thenation--2020-04-16--Joe Biden Needs to Start Acting Like a Presidential Candidate

The Democrats have a nominee for president .
It is former vice president Joe Biden .
Bernie Sanders endorsed him ; all the other Democrats who ran against him endorsed him ; former President Barack Obama endorsed him .
The primary is over , and the general election has begun .
So where the hell is Joe Biden ?
Why isn ’ t he on my television every day ?
Why isn ’ t he offering counterprogramming to Donald Trump ’ s daily ’ rona rallies ( which I ’ ve been begging the networks to stop broadcasting live ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the only Democrat running for president is New York Governor Andrew Cuomo , while Biden has been busy polishing his résumé for Indeed.com .
Meanwhile , the cable networks have decided , once again , to help the Trump campaign by giving him billions of dollars of free media .
I ’ m not making that up .
Donald Trump goes on Twitter and television every day and promises Americans miracle cures and a stimulus check with his name on it .
He holds court while sitting on a throne figuratively composed of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his administration ’ s ineffective response to the pandemic .
And all Biden can come up with in response to this flagrant failure of governance is a 940-word essay in The New York Times .
Maybe next week Biden can write a cartoon caption for The New Yorker so we know he still has a pulse .
Biden ’ s op-ed wasn ’ t even that good .
Elizabeth Warren has more concrete and detailed plans for leading her dog on a walk than Biden does for leading the country through this tragedy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paragraph that reads like it was cribbed from a seventh grader ’ s social studies assignment : “ Perhaps ” Joe Biden should start running for president and stop putting ideas into the suggestion box at Applebee ’ s .
Biden must do better .
If he wants to be a president , he must start acting like one .
I don ’ t want to hear his thought experiment about convening industry leaders .
I want Biden to send out a Zoom link and convene them , now .
Then he should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them standing behind him ( six feet apart , unlike the current hand-shaker in chief ) and tell us how he plans to save the economy .
He should contrast his plan to the Trump administration ’ s plan of ordering people to die to save the stock market .
Biden should be out there with his own team of medical experts and public health professionals telling us what we should really be doing to protect ourselves and our families .
This is a huge opportunity for Biden and the Democrats in general @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bravely , to maintain his credibility , but we know he ’ s compromised by trying to stay as close to Trump ’ s message as he can without debasing himself like the other so-called experts in Trump ’ s orbit .
Trump ’ s demand for loyalty to his lying regime leaves a bunch of brilliant professionals out on the sidelines .
Biden should call them up and put them on television .
He should surround himself with experts willing to tell the hard truths that even Fauci dare not speak , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of cameras as much as possible .
Millions and millions of people have been laid off or furloughed because of this crisis .
Trump never talks about them , because his narcissism demands a constant stream of positive stories about his own greatness .
But Biden can and should talk about them .
He should even talk to them .
He should be holding press conferences with union leaders who are trying to find ways to avoid layoffs .
He should be holding public meetings with the people fighting to get paid leave @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of this pandemic are not the CEOs of airlines ; they ’ re the laid-off flight attendants and the furloughed baggage handlers .
I don ’ t want to hear Biden tell me whom he ’ d be fighting for if he were president tomorrow ; I want him to show me whom he ’ s fighting for today .
I imagine that , somewhere in Biden-land , somebody is whispering in the candidate ’ s ear , cautioning him against “ politicizing ” the pandemic .
Or maybe the campaign is falling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supporters will abandon Trump because of his latest show of bumbling incompetence ( notwithstanding that they didn ’ t abandon him last time , or the time before that , or during any of the thousands of scandals that should have ended Trump ’ s presidency ) .
I imagine this because “ thinking like a Democrat ” means talking about Trump as if he were a unique , unprecedented threat to America but being too afraid to actually do anything unique or unprecedented to counter him .
Democrats always lose trying to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republicans win and use the rule book as kindling .
There is no level of “ politicization ” that is out of bounds when it comes to the response to this virus .
Trump has rendered that word meaningless .
Biden can not worry about politicizing the crisis , not when Trump is delaying stimulus checks so the Treasury Department can put his name on them .
Not when Trump is directing federal resources only to state governors who are nice to him on TV .
Not when Trump and the Supreme Court @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by voting in person because they ’ re trying to help Republicans win elections .
Republicans have even turned good hygiene and social distancing into a political battle , instead of a medical one .
There are now people who think shaking hands is an act of defiance against the “ liberal media.
” Eventually , science will prove these people wrong , but evolution by natural selection takes time and our species will not see those benefits before November 3 .
The Lesson of the Coronavirus ?
There ’ s No One @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Stage for Republicans to Steal the Election We can not wait for Darwin , we are stuck with Biden .
And that means Biden has to get in the game .
He needs to start using the tools of the enemy to defeat the enemy .
Biden ’ s Twitter feed should be a constant stream of coronavirus information .
It should be a place to lift up the voices of those being snuffed out by this disease and Trump ’ s ineffectual response to it .
His digital schedule should be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been if a real-world campaign were possible right now .
If there is a nurse telling her Instagram followers how difficult it is to get personal protective equipment , I want to see the message “ Joe Biden joins the chat.
” Every single time Trump does a press conference , Biden and his team of experts should be ready to go with one of theirs .
And if the networks don ’ t carry Biden ’ s conferences live , as they do Trump ’ s , then I want lawsuits @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( Even though those lawsuits would fail , the act of forcing the networks to argue that Trump ’ s rallies are eligible for the “ news events ” exception to the equal time rule would be worth the price of admission . )
I don ’ t want a Democratic nominee for president .
I want a better president .
And I see no reason why I should have to wait until 2021 to get one .
Joe Biden can start acting like a good president right now , instead of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
If he does , voters will “ reelect ” Biden in November , and put an official end to Trump ’ s fake leadership .

