Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 250

Younger and the Age of Agelessness

The basic premise of Younger, the TV Land dramedy now entering its second season, is this: Liza Miller (Sutton Foster) is a 40-year-old New Jersey housewife who, after her husband cheated on her and gambled away their savings, is in desperate need of a fresh start. Newly divorced (see above), and with her college-aged daughter away on a semester in India, Liza ends up moving in with her friend Maggie (Debi Mazar), an artist, in Brooklyn. She looks for a job in publishing, the industry she loved and thrived in before she had her kid. The problem: In the estimation of 20-something hiring managers, Liza is too old for the entry-level-ish jobs she’s applying for, but too inexperienced for the roles that would traditionally suit someone of her age.

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Prospects for her self-reinvention look pretty dire until Liza happens upon a way out of her catch-22: She’ll pretend to be 26.

Hilarity, and confusion, and many, many lies, ensue. Liza, youth-overed with the help of blond highlights and sassy nail polish and a newly normcored wardrobe, gets a job as an assistant to a Miranda Priestly-esque marketing executive (Miriam Shor) at Manhattan’s Empirical Press. She befriends Kelsey (Hilary Duff), an editor and a rising star at the firm, who takes Liza under her wing. (“We’re gonna be 26-year-old bosses!” Kelsey is fond of enthusing.) She meets a guy—Josh (Nico Tortorella), a tattoo artist—who assumes that she, like he, is in her 20s. Liza doesn’t correct him. They start dating.

So, yes. Pygmalion, pretty much. And also My Fair Lady, only with ‘Enry ‘Iggins’s voice coaching replaced by Maggie’s advice on the proper use of illuminating foundation. And also Cinderella, only with the fantasy in question being not princessery, but that even more sought-after thing: extended youth. And also Pretty Woman, and She’s All That, and Mean Girls, and Clueless, and The Princess Diaries, the small difference being that the makeover in this case concerns the heroine’s age instead of her social standing.

Which is all to say that Younger, a fairy tale fit for basic cable, is a treacly confection of a show: witty but not wise, delightful but not deep. And yet—like its creator Darren Star’s previous exploration of age and sexuality and identity in a tumultuous time, Sex and the City—it offers, almost in spite of itself, deep insights into the culture of the moment. Because, for Liza, and for the age-obsessed universe she inhabits, youth is social standing. And her show, fittingly, presents youth at large as a kind of social class unto itself. Younger treats the typical categories of time’s effect on identity—“20-something,” “middle-aged,” “of a certain age,” etc.—as social situations rather than biological edicts. In Younger’s estimation, age is an outfit that one can don and abandon at will.

Youth, Younger suggests, is not a biological reality—or even a stage of life—so much as it is a state of mind.

With all that, under its chirpy, soap-operatic veneer, Younger makes an argument that manages to be both deeply subversive and broadly reflective of the culture at large: Youth, it suggests, is not a biological reality—or even a stage of life—so much as it is a state of mind. It is a choice. Here is every Oil of Olay ad ever, in the form of a TV Land sitcom. Here is the Aaliyah hypothesis, reinterpreted for a time that is bringing a new fluidity to gender and adulthood and identity itself: Age, socially, ain’t nothing but a number.

Is that posture liberating, or gross? Is Younger taking a brave stand against a culture that so often treats middle-aged women as socially and sexually less-than—or is it, backhandedly, endorsing those unsavory assumptions?

Both, really. Younger, in its way, is part of a long tradition of literature that explores the phenomenon sometimes, by way of the 1929 novel, shorthanded as “passing”: self-camouflage so as to encompass another race or gender or social class than the one someone has been born into. It’s literature that has tended to tap into the deepest anxieties of its respective ages, whether gender (Twelfth Night, Orlando) or social class (Vanity Fair, The Great Gatsby) or race (Black Like Me, The Human Stain). It’s literature, too, that has tended to bring eloquence to its explorations of the broad, interrelated, and often fraught notions that contribute to “identity”: permission and prohibition, biological fact and social construct.

Younger, in that vein, is less concerned about the practical mechanisms of Liza’s deception—her makeover is done and finished in the series’s first episode—than it is with the consequences. What it cares about, deeply, are the permissions that come with her transformation. Can Liza buy her way—via clothes and makeup and hair highlights—into youth? Can she lie herself into a different age?

Take it out a little further, and the question becomes: Can one, in general, choose one’s identity?

Younger is the perfect show for an age that is no longer quite sure what adulthood means, what womanhood means, what growing up means. ​

It’s no accident that TV Land’s ads for Younger’s second season feature the distinctive back beats of Fleetwood Mac’s “Little Lies”; the show repeatedly makes a point of emphasizing the awkward fact that its protagonist is, at her core, deceiving the people she most loves and respects. (“You’re kind of a lunatic, aren’t you?” Josh, the duped boyfriend, asks her early on in the show’s second season.) Liza’s big secret may provide the narrative tension of the show; it also, however, provides the moral tension. Is Liza, wrapped ever-more-tightly in her deceptions as the show goes on, closer to her vague namesake, Eliza Doolittle, or to her fellow bad-breaker, Walter White? Is she a heroine, or an anti-heroine? What matters more—the fact that Liza is faking it, or the fact that she is, in the process, making it?

Younger, for the most part, walks a careful line between empathizing with Liza and judging her. The show makes a point of placing Liza’s lies in context—and not just in that of the show’s thinly fictionalized New York. It’s been compared, in critical reviews of its first season, to other works of fantastical age-switching: Big, 13 Going on 30, Freaky Friday, and their ilk. And the show is, in its way, an instance of time-travel made personal. The maybe-more-apt comparison, though, is to Sex and the City. And to Cougar Town, Sex and the City’s suburbanized follow-up. And to Hot in Cleveland. To shows that concern themselves with the bland truism that youth is wasted on the young, but that also fight back against the argument—made by Hollywood and literature and the job market and the marketing messages of beauty products the world over—that middle age is a synonym for defeat. Shows that counter the various indignities of the culture’s treatment of older women and present them, as Samantha Jones would say, as fabulous. Not in spite of their age, but because of it.  

Younger is airing during an age of deep anxiety about age itself. The show comes at a time that’s given rise to a new phase of life—emerging adulthood—and that’s found many Americans delaying the traditional markers of adulthood: marriage, kids, graduating from a Craigslist-procured couch to an IKEA-bought one. It comes during a time that finds generations collapsing into one another. It comes, too, during a time of technological progress that has allowed the mathematics of age to be disentangled from the appearance of it: If you can afford it, you can get Botox. You can buy La Mer moisturizer. You can Sephora your way into plump, dewy skin—the kind of skin that might let you, as a 40-year-old, pass for 26.

