newyorker--2020-12-22--A Difficult, Beautiful Christmas in the Arctic Circle

“ Even dogs pulling sleds need snacks !
” I tell my daughter , sat in front of me in the sled .
I am attempting to distract her from her own slow , cryogenic death .
She is six .
She makes no sound .
Whoever said , “ There is no bad weather , only bad clothing , ” has never been north of Winnipeg .
Our family undertook this holiday trip to the Arctic Circle in Finland largely because it stood in stark opposition to anything we had ever done .
We ’ d lived in tropical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about cold , about a honeymoon in Norway ’ s fjords or Alaska ’ s islands , about wearing closed-toed shoes .
But when I suggested the idea of Rovaniemi , Finland , my then husband offered a meteorology report .
“ It ’ s freezing , ” he said .
“ Really freezing.
” He had dug ice caves in the military—the warning was for me , not him .
“ It ’ s Santa ’ s village , ” I said .
“ The real Santa.
” It was maybe the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with our daughter before she realized that we had long deceived her about Christmas , and I believed we should capitalize fully on this deception .
Now here we were , on a dogsled in the Arctic , my husband steering behind us , my daughter in eight layers , including a blanket made of reindeer skin .
In December , Rovaniemi has about three hours of daylight .
Our guide estimated that it was negative twenty-six degrees Celsius as we drove across a frozen lake bed .
“ There will be tears @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the bus .
“ My job is to make sure they come at the end and not the beginning.
” This was a lofty goal .
The lake bed looked smooth as a mirror in photos , but the dogsled pitched and jarred against chunks of ice and snow .
You had to yell to be heard over the scrape of the metal blades .
The view never changed : white tundra , hazy tree line .
It was impossible to get any sense of time elapsed or distance travelled .
My glasses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them in a pocket of my snowsuit .
The travel agency had issued snowsuits to each of us to wear over the winter gear and coats we brought ourselves ; we were also given wool socks , fur-lined leather mittens , balaclavas , scarves , and giant lined moon boots .
We kept this gear throughout our time in Rovaniemi .
It was easy to spot a tourist in town .
The guide warned us to remind our children to keep wiggling their fingers and toes .
I imagined my daughter ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Wiggle !
Wiggle , wiggle , wiggle , ” I chanted at her , hoping to salvage her digits and keep her conscious—she had lapsed into a sleepy , semi-comatose state , which is the manner of cryogenic death .
It is , I understand , not entirely unpleasant .
Twenty-one hours of darkness is misleading .
The darkness has layers that , like the ocean , reflect its surfaces .
The morning , before sunrise , can be an indigo-blue , and then , after the sun sets , around two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have a pinkish hue .
Other evenings were a slate blue or a deep navy .
These darknesses were beautiful and melancholy , vast and hollow , and strangely comforting .
The first evening in Rovaniemi , our guides collected us from our hotel in search of the Northern Lights , via snowmobile .
My daughter was tucked into an adult snowsuit and helmet , rolled underneath wool blankets , then wedged into a sleigh alongside other children atop reindeer hides .
Her eyes , beneath her ski mask , looked pleading .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to our cabin .
“ Northern Lights , ” was the muffled reply .
She is like me : craving adventure yet averse to physical discomfort .
Our guides told us it was negative twenty-five degrees Celsius—warming right up .
The white tundra sparkled , reflecting the purples and blues of the sky .
After an hour or so , we arrived at a teepee in a clearing where the sky was black .
My kid ’ s sleigh pulled up .
“ Wiggle !
” I shouted to her .
“ Don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She ignored me , because she had made a new friend , an Australian boy who lived in Singapore .
A hazy swath of white flashed across the sky .
A tourist said , “ The Northern Lights !
” We all fumbled to extract cameras from our many layers .
The guide said no ; it was just lights from the city center .
I couldn ’ t feel anything from my ankles down .
What I was doing to my child and myself could only be rationalized if the Northern Lights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ equivalent of a whale-watching trip .
Meanwhile , the children played tag , falling into the snow , laughing hysterically .
They kept toppling over , unable to maneuver surely in their layers and moon boots .
The ground was uneven , pitted and mounded , and it was too dark to see much .
One boy said he had to pee .
Right now .
This minute .
His mother managed to extricate the necessary equipment with impressive efficiency , and for the next twenty-four hours , this moment sustained my daughter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the snow !
” she screamed , then collapsed in giggles .
Three of my daughter ’ s top highlights of the Rovaniemi trip : penis in snow , dogsled poop , sledding in parking lots .
Another tourist pointed to the sky—the Northern Lights !
The guide said no ; it was a swale of cloud .
It occurred to me , just then , that I didn ’ t really know what the Northern Lights were supposed to look like .
When they came , about two hours later , they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can ’ t capture the movement of the Northern Lights , as if the sky were breathing .
The green elastic band of light curved and stretched across the horizon , and it seemed almost possible to make out the spherical shape of the Earth .
I was struck less by the color and more by this movement , the celestial equivalent of a dancer ’ s body as she glides across a stage , leaps , lands silently , turns and begins again .
Even at their young age , the kids @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They all stopped and stared above .
On Christmas Eve , the sky turned pink—the first sun the town had seen in weeks , a guide told me .
The white clumps of snow atop every branch and needle looked iridescent .
Music piped through the whole of the little village and giant ice sculptures were everywhere .
Elves , some of elfin height , wandered around .
We went to the wood cabin where Santa Claus receives visitors , which looked a bit like Willy Wonka ’ s notion of a haunted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and turning , a two-story pendulum counting down to Christmas .
The room where we met Santa had the hallowed feel of a mass .
Rich tapestries were draped along the walls in reds , golds , and greens .
Santa sat on a platform several steps up , beneath a spotlight .
He looked tired .
He held out his gloved hand to shake ours as if we were at a cocktail party .
He mumbled something , and then my daughter mumbled something else that Santa seemed not to hear , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us .
He reached behind him and pulled out a gift , handing it to her .
“ How did you do that ?
” she exclaimed .
“ You didn ’ t have that in your hand at all !
” Santa mumbled , “ Magic.
” He was phoning it in , if I ’ m being honest .
My daughter told him we cleaned out our fireplace just for him , but again he seemed not to hear .
I leaned toward him .
“ We cleaned out our fireplace @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Later , when we were reading the gift we had bought in advance for Santa to give to my daughter ( a book about himself—narcissist ! )
, we would learn that , when Santa arrives at a Finnish house bearing gifts , instead of diving into the chimney in the dead of night , he arrives at the very reasonable dinner hour and knocks at the front door , where the whole family greets him .

I had many concerns prior to the morning I spent dogsledding in the northernmost reaches of Finland, but chief among them had not been dog excrement. The intensity of the smell was tempered only by the occasional glimpse of a canine guide lurching to nosh on a hardened nugget of his forerunners’ bodily expulsions.
“Even dogs pulling sleds need snacks!” I tell my daughter, sat in front of me in the sled. I am attempting to distract her from her own slow, cryogenic death. She is six. She makes no sound.
Whoever said, “There is no bad weather, only bad clothing,” has never been north of Winnipeg. Our family undertook this holiday trip to the Arctic Circle in Finland largely because it stood in stark opposition to anything we had ever done. We’d lived in tropical climates for six years; we fantasized about cold, about a honeymoon in Norway’s fjords or Alaska’s islands, about wearing closed-toed shoes. But when I suggested the idea of Rovaniemi, Finland, my then husband offered a meteorology report. “It’s freezing,” he said. “Really freezing.” He had dug ice caves in the military—the warning was for me, not him.
“It’s Santa’s village,” I said. “The real Santa.” It was maybe the last year we could wrangle this trip with our daughter before she realized that we had long deceived her about Christmas, and I believed we should capitalize fully on this deception.
Now here we were, on a dogsled in the Arctic, my husband steering behind us, my daughter in eight layers, including a blanket made of reindeer skin. In December, Rovaniemi has about three hours of daylight. Our guide estimated that it was negative twenty-six degrees Celsius as we drove across a frozen lake bed. “There will be tears,” he had told us on the bus. “My job is to make sure they come at the end and not the beginning.”
This was a lofty goal. The lake bed looked smooth as a mirror in photos, but the dogsled pitched and jarred against chunks of ice and snow. You had to yell to be heard over the scrape of the metal blades. The view never changed: white tundra, hazy tree line. It was impossible to get any sense of time elapsed or distance travelled. My glasses froze within minutes, so I put them in a pocket of my snowsuit. The travel agency had issued snowsuits to each of us to wear over the winter gear and coats we brought ourselves; we were also given wool socks, fur-lined leather mittens, balaclavas, scarves, and giant lined moon boots. We kept this gear throughout our time in Rovaniemi. It was easy to spot a tourist in town.
The guide warned us to remind our children to keep wiggling their fingers and toes. I imagined my daughter’s toes falling off inside her boots. “Wiggle! Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle,” I chanted at her, hoping to salvage her digits and keep her conscious—she had lapsed into a sleepy, semi-comatose state, which is the manner of cryogenic death. It is, I understand, not entirely unpleasant.
Twenty-one hours of darkness is misleading. The darkness has layers that, like the ocean, reflect its surfaces. The morning, before sunrise, can be an indigo-blue, and then, after the sun sets, around two p.m., the mostly gray sky might have a pinkish hue. Other evenings were a slate blue or a deep navy. These darknesses were beautiful and melancholy, vast and hollow, and strangely comforting.
The first evening in Rovaniemi, our guides collected us from our hotel in search of the Northern Lights, via snowmobile. My daughter was tucked into an adult snowsuit and helmet, rolled underneath wool blankets, then wedged into a sleigh alongside other children atop reindeer hides. Her eyes, beneath her ski mask, looked pleading. I asked if she wanted to return to our cabin.
“Northern Lights,” was the muffled reply. She is like me: craving adventure yet averse to physical discomfort.