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The Democrats have a nominee for president. It is former vice president Joe Biden. Bernie Sanders endorsed him; all the other Democrats who ran against him endorsed him; former President Barack Obama endorsed him. The primary is over, and the general election has begun.
So where the hell is Joe Biden? Why isn’t he on my television every day? Why isn’t he offering counterprogramming to Donald Trump’s daily ’rona rallies (which I’ve been begging the networks to stop broadcasting live). Right now, it feels like the only Democrat running for president is New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, while Biden has been busy polishing his résumé for Indeed.com.
Meanwhile, the cable networks have decided, once again, to help the Trump campaign by giving him billions of dollars of free media. I’m not making that up. Donald Trump goes on Twitter and television every day and promises Americans miracle cures and a stimulus check with his name on it. He holds court while sitting on a throne figuratively composed of the dead bodies of the victims of his administration’s ineffective response to the pandemic. And all Biden can come up with in response to this flagrant failure of governance is a 940-word essay in The New York Times. Maybe next week Biden can write a cartoon caption for The New Yorker so we know he still has a pulse.
Biden’s op-ed wasn’t even that good. Elizabeth Warren has more concrete and detailed plans for leading her dog on a walk than Biden does for leading the country through this tragedy. Just look at this entirely useless paragraph that reads like it was cribbed from a seventh grader’s social studies assignment:
If I were president, I would convene top experts from the private sector, industry by industry, to come up with new ideas on how to operate more safely. Perhaps offices and factories will need to space out workers and pursue other solutions to lessen risk of spread of the virus on the job. Restaurants may need new layouts, with diners farther apart.
“Perhaps” Joe Biden should start running for president and stop putting ideas into the suggestion box at Applebee’s. Current Issue View our current issue
Biden must do better. If he wants to be a president, he must start acting like one. I don’t want to hear his thought experiment about convening industry leaders. I want Biden to send out a Zoom link and convene them, now. Then he should hold a press conference with all of them standing behind him (six feet apart, unlike the current hand-shaker in chief) and tell us how he plans to save the economy. He should contrast his plan to the Trump administration’s plan of ordering people to die to save the stock market. 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
Biden should be out there with his own team of medical experts and public health professionals telling us what we should really be doing to protect ourselves and our families. This is a huge opportunity for Biden and the Democrats in general. Dr. Anthony Fauci has struggled, bravely, to maintain his credibility, but we know he’s compromised by trying to stay as close to Trump’s message as he can without debasing himself like the other so-called experts in Trump’s orbit. Trump’s demand for loyalty to his lying regime leaves a bunch of brilliant professionals out on the sidelines. Biden should call them up and put them on television. He should surround himself with experts willing to tell the hard truths that even Fauci dare not speak, and Biden should do this in front of cameras as much as possible.
Millions and millions of people have been laid off or furloughed because of this crisis. Trump never talks about them, because his narcissism demands a constant stream of positive stories about his own greatness. But Biden can and should talk about them. He should even talk to them. He should be holding press conferences with union leaders who are trying to find ways to avoid layoffs. He should be holding public meetings with the people fighting to get paid leave. The faces of the economic victims of this pandemic are not the CEOs of airlines; they’re the laid-off flight attendants and the furloughed baggage handlers. I don’t want to hear Biden tell me whom he’d be fighting for if he were president tomorrow; I want him to show me whom he’s fighting for today.
I imagine that, somewhere in Biden-land, somebody is whispering in the candidate’s ear, cautioning him against “politicizing” the pandemic. Or maybe the campaign is falling back on that old idea that Trump supporters will abandon Trump because of his latest show of bumbling incompetence (notwithstanding that they didn’t abandon him last time, or the time before that, or during any of the thousands of scandals that should have ended Trump’s presidency). I imagine this because “thinking like a Democrat” means talking about Trump as if he were a unique, unprecedented threat to America but being too afraid to actually do anything unique or unprecedented to counter him. Democrats always lose trying to follow “the rules,” while Republicans win and use the rule book as kindling.
There is no level of “politicization” that is out of bounds when it comes to the response to this virus. Trump has rendered that word meaningless. Biden cannot worry about politicizing the crisis, not when Trump is delaying stimulus checks so the Treasury Department can put his name on them. Not when Trump is directing federal resources only to state governors who are nice to him on TV. Not when Trump and the Supreme Court are forcing people to risk their lives by voting in person because they’re trying to help Republicans win elections.
Republicans have even turned good hygiene and social distancing into a political battle, instead of a medical one. There are now people who think shaking hands is an act of defiance against the “liberal media.” Eventually, science will prove these people wrong, but evolution by natural selection takes time and our species will not see those benefits before November 3. More from Mystal The Lesson of the Coronavirus? There’s No One Left to Trust. Elie Mystal SCOTUS Just Set the Stage for Republicans to Steal the Election Elie Mystal The Media Is Helping Spread Trump’s Coronavirus Racism Elie Mystal
We cannot wait for Darwin, we are stuck with Biden. And that means Biden has to get in the game. He needs to start using the tools of the enemy to defeat the enemy.
Biden’s Twitter feed should be a constant stream of coronavirus information. It should be a place to lift up the voices of those being snuffed out by this disease and Trump’s ineffectual response to it. His digital schedule should be as full as his public schedule would have been if a real-world campaign were possible right now.
If there is a nurse telling her Instagram followers how difficult it is to get personal protective equipment, I want to see the message “Joe Biden joins the chat.” Every single time Trump does a press conference, Biden and his team of experts should be ready to go with one of theirs. And if the networks don’t carry Biden’s conferences live, as they do Trump’s, then I want lawsuits against every major network demanding equal time. (Even though those lawsuits would fail, the act of forcing the networks to argue that Trump’s rallies are eligible for the “news events” exception to the equal time rule would be worth the price of admission.)
I don’t want a Democratic nominee for president. I want a better president. And I see no reason why I should have to wait until 2021 to get one. Joe Biden can start acting like a good president right now, instead of promising to be one in the future. If he does, voters will “reelect” Biden in November, and put an official end to Trump’s fake leadership.


thenation--2020-04-16--Argentina Is Showing the World What a Humane Covid-19 Response Looks Like

The cheers in Buenos Aires began at 9 pm toward the middle of March , around the time the novel coronavirus brought much of the world to an abrupt and unsettling halt .
Like the residents of New York , Madrid , and countless other cities sheltering in place , quarantined “ porteños ” have appeared at their windows and balconies nightly to applaud those on the front lines of the pandemic .
By month ’ s end , however , a separate sound had begun echoing half an hour later across the wealthier Buenos Aires neighborhoods of Recoleta and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ predecessor , the tone was far more caustic , with participants whistling , blowing plastic horns , and banging pots and pans .
Its ostensible aim was to pressure state functionaries to accept a pay cut , but as is so often the case with Argentina ’ s “ cacerolazos , ” this protest was distinctly anti-political in nature .
In December of 2019 , the Peronist-progressive coalition party Frente de Todos ( Everyone ’ s Front ) swept into power after four years of neoliberal mismanagement .
Now that it had begun @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the backdrop of an unprecedented public health crisis , the forces of reaction were making their voices heard .
Indeed , their demonstration began shortly after Minister of Labor Claudio Moroni ordered the country ’ s largest steel manufacturer , Techint , to pause the firing of 1,450 temporary workers .
( President Alberto Fernández has since issued an emergency decree banning layoffs for a period of two months . )
“ Muchachos , les tocó la hora de ganar menos , ” Fernández told the country ’ s business leaders at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s time for you to earn less.
” Herein lies the challenge not just for Argentina but also for countless other liberal democracies across the West .
While the outlines of our global crisis are only beginning to emerge , it is clear that Covid-19 demands that these nations reimagine the role of the state after decades of free-market hegemony .
New possibilities have presented themselves that seemed unimaginable as recently as February .
Even the editorial board of the Financial Times recently conceded that more radical reforms like a wealth tax and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be put on the table .
