Sep 24, 2024
A decade after “The Case for Reparations,” he is ready to take on Israel, Palestine, and the American media.
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A decade after “The Case for Reparations,” he is ready to take on Israel, Palestine, and the American media.
Voter Apathy -- Part II (A Reprisal from 2018)
Yesterday morning I reprised Part I of a three-part post I wrote in 2018 about voter apathy. Now, you might think that I should write a new one, rather than reprise one from six years ago, but as I read over it to refresh my memory, I find that these posts are every bit as relevant today as they were in 2018. Today’s is less critical than Part I, more of an assessment of who is more likely to…
Voter Apathy -- Part I (A Reprisal From 2018)
In 2018, I wrote a three-part series on voter apathy, people failing to do their civic duty. Voting is a right … and one that we should safeguard, for it would be all too easy to lose it … but it is also a responsibility! If you live in this nation, you pay taxes in this nation, then you have a duty to educate yourself on the candidates and the issues, and vote your conscience for the…
“As the time came closer, I began to apprehend an uncomfortable truth. The actual medical mystery wasn’t about anything inside me. It was whether the tests were going to point to some far side of this where I got my life back.”
—Tom Socca, “My Unravelling”
Free speech is a public utility, not a guarantee of justice. It’s time for the left to stop expecting it to serve its values.
This is a very good article. Debates about free speech have recently been raised to me by a colleague, seemingly with the idea people should be able to say whatever they want without consequences. He's used this idea to suggest hateful people are unjustly excluded from public forums to which I say GOOD! They should be excluded.
An appreciation of the administration’s response to 10/7.
Jonathan Chait produces a subtle, balanced and impressive summary of Joe Biden's response to the events of 10/7. This week, Fox News reported on remarks by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. The headline, “Jean-Pierre refuses to call anti-Israel protestors ‘extremists’ despite fear among Jewish students,” circulated the news that the Biden administration was refusing to denounce antisemitic extremists bullying American Jews. Around the same time, Ryan Grim, bureau chief of the Intercept, circulated a clip of Jean-Pierre, which he summarized, “The White House just compared ‘anti-Israel protesters’ — the phrase used by the Fox News reporter in his question — to the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville.” Grim’s account went viral, attracting more than 3,000 quote tweets, with comments like “a deeply cynical statement that sounds like an administration in over its head” (Carnegie Endowment scholar Zachary Carter) and “The Israeli govt has imposed a siege on every civilian in Gaza, is mercilessly bombing civilian targets, has already forced the displacement of over a million people, has massacred thousands of innocents. To the White House those who oppose these war crimes are akin to nazis.” (Krystal Ball, host of Breaking Points.)
Both these breathless reports, with their contradictory findings, came from the same exchange at the same press briefing. The transcript of the exchange is far more banal. In it, Jean-Pierre announces a series of measures combatting antisemitism. As reporters fling a series of questions at her, Jean-Pierre continually retreats to safe talking points denouncing hatred and bias in all its forms.
When asked, “Does President Biden think the anti-Israel protesters in this country are extremists?,” she replied, “What I can say is what — we’ve been very clear about this: When it comes to antisemitism, there is no place. We have to make sure that we speak against it very loud and be — and be very clear about that.” In a sense, Fox News is right that she declined to answer the question. In another sense, Grim is right that she replied to a question about anti-Israel protesters with an answer about antisemitism, implicitly drawing a link between the two. https://nymag.com/.../joe-biden-policy-israel-hamas...
Obviously, Fox News and Grim’s mutually exclusive interpretations can’t both be correct. If you read the full transcript in context, neither interpretation is fair. Jean-Pierre clearly decided to stick to narrow talking points about how bigotry and hatred are unacceptable and kept repeating those bromides as reporters try to pull her into some more newsworthy or interesting positions. Her strenuous effort to avoid controversy brought about the very response she set out to avoid, in a kind of Larry David–esque farce.
ReduxStock: Photo by John Taggart/Redux of the orange haze in NYC seen through a window caused by Canadian wildfires, on New York magazine’s Intelligencer - June 10, 2023.
Despite a bruising midterm, the Democratic boss isn’t going anywhere, to the frustration of critics.
ReduxStock: Photo by Erica Lansner/Redux of Jay Jacobs, the Chair of the NY State Democratic Party, in New York Intelligencer, December 12, 2022.