Our guides told us it was negative twenty-five degrees Celsius—warming right up. The white tundra sparkled, reflecting the purples and blues of the sky. After an hour or so, we arrived at a teepee in a clearing where the sky was black. My kid’s sleigh pulled up. “Wiggle!” I shouted to her. “Don’t forget to wiggle!” She ignored me, because she had made a new friend, an Australian boy who lived in Singapore.
“Now,” said the guide, “we wait.”
A hazy swath of white flashed across the sky. A tourist said, “The Northern Lights!” We all fumbled to extract cameras from our many layers. The guide said no; it was just lights from the city center.
I couldn’t feel anything from my ankles down. What I was doing to my child and myself could only be rationalized if the Northern Lights appeared. We were on the Arctic equivalent of a whale-watching trip.
Meanwhile, the children played tag, falling into the snow, laughing hysterically. They kept toppling over, unable to maneuver surely in their layers and moon boots. The ground was uneven, pitted and mounded, and it was too dark to see much. One boy said he had to pee. Right now. This minute. His mother managed to extricate the necessary equipment with impressive efficiency, and for the next twenty-four hours, this moment sustained my daughter. “He put his penis in the snow!” she screamed, then collapsed in giggles.
Three of my daughter’s top highlights of the Rovaniemi trip: penis in snow, dogsled poop, sledding in parking lots.
Another tourist pointed to the sky—the Northern Lights! The guide said no; it was a swale of cloud. It occurred to me, just then, that I didn’t really know what the Northern Lights were supposed to look like.
When they came, about two hours later, they were as unmistakable as rain. Photographs can’t capture the movement of the Northern Lights, as if the sky were breathing. The green elastic band of light curved and stretched across the horizon, and it seemed almost possible to make out the spherical shape of the Earth. I was struck less by the color and more by this movement, the celestial equivalent of a dancer’s body as she glides across a stage, leaps, lands silently, turns and begins again.
Even at their young age, the kids knew they were seeing something special. They all stopped and stared above.
On Christmas Eve, the sky turned pink—the first sun the town had seen in weeks, a guide told me. The white clumps of snow atop every branch and needle looked iridescent. Music piped through the whole of the little village and giant ice sculptures were everywhere. Elves, some of elfin height, wandered around. We went to the wood cabin where Santa Claus receives visitors, which looked a bit like Willy Wonka’s notion of a haunted house—dim lighting, giant cartoon gears shifting and turning, a two-story pendulum counting down to Christmas.


newyorker--2020-12-23--How to Re-create the Holidays at Home This Year

What are the holidays without a bunch of pictures you take as a group after an uncle says something creepy about how you “ look so grownup now ” ?
They ’ re nothing !
So here ’ s how you can have that experience at home , alone .
By now , you probably have a ring light for Zoom dates and that one awkward high-school Zoom reunion you attended .
Take that bad boy out , turn it on , and set your phone-camera timer .
Stand as far as you possibly can from the whole setup , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if you can move your arm right when the flash goes off .
It ’ s important to have a picture to send your mom that makes her say , “ Oh , you don ’ t have any other photos of yourself ?
” It ’ s going to be tough to make the trip home this year , but that doesn ’ t mean you can ’ t get all the perks that come with being thirty-eight thousand feet in the sky !
Just like on an aircraft , pay too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by ordering it through Postmates .
Bonus tip : Ask your Postmates driver to sternly remind you to put your tray in its upright and locked position .
He ’ ll be , like , “ What ?
” And you ’ ll enjoy some of that “ I ’ m over this ” plane energy that you ’ re craving !
We also recommend getting into the holiday-travel spirit by having a passive-aggressive conversation with your dog that makes it fairly clear that you could really use a ride to the airport @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a resigned “ Yeah , I ’ ll probably have to pay surge prices , but what other options do I have ?
” Sure , you won ’ t be going to the mall when it ’ s pitch-black at 3 P.M. and breathing in that winter-coat smell at Macy ’ s while Charlie Brown ’ s saddest hits play .
So , you might miss the energy of angry suburban shoppers ready to fight you for something called a “ Spider-Vac ” at Brookstone .
And you won ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as you stare blankly into the middle distance , waiting in line half a mile from the Apple store for an iPad your dad already owns .
But fear not , friends !
You can make your own mall magic at home .
First , bust out that old down jacket you never got dry-cleaned and spray it with a combo of Febreze and that nontoxic grapefruit-scented cleaner that ’ s been collecting dust ever since you stockpiled pure bleach .
Bam—you ’ ve replicated that department-store smell !
Wan na fight ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ opinion about the Spider-Vac , then engage with someone who has their phone number in their handle !
Wan na wait in line ?
Call Spectrum and ask to speak to a human representative !
There you go .
The holiday shopping experience achieved , from the comfort and safety of your home .
It ’ s a stone-cold bummer to miss your office ’ s white-elephant gift exchange .
That shelf in your kitchen with a panini press and a candle that says “ YAS QUEEN ” ( you ’ re the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) is missing a new weird novelty item that you ’ ll never use .
Here ’ s a solution : get blackout drunk on shitty rum and store-bought eggnog ( trust us , this is Gary in H.R.
’ s “ secret recipe ” ) and play Instagram-ad roulette .
Fifteen to seventy-six business days later , you will receive that subscription box of pillow mints !
And , if you ’ re jonesing to stand awkwardly with your office crush under what could be construed as mistletoe in weird lighting , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ amusing D.M .
And then keep refreshing to check if he ’ s seen it or not .
If he sees it and doesn ’ t respond ( and you get indigestion ) , then congratulations—you ’ ve attended the office party from bed !
Who doesn ’ t love seeing gifts under the tree ?
But this year it ’ ll just be you , celebrating solo , so the tree—or whatever you have that has an “ under ” ( table , stool , pile of laundry ) —may look a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t have to !
Remember , at the beginning of the pandemic , when you panic-bought all that single-ply toilet paper and those cans of Hormel chili ?
Wrap ’ em up !
And feel free to Martha Stewart that shit .
Use some ribbon to tie a little sprig from your now browning herb garden you planted in April , thinking you ’ d be growing all your own food by 2021 !
Wake up on Christmas morning to beautifully wrapped stuff you ’ d never think to buy for yourself any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ normal way to start the day !
Never has there been a bigger silver lining to life under lockdown than now—you don ’ t need to have New Year ’ s plans !
So sit back , relax , and go to bed at midnight , Prague time .
Unless you ’ re in Prague , in which case go to bed at 6 P.M. And wake up from this hellacious year to a new year that is .
.
.
mostly the same .
But , also , different !
Because , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s coming , so you can take the lessons of the past twelve months and make them your resolution .
( Namely : don ’ t hoard single-ply toilet paper . )

Photograph from Shutterstock
Staying put this holiday season is bound to make some of you feel melancholy about the festivities you’ll miss out on—or will it? We’re here to tell you exactly how to re-create the seasonal traditions you love while you’re at home and quarantined and not wearing a bra and/or pants from sunup to sundown.
FAMILY PHOTOS
What are the holidays without a bunch of pictures you take as a group after an uncle says something creepy about how you “look so grownup now”? They’re nothing! So here’s how you can have that experience at home, alone. By now, you probably have a ring light for Zoom dates and that one awkward high-school Zoom reunion you attended. Take that bad boy out, turn it on, and set your phone-camera timer. Stand as far as you possibly can from the whole setup, and make sure to blink. See if you can move your arm right when the flash goes off. It’s important to have a picture to send your mom that makes her say, “Oh, you don’t have any other photos of yourself?”
TRAVELLING
It’s going to be tough to make the trip home this year, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get all the perks that come with being thirty-eight thousand feet in the sky! Just like on an aircraft, pay too much for a vodka and tomato juice by ordering it through Postmates. Bonus tip: Ask your Postmates driver to sternly remind you to put your tray in its upright and locked position. He’ll be, like, “What?” And you’ll enjoy some of that “I’m over this” plane energy that you’re craving! We also recommend getting into the holiday-travel spirit by having a passive-aggressive conversation with your dog that makes it fairly clear that you could really use a ride to the airport. End it with a fake laugh and a resigned “Yeah, I’ll probably have to pay surge prices, but what other options do I have?”
HOLIDAY SHOPPING
Sure, you won’t be going to the mall when it’s pitch-black at 3 P.M. and breathing in that winter-coat smell at Macy’s while Charlie Brown’s saddest hits play. So, you might miss the energy of angry suburban shoppers ready to fight you for something called a “Spider-Vac” at Brookstone. And you won’t be making eye contact with a child as you stare blankly into the middle distance, waiting in line half a mile from the Apple store for an iPad your dad already owns. But fear not, friends! You can make your own mall magic at home. First, bust out that old down jacket you never got dry-cleaned and spray it with a combo of Febreze and that nontoxic grapefruit-scented cleaner that’s been collecting dust ever since you stockpiled pure bleach. Bam—you’ve replicated that department-store smell! Wanna fight? Get on Twitter and have literally any opinion about the Spider-Vac, then engage with someone who has their phone number in their handle! Wanna wait in line? Call Spectrum and ask to speak to a human representative! There you go. The holiday shopping experience achieved, from the comfort and safety of your home.
THE OFFICE HOLIDAY PARTY
It’s a stone-cold bummer to miss your office’s white-elephant gift exchange. That shelf in your kitchen with a panini press and a candle that says “YAS QUEEN” (you’re the “funny one” in the office) is missing a new weird novelty item that you’ll never use. Here’s a solution: get blackout drunk on shitty rum and store-bought eggnog (trust us, this is Gary in H.R.’s “secret recipe”) and play Instagram-ad roulette. Fifteen to seventy-six business days later, you will receive that subscription box of pillow mints! And, if you’re jonesing to stand awkwardly with your office crush under what could be construed as mistletoe in weird lighting, instead just send your crush a moderately amusing D.M. And then keep refreshing to check if he’s seen it or not. If he sees it and doesn’t respond (and you get indigestion), then congratulations—you’ve attended the office party from bed!
