thenation--2020-09-11--Freakish, Horrifying, and Sometimes Wondrous Alternative Histories

Haunted mansions are seldom built with the ghosts pre-furnished ; yet there they were , the specters of Jim Crow America , already in residence when a spanking new spook house titled Lovecraft Country recently rose on a tract of HBO .
In keeping with a style of production that has flourished in the streaming era , with its high-end dramatic series and multi-episode movies , Lovecraft Country is designed and shot to make an earlier period look dewy-fresh .
Not contemporary , mind you .
You don ’ t see the 1950s of Lovecraft Country as you would if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the accretions of age built up to different thicknesses in objects wherever you turn .
Here , anything vintage seems to have been manufactured to appear old from the start , for installation side by side with the up-to-date .
It ’ s the same sort of not-past you see in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel , where the re-creation of Manhattan in the early ’ 60s shimmers everywhere with a lighting and palette reminiscent of Hollywood comedies of the era .
To call the purpose nostalgic would be a mistake .
The effect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scenes shot on location , in a tacit revelation of the truth of creating movies and high-end series .
Everything is assembled at once , into a present made to be seen by the camera .
Just so , the intense hues painted onto 1950s America in Lovecraft Country seem scarcely to have had time to dry , no matter whether you ’ re in an El-rattled apartment on Chicago ’ s South Side or at a diner on the main street of Klansville , Ind .
The extraordinary Jonathan Majors ( a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to market ) has dressed for this adventure in a T-shirt so white that it gleams , just like the moisture glistening in each of the thousand eyes embedded in a blob that at one point pursues Majors with malign intent .
You ’ re familiar , of course , with sickeningly deformed nocturnal monsters—the characters in Lovecraft Country are familiar with them as well , from reading pulp fiction and watching horror movies—just as you and the characters are both long acquainted with other tropes in this extended film : an enigmatic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ journey into territory that proves to be unknowable .
But just as the crew keeps the production looking uniformly , artificially present-tense , no matter at which date the action plays out , so too do the writers , producers , and directors succeed in making something novel out of a mishmash of scary thoughts from any number of eras .
If the protagonists of Lovecraft Country can be described as Black people who have taken up residence in a just-completed , many-roomed haunted house , then the Jim Crow ghosts who came @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tags , which can be removed only under penalty of law ( or worse ) .
Based on a novel in interlocking episodes by Matt Ruff , created by showrunner Misha Green , and executive produced by Green and others including Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams , Lovecraft Country has the expansive storytelling , varied settings , and showy camerawork that people commonly call cinematic .
Rigorously restrained filmmaking can be cinematic too , of course , as fans of Straub-Huillet recognize , but that ’ s a conversation for another time .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a dream that ’ s half Paths of Glory and half War of the Worlds and is wonderfully faithful to both , then takes Atticus Freeman ( Majors ) by bus across M. Night Shyamalan territory ( a sunlit yet chilling Corn Belt ) to Freeman ’ s native South Side , conceived here as a nonstop festival of Black vitality .
A rollicking block party is in progress ; kids dance in the spray of fire hydrants .
But disquiet lurks beneath the revelry .
Atticus ’ s father has disappeared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suggests he might have gone to an obscure Massachusetts town with a name that recalls the writings of H.P .
Lovecraft .
( Atticus has always lapped up Lovecraft ’ s tales , accepting the author ’ s bigotry as the price of the thrills . )
Resolving to find his father , Atticus takes to the road in a wood-paneled station wagon with his uncle George ( Courtney B. Vance ) , an author of guidebooks for the “ Negro traveler , ” and a lively but down-on-her-luck young woman called Leti @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to harbor secret troubles of her own .
Then comes Klansville .
Then comes the slug with the thousand eyes .
I am giving away very little of the plot when I tell you the slug and other terrifying things come almost as a relief .
They break into the picture just when the trio has fallen into the hands of racist backwoods white cops .
The nightmare creatures provide the opportunity for a hairbreadth escape ; but , in another sense , they also provide reassurance .
George and Leti , no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the “ weird tales ” branch of popular culture .
When a cop shows signs of metamorphosis after receiving a creature ’ s bite , George knows to tell the man ’ s uncomprehending partner , with authority and low-voiced self-control , “ You… you… you need to shoot him.
” And why can George hold it together so well ?
I suppose it ’ s not just because he knows his vampire lore .
In the worldview of Lovecraft Country , Black Americans are accustomed to coping with a freakish , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bloodthirsty monsters pouring out of the Massachusetts night ?
Yeah , that too .
With that in mind , I momentarily interrupt these thoughts about Lovecraft Country to reintroduce another movie about Black people taking the uncanny in stride : Attack the Block , the first feature of writer-director Joe Cornish .
This rousing blend of sci-fi and social critique has somehow managed to stay in the margin of consciousness of hardy moviegoers , despite a commercially disastrous release nine years ago .
Not that Attack the Block cursed everyone associated with it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when he played the male lead , went on to become a hero in the Star Wars movies , and Jodie Whittaker , the female lead , has since made history as the first woman into whom the Doctor has regenerated on Doctor Who .
On that basis alone , Attack the Block is a monument of fantasy cinema .
That said , a cumulative worldwide box office gross of $ 6.2 million , earned against an estimated production budget of $ 13 million , has left the film in a neglect from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ especially in a moment that has given us Lovecraft Country .
Set in a public housing project in South London , with the action happening amid the bonfires , mischief , and fireworks of Guy Fawkes Night , Attack the Block starts from the sort of one-line premise beloved of movie producers and the writers who pitch them .
What if fearsome extraterrestrial invaders did not land in the boondocks—their usual point of entry for our planet—but instead came down on city streets roamed by low-income , mostly Black teenagers ?
It would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see when Moses ( Boyega ) , the alpha among a crew of five muggers , encounters the first of the aliens and promptly beats it to death .
So far , so sharp and funny .
I would not be fond of Attack the Block , though , if it didn ’ t advance far beyond the jokey limits of this story conference concept .
Instead of insulting and dismissing an entire scuffling inner-city class , as it might have done , the movie gradually forges an alliance between these individuated kids @ @ @ @ @ @ @ young white project resident they ’ d robbed .
More than that : The movie brings the aptly named Moses to an acceptance of his responsibilities that is heroic , in the most invigoratingly cartoonish way .
Directed with a pleasingly large repertoire of crane flights , on-the-run tracking shots , and shock cuts , designed and photographed so you see the age of things in their surfaces , and acted with a consistent drollery that extends to the aliens themselves ( whose apelike locomotion was created by the celebrated creature-feature choreographer Terry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the most of its budget ( which at $ 13 million was actually on the modest side ) while creating a near-exemplary study in pace , humor , and spurts of gore .
But the most important distinction of this frolic is thematic .
“ They ’ re fucking monsters , aren ’ t they ?
” a white neighbor asks Sam , speaking about the young men who had mugged her , and by extension every other Black kid on the block .
Without hesitation , Sam agrees .
( As do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but never around when you need help with a marauding alien . )
After passing judgment , Sam spends the rest of the movie facing real monsters , meanwhile discovering the courage , strength , and loyalty of Moses .
This is the level on which Attack the Block itself might be attacked .
You could argue that its presumed viewers are white , like Sam—because surely Moses and his friends don ’ t need 88 minutes of fantasy derring-do to learn they ’ re human .
Then again , Black people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , of living with the white world ’ s image of them , and so I ’ ve found that some Black viewers enjoy the vindication of Attack the Block .
As James Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time , “ The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you.
” It is no frivolous satisfaction to feel a portion of that destructive belief lifted away , as one symbolic white person , at least , comes to say something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its Black characters know damned well who the monsters are .
They also know that your evaluation of America—whether you see it as a shining city on a hill or a vast , threatening terrain that might have been populated by H.P .
Lovecraft— “ depends on what your sense of reality is.
” ( So says an actor in an anachronistic voiceover , imitating Baldwin in his fabled Cambridge Union debate against William F. Buckley Jr. ) Maybe that ’ s the justification for the production ’ s look of an eternal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to give you anything beyond a highly malleable “ sense of reality ” —one in which Black people contend against the products of diseased imaginations that have also pictured them as uncanny and nonhuman .
The worst of it is , Atticus grew up loving those exciting , racist-born tales .
In Attack the Block , an unpretentious , brusquely made film full of humor , Moses breaks the constraints of what white people think of him .
( The clinching moment , in the final shot : John Boyega smiles for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more ambitious and elaborately wrought Lovecraft Country , Atticus Freeman has ( in a certain way ) accepted the invitation to live in a white man ’ s nightmare—and very few chuckles are to be had .
Michael Almereyda has given only one of his films the title Experimenter—his 2015 not-quite-biopic about the social psychologist Stanley Milgram—but the name fits them all , along with the writer-director himself .
He has made , among much else , a study of early ’ 90s sexual mores shot with a toy camera , a languorous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ business-world Hamlet ( with Ethan Hawke in the lead and Bill Murray as Polonius ) , and a deeply felt and beautifully acted adaptation of Marjorie Prime , a melancholic sci-fi play by Jordan Harrison .
Laurence Sterne famously wrote that if his reader were able to guess what was to come on the next page of Tristram Shandy , “ I would tear it out of my book.
” I sometimes wonder if Almereyda would burn the rushes of his next scene if he guessed what they ’ d show .
Restlessly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a shot , Almereyda now turns his attention to yet another experimenter in Tesla , which resembles a fictionalized biography of the great inventor as a hippogriff looks like your housecat .
Anne Morgan ( Eve Hewson ) , a daughter of one of Nikola Tesla ’ s investors , J.P. Morgan , narrates Tesla ’ s story while scrolling on a laptop computer .
( She died in 1952 . )
Occasionally , she stops the film to admit that an incident didn ’ t happen as just enacted—for example , Tesla @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while poking each other with soft-serve ice cream cones—and then calls for a do-over .
Anne recalls having flirted with the awkward and withdrawn Tesla while roller-skating with him in a marbled foyer to a tune provided by a violinist who was also on skates , but I can find no more evidence for this episode than for the ice cream .
Ethan Hawke plays Tesla with a slight accent ( a sibilant “ s , ” a lightly trilled “ r ” ) and a soup-strainer mustache , his hair parted in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brow .
Sometimes Almereyda poses him in front of projections of key sites in Tesla ’ s career ( the high plains of Colorado , Niagara Falls ) , and sometimes he puts him inside roughly carpentered replicas of the inventor ’ s experimental stations .
In this succession of odd circumstances , Hawke gives an inward-looking performance that emphasizes the alliance in Tesla of spiritual delicacy with globe-spanning ambition—an uneasy combination , which led to what might be called , at a minimum , eccentricity and isolation .
Whether an element of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ characterization is open to speculation .
Tesla is based on Almereyda ’ s earliest screenplay , completed in 1982 .
Perhaps the author feels that , in some ways , he ’ s grown into it .
I ’ m certain he ’ s had time to ponder the question Anne Morgan poses about Tesla : whether idealism can ever work hand-in-hand with capitalism .
Tesla is now available for streaming on the wireless services made possible by Nikola Tesla ’ s experiments .
Viewers who want to see more of Almereyda ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Museum of the Moving Image , which is presenting a small survey through September 20 .

