newyorker--2020-06-30--Should Billy Joe Wardlow Be Executed for a Crime Committed When He Was Eighteen?

Billy Joe Wardlow , who is forty-five and has been on death row in Texas since he was twenty , is scheduled to be executed on July 8th .
When he was eighteen , he shot and killed an eighty-two-year-old man named Carl Cole , while stealing Cole ’ s truck from his home , in the poor hamlet of Cason , in northeast Texas .
At his trial , in 1995 , Wardlow testified that he had intended to intimidate Cole , not kill him , when he brandished a .45-calibre pistol he had stolen from his mother .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Wardlow fired the gun , shooting Cole between the eyes .
A jury convicted Wardlow of capital murder and sentenced him to death .
Until then , he had never committed a violent offense .
To sentence him to death in Texas , the jury had to decide that he “ would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society ” : in other words , the jury had to predict that he would be dangerous in the future .
Wardlow has petitioned the Supreme Court to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Court to consider whether the Texas death-penalty statute is unconstitutional as it was applied to him—and to forty-four other people on the state ’ s death row who , like him , were sentenced for crimes committed when they were under twenty-one .
The heart of the argument is that a person ’ s brain continues to develop until he is in his early twenties and , as a result , so does his character .
The petition points to recent neuroscientific research , which has established that a young adult ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ capacity to manage emotions , which can make an individual act impulsively and impetuously , obtuse about risks and consequences .
That also gives a young adult more potential for reform than an adult .
It ’ s not possible to predict that a young person who committed a violent crime is likely to commit another .
I heard about Billy Joe Wardlow and his case in 2017 , from the lawyer handling his appeals , Richard Burr , when we each gave talks about the death penalty at the University of Texas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The American Scholar this winter , the more I learned about Wardlow and the case , the more convinced I became that the legal system has wronged Wardlow repeatedly , especially in sentencing him to death .
A year ago , I interviewed Wardlow on death row in Texas .
He wept as he recounted the minutes leading up to the moment he killed Carl Cole .
Wardlow told me , “ A terrified old man and a terrified kid .
And the old man was winning .
And when he started to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I can remember I put my finger into the trigger , and pulled the trigger , ” so that Cole would back off .
Wardlow repeated to me what he had testified at his trial .
He didn ’ t aim at Cole .
He didn ’ t mean to hit him with a bullet .
“ I didn ’ t mean to shoot him , ” he said .
“ I didn ’ t mean to do it.
” Neuroscientists describe Wardlow ’ s heightened state when he fired the gun @ @ @ @ @ @ @ threat ” —when a person is on alert that something bad could happen to him , even if the threat is as minor as an unpleasantly loud noise .
With that feeling , young adults become more impulsive and more likely to take risks .
B. J. Casey , a psychology professor at Yale who specializes in neurodevelopment , explained that , with recent developments in brain-imaging technology , researchers have been able to see in real time how young adults react to such threats , and have found that their brain activity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
An important amicus brief , on behalf of leading experts in developmental neuroscience , neuropsychology , brain imagining , and other related fields , repeats this point : “ It is impossible for experts to distinguish whether an emerging adult who engages in risky or impulsive behavior is merely evincing a neurological immaturity or , rather , exhibiting signs of a dangerous future.
” Fifteen years ago , in the landmark case Roper v. Simmons , the Supreme Court for the first time relied on the science of human development as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ case , the Court barred the death penalty for anyone who was under eighteen when they committed their crime , on the grounds that adolescent offenders are typically less mature , less blameworthy , and less deserving of punishment .
“ From a moral standpoint , ” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the Court , “ it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult , for a greater possibility exists that a minor ’ s character deficiencies will be reformed.
” In general , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not with reliability be classified among the worst offenders , ” for whom the death penalty is reserved .
The Court has since extended its reliance on the growing body of research about the adolescent brain .
In 2010 , it prohibited sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole for juveniles in crimes in which no one is killed , on the grounds that the limited blameworthiness of the juvenile offender made the sentence cruel and unusual .
Two years later , it prohibited all mandatory juvenile-life-without-parole sentences , even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2016 , it applied the rule about homicide retroactively , making more than two thousand prisoners eligible for resentencing or parole .
Justice Kennedy wrote then that prisoners “ must be given the opportunity to show their crime did not reflect irreparable corruption ; and , if it did not , their hope for some years of life outside prison walls must be restored.
” Wardlow was an impulsive and hotheaded young man when he committed his crime .
Five months earlier , he had dropped out of high school just a few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ credits away from earning his diploma .
He had moved briefly to Fort Worth , where he did odd jobs .
After moving back to Cason , Wardlow was desperate to leave again .
He said at his trial , about the moment he shot Cole , “ I stood there , I didn ’ t know what to do , everything had gone wrong , the plans had blown up.
” In the quarter century he has spent largely in solitary confinement , he has demonstrated that the jury was wrong to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He is now a thoughtful and responsible man—a man of good and admirable character .
As Brant Bingamon wrote last week in the Austin Chronicle , Wardlow has become “ a caretaker ” on death row , “ known for counseling prisoners having emotional trouble , fixing their typewriters , and scrubbing the showers to bring them to his personal level of cleanliness.
” In a letter to me about Wardlow , Tony Egbuna Ford , one of his friends on death row , emphasized , “ Billy IS one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ here .
And it is my deepest hope and prayer , that he is able to live his life , and not be another statistic for the Texas death penalty.
” With Wardlow ’ s execution scheduled for July 8th , the Supreme Court must rule before then on his request for a stay , perhaps this week .
He wrote to me in May : “ I want to cause no more harm .
I want to erase the pain I ’ ve inflicted on others .
I want to be someone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I want to be useful to those I love .
I want to be someone others look up to and respect , like my dad or Mandy ” —Mandy Welch , one of his current lawyers .
“ I want to wipe away the taint of my past .
I realize this isn ’ t an eloquent answer , but it is about as close as I can come to explaining what drives me to keep going .
”

Billy Joe Wardlow, who is forty-five and has been on death row in Texas since he was twenty, is scheduled to be executed on July 8th. When he was eighteen, he shot and killed an eighty-two-year-old man named Carl Cole, while stealing Cole’s truck from his home, in the poor hamlet of Cason, in northeast Texas.
At his trial, in 1995, Wardlow testified that he had intended to intimidate Cole, not kill him, when he brandished a .45-calibre pistol he had stolen from his mother. Cole grabbed Wardlow’s arm, and Wardlow fired the gun, shooting Cole between the eyes. A jury convicted Wardlow of capital murder and sentenced him to death. Until then, he had never committed a violent offense. To sentence him to death in Texas, the jury had to decide that he “would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society”: in other words, the jury had to predict that he would be dangerous in the future.
Wardlow has petitioned the Supreme Court to stay his execution. He is asking the Court to consider whether the Texas death-penalty statute is unconstitutional as it was applied to him—and to forty-four other people on the state’s death row who, like him, were sentenced for crimes committed when they were under twenty-one. The heart of the argument is that a person’s brain continues to develop until he is in his early twenties and, as a result, so does his character. The petition points to recent neuroscientific research, which has established that a young adult’s brain has not fully evolved the capacity to manage emotions, which can make an individual act impulsively and impetuously, obtuse about risks and consequences. That also gives a young adult more potential for reform than an adult. It’s not possible to predict that a young person who committed a violent crime is likely to commit another.
I heard about Billy Joe Wardlow and his case in 2017, from the lawyer handling his appeals, Richard Burr, when we each gave talks about the death penalty at the University of Texas Law School. As I wrote in The American Scholar this winter, the more I learned about Wardlow and the case, the more convinced I became that the legal system has wronged Wardlow repeatedly, especially in sentencing him to death.
A year ago, I interviewed Wardlow on death row in Texas. He wept as he recounted the minutes leading up to the moment he killed Carl Cole. Wardlow told me, “A terrified old man and a terrified kid. And the old man was winning. And when he started to take the gun out of my hand, I can remember I put my finger into the trigger, and pulled the trigger,” so that Cole would back off. Wardlow repeated to me what he had testified at his trial. He didn’t aim at Cole. He didn’t mean to hit him with a bullet. “I didn’t mean to shoot him,” he said. “I didn’t mean to do it.”
Neuroscientists describe Wardlow’s heightened state when he fired the gun as a reaction to a “potential threat”—when a person is on alert that something bad could happen to him, even if the threat is as minor as an unpleasantly loud noise. With that feeling, young adults become more impulsive and more likely to take risks. B. J. Casey, a psychology professor at Yale who specializes in neurodevelopment, explained that, with recent developments in brain-imaging technology, researchers have been able to see in real time how young adults react to such threats, and have found that their brain activity is similar to that of younger teens. An important amicus brief, on behalf of leading experts in developmental neuroscience, neuropsychology, brain imagining, and other related fields, repeats this point: “It is impossible for experts to distinguish whether an emerging adult who engages in risky or impulsive behavior is merely evincing a neurological immaturity or, rather, exhibiting signs of a dangerous future.”
Fifteen years ago, in the landmark case Roper v. Simmons, the Supreme Court for the first time relied on the science of human development as the foundation for a decision. In that case, the Court barred the death penalty for anyone who was under eighteen when they committed their crime, on the grounds that adolescent offenders are typically less mature, less blameworthy, and less deserving of punishment. “From a moral standpoint,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the Court, “it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor’s character deficiencies will be reformed.” In general, he added, “juvenile offenders cannot with reliability be classified among the worst offenders,” for whom the death penalty is reserved.
The Court has since extended its reliance on the growing body of research about the adolescent brain. In 2010, it prohibited sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole for juveniles in crimes in which no one is killed, on the grounds that the limited blameworthiness of the juvenile offender made the sentence cruel and unusual. Two years later, it prohibited all mandatory juvenile-life-without-parole sentences, even if the crime was homicide. In 2016, it applied the rule about homicide retroactively, making more than two thousand prisoners eligible for resentencing or parole. Justice Kennedy wrote then that prisoners “must be given the opportunity to show their crime did not reflect irreparable corruption; and, if it did not, their hope for some years of life outside prison walls must be restored.”
Wardlow was an impulsive and hotheaded young man when he committed his crime. Five months earlier, he had dropped out of high school just a few months before graduation and only a few credits away from earning his diploma. He had moved briefly to Fort Worth, where he did odd jobs. After moving back to Cason, Wardlow was desperate to leave again. He said at his trial, about the moment he shot Cole, “I stood there, I didn’t know what to do, everything had gone wrong, the plans had blown up.”
In the quarter century he has spent largely in solitary confinement, he has demonstrated that the jury was wrong to predict that he posed a future danger.
He is now a thoughtful and responsible man—a man of good and admirable character. As Brant Bingamon wrote last week in the Austin Chronicle, Wardlow has become “a caretaker” on death row, “known for counseling prisoners having emotional trouble, fixing their typewriters, and scrubbing the showers to bring them to his personal level of cleanliness.” In a letter to me about Wardlow, Tony Egbuna Ford, one of his friends on death row, emphasized, “Billy IS one of the good guys. Billy DOES NOT belong here. And it is my deepest hope and prayer, that he is able to live his life, and not be another statistic for the Texas death penalty.”
With Wardlow’s execution scheduled for July 8th, the Supreme Court must rule before then on his request for a stay, perhaps this week. He wrote to me in May: “I want to cause no more harm. I want to erase the pain I’ve inflicted on others. I want to be someone those I respect would be proud of. I want to be useful to those I love. I want to be someone others look up to and respect, like my dad or Mandy”—Mandy Welch, one of his current lawyers. “I want to wipe away the taint of my past. I realize this isn’t an eloquent answer, but it is about as close as I can come to explaining what drives me to keep going.”


