newyorker--2020-02-26--“Paris Calligrammes”: The Berlin Première of Ulrike Ottinger’s Personal and Political Masterwork

A retrospective of the German director Ulrike Ottinger ’ s films is coming to Metrograph , starting March 14th ( she ’ ll be in town for it ) , and her body of work is now adorned with a welcome plus-one : the director , whose film career stretches back to 1973 , has a new movie that premièred last Saturday , at the Berlin Film Festival , and it ’ s a great one .
Called “ Paris Calligrammes , ” it ’ s an essayistic , autobiographical work centered on her formative years in Paris , where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The film is an extraordinary sort of aesthetico-political nonfiction bildungsroman , in which Ottinger fuses her self-portraiture and her reminiscences with the life of the city and the ideas of the times , as she encountered them .
She retraces the personal and intellectual influences that formed her artistry and her personality—starting with her childhood in Konstanz , which was occupied by France in the wake of the Second World War , allowing her to see a steady run of already classic French movies that were screened there for the troops and staff @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ottinger headed to Paris , which she considered the capital of the fine arts , in order to become a great artist—and ended up , she says , hitchhiking from the countryside ( where her car , which she ’ d fancifully painted , broke down ) to the capital , with a bunch of courtly French gangsters .
Yet her rhapsodic tribute to the teeming artistic apprenticeship that Paris soon offered her isn ’ t solely a vision of beauty : she also observed , and unsparingly recalls , the political and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during her time there .
“ Paris Calligrammes ” is expressly and intimately a postwar film , starting , as she explains in her copious voice-over narration , with its title .
When she got to Paris , she soon started frequenting the Librairie Calligrammes , a Left Bank bookstore that was devoted to German literature and founded by the German Jewish exile Fritz Picard .
It was a “ hangout for Jewish and political émigrés ” and for artists and literary people over all—its guest book features , among many others , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tzara , Julien P. Monod ( Jean-Luc Godard ’ s grandfather ) , the Surrealist filmmaker Hans Richter ( a cue for her to show clips from his inventive and whimsical work ) , and the writer and artist Walter Mehring .
The mention of Mehring ’ s name gives rise to a grand and mournful sequence , of more than four minutes , launched by Ottinger ’ s recollection of a reading he gave at the store , which included a furious and sardonic poem , from 1941 , about German writers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nazi regime .
Ottinger includes Mehring ’ s impassioned recitation of it on the soundtrack , along with archival images of the writers and of the place—Marseille—where he wrote it .
Ottinger ’ s method in “ Paris Calligrammes ” is classical , but her sensibility transforms the film into a work of vital and energetic modernism .
She narrates her experiences and delivers her trenchant observations in a spontaneous , seemingly casually associative voice-over that accompanies a prodigious , absorbing , and wide-ranging collage of archival images and film clips , whether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , or personal collections .
These are framed by her cinematic revisitation of current-day Paris , which she realizes with the same blend of confectionary wonder and frank observation ( she does her own camera work ) that characterizes her dramatic features .
For Ottinger , the Calligrammes bookstore ( whose window display she re-creates at the space ’ s current incarnation , as an art gallery ) proved to be both a social anchor for her and a place where she made crucial contacts that sparked her artistic apprenticeship .
Even as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ artist and her first glimmers of recognition , her reminiscences are insistently but subtly cinema-centric .
She pays homage to the art scene in Saint-Germain-des-Prés , moving from the chill of tiny apartments to working life in cafés alongside Simone Signoret , Jean-Paul Sartre , Simone de Beauvoir , and the filmmaker Jean Rouch , who talked and plotted with Marceline Loridan-Ivens on their audacious fusions of documentary and nonfiction ( they ’ re seen working together in a wondrously atmospheric clip ) .
As meandering as it is , Ottinger ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ montage , following pathways of memory with ardent curiosity as they wind deeply through history and connect her personal experience to the artistic and political currents of the time .
In the process , she faces and overcomes a serious artistic challenge : her film ’ s inevitable dependence on archives .
The ready access to archival footage and its inclusion by the yard as an evocation of history is one of the curses of modern documentary filmmaking , because archival footage is inevitably a mere approximation , or a facile simulacrum , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ experiences .
Ottinger avoids the curse by way of her own artistic alchemy .
The news footage of the events of May , 1968 , isn ’ t exactly what Ottinger saw ; neither is footage of her artist friends and mentors Johnny Friedlaender and Ossip Zadkine at work in their studios , nor the scenes showing the activities of food wholesalers—and of gleaners—at the now vanished central marketplace Les Halles .
But her precise yet wide-ranging recollections , together with her clear-eyed and high-styled new images of Paris today , transform the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ person of historical documents into the first person of reëxperiencing her past by way of them .
The fine and strong thread of her memories leads to Montparnasse , where she painted in a tiny studio ; it was too small for her canvases , so she painted small canvases and assembled her art works on the ground of a courtyard , observing them together from an overhead height that she reached by way of a rickety freight elevator .
The film traces her artistic metamorphoses toward “ narrative figuration , ” three-dimensional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” where visitors assembled paintings that she ’ d cut into puzzle pieces , and where she played records in art galleries and displayed the books that she was reading at the time that she made her art objects .
From there , she reminisces about café life ( illustrated by a clip from Éric Rohmer ’ s first feature , “ The Sign of Leo ” ) and recalls the political commitment of her Montparnasse friends to the cause of Algerian independence .
She recalls their viewing together of Jacques Panijel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Paris , ” about the violent suppression of a demonstration by Algerian immigrants in October , 1961 , and Ottinger hauntingly compares the sites of the massacre , as filmed by Panijel , to their present-day incarnations .
She also recollects the involvement of the former Vichy official Maurice Papon ( who ’ d overseen the deportation of Jews to concentration camps ) in the massacre , as well as the unassuaged fury of the French right wing and the violent response to Jean Genet ’ s play “ The Screens.
” Ottinger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the currents of the times through her awakening cinematic ambitions .
She recalls the lectures of Claude Lévi-Strauss , which she associates with her own directorial perspective , and—by way of her visits to the anthropological Musée de l ’ Homme , at the Palais de Chaillot , where Rouch worked—she enfolds her frequent visits to the Cinémathèque Française , which moved to the same complex in 1963 , and her association with its guiding spirits , Henri Langlois and Mary Meerson .
She displays clips from her own films and reveals their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from her Paris days .
When it comes to the demonstrations of May , 1968 , which she both participated in and observed from her small apartment in the Latin Quarter ( she revisits and films those places and vistas now ) , her autobiographical visions veer toward hallucinations of history .
Her perspective on those events , and on the gap between the revolution that they symbolized and the actual results they delivered , makes for a rueful , paradoxical , tragic envoi : it was afterward that Ottinger left Paris for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her long and splendid career in the cinema .

A retrospective of the German director Ulrike Ottinger’s films is coming to Metrograph, starting March 14th (she’ll be in town for it), and her body of work is now adorned with a welcome plus-one: the director, whose film career stretches back to 1973, has a new movie that premièred last Saturday, at the Berlin Film Festival, and it’s a great one. Called “Paris Calligrammes,” it’s an essayistic, autobiographical work centered on her formative years in Paris, where she lived from 1962 until 1969.
The film is an extraordinary sort of aesthetico-political nonfiction bildungsroman, in which Ottinger fuses her self-portraiture and her reminiscences with the life of the city and the ideas of the times, as she encountered them. She retraces the personal and intellectual influences that formed her artistry and her personality—starting with her childhood in Konstanz, which was occupied by France in the wake of the Second World War, allowing her to see a steady run of already classic French movies that were screened there for the troops and staff. At the age of twenty, Ottinger headed to Paris, which she considered the capital of the fine arts, in order to become a great artist—and ended up, she says, hitchhiking from the countryside (where her car, which she’d fancifully painted, broke down) to the capital, with a bunch of courtly French gangsters. Yet her rhapsodic tribute to the teeming artistic apprenticeship that Paris soon offered her isn’t solely a vision of beauty: she also observed, and unsparingly recalls, the political and social ugliness with which she was confronted during her time there.
“Paris Calligrammes” is expressly and intimately a postwar film, starting, as she explains in her copious voice-over narration, with its title. When she got to Paris, she soon started frequenting the Librairie Calligrammes, a Left Bank bookstore that was devoted to German literature and founded by the German Jewish exile Fritz Picard. It was a “hangout for Jewish and political émigrés” and for artists and literary people over all—its guest book features, among many others, the signatures of Paul Celan, Tristan Tzara, Julien P. Monod (Jean-Luc Godard’s grandfather), the Surrealist filmmaker Hans Richter (a cue for her to show clips from his inventive and whimsical work), and the writer and artist Walter Mehring. The mention of Mehring’s name gives rise to a grand and mournful sequence, of more than four minutes, launched by Ottinger’s recollection of a reading he gave at the store, which included a furious and sardonic poem, from 1941, about German writers murdered or driven to suicide by the Nazi regime. Ottinger includes Mehring’s impassioned recitation of it on the soundtrack, along with archival images of the writers and of the place—Marseille—where he wrote it.
Ottinger’s method in “Paris Calligrammes” is classical, but her sensibility transforms the film into a work of vital and energetic modernism. She narrates her experiences and delivers her trenchant observations in a spontaneous, seemingly casually associative voice-over that accompanies a prodigious, absorbing, and wide-ranging collage of archival images and film clips, whether from features, documentaries, news sources, or personal collections. These are framed by her cinematic revisitation of current-day Paris, which she realizes with the same blend of confectionary wonder and frank observation (she does her own camera work) that characterizes her dramatic features.
For Ottinger, the Calligrammes bookstore (whose window display she re-creates at the space’s current incarnation, as an art gallery) proved to be both a social anchor for her and a place where she made crucial contacts that sparked her artistic apprenticeship. Even as she details her early days as an artist and her first glimmers of recognition, her reminiscences are insistently but subtly cinema-centric. She pays homage to the art scene in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, moving from the chill of tiny apartments to working life in cafés alongside Simone Signoret, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and the filmmaker Jean Rouch, who talked and plotted with Marceline Loridan-Ivens on their audacious fusions of documentary and nonfiction (they’re seen working together in a wondrously atmospheric clip).
As meandering as it is, Ottinger’s narration is a profound act of intellectual montage, following pathways of memory with ardent curiosity as they wind deeply through history and connect her personal experience to the artistic and political currents of the time. In the process, she faces and overcomes a serious artistic challenge: her film’s inevitable dependence on archives. The ready access to archival footage and its inclusion by the yard as an evocation of history is one of the curses of modern documentary filmmaking, because archival footage is inevitably a mere approximation, or a facile simulacrum, of a filmmaker’s memories and experiences. Ottinger avoids the curse by way of her own artistic alchemy. The news footage of the events of May, 1968, isn’t exactly what Ottinger saw; neither is footage of her artist friends and mentors Johnny Friedlaender and Ossip Zadkine at work in their studios, nor the scenes showing the activities of food wholesalers—and of gleaners—at the now vanished central marketplace Les Halles. But her precise yet wide-ranging recollections, together with her clear-eyed and high-styled new images of Paris today, transform the archival into the personal, the third person of historical documents into the first person of reëxperiencing her past by way of them.
The fine and strong thread of her memories leads to Montparnasse, where she painted in a tiny studio; it was too small for her canvases, so she painted small canvases and assembled her art works on the ground of a courtyard, observing them together from an overhead height that she reached by way of a rickety freight elevator. The film traces her artistic metamorphoses toward “narrative figuration,” three-dimensional art works, and then “happenings,” where visitors assembled paintings that she’d cut into puzzle pieces, and where she played records in art galleries and displayed the books that she was reading at the time that she made her art objects. From there, she reminisces about café life (illustrated by a clip from Éric Rohmer’s first feature, “The Sign of Leo”) and recalls the political commitment of her Montparnasse friends to the cause of Algerian independence. She recalls their viewing together of Jacques Panijel’s horrifying documentary “October in Paris,” about the violent suppression of a demonstration by Algerian immigrants in October, 1961, and Ottinger hauntingly compares the sites of the massacre, as filmed by Panijel, to their present-day incarnations. She also recollects the involvement of the former Vichy official Maurice Papon (who’d overseen the deportation of Jews to concentration camps) in the massacre, as well as the unassuaged fury of the French right wing and the violent response to Jean Genet’s play “The Screens.”
Ottinger’s personal history lessons also trace the currents of the times through her awakening cinematic ambitions. She recalls the lectures of Claude Lévi-Strauss, which she associates with her own directorial perspective, and—by way of her visits to the anthropological Musée de l’Homme, at the Palais de Chaillot, where Rouch worked—she enfolds her frequent visits to the Cinémathèque Française, which moved to the same complex in 1963, and her association with its guiding spirits, Henri Langlois and Mary Meerson. She displays clips from her own films and reveals their origins in her artistic activities and affinities from her Paris days. When it comes to the demonstrations of May, 1968, which she both participated in and observed from her small apartment in the Latin Quarter (she revisits and films those places and vistas now), her autobiographical visions veer toward hallucinations of history. Her perspective on those events, and on the gap between the revolution that they symbolized and the actual results they delivered, makes for a rueful, paradoxical, tragic envoi: it was afterward that Ottinger left Paris for Germany and left gallery art work for her long and splendid career in the cinema.