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Haunted mansions are seldom built with the ghosts pre-furnished; yet there they were, the specters of Jim Crow America, already in residence when a spanking new spook house titled Lovecraft Country recently rose on a tract of HBO.
In keeping with a style of production that has flourished in the streaming era, with its high-end dramatic series and multi-episode movies, Lovecraft Country is designed and shot to make an earlier period look dewy-fresh. Not contemporary, mind you. You don’t see the 1950s of Lovecraft Country as you would if you were living in them, with the accretions of age built up to different thicknesses in objects wherever you turn. Here, anything vintage seems to have been manufactured to appear old from the start, for installation side by side with the up-to-date. It’s the same sort of not-past you see in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, where the re-creation of Manhattan in the early ’60s shimmers everywhere with a lighting and palette reminiscent of Hollywood comedies of the era. To call the purpose nostalgic would be a mistake. The effect, rather, is to de-authenticate even scenes shot on location, in a tacit revelation of the truth of creating movies and high-end series. Everything is assembled at once, into a present made to be seen by the camera.
Just so, the intense hues painted onto 1950s America in Lovecraft Country seem scarcely to have had time to dry, no matter whether you’re in an El-rattled apartment on Chicago’s South Side or at a diner on the main street of Klansville, Ind. The extraordinary Jonathan Majors (a lead actor who is himself still fresh to market) has dressed for this adventure in a T-shirt so white that it gleams, just like the moisture glistening in each of the thousand eyes embedded in a blob that at one point pursues Majors with malign intent. You’re familiar, of course, with sickeningly deformed nocturnal monsters—the characters in Lovecraft Country are familiar with them as well, from reading pulp fiction and watching horror movies—just as you and the characters are both long acquainted with other tropes in this extended film: an enigmatic letter, an ominous map, a journey into territory that proves to be unknowable. But just as the crew keeps the production looking uniformly, artificially present-tense, no matter at which date the action plays out, so too do the writers, producers, and directors succeed in making something novel out of a mishmash of scary thoughts from any number of eras. If the protagonists of Lovecraft Country can be described as Black people who have taken up residence in a just-completed, many-roomed haunted house, then the Jim Crow ghosts who came with the place still trail little white tags, which can be removed only under penalty of law (or worse). Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Based on a novel in interlocking episodes by Matt Ruff, created by showrunner Misha Green, and executive produced by Green and others including Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams, Lovecraft Country has the expansive storytelling, varied settings, and showy camerawork that people commonly call cinematic. Rigorously restrained filmmaking can be cinematic too, of course, as fans of Straub-Huillet recognize, but that’s a conversation for another time. The point is, Lovecraft Country begins in a dream that’s half Paths of Glory and half War of the Worlds and is wonderfully faithful to both, then takes Atticus Freeman (Majors) by bus across M. Night Shyamalan territory (a sunlit yet chilling Corn Belt) to Freeman’s native South Side, conceived here as a nonstop festival of Black vitality. A rollicking block party is in progress; kids dance in the spray of fire hydrants. But disquiet lurks beneath the revelry. Atticus’s father has disappeared in strange circumstances. A disturbing letter suggests he might have gone to an obscure Massachusetts town with a name that recalls the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. (Atticus has always lapped up Lovecraft’s tales, accepting the author’s bigotry as the price of the thrills.) Resolving to find his father, Atticus takes to the road in a wood-paneled station wagon with his uncle George (Courtney B. Vance), an author of guidebooks for the “Negro traveler,” and a lively but down-on-her-luck young woman called Leti (Jurnee Smollett), who seems to harbor secret troubles of her own. Then comes Klansville. Then comes the slug with the thousand eyes.
I am giving away very little of the plot when I tell you the slug and other terrifying things come almost as a relief. They break into the picture just when the trio has fallen into the hands of racist backwoods white cops. The nightmare creatures provide the opportunity for a hairbreadth escape; but, in another sense, they also provide reassurance. George and Leti, no less than Atticus, are deeply versed in the “weird tales” branch of popular culture. When a cop shows signs of metamorphosis after receiving a creature’s bite, George knows to tell the man’s uncomprehending partner, with authority and low-voiced self-control, “You… you… you need to shoot him.” And why can George hold it together so well? I suppose it’s not just because he knows his vampire lore. In the worldview of Lovecraft Country, Black Americans are accustomed to coping with a freakish, horrifying reality every day. Shrieking, bloodthirsty monsters pouring out of the Massachusetts night? Yeah, that too.
With that in mind, I momentarily interrupt these thoughts about Lovecraft Country to reintroduce another movie about Black people taking the uncanny in stride: Attack the Block, the first feature of writer-director Joe Cornish.
This rousing blend of sci-fi and social critique has somehow managed to stay in the margin of consciousness of hardy moviegoers, despite a commercially disastrous release nine years ago. Not that Attack the Block cursed everyone associated with it. John Boyega, all of 19 when he played the male lead, went on to become a hero in the Star Wars movies, and Jodie Whittaker, the female lead, has since made history as the first woman into whom the Doctor has regenerated on Doctor Who. On that basis alone, Attack the Block is a monument of fantasy cinema. That said, a cumulative worldwide box office gross of $6.2 million, earned against an estimated production budget of $13 million, has left the film in a neglect from which it ought to be rescued, especially in a moment that has given us Lovecraft Country. Current Issue View our current issue
Set in a public housing project in South London, with the action happening amid the bonfires, mischief, and fireworks of Guy Fawkes Night, Attack the Block starts from the sort of one-line premise beloved of movie producers and the writers who pitch them. What if fearsome extraterrestrial invaders did not land in the boondocks—their usual point of entry for our planet—but instead came down on city streets roamed by low-income, mostly Black teenagers? It would be bad news for the aliens—as you see when Moses (Boyega), the alpha among a crew of five muggers, encounters the first of the aliens and promptly beats it to death. So far, so sharp and funny. I would not be fond of Attack the Block, though, if it didn’t advance far beyond the jokey limits of this story conference concept. Instead of insulting and dismissing an entire scuffling inner-city class, as it might have done, the movie gradually forges an alliance between these individuated kids and Sam (Whittaker), the young white project resident they’d robbed. More than that: The movie brings the aptly named Moses to an acceptance of his responsibilities that is heroic, in the most invigoratingly cartoonish way.
Directed with a pleasingly large repertoire of crane flights, on-the-run tracking shots, and shock cuts, designed and photographed so you see the age of things in their surfaces, and acted with a consistent drollery that extends to the aliens themselves (whose apelike locomotion was created by the celebrated creature-feature choreographer Terry Notary), Attack the Block makes the most of its budget (which at $13 million was actually on the modest side) while creating a near-exemplary study in pace, humor, and spurts of gore. But the most important distinction of this frolic is thematic. “They’re fucking monsters, aren’t they?” a white neighbor asks Sam, speaking about the young men who had mugged her, and by extension every other Black kid on the block. Without hesitation, Sam agrees. (As do the police—always there to hassle Black teenagers, but never around when you need help with a marauding alien.) After passing judgment, Sam spends the rest of the movie facing real monsters, meanwhile discovering the courage, strength, and loyalty of Moses.
This is the level on which Attack the Block itself might be attacked. You could argue that its presumed viewers are white, like Sam—because surely Moses and his friends don’t need 88 minutes of fantasy derring-do to learn they’re human. Then again, Black people know the burdens, external and internal, of living with the white world’s image of them, and so I’ve found that some Black viewers enjoy the vindication of Attack the Block. As James Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time, “The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you.” It is no frivolous satisfaction to feel a portion of that destructive belief lifted away, as one symbolic white person, at least, comes to say something different.
As for Lovecraft Country, its Black characters know damned well who the monsters are. They also know that your evaluation of America—whether you see it as a shining city on a hill or a vast, threatening terrain that might have been populated by H.P. Lovecraft—“depends on what your sense of reality is.” (So says an actor in an anachronistic voiceover, imitating Baldwin in his fabled Cambridge Union debate against William F. Buckley Jr.) Maybe that’s the justification for the production’s look of an eternal present. Lovecraft Country does not pretend to give you anything beyond a highly malleable “sense of reality”—one in which Black people contend against the products of diseased imaginations that have also pictured them as uncanny and nonhuman. The worst of it is, Atticus grew up loving those exciting, racist-born tales.
In Attack the Block, an unpretentious, brusquely made film full of humor, Moses breaks the constraints of what white people think of him. (The clinching moment, in the final shot: John Boyega smiles for the first time.) In the far more ambitious and elaborately wrought Lovecraft Country, Atticus Freeman has (in a certain way) accepted the invitation to live in a white man’s nightmare—and very few chuckles are to be had.
Michael Almereyda has given only one of his films the title Experimenter—his 2015 not-quite-biopic about the social psychologist Stanley Milgram—but the name fits them all, along with the writer-director himself. He has made, among much else, a study of early ’90s sexual mores shot with a toy camera, a languorous yet screwball vampire picture, a Manhattan business-world Hamlet (with Ethan Hawke in the lead and Bill Murray as Polonius), and a deeply felt and beautifully acted adaptation of Marjorie Prime, a melancholic sci-fi play by Jordan Harrison. Laurence Sterne famously wrote that if his reader were able to guess what was to come on the next page of Tristram Shandy, “I would tear it out of my book.” I sometimes wonder if Almereyda would burn the rushes of his next scene if he guessed what they’d show.
Restlessly inventive and willing to give almost anything a shot, Almereyda now turns his attention to yet another experimenter in Tesla, which resembles a fictionalized biography of the great inventor as a hippogriff looks like your housecat. Anne Morgan (Eve Hewson), a daughter of one of Nikola Tesla’s investors, J.P. Morgan, narrates Tesla’s story while scrolling on a laptop computer. (She died in 1952.) Occasionally, she stops the film to admit that an incident didn’t happen as just enacted—for example, Tesla and Thomas Edison never quarreled over money while poking each other with soft-serve ice cream cones—and then calls for a do-over. Anne recalls having flirted with the awkward and withdrawn Tesla while roller-skating with him in a marbled foyer to a tune provided by a violinist who was also on skates, but I can find no more evidence for this episode than for the ice cream.
Ethan Hawke plays Tesla with a slight accent (a sibilant “s,” a lightly trilled “r”) and a soup-strainer mustache, his hair parted in the middle and perpetual worry furrowing his brow. Sometimes Almereyda poses him in front of projections of key sites in Tesla’s career (the high plains of Colorado, Niagara Falls), and sometimes he puts him inside roughly carpentered replicas of the inventor’s experimental stations. In this succession of odd circumstances, Hawke gives an inward-looking performance that emphasizes the alliance in Tesla of spiritual delicacy with globe-spanning ambition—an uneasy combination, which led to what might be called, at a minimum, eccentricity and isolation. Whether an element of Almereyda’s self-portraiture enters into this characterization is open to speculation. Tesla is based on Almereyda’s earliest screenplay, completed in 1982. Perhaps the author feels that, in some ways, he’s grown into it. I’m certain he’s had time to ponder the question Anne Morgan poses about Tesla: whether idealism can ever work hand-in-hand with capitalism.
Tesla is now available for streaming on the wireless services made possible by Nikola Tesla’s experiments. Viewers who want to see more of Almereyda’s work may visit the virtual cinema of Museum of the Moving Image, which is presenting a small survey through September 20.