newyorker--2020-06-30--The Messy Politics of Black Voices—and “Black Voice”—in American Animation

It was 1948 or so , and the comedy duo Freeman F. Gosden and Charles J. Correll faced a dilemma .
Radio was no longer the nation ’ s dominant form of entertainment , and Gosden and Correll ’ s long-running program , “ Amos ’ n ’ Andy , ” about a pair of Southern migrants making their way in Chicago , had lost its pizzazz , growing hokey and hemmed in by the late-stage half-hour format .
It was time to transition to the burgeoning medium of television , and the pair had a lucrative deal lined up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Columbia Broadcasting System .
But how to translate the aural alchemy of their radio show—which , in its twenty-year run , had amassed a mixed-race audience of millions in segregated America—to television ?
Both men were white , while Amos and Andy were black .
Gosden and Correll toyed with the idea of retaining their titular roles in sound but not in body—they would hire black actors as their avatars and dub over the performers ’ voices with their own—but , in the end , simply sought black actors who could perform serviceable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If we can find actors with suitable voices , we ’ ll let them do the talking , ” Gosden said , in a 1948 interview .
The “ Amos ’ n ’ Andy ” television show , starring the luminous performers Alvin Childress , Tim Moore , and Ernestine Wade ( reprising her role from radio ) , ran in prime time for two seasons before going into syndication for a little more than a decade .
Audiences liked the show well enough , but it failed to replicate the enormous success @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to capture the American imagination as thoroughly onscreen .
Last Wednesday , two white actors announced that they would be taking leave from the black animated characters they had been voicing .
The first was Jenny Slate , who played the breathy , bright-eyed , and horny Missy Foreman-Greenwald for four seasons of the animated comedy “ Big Mouth.
” ( Season 4 has not yet been released . )
In a statement posted on Instagram , Slate explained that although she once thought it “ permissible ” to play Missy “ because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ —as Slate herself is—Missy “ is also Black , ” and “ Black characters on an animated show should be played by Black people.
” Later the same evening , Kristen Bell posted a statement from the team behind “ Central Park , ” stating that Bell would relinquish her character , Molly Tillerman , another animated daughter of an interracial marriage .
It read , “ Kristen , along with the entire creative team , recognizes that the casting of the character of Molly is an opportunity to get representation right—to cast @ @ @ @ @ @ @ give Molly a voice that resonates with all of the nuance and experiences of the character as we ’ ve drawn her.
” The announcements continued thusly throughout the week .
Mike Henry , a white voice actor on “ Family Guy , ” tweeted that “ persons of color should play characters of color , ” ending his twenty-one-year run as the voice of Cleveland , Peter Griffin ’ s high-talking black friend , who ’ d inspired his own spinoff show .
“ The Simpsons , ” by now well versed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , will , according to a statement released on Friday , “ no longer have white actors voice non-white characters.
” American animation , populated by sentient foodstuffs and puttied humanoids , has often been considered exempt from the country ’ s prejudices—an understandable , if convenient , fantasy of exceeding real life ’ s doldrums .
In fact , it is a genre built on the marble and mud of racial signification .
Much like vaudeville and the sitcom , and the American stage and screen writ large , the business of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cross-racial desire , also known as minstrelsy .
If you ’ ve ever wondered why our looniest ’ toons wear enormous buttons and have outsize gloves for hands , take a look at Zip Coon , the uppity black dandy whose formal attire only served to accentuate the uncouthness of his character .
Scholars such as Christopher P. Lehman , the author of “ The Colored Cartoon , ” and Nicholas Sammond , the author of “ Birth of an Industry , ” have pointed out that the sartorial inheritance is more than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cartoons were always borrowed from the minstrel ’ s stage , even as the minstrel himself faded as a staple of mass culture in the twentieth century .
In Walt Disney ’ s first sound film , “ Steamboat Willie , ” a proto-Minnie Mouse cranks the tail of a guitar-chomping goat , whose gaping mouth reproduces the popular minstrel tune “ Turkey and the Straw , ” while Mickey shuffles along .
But while early cartoons had a penchant for the sights and sounds of black masquerade , along with traditionally black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ behind .
“ Because animators struggled to draw the movement of a figure ’ s mouth accurately , unintelligibly pronounced ‘ Negro dialect ’ would have been an especially formidable challenge to them , ” Lehman writes .
Animators would catch up , of course , as the jive-talking murder of Jim Crows in Disney ’ s “ Dumbo , ” from 1941 , can affirm .
But most cartoons had , and still have , a bit of jive-talking to them—a feature , like their general unruliness , yoked to stereotypes of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a far cry from any kind of real investment in black people , in black art and black artists and talent , of course .
Conversations about representation in animation tend to focus on gender disparities , studying the content of stories featuring female protagonists ( who are mostly white ) and noting the scant presence of women ( also mostly white ) in directorial or otherwise substantial creative roles .
Discussions of race and ethnicity , meanwhile , are usually preoccupied with the few characters of color who are most visible—the grievance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s one black princess spent most of her movie as a frog .
( I was reminded how shallow the pool of human black characters is , recently , when I attempted to find my cartoon doppelgänger to participate in the “ cartoon me ” meme circulating on Twitter . )
Already more financially precarious than live-action television and film , the animation industry has been more liberal about casting white actors to play black characters than it has been about hiring black actors to play anybody at all .
It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ black voice actors—Regina King , James Earl Jones , Keith David—established careers elsewhere before stepping into the sound booth .
It would be folly , though , to ask that the categories of creator and creation—cartoonists and actors , writers and characters—align neatly .
Cree Summer , a black voice actor whose dominance in the field rivals that of Mel Blanc , has delighted as a mercurial lavender poodle and a tiny-toons tot , a ponytailed teen bully and an Atlantean princess , plus at least a hundred more characters , some black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ power of a voice that seems to come from nowhere—it can become anything .
Phil LaMarr may voice the dubiously Jamaican character on “ Futurama , ” but he is also Samurai Jack and Wilt , my personal favorite , the long-legged , siren-red imaginary friend who plays basketball—a character who is not black but also totally black .
Revisiting his memorable roles in an interview with Vanity Fair , LaMarr spoke about being passed over for the role of Aqualad , a queer black superhero , on Cartoon Network ’ s “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the role of Aquaman on the series instead .
“ I ’ m , like , Oh , I get to be black Aquaman .
Nope , nope , regular Aquaman .
”