CHRISTMAS GIFTS
Who doesn’t love seeing gifts under the tree? But this year it’ll just be you, celebrating solo, so the tree—or whatever you have that has an “under” (table, stool, pile of laundry)—may look a bit bare. But it doesn’t have to! Remember, at the beginning of the pandemic, when you panic-bought all that single-ply toilet paper and those cans of Hormel chili? Wrap ’em up! And feel free to Martha Stewart that shit. Use some ribbon to tie a little sprig from your now browning herb garden you planted in April, thinking you’d be growing all your own food by 2021! Wake up on Christmas morning to beautifully wrapped stuff you’d never think to buy for yourself any other year. Wow—what a cool and normal way to start the day!
NEW YEAR’S EVE/NEW YEAR’S DAY
Never has there been a bigger silver lining to life under lockdown than now—you don’t need to have New Year’s plans! So sit back, relax, and go to bed at midnight, Prague time. Unless you’re in Prague, in which case go to bed at 6 P.M. And wake up from this hellacious year to a new year that is . . . mostly the same. But, also, different! Because, this time around, you know it’s coming, so you can take the lessons of the past twelve months and make them your resolution. (Namely: don’t hoard single-ply toilet paper.)


newyorker--2020-12-23--Georgia Trump Fans Say the Last Election Was a Sham. Will They Vote in This One?

Two days after the protests , Georgia ’ s Republican senators , David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler , issued a press release .
Both politicians appeared headed to runoff elections , to be held on January 5th .
Loeffler , who was appointed to her seat by Georgia ’ s Republican governor , Brian Kemp , had finished second in a special election that had included nineteen other candidates , behind the Democrat Raphael Warnock .
Perdue , who was first elected in 2014 , got more votes than his Democratic opponent , Jon Ossoff—and slightly more than Trump—but fell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ victory by state election law .
Perdue and Loeffler now had the chance to break ranks with a lame-duck President who lost their state and to convey support for local Republican colleagues , including Kemp and Raffensperger , who had overseen the election , and would soon oversee another , in which both senators would likely take part .
Instead , they called on Raffensperger to resign .
“ Georgians are outraged , ” they declared , “ and rightly so.
” It seemed like a dubious strategy .
The two incumbents were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ participate , again , in a process that they insist did not work the last time .
I spoke with Gabriel Sterling , a Republican who helped manage the election in Georgia and who has lately pushed back against the unfounded allegations of fraud and interference .
“ If I put on my old-fashioned political-operative hat , we all know what happened , ” he told me , of Loeffler and Perdue .
“ The President went to them , and said , ‘ If you don ’ t back me to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s resignation and Biden and all this stuff , I ’ m going to send out two tweets and kill your campaign.
’ ” ( Loeffler and Perdue did not respond to multiple interview requests . )
Republicans currently hold fifty Senate seats and Democrats hold forty-eight , including two Independents who caucus with Democrats .
If Loeffler and Perdue lose , then the Vice-President-elect , Kamala Harris , will , beginning in January , break ties whenever the Senate votes along party lines .
For this reason , Sterling still plans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ though he is disappointed in them .
“ I have been a Republican since I was nine years old , ” he said .
“ And I can not , in good conscience , give all levers of power to the Democrats at this point in time.
” But he has found it difficult to persuade some acquaintances to vote at all .
“ I ’ ve had to argue with people I have known for twenty years , ” he said .
“ I had a back-and-forth on Facebook Messenger with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long time , who was like , ‘ I ’ m not going to vote , because it ’ s not going to matter.
’ ” He has a go-to argument in these situations .
“ I ’ m not admitting there is any theft , because there wasn ’ t , ” he tells people .
“ But if you believe that , hand on a Bible , and you believe it will continue to be stolen , then your best bet is to make it harder for them to steal , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we spoke , in early December , he ’ d become worried that Trump ’ s increasingly elaborate and thoroughly discredited story that the election was stolen—and the echoing of that fiction by Perdue , Loeffler , and others—was going to cost Republicans the Senate .
Perry is in Houston County , where Perdue , a onetime management consultant who later became the C.E.O .
of a series of companies , including Reebok and Dollar General , grew up .
His father was the county ’ s superintendent of schools in the years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the county ’ s largest employers is Robins Air Force Base , and many in the crowd wore items signalling a connection with , or an appreciation for , the U.S. military .
I asked John Glover , a veteran of the Second World War , what he liked about the senators .
“ She backed up Trump a hundred per cent , ” he said , of Loeffler .
“ That ’ s No .
1 , because it helps offset the other side , so to speak.
” I asked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ both Loeffler and Perdue had made suspiciously timed stock trades following private meetings about the coronavirus at the beginning of the year .
“ So much B.S.
, ” he said .
“ I ’ ve got stocks myself .
And I hire somebody to take care of them.
” ( E-mails show that Perdue may have directed trades himself ; the Department of Justice investigated both senators but declined to pursue charges . )
Glover was dubious of November ’ s results but passionate about voting again .
“ We can ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to win , because we know that Stacey Abrams is pushing very hard on her people , and there ’ s a lot of shenanigans going on , ” he said , referring to the Democrat and former gubernatorial candidate who has worked on voter turnout in Georgia for years .
Glover shared Trump ’ s frustration with Kemp .
“ I don ’ t know if they ’ ve got something on him or what , ” he said .
“ Just follow the money .
It ’ ll lead you right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cotton began by announcing that the Lord wanted the good people of Georgia to “ hold the line.
” He lambasted Warnock , the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church , in Atlanta , for an old sermon in which Warnock said , “ Nobody can serve God and the military.
” Those comments were part of a Palm Sunday riff on Matthew 6:24— “ No man can serve two masters ” —though Cotton didn ’ t mention this .
Painting Warnock as an extremist is a key component of Republican strategy .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
of a small production company that makes documentaries , have similar policy positions , in line with Biden and the mainstream of the Democratic Party .
But Ossoff , whom Cotton dismissed as a “ pawn for the Democrats , like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi , ” has been deemed “ too dull ” to caricature .
As Jelani Cobb has written , “ Ossoff is white , Warnock is Black , and this is still Georgia.
” Perdue compared the election to a good war .
“ I think God @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right now , to stand up and tell the world what America is gon na be for the next fifty to a hundred years , ” he said .
He talked about Democrats stacking the Supreme Court and granting statehood to Washington , D.C. , and Puerto Rico .
“ That ’ s four Democrat senators , ” he said .
“ We may never have another Republican majority in the Senate in my lifetime !
They want to then get rid of the Electoral College , if you can believe that !
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s not about issues anymore , ” and added , “ If we win Georgia , we save America.
” Loeffler , the wealthiest member of the Senate , began by connecting with the crowd .
She grew up on a large family farm in Illinois , “ showing cattle in 4-H , ” she pointed out .
“ I ’ m so sad there ’ s not a cattle show going on right now , ” she said .
After college , Loeffler mortgaged land that her family owned to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 2002 , she moved to Atlanta to work for the trading company Intercontinental Exchange .
Two years later , she married its founder , Jeffrey Sprecher , who , in 2013 , bought the New York Stock Exchange .
I approached him then about a possible piece in this magazine , and Loeffler , a part owner of Atlanta ’ s W.N.B.A .
team , suggested that we all attend a game together .
Afterward , we had fancy pizza and talked about Sprecher ’ s favorite artist , Jean-Michel Basquiat , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pool table in their home , a fifteen-thousand-square-foot mansion called Descante , which , at the time , was the most expensive residential property in the history of Atlanta .
( The Daily Beast recently reported that , in 2016 , the mansion ’ s appraised value dropped by sixty per cent , for no obvious reason , saving the couple around a hundred thousand dollars a year on their property taxes . )
Loeffler said she liked that the painting included a crown .
In Perry , Loeffler recited the lines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She said , “ Every Republican wants to cover preëxisting conditions , ” but also railed against “ Obamacare , ” the legislation that protects that coverage .
She repeated the plea “ hold the line ” eight times .
“ The American dream is on the ballot , ” she said .
“ Socialism is on the other side of the ballot.
” She encouraged early and absentee voting .
Neither Loeffler nor Perdue said the name Donald Trump .
The night before Thanksgiving , another lawyer , Sidney Powell—who was at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lawsuit riddled with spelling errors accusing Governor Kemp of taking a bribe from the voting company Dominion as part of a conspiracy to throw the election to Biden .
( The conspiracy somehow included the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez , who died in 2013 . )
On the following Tuesday , a prominent QAnon conspiracist uploaded videos showing a young Dominion employee transferring data to a computer , and claimed that it was evidence of fraud .
( It was not . )
Within hours , people on the message board 4chan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ identified the employee ; one user on another pro-Trump forum shared the employee ’ s name next to a GIF of a swinging noose .
That afternoon , Gabriel Sterling held a press conference at the state capitol .
A self-described “ process guy ” who doesn ’ t usually attract much attention—his job title is voting-system implementation manager—Sterling strode to the lectern and pulled off his mask .
“ I ’ m going to do my best to keep it together , ” he said .
“ Because it has all gone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ After relating what had happened to the Dominion employee , he said , “ Mr .
President , you have not condemned these actions or this language .
Senators , you have not condemned this language or these actions .
This has to stop .
We need you to step up .
If you ’ re going to take a position of leadership , show some.
” The video of Sterling ’ s comments was widely shared , and Loeffler and Perdue released statements hours later .
“ Like many officials , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ threats , of course Senator Loeffler condemns violence of any kind , ” Loeffler ’ s spokesperson , Stephen Lawson , tweeted .
“ How ridiculous to even suggest otherwise.
” A spokesperson for Perdue said , “ We won ’ t apologize for addressing the obvious issues with the way our state conducts its elections.
” He did not say what those issues were .
Later , I asked Sterling about these statements .
“ Is it that high of a bar as a senator or a President to go out yourself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ?