thenation--2020-09-11--Tom Seaver’s Major League Protest

Tom Seaver’s Major League Protest

Tom Seaver , one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history , died last week at 75 .
While his pitching exploits put him in the Baseball Hall of Fame—he won 311 victories , had 3,640 strike-outs , won three Cy Young Awards as best pitcher in the National League , and ended his 20-year career with an astounding earned-run average of 2.86—it is what he did and said off the baseball diamond that resonates now more than ever .
Seaver joined the New York Mets in 1967 .
That year the team placed 10th out of the 10 teams @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year , they finished ninth .
But in 1969 , Seaver not only led the “ Miracle Mets ” to a World Series victory ; he also joined the ranks of the anti-war movement—a stance overlooked by many of the media obituaries .
He did so at a time of growing opposition to the Vietnam War but within a baseball culture that was the most conservative and traditional of the nation ’ s major sports .
By 1969 , Seaver had already been voted the National League ’ s Rookie of the Year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
By most measures , Seaver was an all-American boy .
His father was a business executive and his mother a homemaker .
He had joined the US Marine Corps Reserves after high school .
After six months of active duty , he enrolled at Fresno City College , then transferred to the University of Southern California , one of the country ’ s most conservative campuses .
He posted a 10-2 record his sophomore year , before signing a contract with the Mets .
He remained a part-time member of his Reserve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ affinity for the counterculture in his hair , dress , rhetoric , or personal style .
But he often visited wounded Vietnam veterans in hospitals and was upset by their suffering for a war that he viewed as immoral .
Because of his military service , Seaver had credibility about the war that other players did not , but his public stance against it triggered controversy .
Seaver was scheduled to pitch the first game of the World Series against the Orioles in Baltimore on October 11 .
That morning , The New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Seaver expressed his opposition to the Vietnam War .
“ I think it ’ s perfectly ridiculous what we ’ re doing about the Vietnam situation , ” he told the Times .
Seaver said that if the Mets won the World Series , he would buy an ad in the Times saying , “ If the Mets can win the World Series , then we can get out of Vietnam.
” Seaver added , “ I feel very strongly about this.
” Seaver lost the first game of the series but was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Shea Stadium in New York .
That day , October 15 , hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in cities around the county under the auspices of the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam .
By then , despite President Richard Nixon ’ s promise to find an “ honorable ” peace , discontent with his policies had moved far beyond the campuses and into the mainstream .
In the Mets clubhouse before the fourth game , his teammate Tug McGraw showed Seaver a pamphlet being distributed outside the ballpark by anti-war @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fans for Peace.
” Headlined “ Tom Seaver Says U.S. Should Leave Vietnam , ” the pamphlet reprinted part of that morning ’ s New York Times article .
Seaver claimed that he hadn ’ t been asked for permission to use his name in the pamphlet .
But prior to the World Series , the anti-war Vietnam Moratorium Day committee had asked him to sign an ad opposing the war .
Seaver agreed , explaining that “ the war was not helping the American image abroad , was splitting the country apart @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much to our national security.
” The political atmosphere inside the ballpark was another story .
New York City Mayor John Lindsay , an opponent of the war , had decreed October 15 a day of mourning and ordered all city flags to be flown at half-mast , including those at Shea Stadium , which the City owned .
That idea didn ’ t go over well with the honor guard of 225 wounded veterans , who were supposed to participate in the game ’ s opening ceremonies .
They told City officials @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resist any effort to place the flag at half-mast .
Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn intervened and ordered that the flag be flown at full staff .
When the public address announcer identified Seaver as the starting pitcher , the fan response was less enthusiastic than usual .
Some fans even booed the team ’ s best pitcher , who had been 24-7 during the regular season .
According to sportswriter Ray Robinson , there were “ too many [ pro-war ] hawks fluttering around in their expensive seats at Shea.
” Seaver beat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the next day the Mets clinched the series in five games .
After the game , Seaver reminded reporters that “ I am against the war and want us to get out as soon as possible without endangering lives.
” Two months later , on December 31 , 1969 , he and his wife Nancy placed an anti-war ad in The New York Times , as he promised the protesters he would do : “ On the eve of 1970 , please join us in a prayer for peace , ” it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ counter to the prevailing ethos of baseball and to the common belief that professional athletes should just play and keep their political opinions to themselves .
Of course , not all pro athletes fell into line .
And starting with Jackie Robinson , Black athletes were more outspoken on social and political issues than their white counterparts .
In the turbulent 1960s , track stars John Carlos and Tommy Smith at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City , Muhammad Ali in boxing , Jim Brown in football , Arthur Ashe in tennis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ basketball , and Roberto Clemente in baseball used their celebrity as platforms to express their opposition to racism and US militarism .
White athletes were generally more reluctant to express dissenting views , although there were exceptions like Bill Walton , Jim Bouton , and Ted Simmons .
The Trump era has triggered an upsurge of activism and outrage among pro athletes—white as well as Black .
Best known is quarterback Colin Kaepernick , whose decision to kneel during the national anthem triggered attacks by Trump and his own blacklisting by NFL teams @ @ @ @ @ @ @ school to college to professional sports to emulate his actions .
But there ’ s been a lot more .
Washington National pitcher Sean Doolittle , LA Lakers star LeBron James , soccer great Megan Rapinoe , and many other athletes have opposed Trump ’ s exclusion of immigrants and asylum seekers , his racist comments after the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville , and his harsh statements against athletes kneeling during the national anthem .
James has raised millions of dollars to ensure voting rights heading to the November election .
Players on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ teams , as well as the World Cup–winning women ’ s soccer team , have refused invitations to celebrate their victories with Trump at the White House .
Pro athletes have also responded to the murder of George Floyd and the police shooting in Kenosha , Wis. of Jacob Blake .
The Milwaukee Bucks basketball team refused to play an NBA playoff game last week to protest the Blake shooting .
Players George Hill and Sterling Brown , both African American , drafted a statement explaining the team ’ s refusal to play @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at a high level .
Give maximum effort and hold each other accountable .
We hold ourselves to that standard , and in this moment we are demanding the same from lawmakers and law enforcement , ” Brown said .
Other NBA teams followed the Bucks ’ actions .
Player defiance on several Major League Soccer and WNBA teams forced the cancellation of games .
Naomi Osaka , a top tennis star , announced that she wouldn ’ t play in Thursday ’ s semifinals of the Western & Southern Open .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I am a Black woman , ” she tweeted .
NFL players discussed going on a wildcat strike during the season openers , scheduled for September 10 .
Faced with this player uprising over racial injustice , the NFL appeared to give its legal blessing for players to break their union contracts and refuse to play those games .
Instead , the players will be kneeling during the national anthem—with the consent of team owners .
A few coaches , including the Texans ’ Bill O ’ Brien , will join them .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Floyd , Breonna Taylor , and Jacob Blake—recent victims of police shootings—on their helmets .
And some teams may print anti-racism messages , like “ Black Lives Matter , ” in the end zones .
In baseball , the Milwaukee Brewers—led by white outfielders Christian Yelich and Ryan Braun—refused to take the field in solidarity with the Kenosha protesters .
Other MLB teams followed suit .
Baseball ’ s Stadium Workers Are Getting Peanuts From the Billionaire Owners In New York , Seaver ’ s former team , the Mets , and Miami @ @ @ @ @ @ @ left after a planned 42-second moment of silence honoring Jackie Robinson ’ s retired uniform number .
After the players left the field , all that remained was a Black Lives Matter shirt covering home plate .
Mookie Betts , the Dodgers ’ only African American player , told his teammates that he was going to sit out a game with the San Francisco Giants in protest .
Betts was joined in solidarity by the other 27 players on the team .
Hall of Famer Lou Brock , one of baseball ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Louis Cardinals win three pennants and two World Series titles in the 1960s , also died recently at age 81 .
No batter faced Seaver more than Brock , and no pitcher faced Brock more than Seaver during their overlapping major league careers .
The two faced off 157 times .
Seaver struck out Brock 21 times and walked him four times .
Tom Seaver was a dominant pitcher with a political conscience , a Marine veteran , and a proud and patriotic American .
His actions in 1969 opened a space for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and wealth to take a stand for social justice .

