New Yorker magazine alert thread

Peter Hessler's article about his cat Morsi and Cairo expat life was quite enjoyable:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/07/cairo-a-type-of-love-story

well this is a half baked article but the topic is interesting https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-bullshit-job-boom

just read & enjoyed the ben marcus short story a few issues back

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/30/is-don-wagyus-steak-sandwich-worth-the-hundred-and-eighty-dollar-price-tag

"Yesterday, some stockbrokers ordered them for the floor"

and snorted them

Can’t fathom a justification for this. He isn’t in government. He isn’t leading a fringe website anymore. He isn’t interesting. He’s a crank who’s trying (and since Trump, largely failing) to get majority white countries to elect bigots. https://t.co/Qz0NxumU9t

— Radley Balko (@radleybalko) September 3, 2018

they disinvited him, but wtf

https://festival.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Adam-Schiff-DefaultWP.jpg

FRI, OCT. 5 | 10:00 PM | 90 MINUTES
The Borowitz Report Live with Adam Schiff
Andy Borowitz brings his popular column to life onstage. Featuring the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam Schiff.

“popular” my ass

i think andy borowitz should be killed

― miss me belial (crüt), Friday, December 18, 2015

Tough but fair.

A statement from David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, explaining his decision to no longer include Steve Bannon in the 2018 New Yorker Festival. pic.twitter.com/opayiw5GQ2

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) September 3, 2018

hilariously predictable

I call my vagina "New Yorker cartoon" because it's dry and a handful of people have laughed at it

— Megan Amram (@meganamram) October 16, 2016

I am not gonna bother to zoom in to whatever David Remnick wrote in his PJs just now I’m sure it’s not a big deal

it's about what you'd expect. remnick is a very intelligent guy and i like his writing. he is a person who can listen to a viewpoint that is opposite of his own and learn from it. he makes the mistake of thinking that everyone else is like that and failed to see that he was just handing free publicity to a racist creep.

This seems like an attempt to veer into the Aspen Ideas lane that ended in flipping the car.

Remnick's mea culpa is well written but poorly reasoned, since it never really justifies inviting Bannon to be interviewed in the first place. It was allegedly done in a somewhat sneaky manner, without staff or venue or anyone knowing, and the fact that Bannon was announced as a sort of a big surprise headliner shows Remnick at least thought he was some big get. But even objectively speaking I am not sure what wisdom can be gleaned from Bannon gloating at this point.

Remnick at least thought he was some big get.

Aye, he's not wrong la </scouse>

Bannon is a big get like gonorrhea is a big get.

worth remembering that milo was just the other day weeping on facebook about how his being deplatformed everywhere had ruined his life

deplatforming works, folks

keep this gelatinous bag of pickled organs off the national stage

I've a hard time explaining to excellent reporters over, say, forty, why it's not a good idea to give fourth-rate Robert E. Lee-boning grifters like Steve Bannon a means to express themselves. Many of them have a deep attachment to the theory that only by exposing the imbecility of Bannons do you perform a public service. Had Bannon been installed as a university president, I'd say he's worth a story. But he's a nothing now. I have trouble coming up with anything more persuasive than what I just wrote, so if anyone has ideas about confronting colleagues and reporters I'm open. About the only thing I can come up with is, "What will you learn that you haven't already?"

I like the framing I saw on Twitter: had it gone through, Remnick would have been interviewing, but Bannon would have been recruiting. That's the part Remnick doesn't get, and never will.

otm xp

also, will anyone anywhere be moved to change their opinion on bannon after the fearless editor of the New Yorker runs him through with his gleaming sword of FACTS and LOGIC

Giving Bannon a platform to be Bannon will only serve to reinforce people's preexisting feelings about Bannon. Few people will be swayed, but because you run the risk of swaying those swayable people his way, it's best to err on the side of caution.

Also, the argument for giving terrible people as much rope as they want to hang themselves with held much more water when the critical thinking skills of the general public weren't so thoroughly degraded. Like, let's maybe focus our energies on helping people to identify logical fallacies before plopping them down in front of people who pretty much only have a public presence on the basis of having taken regular advantage of that deficiency.