It seems like a pretty low bar , and having to do it through a spokesperson just struck me as weak , ” he said .
He mentioned a rambling Facebook video that Trump had posted the following day , rehearsing his usual falsehoods .
“ He gave them oxygen again , ” Sterling said .
“ I mean .
.
.
” He sighed .
“ The disinformation itself is what ’ s leading to the environment that could lead to violence.
” I spoke with a G.O.P .
strategist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be named , about the way that Loeffler and Perdue were handling this misinformation .
The strategist told me a story about two other senators from Georgia , both Democrats , who held office decades ago .
“ When Sam Nunn first got to the U.S. Senate , he told Senator Herman Talmadge that he got all sorts of crazy letters from constituents talking about seeing space aliens and such , ” the strategist recalled .
“ He asked the senior senator what to do about those .
Talmadge said , ‘ Sam @ @ @ @ @ @ @ letters .
Without the nut vote , you won ’ t carry a county in Georgia.
’ ” The Republican Party in the state is split between those who believe the election was stolen , such as Marjorie Taylor Greene , who endorsed Loeffler and whom the strategist described to me as “ fucking crazy , ” and those who regard the allegations of theft as “ absolutely bonkers , ” the strategist said .
He didn ’ t think the senators had succeeded in pleasing either side .
“ Loeffler and Perdue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attack on Raffensperger , ” he said .
“ The nuts spit it out.
” Seven hundred F.F.C .
team members had descended on Georgia , Pipkin said .
They were not telling people how to vote , he assured me .
But the candidate-comparison charts that they handed out , with such headings as “ abortion on demand ” and “ Confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett , ” made their preferences clear , even if “ Hi , I ’ m a canvasser with Faith & Freedom ” did not .
At @ @ @ @ @ @ @ approached a woman who had a Warnock-Ossoff sign in her yard .
( Her house was not on their list . )
Hearing the name of the group , the woman said , “ That could be .
.
.
for Warnock ?
” When she learned that it wasn ’ t , she tried to give Fuentez some literature of her own .
Tim Head , F.F.C.
’ s executive director , is a Texan who did missionary work in Asia and Europe before becoming a policy adviser to legislators in his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fuentez in a red S.U.V .
The organization had “ four hundred people knocking on doors every single day in Georgia already , ” he told me .
By January , he said , “ we might literally have a thousand people on the streets knocking.
” Head described Trump ’ s focus on election fraud as a “ quandary , ” but sounded a hopeful note .
“ I think that his tone and his specific message is actually in the process of slightly moderating , ” he said .
“ Instead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the process , he ’ s actually going to start engaging people again to engage in the process.
” Trump would soon make his first visit to Georgia in support of the campaigns , and Head believed he would visit once more before they were over .
“ He needs to do it , ” he said .
“ And he will .
He ’ s going to want to have Loeffler ’ s support , and her super PAC ’ s support , in two or three years.
” Head was confident @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Based on voting lists and turnout in November , he should win by three points , ” he said .
( The polls—which , in recent years , have been more accurate in Georgia than in many states—show two tight races , in keeping with November ’ s results . )
He had his doubts about Loeffler , though , and he fretted about the effect that Lin Wood and other conspiracists might have on turnout .
“ If twenty thousand Republicans in the state of Georgia sit at home and say , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the system , ’ or ‘ I ’ m tired of Kemp and Raffensperger , ’ that ’ s enough for Loeffler to lose , ” he said .
( A few days later , Debbie Dooley tweeted , “ GA voters should vote for Perdue but not vote for Kemp ’ s appointee Loeffler in protest of Kemp being a traitor.
” ) “ Lin Wood ’ s rhetoric could almost single-handedly move half a per cent , which could shift the outcome in the Loeffler race , ” he said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a few of the people they ’ d met while canvassing had brought up the claims of election fraud .
One person had said , “ I just don ’ t see the point of voting anymore , ” Fuentez told me .
“ I just say , it ’ s gon na come down to the wire—we need your vote , ” he said .

On Saturday, November 7th, the day that news networks called the Presidential election for Joe Biden, groups of Donald Trump supporters gathered in Atlanta to proclaim, without evidence, that the result was a fraud. A couple hundred people went to the Capitol, where Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has espoused the wild delusions of QAnon and who had just been elected to Congress, railed against the “radical left” and promised to fight alongside Trump to keep him in office. A smaller group assembled at the CNN Center, including Chris Hill, the leader of a far-right group called the Georgia Security Force Three Percent militia, who live-streamed the protest. Hill, who often brings a rifle and a pistol to such events—in case Antifa shows up, he told me, adding, “I’ll eat them up as appetizers and spit them out on my way to glory”—would later attend “Stop the Steal” rallies at the governor’s mansion and at the home of Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. “I think it’s crazy for me to cast a ballot knowing my vote won’t count,” Hill told me. “What counts is who’s doing the counting.” Hill compared the crusade to the plight of women who have been sexually assaulted. “If a woman says they’ve been raped, you need to give her credibility,” he said. “But if a woman says she’s witnessed election fraud, then you throw it out. It’s hypocrisy.”
Two days after the protests, Georgia’s Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, issued a press release. Both politicians appeared headed to runoff elections, to be held on January 5th. Loeffler, who was appointed to her seat by Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, had finished second in a special election that had included nineteen other candidates, behind the Democrat Raphael Warnock. Perdue, who was first elected in 2014, got more votes than his Democratic opponent, Jon Ossoff—and slightly more than Trump—but fell short of the fifty-per-cent threshold required for victory by state election law. Perdue and Loeffler now had the chance to break ranks with a lame-duck President who lost their state and to convey support for local Republican colleagues, including Kemp and Raffensperger, who had overseen the election, and would soon oversee another, in which both senators would likely take part. Instead, they called on Raffensperger to resign. “Georgians are outraged,” they declared, “and rightly so.”
It seemed like a dubious strategy. The two incumbents were, in essence, asking people to participate, again, in a process that they insist did not work the last time. I spoke with Gabriel Sterling, a Republican who helped manage the election in Georgia and who has lately pushed back against the unfounded allegations of fraud and interference. “If I put on my old-fashioned political-operative hat, we all know what happened,” he told me, of Loeffler and Perdue. “The President went to them, and said, ‘If you don’t back me to the hilt on this and call for Raffensperger’s resignation and Biden and all this stuff, I’m going to send out two tweets and kill your campaign.’ ” (Loeffler and Perdue did not respond to multiple interview requests.)
Republicans currently hold fifty Senate seats and Democrats hold forty-eight, including two Independents who caucus with Democrats. If Loeffler and Perdue lose, then the Vice-President-elect, Kamala Harris, will, beginning in January, break ties whenever the Senate votes along party lines. For this reason, Sterling still plans to vote for Loeffler and Perdue, though he is disappointed in them. “I have been a Republican since I was nine years old,” he said. “And I cannot, in good conscience, give all levers of power to the Democrats at this point in time.” But he has found it difficult to persuade some acquaintances to vote at all. “I’ve had to argue with people I have known for twenty years,” he said. “I had a back-and-forth on Facebook Messenger with a woman I’ve known for a long time, who was like, ‘I’m not going to vote, because it’s not going to matter.’ ” He has a go-to argument in these situations. “I’m not admitting there is any theft, because there wasn’t,” he tells people. “But if you believe that, hand on a Bible, and you believe it will continue to be stolen, then your best bet is to make it harder for them to steal, and show up to vote.” When we spoke, in early December, he’d become worried that Trump’s increasingly elaborate and thoroughly discredited story that the election was stolen—and the echoing of that fiction by Perdue, Loeffler, and others—was going to cost Republicans the Senate.
The week after the senators called on Raffensperger to resign, I went to the fairgrounds in Perry, two hours south of Atlanta, to hear them speak to a hundred or so mostly white and mostly elderly Georgians. They were joined by Senator Tom Cotton, of Arkansas, who is widely expected to run for President someday. A truck circled outside, bearing a message in large letters: “David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler: Blocking COVID Relief for 200+ Days.” I watched the driver, a Black man in a Yankees cap, get hassled by some of the people who’d come for the rally. “I’m just doing a job trying to feed my family,” he told me. “And these old ladies out here telling me, ‘Fuck you! Fuck you!’ ” Nearby, a man sold shirts bearing the Gadsden flag and the words “Don’t Tread On My Vote.”
Perry is in Houston County, where Perdue, a onetime management consultant who later became the C.E.O. of a series of companies, including Reebok and Dollar General, grew up. His father was the county’s superintendent of schools in the years that those schools were desegregated. One of the county’s largest employers is Robins Air Force Base, and many in the crowd wore items signalling a connection with, or an appreciation for, the U.S. military. I asked John Glover, a veteran of the Second World War, what he liked about the senators. “She backed up Trump a hundred per cent,” he said, of Loeffler. “That’s No. 1, because it helps offset the other side, so to speak.” I asked him what he thought of reports that both Loeffler and Perdue had made suspiciously timed stock trades following private meetings about the coronavirus at the beginning of the year. “So much B.S.,” he said. “I’ve got stocks myself. And I hire somebody to take care of them.” (E-mails show that Perdue may have directed trades himself; the Department of Justice investigated both senators but declined to pursue charges.) Glover was dubious of November’s results but passionate about voting again. “We can’t sit on our butts and expect to win, because we know that Stacey Abrams is pushing very hard on her people, and there’s a lot of shenanigans going on,” he said, referring to the Democrat and former gubernatorial candidate who has worked on voter turnout in Georgia for years. Glover shared Trump’s frustration with Kemp. “I don’t know if they’ve got something on him or what,” he said. “Just follow the money. It’ll lead you right to what’s going on.”
