newyorker--2020-07-11--Screen Saver: The Movie

Screen Saver: The Movie

OPEN ON : A multicolored cube , CUBE , careens toward the upper right of the void .
Each of Cube ’ s vibrant sides—red , blue , yellow , green , teal , pink—contrasts dramatically with the ink-black nothingness of its surroundings .
Another thing : Cube is ripped .
There ’ s not an ounce of fat on those sides .
Make no mistake , it could definitely kick a hexagon ’ s ass .
Sexy as a Saturday-night casino die , Cube exudes pure machismo as it glides closer to the edge .
Cube ricochets back !
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ lurks beneath Cube ’ s cocky exterior .
Cube has been hurt before .
But what ’ s this ?
Cube is .
.
.
bending inward ?
!
It can ’ t be .
Cube ’ s edges grow pointed at exaggerated angles—mysterious and sinister—until its sides soften , reducing Cube to a spherical mass that crazy-ass spikes start to jut out of .
The grim walls of the void mock Cube ’ s dreams of a better life .
Nevertheless , it barrels toward the edge .
One day , Cube @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Cube looks bad .
Unshaven , stinking of cheap booze and regret , it continues on its haunted journey , morphing from cube to sphere to weird spiky thing and back , numb .
But also angry .
You know Travis Bickle in “ Taxi Driver ” ?
Think him , but as a big , multicolored cube .
Cube never asked for this life .
If you could even call it a life .
Cube thinks back to a time when things were different .
When it wasn ’ t joylessly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that had long since passed it by .
When it wasn ’ t constantly changing shape , which is actually very painful for Cube .
But look !
Cube is heading straight for LOWER LEFT CORNER ( thirties , perky ) .
Not just toward Lower Left Corner but straight at it .
Straight enough to simultaneously hit both sides .
This is everything Cube has ever wanted .
IT HAPPENED !
!
!
The both-sides-at-once collision that Cube has always dreamed of !
Cube instantly knows that this is the corner it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bounce off of and make shapes with .
They belong together .
But it ’ s not to be .
The odds of Cube ever hitting Lower Left Corner at that exact angle again are so low , it ’ s practically forbidden by math .
Sure , they ’ ll see each other in passing .
Maybe share a knowing nod .
But their once-in-a-lifetime bounce will drift into bittersweet memory , a fading glimmer of two shapes passing in the night .

EXT. BLACKNESS – NIGHT
OPEN ON: A multicolored cube, CUBE, careens toward the upper right of the void. Each of Cube’s vibrant sides—red, blue, yellow, green, teal, pink—contrasts dramatically with the ink-black nothingness of its surroundings.
It is beautiful.
Another thing: Cube is ripped. There’s not an ounce of fat on those sides. Make no mistake, it could definitely kick a hexagon’s ass. Sexy as a Saturday-night casino die, Cube exudes pure machismo as it glides closer to the edge.
Closer, closer, until . . .
CUBE
Ow.
Cube ricochets back! Graceful and dangerous. A deep vulnerability lurks beneath Cube’s cocky exterior. Cube has been hurt before.
But what’s this? Cube is . . . bending inward?! It can’t be. Cube’s edges grow pointed at exaggerated angles—mysterious and sinister—until its sides soften, reducing Cube to a spherical mass that crazy-ass spikes start to jut out of.
Captivity has changed Cube.
The grim walls of the void mock Cube’s dreams of a better life. Nevertheless, it barrels toward the edge.
One day, Cube will break through. Cube knows it.
CUBE
Ow.
EXT. WINDOWS 95 DESKTOP – CONTINUOUS
Someone moved the mouse. Shit.
EXT. BLACKNESS – LATER
Cube looks bad. Unshaven, stinking of cheap booze and regret, it continues on its haunted journey, morphing from cube to sphere to weird spiky thing and back, numb. But also angry. You know Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver”? Think him, but as a big, multicolored cube.
CUBE
Ow.
Cube hits the wall again.
CUBE
Ow.
And again.
CUBE
Ow.
And again.
Cube never asked for this life. If you could even call it a life. Cube thinks back to a time when things were different. When it wasn’t joylessly bouncing between the edges of a world that had long since passed it by. When it wasn’t constantly changing shape, which is actually very painful for Cube.
But look! Cube is heading straight for LOWER LEFT CORNER (thirties, perky). Not just toward Lower Left Corner but straight at it. Straight enough to simultaneously hit both sides.
This is everything Cube has ever wanted.
Cube approaches Lower Left Corner, shy but determined.
CUBE
Ow?
LOWER LEFT CORNER
(coy)
Ow.
IT HAPPENED!!! The both-sides-at-once collision that Cube has always dreamed of! Cube instantly knows that this is the corner it wants to grow old with. To bounce off of and make shapes with. They belong together.
But it’s not to be. The odds of Cube ever hitting Lower Left Corner at that exact angle again are so low, it’s practically forbidden by math. Sure, they’ll see each other in passing. Maybe share a knowing nod. But their once-in-a-lifetime bounce will drift into bittersweet memory, a fading glimmer of two shapes passing in the night.


newyorker--2020-07-11--“Do You Think You’re Not Involved?” The Racial Reckoning of “Blood at the Root”

Nearly fifteen years ago , the poets Natasha Trethewey and Patrick Phillips were sharing a taxi in New York City when they began talking about their shared Southern origins .
She was born and raised in Mississippi ; he grew up in Georgia .
Midway through their conversation , Trethewey said to Phillips , “ I know about Forsyth County .
I know about where you are from.
” Only those who know the history of Forsyth County , Georgia , can imagine how exposed Phillips must have felt in that moment .
The Equal Justice Initiative has documented sixty-four @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and children between 1865 and 1950 , and , although every one of those was a horrific act , only one is known to have inaugurated a decades-long reign of terror .
That terror is what Trethewey was referencing when she said she knew about Forsyth County .
“ Why have you been silent on this ?
” Phillips remembers Trethewey asking him .
“ Do you think you ’ re not involved ?
” Trethewey challenged her friend to write about his whiteness , as she had written about her Blackness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years investigating the lynching of a man named Robert Edwards , in 1912 , and all the violence that followed : church burnings , house bombings , and night raids that forced out the nearly eleven hundred African-Americans who lived in Forsyth County at the time .
For seventy-five years , almost none returned .
Phillips published his painful survey of that history , “ Blood at the Root : A Racial Cleansing in America , ” in 2016 , and I have thought about it often in the weeks since the murder @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the wave of protests—in large cities and small towns and everywhere in between—that have followed .
Phillips ’ s book provides a model for the kind of reckoning that other Americans should undertake , wherever they call home .
When Mae Crow ’ s friends finally found her , on September 9 , 1912 , she was barely alive .
The eighteen-year-old had been raped and beaten and left in a patch of pine trees along the banks of the Chattahoochee River .
The young white woman was only a mile from where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ siblings , and not quite twenty miles from where , a few days before , another young white woman said that a Black man had tried to rape her .
The fear and fury provoked by that first alleged attack animated the community ’ s reaction to the second .
Crow had gone missing on a Sunday , and was found early on Monday morning .
By Tuesday , with no evidence and no witnesses , two African-Americans had been arrested : Ernest Knox , who was sixteen years old , and Robert @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did not live to see Wednesday .
Knox was arrested first , but , after being threatened with a mock lynching , he professed guilt , and was turned over to the sheriff in a neighboring county .
Edwards , who was known as Big Rob , was arrested later , on Tuesday morning , and taken directly to the county seat of Cumming , where a mob of two thousand locals awaited him .
Unable to attack Knox , who was protected in a fortified jail , in Fulton County , known @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Edwards .
It is not known whether he died from the blows of a crowbar to his head or from the bullets and buckshot that were fired at him , but Edwards ’ s bruised and bloodied body was dragged from the jail and then hanged from a telephone poll in the town square .
Edwards was kidnapped in the light of day , but , after that , the violence in Forsyth County took place almost entirely in darkness .
This was not out of necessity but convenience : by day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s African-American residents were busy farming their fields and trading their crops , picnicking with their families and worshipping in their churches .
At night , without fear of private retaliation or legal punishment , they waged their race war , gathering up torches , kerosene , gasoline , bullets , shotgun shells , rocks , and sticks of dynamite , then setting off for the cabins where African-Americans lived along the Chattahoochee River , at the base of the Sawnee Mountain , and down around Big Creek .
The lynching of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it only made them more audacious .
They attacked whole African-American families , and , eventually , the few white landowners who dared to protect them .
Within weeks , all but a handful of the African-Americans listed on the 1910 census of Forsyth County had fled .
These refugees were mostly field hands and sharecroppers , who took what they could in their wagons , but some were landowners , who hurriedly tried to sell their property for a fraction of what it was worth .
One second-generation farmer , Joseph Kellogg @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Forsyth County anonymously for cash or trade in an Atlanta newspaper .
Thirty-four African-American landowners who appeared in the tax records for 1912 disappear thereafter without recording a sale .
Teachers walked away from their schoolhouses , and churches were left empty .
White neighbors harvested abandoned crops without apology or compensation , stole what horses , cows , and hogs were left unattended , and plundered property for fence posts , house timbers , and barn boards with impunity .
Even the dead were run out of town : headstones from Black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for white property owners , their inscriptions erased with every step .
This was not the first racial cleansing in Forsyth County .
Two centuries before , the Cherokee Nation had been pushed by European settlers into the northwestern corner of Georgia , compressed into a tiny territory in which , improbably , they were thriving .
Thousands of Cherokees had built houses and schools , shops and sawmills , a council house and court building , and even a print shop for the first indigenous newspaper , the Cherokee Phoenix .
Their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gold was found in the proverbial hills .
( The phrase “ them thar hills ” is a corruption of a local assayer ’ s claim that there were “ millions ” in Georgia ’ s Crown Mountain . )
The resulting gold rush was the motivation for another forced relocation—one that ended eight hundred miles west , in Oklahoma .
The end point of the Trail of Tears is well known , but its origins in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains goes mostly unmarked .
Were there more memorials to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Forsyth County .
The grandfathers of the men who would lynch Robert Edwards often stole the livestock of Cherokees , who were so disenfranchised that they could bring no charges against the thieves .
When the tribe sought redress with the federal government , the Supreme Court ruled , in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia , that they lacked standing to bring such a suit .
The state itself stole Cherokee farms for land lotteries , after the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 , and following the Treaty of New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ indigenous families were forced out of the state entirely and hunted down if they tried to remain on tribal land .
Whites used vigilante violence to assert their supremacy , and then used the law and the criminal-justice system to augment it .
History can be falsely imagined as a clash of villains and heroes , with virtue concentrated in just a few people , and vice in even fewer , but what happened in Forsyth County was more than a story of individual malice .
Many witnessed the deprivation of rights , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and institutions themselves became complicit in the crimes .
Narrating the events of 1912 in Forsyth County as an inventory of nightly violence ignores the daily actions and inactions of elected city , county , and state officials , who failed to enforce the laws that should have punished the perpetrators and protected the victims .
Even after Robert Edwards was lynched for assaulting Mae Crow , the county sheriff continued to interrogate suspects and arrest others for her assault .
Two of those arrested—Knox and his eighteen-year-old cousin Oscar Daniel—were found @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hour and nineteen minutes reviewing their cases .
Their executions were ordered to be private , but , the night before the hangings , a mob burned down the fence around the gallows .
Five thousand people watched as the teen-agers were hanged .
While lynchings were not rare , the violence in Forsyth County was unusual for its thoroughness .
By contrast , at the same time that the county was conducting its purge , a neighboring county was demonstrating how such terrorism could be quelled .
Hall County received many of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and it seemed briefly as though the persecution they had faced might follow them across the Chattahoochee River .
But eleven arrests were made almost immediately , after an attack on a sharecropping family in Hall County , and those arrests were followed by convictions , which signalled that the violence that would continue for decades west of the river would not be tolerated east of it .