Fernández , whose conservative predecessor , Mauricio Macri , reduced the Minister of Health to a non-cabinet position , understands this intuitively , implementing a pandemic response that , if not offering an exemplar for the Americas , stands in stark contrast to the region ’ s more overtly authoritarian regimes .
“ I was concerned that the Argentine state apparatus wouldn ’ t be up to the task , but the response [ has been ] good , ” says Marcelo Leiras , a political scientist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the interior , Eduardo “ Wado ” de Pedro .
“ The Minister of Health [ Ginés González García ] , at the beginning , thought that this epidemic would not strongly effect Argentina .
For good reasons , I think .
We didn ’ t know how contagious this thing was .
The president was wise enough to widen his circle of advisers and heed the most prudent , conservative advice .
He was [ also ] bold in choosing a strong quarantine policy , which in economic terms was incredibly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in mind how inarticulate the international response has been to the [ coronavirus ] , ” he adds .
“ It ’ s reflective of the political disarray of the West in domestic and international terms .
I think the president sensed that and reacted very quickly and consistently.
” Whereas US President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro have abdicated responsibility for their nations ’ pandemic responses , with each openly flouting epidemiologists and sniping at the governors of their respective states and provinces , Fernández issued a nationwide shelter-in-place order @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Argentina had only 128 official cases nationwide , according to data from Johns Hopkins University .
As with the Argentinian president ’ s prior decisions to close the country ’ s borders and place visitors from global hot spots in a two-week quarantine , the aim was simple : to flatten the curve before a swell in cases could overwhelm the country ’ s latticework of trade union clinics , public hospitals , and private health care providers .
It is far too early to call the measures a success , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Infections have come in well below initial projections , and as of April 12 , Argentina ’ s death rate stood at two per 1 million habitants .
Chile ’ s , by contrast , was four , and Brazil ’ s was five .
The United States ’ was 62 .
“ Argentina has acted very quickly in comparison with other countries , ” says Rodrigo Quiroga , a bioinformatician at Argentina ’ s National Scientific and Technical Research Council .
“ [ That includes ] the rapid closure of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who came from countries with high rates of infections and the closing of schools .
These measures , along with the quarantine , have reduced the number of cases in this first stage of the pandemic.
” Fernández ’ s economic actions have been no less audacious , especially when considering that his administration inherited a $ 311 billion debt that includes a record $ 57 billion loan in 2018 from the International Monetary Fund—the institution that imposed punishing austerity measures after the country ’ s crash in 2002 .
Argentina has invested @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gross domestic product in an economic and social relief package—among the highest within the G20—while an executive order issued last month has ensured that no essential services be cut for retirees , social welfare recipients and households earning less than a combined 33,750 pesos ( about $ 520 ) due to a lack of payment .
These services include electricity , gas , water , mobile , and fixed landlines , as well as Internet and cable television .
The Fernández administration has also suspended evictions and frozen all rent hikes through September @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” the country ’ s bottom tax bracket , of penalties for failing to make their March tax payments .
More significantly , the president has created via executive order a 10,000-peso ( about $ 150 ) Ingreso Familiar de Emergencia ( Emergency Family Income ) for domestic workers and other low-income earners , giving first priority to those who qualify for Asignación Universal por Hijo ( Universal Child Allowance ) and Asignación para Embarazadas ( Allowance for Pregnant Women ) .
Nearly 8 million Argentines will receive subsidies beginning April 21 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ employer , regardless of trade and size , eligible for a Programa de Asistencia de Emergencia al Trabajao y la Producción ( Emergency Assistance Program for Work and Production ) , postponing or reducing the tax commitments of small businesses by up to 95 percent and paying out between 50 and 100 percent of a monthly minimum wage salary for each of their employees .
Meanwhile , the federal government has compelled banks to extend hundreds of millions of dollars in loans at a reduced interest rate in an effort to keep the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to nationalize its private hospitals as Spain has done , it has secured their cooperation during the crisis so that its health care system doesn ’ t face a shortage of hospital beds .
Fernández has likewise activated the armed services to build a number of triage centers in the event of a surge in cases .
Taken together , these actions amount to a mass mobilization of the Argentinian state .
This is not to suggest that the country ’ s pandemic response has been entirely free of setbacks .
Earlier this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thousands of retirees were forced to wait in lines for as long as 12 hours—and in some cases overnight—to collect their payments .
The president moved immediately to coordinate the opening of bank branches on weekends , blaming the secretary general of the Asociación Bancaria ( Banking Association ) , Sergio Palazzo , and the executive director of the Administración Nacional de la Seguridad Social ( National Social Security Administration ) , Alejandro Vanoli , for placing the country ’ s most vulnerable at risk .
“ Argentina is closer to Italy and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , doctors , and medical supplies than it is to its neighboring countries , ” says María Esperanza Casullo , a political scientist and the author of Por Qué Funciona El Populismo ?
( “ Why Does Populism Work ? )
“ With that said , state resources are scarce , or scarcer than would be necessary , and the government won ’ t be able to extend the quarantine too long because the economy would not sustain it , especially the percentage of the Argentinian population that works outside of the market @ @ @ @ @ @ @ product has fallen for four consecutive years , so it ’ s going to be difficult.
” Fernández has investigated relaxing quarantine restrictions in order to stimulate the economy , but the challenges will be immense .
While the government maintains that its testing of Covid-19 is proportionate to the country ’ s low rate of infection ( 2,142 official cases as of April 12 ) , it had administered just 19,758 tests—437 per million habitants—two weeks before quarantine was tentatively set to end April 26 .
As the country attempts to ramp @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kits after years of funding cuts to the Administración Nacional de Laboratorios e Institutos de Salud “ Dr .
Carlos Malbrán ” ( the Malbrán Institute ) , and amid supply chain disruptions that have hampered much of Latin America , it may be all but impossible to control the virus ’ s spread in the more impoverished suburbs of Buenos Aires , where population density is high , access to quality health care is limited , and few enjoy the luxury to self-isolate .
At the same time , a 2019 poll @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that nearly half of the country ’ s labor force ( 49.3 percent ) works off the books , with 81.7 percent of that segment in low-quality jobs .
“ The response has ultimately been reflective of the strengths and weaknesses of the Argentinian state , ” says Leiras .
“ The Argentinian state is strong in dialogue and politics but bad in terms of infrastructure , in its ability to go to places and do things , to reach people with health services [ for example ] .
In that respect , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very short tentacles.
” Yet , despite its deficiencies , Argentina has thus far managed to avoid the kinds of catastrophes emerging in countries like Ecuador , where bodies have piled up in the streets of Guayaquil , and Brazil , whose president now faces impeachment calls for his homicidal denialism .
More recently , Fernández has encouraged the congress to pass a tax on the country ’ s biggest fortunes—a response to his political opposition ’ s calls for government officials to reduce their salaries by 30 percent .
The tax , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who were granted immunity by the prior administration for hiding their wealth overseas , signals the president ’ s desire to fundamentally reorder Argentinian society as much as it aims to ameliorate the worst economic effects of the crisis .
Fernandez grasps what many of his counterparts on the world stage have not : that our fates are intrinsically bound together , and that the historical epoch we ’ ve been thrust into demands a new social contract .
“ For many years , Argentinians have been led to believe that politicians and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their problems , ” the president mused in late March .
“ The real problem is those who believe that there are too many people , that this [ isn ’ t ] a country where we all have a place… .
After the pandemic , everything will be different .
We ’ ll live in another world .
I believe that ours is a time of reflection , in which we can recover something that postmodernity has robbed of us.
” “ Postmodernity has led us to believe that individualism was the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” he continued .
“ [ We ’ ve seen ] a microscopic bug lay waste to vast fortunes and destroy accumulated wealth .
Microscopic .
This same bug can kill [ the rich ] as easily as it can kill any one of us .
What was the purpose then of accumulating so much ?
”