It was 1948 or so, and the comedy duo Freeman F. Gosden and Charles J. Correll faced a dilemma. Radio was no longer the nation’s dominant form of entertainment, and Gosden and Correll’s long-running program, “Amos ’n’ Andy,” about a pair of Southern migrants making their way in Chicago, had lost its pizzazz, growing hokey and hemmed in by the late-stage half-hour format. It was time to transition to the burgeoning medium of television, and the pair had a lucrative deal lined up with William S. Paley, of the Columbia Broadcasting System. But how to translate the aural alchemy of their radio show—which, in its twenty-year run, had amassed a mixed-race audience of millions in segregated America—to television? Both men were white, while Amos and Andy were black. Gosden and Correll toyed with the idea of retaining their titular roles in sound but not in body—they would hire black actors as their avatars and dub over the performers’ voices with their own—but, in the end, simply sought black actors who could perform serviceable impressions of their fictional Negroes. “If we can find actors with suitable voices, we’ll let them do the talking,” Gosden said, in a 1948 interview. The “Amos ’n’ Andy” television show, starring the luminous performers Alvin Childress, Tim Moore, and Ernestine Wade (reprising her role from radio), ran in prime time for two seasons before going into syndication for a little more than a decade. Audiences liked the show well enough, but it failed to replicate the enormous success of its radio predecessor, apparently unable to capture the American imagination as thoroughly onscreen.
Last Wednesday, two white actors announced that they would be taking leave from the black animated characters they had been voicing. The first was Jenny Slate, who played the breathy, bright-eyed, and horny Missy Foreman-Greenwald for four seasons of the animated comedy “Big Mouth.” (Season 4 has not yet been released.) In a statement posted on Instagram, Slate explained that although she once thought it “permissible” to play Missy “because her mom is Jewish and White”—as Slate herself is—Missy “is also Black,” and “Black characters on an animated show should be played by Black people.” Later the same evening, Kristen Bell posted a statement from the team behind “Central Park,” stating that Bell would relinquish her character, Molly Tillerman, another animated daughter of an interracial marriage. It read, “Kristen, along with the entire creative team, recognizes that the casting of the character of Molly is an opportunity to get representation right—to cast a Black or mixed race actress and give Molly a voice that resonates with all of the nuance and experiences of the character as we’ve drawn her.” The announcements continued thusly throughout the week. Mike Henry, a white voice actor on “Family Guy,” tweeted that “persons of color should play characters of color,” ending his twenty-one-year run as the voice of Cleveland, Peter Griffin’s high-talking black friend, who’d inspired his own spinoff show. “The Simpsons,” by now well versed in the subject of impertinent white voices, will, according to a statement released on Friday, “no longer have white actors voice non-white characters.”
American animation, populated by sentient foodstuffs and puttied humanoids, has often been considered exempt from the country’s prejudices—an understandable, if convenient, fantasy of exceeding real life’s doldrums. In fact, it is a genre built on the marble and mud of racial signification. Much like vaudeville and the sitcom, and the American stage and screen writ large, the business of cartoons emerged from the performative tradition of cross-racial desire, also known as minstrelsy. If you’ve ever wondered why our looniest ’toons wear enormous buttons and have outsize gloves for hands, take a look at Zip Coon, the uppity black dandy whose formal attire only served to accentuate the uncouthness of his character. Scholars such as Christopher P. Lehman, the author of “The Colored Cartoon,” and Nicholas Sammond, the author of “Birth of an Industry,” have pointed out that the sartorial inheritance is more than cosmetic: the manners and antics of cartoons were always borrowed from the minstrel’s stage, even as the minstrel himself faded as a staple of mass culture in the twentieth century. In Walt Disney’s first sound film, “Steamboat Willie,” a proto-Minnie Mouse cranks the tail of a guitar-chomping goat, whose gaping mouth reproduces the popular minstrel tune “Turkey and the Straw,” while Mickey shuffles along. But while early cartoons had a penchant for the sights and sounds of black masquerade, along with traditionally black musical forms, the black voice lagged behind. “Because animators struggled to draw the movement of a figure’s mouth accurately, unintelligibly pronounced ‘Negro dialect’ would have been an especially formidable challenge to them,” Lehman writes. Animators would catch up, of course, as the jive-talking murder of Jim Crows in Disney’s “Dumbo,” from 1941, can affirm. But most cartoons had, and still have, a bit of jive-talking to them—a feature, like their general unruliness, yoked to stereotypes of the Negro.
All of this is a far cry from any kind of real investment in black people, in black art and black artists and talent, of course. Conversations about representation in animation tend to focus on gender disparities, studying the content of stories featuring female protagonists (who are mostly white) and noting the scant presence of women (also mostly white) in directorial or otherwise substantial creative roles. Discussions of race and ethnicity, meanwhile, are usually preoccupied with the few characters of color who are most visible—the grievance, for instance, that Disney’s one black princess spent most of her movie as a frog. (I was reminded how shallow the pool of human black characters is, recently, when I attempted to find my cartoon doppelgänger to participate in the “cartoon me” meme circulating on Twitter.) Already more financially precarious than live-action television and film, the animation industry has been more liberal about casting white actors to play black characters than it has been about hiring black actors to play anybody at all. It’s telling that a good portion of known black voice actors—Regina King, James Earl Jones, Keith David—established careers elsewhere before stepping into the sound booth.
It would be folly, though, to ask that the categories of creator and creation—cartoonists and actors, writers and characters—align neatly. Cree Summer, a black voice actor whose dominance in the field rivals that of Mel Blanc, has delighted as a mercurial lavender poodle and a tiny-toons tot, a ponytailed teen bully and an Atlantean princess, plus at least a hundred more characters, some black and some not. Such is the power of a voice that seems to come from nowhere—it can become anything. Phil LaMarr may voice the dubiously Jamaican character on “Futurama,” but he is also Samurai Jack and Wilt, my personal favorite, the long-legged, siren-red imaginary friend who plays basketball—a character who is not black but also totally black. Revisiting his memorable roles in an interview with Vanity Fair, LaMarr spoke about being passed over for the role of Aqualad, a queer black superhero, on Cartoon Network’s “Young Justice,” but being offered the role of Aquaman on the series instead. “I’m, like, Oh, I get to be black Aquaman. Nope, nope, regular Aquaman.”
The idea of a “black voice” is tricky, anyhow. Marked dialect, so often relied on as a substitute for actual character traits, has been rebuked and remade again and again by black writers in the American literary canon. Richard Wright, talking out of turn in a review of Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” was scandalized that “Miss Hurston” would “voluntarily” write dialogue reminiscent of, in his evaluation, “the minstrel technique.” In her study of the “Characteristics of Negro Expression,” however, Hurston rebuked the idea of a stable, stereotypical black vernacular. “If we are to believe the majority of writers of Negro dialect and the burnt-cork artists, Negro speech is a weird thing,” she writes. “Fortunately, we don’t have to believe them.” George Schuyler, who went toe to toe with Langston Hughes on the question of a blackened art tradition, rejected black speech outright in his novel “Black No More,” in which black people blend into white society with the help of a race-changing procedure. In the contemporary novel “Erasure,” by Percival Everett, a black author with little faith in race as culture has a massive seizure, besieged by visions of “Native Son and The Color Purple and Amos and Andy,” and hurls up a novella written in eye dialect, which propels him to mainstream recognition.
Meanwhile, in real life, or something like it, pop-cultural celebrities from Billie Eilish to Awkwafina have attracted insistent skepticism with their “blaccents,” or put-on black voices, a critique that coexists awkwardly with another commonly heard refrain: that black people, and black voices, are “not a monolith” in ideological, cultural, or linguistic terms. But the notion that “the Aframerican is merely a lampblacked Anglo-Saxon,” as Schuyler puts it, indistinguishable in art or language from our nearest whites, is as unsatisfying as it is provocative. Even if our idea of a “black voice” ought not to register as anything stable or essential, there is something recognizable about the voices we call black, particularly when the people using them are not black themselves. In that case, what’s perceived is not a black voice but the want of one. Perhaps that is the sound of black voice: the sound of want.
Studios should contract more black people—or rather, endow more black talent. This is what’s meant when people call, in animation and elsewhere, for more black voices. But suturing the visual to the sonic, and animated characters to the talent behind them, limits animation’s power to transcend the borders of the flesh. “Early in my career, white directors would ask me to make a read ‘blacker,’ to which I would reply, ‘Would you ever ask a white actor to make it ‘whiter’?” the voice actor Dave Fennoy told Vice, in 2016. The requests for black characters to be voiced by black actors and for black characters to have blacker voices are more alike than not—one could argue that Amos and Andy were better minstrels when embodied by black actors than when voiced by two white men. In the end, the well-meaning statements of Slate and Bell and the others, like so many in this time, answer calls for justice with a promise to blacken up bourgeois workplaces. There is every chance that, in so doing, they are simply helping to forge a new set of racial terms to gird what black is and what it ain’t.


newyorker--2020-06-30--Trump Did Not Read Taliban Brief Because He Was Busy Not Reading Coronavirus Brief

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —Donald Trump did not read a Presidential Daily Brief about Russia paying Taliban militants to attack U.S. troops because he was busy not reading a Presidential Daily Brief about the coronavirus , the White House said on Monday .
Kayleigh McEnany , the White House press secretary , angrily accused reporters of being “ totally unaware ” of just how much Trump has to not read in a given day .
“ Day in , day out , the President has to ignore briefs on a wide range of subjects , ” McEnany said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ box is overflowing.
” “ I ’ d like to see any of you try to not read all of that stuff , ” she said .
“ It isn ’ t easy , especially when the briefs have words like ‘ URGENT ’ and ‘ MUST READ ’ stamped in big red letters on them.
” After lashing out at the press , McEnany saved her most blistering remarks for the authors of the Presidential Daily Briefs themselves .
“ Anyone who expects this President to find out something important by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” she said .