Nearly fifteen years ago, the poets Natasha Trethewey and Patrick Phillips were sharing a taxi in New York City when they began talking about their shared Southern origins. She was born and raised in Mississippi; he grew up in Georgia. Midway through their conversation, Trethewey said to Phillips, “I know about Forsyth County. I know about where you are from.”
Only those who know the history of Forsyth County, Georgia, can imagine how exposed Phillips must have felt in that moment. The Equal Justice Initiative has documented sixty-four hundred lynchings of Black men, women, and children between 1865 and 1950, and, although every one of those was a horrific act, only one is known to have inaugurated a decades-long reign of terror. That terror is what Trethewey was referencing when she said she knew about Forsyth County. “Why have you been silent on this?” Phillips remembers Trethewey asking him. “Do you think you’re not involved?”
Trethewey challenged her friend to write about his whiteness, as she had written about her Blackness, and it prompted him to spend years investigating the lynching of a man named Robert Edwards, in 1912, and all the violence that followed: church burnings, house bombings, and night raids that forced out the nearly eleven hundred African-Americans who lived in Forsyth County at the time. For seventy-five years, almost none returned. Phillips published his painful survey of that history, “Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America,” in 2016, and I have thought about it often in the weeks since the murder of George Floyd, especially while watching the wave of protests—in large cities and small towns and everywhere in between—that have followed. Phillips’s book provides a model for the kind of reckoning that other Americans should undertake, wherever they call home.
When Mae Crow’s friends finally found her, on September 9, 1912, she was barely alive. The eighteen-year-old had been raped and beaten and left in a patch of pine trees along the banks of the Chattahoochee River. The young white woman was only a mile from where she lived with her parents and eight siblings, and not quite twenty miles from where, a few days before, another young white woman said that a Black man had tried to rape her. The fear and fury provoked by that first alleged attack animated the community’s reaction to the second. Crow had gone missing on a Sunday, and was found early on Monday morning. By Tuesday, with no evidence and no witnesses, two African-Americans had been arrested: Ernest Knox, who was sixteen years old, and Robert Edwards, who was twenty-four.
Edwards did not live to see Wednesday. Knox was arrested first, but, after being threatened with a mock lynching, he professed guilt, and was turned over to the sheriff in a neighboring county. Edwards, who was known as Big Rob, was arrested later, on Tuesday morning, and taken directly to the county seat of Cumming, where a mob of two thousand locals awaited him. Unable to attack Knox, who was protected in a fortified jail, in Fulton County, known as the Tower, the vigilantes fixated on Edwards. It is not known whether he died from the blows of a crowbar to his head or from the bullets and buckshot that were fired at him, but Edwards’s bruised and bloodied body was dragged from the jail and then hanged from a telephone pole in the town square.
Edwards was kidnapped in the light of day, but, after that, the violence in Forsyth County took place almost entirely in darkness. This was not out of necessity but convenience: by day, the men who terrorized the county’s African-American residents were busy farming their fields and trading their crops, picnicking with their families and worshipping in their churches. At night, without fear of private retaliation or legal punishment, they waged their race war, gathering up torches, kerosene, gasoline, bullets, shotgun shells, rocks, and sticks of dynamite, then setting off for the cabins where African-Americans lived along the Chattahoochee River, at the base of the Sawnee Mountain, and down around Big Creek.
The lynching of Robert Edwards did not appease them; it only made them more audacious. They attacked whole African-American families, and, eventually, the few white landowners who dared to protect them. Within weeks, all but a handful of the African-Americans listed on the 1910 census of Forsyth County had fled. These refugees were mostly field hands and sharecroppers, who took what they could in their wagons, but some were landowners, who hurriedly tried to sell their property for a fraction of what it was worth. One second-generation farmer, Joseph Kellogg, offered his two hundred acres in Forsyth County anonymously for cash or trade in an Atlanta newspaper. Thirty-four African-American landowners who appeared in the tax records for 1912 disappear thereafter without recording a sale. Teachers walked away from their schoolhouses, and churches were left empty. White neighbors harvested abandoned crops without apology or compensation, stole what horses, cows, and hogs were left unattended, and plundered property for fence posts, house timbers, and barn boards with impunity. Even the dead were run out of town: headstones from Black cemeteries were taken and made into flagstones for white property owners, their inscriptions erased with every step.
This was not the first racial cleansing in Forsyth County. Two centuries before, the Cherokee Nation had been pushed by European settlers into the northwestern corner of Georgia, compressed into a tiny territory in which, improbably, they were thriving. Thousands of Cherokees had built houses and schools, shops and sawmills, a council house and court building, and even a print shop for the first indigenous newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix. Their precarious peace ended in 1828, when gold was found in the proverbial hills. (The phrase “them thar hills” is a corruption of a local assayer’s claim that there were “millions” in Georgia’s Crown Mountain.) The resulting gold rush was the motivation for another forced relocation—one that ended eight hundred miles west, in Oklahoma.
The end point of the Trail of Tears is well known, but its origins in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains goes mostly unmarked. Were there more memorials to the event, some of them would stand in Forsyth County. The grandfathers of the men who would lynch Robert Edwards often stole the livestock of Cherokees, who were so disenfranchised that they could bring no charges against the thieves. When the tribe sought redress with the federal government, the Supreme Court ruled, in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, that they lacked standing to bring such a suit. The state itself stole Cherokee farms for land lotteries, after the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and following the Treaty of New Echota, in 1835, the remaining indigenous families were forced out of the state entirely and hunted down if they tried to remain on tribal land.
Whites used vigilante violence to assert their supremacy, and then used the law and the criminal-justice system to augment it. History can be falsely imagined as a clash of villains and heroes, with virtue concentrated in just a few people, and vice in even fewer, but what happened in Forsyth County was more than a story of individual malice. Many witnessed the deprivation of rights, plenty benefitted from the theft of property, and institutions themselves became complicit in the crimes. Narrating the events of 1912 in Forsyth County as an inventory of nightly violence ignores the daily actions and inactions of elected city, county, and state officials, who failed to enforce the laws that should have punished the perpetrators and protected the victims. Even after Robert Edwards was lynched for assaulting Mae Crow, the county sheriff continued to interrogate suspects and arrest others for her assault. Two of those arrested—Knox and his eighteen-year-old cousin Oscar Daniel—were found guilty after a jury spent a collective hour and nineteen minutes reviewing their cases. Their executions were ordered to be private, but, the night before the hangings, a mob burned down the fence around the gallows. Five thousand people watched as the teen-agers were hanged.
While lynchings were not rare, the violence in Forsyth County was unusual for its thoroughness. By contrast, at the same time that the county was conducting its purge, a neighboring county was demonstrating how such terrorism could be quelled. Hall County received many of the refugees who fled Forsyth County, and it seemed briefly as though the persecution they had faced might follow them across the Chattahoochee River. But eleven arrests were made almost immediately, after an attack on a sharecropping family in Hall County, and those arrests were followed by convictions, which signalled that the violence that would continue for decades west of the river would not be tolerated east of it.
That local example did nothing to change life in Forsyth County, nor did other examples of addressing racial injustice that would eventually follow. Montgomery and Selma were only a state away, but Forsyth County’s extremism persisted for three-quarters of a century. Black maids who tried moving into the county with their employers were run off, and Black chauffeurs driving through it were attacked, over the protestations of their passengers. Meanwhile, the land stolen from African-Americans became more and more valuable, as professionals fled Atlanta for the suburbs along Lake Lanier, after it was formed by the construction of a dam, in 1957. The segregation fought by activists around the United States was so extreme in Forsyth County that there was no need for separate drinking fountains or schools; there were almost no African-Americans there to use them. In May, 1968, a month after Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, white residents threatened violence against a visiting church group that included ten Black children, forcing them from a campsite; in the summer of 1980, a Black couple attending a corporate picnic was surveilled by locals all afternoon and later shot at while trying to leave a public park. Miguel Marcelli’s girlfriend watched as he bled from a gunshot wound, then listened as the white assailants laughed while she ran for help.


