down God Himself.
” A few pages later @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attack , and the author shuts his hero down .
These gloomy reflections are spurred by the knowledge that the Fairway Market grocery store chain has filed for Chapter Eleven bankruptcy .
There is hope that the failure will not be complete , as it was when another New York grocery chain , Dean & DeLuca , a relic of the minimalist art-world energies of the Soho eighties , went bankrupt last year and closed all its stores in New York .
A last-minute , though apparently place-holding , purchase by a New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ least a few of the Fairway stores open , in some form or another .
Still , to anyone who loves New York , even an intimation of losing Fairway is as sad as losing Kroll ’ s was to Harry .
Fairway is one of those odd original New York institutions that grew up organically , on the sidewalk , unlike the Whole Foods and Trader Joe ’ s stores that have competed with it in recent years , which were dropped down on the street from a retail empire headquartered elsewhere @ @ @ @ @ @ @ history than Simon Schama once wrote of Fairway that it if it were possible to award the congressional Medal of Honor to a food market , Fairway would already have won one for its service to appetite , and that its cheese department alone turned “ Rabelaisian excess into a stationary New York festival of aroma , color and texture.
” Born in the early nineteen-thirties as a fruit-and-vegetable stand on the Upper West Side , Fairway was originally the multi-generation property and obsession of the Glickberg family , starting as a more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which is still in business up the street .
Fairway ’ s magic , as one of its former partners , Steven Jenkins , wrote in a lively and lovely memoir of his years there , “ The Food Life , ” lay in the juxtaposition of grungy , discount-minded practicality with genuinely inspired and discriminating product choices .
The store , with its proudly garish packaging and bags and an elevator that bore a sign boasting of its bad functioning , is stuffed with the usual supermarket staples , but it also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ things in the city .
The olive-oil counter alone is worth the price of admission : seven or eight styles—Spanish , Italian , and Greek—to sample , with sliced baguettes on hand , around which a father and daughter could arrange a weekly tasting while a mother shuddered at the unsanitariness of it .
The West Side Fairway combines the virtues of what used to be called “ gourmet ” shopping—it ’ s now too commonplace to have that title—with the equally strong virtues of popularity .
If you come from a grocer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , you recognize the familiar rhythms and joys and labors of every food market : the long hours , the early mornings , the constant restocking .
Fairway , for all the precious things it sold , from Comté to saffron , was the least precious place on the planet .
The democratic energy of the place was so extraordinary that someone coming home to New York from a place like , say , Paris—where the division between the gastronomic and the generic , the élite and elementary is still strong—would be knocked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contradictory principles .
As Jenkins wrote about his own emigration there , from a “ classier ” downtown boutique , “ I had essentially been ripped from the urbane , everything-has-its-place , serene , haughty world of fancy food and thrust headlong into a peasant-like , sawdust-on-the-floor , ‘ We ’ ll sell anything that sells ’ commoners ’ market.
” That market engendered anecdotes .
A friend remembered having been called away from her shopping cart the day before Thanksgiving and , wandering back into the store a few hours later , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prodded like a bumper car among the throngs .
What went wrong with Fairway will likely be a case study in business schools for years to come .
It seems , to the casual observer , to have an ominous overlap with what went wrong with Dean & DeLuca—or , for that matter , with F. A. O. Schwartz—and more broadly with what has gone wrong for so much American retailing .
( As of 2018 , some twenty per cent of retail space in Manhattan is vacant . )
The agonies of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for our time .
The family opened three more stores , and sold an eighty per cent stake in the company , in 2007 , to a private-equity firm that thought it could , so to speak , exploit the social capital—the good will and the reputation for egalitarian excellence—that the firm had built up over time , to vastly expand and make vastly more money .
The stores were then passed around like a trinket among a bewildering assortment of other investors .
The bankruptcy seems likely to cost the employees far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mention the customers .
This , too , is part of our time : a recent report in the Washington Post points out that private-equity firms “ pooled money—often from pension funds , wealthy investors and financial firms—and relied on large swaths of debt to acquire companies like Mervyn ’ s and Linens ’ n Things , with the goal of turning them around .
In practice , though , they routinely sold off real estate holdings , cut workers ’ pay and benefits , and jettisoned jobs to turn a quick profit @ @ @ @

Eulogies for passing enterprises are hard to entertain, not because the enterprises are not significant in our lives but because they are entirely so—though in ways that are more mystically atmospheric than easily analyzed. What the city lost when, say, Bonwit Teller closed, or when Bendels shuttered, can’t be calculated the way that we calculate, or register in a single frame, the loss of a neighborhood, or even of a building—a Penn Station or a Singer Tower. Given the ongoing bottom line of money in and goods out, presumably every transaction that took place in a closing department store or a lost hardware store is taking place somewhere else—online, more likely than not. So what is lost is not the transaction but the civic ritual, the sense of place, the shared common space, the special scent and sweat—the feeling, if you like—that surrounded it.
This produces something like a paradox of possessiveness, a contradiction of consumption. We know that a transaction of money for goods is simply that, but at the same time we feel the passing of the place where the transaction occurred as something far more than a material loss. It is no accident, to use a locution favored by the Marxists, that John Updike, in detailing the last days of his echt-American character Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom, made one of his final epiphanies the realization that the Christmas displays in the Kroll’s department store, in his mangy but beloved home town of Brewer, were merely commercial come-ons, to be discarded as soon as they stopped paying profits to the store’s owner—that what, in Harry’s boyhood, had been “those otherworldly displays of circling trains and nodding dolls and twinkling stars in the corner windows as if God Himself put them there” were not that at all. They were merely “a shabby set of temporary arrangements rigged up for the time being, all for the sake of the money. . . . If Kroll’s could go, the courthouse could go, the banks could go. When the money stopped, they would close down God Himself.” A few pages later, Harry is struck by a heart attack, and the author shuts his hero down.
These gloomy reflections are spurred by the knowledge that the Fairway Market grocery store chain has filed for Chapter Eleven bankruptcy. There is hope that the failure will not be complete, as it was when another New York grocery chain, Dean & DeLuca, a relic of the minimalist art-world energies of the Soho eighties, went bankrupt last year and closed all its stores in New York. A last-minute, though apparently place-holding, purchase by a New Jersey supermarket chain promises to keep at least a few of the Fairway stores open, in some form or another. Still, to anyone who loves New York, even an intimation of losing Fairway is as sad as the sense of losing Kroll’s was to Harry.
Fairway is one of those odd original New York institutions that grew up organically, on the sidewalk, unlike the Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s stores that have competed with it in recent years, which were dropped down on the street from a retail empire headquartered elsewhere. No less a magus of social history than Simon Schama once wrote of Fairway that if it were possible to award the congressional Medal of Honor to a food market, Fairway would already have won one for its service to appetite, and that its cheese department alone turned “Rabelaisian excess into a stationary New York festival of aroma, color and texture.”
Born in the early nineteen-thirties as a fruit-and-vegetable stand on the Upper West Side, Fairway was originally the multi-generation property and obsession of the Glickberg family, starting as a more down-market variant of Zabar’s, which is still in business up the street. Fairway’s magic, as one of its former partners, Steven Jenkins, wrote in a lively and lovely memoir of his years there, “The Food Life,” lay in the juxtaposition of grungy, discount-minded practicality with genuinely inspired and discriminating product choices. The store, with its proudly garish packaging and bags and an elevator that bore a sign boasting of its bad functioning, is stuffed with the usual supermarket staples, but it also offers some of the finest of fine things in the city. The olive-oil counter alone is worth the price of admission: seven or eight styles—Spanish, Italian, and Greek—to sample, with sliced baguettes on hand, around which a father and daughter could arrange a weekly tasting, while a mother shuddered at the unsanitariness of it. The West Side Fairway combines the virtues of what used to be called “gourmet” shopping—it’s now too commonplace to have that title—with the equally strong virtues of popularity. If you come from a grocer’s family, as I do, you recognize the familiar rhythms and joys and labors of every food market: the long hours, the early mornings, the constant restocking. Fairway, for all the precious things it sold, from Comté to saffron, was the least precious place on the planet.
The democratic energy of the place was so extraordinary that someone coming home to New York from a place like, say, Paris—where the division between the gastronomic and the generic, the élite and elementary is still strong—would be knocked sideways by the coexistence of those seemingly contradictory principles. As Jenkins wrote about his own emigration there, from a “classier” downtown boutique, “I had essentially been ripped from the urbane, everything-has-its-place, serene, haughty world of fancy food and thrust headlong into a peasant-like, sawdust-on-the-floor, ‘We’ll sell anything that sells’ commoners’ market.” That market engendered anecdotes. A friend remembered having been called away from her shopping cart the day before Thanksgiving and, wandering back into the store a few hours later, finding it still full, pushed and prodded like a bumper car among the throngs.
What went wrong with Fairway will likely be a case study in business schools for years to come. It seems, to the casual observer, to have an ominous overlap with what went wrong with Dean & DeLuca—or, for that matter, with F. A. O. Schwartz—and more broadly with what has gone wrong for so much American retailing. (As of 2018, some twenty per cent of retail space in Manhattan is vacant.) The agonies of Fairway are almost too neatly a lesson for our time. The family opened three more stores, and sold an eighty per cent stake in the company, in 2007, to a private-equity firm that thought it could, so to speak, exploit the social capital—the good will and the reputation for egalitarian excellence—that the firm had built up over time, to vastly expand and make vastly more money. The stores were then passed around like a trinket among a bewildering assortment of other investors. The bankruptcy seems likely to cost the employees far more than it will the investors—not to mention the customers. This, too, is part of our time: a recent report in the Washington Post points out that private-equity firms “pooled money—often from pension funds, wealthy investors and financial firms—and relied on large swaths of debt to acquire companies like Mervyn’s and Linens ’n Things, with the goal of turning them around. In practice, though, they routinely sold off real estate holdings, cut workers’ pay and benefits, and jettisoned jobs to turn a quick profit for investors.”
In Fairway’s case, the expansion was undertaken at the very moment when urban retailing of all kinds was coming under the most intense competitive pressure it has in perhaps a century, from online sources—you can buy groceries from Amazon and FreshDirect—and, indeed, on the street, from national chains, including Whole Foods, which is now owned by Amazon. One can be a fan of the many good things about Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s and also recognize that the homogenization of retailing is part of the homogenization of our lives.
All of us know—or, if we don’t, then capitalism is here to teach us—that things pass. It’s hard and even embarrassing to be emotional about a failing business. Those who mourn the demise of Barneys do so largely in private. And yet it is, historically, such private enterprises, from coffeehouses and grocery stores to high-end department stores, with their vast common spaces, that create the social capital that supports our common life—the possibility of bumping into people with whom we share a common citizenship but don’t often share a common space or pursuit. The accumulated social capital of such spaces becomes our common life. The single man buying cheese and the family buying paper towels in bulk stand in line together.