newyorker--2020-02-25--Rose McGowan on the Harvey Weinstein Trial Verdict: “I Haven’t Exhaled in So Long”

On Monday , a Manhattan jury convicted Harvey Weinstein of sex crimes , and the Hollywood producer was remanded to police custody , where he awaits a sentence that could total more than twenty-five years in prison .
Weinstein was found guilty of rape in the third degree against Jessica Mann , a former aspiring actress , and a criminal sex act in the first degree against Miriam Haley ( formerly known as Mimi Haleyi ) , a former “ Project Runway ” production assistant , who claims that he forcibly performed oral sex on her .
Weinstein will be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ awaits trial on separate charges in Los Angeles .
Paul Thompson , the Los Angeles deputy district attorney , told me , “ We are definitely proceeding.
” For many of the more than ninety women who have publicly accused Weinstein of sexual harassment or assault , the New York trial comes after years of frustration .
For decades , Weinstein had been trailed by allegations of misconduct .
In 2015 , the Manhattan District Attorney , Cyrus Vance , dropped an effort to charge him , under pressure from Weinstein ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to speak publicly about Weinstein was the actress Rose McGowan , who alleges that the producer assaulted her in 1997 , during the Sundance Film Festival .
In 2016 , she tweeted that she had been raped by an unnamed studio head .
Several months later , she was among the first accusers to go on the record for my reporting .
Her story also appears in my book , “ Catch and Kill.
” Hours after the jury announced its verdict , McGowan agreed to be interviewed for The New Yorker and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on my book .
During our conversation , which has been edited for length and clarity , we discussed the impact of the decision on McGowan and other victims , and also on the # MeToo movement .
First of all , I often begin our conversations this way : How are you , Rose ?
And I always , I think , answer , “ Well , it ’ s another day in the twilight zone.
” Which it is , but today it ’ s interesting .
I ’ ve had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not native to me , to do what I had to do to cause the cultural reset that I wanted , to get the results I wanted—not like we ’ re talking about with the case today .
But what I feel connected with today by this verdict and what ’ s happened—I feel like the soft girl that I was before I walked into that room .
The other day , someone asked , “ What do you hope for ?
” I looked at them and I said , “ I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t have—I don ’ t hope.
” It ’ s not that I ’ m not optimistic .
I just—it ’ s not part of my lexicon .
Hope .
What ’ s the point ?
What ’ s the goal ?
Survival—that ’ s my goal .
But today I have this tiny feeling of , like , this little chrysalis opening in my heart and my chest right now that ’ s , like , I think it feels like that girl that walked in that room to be raped by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the morning .
Just going back to today .
What has it been like for you ?
You said “ twilight zone.
” So what does that mean ?
And I know that every woman who has been affected by him and everybody who ’ s ever been affected by this period had this kind of collected breath held , right ?
And this is not a referendum on # MeToo , you know , which Tarana created as a language tool , right ?
“ This happened to me , too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Tarana Burke , the activist , who has been using this term for years .
Right .
Of course , my thing was always quite different .
I wanted a cultural reset .
And I wanted it to happen a lot faster than what people were doing .
And I also wanted to take out some trash .
And does this verdict bring you closer to any of those goals ?
Well , the cultural reset already happened .
That ’ s happened .
I think this is like there ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
There ’ s the bigger , more macro , above-it-all goal that I had personally , as an activist and a fighter .
And then , for the one who was hurt by him and has had to deal with seeing his face , like all his other victims .
This person was compulsive—is compulsive—you know .
It ’ s pretty amazing to have one less rapist on the street , though .
Especially a super rapist , like , head rapist in charge .
Like , “ I know I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of rapists .
That ’ s what I ’ m going to be.
” You know better than most people how immovable the status quo can seem sometimes .
So I can imagine that this was not necessarily the outcome you were expecting .
No .
I was honestly shocked .
And I ’ m still quite shocked , pleasantly , of course , because the other alternative is misery .
To see women sitting across from and accusing a man who was so insulated from accountability for so long .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the level of dedication to rape that that man had .
I mean , wow .
That ’ s like , Wow , you ’ re really taking a hobby seriously .
Actually , it was almost like the movies were the hobby , and this was , like , you know , it was like a rape factory .
So you looked at your phone this morning .
You braced for the worst .
And then , when you saw what had happened , what went through your mind ?
Honestly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I wonder if he ’ s gon na hire a hit man to kill me ?
That was my other thought .
And then I thought , Should I have coffee this morning ?
I think it ’ s a rejection , in some ways , of Donna Rotunno , the lawyer—I mean , that narrative .
Donna Rotunno , the attorney for Weinstein who said that she ’ d never put herself in the position to be sexually assaulted and who has made all these statements sort of inflected with the language @ @ @ @ @ @ @ type of movement .
It ’ s a dog whistle .
It ’ s the same thing that an alt-right person does about race or about Jews .
That ’ s what she ’ s doing about women .
And how ’ s that working out for you today , bitch ?
You often found yourself telling things to the culture that , I think , to use a phrase you gave me , the culture wasn ’ t ready to hear .
I don ’ t think they ’ re ready .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ s ever ready .
I think they didn ’ t want to , but you have to get to a point where you ’ re , like , “ I don ’ t care .
Take your medicine.
” “ Yeah , sorry .
People are getting raped , people are getting killed .
Women are dying .
Boys are getting molested .
We don ’ t have time .
I know you ’ re uncomfortable .
And this might make you examine some icky feelings you have inside and maybe something you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or maybe it was you , you know.
” But , I think , if society is walking around with a festering sore on its leg , and the only thing they do is pull their pant leg down farther , that ’ s a very sick society .
And I just thought , What is activism ?
I could sit there and join an organization and , like , fight for women ’ s rights , or I could just take a big sword , cut off the head of power , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This is how it ’ s done .

