newyorker--2020-08-20--Ruth, Frank, and Dario

Ruth, Frank, and Dario

This is the seventh story in this summer ’ s online Flash Fiction series .
You can read the entire series , and our Flash Fiction stories from previous years , here .
The February Ladies ’ Lunch met at Ruth ’ s Riverside Drive apartment , so it was for her to set the agenda : You remember how we said that we ’ re the five people to whom we tell our stories ?
Well , I have a story for you .
A number of stories , Ruth told them .
And at the end there is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was this party at Sylvia ’ s that turned out to be a shiva for Sylvia ’ s aunt .
Lotte and I were there , said Bessie .
Ruth said , And Sylvia came over and asked if she should get me a chair .
I told her , Thanks , very kind , but I ’ ll find one when I need to sit .
Get you a drink ?
she said .
I told her , Sylvia !
I can manage .
The cane is for balance .
And I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ You don ’ t have to go away , I said .
We laughed and Sylvia said she hoped it was O.K .
that she had given Frank my number .
He was dying to talk to me .
Frank ?
Which Frank is this ?
Frank James , yes .
Oh , I think it ’ s that I think of him as James Frank .
Sylvia said , Frank works in a gallery on Bleecker Street and wants to know about your old buddy , your client—what was Dario d ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to you .
So why doesn ’ t he walk over and talk ?
Sylvia said , He says he ’ s afraid of you .
I was annoyed .
That is such nonsense .
What does it even mean ?
Where is he ?
Over there , said Sylvia , walking out the door .
It had irritated her , Ruth told the friends , to find herself waiting for Frank to call .
The prospect of telling her old Dario stories , she said , had opened a window onto such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sylvia and asked for James ’ s number .
James ?
Sylvia said .
Which James is this ?
Frank , I mean , Frank James , who wants to talk to me .
Ruth had dialled and hung up because she couldn ’ t think , at that moment , whether it was James or Frank .
Frank .
She dialled .
Frank , this is Ruth .
Your asking about Dario d ’ Alessi has started all these stories in my head .
Frank said , That ’ s what I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what I want .
I Googled you .
You were Dario d ’ Alessi ’ s lawyer .
I was , she had told him .
There was paperwork to do with the people he hired to fabricate—fabricate , that was the word—one of his sculptures .
I got to go upstate with him into this sort of hangar where men were working on a twenty-foot black curl .
I was never happier .
I loved listening to the craftsmen talking with each other .
God !
Frank said .
How did you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was one of the groupies who hung around whenever he came to New York .
Years later , I visited him in the Italian Alps , in his place .
It was like a Mesa Verde cave dwelling , if you can imagine a Bauhaus cave carved out of the Italian mountainside .
Did you know him ?
Me .
No !
No , Frank said .
I saw him once coming out of a restaurant on East Seventeenth and I walked behind him for a number of blocks .
He went into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the window .
He came out , went into a liquor store , and came out with a bottle .
Then he got into a bus going west .
Ruth told her friends , I had the thrill of thinking : So that ’ s what Dario did on the way over to my place—like watching a scene happening thirty years ago .
But then Frank said : I was just twenty , too young and shy to go up to this man and tell him that I loved his show .
So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first exhibit , years before the one at the Guggenheim .
Before I even knew him .
I told Frank that Dario might have been grateful .
Dario used to talk about the desolation of that early success and his first New York visit before he knew people .
Frank said the gallery had just acquired a d ’ Alessi .
Called “ Hatch.
” I remember , I remember !
I remember the bunch of us sitting with a bottle of Malbec , trying to come up with a name for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ replace “ Untitled.
” It had to be what Clement Greenberg called a word “ independent of meaning , ” in the days when our favorite cartoon was of a museumgoer wiping a tender tear in front of a Russian Constructivist painting .
You don ’ t know till you try how hard it is to think of words that signify no object , or feeling , or value .
I ’ d wake up in the night with a sense of triumph : “ Bout !
” —but that means “ strife.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ because it commented on its opposite— “ standing down.
” There are so many stories !
I said .
Frank said that I was a resource and asked whether he could take me to lunch , but the day of the lunch he called for a rain check .
Major snafu at the gallery .
I ’ ve invited him up for a drink .
Frank James had not made it to Ruth ’ s for that drink .
Someone from the gallery called .
Frank was out of state and would call @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The friends said , Tell us the d ’ Alessi stories you were going to tell Frank James .
Ruth said , Here ’ s something I didn ’ t understand when I was visiting Dario .
I called his attention to a man , a farmer , sitting on the pavement in the village square with a little goat on his lap .
The man held the animal ’ s hoof the way you might hold a child ’ s or a young girl ’ s hand .
Dario said , He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be slaughtered , which I always remembered afterward the way you remember something that doesn ’ t add up .
Ruth said , Dario took me on a climb .
He climbed like a mountaineer—one foot after another at an even pace .
I impressed myself by overtaking him .
Then I had to sit down and recover my breath while he moved steadily on and up .
And the terrifying drive up the mountain road to see the oldest houses on the highest range .
You have to understand that Dario @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
On the way back we ran out of petrol .
Because you are statistically more likely to come upon a wayside shrine where someone plunged to death than a gas pump , the locals—unlike Dario—drive with a spare can of gas .
Dario and I sat with the car door open and we sat and we sat until the milkman ’ s truck tootled up the road .
The milkman siphoned off enough gas to get us back to Altomonte .
Dario took out his wallet—I had enough Italian to understand that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , no grazie !
Signor Dario , no !
che mi faccia un autografo .
I wondered how many upstate New York milkmen would prefer a de Kooning or a Rothko signature to a couple of twenties .
At Farah ’ s lunch in April , as Ruth reported that Frank James had cancelled another appointment , the friends began to smile .
One of those spring colds that are so famously hard to shake .

This is the seventh story in this summer’s online Flash Fiction series. You can read the entire series, and our Flash Fiction stories from previous years, here.
The February Ladies’ Lunch met at Ruth’s Riverside Drive apartment, so it was for her to set the agenda: You remember how we said that we’re the five people to whom we tell our stories? Well, I have a story for you.
Great, said Lotte.
Good, said Farah and Bessie.
A number of stories, Ruth told them. And at the end there is a puzzle.
Good egg, said Bridget.
•
Ruth said, There was this party at Sylvia’s that turned out to be a shiva for Sylvia’s aunt.
Lotte and I were there, said Bessie.
Ruth said, And Sylvia came over and asked if she should get me a chair. I told her, Thanks, very kind, but I’ll find one when I need to sit.
Get you a drink? she said.
I told her, Sylvia! I can manage. The cane is for balance.
And I should stop fussing and go away?
You don’t have to go away, I said. We laughed and Sylvia said she hoped it was O.K. that she had given Frank my number. He was dying to talk to me.
Frank? Which Frank is this?
Ruth, you know. Frank James.
Frank James, yes. Oh, I think it’s that I think of him as James Frank.
Sylvia said, Frank works in a gallery on Bleecker Street and wants to know about your old buddy, your client—what was Dario d’Alessi? Anyhow he wants to talk to you.
So why doesn’t he walk over and talk?
Sylvia said, He says he’s afraid of you.
I was annoyed. That is such nonsense. What does it even mean? Where is he?
Over there, said Sylvia, walking out the door.
•
It had irritated her, Ruth told the friends, to find herself waiting for Frank to call. The prospect of telling her old Dario stories, she said, had opened a window onto such a chunk of time. She called Sylvia and asked for James’s number.
James? Sylvia said. Which James is this?
Frank, I mean, Frank James, who wants to talk to me.
•
Ruth had dialled and hung up because she couldn’t think, at that moment, whether it was James or Frank. Frank. She dialled. Frank, this is Ruth. Your asking about Dario d’Alessi has started all these stories in my head.
Frank said, That’s what I hoped. God! That’s what I want. I Googled you. You were Dario d’Alessi’s lawyer.
I was, she had told him. There was paperwork to do with the people he hired to fabricate—fabricate, that was the word—one of his sculptures. I got to go upstate with him into this sort of hangar where men were working on a twenty-foot black curl. I was never happier. I loved listening to the craftsmen talking with each other.
God! Frank said. How did you meet him?
Ruth said, I was one of the groupies who hung around whenever he came to New York. Years later, I visited him in the Italian Alps, in his place. It was like a Mesa Verde cave dwelling, if you can imagine a Bauhaus cave carved out of the Italian mountainside. Did you know him?
Me. No! No, Frank said. I saw him once coming out of a restaurant on East Seventeenth and I walked behind him for a number of blocks. He went into a grocery and I watched him through the window. He came out, went into a liquor store, and came out with a bottle. Then he got into a bus going west.
Ruth told her friends, I had the thrill of thinking: So that’s what Dario did on the way over to my place—like watching a scene happening thirty years ago. But then Frank said: I was just twenty, too young and shy to go up to this man and tell him that I loved his show. So that must have been Dario’s first exhibit, years before the one at the Guggenheim. Before I even knew him. I told Frank that Dario might have been grateful. Dario used to talk about the desolation of that early success and his first New York visit before he knew people.
Frank said the gallery had just acquired a d’Alessi. Called “Hatch.”
I remember, I remember! I remember the bunch of us sitting with a bottle of Malbec, trying to come up with a name for a new d’Alessi piece, to replace “Untitled.” It had to be what Clement Greenberg called a word “independent of meaning,” in the days when our favorite cartoon was of a museumgoer wiping a tender tear in front of a Russian Constructivist painting. You don’t know till you try how hard it is to think of words that signify no object, or feeling, or value. I’d wake up in the night with a sense of triumph: “Bout!”—but that means “strife.” “Upstanding” got shot down because it commented on its opposite—“standing down.” There are so many stories! I said.
Frank said that I was a resource and asked whether he could take me to lunch, but the day of the lunch he called for a rain check. Major snafu at the gallery. I’ve invited him up for a drink.
•
The March Ladies’ Lunch met at Bessie’s.
Frank James had not made it to Ruth’s for that drink. Someone from the gallery called. Frank was out of state and would call as soon as he got back.
The friends said, Tell us the d’Alessi stories you were going to tell Frank James.
•
Ruth said, Here’s something I didn’t understand when I was visiting Dario. I called his attention to a man, a farmer, sitting on the pavement in the village square with a little goat on his lap. The man held the animal’s hoof the way you might hold a child’s or a young girl’s hand. Dario said, He’s going to take the goat to be slaughtered, which I always remembered afterward the way you remember something that doesn’t add up.
•
Ruth said, Dario took me on a climb. He climbed like a mountaineer—one foot after another at an even pace. I impressed myself by overtaking him. Then I had to sit down and recover my breath while he moved steadily on and up.
•
And the terrifying drive up the mountain road to see the oldest houses on the highest range. You have to understand that Dario was the world’s worst driver. On the way back we ran out of petrol. Because you are statistically more likely to come upon a wayside shrine where someone plunged to death than a gas pump, the locals—unlike Dario—drive with a spare can of gas. Dario and I sat with the car door open and we sat and we sat until the milkman’s truck tootled up the road. The milkman siphoned off enough gas to get us back to Altomonte. Dario took out his wallet—I had enough Italian to understand that the milkman said No, no no, no grazie! Signor Dario, no! che mi faccia un autografo. I wondered how many upstate New York milkmen would prefer a de Kooning or a Rothko signature to a couple of twenties.
•
At Farah’s lunch in April, as Ruth reported that Frank James had cancelled another appointment, the friends began to smile. One of those spring colds that are so famously hard to shake.