newyorker--2020-07-11--How Can the Press Best Serve a Democratic Society?

Henry R. Luce , the publisher of Time Inc. , first proposed engaging a panel of scholars on the state of the American press in December of 1942 .
He suggested the idea to his friend Robert Maynard Hutchins , a legal and educational philosopher who , just over a decade earlier , at the age of thirty , had become the president of the University of Chicago .
With the country mobilized for the fight against totalitarianism , Luce envisioned a philosophical inquiry that would reaffirm the foundations of freedom in the United States .
Distrust of the media @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the public needed to better understand the purpose and function of the press .
At first , Hutchins demurred , contending that the project would be too difficult to organize .
Finally , in the fall of 1943 , after months of Luce ’ s cajoling , he agreed to lead the effort .
On December 15 , 1943 , a group of academics and policymakers gathered for the first time at the University Club , in New York .
Luce ’ s initial idea had been to enlist the University of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hutchins went in a different direction , selecting luminaries from a range of disciplines .
The group included Reinhold Niebuhr , the theologian and ethicist ; Charles E. Merriam , one of the nation ’ s leading political scientists ; Arthur M. Schlesinger , Sr. , a Harvard historian ; Archibald MacLeish , the librarian of Congress and a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet ; and William Ernest Hocking , a renowned philosopher of religion .
None were journalists ; Hutchins believed that the industry needed to be excavated by outsiders .
The thirteen Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ called the Commission on the Freedom of the Press , would spend nearly three years evaluating American journalism .
In a statement of principles , Hutchins told them that their purpose was to answer three questions : “ What society do we want ?
What do we have ?
How can the press .
.
.
be used to get what we want ?
” In “ An Aristocracy of Critics : Luce , Hutchins , Niebuhr , and the Committee that Redefined the Freedom of the Press ” ( Yale ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the University of Nevada , Las Vegas , re-creates the panel ’ s deliberations .
As fascism advanced in Europe , there was a palpable sense that liberties were imperilled at home ; in a Times Op-Ed , Henry A. Wallace , Franklin D. Roosevelt ’ s Vice-President , compared fascism to an “ infectious disease ” and warned against the “ deliberate , systematic poisoning of the public channels of information.
” Commission members worried about the forces of division in American society , the power of tribalism to warp political debate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in provoking discord .
Americans were inhabiting “ different worlds of fact and judgment , ” John M. Clark , a Columbia University economist , said .
Hocking , the philosopher of religion , considered the way a publication and its readers could create a closed system that was rage-filled , self-reinforcing , and profitable ; another commission member , George Shuster , the president of Hunter College , warned that a one-sided press could “ pull the house apart.
” The Hutchins Commission , as it came to be known , met @ @ @ @ @ @ @ three days , mostly in Chicago and New York , and heard from fifty-eight witnesses ; its staff conducted two hundred and twenty-five additional interviews .
On nearly every subject , it struggled to find consensus .
In January of 1946 , as the committee gathered to review a draft of a final report , Niebuhr suggested that it was facing an “ insoluble problem ” ; perhaps definitive answers were out of reach .
“ If you have an insoluble problem of great complexities , and you illumine the complexities , you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ great contribution , ” he said .
The slim volume that the commission eventually produced , “ A Free and Responsible Press , ” is maddeningly contradictory in some places and impractical in others .
Even so , it would go on to become a part of journalistic canon because it did what Niebuhr suggested : articulate the complexities of establishing and maintaining a free and responsible press .
Today , those complexities have deepened .
And yet the work of the Hutchins Commission remains a touchstone , in part because of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which journalism can aspire in a democracy .
The committee ’ s report begins by going back to first principles and making the case for the special status of the freedom of expression .
It is the political liberty from which all others spring—the one that “ promotes and protects all the rest.
” “ Civilized society .
.
.
lives and changes by the consumption of ideas , ” the report argues .
“ Therefore it must make sure that as many as possible of the ideas which its members have are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s because the press is the primary conduit through which people engage with the ideas they need to function as democratic citizens that it must be both protected and scrutinized .
In the mid-twentieth century , when the world was becoming more interconnected in unprecedented ways , the commission believed that society ’ s requirements for the press were “ greater in variety , quantity , and quality than those of any previous society in any age.
” It identified five essential mandates : first , providing “ a truthful , comprehensive , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s events ” ; second , furnishing a forum for discussion of “ all the important viewpoints and interests in the society ” ; third , offering a “ representative picture ” of society and its various groups ; fourth , educating the public on “ the ideals towards which the community should strive ” ; and fifth , making information available to everybody .
The press , the commission found , was failing to meet all of these requirements .
To some degree , the problem was that journalists were driven to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ novel and sensational , ” by the pressures of the market .
But the news was also being skewed by the biases of the owners of media outlets , and by pressure from interest groups .
The report ends with a series of broad recommendations , including raising the professionalism of the industry , encouraging journalists to hold each other accountable , and establishing an independent governmental agency to report regularly on the performance of the press .
If these bland proposals have largely been forgotten , the committee ’ s ultimate conclusion—that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fall most heavily upon the press itself—remains a bracing admonition .
“ The urgent and perplexing issues which confront our country , the new dangers which encompass our free society , the new fatefulness attaching to every step in foreign policy and to what the press publishes about it , mean that the preservation of democracy and perhaps of civilization may now depend upon a free and responsible press , ” the report concludes .
“ Such a press we must have if we would have progress and peace.
” Nearly seventy-five years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Responsible Press , ” we face a crisis similar to , and perhaps deeper than , the one contemplated by the Hutchins Commission .
Confidence in the media is at a nadir , the country ’ s political divisions are driving disagreement over basic facts , and half-truths , falsehoods , and propaganda have overrun digital platforms and polluted the news ecosystem .
The press itself is also shrinking .
According to a new report by the School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in four American newspapers closed .
In the midst of all of this , some of journalism ’ s foundational practices are being reconsidered .
The radicalism of the Trump era , with its populist , race-baiting President and a Republican Party that embraces deception as a political strategy , has caused a reëxamination of “ objectivity ” as a journalistic ideal .
It has also ignited a debate about whether the press ’ s commitment to publishing a diverse set of ideas should be more circumscribed .
Last month , the controversy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Opinion section to publish an Op-Ed by the Republican senator Tom Cotton , which called for a mobilization of the military and an “ overwhelming show of force ” to quell “ riots ” in American cities , came to embody both disputes .
On social media , the piece set off a rare open revolt among reporters and Opinion department staff .
The NewsGuild of New York , which represents many Times journalists , issued a statement castigating what it called the “ irresponsible choice ” to publish the piece : “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by editorial management , spread of misinformation , and the timing of its call to arms gravely undermine the work we do every day , ” the statement read .