On Monday, a Manhattan jury convicted Harvey Weinstein of sex crimes, and the Hollywood producer was remanded to police custody, where he awaits a sentence that could total more than twenty-five years in prison. Weinstein was found guilty of rape in the third degree against Jessica Mann, a former aspiring actress, and a criminal sex act in the first degree against Miriam Haley (formerly known as Mimi Haleyi), a former “Project Runway” production assistant, who claims that he forcibly performed oral sex on her. Weinstein will be sentenced on March 11th. He also awaits trial on separate charges in Los Angeles. Paul Thompson, the Los Angeles deputy district attorney, told me, “We are definitely proceeding.”
For many of the more than ninety women who have publicly accused Weinstein of sexual harassment or assault, the New York trial comes after years of frustration. For decades, Weinstein had been trailed by allegations of misconduct. In 2015, the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, dropped an effort to charge him, under pressure from Weinstein’s attorneys. One of the first women to speak publicly about Weinstein was the actress Rose McGowan, who alleges that the producer assaulted her in 1997, during the Sundance Film Festival. In 2016, she tweeted that she had been raped by an unnamed studio head. Several months later, she was among the first accusers to go on the record for my reporting. Her story also appears in my book, “Catch and Kill.” Hours after the jury announced its verdict, McGowan agreed to be interviewed for The New Yorker and a forthcoming episode of the podcast based on my book. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the impact of the decision on McGowan and other victims, and also on the #MeToo movement.
First of all, I often begin our conversations this way: How are you, Rose?
And I always, I think, answer, “Well, it’s another day in the twilight zone.” Which it is, but today it’s interesting. I’ve had to have this hardness that’s not native to me, to do what I had to do to cause the cultural reset that I wanted, to get the results I wanted—not like we’re talking about with the case today.
But what I feel connected with today by this verdict and what’s happened—I feel like the soft girl that I was before I walked into that room. The other day, someone asked, “What do you hope for?” I looked at them and I said, “I don’t. I don’t have—I don’t hope.” It’s not that I’m not optimistic. I just—it’s not part of my lexicon. Hope. What’s the point? What’s the goal? Survival—that’s my goal. But today I have this tiny feeling of, like, this little chrysalis opening in my heart and my chest right now that’s, like, I think it feels like that girl that walked in that room to be raped by Weinstein, you know, at ten in the morning.
Just going back to today. What has it been like for you? You said “twilight zone.” So what does that mean?
Today, today feels . . . I haven’t exhaled in so long.
And I know that every woman who has been affected by him and everybody who’s ever been affected by this period had this kind of collected breath held, right? And this is not a referendum on #MeToo, you know, which Tarana created as a language tool, right? “This happened to me, too”—that’s what it is.
Tarana Burke, the activist, who has been using this term for years.
Right. Of course, my thing was always quite different. I wanted a cultural reset. And I wanted it to happen a lot faster than what people were doing. And I also wanted to take out some trash.
And does this verdict bring you closer to any of those goals?
Well, the cultural reset already happened. That’s happened. I think this is like there’s two separate things going on for me. There’s the bigger, more macro, above-it-all goal that I had personally, as an activist and a fighter. And then, for the one who was hurt by him and has had to deal with seeing his face, like all his other victims.
This person was compulsive—is compulsive—you know. It’s pretty amazing to have one less rapist on the street, though. Especially a super rapist, like, head rapist in charge. Like, “I know I’m gonna be the Oscar winner of rapists. That’s what I’m going to be.”
You know better than most people how immovable the status quo can seem sometimes. So I can imagine that this was not necessarily the outcome you were expecting.
No. I was honestly shocked. And I’m still quite shocked, pleasantly, of course, because the other alternative is misery.
To see women sitting across from and accusing a man who was so insulated from accountability for so long.
It’s mind-boggling the kind of pathos and the level of dedication to rape that that man had. I mean, wow. That’s like, Wow, you’re really taking a hobby seriously. Actually, it was almost like the movies were the hobby, and this was, like, you know, it was like a rape factory.
So you looked at your phone this morning. You braced for the worst. And then, when you saw what had happened, what went through your mind?
Honestly, joy. And then I thought, I wonder if he’s gonna hire a hit man to kill me? That was my other thought. And then I thought, Should I have coffee this morning?
I think it’s a rejection, in some ways, of Donna Rotunno, the lawyer—I mean, that narrative.
Donna Rotunno, the attorney for Weinstein who said that she’d never put herself in the position to be sexually assaulted and who has made all these statements sort of inflected with the language of the alt-right, men’s-rights type of movement.
It’s a dog whistle. It’s the same thing that an alt-right person does about race or about Jews. That’s what she’s doing about women. And how’s that working out for you today, bitch?
You often found yourself telling things to the culture that, I think, to use a phrase you gave me, the culture wasn’t ready to hear.
I don’t think they’re ready. I don’t think anyone’s ever ready. I think they didn’t want to, but you have to get to a point where you’re, like, “I don’t care. Take your medicine.”
“Yeah, sorry. People are getting raped, people are getting killed. Women are dying. Boys are getting molested. We don’t have time. I know you’re uncomfortable. And this might make you examine some icky feelings you have inside and maybe something you’ve done or heard about, or maybe it was you, you know.” But, I think, if society is walking around with a festering sore on its leg, and the only thing they do is pull their pant leg down farther, that’s a very sick society. And I just thought, What is activism? I could sit there and join an organization and, like, fight for women’s rights, or I could just take a big sword, cut off the head of power, and be, like, See? This is how it’s done.
Sometimes you have to lay on barbed wire so others can walk on your back. And that’s O.K. Because I can take it. It doesn’t make it fun. I honestly didn’t know if I’d survive it at one point.


newyorker--2020-02-25--The Weinstein Trial’s Imperfect, Moving Conclusion

On Monday afternoon , the disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein , who had been standing trial at the New York Supreme Court since early January , was found guilty of two felony sex crimes : for raping the once aspiring actress Jessica Mann , in a midtown-Manhattan DoubleTree hotel , in 2013 ; and for forcing oral sex on the former production assistant Miriam Haley , in his Soho apartment , in 2006 .
( Weinstein is now in the prison ward of Bellevue Hospital , awaiting a hearing on March 11th , at which he will be sentenced to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Still forthcoming is a trial in Los Angeles , where he is charged with sexually assaulting two more women , in 2013 . )
These were the two lesser counts that Weinstein faced in the trial ; on Friday , the jury told Judge James M. Burke that it was unable to unanimously determine whether the producer was guilty of predatory sexual assault—a more serious charge , which relied on statements by the actress Annabella Sciorra , who , as a corroborating witness for the prosecution , testified , in January , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ winter of 1993–94 .
Monday ’ s verdict arrived without a conviction on that charge .
Still , even without the heavier conviction , when the verdict was announced , I found myself abruptly on the verge of tears , moved by a combination of relief and disbelief .
My reaction surprised me a little .
Over the past few weeks , I had been attending the Weinstein trial off and on .
I had never reported from a courtroom before , and what struck me most of all , perhaps , was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the trial and its environment .
Listening as prosecution witnesses described the loathsome ways that Weinstein had assaulted them was difficult , and occasionally enraging , but the horror was more often than not dampened and subsumed by the business-as-usual regularity of the trial ’ s setting .
A line of reporters waiting resignedly in the cold each morning for the building to open , at 8 A.M. ; court officers pacing the room ’ s aisles , back and forth , back and forth , occasionally heeding a spectator ’ s complaints @ @ @ @ @ @ @ poles , the room ’ s high , grimy windows ; the showboating defense attorneys schmoozing with acquaintances in the court ’ s pews ; the plainer prosecution lawyers , poring over a drab clutch of brown accordion files ; even Weinstein himself , looking like hell , with his walker and rumpled suits and sallow , stubbled face : all of these elements came to seem , in their banal repetitiveness , like an enclosed bit of theatre that might go on forever , without much relation to the outside world .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ meant , ideally , to allow justice to be served : to enable a jury to dispassionately examine the evidence brought before it , without considering the broader context beyond the courtroom ’ s walls .
And yet , sitting there , I sometimes worried that , in this case , the blank , carefully circumscribed proceduralism of the legal system might fail us .
A case taken alone , with scant background , might lead one to overlook the tangled , often pernicious ways in which power dynamics , inflected by gender @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perhaps especially in the entertainment industry , largely to the detriment of young women .
Absent a sense of the fact that we tend to disbelieve or blame victims of assault , it might be easier for defense lawyers to paint accusers as untrustworthy and their testimonies as suspect .
With the # MeToo movement , we have begun to see a burgeoning recognition of the larger framework in which patterns of abuse take place .
My fear was that the court , with its useful but limiting fictions of how juries operate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might strip away this context and roll back any gains that the movement had made .
In the case of Harvey Weinstein , justice has eluded victims for years .
More than ninety women have accused the producer of sexual harassment and assault , and yet he had managed for decades to render his repulsive acts unremarkable—either literally unspoken or , if spoken , immediately brushed aside and suppressed .
As Ronan Farrow , in his groundbreaking reporting on the Weinstein accusers for The New Yorker , noted , the mogul ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many years .
And yet he relied on a combination of physical and psychological intimidation and manipulation , money , powerful connections , and , perhaps most of all , a system almost entirely indifferent to the plight of women to achieve a stunning kind of trickery : so many people knew that he was a serial predator , but their knowledge did not , for many years , make a whit of actual difference .
In October , 2017 , when the Times published its first investigation into Weinstein ’ s alleged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had not infrequently resolved with accusers by reaching settlements bolstered by nondisclosure agreements , Weinstein told the paper , “ my motto is to keep the peace.
” But this bone-chilling version of “ peace ” has had a price , of course .
In 2015 , as Farrow first reported , the Filipina-Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez , who was then twenty-two , told the police that Weinstein had assaulted her during a business meeting at his Tribeca office , groping her breasts and attempting to put his hand up her skirt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wear a wire the following day , in an attempt to extract an incriminating statement from the producer .
On the recording , which was shared with Farrow , Gutierrez could be heard resisting Weinstein ’ s attempts to coax her into his hotel room , before demanding to know why he had groped her the day before .
In response , Weinstein admitted that this was the kind of par-for-the-course behavior that he was “ used to , ” but promised that he “ won ’ t do it again.
” In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on , the Manhattan District Attorney ’ s office decided not to press charges against Weinstein .
Gutierrez , faced with Weinstein ’ s powerful legal team , signed , in exchange for payment , a nondisclosure agreement stating that the acts he admitted to in the recording never took place .
Earlier this month , she told The Cut that , although she has never regretted coming forward , the incident left her suffering from a deep depression .
“ I knew what the truth was , and that nobody would listen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , after the verdict was announced , a heartened Gutierrez spoke to reporters outside the court .
“ In 2015 , I tried for whatever I could have possibly done .
.
.
” She paused for a moment , then continued , “ to get him to what happened today.
” The verdict that had finally been reached , she said , is “ something I was dreaming of for years.
” Indeed , there was a sense of slight unreality about the moment .
In recognizing the horror of at least @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the court signalled that powerful institutions are beginning to listen to women ’ s voices and that the legal system might learn to address sexual violence in all its contextual complexity .
It seemed possible that we might be able to move beyond a world in which men like Weinstein operate with impunity—a world that we had all grown used to , and which his defense team had tried to convince us need never change .
Outside the court building , one of Weinstein ’ s attorneys , Donna Rotunno , noted that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appeal the verdict .
Still , she added , Weinstein “ took it like a man.
” The Times reported that , in the courtroom , once the verdict was read and court officers approached Weinstein , following Judge Burke ’ s announcement that he would be taken immediately to jail to await his sentencing , “ the producer seemed stunned and refused to move .
”