newyorker--2020-08-20--Obama, Harris, and an Unconventional Convention

H. L. Mencken , a columnist who gloried in the sweaty pageantry and funny-hat hokum of early-twentieth-century nominating Conventions , would surely have savaged the two-dimensional Presidential campaign of our pandemic summer .
Mencken lampooned the quadrennial bacchanals of his day , but he clearly relished their madness .
Writing of the 1924 Democratic National Convention , a sixteen-day affair at Madison Square Garden , Mencken wrote , “ There is something about a national convention that makes it as fascinating as a revival or a hanging.
” That Convention , which required a hundred and three ballots to settle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Davis , a corporate lawyer from West Virginia , featured the influence of the Ku Klux Klan ( as did the same summer ’ s Republican Convention ) and Franklin Roosevelt ’ s eloquent , yet futile , attempt to promote the Presidential bid of New York Governor Al Smith , “ the Happy Warrior.
” This was an event without television schedules or air-conditioning .
Imagine the tedium , the hovering clouds of cigar smoke and B.O .
And yet there was Mencken , the Sage of Baltimore , pounding his typewriter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vulgar , it is ugly , it is stupid , it is tedious , it is hard upon both the higher cerebral centers and the gluteus maximus , and yet it is somehow charming , ” he wrote .
“ One sits through long sessions wishing all the delegates and alternates were dead and in hell—and then suddenly there comes a show so gaudy and hilarious , so melodramatic and obscene , so unimaginably exhilarating and preposterous that one lives a gorgeous year in an hour.
” In the absence of such lurid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Joe Biden survive the impatience of the voters , much less the pitiless gaze of a Mencken ?
In a campaign without travel and a Convention without crowds , how could a masked and socially distanced candidate , whose most pronounced quality is an outsized capacity for empathy , find a way to connect ?
And with so much on the line—the survival of democratic norms and the rule of law , the national health and the future of the natural world—how could Biden and the Party leadership conceive a nominating Convention that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ screens on which it would be projected ?
So far , the Democrats have largely succeeded in creating a new and effective form of Convention , not so much with balloon showers but with nightly critiques of a calamitous and ugly Presidency and a series of emotional appeals to the country ’ s better angels .
This Convention is a decidedly earnest spectacle—Mencken would have been quick to identify its flavor as treacle—but , over all , this event just may end up playing a critical role for the Democrats in an election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wednesday night , it was Barack Obama and Kamala Harris ’ s turn to prosecute the case against Trump .
And Obama , in particular , was at his best .
It was as if he had been waiting for this moment with a barely concealed relish .
After Trump ’ s victory , in 2016 , Obama met with Trump once at the White House and found him unschooled and uninterested in the particulars of the office he was about to assume .
Obama concealed his true alarm behind the mists of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ staff , telling them that Trump ’ s victory was “ not the apocalypse.
” And yet he has watched with a cool fury as Trump has done everything possible to dismantle his legacy—including the Iran nuclear deal , countless financial and environmental regulations , and the Paris accords on climate change .
In his Convention speech , Obama dispensed with predecessor-successor courtesies .
Like Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders on Monday night , he made his case in plain terms , at once idealistic and brutal .
First , he framed his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Constitution and the general expectations of a President .
Then he got down to cases .
“ I have sat in the Oval Office with both of the men who are running for President , ” Obama said .
“ I never expected that my successor would embrace my vision or continue my policies .
I did hope , for the sake of our country , that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously—that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his care .
But he never did .
For close to four years now , he ’ s shown no interest in putting in the work ; no interest in finding common ground ; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends ; no interest in treating the Presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.
” Obama did not hesitate to get personal .
“ Donald Trump hasn ’ t grown into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t , ” he said .
“ And the consequences of that failure are severe .
A hundred and seventy thousand Americans dead .
Millions of jobs gone .
While those at the top take in more than ever .
Our worst impulses unleashed , our proud reputation around the world badly diminished , and our democratic institutions threatened like never before.
” Then he extolled the virtues of Biden , a “ brother , ” a partner in the creation of the Affordable Care Act and the rescue of the economy after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has shown it will tear our democracy down if that is what it takes to win , ” Obama went on .
“ So we have to get busy building it up , by pouring all our effort into these seventy-six days , and by voting like never before , for Joe and Kamala , and candidates up and down the ticket , so that we can leave no doubt about what this country we love stands for , today and for all our days to come.
” Kamala Harris finished the evening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , she started out by paying tribute to predecessors , from Fannie Lou Hamer to Shirley Chisholm and to her parents , immigrants from India and Jamaica who met during the civil-rights struggle .
Her nomination as Biden ’ s running mate represents a continuity with the Obama years , and not only in ethnic terms .
When I interviewed Obama after his miserable Oval Office meeting with Trump , I asked him who the Democratic Party now had on the bench .
One of the first , and few , names he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Harris assailed Trump ’ s incompetence and “ callousness , ” and called for unity under Biden ’ s banner .
“ Right now , we have a President who turns our tragedies into political weapons , ” Harris said .
“ Joe will be a President who turns our challenges into purpose.
” Her speech was not the best of the night , but it more than suggested a good campaigner and a difficult debate night for Mike Pence .
The set-piece speeches of this Convention have largely been effective .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2020 , as he did in 2016 , was at once generous to Biden but true to his insistence on foundational change .
( There were disappointments : Al Gore on climate change would have been more relevant and welcome than Bill Clinton ’ s discourse on Oval Office comportment . )
Many of the produced-for-TV-and-social-media video segments have also hit the mark , including Tuesday ’ s roll call , with its visions of palm trees , mountain ranges , and fried calamari ; the heart-tugging nomination of Biden by a Times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ady Barkan , a thirty-six-year-old lawyer who suffers from A.L.S .
and became nationally recognized for his campaigning for Medicare for All .
Those pieces and others largely felt genuine and stood in contrast to the distinctly sour and vindictive opponent they sought to upend .