newyorker--2020-01-25--Watch Live: Trump’s Defense Team Begins Its Arguments in the Impeachment Trial

On Friday , President Trump complained about the timing of today ’ s hearing , tweeting that “ [ it ] looks like my lawyers will be forced to start on Saturday , which is called Death Valley in T.V.
” The Saturday-morning hearing will perhaps lack a sizable audience , but Trump ’ s defense will likely have plenty of bombast .
Over the next several days , the attorneys for the President will make their first statements on the Senate floor .
One of those attorneys , Alan Dershowitz , has made no attempt at consistency , abandoning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out in favor of the impeachment of Bill Clinton in the nineties : that an impeachable offense does not need to be a crime .
Even more inconsistent is Kenneth Starr , the inveterate Clinton-era independent prosecutor , who is remembered for his overly salacious report and dogged investigation of Monica Lewinsky , during which she says she was “ terrorized.
” More recently , he was found by an internal investigation to have mishandled numerous reported cases of sexual assault while serving as the president and chancellor of Baylor University .
Jay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his Presidency , including during the Mueller investigation and its aftermath , will likely feature prominently on Saturday .
A preview of the President ’ s case , offered by Pat Cippollone last week , suggests that the lawyers will replicate the President ’ s penchant for personal attacks and distraction .
In remarks this week , Cippollone scolded Representative Jerrold Nadler , saying that the congressman should be embarrassed by the arguments he had presented in the Senate .
This prompted more scolding from Chief Justice John Roberts , who said , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this point for me to admonish both the House managers and President ’ s counsel in equal terms to remember that they are addressing the world ’ s greatest deliberative body .
Those addressing the Senate should remember where they are.
” It is evidently easy to forget .
So far , most of the drama has occurred outside of the Senate chamber .
On Friday , the public evidence of the President ’ s malfeasance grew more fulsome , and the pressure even greater , with the release of a recorded conversation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman .
Both Parnas and Fruman have been indicted for campaign-finance violations , and the President has previously denied knowing them .
On the tape , the President demands the removal of the Ambassador to Ukraine , then Marie Yovanovitch , directing the men and others at the dinner , including a White House staffer , to “ get rid of her.
” Yovanovitch ’ s removal , along with subsequent attacks on her reputation , has been central to the impeachment inquiry .
And in a contentious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Mary Louis Kelly asked the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the President ’ s behavior toward the Ambassador .
When Pompeo was pushed on the question , an aide ended the interview , and Pompeo allegedly proceeded to berate the host.
“ Do you think Americans care about Ukraine ?
” Pompeo shouted , in an expletive-peppered rant , according to Kelly .
Whether Trump ’ s legal team can defend the President ’ s conduct without resorting to similar outbursts remains to be seen .
Watch the President ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their defense in the live stream above .

On Friday, President Trump complained about the timing of today’s hearing, tweeting that “[it] looks like my lawyers will be forced to start on Saturday, which is called Death Valley in T.V.” The Saturday-morning hearing will perhaps lack a sizable audience, but Trump’s defense will likely have plenty of bombast. Over the next several days, the attorneys for the President will make their first statements on the Senate floor. One of those attorneys, Alan Dershowitz, has made no attempt at consistency, abandoning one of the arguments that he laid out in favor of the impeachment of Bill Clinton in the nineties: that an impeachable offense does not need to be a crime.
Even more inconsistent is Kenneth Starr, the inveterate Clinton-era independent prosecutor, who is remembered for his overly salacious report and dogged investigation of Monica Lewinsky, during which she says she was “terrorized.” More recently, he was found by an internal investigation to have mishandled numerous reported cases of sexual assault while serving as the president and chancellor of Baylor University.
Jay Sekulow, who has represented Trump throughout his Presidency, including during the Mueller investigation and its aftermath, will likely feature prominently on Saturday. A preview of the President’s case, offered by Pat Cipollone last week, suggests that the lawyers will replicate the President’s penchant for personal attacks and distraction. In remarks this week, Cipollone scolded Representative Jerrold Nadler, saying that the congressman should be embarrassed by the arguments he had presented in the Senate. This prompted more scolding from Chief Justice John Roberts, who said, “I think it is appropriate at this point for me to admonish both the House managers and President’s counsel in equal terms to remember that they are addressing the world’s greatest deliberative body. Those addressing the Senate should remember where they are.” It is evidently easy to forget.
So far, most of the drama has occurred outside of the Senate chamber. On Friday, the public evidence of the President’s malfeasance grew more fulsome, and the pressure even greater, with the release of a recorded conversation involving Trump and Rudy Giuliani’s associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. Both Parnas and Fruman have been indicted for campaign-finance violations, and the President has previously denied knowing them. On the tape, the President demands the removal of the Ambassador to Ukraine, then Marie Yovanovitch, directing the men and others at the dinner, including a White House staffer, to “get rid of her.” Yovanovitch’s removal, along with subsequent attacks on her reputation, has been central to the impeachment inquiry.
And in a contentious interview released on Thursday night, NPR’s Mary Louis Kelly asked the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the President’s behavior toward the Ambassador. When Pompeo was pushed on the question, an aide ended the interview, and Pompeo allegedly proceeded to berate the host.“Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?” Pompeo shouted, in an expletive-peppered rant, according to Kelly. Whether Trump’s legal team can defend the President’s conduct without resorting to similar outbursts remains to be seen.
Watch the President’s legal team offer the beginning of their defense in the live stream above.


newyorker--2020-01-25--If It Makes You Feel Better

If It Makes You Feel Better

What a bummer that you left your passport on the plane .
If it makes you feel better , I once threw my graduation cap in the air and never got it back .
I ’ m sorry that you tested positive for Lyme disease .
If it makes you feel better , I once rode on the back of a guy ’ s motorcycle and swallowed three gnats .
The man you thought was your brother is actually your dad ?
!
Wow , well , if it makes you feel better , I just found out that my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brother .
I ’ m sorry that you had an allergic reaction to peanuts and wound up in the hospital .
If it makes you feel better , I once found a peanut in a bag of almonds .
I still ate it , but it was a real , “ Whoa , where did you come from ?
” moment .
I ’ m so sorry to hear that your dog died .
That ’ s really sad .
If it makes you feel better , I have a cockatoo and it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fact , it will probably outlive me , which , if you think about it , is pretty sad .
Oh , god , yeah , having a U.T.I .
is awful .
If it makes you feel better , I just ate some pineapple and now my tongue is very itchy .
I heard that your fiancé left you at the altar !
That must have been terrible .
If it makes you feel better , my twin sister left me in the womb .
I eventually got out , too , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and you broke up , huh ?
I really never thought it would happen .
If it makes you feel better , I ’ m currently fighting with my goldfish .
Good luck with your heart surgery .
If it makes you feel better , my birth-control pill is causing a weird under-boob rash .
I ’ m sorry that your house burned down .
If it makes you feel better , I once blew out the candles on a birthday cake and accidentally blew away my best friend , Sam .
Sam @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can ’ t believe you were in labor for thirty-six hours .
If it makes you feel better , I once gave birth to a Beanie Baby .
It was really painful , especially the tag , but the doctor said it would be worth money someday .
I ’ m sorry that you had your identity stolen .
If it makes you feel better , I ’ ve already forgotten your name .

