NBA coach Gregg Popovitch’s commentary on the election got some play but in case you missed it….
Nation
Choosy Beggars (Election 2016)
By Michael Brod, Robert Chametzky, Benj DeMott, Joel DeMott, Ty Geltmaker, Eugene Goodheart, Casey Hayden, George Held, Adam Hochschild, Wesley Hogan, Ben Kessler, Brian Kinstler, Bob Levin, Greil Marcus, Scott McLemee, Dennis Myers (x2), Yasmin Nair, Nathan Osborne, George Scialabba, Budd Shenkin, Fredric Smoler & Alison Stone
Trow, Trump and Truman’s (Imaginary) Pussy Diary
I flashed on George Trow’s exit from The New Yorker when I scrolled through Roseanne Barr’s tweets for Trump. (“If you support HRC who stayed married to a rapist, funded ISIS, robbed starving Haitian children, you deserve xtreme horrors of her globalism”) Back in the day, when Roseanne was a phenomenon not a has-been, Trow resigned in protest from The New Yorker after celeb-mongering Tina Brown had Barr guest-edit an issue of the magazine. At the time, Trow’s gesture seemed locked into a class-bound, liberal artsy terrarium. And there’s a risk of making too much of his elite dudgeon. (I’m not putting him on a pedestal with Tommie Smith and John Carlos!) Looking back, though, Trow’s protest hints at how he was always alive to sketchy alliances that threatened to pollute the American air. As per John Irving:
More than [Trow’s] words, it is his face I remember from Exeter. As I was a slow and struggling student, I used to feel that there was something arrogant or smug in George’s smile; I occasionally felt that George Trow was smirking at me. Now I realize that he was simply more alert and more aware than I was. What I mistook for smirking was instead something prescient in his smile; it was as if the unfathomable powers of precognition were already alive within him.
The satiric movie scenario posted below provides further confirmation of George Trow’s power of precognition.
Joy ‘Round Midnight
A real-time response to MSNBC’s post-debate roundtable.
I’m giving it up to sat-sun morning Joy — who’s so joyous, so exuberant, so happy to bring up every flaw every silliness every cruelty every mistake she can’t contain her pleasure in the trumpy details — even to the point that Chris Mathews chuckling not unappreciatively (coz for all the horribles of CM he likes The Girls and he’s especially fond of Joy) sez, You’re not gonna let go, you’re going in for the kill. That beaming face (she literally cannot stop her delight and laffing) is irresistible. Happy makes happy. Sleep tight.
An Alternate History Lesson on the Clean Left
Underground Airlines by Ben Winters. Little, Brown and Company, 2016.
“To Free a Family” (Distilled)
Underground Airlines‘ alternate history (see First‘s review above) calls to mind Sydney Nathans’ actual history, To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker (2012). That journey began when Mary Walker ran away from bondage, leaving three children behind (along with her mother) after her master announced he planned to send his “impudent” slave to a plantation in Alabama, far removed from her family in North Carolina. Once Mary Walker got settled in the North, she spent years trying to free her family and Nathan provides a gripping chronicle of her efforts. (Struck by the drama of the book and its cast of characters, more than one reader has invoked Dickens.)
Trump and the Media
“Let Trump be Trump his aides has always insisted. And let his convention serve as an unapologetic tribute to his singular, erratic, untamed persona. ‘I want,’ the candidate has often said, ‘to be myself.’” (“In Trump’s Voice, It’s a New Nixon,” Michael Barbaro and Alexander Burns NY Times, July 19.) But who is that myself? If one looks to his political identity in the views that he has expressed over the years, one is baffled by their contradictions, incoherence and vacuous expression, unless, that is, one sees them as symptoms of a mental condition.
Like, A Prayer
“To the victor belong the spoils!” That was Camille Paglia’s reaction, reported in a May Salon article, to what she referred to as “the sexiest picture published in the mainstream media in years”—a photo showing a besuited Donald Trump looming possessively over his seated date at a banquet in the early 90s, his pendulous necktie practically tracing the word “phallus” in the air for the benefit of all easily impressed onlookers. Paglia apparently being one of them, although she wasn’t invited to the banquet—for her, the tie is a “phallic tongue” and Trump resembles “a triumphant dragon,” his “spoils” worthy of Rita Hayworth comparisons.
Gabby Douglas (Fifth Goddess from the Sun)
More than a hand
not pressed obediently to a heart.
More even than my muscled ass
still seated when my teammates soared.
My purple-lipsticked pout
My messy (read “Black”) hair.
My face
honest with disappointment.
Democracy in the Streets
Chauncey DeVega first posted this piecce about a Chicago Black Lives Matter demonstration last month. But his report has gained resonance since the Republican and Democratic Conventions instantiated opposing visions of the American condition.
The Art of Dealing
You and me better spend some time wondering what to choose—“Deal” (Hunter, Garcia)
I once read a bit of one of Trump’s books off a display table in a bookstore. If it was Art of the Deal, I would have been in my mid-twenties. The story I read stuck with me.
Sexual Politics
I don’t know what to make of the Trump thing. I don’t think anybody does—not even Trump. Its agenda is as yet unformed, but the model of a racist strongman is already there. Economic anguish, racial distress, status anxieties, terrorism—all play a part. Some of the anger is real, and some of it is a fantasy projection. Taking this apart will take some time, at which point it may be too late.
But let’s begin with sexual politics, not just because it’s such a powerful force to begin with, but because it’s clearly a motivating factor in this election.
His Blood-stained Hands
In the moments before Donald Trump announced his choice of running mate, Vox’s Ezra Klein told us, reporters found themselves staring at “an empty podium and the Rolling Stones blasting through the speakers.” What was the song chosen for this momentous occasion? “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” The song has been background noise for Trump’s rallies for months, even though the Stones asked the candidate to cease and desist back in February. What is it doing there?
Late for the Sky
The photo below belongs in the DNC’s image bank in Philly. In my dreams, Hillary Clinton’s effort to break the glass ceiling converges with Alfred Yaghobzadeh’s picture of Djila climbing up to a lookout post in the Sinjar region of Iraq where her all-female brigade participated in a successful campaign against ISIS last fall.
Borderline
Donald Trump and his (then) 15 year old daughter, Ivanka. From a 1996 Vanity Fair photo shoot.
What Is Sanders Waiting For?
Sanders entered the Democratic primaries as an outsider presumably with an understanding of the rules. When they worked for him, he didn’t complain; when they didn’t work for him, he cried foul (the system, he claimed was rigged).
A Walk with Bob Moses
It’s not often that people return to the scene of betrayal.