H. L. Mencken, a columnist who gloried in the sweaty pageantry and funny-hat hokum of early-twentieth-century nominating Conventions, would surely have savaged the two-dimensional Presidential campaign of our pandemic summer. Mencken lampooned the quadrennial bacchanals of his day, but he clearly relished their madness. Writing of the 1924 Democratic National Convention, a sixteen-day affair at Madison Square Garden, Mencken wrote, “There is something about a national convention that makes it as fascinating as a revival or a hanging.”
That Convention, which required a hundred and three ballots to settle on the doomed candidacy of John W. Davis, a corporate lawyer from West Virginia, featured the influence of the Ku Klux Klan (as did the same summer’s Republican Convention) and Franklin Roosevelt’s eloquent, yet futile, attempt to promote the Presidential bid of New York Governor Al Smith, “the Happy Warrior.” This was an event without television schedules or air-conditioning. Imagine the tedium, the hovering clouds of cigar smoke and B.O. And yet there was Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore, pounding his typewriter with happy derision.
“It is vulgar, it is ugly, it is stupid, it is tedious, it is hard upon both the higher cerebral centers and the gluteus maximus, and yet it is somehow charming,” he wrote. “One sits through long sessions wishing all the delegates and alternates were dead and in hell—and then suddenly there comes a show so gaudy and hilarious, so melodramatic and obscene, so unimaginably exhilarating and preposterous that one lives a gorgeous year in an hour.”
In the absence of such lurid attractions, how would the candidacy of Joe Biden survive the impatience of the voters, much less the pitiless gaze of a Mencken? In a campaign without travel and a Convention without crowds, how could a masked and socially distanced candidate, whose most pronounced quality is an outsized capacity for empathy, find a way to connect? And with so much on the line—the survival of democratic norms and the rule of law, the national health and the future of the natural world—how could Biden and the Party leadership conceive a nominating Convention that would not fall as flat as the screens on which it would be projected?
So far, the Democrats have largely succeeded in creating a new and effective form of Convention, not so much with balloon showers but with nightly critiques of a calamitous and ugly Presidency and a series of emotional appeals to the country’s better angels. This Convention is a decidedly earnest spectacle—Mencken would have been quick to identify its flavor as treacle—but, over all, this event just may end up playing a critical role for the Democrats in an election that is far from decided.
On Wednesday night, it was Barack Obama and Kamala Harris’s turn to prosecute the case against Trump. And Obama, in particular, was at his best. It was as if he had been waiting for this moment with a barely concealed relish. After Trump’s victory, in 2016, Obama met with Trump once at the White House and found him unschooled and uninterested in the particulars of the office he was about to assume. Obama concealed his true alarm behind the mists of custom and euphemism. He consoled his staff, telling them that Trump’s victory was “not the apocalypse.” And yet he has watched with a cool fury as Trump has done everything possible to dismantle his legacy—including the Iran nuclear deal, countless financial and environmental regulations, and the Paris accords on climate change.
In his Convention speech, Obama dispensed with predecessor-successor courtesies. Like Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders on Monday night, he made his case in plain terms, at once idealistic and brutal. First, he framed his argument in the lofty terms of the Constitution and the general expectations of a President. Then he got down to cases.
“I have sat in the Oval Office with both of the men who are running for President,” Obama said. “I never expected that my successor would embrace my vision or continue my policies. I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously—that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care. But he never did. For close to four years now, he’s shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the Presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.”
Obama did not hesitate to get personal. “Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job, because he can’t,” he said. “And the consequences of that failure are severe. A hundred and seventy thousand Americans dead. Millions of jobs gone. While those at the top take in more than ever. Our worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished, and our democratic institutions threatened like never before.” Then he extolled the virtues of Biden, a “brother,” a partner in the creation of the Affordable Care Act and the rescue of the economy after the Great Recession.
(And, while Obama spoke, invoking the heroes of the civil-rights movement, praising young people on the streets for “telling us we need to be better,” and calling for voters to “give our democracy new meaning,” Trump was in the White House watching the proceedings and tweeting apoplectically: “HE SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN, AND GOT CAUGHT!”)
“This Administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that is what it takes to win,” Obama went on. “So we have to get busy building it up, by pouring all our effort into these seventy-six days, and by voting like never before, for Joe and Kamala, and candidates up and down the ticket, so that we can leave no doubt about what this country we love stands for, today and for all our days to come.”
Kamala Harris finished the evening. Speaking in a vast blue hall, she started out by paying tribute to predecessors, from Fannie Lou Hamer to Shirley Chisholm and to her parents, immigrants from India and Jamaica who met during the civil-rights struggle. Her nomination as Biden’s running mate represents a continuity with the Obama years, and not only in ethnic terms. When I interviewed Obama after his miserable Oval Office meeting with Trump, I asked him who the Democratic Party now had on the bench. One of the first, and few, names he mentioned was hers. In her speech, Harris assailed Trump’s incompetence and “callousness,” and called for unity under Biden’s banner. “Right now, we have a President who turns our tragedies into political weapons,” Harris said. “Joe will be a President who turns our challenges into purpose.” Her speech was not the best of the night, but it more than suggested a good campaigner and a difficult debate night for Mike Pence.


newyorker--2020-08-20--“Boys State,” Reviewed: A Frustratingly Hermetic View of Texas Teen Politicos

The documentary “ Boys State , ” directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss , gave me a cinematic headache from the start .
A nagging absence buzzes throughout nearly the entire film , distracting the viewer from the substance , however engaging , of what ’ s onscreen .
More or less every work of nonfiction , cinematic or otherwise , is shadowed by a second work—a making-of , which tells the stories of the encounters and discoveries that gave rise to the documented record—and there ’ s a notable tradition of documentarians ( from Jean Rouch and Edgar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) integrating this implicit work into the published one .
There ’ s no inherent virtue in doing so , which , rather , depends on the implications of each individual film .
In “ Boys State , ” the absence of such underlying activity makes the film seem insufficient—the iceberg is far more integral to the tip of action than the filmmakers realized or disclosed .
This absence is more conspicuous , more present , than the events onscreen .
As a result , the film feels hermetically sealed , like a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The documentary gets its title from an annual event for high schoolers , a sort of Model U.N. for American politicking , in which students perform a weeklong simulation of state government .
The event , founded and run by the American Legion , in 1935 , is held annually in every state except Hawaii , and also in Washington , D.C. ; as the name suggests , it ’ s gender-specific ( there ’ s also a Girls State ) .
The one that McBaine and Moss film takes place in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hundred students , who are divided into two parties , Federalist and Nationalist—cipher-monikers with no program or ideas attached .
It ’ s up to the members of each party to choose a leader , under whose guidance they ’ ll craft and pass a platform on which their candidates for office ( as chosen in primaries ) will run , and then , after a campaign , there ’ s a general election among the entire group to choose the winning candidates ( the highest office in the event is governor ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the entire event , and they follow Boys State in the gathering of signatures on petitions , platform debates , intra-party elections , primaries and runoffs , campaigns , and Election Day .
Yet any sense of concentrated and tightly focussed observation of the event at hand is diluted by footage showing events that take place outside of the competition ’ s boundaries.The film is centered on four students , whom the filmmakers ’ crews follow throughout , not only at Boys State but at home and in their neighborhoods .
Three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cast prior to the filming .
There ’ s Ben Feinstein , a self-described “ politics junkie ” and conservative , who , at home with his parents , discusses his own situation as a double amputee ( he had meningitis at the age of three ) and speaks proudly of overcoming his disability ; he preaches a gospel of personal responsibility , disdaining references to “ race or gender or disability.
” “ I think , like , we ’ re individuals , right ?
Like , I don ’ t think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of myself as Ben Feinstein , American , right ?
” His mother adds , “ Future President.
” “ Yeah , we ’ ll see , ” he says .
There ’ s Steven Garza , who is Hispanic and says that , at one time , his mother was undocumented ; he also says , of the Boys State event , “ I am a progressive person , and I ’ m in a room full of mostly conservative people.
” His political inspiration is Bernie Sanders ; he shows up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ Rourke T-shirt ; and , soon after arriving , he expresses a preference for a non-gendered “ People ’ s State.
” The filmmakers also follow Robert MacDougall , a Republican Senate page from a seemingly cushy background who ’ s applying to only one college , West Point—but who ultimately admits that his actual political views are at odds with his milieu .
The fourth participant seems to have caught the filmmakers ’ attention in the course of the action : René Otero , a Black student who has recently moved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he grew up in “ a bubble , ” where “ everybody had the same ideas , everybody was mad at the same person.
” Now , at the Boys State event , he says that he wants to be “ a delegate for Black people here , ” adding , “ I ’ ve never seen so many white people , ever.
” Yet what ’ s entirely absent from “ Boys State ” is this casting process and the criteria behind it , both for the students and for the filmmakers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the transactional value for the four boys in appearing at the film ’ s center ( or , for that matter , for the American Legion itself ) , no sense of what went on behind the scenes regarding what could or couldn ’ t be shown , no sense of the terms and conditions of their agreement with the Legion or the students ( or , for that matter , the agreement of parents or guardians—the students are minors ) .
According to the filmmakers , the four protagonists wear wireless microphones @ @ @ @ @ @ @ daily involvement to prepare them .
What do these students think about being in the cinematic spotlight ?
What do the thousand nine hundred and ninety-six other students think about their four peers becoming the first-among-equals by dint of being filmed ?
How does the whole group—and the staff and advisers—feel about the presence of cameras over all ?
( And what did the other students have to agree to regarding the filming ? )
What ’ s even more remarkable is the filmmakers ’ acumen in their casting .
As the days @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ben , all preselected to play what the filmmakers call their “ main characters , ” win major roles in the simulation : Steven and Robert become the gubernatorial candidates who face off in the Nationalist primary runoff , and René and Ben become the party chairs of the Nationalist and Federalist parties , respectively .
In other words , had McBaine and Moss waltzed unprepared into the Boys State maelstrom , with no advance casting , and merely planned to film the most successful participants , they ’ d have ended up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is impressive—but their reticence about their intentions makes the happy accident appear contrived .
The sense of contrivance is reinforced by the filmmakers ’ coy method of eliciting remarks from their subjects .
“ Boys State ” is interspersed with interviews with all four principals , done in the course of the event , in an empty meeting room .
Yet these interviews , too , are distilled to sound bites and give the sense of spontaneous and unprompted utterances by the four—with no questions from the filmmakers , no challenge , no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that they ’ d like to hear the participants discuss .
The void left by the filmmakers ’ invisibility ( and inaudibility ) eclipses the details and events , the personalities being presented , the stakes of the competition .
“ Boys State ” is far from the first or the only documentary that ’ s the product of careful and extensive casting .
For that matter , Claude Lanzmann ’ s historic “ Shoah , ” which I consider the greatest documentary ever made , is the product of years of detective @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people whom Lanzmann interviewed in the film .
Yet , once the camera was rolling , Lanzmann made clear his position with regard to the participants ; he is on camera with many of them , audibly questioning , coaxing , and challenging others .
Lanzmann was so explicit about his careful choice of participants that he even ironically called one of them an “ actor.
” And though he didn ’ t build the background process into the film , he did build his own “ direction ” of these “ actors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their own involvement—into it .
McBaine and Moss , by contrast , replicate the trap of TV journalism : they give the impression of recording without experiencing , without even thinking .
Their own assumptions and presumptions , the premises on which they construct their story and the preconceived ideas that guided their choices , are built into the movie whether they acknowledge it or not .
As it is , “ Boys State ” attempts to maintain objectivity but ends up , instead , merely concealing subjectivity .

