Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 283

Donald Trump Breaks With the GOP on Israel

To the eternal chagrin of the Republican establishment, Donald Trump’s flair for the vague, insensitive, or unorthodox remark has still not cost the candidate his frontrunner status. As my colleague David Graham noted in October, Trump has been well-served by his twinning of immigration tough-talk with a refrain about raising taxes on the wealthy, embodying a populism otherwise unheard in the Republican Party.

But in recent days, Trump appeared to stray across an inviolable line in the modern GOP platform: a robust, if not unflinching, support for the State of Israel. In an interview with the AP on Wednesday, Trump seemed to lay the onus for securing a long-elusive peace agreement at the feet of the Israelis, and not the Palestinians.

“I have a real question as to whether or not both sides want to make it,” Trump said, before explaining that his concerns predominantly reside with “one side in particular.” He then added:

A lot will have to do with Israel and whether or not Israel wants to make the deal — whether or not Israel's willing to sacrifice certain things. They may not be, and I understand that, and I'm OK with that. But then you're just not going to have a deal.

This is by no means a pro-Palestinian sentiment. If anything, it’s a rhetorical inversion of the frequent argument, especially among conservatives, that Israel has no viable negotiating partner on the Palestinian side and that it shouldn’t be pressured to agree to a peace deal that would compromise its security concerns.

What’s particularly notable here is the ominous coda. By (vaguely) interjecting the idea that without a peace deal Israel will continue its occupation of the West Bank and its growing Palestinian population, Trump is echoing the frequent admonishments of President Obama and John Kerry (as well as other Democrats, and a number of Israeli leaders), who continue to warn that without a comprehensive peace deal, Israel will cease to be a Jewish and democratic state.

Even Trump seemed to realize that this time, he might have gone further than voters were prepared to follow. On Thursday, Trump blustered to the Republican Jewish Coalition that President Obama “is the worst thing that’s ever happened to Israel.” He also promised to visit the country after Christmas.

Trump also clarified that, “Israel has given a lot, and a lot of people don’t know that,” he said. “I think the public relations for Israel hasn’t been so great … Israel’s given a lot, but hasn’t been given a lot of credit for what they’ve given.”

And yet, he also doubled down on his earlier remarks, casting doubt on Israel’s desire to make peace.

Trump doubles down at RJC: “I don’t know that Israel has the commitment to make it” You can hear a pin drop

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) December 3, 2015

Later, Trump was actually booed by the crowd when he refused to clarify his position on Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which is Israel’s policy and another common talking point among Republicans.

“When it started, they were skeptical, and you could feel the room warming to him,” noted conservative Gary Bauer told The Washington Post. “I think he turned a lot of people. And then he lost them, because he couldn't just say, ‘of course, Jerusalem is the capital, we won't negotiate on that.’” (Trump was also accused of trading in anti-Semitic stereotypes in his remarks.)

There may be an underserved bloc among the Republican faithful for raising taxes on the wealthy, but if there’s a constituency within the GOP with ambivalent feelings toward Israel, the polls certainly don’t show. Republican support for Israel has steadily grown over the past 20 years and, according to a recent Gallup poll, 83 percent of Republicans expressed more sympathy for Israel than the Palestinians.

Senator Marco Rubio immediately seized on Trump’s comments on Thursday. “Some in our own party have actually called for more sacrifice from the Israeli people. They are dead wrong.” Less ambiguously, he added, “This is not a real estate deal where the two sides argue over money.”

Paul Ryan Pitches 'Confidence' to a Timid GOP

In Paul Ryan’s view, the Republican Party in the Obama years has been too timid.

That may be a tough argument to believe, given that the GOP has resisted Obama’s policies with more fervor than any opposition party in modern memory. But the new House speaker’s critique is not that Republicans have been afraid to oppose the president; it’s that they’ve been content to do only that.

In a speech Thursday laying out his legislative vision for the House, Ryan called on conservatives to summon the “confidence” to put forward a competing policy platform in 2016 that would give a new Republican president a legislative mandate. “Our number-one goal for the next year,” Ryan declared, “is to put together a complete alternative to the Left’s agenda.”