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald Trump did not read a Presidential Daily Brief about Russia paying Taliban militants to attack U.S. troops because he was busy not reading a Presidential Daily Brief about the coronavirus, the White House said on Monday.
Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, angrily accused reporters of being “totally unaware” of just how much Trump has to not read in a given day.
“Day in, day out, the President has to ignore briefs on a wide range of subjects,” McEnany said. “His ‘Do Not Read’ box is overflowing.”
“I’d like to see any of you try to not read all of that stuff,” she said. “It isn’t easy, especially when the briefs have words like ‘URGENT’ and ‘MUST READ’ stamped in big red letters on them.”
After lashing out at the press, McEnany saved her most blistering remarks for the authors of the Presidential Daily Briefs themselves. “Anyone who expects this President to find out something important by reading does not know Donald Trump,” she said.


newyorker--2020-06-30--Hari Kunzru Reads “A Transparent Woman”

Hari Kunzru Reads “A Transparent Woman”

Hari Kunzru reads his story from the July 6 & 13 , 2020 , issue of the magazine .
Kunzru @ @ @ @ @ novels , including “ Gods Without Men ” and “ White Tears.
” A new @ @ @ @ @ , ” from which this story was adapted , will be published in September .

Photograph by David Levenson / Getty
Hari Kunzru reads his story from the July 6 & 13, 2020, issue of the magazine. Kunzru is the author of five novels, including “Gods Without Men” and “White Tears.” A new novel, “Red Pill,” from which this story was adapted, will be published in September.


newyorker--2020-06-29--Milton Glaser Made You Look Once, Think Twice

The greatest artistic fame might be the kind where few people know your name but everyone knows your work , because it feels as inevitable to the everyday culture as fire or the wheel .
The fact that one person had to invent it from nothing gets forgotten , or overlooked , as the work becomes part of our shared visual lexicon .
There aren ’ t many artists who get to see such a process happen during their lifetime , but Milton Glaser , the polymathic graphic designer , illustrator , and artist , who died last week , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
During the past several decades , anyone walking down Canal Street couldn ’ t have missed the sidewalk stalls stuffed with products bearing his “ I ♥ NY ” design : counterfeit T-shirts , onesies , hoodies , license plates , anything , really , emblazoned with the three slightly lopsided letters and the bright-red heart .
Especially after 9/11 , when it was embraced as a hopeful message , the logo was not just fodder for tourists but an omnipresent symbol for the city itself , as familiar and iconic as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the first draft of the logo in the back of a cab , in 1976 , red ink on a scrap of envelope ; the sketch is now , fittingly , in the possession of the Museum of Modern Art .
He made it for a marketing campaign for New York State , in 1977 , which was a tricky moment for the city in particular—it didn ’ t seem very lovable .
In the final design , the typeface is American Typewriter , friendly and approachable , with a cartoonish cast ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ N ” ) that was Glaser ’ s signature , as if he anticipated the logo ’ s ascendance as kitsch .
Its stacked format recalls the artist Robert Indiana ’ s 1966 LOVE screenprint ; Glaser admitted that he may have been “ subliminally ” inspired , but why quibble over ownership or originality ?
Both creations are endlessly remixed memes , gifts from the artists to the rest of civilization .
Glaser knew New York City .
He was born in the Bronx in 1929 , the son of Hungarian-Jewish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ School of Music & Art , and landed downtown at Cooper Union , a university that emphasizes both technical mastery and unorthodox creative leaps , a very Glaserian combination .
After college , he studied in Italy with the painter Giorgio Morandi , an ascetic craftsman of still-lifes .
Glaser made his reputation with Push Pin Studios , a design agency that he started in 1954 , with his Cooper Union classmates Reynold Ruffins , Seymour Chwast , and Edward Sorel .
Push Pin began putting out a monthly publication called Push Pin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s services , but it quickly became influential in its own right .
The early issues are full of typographic experiments and Surrealist illustrations , leaning more toward the sketchy strokes of Paul Klee than the clean-lined modernism of the time .
Glaser ’ s work combined a deep , intimate knowledge of art history with an appealing Pop sensibility : anything was fair game , high or low .
His famous 1966 poster of Bob Dylan mingles an obscure Marcel Duchamp reference—Duchamp made similar silhouettes of his own profile from cut @ @ @ @ @ @ @ painting , in Dylan ’ s psychedelic wave of hair .
Yet pure artistry was never Glaser ’ s primary purpose ; graphic design ’ s job was to communicate .
“ The professional requirement to succeed demands that the work be both understandable and motivating to its target audience , ” Glaser wrote , in his book “ In Search of the Miraculous , ” published in 2012 .
Throughout his work , he exhibited a drive to connect with viewers and reach them wherever they were .
In 1968 , Glaser @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York .
It ’ s hard to think of a better vehicle for communication than a magazine , and Glaser ’ s dynamic layouts and electric illustrations created meaning as much as the writings they accompanied ( to which he also contributed ) .
His covers for the magazine addressed drugs , gossip , sex , summer , and food , often in cartoonish but unsentimental drawings , like Old Master etchings for the twentieth century .
His interest in the exaggerated and grotesque reminds me of the later paintings of Philip Guston @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a classical sensibility .
Vanity Fair described Glaser as a “ visual architect , ” which is more apt than any narrower label—he created a whole world .
Through his eponymous firm , started in 1974 , and with collaborators , he designed rug patterns ; book covers , including for Tom Wolfe ’ s “ The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test ” ; three-dimensional installations , like the sculpture atop the School of Visual Arts Theatre , in Chelsea , a piece that referenced Vladimir Tatlin ’ s “ Monument to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countless logos , including Brooklyn Brewery ’ s ; and new looks for dozens of magazines .
It might be his posters , however , that best encapsulate Glaser ’ s core aesthetic accomplishment .
The intricate handiwork of his illustrations is incorporated into abstract frameworks that function with the utmost efficiency—like a vintage sports car installed with a new motor .
Content is inextricable from form .
You can look at each image for a second and get the message , or you can gaze for many minutes in rapt appreciation of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ layers of contextual meaning .
He continually used that skill to tackle the pressing issues of the previous half century .
Design must be ethical : “ If the practice is , in fact , involved in communicating ideas , then you have to be responsible for what you ’ re communicating , ” Glaser said , in an interview in his 2005 book , “ The Design of Dissent.
” In an AIDS poster he designed for the World Health Organization , in 1987 , a blue skull forms in the overlap @ @ @ @ @ @ @ slogan “ A worldwide effort will stop it.
” In 2014 , he launched a campaign about climate change , attempting to shift our vocabulary : “ It ’ s not warming , it ’ s dying.
” The icon is a circle with a gradient from black at the top to a sliver of sickly green at the bottom .
It ’ s nauseating , as it should be .
Looking back over Glaser ’ s colorful , textured career , it becomes clear how anemic the dominant commercial graphic design of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ ve experienced a wave of flattened , pastel-colored , thinly outlined graphics for every Silicon Valley startup , from Casper to Away , Uber , and Hinge .
Generic humans are seen undertaking tasks made convenient by the companies ’ apps ; the aesthetic promotes a seamlessness that separates us from worldly concerns like surveillance , ethics , or politics .
The illustrations encourage us to consume rather than to think , let alone to think twice .
They do not , in the slightest , take responsibility for what they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Graphic design alone can ’ t solve problems , but it can help push us out of a stultifying conformity .
Despite being commercial , Glaser ’ s work managed to transcend commodification .
Today , the state generates thirty million dollars a year through licensing “ I ♥ NY ” ; Glaser kept no rights to his design .
And the logo has a message more capacious than its literal meaning .
Whenever I saw its endless replications on Canal Street , I felt that it was about belonging and plenitude .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; over the years , I grew to feel that I loved the city as a New Yorker .
Anyone could love it if they gave it their attention , the logo suggested—we all can at once .