The documentary “Boys State,” directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, gave me a cinematic headache from the start. A nagging absence buzzes throughout nearly the entire film, distracting the viewer from the substance, however engaging, of what’s onscreen. More or less every work of nonfiction, cinematic or otherwise, is shadowed by a second work—a making-of, which tells the stories of the encounters and discoveries that gave rise to the documented record—and there’s a notable tradition of documentarians (from Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin to Robert Greene and Khalik Allah) integrating this implicit work into the published one. There’s no inherent virtue in doing so, which, rather, depends on the implications of each individual film. In “Boys State,” the absence of such underlying activity makes the film seem insufficient—the iceberg is far more integral to the tip of action than the filmmakers realized or disclosed. This absence is more conspicuous, more present, than the events onscreen. As a result, the film feels hermetically sealed, like a product that was finished before it started.
The documentary gets its title from an annual event for high schoolers, a sort of Model U.N. for American politicking, in which students perform a weeklong simulation of state government. The event, founded and run by the American Legion, in 1935, is held annually in every state except Hawaii, and also in Washington, D.C.; as the name suggests, it’s gender-specific (there’s also a Girls State). The one that McBaine and Moss film takes place in Austin, Texas, and includes eleven hundred students, who are divided into two parties, Federalist and Nationalist—cipher-monikers with no program or ideas attached. It’s up to the members of each party to choose a leader, under whose guidance they’ll craft and pass a platform on which their candidates for office (as chosen in primaries) will run, and then, after a campaign, there’s a general election among the entire group to choose the winning candidates (the highest office in the event is governor).
McBaine and Moss are on hand for the entire event, and they follow Boys State in the gathering of signatures on petitions, platform debates, intra-party elections, primaries and runoffs, campaigns, and Election Day. Yet any sense of concentrated and tightly focussed observation of the event at hand is diluted by footage showing events that take place outside of the competition’s boundaries.The film is centered on four students, whom the filmmakers’ crews follow throughout, not only at Boys State but at home and in their neighborhoods. Three of them the filmmakers apparently met and cast prior to the filming. There’s Ben Feinstein, a self-described “politics junkie” and conservative, who, at home with his parents, discusses his own situation as a double amputee (he had meningitis at the age of three) and speaks proudly of overcoming his disability; he preaches a gospel of personal responsibility, disdaining references to “race or gender or disability.” “I think, like, we’re individuals, right? Like, I don’t think of myself as white; I think of myself as Ben Feinstein, American, right?” His mother adds, “Future President.” “Yeah, we’ll see,” he says. There’s Steven Garza, who is Hispanic and says that, at one time, his mother was undocumented; he also says, of the Boys State event, “I am a progressive person, and I’m in a room full of mostly conservative people.” His political inspiration is Bernie Sanders; he shows up to the event wearing a Beto O’Rourke T-shirt; and, soon after arriving, he expresses a preference for a non-gendered “People’s State.” The filmmakers also follow Robert MacDougall, a Republican Senate page from a seemingly cushy background who’s applying to only one college, West Point—but who ultimately admits that his actual political views are at odds with his milieu. The fourth participant seems to have caught the filmmakers’ attention in the course of the action: René Otero, a Black student who has recently moved to Texas from Chicago and says that he grew up in “a bubble,” where “everybody had the same ideas, everybody was mad at the same person.” Now, at the Boys State event, he says that he wants to be “a delegate for Black people here,” adding, “I’ve never seen so many white people, ever.”
Yet what’s entirely absent from “Boys State” is this casting process and the criteria behind it, both for the students and for the filmmakers. There’s no sense of the transactional value for the four boys in appearing at the film’s center (or, for that matter, for the American Legion itself), no sense of what went on behind the scenes regarding what could or couldn’t be shown, no sense of the terms and conditions of their agreement with the Legion or the students (or, for that matter, the agreement of parents or guardians—the students are minors). According to the filmmakers, the four protagonists wear wireless microphones, which require the crew’s daily involvement to prepare them. What do these students think about being in the cinematic spotlight? What do the thousand nine hundred and ninety-six other students think about their four peers becoming the first-among-equals by dint of being filmed? How does the whole group—and the staff and advisers—feel about the presence of cameras over all? (And what did the other students have to agree to regarding the filming?)
What’s even more remarkable is the filmmakers’ acumen in their casting. As the days progress, Steven, Robert, and Ben, all preselected to play what the filmmakers call their “main characters,” win major roles in the simulation: Steven and Robert become the gubernatorial candidates who face off in the Nationalist primary runoff, and René and Ben become the party chairs of the Nationalist and Federalist parties, respectively. In other words, had McBaine and Moss waltzed unprepared into the Boys State maelstrom, with no advance casting, and merely planned to film the most successful participants, they’d have ended up with the same group. Their discernment is impressive—but their reticence about their intentions makes the happy accident appear contrived.
The sense of contrivance is reinforced by the filmmakers’ coy method of eliciting remarks from their subjects. “Boys State” is interspersed with interviews with all four principals, done in the course of the event, in an empty meeting room. Yet these interviews, too, are distilled to sound bites and give the sense of spontaneous and unprompted utterances by the four—with no questions from the filmmakers, no challenge, no pushback, no intervention to raise subjects that they’d like to hear the participants discuss. The void left by the filmmakers’ invisibility (and inaudibility) eclipses the details and events, the personalities being presented, the stakes of the competition.
“Boys State” is far from the first or the only documentary that’s the product of careful and extensive casting. For that matter, Claude Lanzmann’s historic “Shoah,” which I consider the greatest documentary ever made, is the product of years of detective work and background interviews to find the people whom Lanzmann interviewed in the film. Yet, once the camera was rolling, Lanzmann made clear his position with regard to the participants; he is on camera with many of them, audibly questioning, coaxing, and challenging others. Lanzmann was so explicit about his careful choice of participants that he even ironically called one of them an “actor.” And though he didn’t build the background process into the film, he did build his own “direction” of these “actors”—and the participants’ perspective on their own involvement—into it. McBaine and Moss, by contrast, replicate the trap of TV journalism: they give the impression of recording without experiencing, without even thinking. Their own assumptions and presumptions, the premises on which they construct their story and the preconceived ideas that guided their choices, are built into the movie whether they acknowledge it or not. As it is, “Boys State” attempts to maintain objectivity but ends up, instead, merely concealing subjectivity.


newyorker--2020-08-20--The Stunning Predictability of Steve Bannon’s “We Build the Wall” Scam

On Sunday , after Steve Bannon appeared on Fox News , an image of his visage during the interview made the rounds on social media .
While we in the audience were living through the multifaceted collapse of society , Bannon faced the camera with a mane of gray hair swept back , his face looking like a sunburned hunk of bologna , and a lighthouse rising behind him on some unidentified coast .
“ He looks INCREDIBLE , ” my colleague Naomi Fry commented .
Nearly four years have passed since Bannon , the former capo of Breitbart News @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political extremism , helped bring an egomaniacal bigot to the White House .
And now there he was on the screen , his multiple shirt collars unbuttoned and his eyes as unreadable as ever .
If the look he was going for was “ James Bond villain in retirement , ” he was pulling it off .
It has been asked , repeatedly , whether the grifts of Donald Trump and the people around him would ever catch up with them .
On Thursday , they caught up to Bannon .
Federal prosecutors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ three other men were being indicted for alleged fraud and money laundering for their role in a scheme that , even in a Bond film , might feel too on the nose .
For the past two years , Bannon and his accomplices ran an online fund-raising campaign called We Build the Wall , whose nominal purpose was to raise the money for the monument to nativism that Trump had promised to build on the southern border .
Trump had also promised that Mexico would pay for the wall .
But , when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ various attempts to strong-arm Congress into giving him the money mostly failed , too , Bannon and his gang stepped forward to ask the very people who ’ d been thrilled by the notion of a “ big , beautiful wall ” to shell out .
According to the government , the group raised more than twenty-five million dollars , and promised “ not to take a penny in salary or compensation.
” Then they pocketed a bunch of the money .
Bannon allegedly routed more than a million dollars through a nonprofit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Brian Kolfage , allegedly used his share of the money to buy , among other things , a boat called Warfighter .
According to the Times ’ Evan Hill , Kolfage sailed Warfighter in a pro-Trump boat parade held in Destin , Florida , on July 4th .
Happy birthday , America .
Is there a word in German for something that is at once extraordinary and shocking and yet at the same time totally predictable and stupid ?
The indictment raises questions about other Trump allies as well .
We Build @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kris Kobach , the former Kansas secretary of state ; Erik Prince , the Blackwater founder and a brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ; David A. Clarke , Jr. , the former sheriff of Milwaukee County , Wisconsin ; and Curt Schilling , the former major-league-baseball pitcher .
The indictment came out of the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York .
In June , Trump and his Attorney General , Bill Barr , forced Geoffrey Berman out of his job as the U.S. Attorney in that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and despite Berman ’ s protests .
It now needs to be asked whether this case against a close Trump associate played a role in Berman ’ s ouster .
The notion that political and legal gravity does not apply to Trump has become a key aspect of the Trump mystique , something that even his opponents begrudgingly believe .
“ Well , I ’ d like to see ol Donny Trump wriggle his way out of THIS jam !
” goes the classic Twitter joke .
“ *Trump wriggles his way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Well .
Nevertheless.
” And maybe Trump will , in the end , avoid serious consequences , despite the instances of likely obstruction of justice found by the special counsel Robert Mueller , despite the various investigations into the Trump Organization swirling in New York State , and despite his long history of engaging in business and personal activities that raise all kinds of legal questions .
Associates of his have been indicted before , from Michael Flynn to Michael Cohen to Rick Gates , without the damage touching Trump .
Being President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been recent evidence that not every jam can be wriggled out of , even by Ol ’ Donny .
Trump has not been able to browbeat and demagogue the coronavirus .
The bottom has fallen out of the American economy , a hundred and seventy thousand Americans are dead , and the polls show that those still alive are souring on the President and his party .
This week , even before the Bannon news , the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that detailed the relationship between another former Trump campaign official @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during the 2016 campaign .
The report called Manafort—who , in recent years , has faced a list of charges for his actions before , during , and after the campaign that is too long to recite here—a “ grave counterintelligence threat.
” And , according to news reports , the leaders of the same Senate committee last year alerted federal prosecutors that Bannon and Prince , as well as Donald Trump , Jr. , Jared Kushner , and the former Trump campaign official Sam Clovis , may have misled them during testimony—a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ previously denied misleading investigators . )
On Thursday , as if to pile on the news , a federal judge once again rejected Trump ’ s attempts to keep prosecutors in Manhattan from obtaining his tax returns .
Four years ago , the Democratic National Convention took place against the backdrop of an orchestrated political attack : that week , the hacked e-mails of various Democratic Party figures were leaked out to the world .
This week , the Democratic Party is again hosting its Convention .
The background news this time is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Trump has spent his recent evenings staying up late to watch his opponents , and to rage-tweet about them .
Next week it will be his turn on the live-streamed stage , at the Republican National Convention .
Steve Bannon probably won ’ t be watching from the seashore .