Making the GOP the “alternative party” and not merely the “opposition party” has been a recurring rhetorical theme for Ryan in the last several years—from his time as the chairman of the House Budget Committee to his run for vice president, and most recently, during his abrupt elevation to speaker of the House. But now as the most powerful Republican in the country, he has the opportunity to show what he means. He vowed on Thursday that under his leadership the House GOP would “unveil a plan to replace every word of Obamacare.”

It’s a promise that Republicans have made in general since the law was enacted in 2010 and as recently as 2014, when then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor promised that the House would vote on a full replacement for Obamacare by the end of the year. That pledge went the way of Cantor himself, who lost his primary and resigned from Congress before he could deliver on it. Ryan may be less vulnerable to electoral defeat, but he’ll face the same political headwinds that for years have stymied Republican attempts to unify around a detailed health care proposal.

For one, he is presiding over the same fractured conference that bedeviled his predecessor, John Boehner. Sure, many lawmakers may be afraid to take a tough vote that will give Democrats ammunition to attack them, but the bigger reason Republicans haven’t acted on a replacement for Obamacare is that 218 of them can't agree on what it would look like. Second, Ryan's status as the defacto leader of the GOP will last only another few months, until Republicans settle on a presidential nominee. Whether it’s Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, or someone else, the party standard-bearer will have a lot to say about how aggressive Republicans in Congress are as the election approaches. Ryan’s approach might also face resistance among senior Republican senators, who know that unlike the party’s relatively safe majority in the House, the balance of power in the Senate after 2016 will be determined in a handful of swing states.

“All I can say is we will not be cowed. We are not here to smooth things over. We are here to shake things up.”

Ryan’s call for a confident GOP extended to policy areas beyond health care. He urged conservatives to advance a long-debated overhaul of the tax code that cuts rates and closes loopholes. “All I can say is we will not be cowed,” Ryan said. “We are not here to smooth things over. We are here to shake things up.” The new speaker pushed for action on an issue he has embraced as a personal cause in recent years: reforming the nation’s anti-poverty apparatus in a way that consolidates federal programs, gives more power to the states, and incentivizes welfare recipients to seek work without the risk that they lose all government support.

The more assertive approach drew praise from Heritage Action, a conservative group that emerged as a chief critic of former Speaker Boehner. Michael Needham, the group’s president, said in a statement after the speech that Heritage Action “strongly supports Speaker Ryan’s commitment to lay out a bold agenda.”

We agree with him that saving America will require an electoral mandate, not just electoral victory. And we applaud his recognition of the unholy alliance between big government and big special interests.

Ryan is pushing Republicans to be bolder, but he’s not ignoring politics altogether. Two policy proposals given noticeably short shrift in his 25-minute speech at the Library of Congress were his contentious plans to partially privatize Medicare and turn Medicaid into a block-grant program in the states. Those ideas were centerpieces of the budget blueprints that he authored, but they were subject to relentless attacks from Democrats, and Ryan gave no indication that they would be priorities for the House GOP in 2016.

Ryan has had a successful first month as office. He’s steered the House to complete significant bipartisan agreements on infrastructure and education, and he’s won positive reviews from conservatives for taking initial procedural steps to fix what he termed a “broken” House. Thursday's speech marked a sharper turn toward substance. Ryan framed his address around the idea of restoring confidence in the country as a whole. “We want America to be confident again,” he said.

We want to see progress and have pride. We want people to believe in our future again. We want a country where no one is stuck, where no one settles, where everyone can rise.

Yet the intended audience was principally his own party. Ryan is more of an earnest orator than a stirring one; he delivers his lines in an increasingly familiar staccato, speaking clearly and directly, occasionally eloquent but rarely emotional. (No handkerchief needed for this House speaker.) So while it might have been difficult to discern from his tone, Ryan was delivering a rallying cry for Republicans on Thursday. “What it all comes down to,” he said, “is whether we conservatives have confidence in ourselves. Do we really believe our philosophy is true? Do we have the best ideas? If so, then I don’t see any reason why we should hold back.” Reluctant as he was to take the job, the new House speaker clearly wants to lead the GOP in a more ambitious agenda. Now the question is, will his party follow?