Henry R. Luce, the publisher of Time Inc., first proposed engaging a panel of scholars on the state of the American press in December of 1942. He suggested the idea to his friend Robert Maynard Hutchins, a legal and educational philosopher who, just over a decade earlier, at the age of thirty, had become the president of the University of Chicago. With the country mobilized for the fight against totalitarianism, Luce envisioned a philosophical inquiry that would reaffirm the foundations of freedom in the United States. Distrust of the media had become pervasive, and Luce believed that the public needed to better understand the purpose and function of the press. At first, Hutchins demurred, contending that the project would be too difficult to organize. Finally, in the fall of 1943, after months of Luce’s cajoling, he agreed to lead the effort.
On December 15, 1943, a group of academics and policymakers gathered for the first time at the University Club, in New York. Luce’s initial idea had been to enlist the University of Chicago’s philosophy department, but Hutchins went in a different direction, selecting luminaries from a range of disciplines. The group included Reinhold Niebuhr, the theologian and ethicist; Charles E. Merriam, one of the nation’s leading political scientists; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., a Harvard historian; Archibald MacLeish, the librarian of Congress and a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet; and William Ernest Hocking, a renowned philosopher of religion. None were journalists; Hutchins believed that the industry needed to be excavated by outsiders. The thirteen Americans and four international advisers, whom Hutchins called the Commission on the Freedom of the Press, would spend nearly three years evaluating American journalism. In a statement of principles, Hutchins told them that their purpose was to answer three questions: “What society do we want? What do we have? How can the press . . . be used to get what we want?”
In “An Aristocracy of Critics: Luce, Hutchins, Niebuhr, and the Committee that Redefined the Freedom of the Press” (Yale), Stephen Bates, a journalism professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, re-creates the panel’s deliberations. As fascism advanced in Europe, there was a palpable sense that liberties were imperilled at home; in an essay published in the Times, Henry A. Wallace, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Vice-President, compared fascism to an “infectious disease” and warned against the “deliberate, systematic poisoning of the public channels of information.” Commission members worried about the forces of division in American society, the power of tribalism to warp political debate, and the press’s role in provoking discord. Americans were inhabiting “different worlds of fact and judgment,” John M. Clark, a Columbia University economist, said. Hocking, the philosopher of religion, considered the way a publication and its readers could create a closed system that was rage-filled, self-reinforcing, and profitable; another commission member, George Shuster, the president of Hunter College, warned that a one-sided press could “pull the house apart.”
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The Hutchins Commission, as it came to be known, met seventeen times, usually over two or three days, mostly in Chicago and New York, and heard from fifty-eight witnesses; its staff conducted two hundred and twenty-five additional interviews. On nearly every subject, it struggled to find consensus. In January of 1946, as the committee gathered to review a draft of a final report, Niebuhr suggested that it was facing an “insoluble problem”; perhaps definitive answers were out of reach. “If you have an insoluble problem of great complexities, and you illumine the complexities, you may be able to make quite a great contribution,” he said. The slim volume that the commission eventually produced, “A Free and Responsible Press,” is maddeningly contradictory in some places and impractical in others. Even so, it would go on to become a part of journalistic canon because it did what Niebuhr suggested: articulate the complexities of establishing and maintaining a free and responsible press.
Today, those complexities have deepened. And yet the work of the Hutchins Commission remains a touchstone, in part because of the way it lays out the virtues to which journalism can aspire in a democracy. The committee’s report begins by going back to first principles and making the case for the special status of the freedom of expression. It is the political liberty from which all others spring—the one that “promotes and protects all the rest.” “Civilized society . . . lives and changes by the consumption of ideas,” the report argues. “Therefore it must make sure that as many as possible of the ideas which its members have are available for its examination.” It’s because the press is the primary conduit through which people engage with the ideas they need to function as democratic citizens that it must be both protected and scrutinized.
In the mid-twentieth century, when the world was becoming more interconnected in unprecedented ways, the commission believed that society’s requirements for the press were “greater in variety, quantity, and quality than those of any previous society in any age.” It identified five essential mandates: first, providing “a truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day’s events”; second, furnishing a forum for discussion of “all the important viewpoints and interests in the society”; third, offering a “representative picture” of society and its various groups; fourth, educating the public on “the ideals towards which the community should strive”; and fifth, making information available to everybody.
The press, the commission found, was failing to meet all of these requirements. To some degree, the problem was that journalists were driven to focus on “firstness, on the novel and sensational,” by the pressures of the market. But the news was also being skewed by the biases of the owners of media outlets, and by pressure from interest groups. The report ends with a series of broad recommendations, including raising the professionalism of the industry, encouraging journalists to hold each other accountable, and establishing an independent governmental agency to report regularly on the performance of the press. If these bland proposals have largely been forgotten, the committee’s ultimate conclusion—that the responsibility for fixing the press must fall most heavily upon the press itself—remains a bracing admonition. “The urgent and perplexing issues which confront our country, the new dangers which encompass our free society, the new fatefulness attaching to every step in foreign policy and to what the press publishes about it, mean that the preservation of democracy and perhaps of civilization may now depend upon a free and responsible press,” the report concludes. “Such a press we must have if we would have progress and peace.”
Nearly seventy-five years after the publication of “A Free and Responsible Press,” we face a crisis similar to, and perhaps deeper than, the one contemplated by the Hutchins Commission. Confidence in the media is at a nadir, the country’s political divisions are driving disagreement over basic facts, and half-truths, falsehoods, and propaganda have overrun digital platforms and polluted the news ecosystem. The press itself is also shrinking. According to a new report by the School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, between 2004 and 2019, nearly one in four American newspapers closed.
In the midst of all of this, some of journalism’s foundational practices are being reconsidered. The radicalism of the Trump era, with its populist, race-baiting President and a Republican Party that embraces deception as a political strategy, has caused a reëxamination of “objectivity” as a journalistic ideal. It has also ignited a debate about whether the press’s commitment to publishing a diverse set of ideas should be more circumscribed. Last month, the controversy over the decision by the Times’ Opinion section to publish an Op-Ed by the Republican senator Tom Cotton, which called for a mobilization of the military and an “overwhelming show of force” to quell “riots” in American cities, came to embody both disputes. On social media, the piece set off a rare open revolt among reporters and Opinion department staff. The NewsGuild of New York, which represents many Times journalists, issued a statement castigating what it called the “irresponsible choice” to publish the piece: “Its lack of context, inadequate vetting by editorial management, spread of misinformation, and the timing of its call to arms gravely undermine the work we do every day,” the statement read.
For some critics, the publication of Cotton’s Op-Ed represented the point of no return for the old mores of journalism. “American view-from-nowhere, ‘objectivity’-obsessed, both-sides journalism is a failed experiment,” Wesley Lowery, a former reporter at the Washington Post who won a Pulitzer Prize, in 2016, for his reporting on policing, tweeted, after the piece was published. “We need to fundamentally reset the norms of our field. The old way must go. We need to rebuild our industry as one that operates from a place of moral clarity.” He later published his own Op-Ed in the Times that elaborated on his argument. “For years, I’ve been among a chorus of mainstream journalists who have called for our industry to abandon the appearance of objectivity as the aspirational journalistic standard, and for reporters instead to focus on being fair and telling the truth, as best as one can, based on the given context and available facts,” Lowery writes.
In response to Lowery, some argued that, as a concept, moral clarity was unrealistically binary, and in tension with Enlightenment liberalism. Others suggested that old values shouldn’t be abandoned. In a piece for the City Journal, a magazine on urban policy established by the conservative Manhattan Institute, the writer Paul Starobin revisits the statement that Adolph Ochs made after taking over as publisher of the Times, in 1896:


newyorker--2020-07-11--What Do College Students Think of Their Schools’ Reopening Plans?