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Younger takes all of these discrete phenomena and distills them down to their essence: It wonders, aloud, what happens to age—that number, that phase, that crucial component of identity—within a culture that is fighting, aggressively, against age’s power. It wonders that, in particular, on behalf of women. This is a time that is reveling in, and negotiating around, the mutability of identity; where does age fit into that? What, actually, does it mean right now to be of a certain age?

Younger doesn’t fully answer those questions. Or, more specifically, it hasn’t yet answered those questions. What is does do, though, is to make a provocative argument: that there is social age, and there is biological age, and those are two separate propositions. It suggests that the Liza who is 40-going-on-26 is somehow a truer version of Liza than the 40-going-on-41. The woman who puts the “lies” in “Liza” is, after all, also the woman who is really, really good at her job. She genuinely likes and respects Kelsey, her co-worker and friend. She has undeniable chemistry with Josh. She may even love him.

Where does that leave everything? Is Liza in the right, or the wrong? Is her relationship with Josh sweet, or icky? What does her biological age mean for her social one?

Which are more questions that Younger leaves unanswered. The show—a little bit My Fair Lady, a little bit Sex and the City, a little bit Breaking Bad—revels in its ambiguities. Which makes it perfectly fit for an age that is no longer quite sure what adulthood means, what womanhood means, what growing up means. Younger is a classic coming-of-age tale; it’s just that the age its star is coming into happens to be, yes, younger than her years.

From Whitewater to Benghazi: A Clinton-Scandal Primer

The mailer demon continues to haunt Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Reports from Fox News, NBC News, and Politico pointed to a new flare-up in the slow-rolling story. Charles McCullough, inspector general of the Intelligence Community, wrote in a letter that the private email server Clinton used to conduct business while secretary of state contained information about “special access programs.” That label applies to a subcategory of sensitive messages more restricted even than top secret.

The State Department and the Intelligence Community had previously tangled over a different pair of emails. The IC argued that the emails were top secret both at the time they were sent and in the present, while the State Department demurred. The dispute led to an FBI investigation. The emails in question in this case are newly unearthed messages, not ones that were previously under discussion.

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In addition, some of Clinton’s emails—which the State Department is currently releasing in batches, per a judge’s orders—have been found to include information that is now marked top secret, but which depending on who you believe was not or possibly was top secret at the time it was sent. Clinton and her aides have consistently maintained that she did not send or receive classified information on the account while secretary. (She says she used a separate system for viewing classified material.) And so far, despite various reports and salvos from the various parties involved, there hasn’t been any clear evidence to contradict that. Yet there are many emails left, and there continue to be reports that suggest there may be more damaging information yet to come—a sword of Damocles hanging over the Clinton campaign, even as the candidate seeks to beat back a strong challenge from Senator Bernie Sanders to win the Democratic nomination.

In an additional twist of irony, the “special access programs” involved appear to be drone strikes, which the U.S. government officially maintains are secret, even though the press reports on them frequently, and White House officials have spoken about them on the record and privately to reporters.

Are you confused yet?

The emails have become a classic Clinton scandal. Her use of a private email account became known during the course of the Benghazi investigation. Thus far, the investigations have found no wrongdoing on her part with respect to the 2012 attacks themselves, but Clinton’s private-email use and concerns about whether she sent classified information have become huge stories unto themselves. This is a pattern with the Clinton family, which has been in the public spotlight since Bill Clinton’s first run for office, in 1974: Something that appears potentially scandalous on its face turns out to be innocuous, but an investigation into it reveals different questionable behavior. The canonical case is Whitewater, a failed real-estate investment Bill and Hillary Clinton made in 1978. While no inquiry ever produced evidence of wrongdoing, investigations ultimately led to President Clinton’s impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice.

With Hillary Clinton leading the field for the Democratic nomination for president, every Clinton scandal—from Whitewater to the State Department emails—will be under the microscope. (No other American politicians—even ones as corrupt as Richard Nixon, or as hated by partisans as George W. Bush—have fostered the creation of a permanent multimillion-dollar cottage industry devoted to attacking them.) Keeping track of each controversy, where it came from, and how serious it is, is no small task, so here’s a primer. We’ll update it as new information emerges.

Clinton’s State Department Emails Secretary of State Hillary Clinton checks her phone on board a plane from Malta to Tripoli, Libya. (Kevin Lamarque / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)

What? Setting aside the question of the Clintons’ private email server, what’s actually in the emails that Clinton did turn over to State? While some of the emails related to Benghazi have been released, there are plenty of others covered by public-records laws that haven’t.

When? 2009-2013

How serious is it? Serious. Initially, it seemed that the interest in the emails would stem from damaging things that Clinton or other aides had said: cover-ups, misrepresentations, who knows? But so far, other than some cringeworthy moments of sucking up and some eye-rolly emails from contacts like Sidney Blumenthal, the emails have been remarkably boring. The main focus now is on classification. We know that some of the material in the emails is now classified. The question is whether any of it, and how much of it, was classified at the time it was sent. Clinton has said she didn’t knowingly send or receive classified material on the account. The State Department and Intelligence Community have disagreed about that. In addition, the Intelligence Community’s inspector general wrote in a January letter that Clinton’s server contained information marked “special access program,” higher even than top secret. Some emails that Clinton didn’t turn over have also since surfaced.

Benghazi A man celebrates as the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi burns on September 11, 2012. (Esam Al-Fetori / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)

What? On September 11, 2012, attackers overran a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Since then, Republicans have charged that Hillary Clinton failed to adequately protect U.S. installations or that she attempted to spin the attacks as spontaneous when she knew they were planned terrorist operations. She testifies for the first time on October 22.

When? September 11, 2012-present

How serious is it? Benghazi has gradually turned into a classic “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup” scenario. Only the fringes argue, at this point, that Clinton deliberately withheld aid. A House committee continues to investigate the killings and aftermath, but Clinton’s marathon appearance before the committee in October was widely considered a win for her. However, it was through the Benghazi investigations that Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server became public—a controversy that remains potent.

Conflicts of Interest in Foggy Bottom Kevin Lamarque / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic

What? Before becoming Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills worked for Clinton on an unpaid basis for four month while also working for New York University, in which capacity she negotiated on the school’s behalf with the government of Abu Dhabi, where it was building a campus. In June 2012, Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin’s status at State changed to “special government employee,” allowing her to also work for Teneo, a consulting firm run by Bill Clinton’s former right-hand man. She also earned money from the Clinton Foundation and was paid directly by Hillary Clinton.

Who? Both Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin are among Clinton’s longest-serving and closest aides. Abedin remains involved in her campaign (and she’s also married to Anthony Weiner).