What a bummer that you left your passport on the plane. If it makes you feel better, I once threw my graduation cap in the air and never got it back.
I’m sorry that you tested positive for Lyme disease. If it makes you feel better, I once rode on the back of a guy’s motorcycle and swallowed three gnats.
The man you thought was your brother is actually your dad?! Wow, well, if it makes you feel better, I just found out that my dad is actually my uncle’s brother.
I’m sorry that you had an allergic reaction to peanuts and wound up in the hospital. If it makes you feel better, I once found a peanut in a bag of almonds. I still ate it, but it was a real, “Whoa, where did you come from?” moment.
I’m so sorry to hear that your dog died. That’s really sad. If it makes you feel better, I have a cockatoo and it’s very much alive. In fact, it will probably outlive me, which, if you think about it, is pretty sad.
Oh, god, yeah, having a U.T.I. is awful. If it makes you feel better, I just ate some pineapple and now my tongue is very itchy.
I heard that your fiancé left you at the altar! That must have been terrible. If it makes you feel better, my twin sister left me in the womb. I eventually got out, too, but her actions still hurt.
Jennifer and you broke up, huh? I really never thought it would happen. If it makes you feel better, I’m currently fighting with my goldfish.
Good luck with your heart surgery. If it makes you feel better, my birth-control pill is causing a weird under-boob rash.
I’m sorry that your house burned down. If it makes you feel better, I once blew out the candles on a birthday cake and accidentally blew away my best friend, Sam. Sam was an ant.
Jesus, I can’t believe you were in labor for thirty-six hours. If it makes you feel better, I once gave birth to a Beanie Baby. It was really painful, especially the tag, but the doctor said it would be worth money someday.
I’m sorry that you had your identity stolen. If it makes you feel better, I’ve already forgotten your name.


newyorker--2020-01-26--Trump, Impeachment, and the Short-Term Thinking of the G.O.P.

In the dazed aftermath of the 2016 election , as a vast portion of the country tried to come to terms with the fact that a fixture of the tabloids and of reality TV would be the next President of the United States , Stephen Bannon , one of Donald Trump ’ s senior advisers , sought to place the event in a historical context .
Like Andrew Jackson , Bannon told The Hollywood Reporter , “ We ’ re going to build an entirely new political movement.
” Trump , embracing the comparison , hung a portrait of Jackson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the kinship made sense : both Jackson and Trump were wealthy men whose elections signified a populist turn in American politics .
Both were ridiculed as uncouth and déclassé , and both saw their colorful marital history dissected in the newspapers .
A deeper comparison would also have highlighted the racism associated with their political careers : Jackson owned slaves and directed the removal of Native Americans from their lands ; Trump campaigned on a platform of removing people from the nation itself .
President Trump ’ s impeachment trial in the Senate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consequential area of commonality between the two Presidents .
In 1832 , the Supreme Court handed down a decision , in Worcester v. Georgia , that effectively prohibited the states from usurping Native Americans ’ sovereignty over their lands .
That conflicted with Jackson ’ s plans , and he responded by saying , in effect , good luck with enforcing that .
Jackson ’ s critics saw such willingness to dismiss the authority of a co-equal branch of the government as further evidence that he had no business being in the Oval @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strategy for fighting impeachment entails dismissing the authority of the third co-equal branch of government .
The White House has steadfastly ignored the House of Representatives ’ subpoenas to produce documents and witnesses relating to Trump ’ s alleged attempt to strong-arm the Ukrainian government to assist with a ploy to sink Joe Biden ’ s Presidential candidacy .
It is not unheard-of for an Administration to stall or only partly comply with subpoenas .
( The Republican-led House notably held Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt , in 2012 , for not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Department of Justice ’ s Fast and Furious firearms sting operation . )
But Trump has refused to comply at all , and congressional Republicans , ignoring one of their most important duties—executive oversight—have abetted his position .
At the start of trial , in eleven roll-call votes , the Republican majority voted down measures to request relevant documents or to hear from new witnesses regarding the Ukraine scheme .
Representative Hakeem Jeffries , one of the House impeachment managers , gave an impassioned speech stating the case for summoning Mick Mulvaney , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , to testify .
He also told Jay Sekulow , one of Trump ’ s attorneys , who had questioned why the trial was even taking place , “ We are here , sir , because President Trump pressured a foreign government to target an American citizen for political and personal gain.
” He concluded by quoting a fellow-Brooklynite , the Notorious B.I.G .
: “ If you don ’ t know , now you know.
” Biggie notwithstanding , the speech failed to move the Republican caucus .
The votes left open @ @ @ @ @ @ @ become available , but only later in the proceedings—a state of affairs that Representative Adam Schiff , the lead House manager , called “ ass-backwards.
” The significance of the votes is twofold : not only did Senate Republicans co-sign the White House ’ s effort to turn the impeachment into a show trial ; they reduced the power of the legislative branch to which they themselves belong .
In recent years , short-term thinking has come to define our politics to an alarming degree .
In 2016 , when Senate Majority Leader @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court without so much as a vote , he seemed not to consider what might happen the next time a Republican President tried to shepherd a nominee through a Democratic Senate .
The G.O.P .
that has come to support Trump ’ s inflammatory nativism is failing to consider the demographic dead end it faces in alienating rapidly growing numbers of immigrant and minority voters .
These decisions were bad for the Party and for judicial integrity .
The Republican response to the impeachment is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s not difficult to discern what some of the long-term impacts of this short-term thinking may be .
Trump ’ s coercive phone conversation with the Ukrainian President , Volodymyr Zelensky , occurred after Attorney General William Barr had miscast the Mueller report as an exoneration of the Trump Administration ’ s alleged contacts with Russians trying to interfere in the 2016 election .
Even after the whistle-blower ’ s account of the Ukraine call emerged , Rudy Giuliani , Trump ’ s unofficial envoy , travelled to that country on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the midst of the trial , Trump continues to push a false conspiracy theory that Ukraine , not Russia , interfered in the last election .
An acquittal in the Senate would confirm Trump ’ s dangerous idea of an omnipotent Presidency .
In explaining why power was to be disseminated among the three branches of government , Madison wrote , in Federalist No .
51 , that “ ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
” Thus far , the Senate majority ’ s stance on impeachment can more aptly be described @ @ @ @ @ @ @ underscored this problem last week , when he told the senators , “ You know you can ’ t trust this President to do what ’ s right for this country .
You can trust he will do what ’ s right for Donald Trump .
He ’ ll do it now .
He ’ s done it before .
He ’ ll do it for the next several months .
He ’ ll do it in the election if he ’ s allowed to.
” An acquittal would set a precedent for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in one election , demand it in a subsequent election , and remain in power nonetheless .
Earlier this month , it was reported that Russian military hackers had attacked Burisma , the Ukrainian gas company that is at the center of the impeachment debacle .
It ’ s reasonable to suspect that they may have been looking for information that could be helpful to Trump ’ s reëlection effort .
There is a contrast that Bannon could not have envisioned four years ago .
Jackson ’ s reputation was made when , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ British at the Battle of New Orleans , in the War of 1812 .
He was revered for his willingness to protect the nation from hostile foreign powers .
No such claim can be made for Trump .
His Presidency has rendered the country more susceptible to them .
♦