San Bernardino Shooting: A Portrait of a Suspect

Updated on December 3 at 3 p.m. ET

Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, began their Wednesday by leaving their 6-month-old daughter with his mother. The day ended with the San Bernardino police chief announcing Farook and Malik had been killed after a gun battle with officers—hours after they opened fire inside a social-services center, killing 14 people and wounding 17 others.

Farook’s family members and coworkers had no answers.

“I have no idea why he would do something like this,” Farhan Khan, his brother in law, said. “I have absolutely no idea.”

Illinois-born Farook had worked as an environmental engineer with the San Bernardino County Health Department for five years. The New York Times, citing county records, reports he inspected restaurants, bakeries, and public swimming pools.

Farook had attended the health department’s holiday party at the Inland Regional Center on Wednesday. Jarrod Burguan, the San Bernardino police chief, said Farook left after some sort of dispute. He said Farook then returned with Malik, in tactical gear, carrying weapons and explosives, at around 11 a.m.  and opened fire.

“They came in with a purpose,” he said. “They came in with the intent to do something.”

Two of Farook’s coworkers told the The Los Angeles Times they were shocked he was named. They said he was quiet and had no obvious grudges. Farook had traveled to Saudi Arabia two years ago, they said, and came back with a wife, Malik, whom he’d met online.

David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, told reporters Thursday that Farook had traveled overseas, and had made a stop in Pakistan. He returned to the U.S. in July 2014, with a fiancee, Malik, who traveled on a Pakistani passport. The couple were then married, Bowdich said.

They were “living the American dream,” Patrick Baccari, a fellow health inspector who shared a cubicle with Farook, told the L.A. Times.

Both Baccari and Christian Nwadike, another coworker, told the newspaper Farook was well-liked and spent much of his time out in the field. He was a devout Muslim, they and others said, but rarely talked about his faith at work.

“I have no idea why he would do something like this. I have absolutely no idea.”

“He never struck me as a fanatic,” Griselda Reisinger, a former coworker, told the L.A. Times. “He never struck me as suspicious.”

When Farook’s mother, a Pakistan-born woman who hasn’t been named, learned of the shooting at the center, her immediate reaction was one of concern, said Hussam Ayloush, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Los Angeles. She then received a call from authorities, he said, informing her that her son was a suspect in the shooting.

Ayloush urged the public not to rush to judgment.

“Is it work?” he said. “Rage-related? Is it mental illness? Extreme ideology?”

Authorities say they are investigating those angles, and haven’t ruled any of them out.

San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said the couple had more than 1,600 bullets when they were killed in their SUV. Authorities discovered more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as 12 pipe bombs, and other tools at the home they rented in Redlands, he said.

“There was obviously a mission here,” Bowdich said. “We know that. We do not know why. We don’t know if this was the intended target or if there was something that triggered him to do this immediately.”

A Day After the San Bernardino Shooting

Updated on December 3 at 3:08 p.m. EST

Here’s what we know Thursday afternoon:

—The shooters have been identified by police as 28-year-old Syed Rizwan Farook and 27-year-old Tashfeen Malik. They were married and had a six-month old daughter. Both shooters were shot and killed by police officers.

—At least 14 people are dead and 21 wounded, up from 17 on Wednesday, in the attack, which occurred at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino.

—Police recovered a haul of weapons and ammunition both from the vehicle in which Farook and Malik were found and at a home they had rented.  

—Police are investigating terrorism and a workplace dispute as possible motives.

The married couple who killed 14 people and wounded 21 others at a social-services center in San Bernardino, California, fired up to 75 rounds in the attack, left behind three pipe bombs that had been rigged together, and had thousands of rounds of ammunition on them and at their home, officials said.

San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said at a news briefing Thursday that the couple had more than 1,600 bullets when they were killed in their SUV. Authorities discovered more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as 12 pipe bombs, and other tools, he said.