When? January 2009-February 2013

How serious is it? This is arcane stuff, to be sure. There are questions about conflict of interest—such as whether Teneo clients might have benefited from special treatment by the State Department while Abedin worked for both. To a great extent, this is just an extension of the tangle of conflicts presented by the Clinton Foundation and the many overlapping roles of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The Clintons’ Private Email Server Jim Young / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic

What? During the course of the Benghazi investigation, New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt learned Clinton had used a personal email account while secretary of state. It turned out she had also been using a private server, located at a house in New York. The result was that Clinton and her staff decided which emails to turn over to the State Department as public records and which to withhold; they say they then destroyed the ones they had designated as personal.

When? 2009-2013, during Clinton’s term as secretary.

Who? Hillary Clinton; Bill Clinton; top aides including Huma Abedin

How serious is it? It looks more serious all the time. The rules governing use of personal emails are murky, and Clinton aides insist she followed the rules. There’s no dispositive evidence otherwise so far. The greater political problem for Clinton is it raises questions about how she selected the emails she turned over and what was in the ones she deleted. The FBI has reportedly managed to recover some of the deleted correspondence. Could the server have been hacked? Some of the emails she received on her personal account are marked sensitive. Plus there’s a entirely different set of questions about Clinton’s State Department emails. The FBI is investigating the security of the server as well as the safety of a thumb drive belonging to her lawyer that contains copies of her emails. And the AP reports that the setup may have made the server vulnerable to hacking. Given the shabby state of State Department cybersecurity, she might not have been any better off using the official system.

Sidney Blumenthal Blumenthal takes a lunch break while being deposed in private session of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. (Jonathan Ernst / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)

What? A former journalist, Blumenthal was a top aide in the second term of the Bill Clinton administration and helped on messaging during the bad old days. He served as an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, and when she took over the State Department, she sought to hire Blumenthal. Obama aides, apparently still smarting over his role in attacks on candidate Obama, refused the request, so Clinton just sought out his counsel informally. At the same time, Blumenthal was drawing a check from the Clinton Foundation.

When? 2009-2013

How serious is it? Some of the damage is already done. Blumenthal was apparently the source of the idea that the Benghazi attacks were spontaneous, a notion that proved incorrect and provided a political bludgeon against Clinton and Obama. He also advised the secretary on a wide range of other issues, from Northern Ireland to China, and passed along analysis from his son Max, a staunch critic of the Israeli government (and conservative bête noire). But emails released so far show even Clinton’s top foreign-policy guru, Jake Sullivan, rejecting Blumenthal’s analysis, raising questions about her judgment in trusting him.

The Speeches Keith Bedford / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic

What? Since Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001, both Clintons have made millions of dollars for giving speeches.

When? 2001-present

Who? Hillary Clinton; Bill Clinton; Chelsea Clinton

How serious is it? At one time, this seemed like the most dangerous of the bunch, but it has since gone dormant—which isn’t to say that it’s dead. For the couple, who left the White House up to their ears in legal debt, lucrative speeches—mostly by the former president—proved to be an effective way of rebuilding wealth. They have also been an effective magnet for prying questions. Where did Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton speak? How did they decide how much to charge? What did they say? How did they decide which speeches would be given on behalf of the Clinton Foundation, with fees going to the charity, and which would be treated as personal income? Are there cases of conflicts of interest or quid pro quos—for example, speaking gigs for Bill Clinton on behalf of clients who had business before the State Department?

The Clinton Foundation A brooch for sale at the Clinton Museum Store in Little Rock, Arkansas (Lucy Nicholson / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)

What? Bill Clinton’s foundation was actually established in 1997, but after leaving the White House it became his primary vehicle for … well, everything. With projects ranging from public health to elephant-poaching protection and small-business assistance to child development, the foundation is a huge global player with several prominent offshoots. In 2013, following Hillary Clinton’s departure as secretary of State, it was renamed the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

When? 1997-present

Who? Bill Clinton; Hillary Clinton; Chelsea Clinton, etc.

How serious is it? If the Clinton Foundation’s strength is President Clinton’s endless intellectual omnivorousness, its weakness is the distractibility and lack of interest in detail that sometimes come with it. On a philanthropic level, the foundation gets decent ratings from outside review groups, though critics charge that it’s too diffuse to do much good, that the money has not always achieved what it was intended to, and that in some cases the money doesn’t seem to have achieved its intended purpose. The foundation made errors in its tax returns it has to correct. Overall, however, the essential questions about the Clinton Foundation come down to two, related issues. The first is the seemingly unavoidable conflicts of interest: How did the Clintons’ charitable work intersect with their for-profit speeches? How did their speeches intersect with Hillary Clinton’s work at the State Department? Were there quid-pro-quos involving U.S. policy? The second, connected question is about disclosure. When Clinton became secretary, she agreed that the foundation would make certain disclosures, which it’s now clear it didn’t always do. And the looming questions about Clinton’s State Department emails make it harder to answer those questions.

The Bad Old Days Supporter Dick Furinash holds up cardboard cut-outs of Bill and Hillary Clinton. (Jim Young / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)

What is it? Since the Clintons have a long history of controversies, there are any number of past scandals that continue to float around, especially in conservative media: Whitewater. Troopergate. Paula Jones. Monica Lewinsky. Vince Foster. Juanita Broaddrick.

When? 1975-2001

Who? Bill Clinton; Hillary Clinton; a brigade of supporting characters

How serious is it? The conventional wisdom is that they’re not terribly dangerous. Some are wholly spurious (Foster). Others (Lewinsky, Whitewater) have been so exhaustively investigated it’s hard to imagine them doing much further damage to Hillary Clinton’s standing. In fact, the Lewinsky scandal famously boosted her public approval ratings. But the January 2016 resurfacing of Juanita Broaddrick’s rape allegations offers a test case to see whether the conventional wisdom is truly wise—or just conventional.

Glenn Frey's Glorious '80s

Love them or hate them, many of the songs that Glenn Frey recorded with the Eagles deserve the term “timeless.” “Hotel California” will long haunt pop culture, whether via American Horror Story episodes or on Frank Ocean albums. It’s hard to conceive of a karaoke night where songs like “Tequila Sunrise” aren’t performed. And “Take It Easy” will keep seeping into the consciousness of young people who may have no idea that it helped define the ‘70s; already, the song feels so elemental that it can be strange to think of it as tied to a particular time and place at all.