Kelly Loeffler speaks in Smyrna, Georgia, as an attendee holds a sign critical of Governor Brian Kemp and the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. Photograph by John Bazemore / AP / Shutterstock
Cotton began by announcing that the Lord wanted the good people of Georgia to “hold the line.” He lambasted Warnock, the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, in Atlanta, for an old sermon in which Warnock said, “Nobody can serve God and the military.” Those comments were part of a Palm Sunday riff on Matthew 6:24—“No man can serve two masters”—though Cotton didn’t mention this. Painting Warnock as an extremist is a key component of Republican strategy. Warnock and Ossoff, the thirty-three-year-old C.E.O. of a small production company that makes documentaries, have similar policy positions, in line with Biden and the mainstream of the Democratic Party. But Ossoff, whom Cotton dismissed as a “pawn for the Democrats, like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi,” has been deemed “too dull” to caricature. As Jelani Cobb has written, “Ossoff is white, Warnock is Black, and this is still Georgia.”
Perdue compared the election to a good war. “I think God has put us in this position, right now, to stand up and tell the world what America is gonna be for the next fifty to a hundred years,” he said. He talked about Democrats stacking the Supreme Court and granting statehood to Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. “That’s four Democrat senators,” he said. “We may never have another Republican majority in the Senate in my lifetime! They want to then get rid of the Electoral College, if you can believe that!” He told those gathered, “It’s not about issues anymore,” and added, “If we win Georgia, we save America.”
Loeffler, the wealthiest member of the Senate, began by connecting with the crowd. She grew up on a large family farm in Illinois, “showing cattle in 4-H,” she pointed out. “I’m so sad there’s not a cattle show going on right now,” she said. After college, Loeffler mortgaged land that her family owned to pay for business school, and, in 2002, she moved to Atlanta to work for the trading company Intercontinental Exchange. Two years later, she married its founder, Jeffrey Sprecher, who, in 2013, bought the New York Stock Exchange. I approached him then about a possible piece in this magazine, and Loeffler, a part owner of Atlanta’s W.N.B.A. team, suggested that we all attend a game together. Afterward, we had fancy pizza and talked about Sprecher’s favorite artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose triptych “Catharsis” hung above the pool table in their home, a fifteen-thousand-square-foot mansion called Descante, which, at the time, was the most expensive residential property in the history of Atlanta. (The Daily Beast recently reported that, in 2016, the mansion’s appraised value dropped by sixty per cent, for no obvious reason, saving the couple around a hundred thousand dollars a year on their property taxes.) Loeffler said she liked that the painting included a crown.
In Perry, Loeffler recited the lines of attack against Warnock and Ossoff. She said, “Every Republican wants to cover preëxisting conditions,” but also railed against “Obamacare,” the legislation that protects that coverage. She repeated the plea “hold the line” eight times. “The American dream is on the ballot,” she said. “Socialism is on the other side of the ballot.” She encouraged early and absentee voting. Neither Loeffler nor Perdue said the name Donald Trump.
The plan, it appeared, was to recapitulate Trump’s claims about election fraud on social media and to campaign on saving America from socialism. But the ongoing saga of those baseless claims kept overshadowing that pitch. The day after the rally in Perry, a federal judge named Steven D. Grimberg dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Atlanta attorney Lin Wood alleging harm done to him as a voter, one of many preposterous lawsuits filed by the “Stop the Steal” crowd. “The fact that Wood’s preferred candidates did not prevail in the General Election—for whom he may have voted or to whom he may have contributed financially—does not create a legally cognizable harm, much less an irreparable one,” Grimberg wrote. Wood, who first received national attention for defending Richard Jewell, and has lately represented Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kyle Rittenhouse, told his more than eight hundred thousand Twitter followers that Georgians who believe that Trump won should refuse to vote for Loeffler and Perdue unless the senators do more to help the President. The next day, Debbie Dooley, the head of the Atlanta Tea Party, made a similar case. “If you have to choose between the Republican Party or @realDonaldTrump,” she asked her twelve thousand followers, “who would you choose?” Most who replied picked Trump. “Republican élitist establishment folks, like Karl Rove, are vastly underestimating the anger that is out there,” Dooley told me. “Many Trump supporters are angry enough they will sit out the runoff.”
The night before Thanksgiving, another lawyer, Sidney Powell—who was at the White House this past weekend—filed a lawsuit riddled with spelling errors accusing Governor Kemp of taking a bribe from the voting company Dominion as part of a conspiracy to throw the election to Biden. (The conspiracy somehow included the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013.) On the following Tuesday, a prominent QAnon conspiracist uploaded videos showing a young Dominion employee transferring data to a computer, and claimed that it was evidence of fraud. (It was not.) Within hours, people on the message board 4chan, where QAnon was born, had identified the employee; one user on another pro-Trump forum shared the employee’s name next to a GIF of a swinging noose. That afternoon, Gabriel Sterling held a press conference at the state capitol. A self-described “process guy” who doesn’t usually attract much attention—his job title is voting-system implementation manager—Sterling strode to the lectern and pulled off his mask. “I’m going to do my best to keep it together,” he said. “Because it has all gone too far. All of it.” After relating what had happened to the Dominion employee, he said, “Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language. Senators, you have not condemned this language or these actions. This has to stop. We need you to step up. If you’re going to take a position of leadership, show some.”
Gabriel Sterling, the voting-systems implementation manager for the Secretary of State’s Office, has pushed back against unfounded allegations of fraud and interference. Photograph by Megan Varner / Getty
The video of Sterling’s comments was widely shared, and Loeffler and Perdue released statements hours later. “Like many officials, as someone who has been the subject of threats, of course Senator Loeffler condemns violence of any kind,” Loeffler’s spokesperson, Stephen Lawson, tweeted. “How ridiculous to even suggest otherwise.” A spokesperson for Perdue said, “We won’t apologize for addressing the obvious issues with the way our state conducts its elections.” He did not say what those issues were.
Later, I asked Sterling about these statements. “Is it that high of a bar as a senator or a President to go out yourself and say, ‘We condemn violence’? It seems like a pretty low bar, and having to do it through a spokesperson just struck me as weak,” he said. He mentioned a rambling Facebook video that Trump had posted the following day, rehearsing his usual falsehoods. “He gave them oxygen again,” Sterling said. “I mean . . .” He sighed. “The disinformation itself is what’s leading to the environment that could lead to violence.”
I spoke with a G.O.P. strategist in Georgia, who asked not to be named, about the way that Loeffler and Perdue were handling this misinformation. The strategist told me a story about two other senators from Georgia, both Democrats, who held office decades ago. “When Sam Nunn first got to the U.S. Senate, he told Senator Herman Talmadge that he got all sorts of crazy letters from constituents talking about seeing space aliens and such,” the strategist recalled. “He asked the senior senator what to do about those. Talmadge said, ‘Sam, you answer every one of those letters. Without the nut vote, you won’t carry a county in Georgia.’ ” The Republican Party in the state is split between those who believe the election was stolen, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, who endorsed Loeffler and whom the strategist described to me as “fucking crazy,” and those who regard the allegations of theft as “absolutely bonkers,” the strategist said. He didn’t think the senators had succeeded in pleasing either side. “Loeffler and Perdue tried to feed the nuts with their attack on Raffensperger,” he said. “The nuts spit it out.”
On December 4th, I drove to Roswell, a town in the north Atlanta suburbs, to shadow canvassers with the Faith & Freedom Coalition, a conservative group founded a decade ago by the Christian lobbyist Ralph Reed. It was raining, and the canvassers, Adam Pipkin and Matthew Fuentez, tucked door hangers in the pockets of their coats as they trudged up steep driveways. We were in an area that leans only slightly Republican; Ossoff-Warnock yard signs outnumbered Loeffler-Perdue signs, although Trump signs outnumbered them all. Pipkin, a genial man in his late thirties and F.F.C.’s state director, drove his F-150 between groupings of target homes. He and Fuentez, a thirty-one-year-old who lost his job earlier this year and was door-knocking part-time, used an app that listed addresses worth approaching. Not all of them belonged to Republicans. “You may have a Dem on here that’s pro-life,” Pipkin said. “That’s why it’s telling us to go there.” He added, “I think we’re hitting more independents than anybody else.”
Seven hundred F.F.C. team members had descended on Georgia, Pipkin said. They were not telling people how to vote, he assured me. But the candidate-comparison charts that they handed out, with such headings as “abortion on demand” and “Confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett,” made their preferences clear, even if “Hi, I’m a canvasser with Faith & Freedom” did not. At one point, Pipkin and Fuentez optimistically approached a woman who had a Warnock-Ossoff sign in her yard. (Her house was not on their list.) Hearing the name of the group, the woman said, “That could be . . . for Warnock?” When she learned that it wasn’t, she tried to give Fuentez some literature of her own.
Tim Head, F.F.C.’s executive director, is a Texan who did missionary work in Asia and Europe before becoming a policy adviser to legislators in his home state. He trailed Pipkin and Fuentez in a red S.U.V. The organization had “four hundred people knocking on doors every single day in Georgia already,” he told me. By January, he said, “we might literally have a thousand people on the streets knocking.” Head described Trump’s focus on election fraud as a “quandary,” but sounded a hopeful note. “I think that his tone and his specific message is actually in the process of slightly moderating,” he said. “Instead of calling into question the veracity of the process, he’s actually going to start engaging people again to engage in the process.” Trump would soon make his first visit to Georgia in support of the campaigns, and Head believed he would visit once more before they were over. “He needs to do it,” he said. “And he will. He’s going to want to have Loeffler’s support, and her super PAC’s support, in two or three years.”
Tim Head, the executive director of the conservative Faith & Freedom Coalition. Photograph by Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New Yorker
Head was confident that Perdue would beat Ossoff. “Based on voting lists and turnout in November, he should win by three points,” he said. (The polls—which, in recent years, have been more accurate in Georgia than in many states—show two tight races, in keeping with November’s results.) He had his doubts about Loeffler, though, and he fretted about the effect that Lin Wood and other conspiracists might have on turnout. “If twenty thousand Republicans in the state of Georgia sit at home and say, ‘I don’t believe in the system,’ or ‘I’m tired of Kemp and Raffensperger,’ that’s enough for Loeffler to lose,” he said. (A few days later, Debbie Dooley tweeted, “GA voters should vote for Perdue but not vote for Kemp’s appointee Loeffler in protest of Kemp being a traitor.”) “Lin Wood’s rhetoric could almost single-handedly move half a per cent, which could shift the outcome in the Loeffler race,” he said.