“There was obviously a mission here,” David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, said at the news briefing. “We know that. We do not know why. We don’t know if this was the intended target or if there was something that triggered him to do this immediately.”

Bowdich refused to speculate on a motive for the shooting, but said authorities had not ruled anything out, including terrorism or whether the attack at the Inland Regional Center was prompted by a workplace dispute.

Speaking from the Oval Office, President Obama echoed those comments, and added: “We’re going to get to the bottom of this.”

Farook was an environmental engineer who worked with the San Bernardino County Health Department. He had been attending a holiday party for the department at the Inland Regional Center on Wednesday, left after some sort of dispute, and returned with Malik at about 11 a.m. local time carrying weapons, Burguan said. All four guns were legally purchased, he said Thursday. Three pipe bombs rigged together, discovered at the scene, failed to detonate, Burguan said.  

Bowdich said Farook, who was born in Illinois, had traveled overseas in recent years, and had visited Pakistan, from where his parents emigrated. He returned in July 2014 with Malik, who traveled on a Pakistani passport with a fiancee visa. The couple had a 6-month-old daughter. Farook’s colleagues told the Los Angeles Times he had visited Saudi Arabia and had returned with Malik.

On Wednesday night, Farhan Khan, who is married to Farook’s sister, expressed his condolences to the victims, who have not yet been identified.

“I have no idea why he would do something like this,” Khan said. “I have absolutely no idea. I’m in shock myself.”

Police received word of the shooting at about 11 a.m. Wednesday. They secured the scene and evacuated the sprawling facility, which provides services for people with disabilities. The suspects fled in a dark-colored SUV, Burguan said Wednesday. On Thursday, he said police received a tip about Farook leaving the party. They then found he had rented a Ford Expedition, which marked the description of the vehicle the suspects were seen leaving in. That vehicle was due to be returned on Wednesday.

The information led about 300 local, county, state, and federal law enforcement officials to the nearby town of Redlands, where Farook and Malik rented a home. It’s unclear if they lived there, Burguan said. Officers and the couple exchanged fire. Farook and Malik fired up to 75 rounds at them, Burguan said. Officers fired 380 rounds at the suspects, killing them.

Two officers were wounded: One was shot in the left leg; the other received cuts; neither injury is life-threatening. News helicopter footage Wednesday showed the scene at a residential street, where dozens of heavily armed police officers had gathered. A dark-colored SUV was stopped in the middle of the street, its windows blown out.

The FBI is leading the investigation, Obama said, and is being assisted by local agencies. The Loma Linda Medical Center said of the five victims in its care, two are in critical condition and three in fair condition.

A suspect who was detained on Wednesday was released, Burguan said, after it was determined he had no connection to the shooting.

We will update this story as we learn more.

The Danish Girl: Portrait of a Lady

The first 20 minutes of The Danish Girl are a breezy romance between two beautiful newlyweds—the artists Einar (Eddie Redmayne) and Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander). He paints landscapes, she does portraits, and they seem very happy with their lives in 1920s Copenhagen. But lurking in the background is a major plot development, one the director Tom Hooper resists setting up with even the slightest subtlety. Einar strokes a rack of ballet costumes with obvious longing; when he dons a pair of stockings to take the place of a female model sitting for Gerda, he has a profound emotional reaction. The Danish Girl is telling an important story, but it does so by following the blueprint of a thousand biopics that have come before.

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If there’s an optimistic take on the movie, it’s that at least the circle of Oscar-bait filmmaking has widened to take in the story of one of the first people to have gender-reassignment surgery. Einar, better known as Lili Elbe, was a pioneer in trans history and her life was the subject of a 2000 novel by David Ebershoff, adapted for the screen by Lucinda Coxon. But in the hands of Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech, Les Misérables), much of the nuance and complication surrounding her story is stripped away, resulting in a film that’s sensitive and often touching, but not remotely compelling.