The above can’t easily be said for Frey’s solo hits in the 1980s, a fact that somehow makes those songs feel more poignant in the wake of Frey’s death Monday at age 67. Frey is usually seen as the leader of the Eagles, and he and Don Henley have said they deserve the bulk of the credit for the band’s hits. But after a famously contentious Long Beach concert in 1980, Frey reportedly initiated, and then savored, their breakup. “After you work at something for nine years, you kind of want to be your own boss,” he told People ​afterwards. He explained in a different interview that he titled his 1982 solo debut No Fun Aloud because “I had a lot of fun doing it, and I wanted people to have a lot of fun listening to it.”

Juxtaposing the Eagles’ late ‘70s hits—say, “Heartache Tonight”—with No Fun Aloud’s first single “The One You Love” feels like time traveling between decades. The syrupy sax, the pillowy electric piano, the steady ballad rhythm, Frey’s supremely tender, unaccompanied performance—whatever this sound is, it isn’t carefree California country-rock of the kind that made the Eagles famous.

No Fun Aloud went gold, but it was a few more years before Frey’s career truly entered a near-iconic second act. The singles “The Heat Is On” (1984) and “You Belong to the City” (1985) both arrived on epochal soundtracks—Beverly Hill Cop and Miami Vice, respectively. The songs are perfect time capsules, defined by lite-jazz sax peals, guitar riffs that are no less pulse-raising for sounding chintzy today, and Frey somehow growling while crooning.

Frey licensed “You Belong to the City” for an extended-length Pepsi commercial that he also starred in, which was neither the first or last time his work annoyed people who believe that rock and capitalism shouldn’t embrace each other too enthusiastically. “If Little Steven and Neil Young don't like me doing Pepsi commercials, I trade insults at 40 paces,” Frey said in his defense in 1988, according to a fan site. “When has integrity ever been synonymous with rock 'n' roll?” The statement might sound extraordinarily mercenary, but it was also refreshingly honest coming from from a hitmaker. Cameron Crowe’s 1975 Rolling Stone cover story on the Eagles featured lots of quotes from Frey and Henley about carefully planning their career and contriving ways to remain relevant; rather than later back away from those statements, the pair remained loud and proud about the fact that their high ambition was matched by their own abilities.

Frey’s second album, 1984’s The Allnighter, produced another successful single that’s become a trademark of its era: “Smuggler’s Blues,” which inspired an episode of Miami Vice that Frey also starred in.

That show has become a surprisingly important musical touchstone in the new millennium. When people today say a song sounds like Miami Vice, they’re in part noting how it sounds like Frey’s ‘80s work. Taylor Swift’s 1989 bears the marks of someone who rifled through his solo hits; so does M83’s “Midnight City,” the music from lots of artists in the indie “chillwave” movement that crested a couple years back, and of course, the beloved Grand Theft Auto: Vice City soundtrack. If this particular era’s music isn’t timeless per se, it’s in part because of dated studio tricks—gated drums, now-obsolete keyboards, saxophone used in ways seemingly scientifically engineered to inspire backlash. When artists today throwback to those production choices, it’s necessarily with a wink, deliberately tapping into shared nostalgia. But it also often accompanies the kind of earnest, straining feeling that was a speciality of Frey’s.

“Smuggler’s Blues” is also remarkable for its lyrics about the intractability of the international drug trade, an issue that was very much of its era but obviously remains relevant today. Like many of Frey’s songs, it was a narrative; unlike most of his or anyone’s, it has a complex political message. Frey and Henley both talked a lot about how much they sweated on the words to their songs, and you can see that work in the economy and directness of “Smuggler’s Blues”:

I knew the gun was loaded
But I didn't think he'd kill
Everything exploded, and the blood began to spill

Pop doesn’t produce many songs like this these days, with un-mushy subject matter (Robert Christgau’s review called it “non-DSMR”) discussed without ironic layering or meta references. The bluntness may scan as cheesy today, but it’s also part of its novelty and appeal. Of course, Frey could and did create music that was more obtuse and mysterious—“Hotel California,” also about drugs, is the ultimate example. But “Smuggler’s Blues” was written and recorded for a different era and it served it well, which is all Frey ever really wanted to do. At one point in the ‘90s, he reflected on the idea of relevance and legacy: “What happens is, if you make music for your time, and you do it well enough, sometimes it becomes music for all time.”

The Growing Water Crisis in Flint

Almost a year after public-health officials first warned about lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan, the city’s toxic water-supply crisis is receiving a national response.

First, President Obama declared a state of emergency in Flint and the surrounding county on Saturday at the request of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, freeing up federal resources for locals affected by the water supply.

Then, on Tuesday, the White House announced it would appoint Nicole Lurie, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, to oversee the federal response to the crisis. Obama is also expected to meet recently elected Flint Mayor Karen Weaver on Tuesday.

The response underscores how severe the public-health crisis facing Flint residents has become. In his annual State of the State address on Tuesday night, Snyder is expected to outline his response plan and request emergency funding from lawmakers. Hours before the address, a group of local lawyers announced a class-action lawsuit against the state for its “false assurances” about the water’s safety.

Many observers singled out Snyder for the state’s sluggish response to elevated levels of lead in Flint’s water supply. The city switched from Detroit’s water supply to the Flint River in 2014 as part of a cost-saving measure instituted by Flint’s state-appointed emergency manager. My colleague David Graham noted earlier this month that state and local officials continued to defend Flint’s water quality long after it became clear that there were serious problems with it.

While the toxic water supply is first and foremost a public-health issue, it has also become a political nightmare for Snyder. At the Democratic presidential debate in South Carolina on Sunday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the governor for his inaction on a crisis in an impoverished, majority-black community.

“He had requests for help that he basically stonewalled,” she told the audience. “I'll tell you what, if the kids in a rich suburb of Detroit had been drinking contaminated water and being bathed in it, there would've been action.”

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders went even further, calling for Snyder’s resignation. “A man who acts that irresponsibly should not stay in power,” he said at Sunday’s debate.

Immediately after the debate, Snyder tweeted an implicit response to the candidates’ criticism from his official account.

Political statements and finger pointing from political candidates only distract from solving the Flint water crisis.

— Governor Rick Snyder (@onetoughnerd) January 18, 2016

GOP candidates, for their part, have largely stayed mum. “Well, it’s a shame what’s happening in Flint, Michigan,” Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump told reporters in Iowa on Tuesday. “A thing like that shouldn’t be allowed to happen, but again, I don’t want to comment on it.”

When asked in an interview with National Journal published Tuesday if it was unfair to call the poisonings his “Katrina,” Snyder replied, “No. It’s a dis­aster.” He also ruled out resigning, saying that he “wants to solve the problem. I don’t want to walk away from it.”

The Demise of 'Jihadi John'

The death of Mohammed Emwazi, known best by his sensationalized sobriquet “Jihadi John,” has been confirmed by the Islamic State in a new issue of its magazine Dabiq.