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The cheers in Buenos Aires began at 9 pm toward the middle of March, around the time the novel coronavirus brought much of the world to an abrupt and unsettling halt. Like the residents of New York, Madrid, and countless other cities sheltering in place, quarantined “porteños” have appeared at their windows and balconies nightly to applaud those on the front lines of the pandemic.
By month’s end, however, a separate sound had begun echoing half an hour later across the wealthier Buenos Aires neighborhoods of Recoleta and Palermo. If not louder than its predecessor, the tone was far more caustic, with participants whistling, blowing plastic horns, and banging pots and pans. Its ostensible aim was to pressure state functionaries to accept a pay cut, but as is so often the case with Argentina’s “cacerolazos,” this protest was distinctly anti-political in nature.
In December of 2019, the Peronist-progressive coalition party Frente de Todos (Everyone’s Front) swept into power after four years of neoliberal mismanagement. Now that it had begun enacting a social democratic agenda, against the backdrop of an unprecedented public health crisis, the forces of reaction were making their voices heard. Indeed, their demonstration began shortly after Minister of Labor Claudio Moroni ordered the country’s largest steel manufacturer, Techint, to pause the firing of 1,450 temporary workers. “Muchachos, les tocó la hora de ganar menos,” President Alberto Fernández told the country’s business leaders at the time. “Boys, it’s time for you to earn less.” (Fernández has since issued an emergency decree banning worker layoffs for a period of two months.)
Herein lies the challenge not just for Argentina but also for countless other liberal democracies across the West. While the outlines of our global crisis are only beginning to emerge, it is clear that Covid-19 demands that these nations reimagine the role of the state after decades of free market hegemony. New possibilities have presented themselves that seemed unimaginable as recently as February. Even the editorial board of the Financial Times recently conceded that more radical reforms like a wealth tax and a universal basic income will have to be put on the table. Fernández, whose conservative predecessor, Mauricio Macri, reduced the minister of health to a non-cabinet position, understands this intuitively, implementing a pandemic response that, if not offering an exemplar for the Americas, stands in stark contrast to the region’s more overtly authoritarian regimes. 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 Related Article Secret US Intelligence Files Provide History’s Verdict on Argentina’s Dirty War Peter Kornbluh
“I was concerned that the Argentine state apparatus wouldn’t be up to the task, but the response [has been] good,” says Marcelo Leiras, a political scientist and adviser to Argentina’s minister of the interior, Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro. “The minister of health [Ginés González García], at the beginning, thought that this epidemic would not strongly affect Argentina. For good reasons, I think. We didn’t know how contagious this thing was. The president was wise enough to widen his circle of advisers and heed the most prudent, conservative advice. He was [also] bold in choosing a strong quarantine policy, which in economic terms was incredibly risky.”
“We have to keep in mind how inarticulate the international response has been to the [coronavirus],” he adds. “It’s reflective of the political disarray of the West in domestic and international terms. I think the president sensed that and reacted very quickly and consistently.”
Whereas US President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro have abdicated responsibility for their nations’ pandemic responses, with each openly flouting epidemiologists and sniping at the governors of their respective states and provinces, Fernández declared a nationwide shelter-in-place order on March 19. It was enacted the following day. By then, Argentina had only 128 official cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. As with the Argentinian president’s prior decisions to close the country’s borders and place visitors from global hot spots in a two-week quarantine, the aim was simple: to flatten the curve before a swell in cases could overwhelm the country’s latticework of trade union clinics, public hospitals, and private health care providers. It is far too early to call the measures a success, but early returns suggest that they are working. Infections have come in well below initial projections, and as of April 12, Argentina’s death rate stood at two per 1 million habitants. Chile’s, by contrast, was four, and Brazil’s was five. The United States’ was 62. Current Issue View our current issue
“Argentina has acted very quickly in comparison with other countries,” says Rodrigo Quiroga, a bioinformatician at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council. “[That includes] the rapid closure of the border, the mandatory isolation of those who came from countries with high rates of infections, and the closing of schools. These measures, along with the quarantine, have reduced the number of cases in this first stage of the pandemic.”
Fernández’s economic actions have been no less audacious, especially considering that his administration inherited a $311 billion debt, including a record $57 billion loan in 2018 from the International Monetary Fund—the institution that imposed punishing austerity measures after the country’s crash in 2002. Argentina has invested as much as 2 percent of its gross domestic product in an economic and social relief package—among the best within the G20—while an executive order issued last month has ensured that no essential services be cut for retirees, social welfare recipients, and households earning less than a combined 33,750 pesos (about $520) due to a lack of payment. These services include electricity, gas, water, mobile, and fixed landlines, as well as Internet and cable television. The Fernández administration has also suspended evictions and frozen all rent hikes through September, in addition to absolving “monotributistas,” the country’s bottom tax bracket, of penalties for failing to make their March tax payments.
More significantly, the president has created via executive order a 10,000-peso (about $150) ingreso familiar de emergencia (emergency family income) for domestic workers and other low-income earners, giving first priority to those who qualify for asignación universal por hijo (universal child allowance) and asignación para embarazadas (allowance for pregnant women). Nearly 8 million Argentines will receive subsidies beginning April 21. The administration has further made every employer, regardless of trade and size, eligible to register for the Programa de Asistencia de Emergencia al Trabajao y la Producción (Emergency Assistance Program for Work and Production), postponing or reducing the tax commitments of small businesses by up to 95 percent and paying out between 50 and 100 percent of a monthly minimum wage salary for each of their employees. Meanwhile, the federal government has compelled banks to extend hundreds of millions of dollars in loans at a reduced interest rate in an effort to keep the economy afloat.
Although Argentina has declined to nationalize its private hospitals as Spain has done, it has secured their cooperation during the crisis so that its health care system doesn’t face a shortage of hospital beds. Fernández has likewise activated the armed services to build a number of triage centers in the event of a surge in cases. Taken together, these actions amount to a mass mobilization of the Argentinian state.
This is not to suggest that the country’s pandemic response has been entirely free of setbacks. Earlier this month, Fernández came under fire when thousands of retirees were forced to wait in lines for as long as 12 hours—and in some cases overnight—to collect their payments. The president moved immediately to coordinate the opening of bank branches on weekends, blaming the secretary general of the Banking Association, Sergio Palazzo, and the executive director of the National Social Security Administration, Alejandro Vanoli, for placing the country’s most vulnerable at risk.
“Argentina is closer to Italy and Spain in its number of hospital beds, doctors, and medical supplies than it is to its neighboring countries,” says María Esperanza Casullo, a political scientist and the author of Por Qué Funciona El Populismo? (Why Does Populism Work?) “With that said, state resources are scarce, or scarcer than would be necessary, and the government won’t be able to extend the quarantine too long because the economy would not sustain it, especially the percentage of the Argentinian population that works outside of the market. The country’s gross domestic product has fallen for four consecutive years, so it’s going to be difficult.”
Fernández has investigated relaxing quarantine restrictions in order to stimulate the economy, but the challenges will be immense. While the government maintains that its testing of Covid-19 is proportionate to the country’s low rate of infection (2,142 official cases as of April 12), it had administered just 19,758 tests—437 per million habitants—two weeks before quarantine was tentatively set to end on April 26. As the country attempts to ramp up the numbers of ventilators and test kits after years of funding cuts to the National Administration of Laboratories and Health Institutes “Dr. Carlos Malbrán,” or the Malbrán Institute, and amid supply chain disruptions that have hampered much of Latin America, it may be all but impossible to control the virus’s spread in the more impoverished suburbs of Buenos Aires, where population density is high, access to quality health care is limited, and few enjoy the luxury to self-isolate. At the same time, a 2019 poll from Argentina’s Catholic University finds that nearly half of the country’s labor force (49.3 percent) works off the books, with 81.7 percent of that segment in low-quality jobs.
“The response has ultimately been reflective of the strengths and weaknesses of the Argentinian state,” says Leiras. “The Argentinian state is strong in dialogue and politics but bad in terms of infrastructure, in its ability to go to places and do things, to reach people with health services [for example]. In that respect, it’s like an octopus with very short tentacles.”
Yet, despite its deficiencies, Argentina has thus far managed to avoid the kinds of catastrophes emerging in countries like Ecuador, where bodies have piled up in the streets of Guayaquil, and Brazil, whose president now faces impeachment calls for his homicidal denialism. More recently, Fernández has encouraged the congress to pass a tax on the country’s biggest fortunes—a response to his political opposition’s calls for government officials to reduce their salaries by 30 percent. The tax, which targets, among others, those who were granted immunity by the prior administration for hiding their wealth overseas, signals the president’s desire to fundamentally reorder Argentinian society as much as it aims to ameliorate the worst economic effects of the crisis. Fernández grasps what many of his counterparts on the world stage have not: that our fates are intrinsically bound together, and that the historical epoch we’ve been thrust into demands a new social contract.
“For many years, Argentinians have been led to believe that politicians and union leaders were the source of all their problems,” the president mused in late March. “The real problem is those who believe that there are too many people, that this [isn’t] a country where we all have a place…. After the pandemic, everything will be different. We’ll live in another world. I believe that ours is a time of reflection, in which we can recover something that postmodernity has robbed of us.”
“Postmodernity has led us to believe that individualism was the secret and that success meant earning money,” he continued. “[We’ve seen] a microscopic bug lay waste to vast fortunes and destroy accumulated wealth. Microscopic. This same bug can kill [the rich] as easily as it can kill any one of us. What was the purpose then of accumulating so much?”
This piece has been updated to reflect when Argentina’s shelter-in-place order was enacted.