Lili’s journey of self-actualization takes place almost entirely in the Wegeners’ sparse apartment and at the parties she attends with Gerda, first posing as a visiting cousin of Einar’s to pass off the resemblance without drawing much attention. Gerda initially indulges Lili’s routine, believing her husband is playing a character. But when Lili draws the attention of another man (Ben Whishaw) at the party, the illusion is shattered. At that point, Lili stops pretending to shift between identities and decides to begin living as a woman permanently.

The Danish Girl is at its most fascinating when it explores the medical reaction to Lili’s realization—she’s diagnosed as schizophrenic and homosexual, and recommended for commitment to an asylum for electroshock therapy. Before she meets the pioneering doctor Kurt Warnekros (Sebastian Koch), who recommends she proceed with reassignment surgery, the bigotry and confusion she encounters is heartbreaking to witness.

In the hands of Tom Hooper, Lili Elbe’s story is one that’s sensitive and touching, but not remotely compelling.

But the personal side is unfortunately pedestrian. Redmayne is a capable physical actor who communicates every shudder and thrill Einar feels in the first act, but that’s all there is to his portrayal of Lili. It’s as if he spent so much time nailing the physical mannerisms that he forgot to create a character to go with it. It’s also possible that the film’s understandable but uncomplicated reverence for its subject is to blame. Lili winces, blanches, and gently tells Gerda over and over again that this is who she is now. Redmayne cries throughout the film—rather, it seems someone is crying in every scene—and the repetitive outpouring of emotion quickly becomes dull.

Most of the narrative is told from Gerda’s perspective. It’s perhaps facile that the film presents Lili’s realization as something happening to her, and it’s the main reason why Lili feels held at arm’s length for the entire film. Still, Vikander does lovely work as Gerda—she also does her fair share of crying and shuddering, but Gerda is largely presented as an accepting spouse who helps guide Lili into the next phase of her life, while letting go of their marriage (in real life, she was a more complicated person). Her gentle soul, in a way, represents the mainstreaming of this story—through her, the audience is being reminded of the importance of recognizing Lili unselfishly. It’s not just a tale of Lili coming out but also one that speaks to the power of acceptance.

All of this is communicated with the kind of hamfistedness Hooper seems to rely on more and more. As in Les Misérables, his camera hovers inches from his subjects’ faces, trying to catch every emotional tremor in case viewers didn’t. Unlike The King’s Speech, a more involving biopic for which he won the Oscar for Best Director, The Danish Girl is lacking in humor or energy, and so it has to fall back on the sheer worthiness of the story it’s telling. Unfortunately for viewers at least, virtue alone isn’t enough.

A Guilty Verdict in Don Blankenship's Trial

In October, the federal trial of Don Blankenship, the former CEO of Massey Energy, started at the U.S. District Court in Charleston, West Virginia.* Blankenship faced criminal charges for covering up safety violations that led to the worst U.S. mining disaster since 1970.

Today, the jury found Blankenship guilty on one of three counts—conspiring to willfully violate safety standards, a misdemeanor. They found him not guilty of securities fraud and making false statements.

The Upper Big Branch mine disaster, an explosion in a Massey-owned mine  in West Virginia attributed to poor ventilation and faulty water systems, killed 29 workers in April 2010. Blankenship was the CEO of Massey Energy at the time, and was forced to retire after the disaster. A criminal investigation found that the company covered up safety violations. Prosecutors alleged that Blankenship knowingly covered up safety violations and deceived both shareholders and regulators. In the trial, prosecutors used conversations that Blankenship recorded in his office. Blankenship’s defense maintained there wasn’t evidence that he was involved.

Earlier this week, the 12-member jury was reportedly deadlocked. The jury had been deliberating for nine days after a 24-day trial, and twice reportedly said they could not agree on a verdict. The misdemeanor charge Blankenship is now convicted of carries a prison sentence of up to one year. Previously, prosecutors said that, with the other charges, he faced a maximum prison sentence of 31 years. William Taylor, Blankenship’s lead defense attorney, says the team intends to appeal.