The terrorist group’s infamous executioner was widely thought to have been killed by an American airstrike in Syria in November of last year. As outlets reported on Tuesday, ISIS says that he “was targeted in a strike by an unmanned drone” in Raqqa, the capital of the group’s so-called caliphate.

Emwazi, who appeared in several propaganda videos in which American and British hostages were beheaded, embodied one of the most inscrutable aspects of the Islamic State’s success—its ability to recruit foreign fighters, particularly from middle-class families in Western countries. Though born in Kuwait, the 27-year-old Emwazi was a British national who studied computer programming in college. As Jessica Stern and J.M Berger noted in The Atlantic last year:

ISIS propaganda and messaging is disproportionately slanted toward foreign fighters, both in its content and its target audience. Important ISIS messages are commonly released simultaneously in English, French, and German, then later translated into other languages, such as Russian, Indonesian, and Urdu.

Eerily, on the same day that Emwazi’s death was confirmed, the younger sister of Siddhartha Dhar, another British national, who has been dubbed the “new Jihadi John,” met with members of the British parliament committee. She told them that she “still believes” her brother is a good man and that he could be rehabilitated.

China's Significant, Semi-Expected Slowdown

On Tuesday, suspicions that the world’s second-largest economy is slowing down were confirmed: Official data from Beijing showed that China’s GDP grew by 6.9 percent in 2015—down from 7.3 percent in 2014, and the slowest rate of annual growth since 1990. The result fell shy of the government’s already revised-down projection of 7-percent growth. Despite all this, Chinese indexes were up more than 3 percent on Tuesday—investors were comforted by the latest growth number because it might be a signal that the government will enact an economic-stimulus plan.

This significant slowdown is perhaps a bit earlier than expected, but it was by most accounts inevitable. A widespread winding down in China’s industrial sector has yet to be offset by growth elsewhere—the growing pains of the Chinese economy’s shift from relying on exports to relying on domestic consumption. China’s economy has grown astonishingly fast over the past two and a half decades—well beyond what’s expected of any modern economy—so it is not surprising that such a streak could not last forever. The days of double-digit growth are over for now.

While the new economic normal for China is still enviable at 7 percent, there are some concerns about how big the slowdown actually is and how the country’s government will handle a slowing economy. The accuracy of official economic data from China has long been the subject of suspicion, particularly because GDP growth numbers tend to have an uncanny habit of hitting government targets. While growth data is never completely accurate anyway, the worry with China has always been that it is overstating its growth.

China’s slowdown is a huge threat to the health of the global economy. Following the data release from Beijing, the International Monetary Fund cut its 2016 forecast, citing the news out of China and the other countries its slowing growth will affect: The IMF is now projecting that the world economy will grow just 3.4 percent this year. (That projection used to be 3.6 percent, a level that was already seen as sluggish.) At the end of last year, Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, warned in an op-ed that global growth would be “disappointing and uneven in 2016”—though she also noted that China’s transition to a consumer economy was “necessary and healthy.”

The Deep Affinity Between Sarah Palin and Donald Trump

Updated on January 19 at 4:17 p.m.

Sarah Palin, the former vice-presidential nominee and Tea Party superstar, endorsed fellow Republican Donald Trump for president on Tuesday. The news came in a statement, but Palin is also appearing at a rally with Trump in Ames, Iowa, on Tuesday.

Palin’s endorsement seems at once perplexing and logical.

On the perplexing side is the fact that Trump—rhetoric aside—isn’t the most conservative candidate in the Republican field. Take Ted Cruz, whose spokesman took a preemptive shot at Palin over the endorsement Tuesday morning. Back in 2012, when Cruz was running an underdog campaign for U.S. Senate, Palin was one of the most prominent national conservatives to endorse him publicly, helping push Cruz to victory. Trump, in contrast, is a heterodox conservative, having previously backed Democrats, and having delivered stirring defenses of things like progressive taxation during Republican debates. Pointing to their very different lifestyles—New York City scion of wealth vs. working-class Westerner-turned-hardy-Alaskan—National Review deemed Trump and Palin “the oddest of political couples.” What gives?

But then there’s a natural affinity between Trump and Palin. Both are candidates who have capitalized on their ability to speak to the grievances of white, working-class Americans. They delight in inflammatory rhetoric—getting a rise out of the right people is much of the fun—and despise the press, even as their success depends in large part on managing to capture journalists’ attention. Both have a tendency to extemporize, producing sentences that are impossible to diagram and often to understand. Both have been reality-TV stars, though Trump rode his television fame to political success, while Palin rode her political success to a television contract.

This similarity is true as far as it goes, but it undersells the depth of the similarity between Trump and Palin. And in fact, that similarity owes something to the very same Trumpian deviations in conservative orthodoxy that might otherwise seem to separate him from Palin.

In 2011, Joshua Green traveled to Alaska to profile Palin for The Atlantic, and found that her actual record there was not quite what lower-48 liberals might have imagined:

As governor, Palin demonstrated many of the qualities we expect in our best leaders. She set aside private concerns for the greater good, forgoing a focus on social issues to confront the great problem plaguing Alaska, its corrupt oil-and-gas politics. She did this in a way that seems wildly out of character today—by cooperating with Democrats and moderate Republicans to raise taxes on Big Business. And she succeeded to a remarkable extent in settling, at least for a time, what had seemed insoluble problems, in the process putting Alaska on a trajectory to financial well-being. Since 2008, Sarah Palin has influenced her party, and the tenor of its politics, perhaps more than any other Republican, but in a way that is almost the antithesis of what she did in Alaska.

In other words, Palin was a pragmatist and a dealmaker, just like Trump—guided by a fundamentally conservative worldview, but not especially interested in or bound by orthodoxy. (You’re unlikely to find either curled up with the complete works of William F. Buckley.) Like Trump, she was willing to take on big business and call for new taxes where they seemed warranted. Trump, too, has a mixed political past in his closet: On the one hand, years of race-baiting, but on the other, past support for abortion, donations to liberal candidates, registration as a Democrat.

But Trump and Palin were both able to spot, and then position themselves to take advantage of, opportunities of the moment. They understood that if they were able to say the right things to the right groups, it would block those more complicated political pasts from view. As a bonus, that rhetoric would cause earnest concern (and worse) from the Republican establishment—but establishment condemnation just strengthened the affection that alienated conservatives already felt for both Trump and Palin. Meanwhile, both have continued to deviate from orthodoxy even after becoming stars: Palin has repeatedly blasted sexism in politics; Trump has shrugged off various criticisms that he’s essentially a big-government politician. True rogues aren’t just dissidents from the liberal consensus—they’re outcasts in their own parties, too.