newyorker--2020-12-23--Kim Kardashian and the Year of Unchecked Privilege-Checking

We have already , I think , exhausted the subject of Kim Kardashian West ’ s birthday bash earlier this year .
But allow me a brief recap : “ 40 and feeling so humbled and blessed , ” she wrote on October 27th , six days after her special day , captioning a series of Instagram photos showing the Kardashians and company bronzed and professionally lit at an indistinct , beachy location that one might have assumed was Malibu .
It was not Malibu .
“ After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time , ” the message continued .
“ I realize that for most people , this is something that is so far out of reach right now , so in moments like these , I am humbly reminded of how privileged my life is.
” What was so risible wasn ’ t Kardashian West ’ s defensive posture ; many of us have , in the past year , sprinkled similar apologia into tales @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Six feet apart !
” “ All wearing masks !
” ) I ’ ve come to think of these as a kind of verbal tic of the pandemic , an oral asterisk assuring others of our consideration and responsibility—very unlike those heedless people over there .
But the “ privilege ” so dutifully acknowledged in Kardashian West ’ s statement stared dumbly , blinking , at the phrase “ right now , ” spinning a phantasmagoric version of the world in which the pandemic was the main obstacle preventing the rest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ circles to a private island .
Nor did it seem to occur to the universe of Kardashian West ’ s sentence that , in the eternal words of her own sister Kourtney , spoken years ago at another island getaway , “ Kim , there ’ s people that are dying.
” Kardashian West ’ s was a sentence that so badly wanted points for trying but maybe also didn ’ t give a fuck ; her name-check of privilege was a feeble Cheeto against the battering ram of wealth , gaudily flaunted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Scott Disick , Kourtney ’ s ex , clutched their son Mason in the foreground of a dinner-party scene while , in the shadowed background , a masked waiter prepared to serve .
It is inevitable that phrases diagnosing social conditions in situ will mutate over time .
“ Performative ” has just about lost the executorial function that the British philosopher J. L. Austin established , no matter how many valiant e-mails the professor Judith Butler may write .
“ Intersectionality , ” a term created by the law professor Kimberlé @ @ @ @ @ @ @ legal negligence that leaves Black women invisible to grievance , is now more typically applied to those who lie at the crossway of two or more discrete identities .
“ Privilege , ” though—which was not created by , so much as attributed to , the scholar and educator Peggy McIntosh—hasn ’ t dramatically changed .
The advantages of maleness and whiteness captured by McIntosh ’ s image of the “ invisible knapsack ” have been joined , in our current usage , by other politically significant traits : cis-ness , thinness , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has retained its capacity to affix an affirmative charge to dynamics that would otherwise be discussed strictly in terms of discrimination and oppression .
Privilege gives everyone something to talk about : the downtrodden can articulate society ’ s injustices without salting their own wounds , while those on the cushier side of things can sidestep an inhospitable language of struggle and instead gaze inward .
But the urge to make one ’ s self-awareness known seemed driven to excess by the events of this year .
Over the summer , as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ The riots saved social life by proving that it was possible , with masks and moving air , to spend time together outdoors without getting sick.
” Yet the more that radical possibilities unfurled across the country , the more predictable racial discourse became .
In the face of cities on fire , invocations of “ privilege ” proliferated , joined by its helpmates “ fragility ” and “ antiracism , ” a fountain of means-well liberalism .
Such words were a civic foil to the wan corporate statements paying lip @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proffered as measures of repair against the catastrophe of silence .
The confessions poured out on social media and in op-ed pages and interviews : the anthropologist who ’ d been arrested for using an allegedly counterfeit bill , in the nineties—privilege , he now knew , had saved his life .
The baseball player who realized how privilege had emptied his empathy for his Black colleagues ; the Dallas man who was taking the opportunity to “ teach his young sons uncomfortable lessons about the privileges their family enjoys because they ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ privilege ” challenge had its day on TikTok , its creator , Kenya Bundy , beckoning participants to hold up their hands and “ put a finger down if you ’ ve been followed in a store unnecessarily , ” and so forth .
These broadcast testimonies swirled among more private expressions that also wanted to be heard , as acquaintances and estranged friends , family members and hookups , came out of the woodwork , confessing a privilege that they hoped to be comforted for .
One began to realize that for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saying , over and over , for whomever would receive it , “ I am .
.
.
, ” “ I am .
.
.
, ” “ I have .
.
.
, ” “ I have .
.
.
” Take , for instance , Jameela Jamil , the British actress and TV host .
In late September , on Instagram , someone complimented her skin , and she took the comment as an opening for this three-part reply : She was not wrong , exactly , but how grating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ detected a secret gloating there : someone whose needs we might already assume were being met and exceeded , what with her being a celebrity , going on and on about how her basic needs were being met and exceeded .
A different kind of sleight of hand was performed earlier this month , when Olivia Jade Giannulli , the daughter of the Operation Varsity Blues delinquents Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli , confabbed with Jada Pinkett Smith and the other women of the online interview show “ Red Table Talk.
” Giannulli @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gold hoops and fuchsia silk , pronounced herself “ the poster child of white privilege , ” but it was Pinkett Smith who helped frame Giannulli ’ s privilege as a predicament .
Pinkett Smith said that she was reminded of her own daughter , Willow , who was also born into the kind of wealth that can preclude sympathy from the masses .
“ People go , ‘ Your kids are going to be fine because they ’ re rich .
We don ’ t care , ’ ” Pinkett Smith said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Copping to a better life without insight is its own mark of entitlement , of course .
A more pedestrian example , only recently called to my attention , was published all the way back in June , in O , The Oprah Magazine .
Written by the magazine ’ s deputy editor , Deborah Way , the essay , “ What the Black Lives Matter Movement Has Taught Me About My Whiteness ” ( another response to murdered Black people , etc.
, etc . )
, is notable only for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not have been implicated in a national admissions-fraud scandal or commandeered an island , but she nonetheless felt compelled to unburden the sins of her privilege , in public and at length .
In breathless detail , she wrote about the time she flagged down a Black police officer to ask if she was in the process of committing a crime ( stealing signs she considered an eyesore ) , and the time she got up close with trees on strangers ’ lawns ( for gardening inspiration ) .
These “ liberties , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attributes to—of course—the privilege of whiteness .
“ I trespassed , I stole , I expected no consequences , ” Way writes , sounding a hairbreadth from smug .
The liberty she took in writing a two-thousand-or-so-word , unself-conscious reënactment of these realizations doesn ’ t seem to have crossed her mind .
“ I ’ m deciding that from now on when I take one , I ’ m also going to take three additional actions , ” she writes .
But even in this promise she can not imagine a reduced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taken—a naughty tax for privilege enjoyed , then lamented .
A cycle repeated ad infinitum .
It did not occur to many people in 2020 that unbosoming can be worse than silence .
• The funniest New Yorker cartoons , as chosen by our Instagram followers .
• Helen Rosner on the best cookbooks .
• Ian Crouch recounts the best jokes of the year .
• Sheldon Pearce on the albums that helped him navigate a lost plague year .
• New Yorker writers on the best books they read this year @

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We have already, I think, exhausted the subject of Kim Kardashian West’s birthday bash earlier this year. But allow me a brief recap: “40 and feeling so humbled and blessed,” she wrote on October 27th, six days after her special day, captioning a series of Instagram photos showing the Kardashians and company bronzed and professionally lit at an indistinct, beachy location that one might have assumed was Malibu. It was not Malibu. “After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time,” the message continued. “I realize that for most people, this is something that is so far out of reach right now, so in moments like these, I am humbly reminded of how privileged my life is.”
What was so risible wasn’t Kardashian West’s defensive posture; many of us have, in the past year, sprinkled similar apologia into tales of our own COVID-19-era outings. (“Six feet apart!” “All wearing masks!”) I’ve come to think of these as a kind of verbal tic of the pandemic, an oral asterisk assuring others of our consideration and responsibility—very unlike those heedless people over there. But the “privilege” so dutifully acknowledged in Kardashian West’s statement stared dumbly, blinking, at the phrase “right now,” spinning a phantasmagoric version of the world in which the pandemic was the main obstacle preventing the rest of us from jetting our own inner circles to a private island. Nor did it seem to occur to the universe of Kardashian West’s sentence that, in the eternal words of her own sister Kourtney, spoken years ago at another island getaway, “Kim, there’s people that are dying.” Kardashian West’s was a sentence that so badly wanted points for trying but maybe also didn’t give a fuck; her name-check of privilege was a feeble Cheeto against the battering ram of wealth, gaudily flaunted. In one photo from the festivities, Scott Disick, Kourtney’s ex, clutched their son Mason in the foreground of a dinner-party scene while, in the shadowed background, a masked waiter prepared to serve.
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It is inevitable that phrases diagnosing social conditions in situ will mutate over time. “Performative” has just about lost the executorial function that the British philosopher J. L. Austin established, no matter how many valiant e-mails the professor Judith Butler may write. “Intersectionality,” a term created by the law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw to address a special sort of legal negligence that leaves Black women invisible to grievance, is now more typically applied to those who lie at the crossway of two or more discrete identities. “Privilege,” though—which was not created by, so much as attributed to, the scholar and educator Peggy McIntosh—hasn’t dramatically changed. The advantages of maleness and whiteness captured by McIntosh’s image of the “invisible knapsack” have been joined, in our current usage, by other politically significant traits: cis-ness, thinness, an absence of disability. But privilege has retained its capacity to affix an affirmative charge to dynamics that would otherwise be discussed strictly in terms of discrimination and oppression. Privilege gives everyone something to talk about: the downtrodden can articulate society’s injustices without salting their own wounds, while those on the cushier side of things can sidestep an inhospitable language of struggle and instead gaze inward.