In finding Harvey Weinstein guilty of felony sex crimes, the court signalled that powerful institutions are beginning to listen to women’s voices. Photograph by Justin Lane / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
On Monday afternoon, the disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who had been standing trial at the New York Supreme Court since early January, was found guilty of two felony sex crimes: for raping the once aspiring actress Jessica Mann, in a midtown-Manhattan DoubleTree hotel, in 2013; and for forcing oral sex on the former production assistant Miriam Haley, in his Soho apartment, in 2006. (Weinstein is now in the prison ward of Bellevue Hospital, awaiting a hearing on March 11th, at which he will be sentenced to between five and twenty-nine years in prison. Still forthcoming is a trial in Los Angeles, where he is charged with sexually assaulting two more women, in 2013.) These were the two lesser counts that Weinstein faced in the trial; on Friday, the jury told Judge James M. Burke that it was unable to unanimously determine whether the producer was guilty of predatory sexual assault—a more serious charge, which relied on statements by the actress Annabella Sciorra, who, as a corroborating witness for the prosecution, testified, in January, that Weinstein had raped her in the winter of 1993–94. Monday’s verdict arrived without a conviction on that charge.
Still, even without the heavier conviction, when the verdict was announced, I found myself abruptly on the verge of tears, moved by a combination of relief and disbelief. My reaction surprised me a little. Over the past few weeks, I had been attending the Weinstein trial off and on. I had never reported from a courtroom before, and what struck me most of all, perhaps, was how quickly I had become desensitized to the trial and its environment. Listening as prosecution witnesses described the loathsome ways that Weinstein had assaulted them was difficult, and occasionally enraging, but the horror was more often than not dampened and subsumed by the business-as-usual regularity of the trial’s setting. A line of reporters waiting resignedly in the cold each morning for the building to open, at 8 A.M.; court officers pacing the room’s aisles, back and forth, back and forth, occasionally heeding a spectator’s complaints of overheating by opening, with long poles, the room’s high, grimy windows; the showboating defense attorneys schmoozing with acquaintances in the court’s pews; the plainer prosecution lawyers, poring over a drab clutch of brown accordion files; even Weinstein himself, looking like hell, with his walker and rumpled suits and sallow, stubbled face: all of these elements came to seem, in their banal repetitiveness, like an enclosed bit of theatre that might go on forever, without much relation to the outside world.
The vacuum-like nature of a trial is meant, ideally, to allow justice to be served: to enable a jury to dispassionately examine the evidence brought before it, without considering the broader context beyond the courtroom’s walls. And yet, sitting there, I sometimes worried that, in this case, the blank, carefully circumscribed proceduralism of the legal system might fail us. A case taken alone, with scant background, might lead one to overlook the tangled, often pernicious ways in which power dynamics, inflected by gender, operate in the workplace, and perhaps especially in the entertainment industry, largely to the detriment of young women. Absent a sense of the fact that we tend to disbelieve or blame victims of assault, it might be easier for defense lawyers to paint accusers as untrustworthy and their testimonies as suspect. With the #MeToo movement, we have begun to see a burgeoning recognition of the larger framework in which patterns of abuse take place. My fear was that the court, with its useful but limiting fictions of how juries operate and how justice should be served, might strip away this context and roll back any gains that the movement had made.
In the case of Harvey Weinstein, justice has eluded victims for years. More than ninety women have accused the producer of sexual harassment and assault, and yet he had managed for decades to render his repulsive acts unremarkable—either literally unspoken or, if spoken, immediately brushed aside and suppressed. As Ronan Farrow, in his groundbreaking reporting on the Weinstein accusers for The New Yorker, noted, the mogul’s behavior had been an open secret for many years. And yet he relied on a combination of physical and psychological intimidation and manipulation, money, powerful connections, and, perhaps most of all, a system almost entirely indifferent to the plight of women to achieve a stunning kind of trickery: so many people knew that he was a serial predator, but their knowledge did not, for many years, make a whit of actual difference. In October, 2017, when the Times published its first investigation into Weinstein’s alleged history of sexual assault, which he had not infrequently resolved with accusers by reaching settlements bolstered by nondisclosure agreements, Weinstein told the paper, “my motto is to keep the peace.”
But this bone-chilling version of “peace” has had a price, of course. In 2015, as Farrow first reported, the Filipina-Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, who was then twenty-two, told the police that Weinstein had assaulted her during a business meeting at his Tribeca office, groping her breasts and attempting to put his hand up her skirt against her will. She agreed to wear a wire the following day, in an attempt to extract an incriminating statement from the producer. On the recording, which was shared with Farrow, Gutierrez could be heard resisting Weinstein’s attempts to coax her into his hotel room, before demanding to know why he had groped her the day before. In response, Weinstein admitted that this was the kind of par-for-the-course behavior that he was “used to,” but promised that he “won’t do it again.” In a move that was widely criticized later on, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office decided not to press charges against Weinstein. Gutierrez, faced with Weinstein’s powerful legal team, signed, in exchange for payment, a nondisclosure agreement stating that the acts he admitted to in the recording never took place. Earlier this month, she told The Cut that, although she has never regretted coming forward, the incident left her suffering from a deep depression. “I knew what the truth was, and that nobody would listen,” she said.
On Monday, after the verdict was announced, a heartened Gutierrez spoke to reporters outside the court. “In 2015, I tried for whatever I could have possibly done . . .” She paused for a moment, then continued, “to get him to what happened today.” The verdict that had finally been reached, she said, is “something I was dreaming of for years.” Indeed, there was a sense of slight unreality about the moment. In recognizing the horror of at least some of Weinstein’s deeds, the court signalled that powerful institutions are beginning to listen to women’s voices and that the legal system might learn to address sexual violence in all its contextual complexity. It seemed possible that we might be able to move beyond a world in which men like Weinstein operate with impunity—a world that we had all grown used to, and which his defense team had tried to convince us need never change. Outside the court building, one of Weinstein’s attorneys, Donna Rotunno, noted that her client’s legal team would appeal the verdict. Still, she added, Weinstein “took it like a man.” The Times reported that, in the courtroom, once the verdict was read and court officers approached Weinstein, following Judge Burke’s announcement that he would be taken immediately to jail to await his sentencing, “the producer seemed stunned and refused to move.”


newyorker--2020-02-25--As Coronavirus Spreads, Stocks Fall Again and the White House Frets About a Black Swan

As more European countries , including Austria , Spain , and Croatia , reported cases of COVID-19 , the pathogen associated with the coronavirus outbreak , the U.S. stock market fell again , on Tuesday morning .
By noon , the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down almost three hundred points , or about one per cent , following its thousand-point slump on Monday .
This fall in stock prices was an accident waiting to happen .
After a ten-year bull run , the S. & P. 500 index rose a whopping 28.9 per cent in 2019 and continued to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Investors appeared to be shrugging off the alarming news about the spread of the coronavirus inside and outside of China , but the sang-froid was never likely to last .
It crumbled over the weekend , amid reports of people getting sick in places as far afield as Egypt , Italy , and the United Arab Emirates .
The rising death toll of the coronavirus is primarily a human tragedy , of course .
And , as Tedros Adhanom , the director-general of the World Health Organization , pointed out on Monday , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
For a couple of weeks now , the number of newly diagnosed cases of COVID-19 has been falling inside China , as the government ’ s draconian measures appear to have taken effect .
But investors are focussing on the possibility of the virus spreading around the world .
“ We now consider this to be a pandemic in all but name , and it ’ s only a matter of time before the World Health Organization starts to use the term , ” Bharat Pankhania , an expert on communicable diseases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ England , said on Monday .
Monday ’ s drop in the Dow didn ’ t rank in the index ’ s top-twenty daily moves in terms of percentage .
But it was the Dow ’ s third-biggest single-day points decline ever , and it was large enough to get the attention of Donald Trump , who was making a state visit to India .
Forty-five minutes after the market closed—at 3:15 A.M. , India time—he tweeted , “ The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA .
We are in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart .
Stock Market starting to look very good to me !
” Trump places a lot of emphasis on the market , of course .
It was predictable , and understandable , that he would try to project an aura of calm .
Behind the scenes , though , he has “ voiced his own anxieties , rebuking public health leaders over last week ’ s decision to fly home 14 Americans who tested positive for the virus while aboard a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Politico reported on Friday .
According to the Washington Post , Trump “ again became irate after learning over the weekend that federal officials planned to house some coronavirus patients in an Alabama facility despite protests from local officials.
” From a political perspective , the virus presents two threats to the President .
If COVID-19 spreads inside the United States , the White House could be held responsible for botching its response to the virus ’ s outbreak .
Democrats are already sharpening their knives .
“ The Trump Administration has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Schumer , the Senate Minority Leader , said on Monday , on the Senate floor .
“ President Trump , good morning !
There ’ s a pandemic of coronavirus .
Where are you ?
” The other threat to Trump is an economic one .
If the stumble in the stock market is a one-off event , it won ’ t have much impact politically .
But , if Wall Street goes into an extended slide , or if the broader economy gets hit badly as the virus spreads , it could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election .
On Monday , MasterCard and United Airlines joined Apple and other multinational corporations in announcing that the emergency measures which China and other countries have introduced—and also the disruption to the international transport of commodities and people—are already adversely affecting their businesses .
Among Wall Street economists , however , the consensus is still that the over-all impact on the U.S. economy will be relatively limited .
The economics team at Goldman Sachs reckons that the fallout from the virus will reduce annualized economic growth in the first quarter of 2020 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it also predicts that most of this decline will be made up later in the year , as the situation stabilizes and activity rebounds .
This sort of analysis reflects the fact that the vast U.S. economy is more like a supertanker than a sailboat , and that it takes something both dramatic and persistent to knock it permanently off course .
Even after 9/11 , when the country was traumatized and airlines were grounded , the economy rebounded in short order .
Other advanced economies have also demonstrated an ability to recover @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
However , the coronavirus isn ’ t a one-time shock like 9/11 : the reality is that nobody really knows how severe the health crisis will become or what impact it ultimately will have on the economy .
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission , United said that “ the range of possible scenarios is too wide to provide earnings guidance at this time.
” The economists at Goldman Sachs warned that “ the risks are clearly skewed to the downside until the outbreak is contained.
” In Republican @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is “ black swan ” —a term for low-probability events that have hard-to-predict effects .
“ The view in the White House is that this is one of those classic black swan events , and all we can do is control the health issues in the U.S. , ” Stephen Moore , a conservative economic analyst who is close to the Administration , told Politico .
Spencer Zwick , a veteran Republican fund-raiser , said to the Washington Post , “ We ’ ve always said that the president has a better shot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but there is talk of whether there could be a black swan event that changes things.
” Some investors and analysts are already speculating about the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates again , in order to shore up the economy .
Policymakers aren ’ t due to meet again until March 17th , though .
If the stock market falls much more between now and then , Trump will surely renew both his attacks on the central bank and his calls for lower rates .
He may even go further .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been reminded that politics , like life , is full of uncertainty .