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Tom Seaver, one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history, died last week at 75. While his pitching exploits put him in the Baseball Hall of Fame—he won 311 victories, had 3,640 strike-outs, won three Cy Young Awards as best pitcher in the National League, and ended his 20-year career with an astounding earned-run average of 2.86—it is what he did and said off the baseball diamond that resonates now more than ever.
Seaver joined the New York Mets in 1967. That year the team placed 10th out of the 10 teams in the National League. The next year, they finished ninth. But in 1969, Seaver not only led the “Miracle Mets” to a World Series victory; he also joined the ranks of the anti-war movement—a stance overlooked by many of the media obituaries. He did so at a time of growing opposition to the Vietnam War but within a baseball culture that was the most conservative and traditional of the nation’s major sports. By 1969, Seaver had already been voted the National League’s Rookie of the Year and been an All-Star all three seasons.
By most measures, Seaver was an all-American boy. His father was a business executive and his mother a homemaker. He had joined the US Marine Corps Reserves after high school. After six months of active duty, he enrolled at Fresno City College, then transferred to the University of Southern California, one of the country’s most conservative campuses. He posted a 10-2 record his sophomore year, before signing a contract with the Mets. He remained a part-time member of his Reserve unit until 1970. He displayed no affinity for the counterculture in his hair, dress, rhetoric, or personal style. But he often visited wounded Vietnam veterans in hospitals and was upset by their suffering for a war that he viewed as immoral.
Because of his military service, Seaver had credibility about the war that other players did not, but his public stance against it triggered controversy.
Seaver was scheduled to pitch the first game of the World Series against the Orioles in Baltimore on October 11. That morning, The New York Times ran a story in which Seaver expressed his opposition to the Vietnam War.
“I think it’s perfectly ridiculous what we’re doing about the Vietnam situation,” he told the Times. Seaver said that if the Mets won the World Series, he would buy an ad in the Times saying, “If the Mets can win the World Series, then we can get out of Vietnam.” Seaver added, “I feel very strongly about this.” Seaver lost the first game of the series but was slated to pitch the fourth game at Shea Stadium in New York.
That day, October 15, hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in cities around the county under the auspices of the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam. By then, despite President Richard Nixon’s promise to find an “honorable” peace, discontent with his policies had moved far beyond the campuses and into the mainstream. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Current Issue View our current issue
In the Mets clubhouse before the fourth game, his teammate Tug McGraw showed Seaver a pamphlet being distributed outside the ballpark by anti-war protesters under the banner: “Mets Fans for Peace.” Headlined “Tom Seaver Says U.S. Should Leave Vietnam,” the pamphlet reprinted part of that morning’s New York Times article.
Seaver claimed that he hadn’t been asked for permission to use his name in the pamphlet. But prior to the World Series, the anti-war Vietnam Moratorium Day committee had asked him to sign an ad opposing the war. Seaver agreed, explaining that “the war was not helping the American image abroad, was splitting the country apart at home, and was not adding much to our national security.”
The political atmosphere inside the ballpark was another story. New York City Mayor John Lindsay, an opponent of the war, had decreed October 15 a day of mourning and ordered all city flags to be flown at half-mast, including those at Shea Stadium, which the City owned. That idea didn’t go over well with the honor guard of 225 wounded veterans, who were supposed to participate in the game’s opening ceremonies. They told City officials and Mets brass that they would physically resist any effort to place the flag at half-mast. Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn intervened and ordered that the flag be flown at full staff.
When the public address announcer identified Seaver as the starting pitcher, the fan response was less enthusiastic than usual. Some fans even booed the team’s best pitcher, who had been 25-7 during the regular season. According to sportswriter Ray Robinson, there were “too many [pro-war] hawks fluttering around in their expensive seats at Shea.”
Seaver beat the Orioles in the fourth game, and the next day the Mets clinched the series in five games. After the game, Seaver reminded reporters that “I am against the war and want us to get out as soon as possible without endangering lives.” Two months later, on December 31, 1969, he and his wife Nancy placed an anti-war ad in The New York Times, as he promised the protesters he would do: “On the eve of 1970, please join us in a prayer for peace,” it read.
Seaver’s outspokenness ran counter to the prevailing ethos of baseball and to the common belief that professional athletes should just play and keep their political opinions to themselves.
Of course, not all pro athletes fell into line. And starting with Jackie Robinson, Black athletes were more outspoken on social and political issues than their white counterparts. In the turbulent 1960s, track stars John Carlos and Tommie Smith at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, Muhammad Ali in boxing, Jim Brown in football, Arthur Ashe in tennis, Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in basketball, and Roberto Clemente in baseball used their celebrity as platforms to express their opposition to racism and US militarism.
White athletes were generally more reluctant to express dissenting views, although there were exceptions like Bill Walton, Jim Bouton, and Ted Simmons.
The Trump era has triggered an upsurge of activism and outrage among pro athletes—white as well as Black. Best known is quarterback Colin Kaepernick, whose decision to kneel during the national anthem triggered attacks by Trump and his own blacklisting by NFL teams, even while inspiring athletes from high school to college to professional sports to emulate his actions. But there’s been a lot more.
Washington National pitcher Sean Doolittle, LA Lakers star LeBron James, soccer great Megan Rapinoe, and many other athletes have opposed Trump’s exclusion of immigrants and asylum seekers, his racist comments after the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, and his harsh statements against athletes kneeling during the national anthem. James has raised millions of dollars to ensure voting rights heading to the November election. Players on championship NFL, NBA, and MLB teams, as well as the World Cup–winning women’s soccer team, have refused invitations to celebrate their victories with Trump at the White House.
Pro athletes have also responded to the murder of George Floyd and the police shooting in Kenosha, Wis. of Jacob Blake. The Milwaukee Bucks basketball team refused to play an NBA playoff game last week to protest the Blake shooting. Players George Hill and Sterling Brown, both African American, drafted a statement explaining the team’s refusal to play.