thenation--2020-04-17--Stuart Gordon’s Alternative Avant-Garde

Stuart Gordon’s Alternative Avant-Garde

I have twice reviewed films directed by Stuart Gordon—his adaptation of David Mamet ’ s play Edmond in 2006 and his gruesome fable about airheaded self-involvement and the will to survive , Stuck , in 2008—taking care to disclose that the filmmaker was a friend .
This was fair notice but also a considerable understatement .
Along with the other , far more prominent brothers , sisters , and whatevers of Chicago ’ s Organic Theater Company , I used to call Stuart not just a friend but Fearless Leader , in three-quarters jest .
This was in the 1970s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ got his hands on movie equipment , as he ’ d always wanted to , and made himself internationally famous with Re-Animator , the surpassingly grotesque , gory , and hilarious H.P .
Lovecraft adaptation he devised with his old friend ( and proto–Organic Theater conspirator ) Dennis Paoli and William J. Norris .
Given this information , you will not be surprised that I learned from Stuart how to make stage blood .
( The best formula : McCormick red food dye titrated into Wisk laundry detergent , which imparts a lurid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enables you to wash the costume in a sink between shows . )
I learned a lot more as well ; so much , in fact , that Stuart has loomed unseen over this film column since the day I began writing it .
When I found out on the morning of March 25 that he had died—not of Covid-19 but heartbreakingly isolated from his family and friends because of the pandemic—the light of the present dimmed ( not that it ’ s bright to begin with , here in my social-distancing quarters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Which is where I see a lot of us now spending our time .
Despite many journalistic speculations about how life will change after Covid-19 , in everything from the conduct of elections to the stuff you run into at art galleries , these visions of the future are all bluff and guesswork .
Nobody knows anything quantifiable—how long the pandemic will last , the eventual death toll , the magnitude of the economic damage , the time that recovery will take—let alone such phantoms as qualitative outcomes .
As I write @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when theaters will reopen or which film titles might be current as you read this , if you ’ re among the people with access to streaming services .
I do know that fresh streaming releases will be ongoing , with films originally planned for the theaters and those meant from the start for the likes of Netflix or Amazon .
But to judge from the preponderance of articles in newspapers and magazines , as well as the personal comments that reach me , people for the moment are less interested in cinematic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in movies from the past .
In this , too , Stuart remains my teacher .
In many ways a traditionalist , more friendly toward 1950s Warner Bros. and comic book illustrations than to the formal conundrums he encountered in 1970s art houses and art museums , he would have been perfectly happy to see people enjoying the oldies—but despite his well-earned reputation as a genre-loving fantasist , I think he would have loathed any sign that people were using films to retreat from the world rather than engage with it .
My @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who emerged with me from a preview screening of Stuck .
Eyes glittering and voice throbbing with joy , he cried , “ Stuart Gordon makes the violence so real !
” And that , in my experience of his combined ethics and aesthetics , was always the point .
Stuart loved his actors when they threw themselves breakneck into their roles , not simply because he wanted to goose the audience ( though his taste did run toward big effects , as suggested by the title he was contemplating for his memoirs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he thought people ought to feel that something was truly at stake in every moment .
He hated nothing more in a show or a movie than to see actors expertly shuck and jive instead of caring intensely about the situation they were in , even if it was a mental duel between Lord Cumulus , Avenger of the Universe , and Chaos , Prince of Madness .
When Stuart added a section of audience engagement to one of his shows , the actors had damned well better be in people ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ miming their way through the house .
When he watched other people ’ s work , he would be scathing—in a genial , belly-laughing way—whenever a director blithely skated past an inconvenience of plot or character rather than work it through on the grounds of the premise .
As with Stuart ’ s notions of how plays and films ought to be directed , so , too , with his sense of show business economics .
He accepted grants for the Organic Theater when he could get them , but having begun his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ warmongers , censors , bigots , self-promoting local officials , violently repressive police , and any authorities who thought there was something wrong with running around naked , he distrusted government and foundation money .
It could vanish easily , and if you depended on it too much , you were probably paying too little attention to the people who should have been persuaded to support your work : the audience .
How honest were your defiant gestures—how real—if you expected an arts council to fund them ?
Stuart preferred to safeguard the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an old mom-and-pop business , with his wife and perennial star , Carolyn Purdy-Gordon , sharing the risks and responsibilities .
Ma and Pa Gordon ’ s attitude could hardly have been more different from the trends that had been taking hold in the East Coast avant-garde .
By the mid- to late 1970s , the nickel-and-dime , grassroots experimenters of the previous decade ’ s theater and film had begun to codify themselves into a semi-academic , grant-seeking , proudly anti-commercial circle , validated principally by themselves , their own press corps @ @ @ @ @ @ @ curators .
I know I ’ m painting with too broad a brush , and I ’ m sure the scene didn ’ t feel so insular from within , but viewed from the shores of Lake Michigan , much of the work being done then in New York was notable for its combination of communal self-approval and condescending irony .
Conventions and themes familiar to a general audience were good only for being tossed into one of several versions of a cerebral yet inexplicable postmodern mélange , where they could be mocked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into gibberish .
The goal , as often as not , was admirably political , but the method amounted to an attempt to knock down existing power relations by semaphore , thanks to the breeze of your flailing arms .
There was rarely any contact , just a shadowboxing battle royale among images and ideas , in which nothing was expected to be authentic except the status that the artists claimed for themselves .
By 1985 , when Re-Animator staggered horribly into the world , this academic avant-garde lay helpless before Ronald Reagan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ triumphed with him .
( For the full story of this dual ascension , see J. Hoberman ’ s Make My Day : Movie Culture in the Age of Reagan . )
It was possible in this context for critics to receive Re-Animator with excitement but also difficult for many to see that Stuart , too , was practicing avant-garde filmmaking , though of a different kind .
His cinema was as opposed to Rambo : First Blood Part II as anything you could see at the Collective for Living Cinema or Millennium @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to anyone with a strong stomach and a sense of humor .
The path of least resistance , though , was to type Stuart as a happy , irresponsible schlockmeister , serving up thrills to a niche audience .
The possibility that he had something to say and meant it sincerely didn ’ t much come into the conversation .
To be fair , people whose most important agenda was to break the death grip of patriarchy could be forgiven for thinking of Stuart ’ s work as rearguard rather than avant-garde .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the dominant culture in terms it could understand , he risked keeping dominant terms in place and might have expected people to call him on it .
But when works of art touch on reality—real emotions , convictions , and sensations , along with elaborations of premises as if they were solid and whole , if gonzo—you might give artists some credit for being right-acting , even if they ’ re not explicitly right-thinking .
Besides , what was so wrong-thinking in Re-Animator ?
It was a story about arrogance masquerading as benevolence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the gradual acquiescence of a well-intentioned , normatively thoughtless man in hideous crimes .
Do you want to tell me that theme isn ’ t real ?
Much has been said over the past weeks about the prescience of Steven Soderbergh and Scott Z. Burns ’ s 2011 Contagion , and with good reason .
With Re-Animator in mind , though , I prefer to think about the Covid-19 movie that Stuart Gordon might have made , set in hospital corridors awash in body parts and bodily fluids , in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is definitely under control , and in a corporate laboratory where someone is just sure of a lucrative solution .
Much of it would be hilarious , except for the part that wasn ’ t .
As Stuart said after Re-Animator was released , “ Violence should horrify .
If it doesn ’ t , there ’ s something wrong with it .
It should not be seductive.
” Can I think of any recent movies in which something ’ s wrong ?
Easily .
Take Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ admired for using genre tropes ( sci-fi , western , psychedelic splatterfest ) for ostensibly political ends .
Give Bacurau a chance .
Watch it on a streaming service for its tale of rural Brazilians fighting back against an invasion of extortionate , murderous creeps from the Northern Hemisphere .
Then ask yourself if the filmmakers ’ attitude toward the country people is any better than paternalistic sentimentality ; if genre mimicry should excuse a jolting , clunky visual style ; and above all , if the film ’ s violence horrifies .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s New York Film Festival , I was appalled to hear the hall rock with cheers for each new butchery .
Dornelles and Mendonça Filho gestured toward any number of actual social and political evils , but they clearly did not make the violence real to their audience Something similar might be said of Craig Zobel ’ s recent US release The Hunt , which resembles Bacurau in a way that ought to unnerve the latter ’ s fans .
Both have plots that involve murder for sport , with the predators @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elitists and the prey red-state MAGA types .
Well , bitter political animosities do divide the country , and Zobel ( whose Great World of Sound is more deserving of your attention ) has certainly pointed toward them .
But his translation of this societal rift into a shoot- ’ em-up means what , exactly ?
Nobody can say , except that he ’ s put himself into the marketing category of “ controversial.
” The substance of his characters ’ lives , the motives of their beliefs , melt away in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
So it goes , too , with Dornelles and Mendonça Filho .
They send out a semaphore of political struggle but deliver pornography .
I shelter in isolation and brood too much on the past—as perhaps you do , these days—and long to encounter other people once more in a common space .
Movies can ’ t spring us from this viral predicament , but now and at all times , the good ones can answer that need for connection .
Even though they ’ re just light , shadow , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ form of human encounter , in an equivalent of shared space , but only if the artists behind them desire it .
That , too , is something I learned from Stuart Gordon .
Because of him , I can never be satisfied with a movie merely because it signals a message I agree with .
I need it to be made in such a way that I imagine someone bent over a sink , squeezing the last drops of food dye out of the costumes .
He made the love so real @