Steve Bannon faces charges of alleged fraud and money laundering. Photograph by Lewis Joly / Sipa / Shutterstock
On Sunday, after Steve Bannon appeared on Fox News, an image of his visage during the interview made the rounds on social media. While we in the audience were living through the multifaceted collapse of society, Bannon faced the camera with a mane of gray hair swept back, his face looking like a sunburned hunk of bologna, and a lighthouse rising behind him on some unidentified coast. “He looks INCREDIBLE,” my colleague Naomi Fry commented. Nearly four years have passed since Bannon, the former capo of Breitbart News and the intellectual godfather of contemporary American political extremism, helped bring an egomaniacal bigot to the White House. And now there he was on the screen, his multiple shirt collars unbuttoned and his eyes as unreadable as ever. If the look he was going for was “James Bond villain in retirement,” he was pulling it off.
It has been asked, repeatedly, whether the grifts of Donald Trump and the people around him would ever catch up with them. On Thursday, they caught up to Bannon. Federal prosecutors in New York announced that Bannon and three other men were being indicted for alleged fraud and money laundering for their role in a scheme that, even in a Bond film, might feel too on the nose. For the past two years, Bannon and his accomplices ran an online fund-raising campaign called We Build the Wall, whose nominal purpose was to raise the money for the monument to nativism that Trump had promised to build on the southern border. Trump had also promised that Mexico would pay for the wall. But, when those funds proved unforthcoming, and his various attempts to strong-arm Congress into giving him the money mostly failed, too, Bannon and his gang stepped forward to ask the very people who’d been thrilled by the notion of a “big, beautiful wall” to shell out. According to the government, the group raised more than twenty-five million dollars, and promised “not to take a penny in salary or compensation.” Then they pocketed a bunch of the money. Bannon allegedly routed more than a million dollars through a nonprofit he controls. One of his co-defendants, Brian Kolfage, allegedly used his share of the money to buy, among other things, a boat called Warfighter. According to the Times’ Evan Hill, Kolfage sailed Warfighter in a pro-Trump boat parade held in Destin, Florida, on July 4th. Happy birthday, America. Is there a word in German for something that is at once extraordinary and shocking and yet at the same time totally predictable and stupid?
The indictment raises questions about other Trump allies as well. We Build the Wall’s board members included Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state; Erik Prince, the Blackwater founder and a brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; David A. Clarke, Jr., the former sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin; and Curt Schilling, the former major-league-baseball pitcher. The indictment came out of the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. In June, Trump and his Attorney General, Bill Barr, forced Geoffrey Berman out of his job as the U.S. Attorney in that office, for reasons that remain unclear, and despite Berman’s protests. It now needs to be asked whether this case against a close Trump associate played a role in Berman’s ouster.
The notion that political and legal gravity does not apply to Trump has become a key aspect of the Trump mystique, something that even his opponents begrudgingly believe. “Well, I’d like to see ol Donny Trump wriggle his way out of THIS jam!” goes the classic Twitter joke. “*Trump wriggles his way out of the jam easily* Ah! Well. Nevertheless.” And maybe Trump will, in the end, avoid serious consequences, despite the instances of likely obstruction of justice found by the special counsel Robert Mueller, despite the various investigations into the Trump Organization swirling in New York State, and despite his long history of engaging in business and personal activities that raise all kinds of legal questions. Associates of his have been indicted before, from Michael Flynn to Michael Cohen to Rick Gates, without the damage touching Trump. Being President is great insulation.
But there has been recent evidence that not every jam can be wriggled out of, even by Ol’ Donny. Trump has not been able to browbeat and demagogue the coronavirus. The bottom has fallen out of the American economy, a hundred and seventy thousand Americans are dead, and the polls show that those still alive are souring on the President and his party. This week, even before the Bannon news, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that detailed the relationship between another former Trump campaign official, Paul Manafort, and Russian intelligence during the 2016 campaign. The report called Manafort—who, in recent years, has faced a list of charges for his actions before, during, and after the campaign that is too long to recite here—a “grave counterintelligence threat.” And, according to news reports, the leaders of the same Senate committee last year alerted federal prosecutors that Bannon and Prince, as well as Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, and the former Trump campaign official Sam Clovis, may have misled them during testimony—a potential federal crime. (Each has previously denied misleading investigators.) On Thursday, as if to pile on the news, a federal judge once again rejected Trump’s attempts to keep prosecutors in Manhattan from obtaining his tax returns.
Four years ago, the Democratic National Convention took place against the backdrop of an orchestrated political attack: that week, the hacked e-mails of various Democratic Party figures were leaked out to the world. This week, the Democratic Party is again hosting its Convention. The background news this time is a drip, drip of Trumpworld corruption. Trump has spent his recent evenings staying up late to watch his opponents, and to rage-tweet about them. Next week it will be his turn on the live-streamed stage, at the Republican National Convention. Steve Bannon probably won’t be watching from the seashore.


newyorker--2020-08-20--The “Narcissism and Ego” That Led to Steve Bannon’s Arrest

On Thursday , federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York charged Steve Bannon—a top strategist on Donald Trump ’ s 2016 campaign , and one of his key White House advisers before being fired , in 2017—with fraud .
According to Audrey Strauss , the acting United States Attorney in Manhattan , Bannon and three other defendants “ defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors , capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars , under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction.
” As part of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Wall , Bannon and his associates promised not to take money for themselves ; according to prosecutors , however , Bannon ended up with more than a million dollars from the operation , and funnelled cash to his associates , too .
To talk about the charges and Bannon ’ s career , I called Joshua Green , a national correspondent at Bloomberg Businessweek , a CNN political analyst , and the author of “ Devil ’ s Bargain : Steve Bannon , Donald Trump , and the Nationalist Uprising.
” During @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for length and clarity , we discussed the extent to which Bannon ’ s populism is sincere , how his tempestuous relationship with Trump might affect the possibility of a pardon , and whether Bannon might have any role in the future of Republican politics .
When did you last speak to Bannon ?
The last time I spoke to him was probably a few weeks ago , when he was trying to get attention for one of his media appearances on Maria Bartiromo ’ s show [ on Fox News ] .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ project .
When did you hear about the charges , and what do you make of them ?
I was actually out on a boat in the middle of a lake , and I looked at my phone and I had five texts that all said the same thing from different people : “ Holy fuck , Bannon.
” And I knew the moment had arrived when he had stepped in it , in a big way .
I think anyone who knows Bannon has been anticipating his indictment at some point , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ say that ?
Well , he was someone who was in the center of the Trump campaign , he was in the center of the White House for seven months , he was in the center of the Mueller investigation , the congressional investigations .
I always figured that at some point they would catch him doing something .
I think the irony is that it is like busting Al Capone for tax evasion , isn ’ t it ?
That what would finally get him is this little immigration grift ?
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to me that this would be the outcome .
Maybe you have answered this , but what does the indictment tell us about Steve Bannon that we didn ’ t already know ?
Nothing .
Well , I will revise and extend that remark : one of the things that he always told me , and one of the things that was part of my job for the last three years as a Bannon expert [ laughs ] , was talking to him about the various investigations that seemed to be circling around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going to get indicted .
And he always rather smugly had the same line that he would go back to again and again .
He would say , “ I am always smart enough not to be in the room.
” If you remember the conversation at Trump Tower with the Russians in June of 2016 , he wasn ’ t in the room .
That was his shorthand for saying he was too clever to get caught doing anything illegal .
And , at least according to the indictment today , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Your book is not uncritical of Bannon , but it also presents him , I would say , as somewhat of a sincere economic populist .
Is that an idea we should update ?
I don ’ t know about sincere economic populist .
I think that Bannon saw the value , early on , in an economically populist appeal that was radically at odds with the appeal being offered by Republicans like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan .
How sincerely he held that view was always an open question .
I think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nativist fervor , but in all the time I spent talking to him , publicly and privately , his passion was on the immigration front .
It wasn ’ t on pushing populist economics that would filter more income down to working people .
When he was in the White House , he did make a push , briefly , with Mark Meadows , to try and raise marginal tax rates for people making more than five million dollars per year , and I think this push maybe lasted for a couple of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ White House leaked on him and he got embarrassed .
And that was the sum total of his efforts on economic populism .
If you just look at where the focus of his energy has been in the last four or five years , it is all immigration .
O.K.
, China , but pushing economic populist policies has been nowhere on his agenda for years and years .
So to me there was never a mystery about what his rooting interests were .
I think he recognized that the populist pitch was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be in 2016 .
This whole thing is pretty ironic .
The President ran on Mexico paying for the wall , and now American taxpayers are paying for it , and Bannon was arrested for bilking people out of their money to build it .
Do you think he recognizes this ?
I ’ m not sure whether he recognizes it , but , I think , looking back at the last four years , it is pretty easy to connect the dots .
When Bannon left the White House , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where he was going to marshal this slate of nationalist candidates , like Roy Moore , that was going to wreck the G.O.P .
establishment .
And Bannon himself had actually confided to people that he himself was thinking about running for President .
He considered himself not only the brains of the operation but a successor to Trump , and instead—and this always happens—his ego blew him up .
After Michael Wolff quoted him disparaging the Trump family , Trump ostracized him and he got fired from Breitbart .
And I think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ power in the Trump universe belonged to Donald Trump , not Steve Bannon .
And then I think he came to realize pretty quickly that to have any kind of influence in Republican politics , which is what Bannon really wanted , he would have to kowtow to Trump , and be seen to be in Trump ’ s good graces in order to get anyone to talk to him .
Otherwise he was out in the wilderness .
So instead of superseding Trump , as he wanted to , he just became @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lackeys praising Trump on Fox News , and that allowed him to regain a modicum of his former influence in Republican circles , but not really the ones that matter .
So when he didn ’ t have a top role in the White House , when he didn ’ t have a top role at Breitbart News , what was left for him was to commandeer these dopey , nativist extremist groups populated with shady characters like Kris Kobach and Curt Schilling .
And I think that when that is who you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s not a huge shock you wind up indicted .