“We are expected to play at a high level. Give maximum effort and hold each other accountable. We hold ourselves to that standard, and in this moment we are demanding the same from lawmakers and law enforcement,” Brown said.
Other NBA teams followed the Bucks’ actions. Player defiance on several Major League Soccer and WNBA teams forced the cancellation of games. Naomi Osaka, a top tennis star, announced that she wouldn’t play in Thursday’s semifinals of the Western & Southern Open. “Before I’m an athlete, I am a Black woman,” she tweeted.
NFL players discussed going on a wildcat strike during the season openers, scheduled for September 10. Faced with this player uprising over racial injustice, the NFL appeared to give its legal blessing for players to break their union contracts and refuse to play those games. Instead, the players will be kneeling during the national anthem—with the consent of team owners. A few coaches, including the Texans’ Bill O’Brien, will join them. Many players will display the names George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Jacob Blake—recent victims of police shootings—on their helmets. And some teams may print anti-racism messages, like “Black Lives Matter,” in the end zones.
In baseball, the Milwaukee Brewers—led by white outfielders Christian Yelich and Ryan Braun—refused to take the field in solidarity with the Kenosha protesters. Other MLB teams followed suit. Pro Ball Baseball’s Stadium Workers Are Getting Peanuts From the Billionaire Owners Peter Dreier and Kelly Candaele
In New York, Seaver’s former team, the Mets, and Miami Marlins initially took the field, but left after a planned 42-second moment of silence honoring Jackie Robinson’s retired uniform number. After the players left the field, all that remained was a Black Lives Matter shirt covering home plate.
Mookie Betts, the Dodgers’ only African American player, told his teammates that he was going to sit out a game with the San Francisco Giants in protest. Betts was joined in solidarity by the other 27 players on the team.
Hall of Famer Lou Brock, one of baseball’s greatest base stealers who helped the St. Louis Cardinals win three pennants and two World Series titles in the 1960s, also died recently at age 81. No batter faced Seaver more than Brock, and no pitcher faced Brock more than Seaver during their overlapping major league careers. The two faced off 157 times. Seaver struck out Brock 21 times and walked him four times.
Tom Seaver was a dominant pitcher with a political conscience, a Marine veteran, and a proud and patriotic American. His actions in 1969 opened a space for other activist athletes to use their fame and wealth to take a stand for social justice.


thenation--2020-09-11--Trump’s Tromperie Plumbs New Depths

Trump’s Tromperie Plumbs New Depths

For much of the past few weeks , trapped inside my home in Sacramento because of the toxic air outside , where gigantic , wind-driven wildfires have created apocalyptic , 40,000-foot-high smoke plumes , I have been brushing up on my French , turning to random pages in the dictionary and trying to memorize as many words as possible .
In the “ Tr ” section , I came to the verb tromper , which means “ to deceive.
” Likewise , tromperie means “ deception , ” and trompeur means to be a “ deceptive ” or “ misleading @ @ @ @ @ @ @ o ” for a “ u ” and it ’ s a perfect description of our grifter/con man/president .
The Signal this week is the sheer scale of deception , manipulation , and abuse of power Trump is now engaged in .
This is a man who told The Washington Post ’ s Bob Woodward back in early February about just how lethal , and how easily transmissible , the novel coronavirus was , but then , out of political expediency , lied to the broader public about the risks from the disease @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a man who tells his own supporters to commit the felony of voting twice , just in case their first voted wasn ’ t counted , and then claims to be the law-and-order president .
This is a man who rages about alleged leftist riot squads and then urges a crowd in North Carolina to mob polling stations on Election Day as self-appointed “ poll watchers ” to counter Democratic “ thieving and stealing and robbing.
” But that incitement to lawlessness isn ’ t even this week ’ s nadir .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ on his own Justice Department to take over his legal representation in a defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who claimed he raped her in the 1990s .
The rationale , pushed by Attorney General Bill Barr , is that Trump ’ s interests and the state ’ s interests are now identical .
How convenient that this is the week I ’ ve been studying French ; the old adage attributed to Louis XIV , “ L ’ État , c ’ est moi , ” could be spoken by Trump .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the American state .
And so , courtesy of Barr and Trump , it is you , me , your unemployed ex-colleagues , and your neighbors—all of us taxpayers—who are footing the bill to defend Trump ’ s allegedly criminal private behavior .
If that doesn ’ t exactly fill you with joy , you ’ ll probably be equally discombobulated by whistleblower allegations this week that Trump ’ s team , when presented with intelligence community assessments that white supremacists are a grave domestic terror threat and that Putin ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election , ordered the intelligence agencies to downplay these findings in order to avoid upsetting No .
45 .
Meanwhile , Trump keeps up his fusillade of Noise , saying whatever he thinks will be politically useful , no matter how much it tortures the truth .
Early evening on Tuesday , when the sun should have been setting , I went on a drive to pick up something at the pharmacy .
The sky was as black as I have ever seen it ; it reminded me of the time , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drove straight toward a tornado in Nebraska .
It felt like the dead of night and smelled like a Dantesque hellscape .
The Air Quality Index in Sacramento hit nearly 500 on Tuesday , as it did throughout much of the Pacific West , meaning that it ’ s not just ill-advised for people with medical conditions to go outside , nor even just ill-advised for all people to go outside , but that it ’ s actually hazardous for anyone merely to breathe .
Which is hardly comforting for us mortals , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The air here has been bad since the first massive fires erupted on August 17 .
Now , nearly a month in , the second heat wave , combined with the brutal Santa Ana and El Diablo winds , have spawned a whole new set of massive fires , not only in California but also in Oregon and Washington .
The air will as a result likely stay poisonous across the West for weeks , if not months .
And yet Trump , the most anti-environmental president in US history , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ every environmental regulation he can get his hands on , now dares to tell audiences he is a “ great environmentalist , ” a kind of Teddy Roosevelt redux .
This is the stuff of Orwell , of two plus two equals five .
Trump is a trompeur through and through , a man given to tromperie out of compulsive temperament , a sociopath unfit to wield power over others ’ lives .