I have twice reviewed films directed by Stuart Gordon—his adaptation of David Mamet’s play Edmond in 2006 and his gruesome fable about airheaded self-involvement and the will to survive, Stuck, in 2008—taking care to disclose that the filmmaker was a friend. This was fair notice but also a considerable understatement. Along with the other, far more prominent brothers, sisters, and whatevers of Chicago’s Organic Theater Company, I used to call Stuart not just a friend but Fearless Leader, in three-quarters jest. This was in the 1970s and early ’80s, before he got his hands on movie equipment, as he’d always wanted to, and made himself internationally famous with Re-Animator, the surpassingly grotesque, gory, and hilarious H.P. Lovecraft adaptation he devised with his old friend (and proto–Organic Theater conspirator) Dennis Paoli and William J. Norris. Given this information, you will not be surprised that I learned from Stuart how to make stage blood. (The best formula: McCormick red food dye titrated into Wisk laundry detergent, which imparts a lurid, purplish hue to the mixture and enables you to wash the costume in a sink between shows.) I learned a lot more as well; so much, in fact, that Stuart has loomed unseen over this film column since the day I began writing it. When I found out on the morning of March 25 that he had died—not of Covid-19 but heartbreakingly isolated from his family and friends because of the pandemic—the light of the present dimmed (not that it’s bright to begin with, here in my social-distancing quarters) as I spiraled into the past.
Which is where I see a lot of us now spending our time. Despite many journalistic speculations about how life will change after Covid-19, in everything from the conduct of elections to the stuff you run into at art galleries, these visions of the future are all bluff and guesswork. Nobody knows anything quantifiable—how long the pandemic will last, the eventual death toll, the magnitude of the economic damage, the time that recovery will take—let alone such phantoms as qualitative outcomes. As I write, I don’t even know when theaters will reopen or which film titles might be current as you read this, if you’re among the people with access to streaming services. I do know that fresh streaming releases will be ongoing, with films originally planned for the theaters and those meant from the start for the likes of Netflix or Amazon. But to judge from the preponderance of articles in newspapers and magazines, as well as the personal comments that reach me, people for the moment are less interested in cinematic novelty than in finding comfort or distraction in movies from the past.
In this, too, Stuart remains my teacher. In many ways a traditionalist, more friendly toward 1950s Warner Bros. and comic book illustrations than to the formal conundrums he encountered in 1970s art houses and art museums, he would have been perfectly happy to see people enjoying the oldies—but despite his well-earned reputation as a genre-loving fantasist, I think he would have loathed any sign that people were using films to retreat from the world rather than engage with it. My thoughts go back to a fanzine writer who emerged with me from a preview screening of Stuck. Eyes glittering and voice throbbing with joy, he cried, “Stuart Gordon makes the violence so real!” And that, in my experience of his combined ethics and aesthetics, was always the point.
Stuart loved his actors when they threw themselves breakneck into their roles, not simply because he wanted to goose the audience (though his taste did run toward big effects, as suggested by the title he was contemplating for his memoirs, More Is More) but because he thought people ought to feel that something was truly at stake in every moment. He hated nothing more in a show or a movie than to see actors expertly shuck and jive instead of caring intensely about the situation they were in, even if it was a mental duel between Lord Cumulus, Avenger of the Universe, and Chaos, Prince of Madness. When Stuart added a section of audience engagement to one of his shows, the actors had damned well better be in people’s faces, forcing an interaction and not miming their way through the house. When he watched other people’s work, he would be scathing—in a genial, belly-laughing way—whenever a director blithely skated past an inconvenience of plot or character rather than work it through on the grounds of the premise. 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
As with Stuart’s notions of how plays and films ought to be directed, so, too, with his sense of show business economics. He accepted grants for the Organic Theater when he could get them, but having begun his career at the University of Wisconsin baiting warmongers, censors, bigots, self-promoting local officials, violently repressive police, and any authorities who thought there was something wrong with running around naked, he distrusted government and foundation money. It could vanish easily, and if you depended on it too much, you were probably paying too little attention to the people who should have been persuaded to support your work: the audience. How honest were your defiant gestures—how real—if you expected an arts council to fund them? Stuart preferred to safeguard the work by running the Organic Theater like an old mom-and-pop business, with his wife and perennial star, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, sharing the risks and responsibilities.
Ma and Pa Gordon’s attitude could hardly have been more different from the trends that had been taking hold in the East Coast avant-garde. By the mid- to late 1970s, the nickel-and-dime, grassroots experimenters of the previous decade’s theater and film had begun to codify themselves into a semi-academic, grant-seeking, proudly anti-commercial circle, validated principally by themselves, their own press corps, and a growing team of institutional curators. I know I’m painting with too broad a brush, and I’m sure the scene didn’t feel so insular from within, but viewed from the shores of Lake Michigan, much of the work being done then in New York was notable for its combination of communal self-approval and condescending irony. Conventions and themes familiar to a general audience were good only for being tossed into one of several versions of a cerebral yet inexplicable postmodern mélange, where they could be mocked, “interrogated,” and turned into gibberish. The goal, as often as not, was admirably political, but the method amounted to an attempt to knock down existing power relations by semaphore, thanks to the breeze of your flailing arms. There was rarely any contact, just a shadowboxing battle royale among images and ideas, in which nothing was expected to be authentic except the status that the artists claimed for themselves.
By 1985, when Re-Animator staggered horribly into the world, this academic avant-garde lay helpless before Ronald Reagan and the resurgent Hollywood crudity that had triumphed with him. (For the full story of this dual ascension, see J. Hoberman’s Make My Day: Movie Culture in the Age of Reagan.) It was possible in this context for critics to receive Re-Animator with excitement but also difficult for many to see that Stuart, too, was practicing avant-garde filmmaking, though of a different kind. His cinema was as opposed to Rambo: First Blood Part II as anything you could see at the Collective for Living Cinema or Millennium Film Workshop and yet was immediately accessible to anyone with a strong stomach and a sense of humor. The path of least resistance, though, was to type Stuart as a happy, irresponsible schlockmeister, serving up thrills to a niche audience. The possibility that he had something to say and meant it sincerely didn’t much come into the conversation. Current Issue View our current issue
To be fair, people whose most important agenda was to break the death grip of patriarchy could be forgiven for thinking of Stuart’s work as rearguard rather than avant-garde. As an artist talking to and about the dominant culture in terms it could understand, he risked keeping dominant terms in place and might have expected people to call him on it. But when works of art touch on reality—real emotions, convictions, and sensations, along with elaborations of premises as if they were solid and whole, if gonzo—you might give artists some credit for being right-acting, even if they’re not explicitly right-thinking. Besides, what was so wrong-thinking in Re-Animator? It was a story about arrogance masquerading as benevolence, madness as a search for truth, and the gradual acquiescence of a well-intentioned, normatively thoughtless man in hideous crimes. Do you want to tell me that theme isn’t real?
Much has been said over the past weeks about the prescience of Steven Soderbergh and Scott Z. Burns’s 2011 Contagion, and with good reason. With Re-Animator in mind, though, I prefer to think about the Covid-19 movie that Stuart Gordon might have made, set in hospital corridors awash in body parts and bodily fluids, in the White House conference rooms where the situation is definitely under control, and in a corporate laboratory where someone is just sure of a lucrative solution. Much of it would be hilarious, except for the part that wasn’t. As Stuart said after Re-Animator was released, “Violence should horrify. If it doesn’t, there’s something wrong with it. It should not be seductive.”
Can I think of any recent movies in which something’s wrong? Easily. Take Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Bacurau, which has been much admired for using genre tropes (sci-fi, western, psychedelic splatterfest) for ostensibly political ends. Give Bacurau a chance. Watch it on a streaming service for its tale of rural Brazilians fighting back against an invasion of extortionate, murderous creeps from the Northern Hemisphere. Then ask yourself if the filmmakers’ attitude toward the country people is any better than paternalistic sentimentality; if genre mimicry should excuse a jolting, clunky visual style; and above all, if the film’s violence horrifies. When I watched Bacurau at last year’s New York Film Festival, I was appalled to hear the hall rock with cheers for each new butchery. Dornelles and Mendonça Filho gestured toward any number of actual social and political evils, but they clearly did not make the violence real to their audience
Something similar might be said of Craig Zobel’s recent US release The Hunt, which resembles Bacurau in a way that ought to unnerve the latter’s fans. Both have plots that involve murder for sport, with the predators in Zobel’s film being blue-state elitists and the prey red-state MAGA types. Well, bitter political animosities do divide the country, and Zobel (whose Great World of Sound is more deserving of your attention) has certainly pointed toward them. But his translation of this societal rift into a shoot-’em-up means what, exactly? Nobody can say, except that he’s put himself into the marketing category of “controversial.” The substance of his characters’ lives, the motives of their beliefs, melt away in the blood and guts being spilled for fun. So it goes, too, with Dornelles and Mendonça Filho. They send out a semaphore of political struggle but deliver pornography.
I shelter in isolation and brood too much on the past—as perhaps you do, these days—and long to encounter other people once more in a common space. Movies can’t spring us from this viral predicament, but now and at all times, the good ones can answer that need for connection. Even though they’re just light, shadow, and sound, films can lead toward a form of human encounter, in an equivalent of shared space, but only if the artists behind them desire it. That, too, is something I learned from Stuart Gordon. Because of him, I can never be satisfied with a movie merely because it signals a message I agree with. I need it to be made in such a way that I imagine someone bent over a sink, squeezing the last drops of food dye out of the costumes.
He made the love so real.