Also, the argument for giving terrible people as much rope as they want to hang themselves with held much more water when the critical thinking skills of the general public weren't so thoroughly degraded

Yeah, this.

The goal should be akin to Errol Morris' "Mr. Death" movie - force a self-obsessed wannabe maestro rife with hubris and cynicism to find refuge with the only people that will pay his thoughts heed, and then let him and his ideas wither in exile.

It's not a great loss, or a loss at all, but I think it's a shame they cancelled, and it could have been an interesting interview. I don't really get the "recruitment" angle. A one-hour interview with Remnick is a piss in the ocean against 24/7 Fox, radio, etc.

OTOH I can understand not wanting to pay Bannon, as Reminck mentioned, if only for travel and accommodation.

it could have been an interesting interview

OK, go ahead and explain what Steve Bannon has to say that's "interesting".

Seeing him being put to account in a more rigourous way than you might seen on TV would be interesting. Indefensible people and subjects can be interesting. That's not the same as "appealing".

I for one would like to know how he so effortlessly pulls off that 'freshly-unearthed corpse' look.

The only "interesting" thing Bannon ever has to offer is that you ignore him and his viewpoint at your political peril, which is right ... except all the times he's massively wrong. He's just another grifter and gambler, albeit one with a gut-churning ethos.

And by that I also mean that I'm sure at any given moment his gut is churning load enough to hear it. Remnick should interview his digestive system. We already know he's full of shit but ... what does it mean?

Seeing him being put to account in a more rigourous way than you might seen on TV would be interesting

possibly, but i dunno if david remnick going 'have you no decency, sir' for an hour would be what you're looking for

I wonder if it's a UK thing. Combative interviews with horrible people are more the norm here.

well, look at cathy newman's jordan peterson interview for a good example of how that can backfire

The goal should be akin to Errol Morris' "Mr. Death" movie - force a self-obsessed wannabe maestro rife with hubris and cynicism to find refuge with the only people that will pay his thoughts heed, and then let him and his ideas wither in exile.

...did you say this knowing, unmentioned, that he's the star of an upcoming Morris documentary? (I'm not convinced it's a good idea, either, and the TIFF program description for it is the opposite of tempting.)

American Dharma, set to premiere Out of Competition at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday, September 4, is an in-depth, often combative 95-minute interview with Bannon, structured around the subject’s favourite films, including Twelve O’clock High, Chimes At Midnight and The Bridge On The Review Kwai.

hm

¿?

The Bridge On The Review Kwai

more details, possibly more typos

https://www.screendaily.com/news/venice-qanda-errol-morris-on-his-steve-bannon-documentary-american-dharma/5132177.article

this is otm really

tbh i think the motivation behind nearly every bannon interview since he's left office has been mostly based on ego/wanting to be the guy who finally nails him, which... is not how the far right works

— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) September 4, 2018

yeah, precisely

Any publicity is good publicity for a POS who's been clinging to the fringes for forever and could die in deserved obscurity if we'd had the good sense to have never acknowledged them in the first place.

xpost I had no idea he was the subject of a Morris doc! I want to hear him hold forth on literally nothing, so ... pass.

I get what Feinberg's saying, but I don't really understand why interviewing is incompatible with "how the far right works", or even what that means

I mean, is it the same as saying "journalism doesn't work any more, forget it"?

That's partly the point I made upthread: a lot of my reporter friends were puzzled about the outrage. The only argument that made headway was when I reminded them that Bannon is hemorrhaging readers and is no longer in the White House.

the trap that a lot of well-meaning people fall into when it comes to debating fascists is assuming that both sides will act in good faith and present their ideas honestly and therefore the fascist will be defeated by facts

that's not how far right discourse works; it's pointless trying to hold them to those standards

the sartre quote about anti-semitism that's been doing the rounds kinda sums it up

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

Man Sartre otm