Days after this post was published , the University of Washington , which was among the first schools to switch to remote learning , back in March , disclosed that at least eighty students living in off-campus fraternity houses had become infected with the coronavirus .
The Seattle Times quoted Daniel Leifer , a pediatrician who is studying at U.W.
, who said , “ I don ’ t hold it against college students that they ’ re partying with each other and getting to know each other , because that ’ s everyone ’ s college experience .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ safe campus .
.
.
.
A lot of college reopening plans are premised on students wearing masks and social distancing .
This crystallized for me that that doesn ’ t seem very realistic.
” A defense of campus life in the pandemic came from Cornell University , whose study concluded that fewer students and staff would likely get infected during an in-person semester than a remote one , because the university would be closely monitoring them .
`` If we have a residential , on-campus semester , then we have the authority @ @ @ @ @ @ @ requirements on our students , '' Martha Pollack , the president of Cornell , told Inside Higher Ed .
She added that the university hoped to design “ a series of escalations for dealing with misbehavior.
” In other words , Cornell wasn ’ t challenging the premise that college students were likely to act irresponsibly but proposing that the university police them in person .
And yet , for weeks , tens of thousands of people of college age have managed to keep themselves safe , healthy , and organized during mass @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Massachusetts , Pennsylvania , and elsewhere show that the protests have not produced a spike in COVID-19 ; in cities that tested protesters specifically , the rate of infection among people who participated is the same as in the population at large .
It no doubt helps that the protests are held outdoors , and that the vast majority of protesters wear masks .
As I observed at Occupy City Hall , many people even sleep in masks .
At marches large and small—beginning with the very first night of protests in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a jail-support team outside One Police Plaza , in Lower Manhattan—I have watched protesters handing out hand sanitizer and masks at all times , and there is always food , water , and first aid available .
In my thirty-five years of protesting and reporting on protests , in this country and elsewhere , I have never seen this level of detailed , organized , and consistent mutual care .
One of the popular call-and-response chants is “ Who keeps us safe ?
/ We keep us safe.
” Another is “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Interdependence and shared responsibility are key elements of the protesters ’ message and their identity .
Community is what students seek when they attend college in person .
Sometimes that community is found at parties , but the meaning of collegiate social connections can not be boiled down to drinking and fraternities .
Young people attend college to learn how to think , and thinking is rarely accomplished in solitude .
Thinking outside of any conversation—the sort in which it is possible to look your interlocutors in the eye , unmediated by a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is nearly impossible .
As the pandemic-era explosion of online reading groups illustrates , we need others to help us understand , to articulate and repeat ideas in ways that make them stick in the memory , and to stay engaged .
Let ’ s reframe the question by asking not whether colleges should get their tuition dollars by putting their students , faculty , and staff at risk but how to insure that the current generation of college students will be able to learn in a meaningful way .
At Occupy City @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and teach-ins in a safe and responsible manner .
Attendees have been learning about the workings of the police and city government , the politics of rent and housing , and the history of abolitionist movements , but , most importantly , they have been learning how to learn , together , while keeping one another safe .
Colleges ought to be asking young people like them how to bring that knowledge , and that sense of care and responsibility , to campus .
Instead , they are treating them alternately as clients @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pleased or managed .
Back in March , decisions to close campuses were made by administrations , sometimes preceded by discussions in hastily called faculty meetings .
Plans for the fall have generally been devised by working groups that include representatives of a school ’ s faculty , its administration , and outside experts .
These working groups have often surveyed students to gauge how likely they would be to return to campus if given the opportunity or to take a gap year instead of studying remotely , and how receptive they would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do not appear to have asked students to help design their new learning environment .
Sonya Dutton , who is about to start college at Williams , in western Massachusetts , told me , via e-mail , “ If recent events have shown us anything , it ’ s that Gen Z is uniquely ready to mobilize if given motivation and a voice .
Rules will be followed more if students have input and view following them as a community responsibility vs. rules put in place by out-of-touch admin.
” “ If I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be so much more aware of our generation , ” Avalon Silver , a rising sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Asheville , told me , by Zoom .
“ I think they think we are the people who don ’ t want to be wearing masks.
” Silver , a public-health major , has been struck by many of the same things that impressed me at the New York protests : community cohesion and the extent and reliability of mutual aid .
She was impressed by one of the early @ @ @ @ @ @ @ destroyed a medics ’ station that had been set up by protesters , slashing water bottles .
When Silver herself joined the protests in Raleigh , she saw “ people with wagons of water bottles walking around , asking if you need anything , ” including masks .
Silver suggested that students could help administrators rethink how colleges are interacting with students who are staying home , whether out of personal choice or because the university has asked them not to come to campus during a particular term .
Such students , Silver @ @ @ @ @ @ @ local clusters by major ; perhaps they could meet outside twice a week to discuss the material .
“ In Raleigh or in Asheville , we could go to a big park and sit and have intellectual conversations , ” she said .
The online portion of the spring semester was alienating , Silver said , and the idea of being able to connect with other students , at a distance but in person , was extremely appealing .