thenation--2020-04-17--A Brief History of the Cuomo–de Blasio Feud

In early April , the Andrew Cuomo–Bill de Blasio feud—which most recently focused on the funding of the subways—re-emerged in the news .
The long-running cold war , ceaselessly psychoanalyzed by New York political insiders , burst into the open when de Blasio , the mayor of New York City , announced public schools would remain closed through the school year to contain the spread of coronavirus .
Less than three hours after the April 11th proclamation , Cuomo shot it down , calling it a mere “ opinion ” and leaving the possibility open that somehow schools would reopen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t . )
The latest reporting hinged on the fact that by sending a text-message just moments before speaking to reporters , de Blasio didn ’ t give Cuomo , the governor of New York , enough of a waning before making the announcement .
New Yorkers weren ’ t impressed ; can ’ t these two just get along for a pandemic ?
“ Cut the crap , ” tweeted Eric Adams , the Brooklyn borough president .
For the uninitiated , Cuomo and de Blasio have been at odds since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Some of the tension derives from the natural friction between the office of the governor and the office of the mayor .
While occupants of City Hall have typically enjoyed more prestige—Ed Koch , Rudy Giuliani , and Michael Bloomberg were all famous ( and notorious ) on a national level—much of the political power resides in the governor ’ s mansion .
Cuomo Helped Get New York Into This Mess Mayors control a massive municipal budget , but governors have the ability to overrule the mayor on virtually anything .
New York @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the governor and state legislature to raise income taxes , strengthen tenant and criminal justice laws , and change the speed limit on city streets , for example .
Mayors and governors tend to butt heads .
Republicans John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller despised each other .
Democrats Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo were bitter political rivals .
But the bad blood between Cuomo and de Blasio has lifted this grand tradition to new heights .
In part , their differences are political .
Cuomo is a Clintonian centrist who has practiced Third @ @ @ @ @ @ @ left when he ’ s pressured enough to go there .
He ’ s the same governor who champions raising the minimum wage one year while shooting down de Blasio ’ s calls for a higher wage a couple of years before .
Though de Blasio managed Hillary Clinton ’ s 2000 Senate campaign , he ’ s occupied more of the center-left flank , rushing to back Bernie Sanders ’ second presidential bid after offering half-hearted support for Clinton in 2016 .
Cuomo and de Blasio have a relationship that dates back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Housing and Urban Development secretary in the 1990 ’ s , de Blasio was overseeing HUD ’ s New York operation , reporting directly to Cuomo .
In 2002 , de Blasio was one of the few supporters of Cuomo ’ s first—and terribly failed—campaign for governor .
In 2009 , Cuomo ’ s father , the legendary former New York Governor Mario Cuomo , backed de Blasio ’ s campaign for public advocate .
All of this makes Cuomo ’ s hatred of de Blasio , on it face , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down the city ’ s subway system before a snow storm without notifying de Blasio while pretending , for his own political benefit , he didn ’ t control the subways at all .
Cuomo has deployed state troopers to New York City for no real reason .
He forced New York City to pay the rent of privately run , publicly funded charter schools .
He has , at times , only granted the city authority over its school system for a single year .
He has repeatedly belittled de Blasio ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And he has implicitly backed Republicans in the State Senate while de Blasio tried to win a majority for Democrats .
When de Blasio tried to presciently cap the explosive growth of Uber in 2015 , fearing the ride-share vehicles would overwhelm city streets , Cuomo publicly praised Uber and allied with the company behind the scenes , helping to thwart the mayor ’ s plan .
On and off the record , Cuomo relishes in trashing de Blasio in the press .
The media tends to portray the squabbling as both @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t play nice in the New York sandbox .
And it ’ s understandable for outsiders to view the feud this way .
It ’ s not as if de Blasio has been a particularly admirable figure of late ; like Cuomo , he failed to act soon enough to slow the rate of Covid-19 infections in New York , and as late as March 16 , with the virus ravaging his city , de Blasio took in a workout at his local gym .
Cuomo , on his part , has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ driver of almost every clash .
De Blasio won office in 2013 on a promise to tax the rich to fund his universal pre-kindergarten initiative .
The next year , Cuomo refused to levy a tax , promising instead the state would offer funding .
De Blasio , in his first year and attempting to honor a pledge that was the centerpiece of a winning campaign , pushed onward for a tax , insisting dedicated revenue was necessary .
De Blasio ’ s efforts so offended Cuomo that the two could never have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ de Blasio ’ s aggressive support for Cuomo ’ s 2014 reelection bid against progressive Zephyr Teachout—it was de Blasio who almost single-handedly engineered Cuomo ’ s Working Families Party endorsement—meant little .
Cuomo would not forgive another Democrat trying to tell him what to do .
The fight over school closures in 2020 belongs to this genre of terrifying idiocy , except this time the stakes are much higher .
More than 11,000 New York City residents have died from Covid-19 and the state has more confirmed cases than anywhere else on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ schools will reopen anytime soon , and we all know it .
So why is Cuomo bothering to bigfoot de Blasio ?
Is asserting his authority , once again , that crucial ?
The mayor of New York City , through laws passed in the state legislature , controls the city ’ s sprawling school system .
Cuomo can wield his emergency powers , theoretically , to do anything , but there ’ s no point to forcing the mayor to reopen the schools too early during a pandemic .
It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s one New York badly does not need right now .

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Nation believes that helping readers stay informed about the impact of the coronavirus crisis is a form of public service. For that reason, this article, and all of our coronavirus coverage, is now free. Please subscribe to support our writers and staff, and stay healthy.
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In early April, the Andrew Cuomo–Bill de Blasio feud—which most recently focused on the funding of the subways—reemerged in the news. The long-running cold war, ceaselessly psychoanalyzed by New York political insiders, burst into the open when de Blasio, the mayor of New York City, announced that public schools would remain closed through the school year to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Less than three hours after the April 11 proclamation, Cuomo shot it down, calling it a mere “opinion” and leaving the possibility open that somehow schools would reopen before June. (They probably won’t.)
The latest reporting hinged on the fact that by sending a text message just moments before speaking to reporters, de Blasio didn’t give Cuomo, the governor of New York, enough of a warning before making the announcement. New Yorkers weren’t impressed; can’t these two just get along for a pandemic? “Cut the crap,” tweeted Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president.
For the uninitiated, Cuomo and de Blasio have been at odds since the mayor took office in 2014. Some of the tension derives from the natural friction between the office of the governor and the office of the mayor. While occupants of City Hall have typically enjoyed more prestige—Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani, and Michael Bloomberg were all famous (and notorious) on a national level—much of the political power resides in the governor’s mansion. Related Article Cuomo Helped Get New York Into This Mess Ross Barkan
Mayors control a massive municipal budget, but governors have the ability to overrule the mayor on virtually anything. New York City mayors need to seek permission from the governor and state legislature to raise income taxes, strengthen tenant and criminal justice laws, and change the speed limit on city streets, for example.
Mayors and governors tend to butt heads. Republicans John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller despised each other. Democrats Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo were bitter political rivals. But the bad blood between Cuomo and de Blasio has lifted this grand tradition to new heights.
In part, their differences are political. Cuomo is a Clintonian centrist who has practiced Third Way politics for decades, only pivoting left when he’s pressured enough to go there. He’s the same governor who champions raising the minimum wage one year while shooting down de Blasio’s calls for a higher wage a couple of years before. Though de Blasio managed Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, he’s occupied more of the center-left flank, rushing to back Bernie Sanders’s second presidential bid after offering half-hearted support for Clinton in 2016. 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
Cuomo and de Blasio have a relationship that dates back decades. When Cuomo was Bill Clinton’s Housing and Urban Development secretary in the 1990s, de Blasio was overseeing HUD’s New York operation, reporting directly to Cuomo. In 2002, de Blasio was one of the few supporters of Cuomo’s first—and terribly failed—campaign for governor. In 2009, Cuomo’s father, the legendary former New York governor Mario Cuomo, backed de Blasio’s campaign for public advocate.
All of this makes Cuomo’s hatred of de Blasio, on it face, nonsensical. Cuomo once decided to shut down the city’s subway system before a snow storm without notifying de Blasio, while pretending, for his own political benefit, that he didn’t control the subways at all. Cuomo has deployed state troopers to New York City for no real reason. He forced New York City to pay the rent of privately run, publicly funded charter schools. He has, at times, only granted the city authority over its school system for a single year. He has repeatedly belittled de Blasio’s calls for new taxes on millionaires. And he has implicitly backed Republicans in the State Senate while de Blasio tried to win a majority for Democrats.
When de Blasio tried to presciently cap the explosive growth of Uber in 2015, fearing the ride-share vehicles would overwhelm city streets, Cuomo publicly praised Uber and allied with the company behind the scenes, helping to thwart the mayor’s plan. On and off the record, Cuomo relishes in trashing de Blasio in the press.
The media tends to portray the squabbling as both immature and symmetrical—two egotistical men who can’t play nice in the New York sandbox. And it’s understandable for outsiders to view the feud this way. It’s not as if de Blasio has been a particularly admirable figure of late; like Cuomo, he failed to act soon enough to slow the rate of Covid-19 infections in New York, and as late as March 16, with the virus ravaging his city, de Blasio took in a workout at his local gym.
Cuomo, on his part, has been a tireless antagonist, a chief driver of almost every clash. De Blasio won office in 2013 on a promise to tax the rich to fund his universal pre-kindergarten initiative. The next year, Cuomo refused to levy a tax, promising instead the state would offer funding. De Blasio, in his first year and attempting to honor a pledge that was the centerpiece of a winning campaign, pushed onward for a tax, insisting dedicated revenue was necessary. De Blasio’s efforts so offended Cuomo that the two could never have a functional working relationship again. Even de Blasio’s aggressive support for Cuomo’s 2014 reelection bid against progressive Zephyr Teachout—it was de Blasio who almost single-handedly engineered Cuomo’s Working Families Party endorsement—meant little. Cuomo would not forgive another Democrat for trying to tell him what to do.
The fight over school closures in 2020 belongs to this genre of terrifying idiocy, except this time the stakes are much higher. More than 11,000 New York City residents have died from Covid-19 and the state has more confirmed cases than anywhere else on Earth. There’s no way schools will reopen anytime soon, and we all know it. So why is Cuomo bothering to bigfoot de Blasio?
Is asserting his authority, once again, that crucial? The mayor of New York City, through laws passed in the state legislature, controls the city’s sprawling school system. Cuomo can wield his emergency powers, theoretically, to do anything, but there’s no point to forcing the mayor to reopen the schools too early during a pandemic. It’s another Cuomo posture. And it’s one New York badly does not need right now.