For much of the past few weeks, trapped inside my home in Sacramento because of the toxic air outside, where gigantic, wind-driven wildfires have created apocalyptic, 40,000-foot-high smoke plumes, I have been brushing up on my French, turning to random pages in the dictionary and trying to memorize as many words as possible.
In the “Tr” section, I came to the verb tromper, which means “to deceive.” Likewise, tromperie means “deception,” and trompeur means to be a “deceptive” or “misleading” person.
Switch out the “o” for a “u” and it’s a perfect description of our grifter/con man/president. The Signal this week is the sheer scale of deception, manipulation, and abuse of power Trump is now engaged in.
This is a man who told The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward back in early February about just how lethal, and how easily transmissible, the novel coronavirus was, but then, out of political expediency, lied to the broader public about the risks from the disease over the next six months. The Fire This Time Is Trump Planning a Coup d’État? Sasha Abramsky The Climate Apocalypse Has Arrived Sasha Abramsky
This is a man who tells his own supporters to commit the felony of voting twice, just in case their first voted wasn’t counted, and then claims to be the law-and-order president.
This is a man who rages about alleged leftist riot squads and then urges a crowd in North Carolina to mob polling stations on Election Day as self-appointed “poll watchers” to counter Democratic “thieving and stealing and robbing.”
But that incitement to lawlessness isn’t even this week’s nadir. For this is a man who calls on his own Justice Department to take over his legal representation in a defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who claimed he raped her in the 1990s. The rationale, pushed by Attorney General Bill Barr, is that Trump’s interests and the state’s interests are now identical. How convenient that this is the week I’ve been studying French; the old adage attributed to Louis XIV, “L’État, c’est moi,” could be spoken by Trump. This hoodlum believes he is the embodiment of the American state. Current Issue View our current issue
And so, courtesy of Barr and Trump, it is you, me, your unemployed ex-colleagues, and your neighbors—all of us taxpayers—who are footing the bill to defend Trump’s allegedly criminal private behavior.
If that doesn’t exactly fill you with joy, you’ll probably be equally discombobulated by whistleblower allegations this week that Trump’s team, when presented with intelligence community assessments that white supremacists are a grave domestic terror threat and that Putin’s Russia is actively meddling in the US election, ordered the intelligence agencies to downplay these findings in order to avoid upsetting No. 45.
Meanwhile, Trump keeps up his fusillade of Noise, saying whatever he thinks will be politically useful, no matter how much it tortures the truth.
Early evening on Tuesday, when the sun should have been setting, I went on a drive to pick up something at the pharmacy. The sky was as black as I have ever seen it; it reminded me of the time, a few years back, when I accidentally drove straight toward a tornado in Nebraska. It felt like the dead of night and smelled like a Dantesque hellscape. The Air Quality Index in Sacramento hit nearly 500 on Tuesday, as it did throughout much of the Pacific West, meaning that it’s not just ill-advised for people with medical conditions to go outside, nor even just ill-advised for all people to go outside, but that it’s actually hazardous for anyone merely to breathe. Which is hardly comforting for us mortals, who have to, well, breathe.
The air here has been bad since the first massive fires erupted on August 17. Now, nearly a month in, the second heat wave, combined with the brutal Santa Ana and El Diablo winds, have spawned a whole new set of massive fires, not only in California but also in Oregon and Washington. The air will as a result likely stay poisonous across the West for weeks, if not months.
And yet Trump, the most anti-environmental president in US history, who has wrecked every climate change initiative and every environmental regulation he can get his hands on, now dares to tell audiences he is a “great environmentalist,” a kind of Teddy Roosevelt redux. This is the stuff of Orwell, of two plus two equals five.
Trump is a trompeur through and through, a man given to tromperie out of compulsive temperament, a sociopath unfit to wield power over others’ lives.


thenation--2020-09-11--We Can’t Dismiss Young Voters. Here’s Why.

When I drove a van of students to a Trump rally , we were in awe .
Traffic crawled into the coliseum .
A sea of people wearing red Make America Great Again T-shirts inched through the parking lot .
Trump 2020 flags waved in the wind .
Vendors selling “ Women for Trump ” and “ Re-elect Trump ” T-shirts crowded the grounds .
It looked more like a music festival than the place where the president of the United States dismissed the devastating Covid-19 pandemic .
I was outside alone in a parking lot in South Carolina at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before the coronavirus pandemic exploded .
I heard him discount it as a convoluted fairy tale exaggerated by the Democrats to sabotage his presidency .
That was before Covid-19 killed more than 189,000 Americans , wrecked the economy , and shuttered the nation .
In February , I was among a team of professors who took students to South Carolina for the Democratic presidential primary to learn about the election process .
They attended a variety of campaign events .
I volunteered to take four students to a Trump rally in Charleston , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we rode by the Mother Emmanuel Church , where a white supremacist shot nine Black parishoners five years earlier .
I thought it was important for students to see that significant site of recent history .
I couldn ’ t be in the city and not see it myself .
About 20 minutes later , we arrived at the rally .
The students went inside .
By the time I parked and returned , no one else was allowed in , as the 14,000-seat North Charleston Coliseum was filled to capacity .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s speech outside on a jumbo screen with the overflow crowd .
The mostly white supporters yelled and applauded .
I stood still , noticed the glares and lingering glances , felt the negative energy from others near me as their excitement grew .
I had none .
This story was produced for Student Nation , a section devoted to highlighting campus activism and student movements from students in their own words .
For more Student Nation , check out our archive .
Are you a student with a campus activism story @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Schuyler at samantha @ thenation.com .
The Student Nation program is made possible through generous funding from The Puffin Foundation .
“ The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus… .
This is their new hoax , ” Trump said on February 28 at the coliseum a day before Joe Biden won the South Carolina Democratic primary and essentially the Democratic nomination .
During the two-hour drive back to Columbia , S.C. , the students and I discussed Trump ’ s speech .
They were baffled by his dismissal of the pandemic , because they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impact across the globe .
About two weeks after the rally , those same students and others who contributed to this Vision 2020 project were told to return to campus , retrieve their belongings , and not come back due to Covid-19 .
The campus was closed .
Our physical newsroom was shuttered .
The students in this project that I directed found themselves hitting brick walls when attempting to conduct interviews .
Sources were more concerned with trying to find groceries , toilet paper , and anti-bacterial gel and grappling with working @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with talking to young reporters .
The world changed drastically after we started this project .
A pandemic erupted ; job losses spiked ; an economic recession took hold ; and a racial justice uprising ignited renewed calls for institutional change and equality .
All of that could have killed this project about young voters ’ presidential election concerns .
But it didn ’ t .
These issues affect young people ’ s lives daily .
These issues pushed them out into the streets for weeks to demand equality in the midst of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and led protests across the country this summer after the police killings of Black people , including George Floyd , Breonna Taylor , and Tony McDade .
Young people will inherit this nation and all of its problems .
Protesting is one way they choose to push for change .
Voting is another .
The Vision 2020 Election Stories From the Next Generation project was created to center and document the concerns of young voters in this presidential election .
Every four years , older journalists ask young people about their concerns .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ interviews featuring white , heterosexual , middle-class , college students—casting young white people as the default representative for all young voters .
In this project we empowered young journalists from different backgrounds to develop their own story ideas about their peers ’ concerns and report them .
They wrote about young Muslim voters ’ interests , suppression of the youth vote , and young queers of color as a voting bloc .
There are multiple stories in this project that amplify the voices of young voters and their vision for the next president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proud of the students ’ work .
Vision 2020 is modeled after an earlier partnership with The Nation , the award-winning project Black on Campus project I codirected with Melissa Harris-Perry .
Black student journalists documented Black college students ’ experiences in the midst of rising racism on campuses .
The point of this project is to move beyond the narrative of the apathetic young voter .
Young voters are often perceived as ambivalent .
But history shows us that young people led the nation ’ s most significant movements , including the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Representative John Lewis worked on voting rights efforts and helped lead the Bloody Sunday march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge that helped garner support for the 1965 Voting Rights Act .
Unita Blackwell , who died last year , registered Black people to vote during the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign and became the first Black woman mayor in Mississippi .
Diane Nash , a founding member of the groundbreaking youth-led civil rights organization SNCC , was a key organizer of the 1965 Selma voting rights campaign .
Dave Dennis served as the Mississippi @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the early 1960s and worked to register Black people to vote in the Deep South years before and during Freedom Summer .
No one knows who today ’ s generation of young voters will become—or how they will change the nation .
Our young journalists ’ stories aim to illuminate issues that are on the radar of this generation whose youth was shaped by a stream of fatal police brutality videos , numerous deadly mass shootings , severe climate change , and a rise in racist , Islamophobic , and anti-Semitic violence .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the streets to protest this summer .
They will surely take some of that passion to the polls in November .
We hope these stories offer some insight into what ’ s important to this young generation and what ’ s at stake for them this election .
• “ What Do Young Black Women Want From This Election ?
” by Kristen Johnson