As more European countries, including Austria, Spain, and Croatia, reported cases of COVID-19, the pathogen associated with the coronavirus outbreak, the U.S. stock market fell again, on Tuesday morning. By noon, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down almost three hundred points, or about one per cent, following its thousand-point slump on Monday.
This fall in stock prices was an accident waiting to happen. After a ten-year bull run, the S. & P. 500 index rose a whopping 28.9 per cent in 2019 and continued to reach new highs until early February. Investors appeared to be shrugging off the alarming news about the spread of the coronavirus inside and outside of China, but the sang-froid was never likely to last. It crumbled over the weekend, amid reports of people getting sick in places as far afield as Egypt, Italy, and the United Arab Emirates.
The rising death toll of the coronavirus is primarily a human tragedy, of course. And, as Tedros Adhanom, the director-general of the World Health Organization, pointed out on Monday, the news isn’t all bad. For a couple of weeks now, the number of newly diagnosed cases of COVID-19 has been falling inside China, as the government’s draconian measures appear to have taken effect. But investors are focussing on the possibility of the virus spreading around the world. “We now consider this to be a pandemic in all but name, and it’s only a matter of time before the World Health Organization starts to use the term,” Bharat Pankhania, an expert on communicable diseases at the University of Exeter, in England, said on Monday.
Monday’s drop in the Dow didn’t rank in the index’s top-twenty daily moves in terms of percentage. But it was the Dow’s third-biggest single-day points decline ever, and it was large enough to get the attention of Donald Trump, who was making a state visit to India. Forty-five minutes after the market closed—at 3:15 A.M., India time—he tweeted, “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
Trump places a lot of emphasis on the market, of course. It was predictable, and understandable, that he would try to project an aura of calm. Behind the scenes, though, he has “voiced his own anxieties, rebuking public health leaders over last week’s decision to fly home 14 Americans who tested positive for the virus while aboard a cruise ship in Japan,” as Politico reported on Friday. According to the Washington Post, Trump “again became irate after learning over the weekend that federal officials planned to house some coronavirus patients in an Alabama facility despite protests from local officials.”
From a political perspective, the virus presents two threats to the President. If COVID-19 spreads inside the United States, the White House could be held responsible for botching its response to the virus’s outbreak. Democrats are already sharpening their knives. “The Trump Administration has been asleep at the wheel,” Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, said on Monday, on the Senate floor. “President Trump, good morning! There’s a pandemic of coronavirus. Where are you?”
The other threat to Trump is an economic one. If the stumble in the stock market is a one-off event, it won’t have much impact politically. But, if Wall Street goes into an extended slide, or if the broader economy gets hit badly as the virus spreads, it could change the political environment going into the election.
On Monday, MasterCard and United Airlines joined Apple and other multinational corporations in announcing that the emergency measures which China and other countries have introduced—and also the disruption to the international transport of commodities and people—are already adversely affecting their businesses. Among Wall Street economists, however, the consensus is still that the over-all impact on the U.S. economy will be relatively limited. The economics team at Goldman Sachs reckons that the fallout from the virus will reduce annualized economic growth in the first quarter of 2020 by about 0.8 per cent, but it also predicts that most of this decline will be made up later in the year, as the situation stabilizes and activity rebounds.
This sort of analysis reflects the fact that the vast U.S. economy is more like a supertanker than a sailboat, and that it takes something both dramatic and persistent to knock it permanently off course. Even after 9/11, when the country was traumatized and airlines were grounded, the economy rebounded in short order. Other advanced economies have also demonstrated an ability to recover pretty rapidly from man-made and human disasters.
However, the coronavirus isn’t a one-time shock like 9/11: the reality is that nobody really knows how severe the health crisis will become or what impact it ultimately will have on the economy. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, United said that “the range of possible scenarios is too wide to provide earnings guidance at this time.” The economists at Goldman Sachs warned that “the risks are clearly skewed to the downside until the outbreak is contained.”
In Republican circles, the phrase of the moment is “black swan”—a term for low-probability events that have hard-to-predict effects. “The view in the White House is that this is one of those classic black swan events, and all we can do is control the health issues in the U.S.,” Stephen Moore, a conservative economic analyst who is close to the Administration, told Politico. Spencer Zwick, a veteran Republican fund-raiser, said to the Washington Post, “We’ve always said that the president has a better shot of being reelected in a good market, but there is talk of whether there could be a black swan event that changes things.”
Some investors and analysts are already speculating about the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates again, in order to shore up the economy. Policymakers aren’t due to meet again until March 17th, though. If the stock market falls much more between now and then, Trump will surely renew both his attacks on the central bank and his calls for lower rates. He may even go further. But, whatever happens, we have just been reminded that politics, like life, is full of uncertainty.
A Guide to the Coronavirus
How much of the world is likely to be quarantined?
Donald Trump in the time of coronavirus.
The coronavirus is likely to spread for months, if not more than a year, before a vaccine could be widely available.
We are all irrational panic shoppers.
The strange terror of watching the coronavirus take Rome.
How pandemics change history.


newyorker--2020-02-25--What Bernie Sanders Should Have Said About Socialism and Totalitarianism in Cuba

There are two ways to misinterpret the comments Bernie Sanders made in a “ 60 Minutes ” interview that aired on Sunday night .
When asked by the host , Anderson Cooper , to explain his long-ago praise of the achievements of Fidel Castro ’ s regime , in Cuba , Sanders said , “ We are very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba .
But , you know , it ’ s unfair to simply say , ‘ Everything is bad.
’ When Fidel Castro came into office , you know what he did ?
He had a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bad thing , even though Fidel Castro did it ?
” One way to spin these statements is to say that Sanders has finally been exposed as the socialist bogeyman that President Donald Trump and the Democratic contender Michael Bloomberg have been invoking , and that , if elected , Sanders will destroy the American way of life in favor of Soviet-style totalitarianism .
This was the predictable reaction from the right .
The predictable corollary from the left was to say , in effect , that Sanders is right : Cuba has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and universal health care , too .
And then there was a third reaction .
The writer Ana Simo responded to the interview with a two-word comment on Facebook : “ Moral stupidity.
” Another writer , Achy Obejas , commented , “ .
.
.
And there goes Florida .
.
.
” Halfway across the world , the artist Tania Bruguera got off a plane in Milan , where she is mounting a show , and told me by phone that she “ saw the news and thought , Oh @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expressions of glee .
None of these artists is a right-wing ideologue—all three are outspoken progressives , out lesbians , and potential Sanders voters .
All three are also Cuban .
Simo fled Castro ’ s homophobic purges as a young woman , in the late sixties , landed in Paris , and later moved to New York .
Bruguera divides her time between New York , international travel , and Havana , where her work has been censored and she has been arrested for her art and her activism .
Obejas came @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when she was a child , in 1962 .
She told me on the phone that she doesn ’ t call herself a socialist , though her political beliefs probably fit the label .
But , she said , “ It ’ s quite another thing to consider voting for someone who thinks that a place that caused my parents so much pain is not just O.K .
but exemplary in some ways.
” Simo and Obejas are refugees from totalitarianism , as am I .
In making his comments , Sanders stepped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ left from those of us who came here from totalitarian countries .
The regimes we fled did their best to discredit Marxism , socialism , and leftist ideas in general .
To a large extent , they succeeded .
When I was growing up , my parents believed , and taught me , that the attempt to build a state in accordance with Marxist ideals—or , really , any attempt to create a society in which everyone contributed what they could and received what they needed—was doomed to produce a totalitarian dystopia .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ruled by the blissful and , it seemed to us , natural union of capitalism and freedom .
In the U.S. , some of us commenced the long journey to a more complicated view of capitalism .
At the other end of this journey lay the realization that capitalism and democracy may not be a match made in heaven , and the hypothesis , supported by the example of Western social democracies , that socialist ideas may yield a freer and fairer society .
These discoveries suggested that socialist ideas can and ought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of our past—indeed , that those totalitarian regimes , whatever they might have written on their banners , had very little to do with those ideas .
Both Obejas and Bruguera told me that Sanders ’ s reference to the sixty-year-old literacy campaign ( for which both of their mothers volunteered ) was particularly painful .
Obejas explained how distant it is from contemporary Cuban reality , which is plagued by a shortage of teachers and doctors .
Like the Soviet Union , Cuban society is profoundly stratified .
These are essentially exploitative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is peace , freedom is slavery , or ignorance is strength .
But such is the power of Cold War framing—and such is the power of Soviet propaganda—that the decoupling of totalitarianism from socialism has not happened in American political culture .
The right and the left both essentially continue to believe that the Soviet Union and its satellite , Castro ’ s Cuba , were socialist states .
On the right , this has meant equating the ideas with the totalitarian nightmare .
On the left , it has led to erasing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guilty of minimizing , and even idealizing , these regimes when he talked about Cuba in the early nineteen-eighties , and the U.S.S.R. , after his visit there in 1988 .
His infatuation with the Soviet Union was both understandable and forgivable .
He visited just as perestroika was kicking into gear ; it was a moment of unprecedented openness and self-criticism in Soviet society , and Sanders described this mood eloquently at a press conference following his trip .
Perhaps more important , Sanders was then the mayor of Burlington , Vermont @ @ @ @ @ @ @ candidate for national office .
If he wanted to be bamboozled , it was his right and his personal choice .
In making this choice , Sanders acted in a way that has long been characteristic of some members of the American left , who gloss over the crimes of totalitarian regimes as though they were footnotes to a greater story , or jokes .
This tendency is typified by one of New York ’ s literary dive bars , KGB Bar , where I have missed many a friend ’ s book @ @ @ @ @ @ @ always have to explain , I can no more see myself spending time there than I can see myself drinking at a bar named for , say , the S.S. ( “ It ’ s in no way pro-Soviet , ” a friend recently assured me .
Imagine explaining away a Nazi name that way . )
Similarly , imagine Sanders saying that the Nazis were terrible but they had great cancer-prevention programs .
Such a statement would be factually true .
It would also be unconscionable , because the nature of totalitarianism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ subjects of agency , dignity , and humanity .
( Sanders , whose extended family suffered greatly in the Holocaust , would certainly understand this . )
That a person who has been so robbed has also been protected from cancer , or taught to read , does not fall into a category of good or even “ not bad ” things .
“ Yes , they taught us to read and write , ” Bruguera told me on the phone .
“ And then they forbade us to read what we want @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said that she has written to the Sanders campaign to ask to come and talk about Cuba ; as of Tuesday afternoon , she had not heard back .
( I also contacted the campaign for comment and have not heard back . )
What Sanders could have said , and should have said , is that totalitarianism , that most horrible of inventions of the twentieth century , is one of the greatest crimes against humanity .
But it should not discredit the ideas of common welfare and basic fairness that make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ideology ; socialism is no more essentially totalitarian than capitalism is essentially democratic .
This would have been at once factually true and true to the politics that Sanders has espoused .
Instead , during a CNN town hall on Monday evening , Sanders doubled down on his praise of Castro ’ s sixty-year-old literacy program .
Then , he added , “ China is another example .
It ’ s an authoritarian country , becoming more and more authoritarian .
But can anyone deny—I mean , the facts are clear—that they have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than any country in history ?
” I could almost hear the collective gasp of many Chinese-American voters , who also stand on my side of the great unbridgeable gap .
It ’ s as if Sanders didn ’ t realize that all of these good things that he cites—literacy , public medicine , access to culture and public transportation , and being lifted out of poverty—are good because they create the conditions for human dignity , which is precisely what totalitarianism destroys .