Highbrow Ink

The tattoo is no longer quite the symbol of rebellion and subculture it once was. Roughly one in five Americans has one, and that rate is much higher for Millennials than their Boomer counterparts. Popular tattoo artists such as Nikko Hurtado regularly have close to a million Instagram followers, and the stigma against tattoos in the workplace is slowly fading in many parts of the country. Another sign of America’s broadening acceptance of the 1,000-year-old art form? High-art tattoo auctions and museum exhibitions.

In November the eccentric auction house Guernsey’s, which has sold President John F. Kennedy’s underwear and Cuban cigars, offered up a collection of 1500 images by some of the world’s foremost tattoo artists for between $50 and $50,000. A traveling exhibition that recently left Richmond’s Virginia Museum of Fine Arts features life-sized photographs of traditional Japanese tattoo art. In many ways, tattoos are fundamentally at odds with the fine-art world’s business model, which is based on buying, selling, and displaying objects. And yet, it seems almost inevitable that, given the popularity of tattoos, more art institutions will recognize the value of embracing the once-subversive art form.

The New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman

Obama on San Bernardino: 'We Don't Know Why They Did It'

President Obama was here just two months ago.

At the start of October, the president delivered a statement from the White House about a shooting at an Oregon community college that had claimed nine lives.

“I hope and pray that I don’t have to come out again during my tenure as president to offer my condolences to families in these circumstances,” he said, visibly frustrated, inside the briefing room. “But based on my experience as president, I can’t guarantee that.”

On Thursday morning, Obama offered his condolences to the friends and family of the 14 people killed and 17 injured in a shooting rampage in San Bernardino, California, a day earlier. This time, Obama spoke to a group of reporters inside the Oval Office, his tone considerably less forceful, almost resigned.

“It’s going to be important for all of us, including our legislatures, to see what we can do to make sure that when individuals decide that they want to do somebody harm, we’re making it a little harder for them to do it,” he said, “Because right now, it’s just too easy.”

Obama said the shooting investigation has been turned over to the FBI, which will coordinate with local law enforcement. Investigators are considering terrorism and a workplace dispute as possible motives.

“We don't know why they did it,” he said. “We don’t know at this point the extent of their plans. We do not know their motivations …  it is possible that this was terrorist-related. But we don’t know. It’s also possible that this was workplace-related.”

On Wednesday morning, the San Bernardino County Health Department held a holiday party for employees at the Inland Regional Center, which offers social services to individuals with developmental disabilities. The department had rented out of the center’s conference rooms. Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, who’d been with the department for five years, was there, but left “under circumstances described as angry or something of that nature,” police said. He returned at around 11 a.m. local time, with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27. They carried assault rifles and handguns, and wore “assault-style” clothes, and opened fire. Farook, a U.S. citizen, was a devout Muslim, his colleagues said, but rarely talked about his faith at work.

“We see the prevalence of these kinds of acts of mass shootings in this country,” Obama said Thursday. “I think so many Americans sometimes feel as if there is nothing we can do about it.”

He called for legislation for stricter gun-ownership laws, saying “we can take basic steps that would make it harder, not impossible, but harder for individuals to get access to weapons.”

The San Bernardino shooting is the deadliest mass shooting since 20 children and six adults were killed at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. In response to the Newtown shooting, lawmakers introduced proposals that would regulate assault weapons and expand background checks for gun purchases. Both were defeated in 2013.

Obama signed a presidential proclamation in honor of the shooting victims on Thursday, ordering the flag to fly at half-staff at the White House, all public buildings, military posts, and naval ships in the U.S., and U.S. embassies and consular offices abroad, until Monday.

Batter Up for The Great Holiday Baking Show

The best television shows usually have titles that express their concepts in the simplest of ways. Friends, arguably the most popular and culturally influential sitcom of all time, is indeed a show about six friends. ER is a drama set in and around an emergency room. Breaking Bad is an apt description of what Walter White did over six seasons (presumably The Chemistry Teacher Who Starts Making Methamphetamine and Discovers His True Destiny was deemed too wordy).