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When I drove a van of students to a Trump rally, we were in awe. Traffic crawled into the coliseum. A sea of people wearing red Make America Great Again T-shirts inched through the parking lot. Trump 2020 flags waved in the wind. Vendors selling “Women for Trump” and “Re-elect Trump” T-shirts crowded the grounds. It looked more like a music festival than the place where the president of the United States dismissed the devastating Covid-19 pandemic.
I was outside alone in a parking lot in South Carolina at one of Trump’s last rallies before the coronavirus pandemic exploded. I heard him discount it as a convoluted fairy tale exaggerated by the Democrats to sabotage his presidency. That was before Covid-19 killed more than 189,000 Americans, wrecked the economy, and shuttered the nation.
In February, I was among a team of professors who took students to South Carolina for the Democratic presidential primary to learn about the election process. They attended a variety of campaign events. I volunteered to take four students to a Trump rally in Charleston, S.C. Before heading to the rally, we rode by the Mother Emmanuel Church, where a white supremacist shot nine Black parishoners five years earlier. I thought it was important for students to see that significant site of recent history. I couldn’t be in the city and not see it myself.
About 20 minutes later, we arrived at the rally. The students went inside. By the time I parked and returned, no one else was allowed in, as the 14,000-seat North Charleston Coliseum was filled to capacity. I, a Black woman, watched Trump’s speech outside on a jumbo screen with the overflow crowd. The mostly white supporters yelled and applauded. I stood still, noticed the glares and lingering glances, felt the negative energy from others near me as their excitement grew. I had none. This story was produced for Student Nation, a section devoted to highlighting campus activism and student movements from students in their own words. For more Student Nation, check out our archive. Are you a student with a campus activism story? Send questions and pitches to Samantha Schuyler at [email protected]. The Student Nation program is made possible through generous funding from The Puffin Foundation.
“The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus…. This is their new hoax,” Trump said on February 28 at the coliseum a day before Joe Biden won the South Carolina Democratic primary and essentially the Democratic nomination.
During the two-hour drive back to Columbia, S.C., the students and I discussed Trump’s speech. They were baffled by his dismissal of the pandemic, because they had read about the coronavirus’s impact across the globe. About two weeks after the rally, those same students and others who contributed to this Vision 2020 project were told to return to campus, retrieve their belongings, and not come back due to Covid-19.
The campus was closed. Our physical newsroom was shuttered. The students in this project that I directed found themselves hitting brick walls when attempting to conduct interviews. Sources were more concerned with trying to find groceries, toilet paper, and anti-bacterial gel and grappling with working from home or with losing work than with talking to young reporters. Current Issue View our current issue
The world changed drastically after we started this project. A pandemic erupted; job losses spiked; an economic recession took hold; and a racial justice uprising ignited renewed calls for institutional change and equality. All of that could have killed this project about young voters’ presidential election concerns. But it didn’t. These issues affect young people’s lives daily. These issues pushed them out into the streets for weeks to demand equality in the midst of a deadly pandemic. Young people organized and led protests across the country this summer after the police killings of Black people, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Young people will inherit this nation and all of its problems. Protesting is one way they choose to push for change. Voting is another. The Vision 2020 Election Stories From the Next Generation project was created to center and document the concerns of young voters in this presidential election. Every four years, older journalists ask young people about their concerns. The result is often generic stories with interviews featuring white, heterosexual, middle-class, college students—casting young white people as the default representative for all young voters.
In this project we empowered young journalists from different backgrounds to develop their own story ideas about their peers’ concerns and report them. They wrote about young Muslim voters’ interests, suppression of the youth vote, and young queers of color as a voting bloc. There are multiple stories in this project that amplify the voices of young voters and their vision for the next president and the nation. I’m proud of the students’ work. Vision 2020 is modeled after an earlier partnership with The Nation, the award-winning project Black on Campus project I codirected with Melissa Harris-Perry. Black student journalists documented Black college students’ experiences in the midst of rising racism on campuses.
The point of this project is to move beyond the narrative of the apathetic young voter. Young voters are often perceived as ambivalent. But history shows us that young people led the nation’s most significant movements, including the fight for voting rights. The late Representative John Lewis worked on voting rights efforts and helped lead the Bloody Sunday march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge that helped garner support for the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Unita Blackwell, who died last year, registered Black people to vote during the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign and became the first Black woman mayor in Mississippi. Diane Nash, a founding member of the groundbreaking youth-led civil rights organization SNCC, was a key organizer of the 1965 Selma voting rights campaign. Dave Dennis served as the Mississippi Congress of Racial Equality project director in the early 1960s and worked to register Black people to vote in the Deep South years before and during Freedom Summer.
No one knows who today’s generation of young voters will become—or how they will change the nation. Our young journalists’ stories aim to illuminate issues that are on the radar of this generation whose youth was shaped by a stream of fatal police brutality videos, numerous deadly mass shootings, severe climate change, and a rise in racist, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic violence. Their anger and energy thrust them into the streets to protest this summer. They will surely take some of that passion to the polls in November. We hope these stories offer some insight into what’s important to this young generation and what’s at stake for them this election.