Glaser scrawled the first draft of the “I ♥ NY” logo in the back of a cab. Photograph by Axel Dupeux / Redux
The greatest artistic fame might be the kind where few people know your name but everyone knows your work, because it feels as inevitable to the everyday culture as fire or the wheel. The fact that one person had to invent it from nothing gets forgotten, or overlooked, as the work becomes part of our shared visual lexicon. There aren’t many artists who get to see such a process happen during their lifetime, but Milton Glaser, the polymathic graphic designer, illustrator, and artist, who died last week, at the age of ninety-one, did. During the past several decades, anyone walking down Canal Street couldn’t have missed the sidewalk stalls stuffed with products bearing his “I ♥ NY” design: counterfeit T-shirts, onesies, hoodies, license plates, anything, really, emblazoned with the three slightly lopsided letters and the bright-red heart. Especially after 9/11, when it was embraced as a hopeful message, the logo was not just fodder for tourists but an omnipresent symbol for the city itself, as familiar and iconic as the Empire State Building.
Glaser scrawled the first draft of the logo in the back of a cab, in 1976, red ink on a scrap of envelope; the sketch is now, fittingly, in the possession of the Museum of Modern Art. He made it for a marketing campaign for New York State, in 1977, which was a tricky moment for the city in particular—it didn’t seem very lovable. In the final design, the typeface is American Typewriter, friendly and approachable, with a cartoonish cast (notice the rounded bent knee of the “N”) that was Glaser’s signature, as if he anticipated the logo’s ascendance as kitsch. Its stacked format recalls the artist Robert Indiana’s 1966 LOVE screenprint; Glaser admitted that he may have been “subliminally” inspired, but why quibble over ownership or originality? Both creations are endlessly remixed memes, gifts from the artists to the rest of civilization.
Glaser knew New York City. He was born in the Bronx in 1929, the son of Hungarian-Jewish immigrants, attended Manhattan’s High School of Music & Art, and landed downtown at Cooper Union, a university that emphasizes both technical mastery and unorthodox creative leaps, a very Glaserian combination. After college, he studied in Italy with the painter Giorgio Morandi, an ascetic craftsman of still-lifes. Glaser made his reputation with Push Pin Studios, a design agency that he started in 1954, with his Cooper Union classmates Reynold Ruffins, Seymour Chwast, and Edward Sorel. Push Pin began putting out a monthly publication called Push Pin Graphic, partly to advertise the agency’s services, but it quickly became influential in its own right. The early issues are full of typographic experiments and Surrealist illustrations, leaning more toward the sketchy strokes of Paul Klee than the clean-lined modernism of the time.
Glaser’s work combined a deep, intimate knowledge of art history with an appealing Pop sensibility: anything was fair game, high or low. His famous 1966 poster of Bob Dylan mingles an obscure Marcel Duchamp reference—Duchamp made similar silhouettes of his own profile from cut paper—with the colors and patterns of Islamic painting, in Dylan’s psychedelic wave of hair. Yet pure artistry was never Glaser’s primary purpose; graphic design’s job was to communicate. “The professional requirement to succeed demands that the work be both understandable and motivating to its target audience,” Glaser wrote, in his book “In Search of the Miraculous,” published in 2012. Throughout his work, he exhibited a drive to connect with viewers and reach them wherever they were.
In 1968, Glaser and the editor Clay Felker co-founded New York. It’s hard to think of a better vehicle for communication than a magazine, and Glaser’s dynamic layouts and electric illustrations created meaning as much as the writings they accompanied (to which he also contributed). His covers for the magazine addressed drugs, gossip, sex, summer, and food, often in cartoonish but unsentimental drawings, like Old Master etchings for the twentieth century. His interest in the exaggerated and grotesque reminds me of the later paintings of Philip Guston, another artist who approached earthly detritus with a classical sensibility.
Vanity Fair described Glaser as a “visual architect,” which is more apt than any narrower label—he created a whole world. Through his eponymous firm, started in 1974, and with collaborators, he designed rug patterns; book covers, including for Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”; three-dimensional installations, like the sculpture atop the School of Visual Arts Theatre, in Chelsea, a piece that referenced Vladimir Tatlin’s “Monument to the Third International”; retail environments; countless logos, including Brooklyn Brewery’s; and new looks for dozens of magazines.
It might be his posters, however, that best encapsulate Glaser’s core aesthetic accomplishment. The intricate handiwork of his illustrations is incorporated into abstract frameworks that function with the utmost efficiency—like a vintage sports car installed with a new motor. Content is inextricable from form. You can look at each image for a second and get the message, or you can gaze for many minutes in rapt appreciation of the quality of a line or the layers of contextual meaning. He continually used that skill to tackle the pressing issues of the previous half century.
Design must be ethical: “If the practice is, in fact, involved in communicating ideas, then you have to be responsible for what you’re communicating,” Glaser said, in an interview in his 2005 book, “The Design of Dissent.” In an AIDS poster he designed for the World Health Organization, in 1987, a blue skull forms in the overlap between two red hearts, below the slogan “A worldwide effort will stop it.” In 2014, he launched a campaign about climate change, attempting to shift our vocabulary: “It’s not warming, it’s dying.” The icon is a circle with a gradient from black at the top to a sliver of sickly green at the bottom. It’s nauseating, as it should be.
Looking back over Glaser’s colorful, textured career, it becomes clear how anemic the dominant commercial graphic design of the twenty-tens has been. Lately, we’ve experienced a wave of flattened, pastel-colored, thinly outlined graphics for every Silicon Valley startup, from Casper to Away, Uber, and Hinge. Generic humans are seen undertaking tasks made convenient by the companies’ apps; the aesthetic promotes a seamlessness that separates us from worldly concerns like surveillance, ethics, or politics. The illustrations encourage us to consume rather than to think, let alone to think twice. They do not, in the slightest, take responsibility for what they are communicating, as Glaser mandated. Graphic design alone can’t solve problems, but it can help push us out of a stultifying conformity.
Despite being commercial, Glaser’s work managed to transcend commodification. Today, the state generates thirty million dollars a year through licensing “I ♥ NY”; Glaser kept no rights to his design. And the logo has a message more capacious than its literal meaning. Whenever I saw its endless replications on Canal Street, I felt that it was about belonging and plenitude. I first encountered it as a tourist; over the years, I grew to feel that I loved the city as a New Yorker. Anyone could love it if they gave it their attention, the logo suggested—we all can at once.


newyorker--2020-06-29--What John Roberts’s Surprise Abortion-Rights Ruling Means for the Future of Roe v. Wade