Illustration by João Fazenda
In the dazed aftermath of the 2016 election, as a vast portion of the country tried to come to terms with the fact that a fixture of the tabloids and of reality TV would be the next President of the United States, Stephen Bannon, one of Donald Trump’s senior advisers, sought to place the event in a historical context. Like Andrew Jackson, Bannon told The Hollywood Reporter, “We’re going to build an entirely new political movement.” Trump, embracing the comparison, hung a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office. Superficially, the kinship made sense: both Jackson and Trump were wealthy men whose elections signified a populist turn in American politics. Both were ridiculed as uncouth and déclassé, and both saw their colorful marital history dissected in the newspapers. A deeper comparison would also have highlighted the racism associated with their political careers: Jackson owned slaves and directed the removal of Native Americans from their lands; Trump campaigned on a platform of removing people from the nation itself.
President Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate points to another, potentially far more consequential area of commonality between the two Presidents. In 1832, the Supreme Court handed down a decision, in Worcester v. Georgia, that effectively prohibited the states from usurping Native Americans’ sovereignty over their lands. That conflicted with Jackson’s plans, and he responded by saying, in effect, good luck with enforcing that. Jackson’s critics saw such willingness to dismiss the authority of a co-equal branch of the government as further evidence that he had no business being in the Oval Office.
The Trump Administration’s strategy for fighting impeachment entails dismissing the authority of the third co-equal branch of government. The White House has steadfastly ignored the House of Representatives’ subpoenas to produce documents and witnesses relating to Trump’s alleged attempt to strong-arm the Ukrainian government to assist with a ploy to sink Joe Biden’s Presidential candidacy. It is not unheard-of for an Administration to stall or only partly comply with subpoenas. (The Republican-led House notably held Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt, in 2012, for not fully complying with subpoenas related to the Department of Justice’s Fast and Furious firearms sting operation.) But Trump has refused to comply at all, and congressional Republicans, ignoring one of their most important duties—executive oversight—have abetted his position.
At the start of trial, in eleven roll-call votes, the Republican majority voted down measures to request relevant documents or to hear from new witnesses regarding the Ukraine scheme. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, one of the House impeachment managers, gave an impassioned speech stating the case for summoning Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, to testify. He also told Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s attorneys, who had questioned why the trial was even taking place, “We are here, sir, because President Trump pressured a foreign government to target an American citizen for political and personal gain.” He concluded by quoting a fellow-Brooklynite, the Notorious B.I.G.: “If you don’t know, now you know.” Biggie notwithstanding, the speech failed to move the Republican caucus.
The votes left open the possibility that witnesses and documents might become available, but only later in the proceedings—a state of affairs that Representative Adam Schiff, the lead House manager, called “ass-backwards.” The significance of the votes is twofold: not only did Senate Republicans co-sign the White House’s effort to turn the impeachment into a show trial; they reduced the power of the legislative branch to which they themselves belong.
In recent years, short-term thinking has come to define our politics to an alarming degree. In 2016, when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court without so much as a vote, he seemed not to consider what might happen the next time a Republican President tried to shepherd a nominee through a Democratic Senate. The G.O.P. that has come to support Trump’s inflammatory nativism is failing to consider the demographic dead end it faces in alienating rapidly growing numbers of immigrant and minority voters. These decisions were bad for the Party and for judicial integrity. The Republican response to the impeachment is bad for the future of democracy.
It’s not difficult to discern what some of the long-term impacts of this short-term thinking may be. Trump’s coercive phone conversation with the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, occurred after Attorney General William Barr had miscast the Mueller report as an exoneration of the Trump Administration’s alleged contacts with Russians trying to interfere in the 2016 election. Even after the whistle-blower’s account of the Ukraine call emerged, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s unofficial envoy, travelled to that country on his behalf. And, even in the midst of the trial, Trump continues to push a false conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the last election. An acquittal in the Senate would confirm Trump’s dangerous idea of an omnipotent Presidency.
In explaining why power was to be disseminated among the three branches of government, Madison wrote, in Federalist No. 51, that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” Thus far, the Senate majority’s stance on impeachment can more aptly be described as ambition emboldened by deference. Schiff underscored this problem last week, when he told the senators, “You know you can’t trust this President to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to.” An acquittal would set a precedent for a U.S. President to invite foreign intervention in one election, demand it in a subsequent election, and remain in power nonetheless. Earlier this month, it was reported that Russian military hackers had attacked Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company that is at the center of the impeachment debacle. It’s reasonable to suspect that they may have been looking for information that could be helpful to Trump’s reëlection effort.
There is a contrast that Bannon could not have envisioned four years ago. Jackson’s reputation was made when, as a general, he defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans, in the War of 1812. He was revered for his willingness to protect the nation from hostile foreign powers. No such claim can be made for Trump. His Presidency has rendered the country more susceptible to them. ♦


newyorker--2020-01-26--The Once and Future MOMA

The Once and Future MOMA

When the architect Elizabeth Diller talks about glass , she evokes the progressive , quixotic European doctrines of a century ago .
Bruno Taut ’ s Glass Pavilion , which was built in 1914 for an exhibition , inspired Paul Scheerbart , a poet and author of fantasy novels , to write “ Glass Architecture , ” an essay describing an imaginary transparent city of the future .
“ If we want our culture to rise to a higher level , ” Scheerbart said , “ we are obliged , for better or for worse , to change our architecture @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do that by introducing glass architecture , which lets in the lights of the sun , the moon , and the stars , nor merely through a few windows but through every possible wall.
” Diller describes her firm ’ s expansion and renovation of New York ’ s Museum of Modern Art as guided by “ the modernist aspirations of glass , the utopian ones about democratizing space and about the extension between the outside and the inside.
” Diller , whose practice emerged from collaborations with her husband , Ricardo Scofidio @ @ @ @ @ @ @ + Renfro , an architectural partnership whose work crosses over into the visual and performing arts .
DS+R ’ s dictum of “ adaptive re-use ” is best demonstrated in its most famous ( and most globally mimicked ) project , the High Line , an abandoned elevated railway on Manhattan ’ s West Side , once slated for demolition by Mayor Rudy Giuliani and now repurposed as a public park .
The High Line snakes northward from the meatpacking district , terminating at the new and controversial Hudson Yards development , where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s cultural fabric by creating the Shed , a multipurpose arts complex with a sliding outer shell , which opened last year .
These projects , expressing the firm ’ s commitment to democratizing public spaces , anticipated the challenges of reinventing MOMA , which , for ninety years , has stood as a monument to the paradoxical alignment of capital and counterculture .
When Tom Wolfe wrote that “ Modern Art arrived in the United States in the 1920s not like a rebel commando force but like Standard Oil , ” he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York ’ s “ cathedral of culture ” —the first institution of its kind in the world— “ was not exactly the brain child of visionary bohemians .
It was founded in John D. Rockefeller , Jr. ’ s living room , to be exact , with Goodyears , Blisses , and Crowninshields in attendance.
” The original seeds of this upper-class defiance can be traced to the infamous Armory Show of 1913 , which introduced America to Cubism , Fauvism , and Futurism .
The crowds were astonished by works by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Courbet , Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , Édouard Manet , Pablo Picasso—who had declared that “ museums are just a lot of lies ” —and Marcel Duchamp , whose shimmering masterwork “ Nude Descending a Staircase ” was the outstanding hit of the show .
( “ That ’ s not art , ” Theodore Roosevelt announced . )
In 1928 , Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and the Boston textile heir Lillie P. Bliss seized on the idea of a permanent establishment for the kind of European art that they liked but could not find @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York .
The two women recruited the lumber heir A. Conger Goodyear , who had been ejected from a gallery board in Buffalo for buying a Picasso , to be their administrator .
Goodyear brought in Paul J. Sachs , an investor , and Sachs in turn recruited Alfred Barr , an academic who defended modern painting , to be the project ’ s director .
Their museum opened on November 8 , 1929—ten days after Black Tuesday—in a rented office space on Fifty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue .
The first exhibition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cézanne , Gauguin , Seurat , and van Gogh , drew curious crowds that overflowed in a line down the block .
“ It was a fantastic atmosphere , ” Margaret Fitzmaurice-Scolari , the art historian , said .
“ You felt an unbelievable vibration .
.
.
.
It was absolutely electric.
” In 1932 , when the newborn institution moved into a five-story townhouse on Fifty-third Street that was owned by the Rockefellers , its radical zeal was as undiminished as its breathless patronage by the one per cent , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the privilege of being disrespected , or even outright attacked .
The first exhibit there included a mural by the Hungarian immigrant Hugo Gellert , a member of the Communist Party of America , which depicted Henry Ford , President Herbert Hoover , J. P. Morgan , and John D. Rockefeller , Sr. , flanked by gunmen and bags of cash and accompanied by America ’ s most famous gangster .
It was called “ ‘ Us Fellas Got ta Stick Together ’ —Al Capone.
” Even before the museum erected its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in 1939 , it had fundamentally altered the trajectory of architecture and urban planning with a landmark 1932 exhibit grandly titled “ Modern Architecture : International Exhibition.
” The curator was Philip Johnson , a wealthy young aesthete whom Barr had invited to broaden the museum ’ s scope to include photography , graphic arts , and industrial fabrication .
Johnson ’ s “ Machine Art ” exhibit , in 1934 , was , according to his biographer , the critic Mark Lamster , “ a sensation from the moment it opened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had considered putting in an art museum before : beakers , a cash register , a circular saw , a Dictaphone , perfume bottles , pans , springs of all sizes , a toaster oven , a waffle maker , a telescope , a vacuum , and even a dentist ’ s X-ray machine.
” For the architecture showcase , Johnson collected models and drawings of buildings by Europeans like Walter Gropius—who had founded the Bauhaus , a neo-socialist collective of craftsmen , engineers , artists , and architects—and by the Swiss-French painter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Le Corbusier , whose utopian urban-planning concept , “ The Radiant City , ” was expressed in a 1925 sponsored study , called “ The Voisin Plan City , ” which proposed demolishing broad sections of Paris and replacing them with rows of identical cruciform residential towers interspersed with elevated freeways , concrete walkways , and courtyards of featureless grass .
Wolfe wrote that Johnson ’ s accompanying book , co-authored with Henry-Russell Hitchcock , a Wesleyan lecturer who wrote influential articles on design , “ gave no indication that the International Style—and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any social setting , any terra firma , whatsoever.
” Frank Lloyd Wright , declining an invitation to participate , condemned the style as “ communistic , ” disdaining the curators as a “ self-selected group of formalizers .
.
.
superficial and ignorant.
” The museum ’ s flagship structure—the 1939 faux-Bauhaus imposture done by Philip L. Goodwin , a society architect , and Edward Durell Stone , whom Rockefeller admired for the elegant deco execution of his Radio City Music Hall—was disdained by Johnson , who , in the process of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , was invited to counteract the building ’ s shortcomings .
MOMA ’ s first westward addition , the taut and elegant Grace Rainey Rogers Memorial Wing , done by Johnson in 1951 , and since demolished , was , according to Lamster , “ a masterpiece .
.
.
the first glass-walled modern building to rise in New York , but that ’ s the story of MoMA , the constant tearing itself down to remake itself , often for the worse.
” There is no visible trace of Johnson ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ East Wing , but his eternally serene Sculpture Garden , from 1953 , remains essentially intact .
In the postwar decades , modern art , modern architecture , and the museum all faltered and languished .
The once brazen International Style could now be found everywhere , its Platonic forms duly copied out in diluted , increasingly mundane degrees of fidelity to the thrilling European originals .
In the late nineteen-fifties , Johnson collaborated with Pietro Belluschi , Gordon Bunshaft , Wallace Harrison , and Eero Saarinen on another Rockefeller project , planned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the San Juan Hill neighborhood to make way for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts , a set of ersatz-Italian piazzas flanked by white limestone brutalist auditoriums that present the surrounding streets with impenetrable stone walls .
Lamster wrote , “ If you look at the new formalism of the sixties , Lincoln Center with its monumentality and its stark whiteness and its classicism and its insistence on authority—there ’ s something fascistic about that.
” ( Johnson ’ s defiant insistence on the amoral purity of his aesthetics reached its apotheosis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to build , much later , for Donald Trump . )