There are two ways to misinterpret the comments Bernie Sanders made in a “60 Minutes” interview that aired on Sunday night. When asked by the host, Anderson Cooper, to explain his long-ago praise of the achievements of Fidel Castro’s regime, in Cuba, Sanders said, “We are very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba. But, you know, it’s unfair to simply say, ‘Everything is bad.’ When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing, even though Fidel Castro did it?”
One way to spin these statements is to say that Sanders has finally been exposed as the socialist bogeyman that President Donald Trump and the Democratic contender Michael Bloomberg have been invoking, and that, if elected, Sanders will destroy the American way of life in favor of Soviet-style totalitarianism. This was the predictable reaction from the right. The predictable corollary from the left was to say, in effect, that Sanders is right: Cuba has the best education record in Latin America, and universal health care, too.
And then there was a third reaction. The writer Ana Simo responded to the interview with a two-word comment on Facebook: “Moral stupidity.” Another writer, Achy Obejas, commented, “ . . . And there goes Florida . . . ” Halfway across the world, the artist Tania Bruguera got off a plane in Milan, where she is mounting a show, and told me by phone that she “saw the news and thought, Oh, my God.”
These were not expressions of glee. None of these artists is a right-wing ideologue—all three are outspoken progressives, out lesbians, and potential Sanders voters. All three are also Cuban. Simo fled Castro’s homophobic purges as a young woman, in the late sixties, landed in Paris, and later moved to New York. Bruguera divides her time between New York, international travel, and Havana, where her work has been censored and she has been arrested for her art and her activism. Obejas came to the United States with her parents when she was a child, in 1962. She told me on the phone that she doesn’t call herself a socialist, though her political beliefs probably fit the label. But, she said, “It’s quite another thing to consider voting for someone who thinks that a place that caused my parents so much pain is not just O.K. but exemplary in some ways.”
Simo and Obejas are refugees from totalitarianism, as am I. In making his comments, Sanders stepped into the gap that separates the American-born left from those of us who came here from totalitarian countries. The regimes we fled did their best to discredit Marxism, socialism, and leftist ideas in general. To a large extent, they succeeded. When I was growing up, my parents believed, and taught me, that the attempt to build a state in accordance with Marxist ideals—or, really, any attempt to create a society in which everyone contributed what they could and received what they needed—was doomed to produce a totalitarian dystopia. We longed to escape to a land ruled by the blissful and, it seemed to us, natural union of capitalism and freedom.
In the U.S., some of us commenced the long journey to a more complicated view of capitalism. At the other end of this journey lay the realization that capitalism and democracy may not be a match made in heaven, and the hypothesis, supported by the example of Western social democracies, that socialist ideas may yield a freer and fairer society. These discoveries suggested that socialist ideas can and ought to be decoupled from the totalitarian nightmare of our past—indeed, that those totalitarian regimes, whatever they might have written on their banners, had very little to do with those ideas.
Both Obejas and Bruguera told me that Sanders’s reference to the sixty-year-old literacy campaign (for which both of their mothers volunteered) was particularly painful. Obejas explained how distant it is from contemporary Cuban reality, which is plagued by a shortage of teachers and doctors. Like the Soviet Union, Cuban society is profoundly stratified. These are essentially exploitative societies—each is no more socialist than war is peace, freedom is slavery, or ignorance is strength.
But such is the power of Cold War framing—and such is the power of Soviet propaganda—that the decoupling of totalitarianism from socialism has not happened in American political culture. The right and the left both essentially continue to believe that the Soviet Union and its satellite, Castro’s Cuba, were socialist states. On the right, this has meant equating the ideas with the totalitarian nightmare. On the left, it has led to erasing or minimizing the nightmare.
Sanders was guilty of minimizing, and even idealizing, these regimes when he talked about Cuba in the early nineteen-eighties, and the U.S.S.R., after his visit there in 1988. His infatuation with the Soviet Union was both understandable and forgivable. He visited just as perestroika was kicking into gear; it was a moment of unprecedented openness and self-criticism in Soviet society, and Sanders described this mood eloquently at a press conference following his trip. Perhaps more important, Sanders was then the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, not a federal official or a candidate for national office. If he wanted to be bamboozled, it was his right and his personal choice.
In making this choice, Sanders acted in a way that has long been characteristic of some members of the American left, who gloss over the crimes of totalitarian regimes as though they were footnotes to a greater story, or jokes. This tendency is typified by one of New York’s literary dive bars, KGB Bar, where I have missed many a friend’s book launch or reading because, as I always have to explain, I can no more see myself spending time there than I can see myself drinking at a bar named for, say, the S.S. (“It’s in no way pro-Soviet,” a friend recently assured me. Imagine explaining away a Nazi name that way.)
Similarly, imagine Sanders saying that the Nazis were terrible but they had great cancer-prevention programs. Such a statement would be factually true. It would also be unconscionable, because the nature of totalitarianism is to rob every one of its subjects of agency, dignity, and humanity. (Sanders, whose extended family suffered greatly in the Holocaust, would certainly understand this.) That a person who has been so robbed has also been protected from cancer, or taught to read, does not fall into a category of good or even “not bad” things. “Yes, they taught us to read and write,” Bruguera told me on the phone. “And then they forbade us to read what we want and write what we think.” She said that she has written to the Sanders campaign to ask to come and talk about Cuba; as of Tuesday afternoon, she had not heard back. (I also contacted the campaign for comment and have not heard back.)
What Sanders could have said, and should have said, is that totalitarianism, that most horrible of inventions of the twentieth century, is one of the greatest crimes against humanity. But it should not discredit the ideas of common welfare and basic fairness that make up socialism. Totalitarianism can weaponize any ideology; socialism is no more essentially totalitarian than capitalism is essentially democratic. This would have been at once factually true and true to the politics that Sanders has espoused.
Instead, during a CNN town hall on Monday evening, Sanders doubled down on his praise of Castro’s sixty-year-old literacy program. Then, he added, “China is another example. It’s an authoritarian country, becoming more and more authoritarian. But can anyone deny—I mean, the facts are clear—that they have taken more people out of extreme poverty than any country in history?” I could almost hear the collective gasp of many Chinese-American voters, who also stand on my side of the great unbridgeable gap. It’s as if Sanders didn’t realize that all of these good things that he cites—literacy, public medicine, access to culture and public transportation, and being lifted out of poverty—are good because they create the conditions for human dignity, which is precisely what totalitarianism destroys.