On Thursday, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York charged Steve Bannon—a top strategist on Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, and one of his key White House advisers before being fired, in 2017—with fraud. According to Audrey Strauss, the acting United States Attorney in Manhattan, Bannon and three other defendants “defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction.” As part of an online campaign, called We Build the Wall, Bannon and his associates promised not to take money for themselves; according to prosecutors, however, Bannon ended up with more than a million dollars from the operation, and funnelled cash to his associates, too.
To talk about the charges and Bannon’s career, I called Joshua Green, a national correspondent at Bloomberg Businessweek, a CNN political analyst, and the author of “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising.” During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the extent to which Bannon’s populism is sincere, how his tempestuous relationship with Trump might affect the possibility of a pardon, and whether Bannon might have any role in the future of Republican politics.
When did you last speak to Bannon?
The last time I spoke to him was probably a few weeks ago, when he was trying to get attention for one of his media appearances on Maria Bartiromo’s show [on Fox News]. He was hawking some sort of China project.
When did you hear about the charges, and what do you make of them?
I was actually out on a boat in the middle of a lake, and I looked at my phone and I had five texts that all said the same thing from different people: “Holy fuck, Bannon.” And I knew the moment had arrived when he had stepped in it, in a big way. I think anyone who knows Bannon has been anticipating his indictment at some point, on some charge.
Why do you say that?
Well, he was someone who was in the center of the Trump campaign, he was in the center of the White House for seven months, he was in the center of the Mueller investigation, the congressional investigations. I always figured that at some point they would catch him doing something. I think the irony is that it is like busting Al Capone for tax evasion, isn’t it? That what would finally get him is this little immigration grift? But it’s not a huge surprise to me that this would be the outcome.
Maybe you have answered this, but what does the indictment tell us about Steve Bannon that we didn’t already know?
Nothing. Well, I will revise and extend that remark: one of the things that he always told me, and one of the things that was part of my job for the last three years as a Bannon expert [laughs], was talking to him about the various investigations that seemed to be circling around him, and about whether he was going to get indicted. And he always rather smugly had the same line that he would go back to again and again. He would say, “I am always smart enough not to be in the room.” If you remember the conversation at Trump Tower with the Russians in June of 2016, he wasn’t in the room. That was his shorthand for saying he was too clever to get caught doing anything illegal. And, at least according to the indictment today, that turned out not to be true.
Your book is not uncritical of Bannon, but it also presents him, I would say, as somewhat of a sincere economic populist. Is that an idea we should update?
I don’t know about sincere economic populist. I think that Bannon saw the value, early on, in an economically populist appeal that was radically at odds with the appeal being offered by Republicans like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. How sincerely he held that view was always an open question. I think he is sincere in his anti-immigration, nativist fervor, but in all the time I spent talking to him, publicly and privately, his passion was on the immigration front. It wasn’t on pushing populist economics that would filter more income down to working people.
When he was in the White House, he did make a push, briefly, with Mark Meadows, to try and raise marginal tax rates for people making more than five million dollars per year, and I think this push maybe lasted for a couple of days, and then everybody in the White House leaked on him and he got embarrassed. And that was the sum total of his efforts on economic populism. If you just look at where the focus of his energy has been in the last four or five years, it is all immigration.
And China, I guess, right?
O.K., China, but pushing economic populist policies has been nowhere on his agenda for years and years. So to me there was never a mystery about what his rooting interests were. I think he recognized that the populist pitch was effective politics, as it turned out to be in 2016.
This whole thing is pretty ironic. The President ran on Mexico paying for the wall, and now American taxpayers are paying for it, and Bannon was arrested for bilking people out of their money to build it. Do you think he recognizes this?
I’m not sure whether he recognizes it, but, I think, looking back at the last four years, it is pretty easy to connect the dots. When Bannon left the White House, he had this heroic vision of himself, where he was going to marshal this slate of nationalist candidates, like Roy Moore, that was going to wreck the G.O.P. establishment. And Bannon himself had actually confided to people that he himself was thinking about running for President. He considered himself not only the brains of the operation but a successor to Trump, and instead—and this always happens—his ego blew him up. After Michael Wolff quoted him disparaging the Trump family, Trump ostracized him and he got fired from Breitbart. And I think he realized pretty quickly that the star power in the Trump universe belonged to Donald Trump, not Steve Bannon. And then I think he came to realize pretty quickly that to have any kind of influence in Republican politics, which is what Bannon really wanted, he would have to kowtow to Trump, and be seen to be in Trump’s good graces in order to get anyone to talk to him. Otherwise he was out in the wilderness.
So instead of superseding Trump, as he wanted to, he just became another in the long line of obsequious lackeys praising Trump on Fox News, and that allowed him to regain a modicum of his former influence in Republican circles, but not really the ones that matter. So when he didn’t have a top role in the White House, when he didn’t have a top role at Breitbart News, what was left for him was to commandeer these dopey, nativist extremist groups populated with shady characters like Kris Kobach and Curt Schilling. And I think that when that is who you are spending your time with, it’s not a huge shock you wind up indicted.
It’s somewhat interesting that he cared enough to initially not want to become a Trump lackey. It suggests some sort of ideological vision. This is more than can be said for some people in the Trump orbit.
In terms of ideology, sure, he has a little bit more of an elevated ideology than, like, Corey Lewandowski. But, I mean… the way I look at it is kind of in a different vector, which is that all these people around Trump really just want power and attention. Bannon is no different. The difference is that Bannon initially had an elevated sense of his own grandeur, and that he was some kind of a historical figure who could be as large as Trump, or larger. I don’t think that David Bossie or Roger Stone or Lewandowski aspired to be anything other than No. 1 Trump Lackey, whereas I think Bannon did aspire to that, initially. And I think he discovered within about six months of leaving the White House that that wasn’t going to happen. But, in the end, I don’t think he is all that different from the other Trump lackeys. His moment in history came in the 2016 campaign, and in understanding what would help get Trump elected and helping to guide Trump, but I think that is the end of the story as far as his historical significance.


newyorker--2020-08-20--Trump Fails Cognitive Test When Asked to Remember Steve Bannon

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —Donald J. Trump ’ s stellar reputation for mental acuity took a hit on @ @ @ @ @ cognitive test in which he was asked to remember Steve Bannon .
According to the @ @ @ @ @ was shown several pictures and asked to identify them , including ones of a woman @ @ @ @ @ camera , a TV , and Steve Bannon .
“ He nailed woman , man @ @ @ @ @ but drew a blank when it came to Steve Bannon , ” the physician said @ @ @ @ @ was unfamiliar with that picture and could not remember ever seeing that person before.
” @ @ @ @ @ Trump ’ s memory concerning the identity of Steve Bannon , including writing the name @ @ @ @ @ and showing it to him , the physician gave up trying .
On a positive @ @ @ @ @ , Trump ’ s cognition appeared to improve later in the morning , when he @ @ @ @ @ Bannon on Twitter , Facebook , and his phone .