When the architect Elizabeth Diller talks about glass, she evokes the progressive, quixotic European doctrines of a century ago. Bruno Taut’s Glass Pavilion, which was built in 1914 for an exhibition, inspired Paul Scheerbart, a poet and author of fantasy novels, to write “Glass Architecture,” an essay describing an imaginary transparent city of the future. “If we want our culture to rise to a higher level,” Scheerbart said, “we are obliged, for better or for worse, to change our architecture. . . . We can only do that by introducing glass architecture, which lets in the lights of the sun, the moon, and the stars, nor merely through a few windows but through every possible wall.” Diller describes her firm’s expansion and renovation of New York’s Museum of Modern Art as guided by “the modernist aspirations of glass, the utopian ones about democratizing space and about the extension between the outside and the inside.”
Diller, whose practice emerged from collaborations with her husband, Ricardo Scofidio, is a co-founder of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, an architectural partnership whose work crosses over into the visual and performing arts. DS+R’s dictum of “adaptive re-use” is best demonstrated in its most famous (and most globally mimicked) project, the High Line, an abandoned elevated railway on Manhattan’s West Side, once slated for demolition by Mayor Rudy Giuliani and now repurposed as a public park. The High Line snakes northward from the meatpacking district, terminating at the new and controversial Hudson Yards development, where DS+R has again altered the city’s cultural fabric by creating the Shed, a multipurpose arts complex with a sliding outer shell, which opened last year. These projects, expressing the firm’s commitment to democratizing public spaces, anticipated the challenges of reinventing MOMA, which, for ninety years, has stood as a monument to the paradoxical alignment of capital and counterculture.
When Tom Wolfe wrote that “Modern Art arrived in the United States in the 1920s not like a rebel commando force but like Standard Oil,” he meant it literally: the museum, New York’s “cathedral of culture”—the first institution of its kind in the world—“was not exactly the brain child of visionary bohemians. It was founded in John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s living room, to be exact, with Goodyears, Blisses, and Crowninshields in attendance.” The original seeds of this upper-class defiance can be traced to the infamous Armory Show of 1913, which introduced America to Cubism, Fauvism, and Futurism. The crowds were astonished by works by Paul Cézanne, Mary Cassatt, Gustave Courbet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Édouard Manet, Pablo Picasso—who had declared that “museums are just a lot of lies”—and Marcel Duchamp, whose shimmering masterwork “Nude Descending a Staircase” was the outstanding hit of the show. (“That’s not art,” Theodore Roosevelt announced.)
In 1928, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and the Boston textile heir Lillie P. Bliss seized on the idea of a permanent establishment for the kind of European art that they liked but could not find in museums like the Metropolitan, in New York. The two women recruited the lumber heir A. Conger Goodyear, who had been ejected from a gallery board in Buffalo for buying a Picasso, to be their administrator. Goodyear brought in Paul J. Sachs, an investor, and Sachs in turn recruited Alfred Barr, an academic who defended modern painting, to be the project’s director. Their museum opened on November 8, 1929—ten days after Black Tuesday—in a rented office space on Fifty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue. The first exhibition, a small collection of paintings by Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, and van Gogh, drew curious crowds that overflowed in a line down the block. “It was a fantastic atmosphere,” Margaret Fitzmaurice-Scolari, the art historian, said. “You felt an unbelievable vibration. . . . It was absolutely electric.”
One of MOMA’s early homes was a five-story townhouse on Fifty-third Street. Photograph from Bettmann / Getty
In 1932, when the newborn institution moved into a five-story townhouse on Fifty-third Street that was owned by the Rockefellers, its radical zeal was as undiminished as its breathless patronage by the one per cent, who, like their European counterparts, paid for the privilege of being disrespected, or even outright attacked. The first exhibit there included a mural by the Hungarian immigrant Hugo Gellert, a member of the Communist Party of America, which depicted Henry Ford, President Herbert Hoover, J. P. Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller, Sr., flanked by gunmen and bags of cash and accompanied by America’s most famous gangster. It was called “ ‘Us Fellas Gotta Stick Together’—Al Capone.”
Even before the museum erected its permanent home, on West Fifty-third Street, in 1939, it had fundamentally altered the trajectory of architecture and urban planning with a landmark 1932 exhibit grandly titled “Modern Architecture: International Exhibition.” The curator was Philip Johnson, a wealthy young aesthete whom Barr had invited to broaden the museum’s scope to include photography, graphic arts, and industrial fabrication. Johnson’s “Machine Art” exhibit, in 1934, was, according to his biographer, the critic Mark Lamster, “a sensation from the moment it opened . . . Here were things nobody had considered putting in an art museum before: beakers, a cash register, a circular saw, a Dictaphone, perfume bottles, pans, springs of all sizes, a toaster oven, a waffle maker, a telescope, a vacuum, and even a dentist’s X-ray machine.”
For the architecture showcase, Johnson collected models and drawings of buildings by Europeans like Walter Gropius—who had founded the Bauhaus, a neo-socialist collective of craftsmen, engineers, artists, and architects—and by the Swiss-French painter and architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, whose utopian urban-planning concept, “The Radiant City,” was expressed in a 1925 sponsored study, called “The Voisin Plan City,” which proposed demolishing broad sections of Paris and replacing them with rows of identical cruciform residential towers interspersed with elevated freeways, concrete walkways, and courtyards of featureless grass. Wolfe wrote that Johnson’s accompanying book, co-authored with Henry-Russell Hitchcock, a Wesleyan lecturer who wrote influential articles on design, “gave no indication that the International Style—and their label caught on immediately—had originated in any social setting, any terra firma, whatsoever.” Frank Lloyd Wright, declining an invitation to participate, condemned the style as “communistic,” disdaining the curators as a “self-selected group of formalizers . . . superficial and ignorant.”
The museum’s flagship structure—the 1939 faux-Bauhaus imposture done by Philip L. Goodwin, a society architect, and Edward Durell Stone, whom Rockefeller admired for the elegant deco execution of his Radio City Music Hall—was disdained by Johnson, who, in the process of remaking himself as a stratospherically prestigious architect, was invited to counteract the building’s shortcomings. MOMA’s first westward addition, the taut and elegant Grace Rainey Rogers Memorial Wing, done by Johnson in 1951, and since demolished, was, according to Lamster, “a masterpiece . . . the first glass-walled modern building to rise in New York, but that’s the story of MoMA, the constant tearing itself down to remake itself, often for the worse.” There is no visible trace of Johnson’s next, larger addition, the 1964 East Wing, except its black glass façade, but his eternally serene Sculpture Garden, from 1953, remains essentially intact.
The Japanese Exhibition House stood in the museum garden and opened to the public in June, 1954. Photograph by Michael Rougier / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty
In the postwar decades, modern art, modern architecture, and the museum all faltered and languished. The once brazen International Style could now be found everywhere, its Platonic forms duly copied out in diluted, increasingly mundane degrees of fidelity to the thrilling European originals. In the late nineteen-fifties, Johnson collaborated with Pietro Belluschi, Gordon Bunshaft, Wallace Harrison, and Eero Saarinen on another Rockefeller project, planned with Robert Moses: the demolition of the San Juan Hill neighborhood to make way for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, a set of ersatz-Italian piazzas flanked by white limestone brutalist auditoriums that present the surrounding streets with impenetrable stone walls. Lamster said, “If you look at the new formalism of the sixties, Lincoln Center with its monumentality and its stark whiteness and its classicism and its insistence on authority—there’s something fascistic about that.” (Johnson’s defiant insistence on the amoral purity of his aesthetics reached its apotheosis in the kitschy towers he was happy to build, much later, for Donald Trump.)
By the nineteen-seventies, Le Corbusier’s Platonic “Radiant City” had found dismal, artless expression in low-income, high-density housing projects: St. Louis’s infamous 1972 demolition of its failed Pruitt-Igoe complex was bitterly commemorated by Charles Jencks, the critic and scholar, as the moment that “Modern Architecture died.” In 1984—at the cusp of the dreary Ed Koch-era midtown construction boom—MOMA reached its nadir, erecting a luxury condominium high-rise designed by César Pelli, the dean of Yale’s architecture school, the proceeds of which would fund the museum’s expansion. The bland intrusion of Pelli’s pastel-speckled Museum Tower—anonymous in the skyline and on the street—allowed a doubling of exhibition space but required the sacrifice of a portion of the sculpture garden to provide a protruding atrium of escalators, creating the atmosphere of a shopping mall.
By the century’s final decades, modernism had receded into the past, a historical movement like any other. The ennobling emplacement of bohemian art work into plutocratic, cosmopolitan galleries had lost its shocking novelty, while the increasing insularity and academic remove of new “isms” in painting and sculpture had unmoored modern art from its social and political purpose. “Many people think the modernist laboratory is now vacant,” the critic Robert Hughes concluded in his elegiac retrospective “The Shock of the New.” “It has become less an arena for significant experiment and more like a period room in a museum, a historical space that we can enter, look at, but no longer be part of,” he wrote. “In art, we are at the end of the modernist era, but this is not—as some critics apparently think—a matter for self-congratulation. What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore.”