In an unexpected 5–4 decision today , the Supreme Court struck down a 2014 Louisiana law that severely restricted access to abortions by mandating that doctors who perform the procedure have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals .
If the law had gone into effect , it would have likely left the state with a single abortion clinic .
The ruling was the third major case in a week in which Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the Court ’ s four liberal Justices and rejected a legal argument backed by President Trump and conservative Republicans .
The majority ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Services v. Russo , was written by Justice Stephen Breyer and joined by his three liberal colleagues .
Roberts wrote a concurring , “ controlling ” opinion , which agreed with the majority despite his dissent in a similar case , in 2016 , involving a nearly identical law in Texas .
“ The result in this case is controlled by our decision four years ago invalidating a nearly identical Texas law , ” Roberts wrote .
To talk about what this decision means for the future of abortion rights and the Supreme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mary Ziegler , a law professor at Florida State University and the author of the new book “ Abortion and the Law in America : Roe v. Wade to the Present.
” During our conversation , which has been edited for length and clarity , we discussed why Roberts came to the conclusion he did , what the dissents of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh tell us about the Court ’ s two Trump appointees , and what signals the Court sent about the future of Roe v. Wade .
What is the importance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the short term , it pauses the death of abortion rights .
We have also seen the emergence of a new swing Justice on abortion , in John Roberts .
But I think people are going to read this as a win for abortion rights to a much greater extent than it is .
Roberts ’ s opinion was unambiguously skeptical of abortion rights .
He made the point that the correct reading of the undue-burden standard , which is still the doctrine that applies to abortion , only resulted in one restriction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Parenthood v. Casey decision , in 1992 .
And I think that pretty much captures what Roberts thinks is right in terms of how protected he thinks abortion rights should be .
But Roberts , I think , unlike Brett Kavanaugh , wants to look as if he cares about precedent .
And he couldn ’ t in good conscience do that while voting to uphold this law .
So it means that respect for precedent will carry some kind of weight with this majority .
But it also means that , if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he can save face and still undo abortion rights , he will probably take it .
What does Roberts ’ s decision to defer to a precedent from four years ago suggest about how he might feel about deferring to a decision from nearly thirty years ago , Casey , or to Roe , which is nearly fifty years ago ?
That ’ s the challenge for abortion opponents .
Roberts is clearly an abortion-rights skeptic , as he made apparent today , but he also has an investment in precedent .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Casey are precedents , too .
I think the most obvious strategy , if you are an abortion opponent , is to gut abortion rights without gutting abortion precedents .
In other words , to say that women still have a right to an abortion but to functionally eliminate access to abortion .
That is much more likely .
There is nothing stopping someone like Roberts from doing that , and I think , if anything , the tools for doing that are already present in Casey and the decisions following it .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ you are looking for him to come out and say , “ Roe and Casey are gone.
” There is still a path to doing that , too , but only a very gradual one , which would make it seem as if this Court had really taken this seriously and grappled with it for a while and not just put Brett Kavanaugh on the Court and overturned Roe overnight—which is what conservatives seem to have been expecting .
In March , you wrote an Op-Ed for the Times , which read , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Louisiana—and , by proxy , abortion ’ s most sophisticated opponents—taking this approach ?
The answer is simple : Leading anti-abortion groups believe that arguing harm to women—not fetal rights—is the key to convincing both the court and the nation to let go of Roe v. Wade.
” Does the decision they made today make you think you misjudged that ?
Yes and no .
There is a kind of popular-opinion protection for Roe .
People think women want abortion rights , and the public supports abortion rights because abortion access makes women @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are correct to worry that , if that persists , the Supreme Court—and maybe any Supreme Court—will struggle to overturn Roe .
I think it was a mistake to focus on that strategy , insofar as you were asking Roberts to uphold a law identical to one the Court struck down four years ago .
And , for a Chief Justice who is deeply concerned about the Court ’ s reputation and also about optics , that was going to be a heavy lift from the beginning .
So it may not have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but it was a mistake to focus on this law , which the Court had already weighed in on .
Are there other kinds of laws working their way through the courts that may end up being better targets for the anti-abortion movement ?
Yeah , absolutely .
Probably the most obvious are ones that are extensions of the Supreme Court ’ s decision in Gonzales v. Carhart , a 2007 decision that focused on later abortions .
So , a twenty-week-abortion ban that bans abortions based on the theory that fetal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ idea in Gonzales that , if there is scientific uncertainty , the tie goes to the legislature .
You can also leverage the fact that the Court has been more willing to uphold abortion restrictions later in pregnancy rather than earlier , and the idea that fetal viability—which is a little bit murky—does change as technology changes .
So-called “ dismemberment bans , ” which outlaw dilation and evacuation ( which is the most common second-trimester-and-after procedure ) , leveraged the idea , in Gonzales , that you can ban one procedure without @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on later abortions resonates better with voters , as well as with the Court , which isn ’ t an accident .
And then , more recently , you have so-called “ reasons bans.
” You saw ones come out of Tennessee and Mississippi in the last couple of weeks , and they ban abortions for reasons of race , sex , or disability .
The Court decided to not decide on one of those last year , but all of them are promising if you are an abortion opponent looking to unravel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the conservative dissent that you found particularly notable for thinking about the future of these matters ?
I think Justice Gorsuch ’ s dissent was pretty notable .
He was channelling a pretty common anti-abortion argument that is called the “ abortion distortion ” argument , which says that Roe is bad not just because it was wrongly decided but that it has also warped a lot of other aspects of American law .
That was straight out of an anti-abortion brief .
And if anyone had any doubts about whether Neil Gorsuch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on abortion , as he was in the Bostock case on L.G.B.T.Q .
discrimination , this case puts those doubts to rest pretty clearly .

In an unexpected 5–4 decision today, the Supreme Court struck down a 2014 Louisiana law that severely restricted access to abortions by mandating that doctors who perform the procedure have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. If the law had gone into effect, it would have likely left the state with a single abortion clinic. The ruling was the third major case in a week in which Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the Court’s four liberal Justices and rejected a legal argument backed by President Trump and conservative Republicans. The majority’s decision in the case, June Medical Services v. Russo, was written by Justice Stephen Breyer and joined by his three liberal colleagues. Roberts wrote a concurring, “controlling” opinion, which agreed with the majority despite his dissent in a similar case, in 2016, involving a nearly identical law in Texas. “The result in this case is controlled by our decision four years ago invalidating a nearly identical Texas law,” Roberts wrote.
To talk about what this decision means for the future of abortion rights and the Supreme Court, I spoke by phone with Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University and the author of the new book “Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present.” During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why Roberts came to the conclusion he did, what the dissents of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh tell us about the Court’s two Trump appointees, and what signals the Court sent about the future of Roe v. Wade.
What is the importance of today’s decision?
In the short term, it pauses the death of abortion rights. We have also seen the emergence of a new swing Justice on abortion, in John Roberts. But I think people are going to read this as a win for abortion rights to a much greater extent than it is. Roberts’s opinion was unambiguously skeptical of abortion rights. He made the point that the correct reading of the undue-burden standard, which is still the doctrine that applies to abortion, only resulted in one restriction being struck down in the original Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, in 1992. And I think that pretty much captures what Roberts thinks is right in terms of how protected he thinks abortion rights should be. But Roberts, I think, unlike Brett Kavanaugh, wants to look as if he cares about precedent. And he couldn’t in good conscience do that while voting to uphold this law. So it means that respect for precedent will carry some kind of weight with this majority. But it also means that, if there is some way to convince Roberts that he can save face and still undo abortion rights, he will probably take it.
What does Roberts’s decision to defer to a precedent from four years ago suggest about how he might feel about deferring to a decision from nearly thirty years ago, Casey, or to Roe, which is nearly fifty years ago?
That’s the challenge for abortion opponents. Roberts is clearly an abortion-rights skeptic, as he made apparent today, but he also has an investment in precedent. And to your point, Roe and Casey are precedents, too. I think the most obvious strategy, if you are an abortion opponent, is to gut abortion rights without gutting abortion precedents. In other words, to say that women still have a right to an abortion but to functionally eliminate access to abortion. That is much more likely. There is nothing stopping someone like Roberts from doing that, and I think, if anything, the tools for doing that are already present in Casey and the decisions following it.
It’s a different question if you are looking for him to come out and say, “Roe and Casey are gone.” There is still a path to doing that, too, but only a very gradual one, which would make it seem as if this Court had really taken this seriously and grappled with it for a while and not just put Brett Kavanaugh on the Court and overturned Roe overnight—which is what conservatives seem to have been expecting.
In March, you wrote an Op-Ed for the Times, which read, in part, “So why is Louisiana—and, by proxy, abortion’s most sophisticated opponents—taking this approach? The answer is simple: Leading anti-abortion groups believe that arguing harm to women—not fetal rights—is the key to convincing both the court and the nation to let go of Roe v. Wade.” Does the decision they made today make you think you misjudged that?
Yes and no. There is a kind of popular-opinion protection for Roe. People think women want abortion rights, and the public supports abortion rights because abortion access makes women more equal. I think abortion opponents are correct to worry that, if that persists, the Supreme Court—and maybe any Supreme Court—will struggle to overturn Roe. I think it was a mistake to focus on that strategy, insofar as you were asking Roberts to uphold a law identical to one the Court struck down four years ago. And, for a Chief Justice who is deeply concerned about the Court’s reputation and also about optics, that was going to be a heavy lift from the beginning. So it may not have been a mistake to focus on women, but it was a mistake to focus on this law, which the Court had already weighed in on.
Are there other kinds of laws working their way through the courts that may end up being better targets for the anti-abortion movement?
Yeah, absolutely. Probably the most obvious are ones that are extensions of the Supreme Court’s decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, a 2007 decision that focused on later abortions. So, a twenty-week-abortion ban that bans abortions based on the theory that fetal pain is possible. They leveraged this idea in Gonzales that, if there is scientific uncertainty, the tie goes to the legislature. You can also leverage the fact that the Court has been more willing to uphold abortion restrictions later in pregnancy rather than earlier, and the idea that fetal viability—which is a little bit murky—does change as technology changes. So-called “dismemberment bans,” which outlaw dilation and evacuation (which is the most common second-trimester-and-after procedure), leveraged the idea, in Gonzales, that you can ban one procedure without it violating the Constitution. This focus on later abortions resonates better with voters, as well as with the Court, which isn’t an accident. And then, more recently, you have so-called “reasons bans.” You saw ones come out of Tennessee and Mississippi in the last couple of weeks, and they ban abortions for reasons of race, sex, or disability. The Court decided to not decide on one of those last year, but all of them are promising if you are an abortion opponent looking to unravel abortion.
Were there any aspects of the conservative dissent that you found particularly notable for thinking about the future of these matters?
I think Justice Gorsuch’s dissent was pretty notable. He was channelling a pretty common anti-abortion argument that is called the “abortion distortion” argument, which says that Roe is bad not just because it was wrongly decided but that it has also warped a lot of other aspects of American law. That was straight out of an anti-abortion brief. And if anyone had any doubts about whether Neil Gorsuch was going to be a swing vote on abortion, as he was in the Bostock case on L.G.B.T.Q. discrimination, this case puts those doubts to rest pretty clearly.
Kavanaugh, I think, is very much trying to seem as if he respects precedent, as he promised Susan Collins in their interactions prior to his confirmation. But I think he feels less compunction about departing pretty quickly from precedent if he thinks he can argue the facts on the ground are different.
How does Kavanaugh argue that the facts are different, and do you find his argument convincing at all?
He was following the same strategy that Justice Alito was following, essentially saying that doctors in Louisiana didn’t try hard to get admitting privileges and that it wouldn’t be as big of a deal in terms of abortion-clinic closures. You can always make arguments about the facts, which is why the undue-burden standard is, in some ways, devilishly difficult for supporters of abortion rights.