thenation--2020-04-17--We Can’t Save the Economy Without Universal Child Care

I ’ ve worked from home for seven years , but my workday is now punctuated by new sounds : the clamor of little feet and loud voices as my young upstairs neighbors learn from home .
Every state has closed schools in response to the coronavirus outbreak ; some are not resuming the academic year .
That has sent at least 55.1 million students home .
But many parents have come to count on school as a form of child care while they go to their jobs .
Both parents work in nearly two-thirds of married couples with children @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about three-quarters of single mothers and 84 percent of single fathers do .
That ’ s 22.6 million families that now have nowhere to send their children .
If parents are lucky enough to have a job that lets them work from home , they ’ re doing so with children , who need a watchful eye and , if possible , something enriching to do .
Things are even harder for anyone who still has to leave the house to go to work .
Those people are now scrambling to find backup @ @ @ @ @ @ @ safe .
We don ’ t normally think of public school as child care , but schools are generally a safe place for children when their parents go to work .
We have lots of evidence that offering something similar for children at younger ages would allow even more people to be employed .
And now we ’ re witnessing the terrifying opposite : what happens to parents—and the economy—when free , accessible , quality child care is yanked away .
One of the older examples of the economic benefits of offering inexpensive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Canada .
After the province of Quebec instituted a universal child care program in 1997 , its share of working women ages 26 to 44 reached close to 85 percent , the highest in the world .
The increased number of women in the workforce elevated tax revenues so much that the program essentially pays for itself now .
The Coronavirus Strike Wave Could Shift Power to Workers—for Good As Low-Income Workers Lose Hours and Jobs , Pressure Mounts to Halt Evictions The Weinstein Verdict Means Everything Is Different—and Nothing Is Here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , has been working toward something similar .
In 2009 the city started offering free , universal preschool , which is now available for kids ages 3 to 4 .
The program increased the labor force participation rate for women with young children by 10 percentage points .
You can dig back into US history to see a similar impact .
During World War II , the federal government ran universal , low-cost child care for the Rosies going into factories as riveters .
Where it was available , women were more likely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But that program ended when the war did , and the US hasn ’ t had universal child care since .
We know our economy is suffering for it .
The labor force participation rate for women in the US has fallen behind that of other developed countries , thanks , in part , to our lack of investment in early care .
In 2016 alone , nearly 2 million parents with children age 5 or younger quit their jobs , turned down offers , or significantly changed their work arrangements because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The burden falls hardest on women , who are still expected to be the primary caregivers .
Mothers who can ’ t find child care are significantly less likely to be employed than those who can .
Tens of millions of parents of older children whose schools have closed have now joined their ranks .
Their options are bleak .
Since older people are at higher risk of complications from Covid-19 , grandparents can ’ t help .
If child care centers are open , they ’ re likely to be serving only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to continue to work and care for their children at the same time—an arrangement that has health experts predicting a spike in pediatric injuries , given that there ’ s only so much attention a person has to split between work and child care .
It ’ s unclear how long our political and business leaders can keep pretending that everything is normal and that parents can work as they did before without anyone else to watch their kids .
Eventually , the crisis will pass , and schools will reopen .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t forget this painful lesson : A smoothly functioning economy is one in which people who want to work can do so .
Affordable and accessible child care plays an enormous role in making that a reality .
It ’ s just as true for infants and toddlers as it is for middle and high schoolers .
Just as we ’ ve made public school available to all , we should make free , high-quality care for children age 5 or younger available to all parents , too .

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Nation believes that helping readers stay informed about the impact of the coronavirus crisis is a form of public service. For that reason, this article, and all of our coronavirus coverage, is now free. Please subscribe to support our writers and staff, and stay healthy.
This article appears in the May 4/11, 2020 issue.
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
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Thank you for signing up for The Nation’s weekly newsletter.
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I’ve worked from home for seven years, but my workday is now punctuated by new sounds: the clamor of little feet and loud voices as my young upstairs neighbors learn from home.
Every state has closed schools in response to the coronavirus outbreak; some are not resuming the academic year. That has sent at least 55.1 million students home. But many parents have come to count on school as a form of child care while they go to their jobs. Both parents work in nearly two-thirds of married couples with children under the age of 18, and about three-quarters of single mothers and 84 percent of single fathers do. That’s 22.6 million families that now have nowhere to send their children.
If parents are lucky enough to have a job that lets them work from home, they’re doing so with children, who need a watchful eye and, if possible, something enriching to do. Things are even harder for anyone who still has to leave the house to go to work. Those people are now scrambling to find backup child care arrangements to keep their kids safe.
We don’t normally think of public school as child care, but schools are generally a safe place for children when their parents go to work. We have lots of evidence that offering something similar for children at younger ages would allow even more people to be employed. And now we’re witnessing the terrifying opposite: what happens to parents—and the economy—when free, accessible, quality child care is yanked away.
One of the older examples of the economic benefits of offering inexpensive, universal care for young children comes from Canada. After the province of Quebec instituted a universal child care program in 1997, its share of working women ages 26 to 44 reached close to 85 percent, the highest in the world. The increased number of women in the workforce elevated tax revenues so much that the program essentially pays for itself now. More From Bryce Covert The New Law to Protect Pregnant Workers Is Already Changing Lives August 14, 2023 Finally, the Biden Administration Will Offer Some Relief for Childcare Costs July 11, 2023 One of #MeToo’s Biggest Wins Is About to Be Tested in Court June 13, 2023
Here in the US, Washington, DC, has been working toward something similar. In 2009 the city started offering free, universal preschool, which is now available for kids ages 3 to 4. The program increased the labor force participation rate for women with young children by 10 percentage points. You can dig back into US history to see a similar impact. During World War II, the federal government ran universal, low-cost child care for the Rosies going into factories as riveters. Where it was available, women were more likely to work and to work longer hours.
But that program ended when the war did, and the US hasn’t had universal child care since. We know our economy is suffering for it. The labor force participation rate for women in the US has fallen behind that of other developed countries, thanks, in part, to our lack of investment in early care. In 2016 alone, nearly 2 million parents with children age 5 or younger quit their jobs, turned down offers, or significantly changed their work arrangements because they had problems getting child care. The burden falls hardest on women, who are still expected to be the primary caregivers. Mothers who can’t find child care are significantly less likely to be employed than those who can.
Tens of millions of parents of older children whose schools have closed have now joined their ranks. Their options are bleak. Since older people are at higher risk of complications from Covid-19, grandparents can’t help. If child care centers are open, they’re likely to be serving only essential workers. Many parents are trying to continue to work and care for their children at the same time—an arrangement that has health experts predicting a spike in pediatric injuries, given that there’s only so much attention a person has to split between work and child care. It’s unclear how long our political and business leaders can keep pretending that everything is normal and that parents can work as they did before without anyone else to watch their kids.
Eventually, the crisis will pass, and schools will reopen. But when they do, we shouldn’t forget this painful lesson: A smoothly functioning economy is one in which people who want to work can do so. Affordable and accessible child care plays an enormous role in making that a reality. It’s just as true for infants and toddlers as it is for middle and high schoolers. Just as we’ve made public school available to all, we should make free, high-quality care for children age 5 or younger available to all parents, too.