What will Palin’s endorsement do for the Trump campaign? Perhaps not much. Palin isn’t the star she once was. Fox News dropped her contract as a commentator; a 2015 speech in Iowa was widely derided even in formerly friendly precincts; and as Harry Enten noted last summer, her favorability even among Republicans has tumbled.

That really just raises two more questions about Trump’s current lofty position. After all, Palin was also floated as a candidate for this cycle, but opted out of the race. One issue is why Palin didn’t reach the same level that Trump has now. Sure, she was picked as the vice-presidential nominee, but that turned out to be her apogee; as the American people got to know her better, her support dwindled over time. What did she do wrong that Trump has done (politically, at least) right? Was she not as disciplined? (Trump, for all his foibles, manages to keep tightly to a few messages even as he improvises.) Was sexism a factor? Alternatively, perhaps Trump’s political future looks a lot like Palin’s: Maybe one lesson from her career is that this method yields short-term support, but can only succeed for so long. In any case, endorsing Trump would makes perfect sense. Palin’s clan of Mama Grizzlies is largely gone, and so is her moment. Trump is one of her few remaining proteges. Palin won’t ever be president, but if helping make Trump the nominee could be her legacy, it wouldn’t be a bad revenge on the GOP establishment.

What Will the Sound of Jazz Be in 2016?

As Ornette Coleman, one of 2015’s most notable departures from the jazz world, memorably argued, tomorrow is the question. If jazz came back in 2015, as some observers have suggested, where will it go in 2016? The New York City Winter Jazzfest, an annual January event around Greenwich Village, has typically served as a good lodestone for where the music is going in the year ahead. And if this year’s festival serves that purpose, the jazz world can look forward to year of vitality and wide diffusion.

Winter Jazzfest isn’t the fanciest festival, and it doesn’t have the biggest names, but it’s the single best ticket for serious jazz fans interested in fresh sounds and ideas. The event was larger than ever this year, offering more than 100 different musical acts over 10 venues. On Friday and Saturday nights, listeners can jump in and out of shows at their leisure. At one time, it may have been possible to speak of the festival having a character or a vibe; at this size, it’s impossible for any one listener, no matter how frenetic, to get her hands around the scope of the whole thing. A critic can only describe the festival as he saw it, acknowledging the nearly infinite other possibilities for a fellow traveler.

That’s not such a bad metaphor for the jazz scene on display, either. Winter Jazzfest has always straddled a line—it’s catholic in taste, but tends toward a more experimental, edgy, and younger set of musicians, playing in small venues. (You won’t find Wynton Marsalis or Herbie Hancock or Wayne Shorter on most of these bandstands, though Wynton did play a disability-pride benefit Thursday.) Kamasi Washington, the young saxophonist whose name was most frequently invoked in those “Jazz Is Back!” stories, had to postpone his appearance after breaking an ankle, but a range of stars both young and aging were present, offering widely different directions in music.

Trying to speak about the sound of jazz today is a quick route to giving oneself a headache or confusing one’s interlocutor. The music all springs from the same place—black music in the American south—but its styles and players come from such widely spread places as to annihilate generalization. I think that’s a good sign, proof of intellectual and artistic engagement rather than splintering. In recent histories, an easily defined temporal sound has often been a sign of either stagnation and kitsch (think late jazz fusion) or of retrenchment and restriction (think of the “young lions.”) In healthy times, musicians are testing the limits and possibilities of the form.

Take the three best sets I heard: Ibrahim Maalouf’s combo; a solo piano by Craig Taborn; and Butler, Bernstein, & The Hot 9. Maalouf, a Beirut-born and Paris-based trumpeter, played selections from his 2015 album inspired by the great Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum. Attempts at translating world music into jazz are common, but successful translations are far rarer. Maalouf managed the trick. He took full advantage of Eastern scales, hammering them into superb modal jazz. He also captured the longing in Umm Kulthum’s love songs—using the trumpet to slur, slide, and moan—and replicating some of the grave undertow of her backing musicians through clever arrangement of saxophone, piano, and bass into unison movement. The band might work over a plaintive melody for a bit, then abruptly shift tempo to a quick jazz-rock beat, keeping the tune in place but transforming the ground underneath it. The bassist Linda Oh, filling in for Larry Grenadier, was a standout.

The drummer Dave King (Bart Babinski)

Butler, Bernstein, & The Hot 9 were equally rooted in the past. Helmed by Henry Butler, a New Orleans-native pianist, and Steven Bernstein, an impishly creative avant-garde trumpeter and bandleader, the group drafts veterans of New York’s downtown scene into a little big band playing an old-school Crescent City repertoire—think Jelly Roll Morton. Butler, a force of nature, is transfixing even without the help of his horn section and Mazz Swift’s violin, an inspired addition. This was wildly fun music that practically demanded dancing, but without a whiff of the two scourges of such material: retrograde, straw-boater-and-red-vest kitsch or musty, academic revivalism. If you’ve got a pulse and can see this band, do it.

Taborn’s set was completely different—a performance unfreighted by the weight of history, or even other musicians. (An in-demand sideman, Taborn is also an excellent collaborator.) Sitting alone at a piano, he unspooled a series of songs—improvisations? Compositions? It wasn’t clear—that were technically masterful but never austere or passionless. A closing tune in what seemed like funky, mindbending 11/8 time brought the audience to its feet.

One unifying thread across the festival was the power of a great drummer. Marcus Gilmore brought understated funk and a steady motor to sets by the saxophonists Mark Turner and Chris Potter, anchoring bands that might veer into ethereality without him. Mark Guiliana, newly feted from his role on David Bowie’s Blackstar (and still reeling from the singer’s death) played an unstoppable set to a packed house. Gilmore and Dave King stood out during back-to-back sets, halfway across the village, by the pianist Vijay Iyer’s trio (with the bassist Stephan Crump) and the Bad Plus (with the pianist Ethan Iverson and the bassist Reid Anderson), respectively. The piano-bass-drum trio is one of the most basic jazz formats, and it often seems moldy and tapped out. These two bands, in very different ways, dramatically demonstrated new possibilities for the format when they formed in the 2000s. Seeing the two trios sequentially demonstrated the magic available to tight-knit groups who have been playing together for years. Iyer’s trio can rise to a climax or fall to a hush telepathically; the Bad Plus closed their unannounced set with “Physical Cities,” a showstopping display of rhythmic virtuosity.