newyorker--2020-02-25--Joe Biden’s Last Stand in South Carolina

Two weeks before the South Carolina Democratic primary , which will be held on Saturday , Kevin Freel packed a cooler with Yuenglings and big oil cans of Foster ’ s and drove six hundred and fifty miles , from Delaware , to knock on doors for his old friend Joe Biden .
He ’ d done the same in Iowa , which was a thousand miles from home .
“ This might be Joe ’ s last stand , ” Freel told me .
“ I figure , I ought to stand with him.
” It is hard to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a tall , shoulder-slapping , seventy-year-old Irish-Catholic from the Eastern Seaboard—he grew up in New Jersey—who has known Biden since the nineteen-seventies .
A few years after Biden became a U.S. senator , in 1973 , Freel ran for state senate in Delaware and lost , narrowly .
Later , he worked as a campaign manager for local candidates .
“ Just watch Biden and try to do like him , ” he would tell them .
“ He can walk into any church hall or fire hall in America and you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there his whole life.
” Freel has also worked as a consumer-affairs investigator , a department-store Santa , and a community-theatre actor .
He and Biden are the same kind of Irish , he said .
“ There ’ s the reserved kind of Irish , like my older brother .
And then there ’ s the Joe Biden-and-me kind .
We ’ re very physical .
Yeah , yeah , how you doing .
He ’ s been doing that ever since I ’ ve known him .
That ’ s how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the primary , I had a few pints with Freel at what he called a “ pretty nice ” Irish pub in downtown Charleston .
It was only his second time visiting the state .
Freel used to own a bar in Delaware—it hosted Beau Biden ’ s twenty-first birthday , he said—and he wore a hat with the bar ’ s name on it .
( Freel has known Jill Biden since she was “ stamping hands ” at a bar in Newark , he said—the same bar where Freel saw Bruce @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Run ” came out . )
Freel also wore a Biden pin that was “ on loan ” from the campaign .
It depicted the former Vice-President smiling widely and wearing his signature aviators .
“ One of the guys in the campaign lent it to me on the promise I would guard it with my life , ” he said , adding , “ They ’ re out of everything.
” ( Later , he explained that they had just run out of this particular button . )
Polls still show Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gap between him and the national front-runner , Senator Bernie Sanders , has been narrowing for a while .
On Tuesday night , CBS News will host a debate in Charleston ; on Wednesday , one of South Carolina ’ s most prominent African-American politicians , Jim Clyburn , the House Majority Whip , is expected to endorse Biden , in an apparent effort to stem the Sanders tide .
Biden has long had a substantial lead among black voters in the state .
Freel ’ s work had consisted mostly of speaking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them to stick with his friend .
“ I ’ ve only seen maybe two white people , ” Freel said , describing his days so far knocking on doors in North Charleston .
“ But I just act like I live around there.
” On his first Saturday in town , he said , “ a cop pulled over to talk to me , while I was sitting beside the road .
An African-American officer .
He says , ‘ You picking somebody up ?
’ I held up the literature and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ here campaigning for my old friend Joe Biden.
’ He goes , ‘ Oh , no problem .
I like Joe .
Just pull a little more off the road.
’ ” A few days later , Freel said , he was poking around “ three or four trailers , ” trying to find their street addresses .
“ Couldn ’ t see a number , ” he said .
“ A lady was getting out of her car .
She said , ‘ Excuse me , sir , can I help you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I said , ‘ I ’ m campaigning for my friend Joe Biden.
’ She said , ‘ Oh , don ’ t worry about him with us .
He ’ s fine with us .
He ’ s our man.
’ I said , ‘ Oh , thank you , dear.
’ ” Freel ordered another Harp and broke down the day ’ s numbers .
“ Forty people weren ’ t home , ” he said .
“ Sixteen were strong Biden .
I had a couple leaning Biden .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one lady who was rude .
One who moved .
And a couple others.
” He went on , “ One woman said , ‘ I ’ m undecided between Joe and Steerer.
’ I said , ‘ Tom Steyer ?
’ She said , ‘ Yeah , that ’ s the one.
’ ” After Sanders , Steyer , a hedge-fund billionaire who has spent millions in South Carolina , may be Biden ’ s main challenger in the state .
“ You get into these neighborhoods and look around at these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t know anything , ” Freel said .
“ But they know what ’ s going on.
” Most critically , he felt that they understood the difference between new and old friends .
“ More than one person has said to me , ‘ Joe ’ s been around here for years .
That means a lot.
’ ” One of Freel ’ s favorite comments from a voter wasn ’ t Biden-specific .
It was the person who said he ’ d “ vote for Ronald McDonald ” before voting for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whoever runs against Trump and I know Biden will , too , ” Freel said .
“ We ’ ll all get on the firing line.
” He summed up his feelings for Trump by way of an Irish Gaelic phrase , póg mo thóin , which translates , roughly , as “ kiss my ass.
” The next day , I joined Freel as he knocked on doors of previous primary voters in North Charleston , as a light rain came and went .
A number of homes had Ring video doorbells @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had political signs in their yards .
A postal worker pulled up to the sidewalk just as Freel and I were leaving a home where , once again , no one had answered the door .
“ I ’ m seeing tons and tons of flyers , ” she said .
Mostly for Steyer , some for Elizabeth Warren .
“ Not many for Joe , ” she said .
“ But I like Joe.
” Whenever someone did answer the door , Freel would begin , “ I ’ m out here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Some of the men who answered doors said that they wouldn ’ t know who ’ d they be voting for until their wives or girlfriends had made up their minds .
At one home , Freel arrived just as the woman of the house was returning .
Her name was Jerrial Major , and she was a medical technician , an ordained minister , and a mother of four .
“ I know he ’ s capable of doing the job , ” Major said , of Biden .
“ But he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there when it comes to the debates .
He can ’ t be a good guy !
” Freel explained that he ’ s known Biden since the seventies , and assured Major that Biden was still sharp as a tack .
“ I know he is , ” Major said .
“ It ’ s just that … it seems like he ’ s becoming everyone ’ s punching bag .
I said , ‘ Lord , I ’ m just so undecided , I don ’ t know what I want @ @ @ @ @ @ @ electability .
“ Joe Biden is the only candidate who consistently beats Trump and beats him bad in all the swing states , ” he said .
“ And that ’ s crucial .
No way we win the White House back without them .
”

Two weeks before the South Carolina Democratic primary, which will be held on Saturday, Kevin Freel packed a cooler with Yuenglings and big oil cans of Foster’s and drove six hundred and fifty miles, from Delaware, to knock on doors for his old friend Joe Biden. He’d done the same in Iowa, which was a thousand miles from home. “This might be Joe’s last stand,” Freel told me. “I figure, I ought to stand with him.” It is hard to imagine a more apt surrogate: Freel is a tall, shoulder-slapping, seventy-year-old Irish-Catholic from the Eastern Seaboard—he grew up in New Jersey—who has known Biden since the nineteen-seventies. A few years after Biden became a U.S. senator, in 1973, Freel ran for state senate in Delaware and lost, narrowly. Later, he worked as a campaign manager for local candidates. “Just watch Biden and try to do like him,” he would tell them. “He can walk into any church hall or fire hall in America and you’d think he’s been there his whole life.” Freel has also worked as a consumer-affairs investigator, a department-store Santa, and a community-theatre actor. He and Biden are the same kind of Irish, he said. “There’s the reserved kind of Irish, like my older brother. And then there’s the Joe Biden-and-me kind. We’re very physical. Yeah, yeah, how you doing. He’s been doing that ever since I’ve known him. That’s how we are.”
On the Sunday before the primary, I had a few pints with Freel at what he called a “pretty nice” Irish pub in downtown Charleston. It was only his second time visiting the state. Freel used to own a bar in Delaware—it hosted Beau Biden’s twenty-first birthday, he said—and he wore a hat with the bar’s name on it. (Freel has known Jill Biden since she was “stamping hands” at a bar in Newark, he said—the same bar where Freel saw Bruce Springsteen play just before “Born to Run” came out.) Freel also wore a Biden pin that was “on loan” from the campaign. It depicted the former Vice-President smiling widely and wearing his signature aviators. “One of the guys in the campaign lent it to me on the promise I would guard it with my life,” he said, adding, “They’re out of everything.” (Later, he explained that they had just run out of this particular button.)
Polls still show Biden ahead in South Carolina, although the gap between him and the national front-runner, Senator Bernie Sanders, has been narrowing for a while. On Tuesday night, CBS News will host a debate in Charleston; on Wednesday, one of South Carolina’s most prominent African-American politicians, Jim Clyburn, the House Majority Whip, is expected to endorse Biden, in an apparent effort to stem the Sanders tide. Biden has long had a substantial lead among black voters in the state. Freel’s work had consisted mostly of speaking with black residents in Charleston and persuading them to stick with his friend.
“I’ve only seen maybe two white people,” Freel said, describing his days so far knocking on doors in North Charleston. “But I just act like I live around there.” On his first Saturday in town, he said, “a cop pulled over to talk to me, while I was sitting beside the road. An African-American officer. He says, ‘You picking somebody up?’ I held up the literature and said, ‘I’m out here campaigning for my old friend Joe Biden.’ He goes, ‘Oh, no problem. I like Joe. Just pull a little more off the road.’ ” A few days later, Freel said, he was poking around “three or four trailers,” trying to find their street addresses. “Couldn’t see a number,” he said. “A lady was getting out of her car. She said, ‘Excuse me, sir, can I help you? That’s my house.’ I said, ‘I’m campaigning for my friend Joe Biden.’ She said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about him with us. He’s fine with us. He’s our man.’ I said, ‘Oh, thank you, dear.’ ”
Freel ordered another Harp and broke down the day’s numbers. “Forty people weren’t home,” he said. “Sixteen were strong Biden. I had a couple leaning Biden. A couple undecided. Then I had the one lady who was rude. One who moved. And a couple others.” He went on, “One woman said, ‘I’m undecided between Joe and Steerer.’ I said, ‘Tom Steyer?’ She said, ‘Yeah, that’s the one.’ ” After Sanders, Steyer, a hedge-fund billionaire who has spent millions in South Carolina, may be Biden’s main challenger in the state.
“You get into these neighborhoods and look around at these houses and think these people don’t know anything,” Freel said. “But they know what’s going on.” Most critically, he felt that they understood the difference between new and old friends. “More than one person has said to me, ‘Joe’s been around here for years. That means a lot.’ ” One of Freel’s favorite comments from a voter wasn’t Biden-specific. It was the person who said he’d “vote for Ronald McDonald” before voting for Trump. “I’ll support whoever runs against Trump and I know Biden will, too,” Freel said. “We’ll all get on the firing line.” He summed up his feelings for Trump by way of an Irish Gaelic phrase, póg mo thóin, which translates, roughly, as “kiss my ass.”
The next day, I joined Freel as he knocked on doors of previous primary voters in North Charleston, as a light rain came and went. A number of homes had Ring video doorbells peering from beside their doors; none had political signs in their yards. A postal worker pulled up to the sidewalk just as Freel and I were leaving a home where, once again, no one had answered the door. “I’m seeing tons and tons of flyers,” she said. Mostly for Steyer, some for Elizabeth Warren. “Not many for Joe,” she said. “But I like Joe.”
Whenever someone did answer the door, Freel would begin, “I’m out here campaigning for my friend Joe Biden.” Some of the men who answered doors said that they wouldn’t know who’d they be voting for until their wives or girlfriends had made up their minds. At one home, Freel arrived just as the woman of the house was returning. Her name was Jerrial Major, and she was a medical technician, an ordained minister, and a mother of four. “I know he’s capable of doing the job,” Major said, of Biden. “But he’s not putting the punch out there when it comes to the debates. He can’t be a good guy!”
Freel explained that he’s known Biden since the seventies, and assured Major that Biden was still sharp as a tack.
“I know he is,” Major said. “It’s just that … it seems like he’s becoming everyone’s punching bag. I said, ‘Lord, I’m just so undecided, I don’t know what I want to do.’ ”
Freel pivoted to electability. “Joe Biden is the only candidate who consistently beats Trump and beats him bad in all the swing states,” he said. “And that’s crucial. No way we win the White House back without them.”
Major didn’t disagree, but didn’t sound committed, either.
“Should I call him up tonight and tell him when he gets to the debate tomorrow night to just knock somebody over?” Freel said.
“Yeah, tell him to knock somebody over,” Major said. “Be a little more aggressive. Like I said, I know he’s capable of being President on Day One. He’s just not showing me, at this phase, that he wants to do this.”
She went on, “I’m weighing my options. I was driving up just now and I said, ‘I guess I’ll cast my vote for Joe.’ But he’s got to show me he wants to do this. Stop being the good guy.” She added, “We have a scum in the White House that needs to go.”
“I’ll try to get that word to him tonight,” Freel said.
A few houses later, a semi-retired operator of a commercial cleaning business answered the door. He said his name was Robert Smalls. “I’ve got to vote or my wife gonna kick me out,” he told Freel. Freel asked which way he was leaning. “I’m still debating,” Smalls said. “It ain’t the gay guy,” he added, referring to Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who would be the first openly gay nominee of a major party were he to win the primary. Small said that neither he nor his wife would vote for a gay candidate. “We talked about that last night,” he said. Smalls liked Sanders pretty well. “I’m not really satisfied with none of them, though,” he added. He wanted to hear more talk about reparations for descendants of slavery, he said, and about the “long prison terms for black men.”
Freel talked about Biden’s “ability to empathize with other people” and to “beat Trump like a drum,” particularly in the swing states. Smalls was unwilling to commit. He said he was looking forward to Tuesday’s debate.
At the end of the day, Freel tallied up his numbers. Forty-three people weren’t home. Twelve were strongly in favor of Biden; six, including Jerrial Major, were leaning his way. Four more were undecided. One person who’d been on Freel’s list was currently incarcerated, he had learned, and another, who serves in the Army, was out of state. Freel put them into the “other” category on the paperwork that he’d give to the campaign.
On his way back to the campaign’s North Charleston office, housed in a former dance club, Freel passed a place called Obama Quick Stop. Inside, a cashier said that she knew nothing about Biden or any other Democrats running for President. She said she loathed Trump, though. (The name of the shop, she explained, was unrelated to the previous occupant of the White House.) Freel offered a quick pitch on behalf of his man. “He was Obama’s Vice-President,” he said. The young woman nodded, seeming genuinely enthusiastic about that connection, and about voting in the primary. But Freel had his doubts.