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But the urge to make one’s self-awareness known seemed driven to excess by the events of this year. Over the summer, as the artist and writer Hannah Black recently wrote, “The riots saved social life by proving that it was possible, with masks and moving air, to spend time together outdoors without getting sick.” Yet the more that radical possibilities unfurled across the country, the more predictable racial discourse became. In the face of cities on fire, invocations of “privilege” proliferated, joined by its helpmates “fragility” and “antiracism,” a fountain of means-well liberalism. Such words were a civic foil to the wan corporate statements paying lip service to “systemic racism,” proffered as measures of repair against the catastrophe of silence. The confessions poured out on social media and in op-ed pages and interviews: the anthropologist who’d been arrested for using an allegedly counterfeit bill, in the nineties—privilege, he now knew, had saved his life. The baseball player who realized how privilege had emptied his empathy for his Black colleagues; the Dallas man who was taking the opportunity to “teach his young sons uncomfortable lessons about the privileges their family enjoys because they’re white.” A “check your privilege” challenge had its day on TikTok, its creator, Kenya Bundy, beckoning participants to hold up their hands and “put a finger down if you’ve been followed in a store unnecessarily,” and so forth. These broadcast testimonies swirled among more private expressions that also wanted to be heard, as acquaintances and estranged friends, family members and hookups, came out of the woodwork, confessing a privilege that they hoped to be comforted for. One began to realize that for some people there must be ecstasy in saying, over and over, for whoever would receive it, “I am . . . ,” “I am . . . ,” “I have . . . ,” “I have . . .”
Take, for instance, Jameela Jamil, the British actress and TV host. In late September, on Instagram, someone complimented her skin, and she took the comment as an opening for this three-part reply:


newyorker--2020-12-22--Review: “Sylvie’s Love” Revives the Art of the Classic Hollywood Romance

There are two jazz-centered movies opening this week , though one of them , the Pixar film “ Soul , ” can be passed over quickly because it approaches the subject merely , um , instrumentally .
It ’ s the story of a middle-school music teacher , Joe ( voiced by Jamie Foxx ) , who has long aspired to a career as a jazz pianist .
His passion becomes a mere pretext for the movie ’ s metaphysical twist .
( He dies , and his soul goes to a huge processing plant in the sky , run @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the blanked-out spirits new traits . )
Music , in “ Soul , ” becomes a mere plot device .
By contrast , “ Sylvie ’ s Love , ” which streams on Amazon Prime starting December 23rd , written and directed by Eugene Ashe , is among the rare movies to treat jazz seriously and to consider with dramatic care the quandaries and conflicts of the musical life .
The film ’ s styles , tones , and moods are as distinctive as its approach to jazz .
( If I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it would have had a place on my list of the year ’ s best films . )
At the same time , “ Sylvie ’ s Love ” —which is only Ashe ’ s second dramatic feature—is unusually perceptive in dramatizing its own place in the history of cinema .
The film is a period piece , ranging from 1957 to 1963 , and it ’ s one of the few such films that does more than merely depict history ; it embraces and adapts the relevant history of cinema itself—Hollywood @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s set .
Moreover , it embodies the filmmaker ’ s own view of that history as an essential part of the story .
In this sense , the film is a living counterfactual history of Hollywood , of the kinds of movies that Hollywood should and could have been making at the time , a movie by a Black filmmaker about the lives of Black people facing the same conflicts of family , romance , and work as white people—along with the inescapable problems that arise from the obstacles of racism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is centered on the romance between two Harlem residents , Sylvie Johnson ( Tessa Thompson ) and Robert Halloway ( Nnamdi Asomugha ) , and the very setup of the film is built on the thrum of longing , the resonant tensions of separation and reunion .
The movie starts in 1962 , when Robert , after emerging from a recording studio after a day ’ s work , and Sylvie , all dressed up and waiting alone , reconnect by chance at the door of New York ’ s Town Hall , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to give a concert .
The story then leaps back to 1957 and the tale of their meeting as well as the relationship that develops .
Sylvie , a native New Yorker , is the daughter of Eunice ( Erica Gimpel ) , the locally celebrated founder of a school of etiquette , and Herbert ( Lance Reddick ) , a former saxophonist and the owner of a record store , where Sylvie works , obsessively watching TV and dreaming of a career as a producer of television shows .
Sylvie is sitting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and watching “ I Love Lucy ” on TV ) when Robert , a tenor saxophonist from Detroit , now living in Harlem and in need of a day job , comes in to buy a record ( Thelonious Monk ’ s “ Brilliant Corners ” ) and to respond to the “ Help Wanted ” sign in the window .
What follows is a roller-coaster romantic melodrama—a love story that carries its protagonists through a slowly building relationship , an abrupt separation ( or two or more ) , and dramatic reunions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of their complicated working lives and the secrets and silences that they maintain in the face of difficulties .
Robert is part of a working band , the Dickie Brewster Quartet , that has a long-term gig at the Blue Morocco night club ; though a sideman , Robert is considered the group ’ s leading musical light .
Sylvie is engaged to a promising young businessman , Lacy ( Alano Miller ) , who is away in Korea , on a tour of duty .
When the band ’ s new manager @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Genevieve ( Jemima Kirke ) , gets them a lucrative extended gig in Paris , Robert invites Sylvie to join him on the trip , but—pressured by her family and planning a career of her own—she decides to stay home .
Five years later , in 1962 , Sylvie is married to Lacy and has both a young child and a job , as a switchboard operator at a TV station , which she soon parlays into a promotion—to the position of assistant to a producer ( Ryan Michelle Bathe ) who is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ producers at the time .
That ’ s when Robert , back in town to record , passes by Town Hall the night of the Nancy Wilson concert , and—unsurprisingly—the old flame is quickly rekindled .
From the very beginning of the movie , its confected artifices , in the manner of Hollywood studio movies of the period , are as prominent as the stars : when Sylvie is waiting outside Town Hall , her pleated teal dress and white gloves and clutch are as photographically arresting as her searching gaze , just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its ornate metal fixtures , is as active as Robert ’ s confident stride from the studio to the street .
The styles of clothing and design ( the production design is by Mayne Berke ; the costume design , by Phoenix Mellow ) aren ’ t merely derived from the era ; they signify it—the design sensibility is pointed , drawing the eye to evocative forms and colors .
The movie ’ s palette emphasizes secondary colors , especially greens and oranges , and piquantly tweaked primary ones , that stand out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ particularly heated situations , are placed one atop the other to intensify dramatic conflicts .
Impressively , despite the film ’ s deep period moods , its iconic objects aren ’ t of the nostalgic kind ; appliances and accoutrements may be era-appropriate , but they don ’ t stand out from the movie ’ s texture ( as they would , to resonant effect , in a film by Wes Anderson , or to trivial effect in the “ John Wick ” series ) .
Ashe takes a canny approach to his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ amplifies it through his poised and deft images ( the cinematography is by Declan Quinn ) , which tend to be at just the right distance and with the right depth of field , to draw the eye not to the comprehensive lines of sets or spaces but to the eccentric detail .
These images are emphasized by a terse and witty dramaturgy that condenses the action into emblematic moments in a way that ’ s similarly classically rooted in a bygone Hollywood manner .
( This method is one that F. Scott @ @ @ @ @ @ @ toward the end of his life , illustrates in a remarkable scene in “ The Love of the Last Tycoon.
” ) Robert , upon entering the record store where Sylvie works , grabs the “ Help Wanted ” sign from the window and slips it behind the jacket of the record he ’ s buying ; Genevieve plucks a bill out of the cash advance that she ’ s just handed Dickie , to signify that she ’ s now his manager ; Robert reaches as if to caress Sylvie but instead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ order to pick a locked door .
The pressure and taut control of these gestures arises , above all , from Ashe ’ s supreme directorial concept , which is centered on the actors ’ performances—especially those of the two stars .
With their graceful , virtually choreographic poise , Thompson and Asomugha revive the lofty art of dynamic stillness , which is exemplary of classic cinema , certainly through the mid-sixties , but which very few period movies capture .
( Paul Thomas Anderson ’ s “ The Master ” is another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has a social and fundamentally political significance : the sculptural bearing of people reflected their awareness of being seen , the rigid norms that they ’ d internalized , the sense of wary constraint and stringent judgment ( whether abstractly moral or religious ) that held people still until they took the existential leap into action .
Such outbursts of action in “ Sylvie ’ s Love ” occur when Sylvie and Robert seal their incipient romance with a kiss , and when Robert bounds athletically up two steps at a time and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , comes rushing back to him .
As important is Ashe ’ s penchant for keeping the camera still , using proscenium-like framings ( and brief punctuations of closeups ) to match the actors in creating drama with incisive economy of movement .
If I ’ m emphasizing the tones and moods , the textures and gestures , of “ Sylvie ’ s Love , ” it ’ s in part because the drama is somewhat less satisfying ; it ’ s a victim of another sort of artistic tautness .
The movie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , at that length , it ’ s too short .
What ’ s missing from “ Sylvie ’ s Love ” is digression , as in sidebar scenes where history reinforces the drama and amplifies the characters ’ sense of themselves and their place in the world .
For instance , there isn ’ t enough about Robert ’ s place in the jazz business—it ’ s dramatized all too briefly and abstractly , with an emphasis on his struggle to establish himself in the age of rock and roll .
( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , lead to a great line from a record producer , played by John Magaro , who dismisses Robert with a memorably flip aphorism that could be an outtake from the Coen brothers ’ “ Inside Llewyn Davis.
” ) John Coltrane ’ s name comes up often—even as early as 1957 , when he was only beginning to win acclaim .
Yet the movie ’ s six-year span encompasses vast changes in jazz and , for that matter , in Coltrane ’ s own place in the art ; unfortunately , Robert @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much with other musicians or confronting those changes on his own .