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump’s stellar reputation for mental acuity took a hit on Thursday when he failed a cognitive test in which he was asked to remember Steve Bannon.
According to the White House physician, Trump was shown several pictures and asked to identify them, including ones of a woman, a man, a camera, a TV, and Steve Bannon.
“He nailed woman, man, camera, and TV but drew a blank when it came to Steve Bannon,” the physician said. “He said he was unfamiliar with that picture and could not remember ever seeing that person before.”
After repeated attempts to jog Trump’s memory concerning the identity of Steve Bannon, including writing the name Steve Bannon on a notecard and showing it to him, the physician gave up trying.
On a positive note, the physician said, Trump’s cognition appeared to improve later in the morning, when he was able to block Steve Bannon on Twitter, Facebook, and his phone.


newyorker--2020-08-20--What Does Boredom Do to Us—and for Us?

What Does Boredom Do to Us—and for Us?

Quick inventory : Among the many things you might be feeling more of these days , is boredom one of them ?
It might seem like something to disavow , automatically , when the country is roiling .
The American plot thickens by the hour .
We need to be paying attention .
But boredom , like many an inconvenient human sensation , can steal over a person at unseemly moments .
And , in some ways , the psychic limbo of the pandemic has been a breeding ground for it—or at least for a restless , buzzing frustration that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fundamentally , boredom is , as Tolstoy defined it , “ a desire for desires.
” The psychoanalyst Adam Phillips , describing the feeling that sometimes drops over children like a scratchy blanket , elaborated on this notion : boredom is “ that state of suspended animation in which things are started and nothing begins , the mood of diffuse restlessness which contains that most absurd and paradoxical wish , the wish for a desire.
” In a new book , “ Out of My Skull : The Psychology of Boredom , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ John D. Eastwood , a psychologist , nicely describe it as a cognitive state that has something in common with tip-of-the-tongue syndrome—a sensation that something is missing , though we can ’ t quite say what .
Danckert and Eastwood are hardly alone in their inquiries .
In the past couple of decades , a whole field of boredom studies has flourished , complete with conferences , seminars , symposiums , workshops , and a succession of papers with such titles as “ In Search of Meaningfulness : Nostalgia as an Antidote to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Eaten Up by Boredom : Consuming Food to Escape Awareness of the Bored Self ” ( definitely been there ) .
And , of course , there ’ s a “ Boredom Studies Reader , ” which bears the suitably stolid subtitle “ Frameworks and Perspectives.
” Boredom , it ’ s become clear , has a history , a set of social determinants , and , in particular , a pungent association with modernity .
Leisure was one precondition : enough people had to be free of the demands of subsistence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ required filling .
Modern capitalism multiplied amusements and consumables , while undermining spiritual sources of meaning that had once been conferred more or less automatically .
Expectations grew that life would be , at least some of the time , amusing , and people , including oneself , interesting—and so did the disappointment when they weren ’ t .
In the industrial city , work and leisure were cleaved in a way that they had not been in traditional communities , and work itself was often more monotonous and regimented .
Moreover , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out in his contribution to the “ Boredom Studies Reader , ” boredom often comes about when we are constrained to pay attention , and in modern , urban society there was simply so much more that human beings were expected to pay attention to—factory whistles , school bells , traffic signals , office rules , bureaucratic procedures , chalk-and-talk lectures .
( Zoom meetings . )
Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard considered boredom a particular scourge of modern life .
The nineteenth-century novel arose in part as an antidote to the experience of tedium @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
What was Emma Bovary , who arrived in 1856 , if not bored—by her plodding husband , by provincial existence , by life itself when it failed to show the glittering colors of fiction ?
Oblomov ( the eponymous novel by Ivan Goncharov appeared three years after Gustave Flaubert ’ s ) is a superfluous man on a superannuated feudal estate who passes the time with his family in thick silence and bouts of helplessly contagious yawning .
Though it was possible in the English language to be “ a bore ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the first documented instances of the noun boredom ’ s being invoked to describe a subjective feeling did not appear until 1852 , in Dickens ’ s “ Bleak House , ” afflicting the aptly named Lady Dedlock .
Heidegger , one of the preeminent theorists of boredom , classified it into three kinds : the mundane boredom of , say , waiting for a train ; a profound malaise he associated not with modernity or any specific experience but with the human condition itself ; and an ineffable deficit of some unnameable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( This third kind might have made a good additional verse for Peggy Lee in her languid “ Is That All There Is ?
” ) We are invited to a dinner party .
“ There we find the usual food and the usual table conversation , ” Heidegger writes .
“ Everything is not only tasty , but very tasteful as well.
” There was nothing unsatisfactory about the occasion at all , and yet , once home , the realization arrives unbidden : “ I was bored after all this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ boredom long before its mid-nineteenth-century flowering .
Seneca , in the first century , evoked taedium vitae , a mood akin to nausea , set off by contemplating the relentless cyclicality of life : “ How long will things be the same ?
Surely I will be awake , I will sleep , I will be hungry , I will be cold , I will be hot .
Is there no end ?
Do all things go in a circle ?
” Medieval monks were prone to something called acedia—a “ kind of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the ascetic John Cassian wrote in the fifth century , in which they couldn ’ t do much of anything but go in and out of their cells , sighing that “ none of the brethren ” came to see them , and looking up at the sun “ as if it was too slow in setting.
” As scholars have pointed out , acedia sounds a lot like boredom ( depression , too ) , although a particular judgment was attached to it : acedia was sinful because it rendered a monk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work.
” Still , these were exceptional harbingers of a feeling that would later be distributed far more democratically .
In these earlier incarnations , boredom was “ a marginal phenomenon , reserved for monks and the nobility , ” Lars Svendsen writes in “ A Philosophy of Boredom ” ; indeed , it was something of a “ status symbol , ” since it seemed to plague only “ the upper echelons of society.
” This is persuasive , though I suspect that some subjective sense of monotony is a more fundamental @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Surely even medieval peasants sometimes stared into the middle distance and sighed over their barley pottage , longing for the next village fête day and a bit of carnivalesque mayhem .
In recent years , something like boredom has been studied and documented in understimulated animals , which would seem to argue against its being an entirely social construction .
( It certainly seems to be boredom that gets into my workaholic dog when he drags a magazine off the coffee table , always checking first that some human has seen him , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so we ’ ll chase him . )
The classicist Peter Toohey , in his book “ Boredom : A Lively History , ” offers a helpful resolution for the debate between those who say that boredom is a basic feature ( or bug ) of humanness and those who say that it ’ s a by-product of modernity .
He argues that we need to distinguish between simple boredom—which people ( and animals ) have probably always experienced on occasion—and “ existential boredom , ” a sense of emptiness and alienation that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that perhaps did not come into many people ’ s emotional lexicon until the past couple of centuries , when philosophers , novelists , and social critics helped define it .