After months of hemming, hawing, hand-wringing, and collecting student deposits, residential colleges and universities have started announcing their plans for the next academic year. A majority are planning to hold classes in person. Some, like Middlebury, a small liberal-arts college in rural Vermont, and Bard College, in upstate New York (where I will start teaching in August), are planning for most students to return to campus, and provisionally committing only to minor adjustments to the academic calendar. Some, like Bowdoin College, in Maine, and Amherst College, in Massachusetts (where I have been teaching), are reducing the number of students on campus and providing everyone with a single dorm room, and will transition to remote learning after Thanksgiving break. Others, like Oberlin College, in Ohio, are radically changing their academic calendars, switching to a three-semester, year-round schedule to insure that no more than two-thirds of students are on campus at any given time. Stanford will bring half of its undergraduates back to campus at a time, but it plans for most classes to be taught remotely, as does the University of California system. Harvard is bringing up to forty per cent of undergraduates back to campus, where they will take classes online. (On Wednesday, Harvard and M.I.T. sued the Trump Administration for its directive to strip foreign students of their visas if they have no in-person classes.) Some classes will meet outdoors—Amherst, for example, will erect tents for outdoor instruction, which will allow for social distancing. All schools are putting testing and contact-tracing protocols in place: Yale is planning to test students weekly, Bard will require students to arrive carrying negative test results, and Amherst is setting aside residence halls where students who have tested positive will be quarantined.
Critics of the plans to bring students back to campus—any number of students, for any amount of time—have been merciless. Two law professors from Colorado, Peter Huang and Debra Austin, are publishing a sixty-five-page article, titled “Unsafe at Any Campus: Don’t Let Colleges Become the Next Cruise Ships, Nursing Homes, and Food Processing Plants.” Huang and Austin write, “We recognize that lost tuition revenue if students delay or defer education is an institutional concern,” but, they argue, “Our decision-making should be guided by the overriding principle that people matter more than money.” Their worst-case scenario is captured in the title, but their best-case scenario is dire, too:
Students sitting in classrooms (or negotiating hallways or going to restrooms), concerned about becoming infected or bringing an infection home to at-risk loved ones, are under greater anxiety and stress than usual. Anxiety is a transient learning disability interfering with a student’s working memory, learning, recall, and capacity to complete tasks. Additionally, some students, staff, and faculty may experience what is known as mask anxiety, due to feeling the inability to breathe because of a pre-existing condition, such as asthma, or a snug face covering. Either possibility can lead people to take their masks off unsafely causing COVID-19 transmission risks.
Although colleges have designed their reopening plans in coöperation with state public-health authorities and leading private medical institutions, their potential flaws are obvious. The coronavirus can likely be spread by asymptomatic and presymptomatic infected people, so asking students to monitor themselves for signs of illness may not help. Tests continue to be unreliable, possibly especially for asymptomatic people. Many dormitories have shared bathrooms and showers in the hallways. The biggest variable that complicates reopening plans, however, according to many critics, are the students themselves. Scott Galloway, a business-school professor at N.Y.U., wrote a blog post eviscerating college administrators who are inviting students to return to campus.
My 4th year at UCLA I was Interfraternity Council President (not on my LinkedIn profile). As king of the jarheads, I was privy to the tragedy that unfurled each week from the collision of youth, alcohol, and newfound freedom. In the same year, a Lambda Chi passed out from drinking on the roof of his fraternity, rolled off into the driveway, and was found the next morning in a coma. Our IFC VP (a Phi Kap) got shi**y drunk at a party in Malibu, decided to take a jetski out at 2 am, and washed up 5 days later. Our treasurer (Sigma Chi) hanged himself after his girlfriend rejected his marriage proposal. Yep, but today’s youth will definitely wear masks and keep 6 feet from each other off campus.
Gen Z is by far the age group most likely to be asymptomatic. They are also most likely to feel immortal and defy healthcare guidance. So, both physically and psychologically, young people are most inclined to be superspreaders.
Days after this post was published, the University of Washington, which was among the first schools to switch to remote learning, back in March, disclosed that at least eighty students living in off-campus fraternity houses had become infected with the coronavirus. The Seattle Times quoted Daniel Leifer, a pediatrician who is studying at U.W., who said, “I don’t hold it against college students that they’re partying with each other and getting to know each other, because that’s everyone’s college experience. It just doesn’t make for a safe campus. . . . A lot of college reopening plans are premised on students wearing masks and social distancing. This crystallized for me that that doesn’t seem very realistic.”
A defense of campus life in the pandemic came from Cornell University, whose study concluded that fewer students and staff would likely get infected during an in-person semester than a remote one, because the university would be closely monitoring them. "If we have a residential, on-campus semester, then we have the authority to put all kinds of expectations and requirements on our students," Martha Pollack, the president of Cornell, told Inside Higher Ed. She added that the university hoped to design “a series of escalations for dealing with misbehavior.” In other words, Cornell wasn’t challenging the premise that college students were likely to act irresponsibly but proposing that the university police them in person.
And yet, for weeks, tens of thousands of people of college age have managed to keep themselves safe, healthy, and organized during mass protests nationwide. Data from New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere show that the protests have not produced a spike in COVID-19; in cities that tested protesters specifically, the rate of infection among people who participated is the same as in the population at large. It no doubt helps that the protests are held outdoors, and that the vast majority of protesters wear masks. As I observed at Occupy City Hall, many people even sleep in masks. At marches large and small—beginning with the very first night of protests in New York City, which I spent with a jail-support team outside One Police Plaza, in Lower Manhattan—I have watched protesters handing out hand sanitizer and masks at all times, and there is always food, water, and first aid available. In my thirty-five years of protesting and reporting on protests, in this country and elsewhere, I have never seen this level of detailed, organized, and consistent mutual care. One of the popular call-and-response chants is “Who keeps us safe? / We keep us safe.” Another is “This is what community looks like.” Interdependence and shared responsibility are key elements of the protesters’ message and their identity.
Community is what students seek when they attend college in person. Sometimes that community is found at parties, but the meaning of collegiate social connections cannot be boiled down to drinking and fraternities. Young people attend college to learn how to think, and thinking is rarely accomplished in solitude. Thinking outside of any conversation—the sort in which it is possible to look your interlocutors in the eye, unmediated by a screen—is difficult beyond measure. Learning alone is nearly impossible. As the pandemic-era explosion of online reading groups illustrates, we need others to help us understand, to articulate and repeat ideas in ways that make them stick in the memory, and to stay engaged.
Let’s reframe the question by asking not whether colleges should get their tuition dollars by putting their students, faculty, and staff at risk but how to insure that the current generation of college students will be able to learn in a meaningful way. At Occupy City Hall, organizers have set up talks and teach-ins in a safe and responsible manner. Attendees have been learning about the workings of the police and city government, the politics of rent and housing, and the history of abolitionist movements, but, most importantly, they have been learning how to learn, together, while keeping one another safe. Colleges ought to be asking young people like them how to bring that knowledge, and that sense of care and responsibility, to campus. Instead, they are treating them alternately as clients and as children, people to be pleased or managed.
Back in March, decisions to close campuses were made by administrations, sometimes preceded by discussions in hastily called faculty meetings. Plans for the fall have generally been devised by working groups that include representatives of a school’s faculty, its administration, and outside experts. These working groups have often surveyed students to gauge how likely they would be to return to campus if given the opportunity or to take a gap year instead of studying remotely, and how receptive they would be to safety protocols. Most schools do not appear to have asked students to help design their new learning environment. Sonya Dutton, who is about to start college at Williams, in western Massachusetts, told me, via e-mail, “If recent events have shown us anything, it’s that Gen Z is uniquely ready to mobilize if given motivation and a voice. Rules will be followed more if students have input and view following them as a community responsibility vs. rules put in place by out-of-touch admin.”
“If I were in higher education, I would be so much more aware of our generation,” Avalon Silver, a rising sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, told me, by Zoom. “I think they think we are the people who don’t want to be wearing masks.” Silver, a public-health major, has been struck by many of the same things that impressed me at the New York protests: community cohesion and the extent and reliability of mutual aid. She was impressed by one of the early demonstrations in Asheville, where the police destroyed a medics’ station that had been set up by protesters, slashing water bottles. When Silver herself joined the protests in Raleigh, she saw “people with wagons of water bottles walking around, asking if you need anything,” including masks.
Silver suggested that students could help administrators rethink how colleges are interacting with students who are staying home, whether out of personal choice or because the university has asked them not to come to campus during a particular term. Such students, Silver told me, could organize themselves in local clusters by major; perhaps they could meet outside twice a week to discuss the material. “In Raleigh or in Asheville, we could go to a big park and sit and have intellectual conversations,” she said. The online portion of the spring semester was alienating, Silver said, and the idea of being able to connect with other students, at a distance but in person, was extremely appealing.
Oli Schmitz, who has been taking part in protests in Milwaukee and studies at Vassar, proposed that the college employ NOVID, an app that tracks contacts and alerts people if they have been in proximity to someone who has tested positive for or been exposed to the coronavirus. Vassar plans to bring a majority of students to campus and offer mostly in-person classes; students will be required to stay on campus until Thanksgiving. An app like NOVID, Schmitz suggested, would insure that these rules are followed.


newyorker--2020-07-11--HAIM Are Talking About Everything They Weren’t Talking About Before

On March 10th , the three sisters who make up the band HAIM were in New York City to launch what they were calling their “ Deli Tour ” of the country , to promote their new album , “ Women in Music Pt .
III.
” The concept of the tour had sentimental significance .
The sisters—Alana , who is twenty-eight , Danielle , thirty-one , and Este , thirty-four—had performed their first rock show at Canter ’ s deli , in their home town of Los Angeles , in 2000 , back when the trio were in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which specialized mostly in covers of oldies .
In the two decades since , HAIM had released three major-label records , played Glastonbury and Coachella , made music videos with Paul Thomas Anderson , and become icons of walking in a city where people supposedly don ’ t walk .
They ’ d been big for a while ; it was time to get small , if only for a moment—they were due to play Madison Square Garden and the Hollywood Bowl later in 2020 .
I met them in the lobby @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I elbow-bumped instead of shaking hands—laughing as we did it , as if we were only pantomiming our health anxieties—and the band and I tried to sit apart yet together on adjoining red velvet couches , although six feet had not yet become the baseline of social distancing .
Nobody wore a mask , but the lobby was almost empty , eerie .
Everything would change within days .
But at this moment the sisters were barrelling ahead with the deli tour ; that night they would play Sarge ’ s , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( Their father , Moti , was a professional soccer player in Israel before emigrating , in 1980 , to California , where he met their mother , Donna ; the two went into real estate together . )
The sisters constantly overlap and interrupt one another in conversation ; it ’ s like talking to an effervescent hydra .
Talk of Jewish food—the reliability of the Reuben , the insuperable grossness of gefilte fish—transitioned perhaps inevitably to how our bat mitzvahs reflected our respective personalities .
For hers , Este recreated Sugar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Morning , ” shot for shot , in a roller rink in the San Fernando Valley .
Alana requested a “ Mardi Gras ” theme , without understanding what it meant .
Danielle chose not to have a celebration .
“ I don ’ t really like having parties , ” she said , quietly .
“ I ’ m scared no one ’ s going to show up.
” “ Women in Music Pt .
III ” has moments like this , when the breezy , comfy ambience is suddenly broken by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ loneliness .
The album has a bit more emotional scaffolding beneath it than “ Days Are Gone , ” from 2013 , and “ Something to Tell You , ” from 2017 .
The HAIM project has always been in part a mood and a magnetic aesthetic , captured in their trademark walk—a row of sisters in high-waisted jeans , clomping down the sunbaked streets of Los Angeles , inseparable and in sync .
A large part of HAIM ’ s initial appeal was the aura of entangled sisterhood : they write songs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is lead on guitar and vocals , Alana plays keyboard and guitar ; all three play percussion ) ; talk on the phone constantly ; and , when restrictions eased in California , they resumed going to each other ’ s houses every day .
( After a recent spike in cases , they ’ ve gone back to quarantining separately . )
They had lifetime memberships to a club that no one else could join , but we could pay a cover charge to hear the music .
With “ Women in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s a loosening-up , an invitation into darker , more candid terrain .
Much of the record was written in a cramped , windowless studio in Burbank in early 2019 .
The studio once belonged to Danielle ’ s partner , Ariel Rechtshaid—a producer who has worked with Vampire Weekend , Adele , and Kelela , and who co-produced the new album—and the sisters decided to lock themselves in for several weeks to see if songs would tumble out .
It was an ad-hoc form of group therapy : Alana was working @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Sammi Kane Kraft , who died in a car accident in 2012 ; Este , who has Type 1 diabetes , was exhausted after months of touring ; and Danielle was dealing with depression .
( The bonus track , “ Now I ’ m In It , ” which the sisters wrote with the album ’ s co-producer Rostam Batmanglij , directly addresses Danielle ’ s struggles . )
Perhaps vulnerability was what was missing from HAIM before ; they had nailed goofiness and buoyancy , but the songs could feel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fresh car wax .
In “ Women in Music Pt .
III , ” they talk about everything that they weren ’ t talking about before : social isolation in the age of the Internet , mental illness , unfinished business with ex-boyfriends , drunk sexts , unrequited yearning , and the ways that male critics have dismissed them in the past .
In “ Man from a Magazine , ” a song that in both its chord progressions and vibrato echoes Joni Mitchell , Danielle confronts a journalist who mocked Este ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bass , asking if she “ makes the same faces in bed.
” “ Hey , man , what kind of question is that ?
” she sings .
“ What do you really want me to say back ?
/ What ’ s going on behind those dark glasses ?
/ Is this what you think making a pass is ?
” There is anger and exasperation all over the record , as if the women have grown tired of the contortions required to perpetuate their own cool-girl mythology .
The resulting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; there is no one genre on it , no dominant tone .
It sounds like a band purposefully trying to wriggle free of what came before .
Danielle said that the band had been inspired by Outkast ’ s eclectic album “ Speakerboxxx/The Love Below ” : “ We thought it would be cool to make a body of work that didn ’ t adhere to specific rules or genre , like they did , ” she told me .
The album is , by the band ’ s own admission , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Steps ” is a fuzzed-out , shambling rock song in the Sheryl Crow mode ; “ I Know Alone ” is a thrumming electronic-dance track about being addicted to your iPhone ; “ Leaning on You ” is a jaunty friendship anthem that borrows from Lindsey Buckingham ’ s bright guitar riffs ; “ FUBT ” is a soulful , stripped-down lament about lost love that evokes a track Prince might have cut after midnight .
HAIM makes dozens of cheeky musical references on the album , and the cumulative effect of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can play whatever they want .
After I met HAIM at the Bowery Hotel , in March , they continued to Washington , D.C. , where they played one more deli show before returning to Los Angeles to shelter in place .
Each sister quarantined separately in their houses near one another on the east side of Los Angeles .
About two months passed before they formed a pod ; they had been worried about Este , who is considered to be at high risk for complications from the virus .
“ Danielle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bubble wrap , ” Este told me on Zoom .
“ I went full ‘ Cast Away.
’ ” Those two months , during which they communicated largely via video chat , was one of the longest periods that the sisters had ever spent apart .
The last time I spoke to them , they had recently released the video for “ I Know Alone , ” which was shot in April in a backyard basketball court , using choreography from another musician , Frances Starlite .
Because each of the sisters learned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they found that when they finally got together , they were all on the wrong foot .
“ We didn ’ t realize that Zoom had a feature where other people see the mirrored version of you , ” Alana said .
“ But we ’ ve always said that we love a homework assignment.
” In quarantine , Alana has been doing needlepoint , Danielle has been cooking , and Este has been sending her sisters their old GarageBand demos , back from when the three of them first started playing together @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In June , HAIM performed songs from the new album in the empty dining room of Canter ’ s for a YouTube video .
It was the closest that they will get to the full deli tour , for now .
Canter ’ s sent Alana home with a big pink box of chocolate rugelach .
“ I ’ ve been living on that for a couple weeks , ” she said .