newyorker--2020-06-29--Keeping Released Prisoners Safe and Sane

Starting this spring , many states began releasing some inmates from prisons and jails to try to reduce the spread @ @ @ @ @ huge number of incarcerated people are mentally ill or addicted to drugs , or sometimes @ @ @ @ @ are released , they may lose their only consistent access to treatment .
Marianne McCune @ @ @ @ @ , spent weeks following a psychiatrist and a social worker as they tried to locate @ @ @ @ @ released patients , at a time of uncertainty and chaos .
This is a collaboration @ @ @ @ @ Hour and WNYC ’ s “ The United States of Anxiety .
”

Download a transcript.|||
Photograph by Mark Kanning / Alamy
Starting this spring, many states began releasing some inmates from prisons and jails to try to reduce the spread of COVID-19. But a huge number of incarcerated people are mentally ill or addicted to drugs, or sometimes both. When those people are released, they may lose their only consistent access to treatment. Marianne McCune, a reporter for WNYC, spent weeks following a psychiatrist and a social worker as they tried to locate and then help some recently released patients, at a time of uncertainty and chaos.
This is a collaboration between The New Yorker Radio Hour and WNYC’s “The United States of Anxiety.”


newyorker--2020-06-29--The Walkman, Forty Years On

The Walkman, Forty Years On

Even prior to extended quarantines , lockdowns , and self-isolation , it was hard to imagine life without the electronic escapes of noise-cancelling earbuds , smartphones , and tablets .
Today , it seems impossible .
Of course , there was most certainly a before and after , a point around which the cultural gravity of our plugged-in-yet-tuned-out modern lives shifted .
Its name is Walkman , and it was invented , in Japan , in 1979 .
After the Walkman arrived on American shores , in June of 1980 , under the temporary name of Soundabout , our days @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to this point , music was primarily a shared experience : families huddling around furniture-sized Philcos ; teens blasting tunes from automobiles or sock-hopping to transistor radios ; the bar-room juke ; break-dancers popping and locking to the sonic backdrop of a boom box .
After the Walkman , music could be silence to all but the listener , cocooned within a personal soundscape , which spooled on analog cassette tape .
The effect was shocking even to its creators .
“ Everyone knows what headphones sound like today , ” the late @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Japanese-language memoir , from 1990 .
“ But at the time , you couldn ’ t even imagine it , and then suddenly Beethoven ’ s Fifth is hammering between your ears.
” The initial incarnation of the Walkman , the TPS-L2 , was envisioned as a toy for Japanese high-school and college students to use as they studied .
( Sharp-eyed fans will recognize the distinctive silver and blue TPS-L2 as the model carried by Peter Quill in Marvel ’ s “ Guardians of the Galaxy ” films . )
Sony ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ genial Akio Morita , was so unsure of the device ’ s prospects that he ordered a manufacturing run of only thirty thousand , a drop in the bucket compared to such established lines as Trinitron televisions .
Initially , he seemed right to be cautious .
The Walkman débuted in Japan to near silence .
But word quickly spread among the youth of Tokyo about a strange new device that let you carry a soundtrack out of your bedroom , onto commuter trains , and into city streets .
Within a year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Walkman , Sony would produce and sell two million of them .
While the Walkman was far smaller and lighter than any tape deck that had come before , it remained stubbornly large .
The technology of the day precluded Sony ’ s engineers , who were renowned as wizards of miniaturization , from whittling their portable stereo down to anything smaller than the size of a paperback book .
Oversized for a pocket , the Walkman obligated the user to carry it by hand or sling it in an included belt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ portable-listening standards , were the Walkman ’ s headphone ports—plural—and a built-in microphone .
The Walkman was initially designed to be used in tandem : a “ hot line ” button paused the music and activated the mic , letting two users chat even with headphones on .
This specification had come at the insistence of Morita , who had irritated his wife by not being able to conduct a conversation while testing early prototypes at home .
The canny Morita , the architect of Sony ’ s sleek image both inside Japan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the isolating nature of the Walkman .
What he was wrong about was how , for the Walkman ’ s growing numbers of users , isolation was the whole point .
“ With the advent of the Sony Walkman came the end of meeting people , ” Susan Blond , a vice-president at CBS Records , told the Washington Post in 1981 .
“ It ’ s like a drug : You put the Walkman on and you blot out the rest of the world.
” It didn ’ t take long for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ phenomenon .
The musicologist Shuhei Hosokawa called it “ the Walkman effect.
” Hosokawa noted how listeners used the devices to tame the unpredictability of urban spaces , with all of their unexpected intrusions and loud noises .
Wearing headphones functioned both as a personal “ Do Not Disturb ” sign and an alternate soundtrack to the cacophony of the city .
This was a new form of human experience , engaged disengagement , a technological shield from the world and an antidote to ennui .
Whenever nerves frayed or boredom crept in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fast-forward life a little .
One of the first Westerners to grasp the import of this new human capacity was the author William Gibson , a pioneer of the genre of science fiction called cyberpunk , who wrote years later that “ the Sony Walkman has done more to change human perception than any virtual reality gadget.
” The Walkman instantly entrenched itself in daily life as a convenient personal music-delivery device ; within a few years of its global launch , it emerged as a status symbol and fashion statement in and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back from Paris and everybody ’ s wearing them , ” Andy Warhol enthused to the Post .
Boutiques like Bloomingdale ’ s had months-long waiting lists of eager customers .
Paul Simon ostentatiously wore his onstage at the 1981 Grammys ; by Christmas , they were de-rigueur celebrity gifts , with leading lights like Donna Summer dispensing them by the dozens .
There had been popular electronic gadgets before , such as the pocket-sized transistor radios of the fifties , sixties , and seventies .
But the Walkman was in another league @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been associated with hearing impairment , geeky technicians manning sonar stations , or basement-dwelling hi-fi fanatics .
Somehow , a Japanese company had made the high-tech headgear cool .
Steve Jobs , then the young C.E.O .
of a fledgling Silicon Valley startup called Apple Computer , had personally received a Walkman from Morita on a business trip to Japan , where Jobs went in search of disk-drive suppliers in the early nineteen-eighties .
When Jobs returned home , he didn ’ t even bother listening to a cassette on the Walkman ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ machinery piece by piece , reading tiny gears , drive belts , and capstans like tea leaves , to divine how he might , someday , make something so epically world-changing himself .
“ Steve ’ s point of reference was Sony at the time , ” his successor at Apple , John Sculley , recalled .
“ He really wanted to be Sony .
He didn ’ t want to be IBM .
He didn ’ t want to be Microsoft .
He wanted to be Sony.
” Jobs would get his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in 2001 .
It wasn ’ t the first digital-music player—a South Korean firm had introduced one back in 1998 .
( That Sony failed to exploit the niche , in spite of having created listening-on-the-go and even owning its own record label , was a testament to how Morita ’ s unexpected retirement after a stroke , in 1993 , hobbled the corporation . )
But Apple ’ s was the most stylish to date , bereft of the complicated and button-festooned interfaces of its competitors , finished in sleek pearlescent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hinted at powerful technologies churning inside .
Apple also introduced a tantalizing new method of serving up music : the shuffle , which let listeners remix entire musical libraries into never-ending audio backdrops for their lives .
Once again , city streets were the proving ground for this evolution of portable listening technology .
“ I was on Madison [ Ave ] , ” Jobs told Newsweek , in 2004 , “ and it was , like , on every block , there was someone with white headphones , and I thought , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s starting to happen.
’ ” That happening never really stopped , even after the advent , in 2007 , of the iPhone—a direct descendant of the iPod and Walkman—made stand-alone portable music players obsolete .
The iPhone added the intraocular drip of always accessible Internet , a new way of escaping the cacophonies that surround us .
But the headphones were here to stay .
iPod sales have dwindled to the point that Apple stopped reporting them in 2014 , but , that very same year , the company purchased the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than three billion dollars .
At the time , this marked the single biggest acquisition in Apple ’ s history—proof of Sony ’ s prescience in discovering and stoking an incandescent hunger for auditory escapes in our daily lives .
The Walkman wasn ’ t the end of meeting people , but it paved the way for surviving an unthinkable era in which we would find ourselves unable to meet at all .