Quick inventory: Among the many things you might be feeling more of these days, is boredom one of them? It might seem like something to disavow, automatically, when the country is roiling. The American plot thickens by the hour. We need to be paying attention. But boredom, like many an inconvenient human sensation, can steal over a person at unseemly moments. And, in some ways, the psychic limbo of the pandemic has been a breeding ground for it—or at least for a restless, buzzing frustration that can feel a lot like it.
Fundamentally, boredom is, as Tolstoy defined it, “a desire for desires.” The psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, describing the feeling that sometimes drops over children like a scratchy blanket, elaborated on this notion: boredom is “that state of suspended animation in which things are started and nothing begins, the mood of diffuse restlessness which contains that most absurd and paradoxical wish, the wish for a desire.” In a new book, “Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom,” James Danckert, a neuroscientist, and John D. Eastwood, a psychologist, nicely describe it as a cognitive state that has something in common with tip-of-the-tongue syndrome—a sensation that something is missing, though we can’t quite say what.
Danckert and Eastwood are hardly alone in their inquiries. In the past couple of decades, a whole field of boredom studies has flourished, complete with conferences, seminars, symposiums, workshops, and a succession of papers with such titles as “In Search of Meaningfulness: Nostalgia as an Antidote to Boredom” (been there) and “Eaten Up by Boredom: Consuming Food to Escape Awareness of the Bored Self” (definitely been there). And, of course, there’s a “Boredom Studies Reader,” which bears the suitably stolid subtitle “Frameworks and Perspectives.”
Boredom, it’s become clear, has a history, a set of social determinants, and, in particular, a pungent association with modernity. Leisure was one precondition: enough people had to be free of the demands of subsistence to have time on their hands that required filling. Modern capitalism multiplied amusements and consumables, while undermining spiritual sources of meaning that had once been conferred more or less automatically. Expectations grew that life would be, at least some of the time, amusing, and people, including oneself, interesting—and so did the disappointment when they weren’t. In the industrial city, work and leisure were cleaved in a way that they had not been in traditional communities, and work itself was often more monotonous and regimented. Moreover, as the political scientist Erik Ringmar points out in his contribution to the “Boredom Studies Reader,” boredom often comes about when we are constrained to pay attention, and in modern, urban society there was simply so much more that human beings were expected to pay attention to—factory whistles, school bells, traffic signals, office rules, bureaucratic procedures, chalk-and-talk lectures. (Zoom meetings.)
Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard considered boredom a particular scourge of modern life. The nineteenth-century novel arose in part as an antidote to the experience of tedium, and tedium often propelled its plots. What was Emma Bovary, who arrived in 1856, if not bored—by her plodding husband, by provincial existence, by life itself when it failed to show the glittering colors of fiction? Oblomov (the eponymous novel by Ivan Goncharov appeared three years after Gustave Flaubert’s) is a superfluous man on a superannuated feudal estate who passes the time with his family in thick silence and bouts of helplessly contagious yawning. Though it was possible in the English language to be “a bore” in the eighteenth century, one of the first documented instances of the noun boredom’s being invoked to describe a subjective feeling did not appear until 1852, in Dickens’s “Bleak House,” afflicting the aptly named Lady Dedlock.
Heidegger, one of the preeminent theorists of boredom, classified it into three kinds: the mundane boredom of, say, waiting for a train; a profound malaise he associated not with modernity or any specific experience but with the human condition itself; and an ineffable deficit of some unnameable something that sounds thoroughly familiar to us. (This third kind might have made a good additional verse for Peggy Lee in her languid “Is That All There Is?”) We are invited to a dinner party. “There we find the usual food and the usual table conversation,” Heidegger writes. “Everything is not only tasty, but very tasteful as well.” There was nothing unsatisfactory about the occasion at all, and yet, once home, the realization arrives unbidden: “I was bored after all this evening.”
One does find intimations of boredom long before its mid-nineteenth-century flowering. Seneca, in the first century, evoked taedium vitae, a mood akin to nausea, set off by contemplating the relentless cyclicality of life: “How long will things be the same? Surely I will be awake, I will sleep, I will be hungry, I will be cold, I will be hot. Is there no end? Do all things go in a circle?” Medieval monks were prone to something called acedia—a “kind of unreasonable confusion of mind,” as the ascetic John Cassian wrote in the fifth century, in which they couldn’t do much of anything but go in and out of their cells, sighing that “none of the brethren” came to see them, and looking up at the sun “as if it was too slow in setting.” As scholars have pointed out, acedia sounds a lot like boredom (depression, too), although a particular judgment was attached to it: acedia was sinful because it rendered a monk “idle and useless for every spiritual work.” Still, these were exceptional harbingers of a feeling that would later be distributed far more democratically. In these earlier incarnations, boredom was “a marginal phenomenon, reserved for monks and the nobility,” Lars Svendsen writes in “A Philosophy of Boredom”; indeed, it was something of a “status symbol,” since it seemed to plague only “the upper echelons of society.”
This is persuasive, though I suspect that some subjective sense of monotony is a more fundamental affect—like joy or fear or anger. Surely even medieval peasants sometimes stared into the middle distance and sighed over their barley pottage, longing for the next village fête day and a bit of carnivalesque mayhem. In recent years, something like boredom has been studied and documented in understimulated animals, which would seem to argue against its being an entirely social construction. (It certainly seems to be boredom that gets into my workaholic dog when he drags a magazine off the coffee table, always checking first that some human has seen him, and runs around the house with it so we’ll chase him.) The classicist Peter Toohey, in his book “Boredom: A Lively History,” offers a helpful resolution for the debate between those who say that boredom is a basic feature (or bug) of humanness and those who say that it’s a by-product of modernity. He argues that we need to distinguish between simple boredom—which people (and animals) have probably always experienced on occasion—and “existential boredom,” a sense of emptiness and alienation that extends beyond momentary mental weariness, and that perhaps did not come into many people’s emotional lexicon until the past couple of centuries, when philosophers, novelists, and social critics helped define it.
Historically, the diagnosis of boredom has contained an element of social critique—often of life under capitalism. The Frankfurt School philosopher Theodor Adorno argued that leisure is fundamentally shaped by “the social totality”—and is “shackled” to work, its supposed opposite: “Boredom is a function of life which is lived under the compulsion to work, and under the strict division of labor.” So-called free time—obligatory hobbies and holidays that reconcile us to the capitalist economy’s coldly regimented workday—is really a sign of our unfreedom. David Graeber, in his influential “bullshit jobs” thesis, argues that the vast expansion of administrative jobs—he cites, for example, “whole new industries,” such as financial services and telemarketing—means that “huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed.” The result can be soul-choking misery. What Adorno called “objective dullness” is at hand, although, Graeber cautions, “where for some, pointlessness exacerbates boredom, for others it exacerbates anxiety.” Punk music evoked boredom as an incitement to quasi-political rebellion—the Clash’s boredom with the U.S.A., or Fugazi’s “Waiting Room,” where time like “water down the drain” made a boy lose his patience with the world as it was.
But, while social critics can endow boredom with a certain potent charge, many people downplay or deny their own ordinary experience of it. Maybe it’s the system’s fault, but it feels like ours. Boredom is a distinctly uncharismatic state of being. It “lacks the charm of melancholy—a charm that is connected to melancholy’s traditional link to wisdom, sensitivity and beauty,” Svendsen observes. Ennui would be its chic, black-clad, Continental cousin, but you don’t often hear even the most pretentious aesthetes complain of that. Depression has a connection to boredom (“the opposite of depression is not happiness but vitality,” Andrew Solomon has written), but depression is perceived as clinical and chemical, and probably easier to confess to in a lot of social settings than chronic boredom would be. If you are bored, you might well be a bore.
The psychologist Sandi Mann, in her 2016 book, “The Science of Boredom,” argues that “boredom is the ‘new’ stress”: a condition that people are reluctant to own up to, just as they once were hesitant to admit to stress, but may be doing so more. But I doubt that boredom will ever become the same sort of sure-who-isn’t? complaint that you toss off to an acquaintance in the Starbucks line. To confess that you are stressed implies that you are needed, busy, possibly quite important; to say that you are bored suggests—as it did when you were a child, and adults got exasperated if you kvetched about having nothing to do—that you lack imagination or initiative, or the good fortune of having a job that reflects your “passions.”
“Life, friends, is boring,” John Berryman’s poem “Dream Song 14” goes. “We must not say so. / After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, / we ourselves flash and yearn, / and moreover my mother told me as a boy / (repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored / means you have no / Inner Resources.’ ” Though boredom no longer strikes most people as a sin, as acedia was for medieval monks, a dusting of shame still clings to it, especially when it can’t be blamed on a job endured to pay the bills. To be bored more than occasionally seems a small, peevish grievance in the scheme of things, a sort of weak-minded disengagement from a world that demands urgent action to try to set it right (while offering endlessly streaming entertainment to distract us).
The interpretation of boredom is one thing; its measurement is quite another. In the nineteen-eighties, Norman Sundberg and Richard Farmer, two psychology researchers at the University of Oregon, developed a Boredom Proneness Scale, to assess how easily a person gets bored in general. Seven years ago, John Eastwood helped come up with a scale for measuring how bored a person was in the moment. In recent years, boredom researchers have done field surveys in which, for example, they ask people to keep diaries as they go about daily life, recording instances of naturally occurring lethargy. (The result of these new methods was a boon to boredom studies—Mann refers to colleagues she runs into on “the ‘boredom’ circuit.”) But many of the studies involve researchers inducing boredom in a lab setting, usually with college students, in order to study how that clogged, gray lint screen of a feeling affects people.
Creating dull content is a mission they approach with some ingenuity, and the results evoke a kind of rueful, Beckettian comedy. One of James Danckert’s graduate students at the University of Waterloo, for example, directed an exceptionally drab little video that has been used to bore people for research purposes. It depicts two men desultorily hanging laundry on a metal rack in a small, bare room while mumbling banalities. (“Do you want a clothespin?”) Other researchers have had study participants watch an instructional film about fish-farm management or copy down citations from a reference article about concrete. Then the researchers might check how much the stupefied participants want to snack on unhealthy foods (a fair amount, in one such study).
Contemporary boredom researchers, for all their scales and graphs, do engage some of the same existential questions that had occupied philosophers and social critics. One camp contends that boredom stems from a deficit in meaning: we can’t sustain interest in what we’re doing when we don’t fundamentally care about what we’re doing. Another school of thought maintains that it’s a problem of attention: if a task is either too hard for us or too easy, concentration dissipates and the mind stalls. Danckert and Eastwood argue that “boredom occurs when we are caught in a desire conundrum, wanting to do something but not wanting to do anything,” and “when our mental capacities, our skills and talents, lay idle—when we are mentally unoccupied.”
Erin Westgate, a social psychologist at the University of Florida, told me that her work suggests that both factors—a dearth of meaning and a breakdown in attention—play independent and roughly equal roles in boring us. I thought of it this way: An activity might be monotonous—the sixth time you’re reading “Knuffle Bunny” to your sleep-resistant toddler, the second hour of addressing envelopes for a political campaign you really care about—but, because these things are, in different ways, meaningful to you, they’re not necessarily boring. Or an activity might be engaging but not meaningful—the jigsaw puzzle you’re doing during quarantine time, or the seventh episode of some random Netflix series you’ve been sucked into. If an activity is both meaningful and engaging, you’re golden, and if it’s neither you’ve got a one-way ticket to dullsville.


newyorker--2020-08-20--Obama Renews Lease Inside Trump’s Head

Obama Renews Lease Inside Trump’s Head

PHILADELPHIA ( The Borowitz Report ) —Former President Barack Obama announced on Wednesday night that he had renewed his lease @ @ @ @ @ head .
Obama , who took up residence in Trump ’ s head during the @ @ @ @ @ Association dinner , said that his new lease will run until November 3rd of this @ @ @ @ @ ve enjoyed living there for the past nine years , ” Obama said .
“ @ @ @ @ @ only Trump property I ’ d ever consider staying in.
” He confirmed reports that @ @ @ @ @ , his wife , Michelle Obama , had also taken up residence in Trump ’ @ @ @ @ @ , there ’ s plenty of room for both of us , ” he said @

PHILADELPHIA (The Borowitz Report)—Former President Barack Obama announced on Wednesday night that he had renewed his lease inside Donald Trump’s head.
Obama, who took up residence in Trump’s head during the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, said that his new lease will run until November 3rd of this year.
“I’ve enjoyed living there for the past nine years,” Obama said. “It’s really the only Trump property I’d ever consider staying in.”
He confirmed reports that, as of Monday night, his wife, Michelle Obama, had also taken up residence in Trump’s head.
“Fortunately, there’s plenty of room for both of us,” he said.