The Great British Bake Off is a show about a bake-off. The bake-off is great. But above all, it is British: It’s produced by the BBC, and watched by more than 15 million viewers in the U.K., where its sixth season concluded in October. The show has become legend, in part, thanks to its microdramas (“Bin-gate”), its fanciful concoctions (mocha and tutti frutti cream horns, anyone?), and its double entendres, to the point where “soggy bottom” is now firmly entrenched in the national lexicon. But its popularity is primarily due to something less tangible, namely, Britishness. It’s about all the things that make that island nation great: overbearing modesty, paper doilies, inclusiveness, smutty innuendo, team spirit, irrepressible gumption, suet, creative flair, and a dab hand with a piping bag. How can that winning formula be translated for an American audience?

The series is available in the U.S. on PBS and Netflix, although it airs under the title The Great British Baking Show thanks to the fact that Pillsbury copyrighted the term “bake-off” for its own long-running baking contest and won’t allow any similar competitive events to use the name. In 2013, CBS tried to franchise its appeal with The American Baking Show, a pale, pitiful pudding of an imitation notable only for the fact that Paul Hollywood—pastry chef extraordinaire, a steely silver fox, and the bad cop to Mary Berry’s grandmotherly baking goddess—came over from Britain to help and ended up having an affair with his co-judge, Marcela Valladolid.

Despite the on-set chemistry, the show floundered in the ratings, and was canceled after a single season. “Future installments might take a few tips from various Food Network competition shows and put a little more emphasis on the actual dishes,” TVLine’s Michael Slezak wrote. But the point was never the baking itself so much as what it represents: the cure for all modern ails. Baking is nostalgia, baking is home, baking is a warm, cinnamon-scented sense of security. The first time I watched an episode of The Great British Baking Show, homesick even after seven years living in the U.S., I cried.

In #GBBO, as the show is referred to on social media, the baking itself is secondary to the communal experience of watching the show and exalting, quietly, in a feeling of national pride. This isn’t something British people get to do much, given that boasting is vulgar and patriotism is only permitted during a royal wedding, a Bond film, or Wimbledon. How do you translate that goodwill, then, for an American audience, whose sense of exceptionalism is as unshakable as Tom Brady’s aim is true? The answer: You holidazzle it.

Enter The Great Holiday Baking Show, a four-part ABC special that possesses all the elements its name suggests: the kitchen inside a marquee tent; the music; the contestants of varied ability and confidence, who are pitted against each other for three timed baking challenges each episode. Even Mary Berry herself, the patron saint of flans and fluting, is present, only paired with the pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini rather than Hollywood, whose wife presumably forbade him from crossing the Atlantic this time around. But the hosts are Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and her husband Ian Gomez (Cougar Town), rather than Mel and Sue, two British comedians who’ve somehow made a career out of insouciance. And the contestants are, of course, American.

Baking is nostalgia, baking is home, baking is a warm, cinnamon-scented sense of security.

This means they tremble slightly when asked to reproduce one of Mary’s recipes in the technical challenge—brandy snaps filled with eggnog cream. “The only snap I’ve ever heard of is a ginger snap, and a snap like, ‘You go girl!’” said contestant Nicole in the first episode on Monday night. They were more comfortable in the first challenge, which tasked them with baking a cookie plate for Santa. (If this version ever airs in the U.K., it’s possible the pearl-clutching prompted by hearing Berry say “Santa” rather than “Father Christmas” will lead to national asphyxiation.) The final showstopper challenge, in which the contestants created a dazzling gingerbread house of their own design, led to some remarkable successes (a gingerbread pagoda, a gingerbread Eiffel Tower, a gingerbread carousel with gingerbread horses and trees) and one notable failure: a gingerbread hospital, baked by Grace, who’d already compared her Staten Island pronunciation of “water” to Mary Berry’s pristine articulation of the same word to great comical effect.

“You haven’t shown us many skills,” Berry said. “We would have liked to see some piping, and the decorations are all bought things.” It’s hard to accurately convey how brutally this sentence would have felled a contestant in #GBBO. Luckily, Grace was made of hardier stock. She was chosen by Berry and Iuzzini to go home, while the star baker of the week was Lauren, whose competence and grace under pressure seem to hint that she’ll be victorious in the grand finale on December 21.