newyorker--2020-01-26--Sunday Reading: Critics on the Classics

Sunday Reading: Critics on the Classics

“ ‘ Nineteen Eighty-Four ’ is a profound , terrifying , and wholly fascinating book.
” That was how the critic Lionel Trilling characterized George Orwell ’ s classic dystopian tale when it was originally published , in 1949 .
With the passage of time , even the most groundbreaking works of literature can grow familiar .
One way to recapture our sense of wonder is to look back at the first impressions these books made on the world .
This week , we ’ re bringing you a selection of original reviews of classic literature .
In “ Expeditions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1986 , John Updike examines the compelling anti-utopian narrative of Margaret Atwood ’ s novel “ The Handmaid ’ s Tale.
” In a review from 1940 , Clifton Fadiman analyzes the recurring themes of mortality in Ernest Hemingway ’ s “ For Whom the Bell Tolls ” and , in a piece from 1939 , he explores the uniquely American character of John Steinbeck ’ s “ The Grapes of Wrath.
” ( “ If only a couple of million overcomfortable people can be brought to read it , John Steinbeck ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may actually effect something like a revolution in their minds and hearts.
” ) In “ So It Goes , ” Susan Lardner considers the vibrant simplicity of Kurt Vonnegut ’ s seventh novel , “ Slaughterhouse-Five , ” and , in a piece from 1927 , Dorothy Parker sifts through the rules and rituals set forth in Emily Post ’ s “ Etiquette.
” ( “ As one delves deeper and deeper into ‘ Etiquette , ’ disquieting thoughts come.
” ) In “ Songbird , ” Hilton Als scrutinizes the complex @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In “ The Simple Art of Murder , ” Susannah Clapp appraises “ The Talented Mr. Ripley ” and surveys the intricate nature of Patricia Highsmith ’ s work .
In “ Black Man ’ s Burden , ” from 1952 , Anthony West writes about the masterly dexterity of Ralph Ellison ’ s début novel , “ Invisible Man.
” ( “ What gives [ the book ] its character is a robust courage ; it walks squarely up to color the way seventeenth-century writing walks up to mortality and death.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ’ a Reader ’ s Companion , ” Judith Thurman looks at the multifaceted narrative behind A. S. Byatt ’ s masterpiece .
We hope that you enjoy rediscovering these literary masterworks this Sunday .
George Orwell ’ s “ 1984 ” predicts a state of things far worse than any we have ever known .
Stories of the frontier in John Steinbeck ’ s “ The Grapes of Wrath ” and George R. Leighton ’ s “ Five Cities.
” Margaret Atwood and Iris Murdoch give their imaginations room to roam @ @ @ @ @ @ @ herself .
A new film , “ The Talented Mr. Ripley , ” revives the chilliest crime writer of them all .
The transformations of “ For Whom the Bell Tolls .
”

“ ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ is a profound, terrifying, and wholly fascinating book.” That was how the critic Lionel Trilling characterized George Orwell’s classic dystopian tale when it was originally published, in 1949. With the passage of time, even the most groundbreaking works of literature can grow familiar. One way to recapture our sense of wonder is to look back at the first impressions these books made on the world. This week, we’re bringing you a selection of original reviews of classic literature. In “Expeditions to Gilead and Seegard,” from 1986, John Updike examines the compelling anti-utopian narrative of Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.” In a review from 1940, Clifton Fadiman analyzes the recurring themes of mortality in Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and, in a piece from 1939, he explores the uniquely American character of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.” (“If only a couple of million overcomfortable people can be brought to read it, John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ may actually effect something like a revolution in their minds and hearts.”) In “So It Goes,” Susan Lardner considers the vibrant simplicity of Kurt Vonnegut’s seventh novel, “Slaughterhouse-Five,” and, in a piece from 1927, Dorothy Parker sifts through the rules and rituals set forth in Emily Post’s “Etiquette.” (“As one delves deeper and deeper into ‘Etiquette,’ disquieting thoughts come.”) In “Songbird,” Hilton Als scrutinizes the complex and inventive work of Maya Angelou. In “The Simple Art of Murder,” Susannah Clapp appraises “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and surveys the intricate nature of Patricia Highsmith’s work. In “Black Man’s Burden,” from 1952, Anthony West writes about the masterly dexterity of Ralph Ellison’s début novel, “Invisible Man.” (“What gives [the book] its character is a robust courage; it walks squarely up to color the way seventeenth-century writing walks up to mortality and death.”) Finally, in “ ‘Possession,’ a Reader’s Companion,” Judith Thurman looks at the multifaceted narrative behind A. S. Byatt’s masterpiece. We hope that you enjoy rediscovering these literary masterworks this Sunday.
—Erin Overbey, archive editor
Illustration by Leonardo Santamaria
George Orwell’s “1984” predicts a state of things far worse than any we have ever known.
Photograph by Dorothea Lange / FSA / Library of Congress
Stories of the frontier in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” and George R. Leighton’s “Five Cities.”
Illustration by Holly Stapleton
Margaret Atwood and Iris Murdoch give their imaginations room to roam.
A book of many rules.
Illustration by Max Löffler
The protest of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five.”
Illustration by Chioma Ebinama
How Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” confronts progressive racism.
Maya Angelou takes another look at herself.
A new film, “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” revives the chilliest crime writer of them all.
A. S. Byatt’s masterpiece.
The transformations of “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”