thenation--2020-09-11--The ‘Disposable Populations’ of Sports

The ‘Disposable Populations’ of Sports

Amid the whirlwind of the recent athlete strike wave against racism , Human Rights Watch issued a report on a different set of workers in the world of sports who are also struggling but lack the star power of the Milwaukee Bucks or tennis star Naomi Osaka .
The report detailed how guest workers in Qatar , who have been toiling in abject conditions to build stadiums , hotels , and transportation for the 2022 men ’ s soccer World Cup , continue to experience horrific exploitation .
The coronavirus—and the Trump administration ’ s stratospheric incompetence in the face @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ disposable populations ” smack into the public eye .
We see this crude formulation in Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick ’ s suggestion to Tucker Carlson that it ’ s perfectly acceptable to sacrifice the elderly in order to juice the economy and to preserve “ the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren.
” The sports world has long been fueled by “ disposable populations , ” whether they are football players whose lives have been turned inside-out by brain damage , baseball players in the Dominican Republic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as children only to be cast aside when their talent is found lacking , or the countless college athletes who are treated like revenue-generating chattel .
“ Disposable populations , ” which , Davis asserts , are comprised largely of “ populations of people of color and immigrant populations from the countries of the Global South , ” are routinely gobbled up and spit out by the sports industrial complex .
Take the Qatar World Cup .
It has been a labor rights nightmare from day one .
Migrant workers comprise about 95 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , journeying from places like Bangladesh , Kenya , India , Nepal , and the Philippines .
Upon arrival , they have been subjected to the kafala system , whereby their work visas are tied to their sponsoring employers , who control whether workers can change jobs or leave the country , thereby thrusting them into vulnerable situations that are rife with abuse .
The kafala system has been a recipe for oppression and , as labor reporter Michelle Chen has noted , “ the human toll is stunning.
” Data from Nepal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1,400 Nepali workers died working in Qatar between 2009 and 2019 .
Qatar has promised to abolish the kafala system , but the Human Rights Watch report found a massive chasm between word and deed .
Workers continue to have their passports confiscated by their employers , often after forking over hefty fees that are an integral part of widespread , deceptive recruitment processes .
Employers routinely abrogate labor contracts and underpay workers—one worker in Qatar who started in June 2019 received his first paycheck , for $ 228 , three months later @ @ @ @ @ @ @ workers at 60 different Qatari firms “ all of whom reported some form of wage abuse by their employer such as unpaid overtime , arbitrary deductions , delayed wages , withholding of wages , unpaid wages , or inaccurate wages.
” ( And by the way , Qatar allegedly bribed their way into this chance to exploit workers in the first place—people associated with Qatar ’ s World Cup bid are under indictment for wire fraud and money laundering linked to vote-buying . )
But when it comes to mistreating workers to host @ @ @ @ @ @ @ alone .
Last week , the NFL ’ s Los Angeles Rams announced the completion of their new football stadium in Inglewood , which cost around $ 5 billion .
Lost amid breathless accounts of the stadium ’ s amenities—it “ shimmers amid palm trees and parking lots and a six-acre artificial lake ” and “ looks as if it arrived from another world , ” according to the Los Angeles Times—was the fact that two workers died in the process of stadium construction and dozens others contracted Covid-19 .
Workers Juan Beccera @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Beccera plunging 110 feet from the stadium ’ s roof .
A lawsuit instigated by Beccera ’ s family asserts that unsafe working conditions contributed to his death .
In addition , at least 75 workers contracted coronavirus while rushing to complete the stadium , having fallen behind schedule .
That ’ s not to mention the gentrification that the stadium project jump-started .
African Americans in particular are experiencing the burden of gentrification and displacement in Inglewood .
The stadium is slated to host the opening and closing ceremonies for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ course , Qatar and Los Angeles are not exact replicas .
However , when elites from a country or city decide to host a sports mega-event in the 21st century , or to build a stadium as a so-called revitalization project , they also agree to import a slew of social problems , from displacement , debt , and militarization to worker exploitation and even death .
Journalist Sarah Jeong ’ s “ information-nationalism ” ideology is relevant to pondering the dynamics thrumming through Qatar and LA .
One of information-nationalism ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country acknowledges human rights abuses , you are made weak.
” We see this in Qatar , which has been slow to recognize worker abuse , but also in LA , where homelessness is a humanitarian crisis in plain sight that is rarely discussed as such .
As Jeong notes , “ When you play the game of information-nationalism , you don ’ t slander your enemies ; you tell the truth about them , while hiding the truth about yourself.
” This can create a delusional sense of self-forgiveness that enables the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ disposable populations ” : In other words , it allows people in the United States to criticize Qatar but not look at Los Angeles .
We need to spotlight atrocities committed abroad , of course , but also those that happen at home .
As Qatar , LA , and the ongoing coronavirus nightmare show , the merry-go-round of self-delusion must eventually stop before everything unravels .
Sometimes sports can be the place where people stand up and say , “ No more , ” where reality can get a foothold .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ sooner rather than later .

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Amid the whirlwind of the recent athlete strike wave against racism, Human Rights Watch issued a report on a different set of workers in the world of sports who are also struggling but lack the star power of the Milwaukee Bucks or tennis star Naomi Osaka. The report detailed how guest workers in Qatar, who have been toiling in abject conditions to build stadiums, hotels, and transportation for the 2022 men’s soccer World Cup, continue to experience horrific exploitation.
The coronavirus—and the Trump administration’s stratospheric incompetence in the face of it—has flung what Angela Davis calls “disposable populations” smack into the public eye. We see this crude formulation in Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick’s suggestion to Tucker Carlson that it’s perfectly acceptable to sacrifice the elderly in order to juice the economy and to preserve “the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren.”
The sports world has long been fueled by “disposable populations,” whether they are football players whose lives have been turned inside-out by brain damage, baseball players in the Dominican Republic who are sent to “academies” as children only to be cast aside when their talent is found lacking, or the countless college athletes who are treated like revenue-generating chattel. “Disposable populations,” which, Davis asserts, are comprised largely of “populations of people of color and immigrant populations from the countries of the Global South,” are routinely gobbled up and spit out by the sports industrial complex.
Take the Qatar World Cup. It has been a labor rights nightmare from day one. Migrant workers comprise about 95 percent of Qatar’s labor force, journeying from places like Bangladesh, Kenya, India, Nepal, and the Philippines. Upon arrival, they have been subjected to the kafala system, whereby their work visas are tied to their sponsoring employers, who control whether workers can change jobs or leave the country, thereby thrusting them into vulnerable situations that are rife with abuse.
The kafala system has been a recipe for oppression and, as labor reporter Michelle Chen has noted, “the human toll is stunning.” Data from Nepal’s government found that more than 1,400 Nepali workers died working in Qatar between 2009 and 2019. Qatar has promised to abolish the kafala system, but the Human Rights Watch report found a massive chasm between word and deed. Workers continue to have their passports confiscated by their employers, often after forking over hefty fees that are an integral part of widespread, deceptive recruitment processes. Employers routinely abrogate labor contracts and underpay workers—one worker in Qatar who started in June 2019 received his first paycheck, for $228, three months later. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Human Rights Watch interviewed around 100 workers at 60 different Qatari firms “all of whom reported some form of wage abuse by their employer such as unpaid overtime, arbitrary deductions, delayed wages, withholding of wages, unpaid wages, or inaccurate wages.” (And by the way, Qatar allegedly bribed their way into this chance to exploit workers in the first place—people associated with Qatar’s World Cup bid are under indictment for wire fraud and money laundering linked to vote-buying.)
But when it comes to mistreating workers to host a sports mega-event, Qatar is not alone. Last week, the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams announced the completion of their new football stadium in Inglewood, which cost around $5 billion. Lost amid breathless accounts of the stadium’s amenities—it “shimmers amid palm trees and parking lots and a six-acre artificial lake” and “looks as if it arrived from another world,” according to the Los Angeles Times—was the fact that two workers died in the process of stadium construction and dozens others contracted Covid-19. Current Issue View our current issue
Workers Juan Beccera and Simon Fite died during construction, with Beccera plunging 110 feet from the stadium’s roof. A lawsuit instigated by Beccera’s family asserts that unsafe working conditions contributed to his death. In addition, at least 75 workers contracted coronavirus while rushing to complete the stadium, having fallen behind schedule. That’s not to mention the gentrification that the stadium project jump-started. African Americans in particular are experiencing the burden of gentrification and displacement in Inglewood. The stadium is slated to host the opening and closing ceremonies for the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Olympics.
Of course, Qatar and Los Angeles are not exact replicas. However, when elites from a country or city decide to host a sports mega-event in the 21st century, or to build a stadium as a so-called revitalization project, they also agree to import a slew of social problems, from displacement, debt, and militarization to worker exploitation and even death.
Journalist Sarah Jeong’s “information-nationalism” ideology is relevant to pondering the dynamics thrumming through Qatar and LA. One of information-nationalism’s central assumptions is that “when your country acknowledges human rights abuses, you are made weak.” We see this in Qatar, which has been slow to recognize worker abuse, but also in LA, where homelessness is a humanitarian crisis in plain sight that is rarely discussed as such.
As Jeong notes, “When you play the game of information-nationalism, you don’t slander your enemies; you tell the truth about them, while hiding the truth about yourself.” This can create a delusional sense of self-forgiveness that enables the creation and maintenance of Davis’s “disposable populations”: In other words, it allows people in the United States to criticize Qatar but not look at Los Angeles. We need to spotlight atrocities committed abroad, of course, but also those that happen at home. As Qatar, LA, and the ongoing coronavirus nightmare show, the merry-go-round of self-delusion must eventually stop before everything unravels. Sometimes sports can be the place where people stand up and say, “No more,” where reality can get a foothold. Let’s hope that day comes sooner rather than later.