So no real surprises, other than the fact that against all odds, the show actually works. Maybe it’s Mary Berry’s charisma. Maybe it’s a holiday miracle. It’s definitely not Vardalos and Gomez, nor Iuzzini, who tried to make a joke about gingerbread houses having soggy bottoms, capably proving how little he understands what a soggy bottom is (it relates to pies and tarts, never cookies). But more likely it’s the feeling that holiday baking evokes—the sensation the Porteguese call saudade, where you’re simultaneously mournfully nostalgic and full of love. Making the show as a four-episode special rather than a full series, and framing it around the holidays, allows it to tap into the well of complex emotion that the British series somehow stimulates. Essentially, yes, it’s a television show about people baking things. But that’s not what makes it great.

The Political Reactions to the San Bernardino Shooting

As details emerge about the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, American officials, politicians, and presidential candidates weighed in. The tenor of the responses fell largely along partisan lines.

After being informed of the developing situation, President Obama spoke with CBS’ Kelly O’Donnell. He stressed the ongoing nature of the episode, acknowledged its unknowns, and offered condolences to the victims. He then added:

The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world, and there's some steps we could take, not to eliminate every one of these mass shootings, but to improve the odds that they don't happen as frequently.

Common sense gun safety laws, stronger background checks and, for those who are concerned about terrorism, some may be aware of the fact that we have a no fly list where people can't get on planes, but those same people who we don't allow to fly could go into a store right now in the United States and buy a firearm and there's nothing that we can do to stop them.

That's a law that needs to be changed, and so you know, my hope is that we're able to contain this particular shooting and, and we don't yet know what the motives of the shooters are, but what we do know is, is that there are steps we can take to make Americans safer and that we should come together in a bipartisan basis at every level of government to make these rare as opposed to normal. We should never think that this is something that just happens in the ordinary course of events, because it doesn't happen with the same frequency in other countries.

The president was echoed by fellow Democrats, whose responses also centered on the need to change gun laws and the recent prevalence of mass shootings.

Once again our hearts ache to see a mass shooting. My heart is with the victims, their families and the people of my state.

— Sen. Barbara Boxer (@SenatorBoxer) December 2, 2015

I’m monitoring the shooting in San Bernardino closely. Absolutely heartbreaking that we’re faced with another mass shooting.

— Sen Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) December 2, 2015

I refuse to accept this as normal. We must take action to stop gun violence now. -H https://t.co/SkKglwQycb

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) December 2, 2015

Mass shootings are becoming an almost-everyday occurrence in this country. This sickening and senseless gun violence must stop.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) December 2, 2015

Horrifying news out of #SanBernardino. Enough is enough: it's time to stand up to the @NRA and enact meaningful gun safety laws

— Martin O'Malley (@MartinOMalley) December 2, 2015

Gabrielle Giffords, the former congresswoman from Arizona and herself the victim of shooting attack in 2011, spoke out just days after she praised the anniversary of the passage of the Brady Act.

On a plane & just seeing reports of the tragedy in San Bernardino, CA. Sad, awful, & frightening news. Praying for #SanBernardino.

— Gabrielle Giffords (@GabbyGiffords) December 2, 2015

On the Republican side, comments about the shooting emphasized prayer and offered praise for emergency workers.

California shooting looks very bad. Good luck to law enforcement and God bless. This is when our police are so appreciated!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2015

My thoughts and prayers are with the shooting victims and their families in San Bernardino.

— Dr. Ben Carson (@RealBenCarson) December 2, 2015

Our prayers are with the victims, their families, and the first responders in San Bernardino who willingly go into harm’s way to save others

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) December 2, 2015

Praying for the victims, their families & the San Bernardino first responders in the wake of this tragic shooting.

— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) December 2, 2015

My thoughts & prayers go out to those impacted by the shooting in San Bernardino, especially the first responders. -John

— John Kasich (@JohnKasich) December 2, 2015

Praying for those impacted by the shooting in California today.

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) December 2, 2015