newyorker--2020-02-25--Ruth Bader Ginsburg Says Trump Should Recuse Himself from All Decisions Involving the Future of the

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Says Trump Should Recuse Himself from All Decisions Involving the Future of the Country

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —Asserting that his personal interests put him in direct conflict with the interests of the United States of America , Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has demanded that Donald Trump recuse himself from all decisions involving the future of the U.S .
Speaking from her office at the Supreme Court , Ginsburg said that Trump ’ s oft-stated allegiance to himself makes it impossible for him to render unbiased decisions on issues affecting people other than himself .
“ Since the United States is populated by three hundred and thirty-one million people who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their fates would , by definition , ensnare Trump in an insoluble conflict of interest , ” she said .
Ginsburg enumerated a list of issues about which Trump should immediately recuse himself , including immigration , trade , taxes , the social safety net , women ’ s reproductive rights , health care , the economy , the military , the environment , “ and any other issues related to domestic or foreign policy not listed above.
” Ginsburg stressed , however , that , even after recusing himself from those matters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weigh in on other important decisions , like “ what to eat and which channel to watch .
”

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Asserting that his personal interests put him in direct conflict with the interests of the United States of America, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has demanded that Donald Trump recuse himself from all decisions involving the future of the U.S.
Speaking from her office at the Supreme Court, Ginsburg said that Trump’s oft-stated allegiance to himself makes it impossible for him to render unbiased decisions on issues affecting people other than himself.
“Since the United States is populated by three hundred and thirty-one million people who are not him, any decision regarding their fates would, by definition, ensnare Trump in an insoluble conflict of interest,” she said.
Ginsburg enumerated a list of issues about which Trump should immediately recuse himself, including immigration, trade, taxes, the social safety net, women’s reproductive rights, health care, the economy, the military, the environment, “and any other issues related to domestic or foreign policy not listed above.”
Ginsburg stressed, however, that, even after recusing himself from those matters, Trump would still be allowed to weigh in on other important decisions, like “what to eat and which channel to watch.”


newyorker--2020-02-25--Virtual Imagery That Would Actually Make Me Run Faster on the Elliptical

The doors of the airport-shuttle train are closing , and I start to book it , clunky luggage in tow , even though these trains run , like , every three minutes and I am a sociopathic three hours early for a domestic flight .
My work crush , Hot Silent Brian from business affairs , watches me run , and the faster I go the more it looks as if he ’ s about to say something , anything , to me .
He never does .
If I run a mile in less than ten minutes , my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ m her favorite patient and she wishes I were her daughter .
I ’ m being chased by the ghost of my sixteen-year-old self , who ’ s yelling at me about whatever happened to all her hopes and dreams ?
I ’ m running a quick errand at CVS , and I spot a former high-school classmate , whom I haven ’ t spoken to in years but would definitely have to say hi to if I made eye contact , and I ’ m not wearing makeup or a bra @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on my chin , and , honestly , I ’ ve had a rough couple of months and just don ’ t have it in me right now to make small talk and pretend things are going great , when I ’ m just here to pick up tampons .
My onscreen avatar is carrying a laptop and it is just beginning to rain .
Also , she ’ s wearing suede .
It ’ s the first of the month and a rent check from a generous , anonymous benefactor dangles on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my reach .
I snatch a golden idol from a pedestal in an ancient temple , and , as I smirk , thinking how easy that was , rocks fall from the ceiling .
The roof is going to collapse !
I sprint down a corridor , idol in hand , while arrows shoot from the walls , each a near miss .
My colleague ’ s there , waiting for me , telling me to give him the statue first and then he ’ ll help me across the pit that gapes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the statue and leaving me to die .
I leap over the pit , slide under a closing stone door , and BAM , there ’ s my colleague , dead .
Arrows got him .
I recover the statue , pausing for a moment to catch my breath , maybe wipe the sweat off my brow with a lemongrass-scented towelette , but there ’ s no time !
A massive boulder comes rolling down out of nowhere , and if I don ’ t keep running , I will be crushed !
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ me from onscreen , and , if I don ’ t keep my heart rate above 120 B.P.M.
, I will be forced to watch their execution in unbelievably graphic C.G.I .
imagery .

The doors of the airport-shuttle train are closing, and I start to book it, clunky luggage in tow, even though these trains run, like, every three minutes and I am a sociopathic three hours early for a domestic flight.
My work crush, Hot Silent Brian from business affairs, watches me run, and the faster I go the more it looks as if he’s about to say something, anything, to me. He never does.
If I run a mile in less than ten minutes, my therapist appears and tells me that I’m her favorite patient and she wishes I were her daughter.
I’m being chased by a lion!
I’m being chased by a shark!
I’m being chased by the ghost of my sixteen-year-old self, who’s yelling at me about whatever happened to all her hopes and dreams?
I’m running a quick errand at CVS, and I spot a former high-school classmate, whom I haven’t spoken to in years but would definitely have to say hi to if I made eye contact, and I’m not wearing makeup or a bra, and I have a huge zit on my chin, and, honestly, I’ve had a rough couple of months and just don’t have it in me right now to make small talk and pretend things are going great, when I’m just here to pick up tampons.
My onscreen avatar is carrying a laptop and it is just beginning to rain. Also, she’s wearing suede.
It’s the first of the month and a rent check from a generous, anonymous benefactor dangles on a string, always just out of my reach.
I snatch a golden idol from a pedestal in an ancient temple, and, as I smirk, thinking how easy that was, rocks fall from the ceiling. The roof is going to collapse! I sprint down a corridor, idol in hand, while arrows shoot from the walls, each a near miss. My colleague’s there, waiting for me, telling me to give him the statue first and then he’ll help me across the pit that gapes between us—but he betrays me, stealing the statue and leaving me to die. I leap over the pit, slide under a closing stone door, and BAM, there’s my colleague, dead. Arrows got him. I recover the statue, pausing for a moment to catch my breath, maybe wipe the sweat off my brow with a lemongrass-scented towelette, but there’s no time! A massive boulder comes rolling down out of nowhere, and if I don’t keep running, I will be crushed!
My loved ones smile and wave at me from onscreen, and, if I don’t keep my heart rate above 120 B.P.M., I will be forced to watch their execution in unbelievably graphic C.G.I. imagery.
Food Network reruns.