newyorker--2020-01-27--Old Married (Not to Each Other) Costars Try Jujitsu

Christopher Sieber and Jennifer Simard met twenty-five years ago and complete each other ’ s sentences in the teasing manner of a married couple .
But they ’ re not married ; they ’ re stage actors , who have costarred in “ Shrek the Musical ” ( Sieber was Lord Farquaad ; Simard was the Wicked Witch ) and “ Annie ” ( he was Daddy Warbucks ; she was Miss Hannigan ) .
This spring , in a new Broadway revival of “ Company , ” the 1970 musical by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth , they will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sarah—one of five pairs who revolve around the protagonist , a marriage-phobic bachelor named Bobby , who , in the new production , is a marriage-phobic bachelorette named Bobbie .
The revival , which originated in London , has also updated some of the references for 2020 .
In the original , Sarah is taking a karate class and demonstrates her moves on Harry .
In the new version , it ’ s jujitsu , but she still knocks him to the floor .
“ I guess you could say we ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ characters , a few days before rehearsals .
“ You ’ re a recovering alcoholic— ” The two were at Vitor Shaolin ’ s Brazilian Jiu Jitsu , a school in midtown , for a beginners ’ class .
( Barbara Barrie , who played Sarah in the original production , took karate lessons and made the director , Hal Prince , pay for them . )
“ My husband said , ‘ You be careful .
You haven ’ t been moving around lately , ’ ” Sieber said with a laugh @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s husband , Kevin Burrows , is the food stylist for “ The Wendy Williams Show.
” They met nineteen years ago , while acting on Broadway in “ Beauty and the Beast.
” ( “ He was the fork , and I was Gaston.
” ) Simard met her husband , the theatre electrician Brad Robertson , eighteen years ago , on the musical “ I Love You , You ’ re Perfect , Now Change.
” In “ Company , ” the martial-arts scene is interlaced with a song called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” about the everyday minutiae that keep marriages healthy .
Simard was partial to the line about “ looks you misconstrue together.
” “ Brad and I call it the Disproportionate Response Game , ” she said , and acted it out : “ ‘ Honey , those vertical stripes look good !
’ ‘ Oh , because I look bad in the horizontal ones ?
’ ” They filled out a questionnaire .
“ ‘ What would you like to achieve with our program ?
’ ” Simard read aloud , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
.
Sieber ’ s .
.
.
ass.
” The school ’ s manager , Jen Sung , explained the philosophy of Brazilian jujitsu .
“ It really is a human game of chess , ” she said .
It was founded by Hélio Gracie , a petite man .
“ That ’ s why it ’ s made for people who are smaller and can go against bigger people.
” “ Perfect !
” Simard said .
( Sieber towers over her , which would make kicking his ass that much @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the basics , including the tap , the jujitsu equivalent of crying uncle .
“ When I tap you , it says , ‘ Hey , I know you could seriously hurt me , but I respect your technique enough that I ’ m going to submit to you.
’ And the other person says , ‘ I respect that , and I ’ m going to let you live.
’ ” It seemed like a decent metaphor for marriage , in which knowing each other ’ s vulnerabilities breeds trust—or mutually assured @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are both black belts , ” Sung added .
Sieber and Simard changed into blue uniforms , called gis , and began stretching .
An instructor named Silvio taught them “ how to fall ” safely : curl into a ball , arms at your side .
“ Now you ’ re going to learn how to take somebody down , ” he said , and demonstrated a double-leg maneuver , in which you clutch your opponent ’ s thighs and hook your legs around his knees .
Then he showed them a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” in which you wrench your opponent ’ s arm in an unholy direction until , presumably , you get the tap .
Silvio invited Simard to try it on him , and she nervously twisted his elbow .
“ I ’ m very flexible , ” he assured her .
Next came the rear naked choke , in which you cling to your opponent ’ s back like a backpack and strangle him with your forearm .
Sieber and Simard each took an instructor , and soon the foursome was rolling on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ self-defense , and the other instructor , Freddy , said , “ Maybe we ’ re in Times Square , there ’ s a bar .
You walk there after work , and some guys have had a rough day.
” He showed how to block a punch , then slide in and lift one of those bad boys on your hip , like a fanny pack .
“ So someone of my size , in theory , could do that to him ?
” Simard asked , nodding at Sieber .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the leverage , ” Freddy said .
Last , they learned some basic grip defenses—how to pry off someone ’ s grabby fingers .
Simard was giddy .
“ Forget music rehearsal .
We ’ re doing this .
For hours.
” She added , “ The choke hold I ’ m excited about.
” It ’ s the little things .
♦

Christopher Sieber and Jennifer Simard met twenty-five years ago and complete each other’s sentences in the teasing manner of a married couple. But they’re not married; they’re stage actors, who have costarred in “Shrek the Musical” (Sieber was Lord Farquaad; Simard was the Wicked Witch) and “Annie” (he was Daddy Warbucks; she was Miss Hannigan). This spring, in a new Broadway revival of “Company,” the 1970 musical by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, they will play a married couple named Harry and Sarah—one of five pairs who revolve around the protagonist, a marriage-phobic bachelor named Bobby, who, in the new production, is a marriage-phobic bachelorette named Bobbie.
The revival, which originated in London, has also updated some of the references for 2020. In the original, Sarah is taking a karate class and demonstrates her moves on Harry. In the new version, it’s jujitsu, but she still knocks him to the floor. “I guess you could say we’re codependent,” Simard said of the characters, a few days before rehearsals. “You’re a recovering alcoholic—”
“—who’s still drinking,” Sieber said.
“And I’m an overeater—”
“—who’s still eating.”
The two were at Vitor Shaolin’s Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, a school in midtown, for a beginners’ class. (Barbara Barrie, who played Sarah in the original production, took karate lessons and made the director, Hal Prince, pay for them.) “My husband said, ‘You be careful. You haven’t been moving around lately,’ ” Sieber said with a laugh. Both actors are married. Sieber’s husband, Kevin Burrows, is the food stylist for “The Wendy Williams Show.” They met nineteen years ago, while acting on Broadway in “Beauty and the Beast.” (“He was the fork, and I was Gaston.”) Simard met her husband, the theatre electrician Brad Robertson, eighteen years ago, on the musical “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change.” In “Company,” the martial-arts scene is interlaced with a song called “The Little Things You Do Together,” about the everyday minutiae that keep marriages healthy. Simard was partial to the line about “looks you misconstrue together.” “Brad and I call it the Disproportionate Response Game,” she said, and acted it out: “ ‘Honey, those vertical stripes look good!’ ‘Oh, because I look bad in the horizontal ones?’ ”
They filled out a questionnaire. “ ‘What would you like to achieve with our program?’ ” Simard read aloud, then wrote down, “Kick . . . Sieber’s . . . ass.” The school’s manager, Jen Sung, explained the philosophy of Brazilian jujitsu. “It really is a human game of chess,” she said. It was founded by Hélio Gracie, a petite man. “That’s why it’s made for people who are smaller and can go against bigger people.”
“Perfect!” Simard said. (Sieber towers over her, which would make kicking his ass that much funnier onstage.)
Sung ran through the basics, including the tap, the jujitsu equivalent of crying uncle. “When I tap you, it says, ‘Hey, I know you could seriously hurt me, but I respect your technique enough that I’m going to submit to you.’ And the other person says, ‘I respect that, and I’m going to let you live.’ ” It seemed like a decent metaphor for marriage, in which knowing each other’s vulnerabilities breeds trust—or mutually assured destruction. “My husband and I are both black belts,” Sung added.
Sieber and Simard changed into blue uniforms, called gis, and began stretching. An instructor named Silvio taught them “how to fall” safely: curl into a ball, arms at your side. “Now you’re going to learn how to take somebody down,” he said, and demonstrated a double-leg maneuver, in which you clutch your opponent’s thighs and hook your legs around his knees. Then he showed them a move called “Americana from mount,” in which you wrench your opponent’s arm in an unholy direction until, presumably, you get the tap. Silvio invited Simard to try it on him, and she nervously twisted his elbow. “I’m very flexible,” he assured her.
Next came the rear naked choke, in which you cling to your opponent’s back like a backpack and strangle him with your forearm. Sieber and Simard each took an instructor, and soon the foursome was rolling on the floor. They moved on to self-defense, and the other instructor, Freddy, said, “Maybe we’re in Times Square, there’s a bar. You walk there after work, and some guys have had a rough day.” He showed how to block a punch, then slide in and lift one of those bad boys on your hip, like a fanny pack.
“So someone of my size, in theory, could do that to him?” Simard asked, nodding at Sieber.
“Yeah, because it’s all about the leverage,” Freddy said.
Last, they learned some basic grip defenses—how to pry off someone’s grabby fingers. Simard was giddy. “Forget music rehearsal. We’re doing this. For hours.” She added, “The choke hold I’m excited about.” It’s the little things. ♦