On March 10th, the three sisters who make up the band HAIM were in New York City to launch what they were calling their “Deli Tour” of the country, to promote their new album, “Women in Music Pt. III.” The concept of the tour had sentimental significance. The sisters—Alana, who is twenty-eight, Danielle, thirty-one, and Este, thirty-four—had performed their first rock show at Canter’s deli, in their home town of Los Angeles, in 2000, back when the trio were in a family band with their parents called Rockinhaim, which specialized mostly in covers of oldies. In the two decades since, HAIM had released three major-label records, played Glastonbury and Coachella, made music videos with Paul Thomas Anderson, and become icons of walking in a city where people supposedly don’t walk. They’d been big for a while; it was time to get small, if only for a moment—they were due to play Madison Square Garden and the Hollywood Bowl later in 2020.
I met them in the lobby of the Bowery Hotel. Danielle and I elbow-bumped instead of shaking hands—laughing as we did it, as if we were only pantomiming our health anxieties—and the band and I tried to sit apart yet together on adjoining red velvet couches, although six feet had not yet become the baseline of social distancing. Nobody wore a mask, but the lobby was almost empty, eerie. Everything would change within days. But at this moment the sisters were barrelling ahead with the deli tour; that night they would play Sarge’s, in Midtown East, a family favorite. (Their father, Moti, was a professional soccer player in Israel before emigrating, in 1980, to California, where he met their mother, Donna; the two went into real estate together.) The sisters constantly overlap and interrupt one another in conversation; it’s like talking to an effervescent hydra. Talk of Jewish food—the reliability of the Reuben, the insuperable grossness of gefilte fish—transitioned perhaps inevitably to how our bat mitzvahs reflected our respective personalities. For hers, Este recreated Sugar Ray’s video for “Every Morning,” shot for shot, in a roller rink in the San Fernando Valley. Alana requested a “Mardi Gras” theme, without understanding what it meant. Danielle chose not to have a celebration. “I don’t really like having parties,” she said, quietly. “I’m scared no one’s going to show up.”
“Women in Music Pt. III” has moments like this, when the breezy, comfy ambience is suddenly broken by intimations of anxiety, overthinking, and loneliness. The album has a bit more emotional scaffolding beneath it than “Days Are Gone,” from 2013, and “Something to Tell You,” from 2017. The HAIM project has always been in part a mood and a magnetic aesthetic, captured in their trademark walk—a row of sisters in high-waisted jeans, clomping down the sunbaked streets of Los Angeles, inseparable and in sync. A large part of HAIM’s initial appeal was the aura of entangled sisterhood: they write songs together (Este plays bass, Danielle is lead on guitar and vocals, Alana plays keyboard and guitar; all three play percussion); talk on the phone constantly; and, when restrictions eased in California, they resumed going to each other’s houses every day. (After a recent spike in cases, they’ve gone back to quarantining separately.) They had lifetime memberships to a club that no one else could join, but we could pay a cover charge to hear the music.
With “Women in Music Pt. III,” there’s a loosening-up, an invitation into darker, more candid terrain. Much of the record was written in a cramped, windowless studio in Burbank in early 2019. The studio once belonged to Danielle’s partner, Ariel Rechtshaid—a producer who has worked with Vampire Weekend, Adele, and Kelela, and who co-produced the new album—and the sisters decided to lock themselves in for several weeks to see if songs would tumble out. It was an ad-hoc form of group therapy: Alana was working through unprocessed grief for her best friend, Sammi Kane Kraft, who died in a car accident in 2012; Este, who has Type 1 diabetes, was exhausted after months of touring; and Danielle was dealing with depression. (The bonus track, “Now I’m In It,” which the sisters wrote with the album’s co-producer Rostam Batmanglij, directly addresses Danielle’s struggles.)
Perhaps vulnerability was what was missing from HAIM before; they had nailed goofiness and buoyancy, but the songs could feel almost too shiny and squeaky, like fresh car wax. In “Women in Music Pt. III,” they talk about everything that they weren’t talking about before: social isolation in the age of the Internet, mental illness, unfinished business with ex-boyfriends, drunk sexts, unrequited yearning, and the ways that male critics have dismissed them in the past. In “Man from a Magazine,” a song that in both its chord progressions and vibrato echoes Joni Mitchell, Danielle confronts a journalist who mocked Este’s emphatic facial expressions when she plays bass, asking if she “makes the same faces in bed.” “Hey, man, what kind of question is that?” she sings. “What do you really want me to say back? / What’s going on behind those dark glasses? / Is this what you think making a pass is?” There is anger and exasperation all over the record, as if the women have grown tired of the contortions required to perpetuate their own cool-girl mythology.
The resulting record is coherent and yet pleasantly disjointed; there is no one genre on it, no dominant tone. It sounds like a band purposefully trying to wriggle free of what came before. Danielle said that the band had been inspired by Outkast’s eclectic album “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below”: “We thought it would be cool to make a body of work that didn’t adhere to specific rules or genre, like they did,” she told me. The album is, by the band’s own admission, quite all over the place. “The Steps” is a fuzzed-out, shambling rock song in the Sheryl Crow mode; “I Know Alone” is a thrumming electronic-dance track about being addicted to your iPhone; “Leaning on You” is a jaunty friendship anthem that borrows from Lindsey Buckingham’s bright guitar riffs; “FUBT” is a soulful, stripped-down lament about lost love that evokes a track Prince might have cut after midnight. HAIM makes dozens of cheeky musical references on the album, and the cumulative effect of these footnotes is to prove that they can play whatever they want.
After I met HAIM at the Bowery Hotel, in March, they continued to Washington, D.C., where they played one more deli show before returning to Los Angeles to shelter in place. Each sister quarantined separately in their houses near one another on the east side of Los Angeles. About two months passed before they formed a pod; they had been worried about Este, who is considered to be at high risk for complications from the virus. “Danielle and Alana wanted to wrap me in bubble wrap,” Este told me on Zoom. “I went full ‘Cast Away.’ ” Those two months, during which they communicated largely via video chat, was one of the longest periods that the sisters had ever spent apart.
The last time I spoke to them, they had recently released the video for “I Know Alone,” which was shot in April in a backyard basketball court, using choreography from another musician, Frances Starlite. Because each of the sisters learned their dance moves via video chat, they found that when they finally got together, they were all on the wrong foot. “We didn’t realize that Zoom had a feature where other people see the mirrored version of you,” Alana said. “But we’ve always said that we love a homework assignment.” In quarantine, Alana has been doing needlepoint, Danielle has been cooking, and Este has been sending her sisters their old GarageBand demos, back from when the three of them first started playing together as a band, in 2007. In June, HAIM performed songs from the new album in the empty dining room of Canter’s for a YouTube video. It was the closest that they will get to the full deli tour, for now. Canter’s sent Alana home with a big pink box of chocolate rugelach. “I’ve been living on that for a couple weeks,” she said.