Even prior to extended quarantines, lockdowns, and self-isolation, it was hard to imagine life without the electronic escapes of noise-cancelling earbuds, smartphones, and tablets. Today, it seems impossible. Of course, there was most certainly a before and after, a point around which the cultural gravity of our plugged-in-yet-tuned-out modern lives shifted. Its name is Walkman, and it was invented, in Japan, in 1979. After the Walkman arrived on American shores, in June of 1980, under the temporary name of Soundabout, our days would never be the same.
Up to this point, music was primarily a shared experience: families huddling around furniture-sized Philcos; teens blasting tunes from automobiles or sock-hopping to transistor radios; the bar-room juke; break-dancers popping and locking to the sonic backdrop of a boom box. After the Walkman, music could be silence to all but the listener, cocooned within a personal soundscape, which spooled on analog cassette tape. The effect was shocking even to its creators. “Everyone knows what headphones sound like today,” the late Sony designer Yasuo Kuroki wrote in a Japanese-language memoir, from 1990. “But at the time, you couldn’t even imagine it, and then suddenly Beethoven’s Fifth is hammering between your ears.”
The initial incarnation of the Walkman, the TPS-L2, was envisioned as a toy for Japanese high-school and college students to use as they studied. (Sharp-eyed fans will recognize the distinctive silver and blue TPS-L2 as the model carried by Peter Quill in Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” films.) Sony’s chairman at the time, the genial Akio Morita, was so unsure of the device’s prospects that he ordered a manufacturing run of only thirty thousand, a drop in the bucket compared to such established lines as Trinitron televisions. Initially, he seemed right to be cautious. The Walkman débuted in Japan to near silence. But word quickly spread among the youth of Tokyo about a strange new device that let you carry a soundtrack out of your bedroom, onto commuter trains, and into city streets. Within a year and a half of the appearance of the Walkman, Sony would produce and sell two million of them.
While the Walkman was far smaller and lighter than any tape deck that had come before, it remained stubbornly large. The technology of the day precluded Sony’s engineers, who were renowned as wizards of miniaturization, from whittling their portable stereo down to anything smaller than the size of a paperback book. Oversized for a pocket, the Walkman obligated the user to carry it by hand or sling it in an included belt holster. Even stranger, by current portable-listening standards, were the Walkman’s headphone ports—plural—and a built-in microphone. The Walkman was initially designed to be used in tandem: a “hot line” button paused the music and activated the mic, letting two users chat even with headphones on. This specification had come at the insistence of Morita, who had irritated his wife by not being able to conduct a conversation while testing early prototypes at home.
The canny Morita, the architect of Sony’s sleek image both inside Japan and abroad, was right to fear the isolating nature of the Walkman. What he was wrong about was how, for the Walkman’s growing numbers of users, isolation was the whole point. “With the advent of the Sony Walkman came the end of meeting people,” Susan Blond, a vice-president at CBS Records, told the Washington Post in 1981. “It’s like a drug: You put the Walkman on and you blot out the rest of the world.” It didn’t take long for academics to coin a term for the phenomenon. The musicologist Shuhei Hosokawa called it “the Walkman effect.”
Hosokawa noted how listeners used the devices to tame the unpredictability of urban spaces, with all of their unexpected intrusions and loud noises. Wearing headphones functioned both as a personal “Do Not Disturb” sign and an alternate soundtrack to the cacophony of the city. This was a new form of human experience, engaged disengagement, a technological shield from the world and an antidote to ennui. Whenever nerves frayed or boredom crept in, one could just hit Play and fast-forward life a little. One of the first Westerners to grasp the import of this new human capacity was the author William Gibson, a pioneer of the genre of science fiction called cyberpunk, who wrote years later that “the Sony Walkman has done more to change human perception than any virtual reality gadget.”
The Walkman instantly entrenched itself in daily life as a convenient personal music-delivery device; within a few years of its global launch, it emerged as a status symbol and fashion statement in and of itself. “We just got back from Paris and everybody’s wearing them,” Andy Warhol enthused to the Post. Boutiques like Bloomingdale’s had months-long waiting lists of eager customers. Paul Simon ostentatiously wore his onstage at the 1981 Grammys; by Christmas, they were de-rigueur celebrity gifts, with leading lights like Donna Summer dispensing them by the dozens. There had been popular electronic gadgets before, such as the pocket-sized transistor radios of the fifties, sixties, and seventies. But the Walkman was in another league. Until this point, earphones had been associated with hearing impairment, geeky technicians manning sonar stations, or basement-dwelling hi-fi fanatics. Somehow, a Japanese company had made the high-tech headgear cool.
Steve Jobs, then the young C.E.O. of a fledgling Silicon Valley startup called Apple Computer, had personally received a Walkman from Morita on a business trip to Japan, where Jobs went in search of disk-drive suppliers in the early nineteen-eighties. When Jobs returned home, he didn’t even bother listening to a cassette on the Walkman; instead, he opened and dissected the machinery piece by piece, reading tiny gears, drive belts, and capstans like tea leaves, to divine how he might, someday, make something so epically world-changing himself. “Steve’s point of reference was Sony at the time,” his successor at Apple, John Sculley, recalled. “He really wanted to be Sony. He didn’t want to be IBM. He didn’t want to be Microsoft. He wanted to be Sony.”
Jobs would get his wish with the début of the iPod, in 2001. It wasn’t the first digital-music player—a South Korean firm had introduced one back in 1998. (That Sony failed to exploit the niche, in spite of having created listening-on-the-go and even owning its own record label, was a testament to how Morita’s unexpected retirement after a stroke, in 1993, hobbled the corporation.) But Apple’s was the most stylish to date, bereft of the complicated and button-festooned interfaces of its competitors, finished in sleek pearlescent plastic and with a satisfying heft that hinted at powerful technologies churning inside. Apple also introduced a tantalizing new method of serving up music: the shuffle, which let listeners remix entire musical libraries into never-ending audio backdrops for their lives. Once again, city streets were the proving ground for this evolution of portable listening technology. “I was on Madison [Ave],” Jobs told Newsweek, in 2004, “and it was, like, on every block, there was someone with white headphones, and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, it’s starting to happen.’ ”
That happening never really stopped, even after the advent, in 2007, of the iPhone—a direct descendant of the iPod and Walkman—made stand-alone portable music players obsolete. The iPhone added the intraocular drip of always accessible Internet, a new way of escaping the cacophonies that surround us. But the headphones were here to stay. iPod sales have dwindled to the point that Apple stopped reporting them in 2014, but, that very same year, the company purchased the headphones company Beats by Dre for more than three billion dollars. At the time, this marked the single biggest acquisition in Apple’s history—proof of Sony’s prescience in discovering and stoking an incandescent hunger for auditory escapes in our daily lives. The Walkman wasn’t the end of meeting people, but it paved the way for surviving an unthinkable era in which we would find ourselves unable to meet at all.


newyorker--2020-06-29--Trump to Retaliate Against Russia by Sending Jared Kushner to Advise Kremlin on Coronavirus Response

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —In an act of retaliation against the Russians for sponsoring Taliban attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan , Donald J. Trump is sending Jared Kushner to the Kremlin to offer advice on its coronavirus response , the White House confirmed on Monday .
“ To all those who thought that this President was not taking the Russians ’ actions seriously , this response should speak for itself , ” the White House press secretary , Kayleigh McEnany , said .
“ The President had an array of responses to choose from , and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most punishing.
” According to White House insiders , Trump and his advisers debated the response to the Russians for hours before finally settling on the Kushner option late Sunday night .
“ Jared Kushner is the most brutal weapon in our arsenal , and deploying him is a decision that no one should ever take lightly , ” one adviser said .
McEnany indicated that Kushner will be dispatched to the Kremlin by Monday afternoon and will start advising the Kremlin on ventilators , personal protective equipment , and other coronavirus-related matters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will bring Russia to its knees , ” she said .
Many in Washington were surprised by the severity of Trump ’ s retaliation against the Russians , including the esteemed virologist Dr. Anthony Fauci .
“ I know that the Russians are our enemies , but I ’ m still not sure I would wish Jared Kushner on them , ” he said .

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In an act of retaliation against the Russians for sponsoring Taliban attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Donald J. Trump is sending Jared Kushner to the Kremlin to offer advice on its coronavirus response, the White House confirmed on Monday.
“To all those who thought that this President was not taking the Russians’ actions seriously, this response should speak for itself,” the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, said. “The President had an array of responses to choose from, and the one he selected is by far the most punishing.”
According to White House insiders, Trump and his advisers debated the response to the Russians for hours before finally settling on the Kushner option late Sunday night.
“Jared Kushner is the most brutal weapon in our arsenal, and deploying him is a decision that no one should ever take lightly,” one adviser said.
McEnany indicated that Kushner will be dispatched to the Kremlin by Monday afternoon and will start advising the Kremlin on ventilators, personal protective equipment, and other coronavirus-related matters as early as Tuesday.
“He will bring Russia to its knees,” she said.
Many in Washington were surprised by the severity of Trump’s retaliation against the Russians, including the esteemed virologist Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“I know that the Russians are our enemies, but I’m still not sure I would wish Jared Kushner on them,” he said.