This year, Winter Jazzfest’s larger lineup and greater profusion of marquee names brought it into several larger venues, especially theaters at the New School. (Iyer, Turner, and Taborn all played at a showcase for ECM Records, a pivotal German label, in an 800-seat hall.) The pivot is mostly a vast improvement. It allowed the festival to present a greater range of music with radically improved sound, and to almost eliminate the painful time listeners have spent waiting in line in previous years (painful both because of missed music and often sub-freezing temperatures). There’s a bittersweet edge to the transformation, though. Most jazz performances today are in respectful, hushed halls and theaters, but there’s no other time or place where jazz fans can get the sensation of packing into small clubs with other rabid fans to hear the world’s best jazz musicians play at intimate range. It’s the closest anyone who’s not eligible for Social Security can get to what Manhattan’s 52nd Street much have been like in its 1950s heyday.

So it was particularly satisfying for me to end the festival Saturday with a late set at the Bitter End by Ben Williams, where my table was flush with the stage. The rising star and D.C. native played an excellent set. The material was eclectic—original tunes, but also a cover of N.E.R.D.’s “Fly or Die” and a solo double-bass “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Playing both acoustic and electric bass, Williams held a strong groove, with help from Christian Sands on keyboards and John Davis on drums. The capacity crowd hooted and hollered as they swilled overpriced Rolling Rocks. The sound wasn’t great. The sightlines were bad. It was too packed. It was hot and sweaty. It was perfect.

The ‘Staggering’ Civilian Toll of Iraq’s Fight Against ISIS

Thousands have been killed, maimed, and displaced over the last two years in what a new United Nations report characterized as the “untold suffering” of Iraqi civilians.

The report, released Tuesday, provides some “staggering” figures related to the horrors of life in Iraq in the time of ISIS. According to the UN, between the start of 2014 and October 31 of last year, 18,802 Iraqis were killed, 36,245 were wounded, 3.2 million were displaced, and 3,500 others, mainly women and children, have been enslaved by Islamic State fighters.

Worst of all, perhaps, the issuers of the report fear that their estimates may be low and that their assessments of the carnage, which were collected by the UN from interviews with survivors and witnesses, may not fully reflect the situation.

The charges of systematic violence mainly focus on Islamic State activity—one grim entry in an attached glossary involves the acronym “SVBIED” for suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices. Stories from the collected testimonies involve abuses including the killing of women who refused to have sex with ISIS fighters, the public bulldozing of a crowd, drownings, decapitations, and the killing and abduction of minorities.

In June, three men, two young men, and a 60-year-old man were reportedly thrown off a building in Mosul for “alleged homosexual acts.” Later that month:

On 21 June, in Mosul, Ninewa, it was reported that ISIL had announced a Quran memorization competition in Mosul on the occasion of Ramadan, stating that the first three winners would reportedly receive ‘sex slaves’ as prizes.

“These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide,” the UN report noted. However, the UN also cites acts of violence committed by Iraqi security forces, anti-ISIS militiamen, Kurdish forces.

All told, the figures, however low they may be, show a terrible return to levels of violence not seen in Iraq since the height of Sunni-Shia conflagration in 2006-2007 when more than 50,000 Iraqis died.

The UN report was accompanied by a small piece of good news on Tuesday. Owing to the ongoing international campaign, which has recently liberated the city of Ramadi and targeted the Islamic State capital of Raqqa in Syria, ISIS has reportedly cut the pay of its fighters in half.

Can Rahm Emanuel Survive in Office? Advice From a Mayor Who Did

There’s been a steady drumbeat of bad news for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel since November, all tied to the bad relationship between the police and the community. The latest set of stories comes only a few months after Emanuel narrowly won reelection, in a runoff he had desperately tried to avoid. Protestors are marching in the streets, and an increasing number of Chicago groups are calling for Emanuel to resign. For the national media, it’s become a political deathwatch (in many cases cheered on by liberal journalists): Can Rahm, the famed Washington street brawler, hold on to his job?

The precedents offered by other mayors who have recently faced policing scandals are mixed. Ferguson Mayor James Knowles remains in office. Baltimore’s Stephanie Rawlings-Blake opted not to run for reelection, under pressure. New York’s Bill de Blasio is battling low approval ratings. In the past, major protests have ended mayors’ tenures. Los Angeles’ Tom Bradley retired after the riots there. Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums retired after riots followed the acquittal of an officer who killed Oscar Grant; his successor, Jean Quan, was defeated in her reelection effort after unrest involving Occupy Oakland.

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How to Fix a Broken Police Department

One of the few big-city mayors to survive a major episode of civil unrest is Charlie Luken of Cincinnati. The Democrat entered office (for a second stint) in 1999. In April 2001, police shot and killed 19-year-old black man Timothy Thomas, setting off several days of rioting. The riots cost millions and devastated the city’s Over-the-Rhine district. Several months later, however, Luken was reelected. He oversaw a process of police reform that is now hailed a model for other cities. Luken declined to run for reelection in 2004, and now works for a law firm in the Queen City.

I called him to see what he learned from his experience, and what Rahm Emanuel might take from it. Like Emanuel, Luken faced a crisis rooted in issues that predated his term in office, lacked quick fixes, and involved issues extending well beyond the city limits. In our conversation, Luken put a premium on transparency above all else. “When I see something like we held a video of a kid getting shot for 14 months, I’m shocked,” he said. “That could never, ever happen here.” But he said there’s no clear guidebook—the path he followed was difficult and fraught, and his reelection hinged in large part on his luck in facing a weak challenger. Luken ended on a somewhat pessimistic note. Although proud of Cincinnati’s work to repair the relationship between police and citizens, he worries that the issues underlying the 2001 riots aren’t any closer to being solved than they were then.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

David Graham: How does a mayor approach police-community relations problems like the ones in Chicago and Cincinnati, that started long before you entered office and don’t have simple fixes?

Charlie Luken: We went through hell, and by that I mean, we didn’t just flip a switch and go from darkness to sunlight. It was a few years of work and pain. I’m certain things are much better. I’m not sure we solved anything. Issues of poverty, racial discrimination—they still exist here. If we solved anything it would be in the area of police-community relations. Large problems still exist as they do in many American cities. When I became mayor in 2000, it was clear that the city had a very serious police-community relations problem, and I talked about it but nobody paid any attention until the young man was shot, Timothy Thomas. Then the riots happened for three days, and then people got more serious about corrective action.

Graham: How did you go about reforming Cincinnati’s police department?

Luken: I invited the Justice Department to town, which was not a real popular decision, but it was a good one. The teaching, the lessons, just have to do with police training and transparency. If I look at Chicago from 10,000 feet, I would say they never got the transparency part or really all of the police-training part. [With Timothy Thomas,] they had a guy who was got out of a mental hospital, and he had a brick. A bunch of police surrounded him and shot and killed him. Obviously there are alternative ways to handle that.