newyorker--2020-01-27--Impeachment by Day, Drum Solo by Night

Impeachment by Day, Drum Solo by Night

When assembling the legal team for his Senate impeachment trial , President Trump called up some old friends : Alan Dershowitz , a lawyer for the late Jeffrey Epstein and the author of “ The Case Against Impeaching Trump ” ; Ken Starr , whom , during Bill Clinton ’ s impeachment trial , Trump referred to as a “ lunatic ” ; and two lawyers who defended the President during the Russia probe , Jane Raskin and Jay Sekulow .
“ We ’ ve got the band back together !
” Raskin said to CNN , before the hearings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ definitely the leader of the band.
” It ’ s a familiar role for Sekulow , who , for the past several years , has played drums and rhythm guitar in his own rock group , the Jay Sekulow Band .
The Jay Sekulow Band often performs on “ Jay Sekulow Live !
, ” a daily syndicated radio show hosted by Jay Sekulow and his son Jordan Sekulow .
The group does dad-band covers of classic-rock tunes , and some Christian-tinged originals .
Their version of the Doobie Brothers ’ “ Jesus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a million views on Facebook .
Their original song “ Where I Stand ” ( “ Father in Heaven hear our prayer / Strengthen your souls lost in despair ” ) has fewer .
The comments section of the band ’ s Facebook page is a mishmash of true and false : one fan thought that Sekulow was a congressman ; another identified him as a born-again Christian and the chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice .
Another wrote , “ Congas need to be up in the mix @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” The Jay Sekulow Band specializes in the timely posting of songs that function as commentaries on the news .
In October , after the story of Trump ’ s Ukraine phone call broke , Sekulow posted a video of his band performing the R. & B. classic “ I Heard It Through the Grapevine.
” The video opens with a shot of the Capitol , followed by clips of Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff talking impeachment , and one of Lindsey Graham complaining that the whole thing is based on hearsay .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ its studio ( guitars hanging on the walls , Oriental rugs ) .
Sekulow pounds away on the drums in a black T-shirt , his dark hair perfect , separated from the other band members by a glass drum shield .
And in 2016 , right after Trump tweeted that Hillary Clinton was a “ PATHOLOGICAL LIAR ” for phumphering about her use of a private e-mail server , Sekulow posted the band playing the Three Dog Night hit “ Liar.
” ( Debbie Landers , a fan who is a retired nurse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I do like how he can find a song that matches the kind of folks that he and we as a nation deal with.
” ) The whole band wails on the chorus— “ Li-ar !
” —with Sekulow crashing the cymbals each time .
Visible on his wrist , during closeups , is a Beatles edition Raymond Weil watch that has song titles where the numbers should be .
Like Trump ’ s legal team , Sekulow ’ s band was conceived as a sort of supergroup , a C-list Traveling Wilburys @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Sekulow recruited several stars from the Christian-rock scene : John Elefante , of the band Kansas ( a recent hit : “ Pass the Flame ” ) ; John Schlitt ( “ God Is Too Big ” ) , of Head East ; and Mark Lee Townsend , of DC Talk , which is a regular on the Jesus Freak Cruise .
“ Jay ’ s lineup of superstars is outstanding , ” Scott Cameron , a fan in California , said over the phone .
“ I don ’ t know @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fold .
You ’ d think these guys would be drugged-up rock stars from the seventies who are long gone , but no !
” Cameron likes to watch the band ’ s live performances on its Facebook page .
“ When you see Jay on the drums , he seems very staid , ” Cameron said .
Vance Jorgensen , a personal-injury lawyer in Iowa and Minnesota who found the band through his love of Head East , said that he has managed to separate the Jay Sekulow Band from its politics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ I respect Jay for what he ’ s put together , ” Jorgensen said .
“ He ’ s bringing in the actual guys who were doing concert tours back in the late sixties , early seventies .
Perhaps as time goes on he ’ ll get a little more comfortable , step out front , do a little singing .
Who knows ?
” Sekulow did not appear too comfortable in his first week leading Trump ’ s defense in the impeachment trial .
He was ridiculed for mischaracterizing the conclusions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the articles of impeachment themselves , and he rambled on disjointedly after mishearing a remark by the opposing counsel .
“ Trump may have hired America ’ s dumbest lawyer in Jay Sekulow , ” Jonathan Chait wrote , in New York .
And Chief Justice John Roberts , who is known to be a Bob Dylan man , admonished both legal teams for their childish behavior .
The Jay Sekulow Band is on hiatus during the impeachment trial , but perhaps Cameron , the fan in California , has the right take @ @ @ @ @ @ @ background , playing the drums , and he loves it to death—but he knows his place back there .
He ’ s no Neil Peart.
” ♦

Jay Sekulow Illustration by João Fazenda
When assembling the legal team for his Senate impeachment trial, President Trump called up some old friends: Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer for the late Jeffrey Epstein and the author of “The Case Against Impeaching Trump”; Ken Starr, whom, during Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, Trump referred to as a “lunatic”; and two lawyers who defended the President during the Russia probe, Jane Raskin and Jay Sekulow. “We’ve got the band back together!” Raskin said to CNN, before the hearings began last week. “Jay is definitely the leader of the band.”
It’s a familiar role for Sekulow, who, for the past several years, has played drums and rhythm guitar in his own rock group, the Jay Sekulow Band. The Jay Sekulow Band often performs on “Jay Sekulow Live!,” a daily syndicated radio show hosted by Jay Sekulow and his son Jordan Sekulow. The group does dad-band covers of classic-rock tunes, and some Christian-tinged originals. Their version of the Doobie Brothers’ “Jesus Is Just Alright” has more than a million views on Facebook. Their original song “Where I Stand” (“Father in Heaven hear our prayer / Strengthen your souls lost in despair”) has fewer. The comments section of the band’s Facebook page is a mishmash of true and false: one fan thought that Sekulow was a congressman; another identified him as a born-again Christian and the chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice. Another wrote, “Congas need to be up in the mix more but otherwise you guys sound great.”
The Jay Sekulow Band specializes in the timely posting of songs that function as commentaries on the news. In October, after the story of Trump’s Ukraine phone call broke, Sekulow posted a video of his band performing the R. & B. classic “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” The video opens with a shot of the Capitol, followed by clips of Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff talking impeachment, and one of Lindsey Graham complaining that the whole thing is based on hearsay. Cut to the Jay Sekulow Band in its studio (guitars hanging on the walls, Oriental rugs). Sekulow pounds away on the drums in a black T-shirt, his dark hair perfect, separated from the other band members by a glass drum shield. And in 2016, right after Trump tweeted that Hillary Clinton was a “PATHOLOGICAL LIAR” for phumphering about her use of a private e-mail server, Sekulow posted the band playing the Three Dog Night hit “Liar.” (Debbie Landers, a fan who is a retired nurse in St. Louis, said, “I do like how he can find a song that matches the kind of folks that he and we as a nation deal with.”) The whole band wails on the chorus—“Li-ar!”—with Sekulow crashing the cymbals each time. Visible on his wrist, during closeups, is a Beatles edition Raymond Weil watch that has song titles where the numbers should be.
Like Trump’s legal team, Sekulow’s band was conceived as a sort of supergroup, a C-list Traveling Wilburys. To glam up his legal-pad demeanor, Sekulow recruited several stars from the Christian-rock scene: John Elefante, of the band Kansas (a recent hit: “Pass the Flame”); John Schlitt (“God Is Too Big”), of Head East; and Mark Lee Townsend, of DC Talk, which is a regular on the Jesus Freak Cruise.
“Jay’s lineup of superstars is outstanding,” Scott Cameron, a fan in California, said over the phone. “I don’t know how he brought those guys into the fold. You’d think these guys would be drugged-up rock stars from the seventies who are long gone, but no!” Cameron likes to watch the band’s live performances on its Facebook page. “When you see Jay on the drums, he seems very staid,” Cameron said.
Vance Jorgensen, a personal-injury lawyer in Iowa and Minnesota who found the band through his love of Head East, said that he has managed to separate the Jay Sekulow Band from its politics. He just likes the songs. “I respect Jay for what he’s put together,” Jorgensen said. “He’s bringing in the actual guys who were doing concert tours back in the late sixties, early seventies. Perhaps as time goes on he’ll get a little more comfortable, step out front, do a little singing. Who knows?”
Sekulow did not appear too comfortable in his first week leading Trump’s defense in the impeachment trial. He was ridiculed for mischaracterizing the conclusions of the Mueller report and for garbling the articles of impeachment themselves, and he rambled on disjointedly after mishearing a remark by the opposing counsel. “Trump may have hired America’s dumbest lawyer in Jay Sekulow,” Jonathan Chait wrote, in New York. And Chief Justice John Roberts, who is known to be a Bob Dylan man, admonished both legal teams for their childish behavior.
The Jay Sekulow Band is on hiatus during the impeachment trial, but perhaps Cameron, the fan in California, has the right take: “You see Jay in the background, playing the drums, and he loves it to death—but he knows his place back there. He’s no Neil Peart.” ♦