Sylvie ’ s best friend , Mona ( Aja Naomi King ) , becomes an organizer with the Congress of Racial Equality , in rural Georgia , but this detail is dropped in only briefly , to explain her absence from the Town Hall concert .
Above all , Sylvie ’ s work at the TV station gives rise to the most entertaining—and the most curiosity-rooted , virtually documentary—scenes in the movie , suggesting a “ My Favorite Year ” -like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sylvie ’ s Love.
” The movie pursues its dramatic paths in straight lines ; it doesn ’ t turn left or right or pause to unfold its protagonists ’ contextualizing thoughts and exploratory activities .
Similarly , Ashe ’ s direction—which so attentively reconstructs the psychological essence of the classic system—doesn ’ t do what many of the greatest directors of the classic Hollywood era , the greatest melodramatists ( such as Douglas Sirk , Vincente Minnelli , and Otto Preminger ) , did : he doesn ’ t wrench the system @ @ @ @ @ @ @ movie lacks literal and figurative mirror scenes , moments in which the abysses of self-reflection open the characters to themselves and bring to light their unvoiced doubts about their very identities .
Still , the film is brought to life with such imaginative power that this absence almost doesn ’ t matter .
“ Sylvie ’ s Love ” is among the boldest and most persuasive displays of the preëminence—and the essential substance—of style that the recent cinema has to offer .
• The funniest New Yorker cartoons , as chosen by our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the best cookbooks .
• Ian Crouch recounts the best jokes of the year .
• Sheldon Pearce on the albums that helped him navigate a lost plague year .
• New Yorker writers on the best books they read this year .

There are two jazz-centered movies opening this week, though one of them, the Pixar film “Soul,” can be passed over quickly because it approaches the subject merely, um, instrumentally. It’s the story of a middle-school music teacher, Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx), who has long aspired to a career as a jazz pianist. His passion becomes a mere pretext for the movie’s metaphysical twist. (He dies, and his soul goes to a huge processing plant in the sky, run like a mega-bureaucratic corporation, that assigns the blanked-out spirits new traits.) Music, in “Soul,” becomes a mere plot device. By contrast, “Sylvie’s Love,” which streams on Amazon Prime starting December 23rd, written and directed by Eugene Ashe, is among the rare movies to treat jazz seriously and to consider with dramatic care the quandaries and conflicts of the musical life. The film’s styles, tones, and moods are as distinctive as its approach to jazz. (If I’d been able to see it earlier, it would have had a place on my list of the year’s best films.)
At the same time, “Sylvie’s Love”—which is only Ashe’s second dramatic feature—is unusually perceptive in dramatizing its own place in the history of cinema. The film is a period piece, ranging from 1957 to 1963, and it’s one of the few such films that does more than merely depict history; it embraces and adapts the relevant history of cinema itself—Hollywood movies from the era in which it’s set. Moreover, it embodies the filmmaker’s own view of that history as an essential part of the story. In this sense, the film is a living counterfactual history of Hollywood, of the kinds of movies that Hollywood should and could have been making at the time, a movie by a Black filmmaker about the lives of Black people facing the same conflicts of family, romance, and work as white people—along with the inescapable problems that arise from the obstacles of racism by law and convention.
2020 in Review New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.
The story is centered on the romance between two Harlem residents, Sylvie Johnson (Tessa Thompson) and Robert Halloway (Nnamdi Asomugha), and the very setup of the film is built on the thrum of longing, the resonant tensions of separation and reunion. The movie starts in 1962, when Robert, after emerging from a recording studio after a day’s work, and Sylvie, all dressed up and waiting alone, reconnect by chance at the door of New York’s Town Hall, where the singer Nancy Wilson is about to give a concert. The story then leaps back to 1957 and the tale of their meeting as well as the relationship that develops. Sylvie, a native New Yorker, is the daughter of Eunice (Erica Gimpel), the locally celebrated founder of a school of etiquette, and Herbert (Lance Reddick), a former saxophonist and the owner of a record store, where Sylvie works, obsessively watching TV and dreaming of a career as a producer of television shows.
Sylvie is sitting behind the counter of the store (and watching “I Love Lucy” on TV) when Robert, a tenor saxophonist from Detroit, now living in Harlem and in need of a day job, comes in to buy a record (Thelonious Monk’s “Brilliant Corners”) and to respond to the “Help Wanted” sign in the window. What follows is a roller-coaster romantic melodrama—a love story that carries its protagonists through a slowly building relationship, an abrupt separation (or two or more), and dramatic reunions, all developed through the intricate background of their complicated working lives and the secrets and silences that they maintain in the face of difficulties. Robert is part of a working band, the Dickie Brewster Quartet, that has a long-term gig at the Blue Morocco night club; though a sideman, Robert is considered the group’s leading musical light. Sylvie is engaged to a promising young businessman, Lacy (Alano Miller), who is away in Korea, on a tour of duty. When the band’s new manager, a glamorously rich white countess named Genevieve (Jemima Kirke), gets them a lucrative extended gig in Paris, Robert invites Sylvie to join him on the trip, but—pressured by her family and planning a career of her own—she decides to stay home. Five years later, in 1962, Sylvie is married to Lacy and has both a young child and a job, as a switchboard operator at a TV station, which she soon parlays into a promotion—to the position of assistant to a producer (Ryan Michelle Bathe) who is one of the very few Black female producers at the time. That’s when Robert, back in town to record, passes by Town Hall the night of the Nancy Wilson concert, and—unsurprisingly—the old flame is quickly rekindled.
From the very beginning of the movie, its confected artifices, in the manner of Hollywood studio movies of the period, are as prominent as the stars: when Sylvie is waiting outside Town Hall, her pleated teal dress and white gloves and clutch are as photographically arresting as her searching gaze, just as the narrow marble lobby, with its ornate metal fixtures, is as active as Robert’s confident stride from the studio to the street. The styles of clothing and design (the production design is by Mayne Berke; the costume design, by Phoenix Mellow) aren’t merely derived from the era; they signify it—the design sensibility is pointed, drawing the eye to evocative forms and colors. The movie’s palette emphasizes secondary colors, especially greens and oranges, and piquantly tweaked primary ones, that stand out from more neutral backgrounds and, in particularly heated situations, are placed one atop the other to intensify dramatic conflicts. Impressively, despite the film’s deep period moods, its iconic objects aren’t of the nostalgic kind; appliances and accoutrements may be era-appropriate, but they don’t stand out from the movie’s texture (as they would, to resonant effect, in a film by Wes Anderson, or to trivial effect in the “John Wick” series).
Ashe takes a canny approach to his film’s neoclassical style: he amplifies it through his poised and deft images (the cinematography is by Declan Quinn), which tend to be at just the right distance and with the right depth of field, to draw the eye not to the comprehensive lines of sets or spaces but to the eccentric detail. These images are emphasized by a terse and witty dramaturgy that condenses the action into emblematic moments in a way that’s similarly classically rooted in a bygone Hollywood manner. (This method is one that F. Scott Fitzgerald, who worked unhappily in Hollywood toward the end of his life, illustrates in a remarkable scene in “The Love of the Last Tycoon.”) Robert, upon entering the record store where Sylvie works, grabs the “Help Wanted” sign from the window and slips it behind the jacket of the record he’s buying; Genevieve plucks a bill out of the cash advance that she’s just handed Dickie, to signify that she’s now his manager; Robert reaches as if to caress Sylvie but instead takes a hairpin from her coiffure in order to pick a locked door.
The pressure and taut control of these gestures arises, above all, from Ashe’s supreme directorial concept, which is centered on the actors’ performances—especially those of the two stars. With their graceful, virtually choreographic poise, Thompson and Asomugha revive the lofty art of dynamic stillness, which is exemplary of classic cinema, certainly through the mid-sixties, but which very few period movies capture. (Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” is another exception.) This quality of immobility has a social and fundamentally political significance: the sculptural bearing of people reflected their awareness of being seen, the rigid norms that they’d internalized, the sense of wary constraint and stringent judgment (whether abstractly moral or religious) that held people still until they took the existential leap into action. Such outbursts of action in “Sylvie’s Love” occur when Sylvie and Robert seal their incipient romance with a kiss, and when Robert bounds athletically up two steps at a time and Sylvie, heading inside from the stoop, comes rushing back to him. As important is Ashe’s penchant for keeping the camera still, using proscenium-like framings (and brief punctuations of closeups) to match the actors in creating drama with incisive economy of movement.
If I’m emphasizing the tones and moods, the textures and gestures, of “Sylvie’s Love,” it’s in part because the drama is somewhat less satisfying; it’s a victim of another sort of artistic tautness. The movie runs just under two hours, and, at that length, it’s too short. What’s missing from “Sylvie’s Love” is digression, as in sidebar scenes where history reinforces the drama and amplifies the characters’ sense of themselves and their place in the world. For instance, there isn’t enough about Robert’s place in the jazz business—it’s dramatized all too briefly and abstractly, with an emphasis on his struggle to establish himself in the age of rock and roll. (Robert’s difficulty does, however, lead to a great line from a record producer, played by John Magaro, who dismisses Robert with a memorably flip aphorism that could be an outtake from the Coen brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis.”) John Coltrane’s name comes up often—even as early as 1957, when he was only beginning to win acclaim. Yet the movie’s six-year span encompasses vast changes in jazz and, for that matter, in Coltrane’s own place in the art; unfortunately, Robert isn’t seen talking music very much with other musicians or confronting those changes on his own. Sylvie’s best friend, Mona (Aja Naomi King), becomes an organizer with the Congress of Racial Equality, in rural Georgia, but this detail is dropped in only briefly, to explain her absence from the Town Hall concert. Above all, Sylvie’s work at the TV station gives rise to the most entertaining—and the most curiosity-rooted, virtually documentary—scenes in the movie, suggesting a “My Favorite Year”-like film lurking, undeveloped, in “Sylvie’s Love.”