“I’m certain things are much better. I’m not sure we solved anything. Issues of poverty, racial discrimination—they still exist here.”

Graham: I imagine it was hard for you as the mayor to convince a huge group of career officers to change their methods.

Luken: The brass used to say to me, “You know, I was here before you, and I’ll be here after you.” They were generally right about that. The interesting thing is over the few years that we engaged in this process, the Fraternal Order of Police and most of the police brass went from rejecting this process and fighting any changes to really embracing it. That’s been the key going forward. Now I think there’s even a little pride when people go to Cincinnati in talking about the reform.

Graham: Is there a trick to getting the community to come together to back reform?

Luken: I really don’t know. You get a bunch of people at the table and you just keep slugging it out. We had a boycott called by leaders in the African American community. It was honored by people like Bill Cosby, who wouldn’t come. The old saying is what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. We had good lawyers that represented the community. We had a good federal magistrate. We grudgingly brought the police department along. There’s no rabbit in a hat here. Everybody's gotta get out of their comfort zone.

Graham: Chicago is in the process of searching for a new police chief. Is it important that they hire from outside the department? Does it work better if it’s someone from inside the ranks?

Luken: That was one of the things we faced. I put a ballot issue on that would allow us to pick a chief from a national search.We tended to get the same demographic of police chief over and over again from within. I’m not saying it should always be from within or from outside, but having the option is very important.

Graham: Who were the people you brought into discussions?

Luken: The engagement ran the gamut. It wasn’t just the city. It wasn’t just the community. It was the business community. They had to be there. They had to help and participate. So it was a wide ranging communication effort. I just tell you, I got through it, but two weeks before the riots they came to me and said they wanted me to do some commercials because my approval was 82 percent. Three weeks later it was 32 percent. In 2014, Luken told The Washington Post he fell to 40 percent.

I think one problem that Chicago seems to have is that they dole out information only when they get caught. That is just the reverse of what I think I learned. I think if you have good relationships between the police and the community you can be honest with them, and even if the news is bad, there’s an understanding and a process. People can deal with it. I get the sense that Chicago has been engaged in a “reveal it when we have to, if we have to.” That wouldn’t work here.

“Chicago seems to dole out information only when they get caught.”

Graham: Was it easier for you to build those relationships since you had been talking about it before?

Luken: No one was paying attention! I remember giving the State of the City six months or eight months before the riots, and I remember opening up questions. It was more of a business than community audience. They asked me what the biggest problem in the city was, and I said it was race relations. They thought I was going to say we needed a new stadium, a new convention center. It dawned on us slowly. We didn’t have a citizens’ complaint authority before 2001. Part of the reform was—there was a long list—part of the reform was the formation of a citizens’ complaint board.

Graham: Did you worry that some of the big businesses in Cincinnati—Kroger, Proctor and Gamble, Macy’s—would decamp after the riots?

Luken: I was afraid people were going to leave town.There was a period of time when I really wondered whether the city as we know it was going to make it. If you look at it today, Cincinnati has done pretty well for a midwestern, medium-sized city. I don’t think we would have been able to make any progress had we not first dealt with the police-community issues. We wouldn’t have been able to do the development that has happened over the last few years.

Graham: How did you repair the city’s relationships with African Americans? You’ve mentioned in the past that you regret the way you responded to the boycott.

Luken: I don’t know that I regret my response. I did call it “economic terrorism.” That was—we can debate whether that’s true, but it certainly was not the right word to choose. I don’t have any good answer for that. I ran for election eight months later and it became unfortunately a white vs. black election. Luken came in second in a nonpartisan primary to Courtis Fuller, a former Democrat running for a venerable Cincinnati third party. But he beat Fuller in the general election. Predominantly black wards voted 78 percent for Fuller, while conservative and liberal white wards voted even more heavily for Luken. I think today I have a certain level of trust. In 2005, Luken won a leadership award from African Methodist Episcopal Churches.

Graham: Did it ever occur to you not to run for reelection in 2001?

Luken: No. I always thought I’d rather the headline be ‘Luken Loses’ than ‘Luken Quits.’ It’s just a personal preference. When you go through things like that—I knew after the election I was done. I knew that was my last term. I knew I had to make some changes that nobody would like. Those four years were probably the—for sure, the four years of most change in Cincinnati in modern history.

Graham: How’d you win the election? There were just enough more white voters than black voters?

Luken: To be honest, the other guy is a friend of mine. He was a news anchor. Before Luken entered politics, he and Fuller were co-anchors at WLWT, which also launched Jerry Springer’s career. He’d have won except his campaign just kind of collapsed around him. He was caught in some things I don’t really want to talk about. Fuller faced questions about old financial difficulties during the campaign. Otherwise he’d have won. People recognized, ‘This guy may—we may not like him very much at the moment, but he’s the guy to get us through.’ I ended up winning by about 11 points.

Graham: What does Chicago need to do to make the sort of reversal in police relations that Cincinnati did?

Luken: The changes that we made were, in that sphere that I described, were historic, and like so many police departments we had a demographic of a police officer that wasn’t always true to the city. You’ve got a certain neighborhood, certain Catholic schools, certain… that’s where the police tended to come from. The cultural differences between a city like Cincinnati and the police department had just grown very apparent. I think people made a commitment and they stuck to it. We still view the Collaborative The Collaborative Agreement, colloquially known as the Collaborative, is the reform plan that the city consented to in a settlement. as the bible of police-community relations.

“We had a demographic of a police officer that wasn’t always true to the city. You’ve got a certain neighborhood, certain Catholic schools...”

When I see something like ‘We held a video of a kid getting shot for 14 months,’ I’m shocked. That could never, ever happen here. If it happened, people would—the city wouldn't do it, the community wouldn’t tolerate it. You have to get the info out quick and deal with it. When Timothy Thomas got killed, the reaction of the city was to say, “It’s under investigation.” It just boiled. That’s just not—you have to say, “Here’s what we know, here’s the video we have, here’s what we think, AND it’s under investigation.”

Graham: What was your relationship with the city council like throughout the process?

Luken: I think they felt sorry for me. The Collaborative was voted on by city council. It passed 7-2. The Fraternal Order of Police signed it! You could have knocked me over with a feather. If you’d looked at the change of where they came and where they ended, it was amazing to me. Those people were important players. We didn’t always get along by a long shot.

Graham: I wanted to come back to something you mentioned at the start, which is that you feel like the underlying causes of tension are still there. What is a mayor supposed to do about problems like that that are much broader than what’s in his control?

Luken: It wasn’t easy. It was a long time. It was years. It was tough. And it was solving a piece of the problem. It’s part of a larger problem that deals with race and economics.