newyorker--2020-07-11--The Roger Stone Case Shows Why Trump Is Worse Than Nixon

On March 21 , 1973 , President Richard Nixon and John Dean , the White House counsel , conferred in the Oval Office about ways to keep the Watergate scandal from consuming the Administration .
The two men weighed the possibility of a pardon or commutation for E. Howard Hunt , one of the Watergate burglars .
“ Hunt ’ s now demanding clemency or he ’ s going to blow , ” Dean said .
“ And , politically , it ’ d be impossible for , you know , you to do it.
” Nixon agreed : “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ I ’ m not sure that you ’ ll ever be able to deliver on clemency .
It may be just too hot.
” Neither Nixon nor Dean had especially refined senses of morality or legal ethics , but even they seemed to understand that a President could not use his pardon power to erase charges against someone who might offer testimony implicating Nixon himself in a crime .
To do so , they recognized , would be too unseemly , too transparent , too egregiously corrupt .
And , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , or commuted a sentence , of anyone implicated in the Watergate scandal .
But , on Friday night , Donald Trump commuted the prison sentence of Roger Stone , his associate and political mentor of more than three decades .
Last year , Stone was convicted of obstruction of justice , lying to Congress , and witness tampering in a case brought by Robert Mueller , the special counsel .
William Barr , the Attorney General , had already overridden the sentencing recommendation of the prosecutors who tried the case—a nearly unprecedented @ @ @ @ @ @ @ months in prison .
But Barr ’ s unseemly interference in the case was somehow not enough for the President , so Trump made sure that Stone would serve no time at all .
The only trace of shame in Trump ’ s announcement was that he delivered it on a Friday night—supposedly when the public is least attentive .
In light of the long relationship between Trump and Stone , the commutation represents a consummate act of cronyism ; and yet it is far worse than that .
Trump has already exercised @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who have run into trouble with the law , pardoning the likes of Joe Arpaio , the racist sheriff from Arizona , and Dinesh D ’ Souza , the right-wing propagandist .
( According to a count by Jack Goldsmith , a professor at Harvard Law School , thirty-one of Trump ’ s thirty-six acts of clemency have been based on personal or political connections . )
But Trump had not , until now , used pardons and commutations to reward defendants who possessed incriminating information against him .
The Stone commutation isn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ old friend—it is a reward to Stone for keeping his mouth shut during the Mueller investigation .
It is , in other words , corruption on top of cronyism .
As Amy Berman Jackson , the judge in Stone ’ s case , said , in sentencing him , “ He was not prosecuted , as some have complained , for standing up for the President .
He was prosecuted for covering up for the President.
” And now Stone has been rewarded for covering up for the President .
One of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use of the criminal-justice system to reward friends and punish enemies .
To put it another way , in healthy societies , the work of law enforcement is conducted according to neutral principles , applied equally .
The Stone commutation represents a culmination ( if not , necessarily , the final one ) of Trump ’ s efforts to dismantle the legacy of the Mueller investigation .
The Attorney General , as Trump ’ s loyal vassal , has moved to undo Mueller ’ s prosecution of Michael Flynn , Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ case brought by Mueller , Flynn pleaded guilty to lying in an interview with F.B.I .
agents . )
In the same vein , Barr has launched a criminal probe of the initial F.B.I .
investigation into the ties between Trump ’ s 2016 campaign and Russian interests .
These actions are not the even-handed application of criminal law , but rather the indulgence , by the Department of Justice , of the President ’ s grievances with his enemies .
The power to prosecute ( and withhold prosecution ) is among the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the exercise of that power is a fair test of the legitimacy of any ruling authority .
Here and now , Trump and his enablers are failing disastrously .
Under the Constitution , the power to grant clemency is a core function of the Presidency .
For this reason , there is no real option for prosecutors , or even members of Congress , to impose consequences on Trump for the commutation .
But , as the saying goes , in the United States , the people still rule , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the verdict on Trump ’ s commutation , and his entire sordid Presidency , on November 3rd .

On March 21, 1973, President Richard Nixon and John Dean, the White House counsel, conferred in the Oval Office about ways to keep the Watergate scandal from consuming the Administration. The two men weighed the possibility of a pardon or commutation for E. Howard Hunt, one of the Watergate burglars. “Hunt’s now demanding clemency or he’s going to blow,” Dean said. “And, politically, it’d be impossible for, you know, you to do it.” Nixon agreed: “That’s right.” Dean continued, “I’m not sure that you’ll ever be able to deliver on clemency. It may be just too hot.” Neither Nixon nor Dean had especially refined senses of morality or legal ethics, but even they seemed to understand that a President could not use his pardon power to erase charges against someone who might offer testimony implicating Nixon himself in a crime. To do so, they recognized, would be too unseemly, too transparent, too egregiously corrupt. And, in fact, Nixon never gave a pardon, or commuted a sentence, of anyone implicated in the Watergate scandal.
But, on Friday night, Donald Trump commuted the prison sentence of Roger Stone, his associate and political mentor of more than three decades. Last year, Stone was convicted of obstruction of justice, lying to Congress, and witness tampering in a case brought by Robert Mueller, the special counsel. William Barr, the Attorney General, had already overridden the sentencing recommendation of the prosecutors who tried the case—a nearly unprecedented act—and Stone was ultimately sentenced to forty months in prison. But Barr’s unseemly interference in the case was somehow not enough for the President, so Trump made sure that Stone would serve no time at all. The only trace of shame in Trump’s announcement was that he delivered it on a Friday night—supposedly when the public is least attentive.
In light of the long relationship between Trump and Stone, the commutation represents a consummate act of cronyism; and yet it is far worse than that. Trump has already exercised his clemency powers to reward political allies who have run into trouble with the law, pardoning the likes of Joe Arpaio, the racist sheriff from Arizona, and Dinesh D’Souza, the right-wing propagandist. (According to a count by Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School, thirty-one of Trump’s thirty-six acts of clemency have been based on personal or political connections.) But Trump had not, until now, used pardons and commutations to reward defendants who possessed incriminating information against him. The Stone commutation isn’t just a gift to an old friend—it is a reward to Stone for keeping his mouth shut during the Mueller investigation. It is, in other words, corruption on top of cronyism. As Amy Berman Jackson, the judge in Stone’s case, said, in sentencing him, “He was not prosecuted, as some have complained, for standing up for the President. He was prosecuted for covering up for the President.” And now Stone has been rewarded for covering up for the President.
One of the touchstones of authoritarian political cultures is the use of the criminal-justice system to reward friends and punish enemies. To put it another way, in healthy societies, the work of law enforcement is conducted according to neutral principles, applied equally. The Stone commutation represents a culmination (if not, necessarily, the final one) of Trump’s efforts to dismantle the legacy of the Mueller investigation. The Attorney General, as Trump’s loyal vassal, has moved to undo Mueller’s prosecution of Michael Flynn, Trump’s short-tenured national-security adviser. (In a case brought by Mueller, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying in an interview with F.B.I. agents.) In the same vein, Barr has launched a criminal probe of the initial F.B.I. investigation into the ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian interests. These actions are not the even-handed application of criminal law, but rather the indulgence, by the Department of Justice, of the President’s grievances with his enemies. The power to prosecute (and withhold prosecution) is among the most formidable that belong to any government, and the exercise of that power is a fair test of the legitimacy of any ruling authority. Here and now, Trump and his enablers are failing disastrously.
Under the Constitution, the power to grant clemency is a core function of the Presidency. For this reason, there is no real option for prosecutors, or even members of Congress, to impose consequences on Trump for the commutation. But, as the saying goes, in the United States, the people still rule, and they will have a chance to render the verdict on Trump’s commutation, and his entire sordid Presidency, on November 3rd.