Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 298

The Vision of Charles and Ray Eames

In a 1972 short film titled “Design Q&A,” Charles Eames offered answers to a series of questions about design, a field in which he and his wife, Ray, had envisioned everything from medical splints and airport seating to low-cost housing and children’s toys. “What is your definition of design, Monsieur Eames?” asked the interviewer, Madame L’Amic. “One could describe design as a plan for arranging elements to accomplish a particular purpose,” Charles replied. They continued:

MADAME L’AMIC: What are the boundaries of design?

CHARLES EAMES: What are the boundaries of problems?

This Eamesian understanding of design as a solution rather than a luxury—as something that’s about industry as much as art—encapsulates the unique philosophy and vast influence of Charles and Ray Eames, a husband-and-wife team whose lightness of touch and Californian joie de vivre infuses contemporary offices and homes. Would Ikea be the same without the Eameses? Would Apple? Their work is best remembered via the molded-plywood and leather lounge chair that bears the Eames name, but their vision of design as something that could get “the best to the greatest number of people for the least” lives on in less tangible ways. The Eameses, above all else, helped democratize the genre.

Eames Office

The couple are currently the subject of a major retrospective at London’s Barbican Center. The World of Charles and Ray Eames incorporates the breadth of their influence, opening with the plywood nose cone they designed for a military aircraft during World War Two, and recreating “Think,” a mid-1960s immersive installation made for the IBM Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair that draws parallels between human brains and computers. Although the Eameses were practical about their work, they were idealistic about the coming information age, seeing the ability to rapidly communicate with others all over the world as a powerful force for global change. “Beyond the age of information,” Charles Eames said in 1971, “is the age of choices.”

Eames Office

Charles and Ray Eames arrived in Los Angeles in 1941, a year after they met at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Charles was married to his first wife, Catherine at the time, but Ray began assisting him and Eero Saarinen in their designs for the Museum of Modern Art’s Organic Design in Home Furnishings Competition, and soon he divorced Catherine and married Ray. Their early years in California were spent trying to mass-produce the molded-plywood furniture Charles and Saarinen had pioneered, but they began shaping their designs to aid the war effort instead, making splints, stretchers, and airplane parts with their new technique. This shift said as much about the Eameses’ philosophy regarding their work as it did their patriotism. “Design,” Charles said, “addresses itself to the need.”

Eames Office

The two brought numerous skill sets to their work—both had an interest in film (Charles subsidized their studio in the early days by painting sets for MGM), and Ray was a visual artist who designed textiles and sketched covers for the journal Arts & Architecture. After the war they returned to their commercial efforts, completing the Eames House in Los Angeles in 1949 as part of a Case Study program for Arts & Architecture. The house was intended as an experiment to realize the design of a house for a young married couple needing a place to live and work. Like so many of their designs it became inextricable from the couple themselves, who lived there until their deaths (Charles in 1978, Ray 10 years later).

Eames Office

The Barbican exhibition offers countless examples of the chairs for which the Eameses are best known, and which encapsulate their spirit of “way-it-should-be-ness”—when an object, through hard work and meticulous process, is finally realized in the incarnation of its ideal state. More than artists, the couple considered themselves to be tradesmen and engineers, combining ingenuity and technological progress to produce playful, practical, reliable designs. Their tandem sling seating, first installed in Washington’s Dulles Airport and Chicago’s O’Hare, is now mimicked in waiting rooms all over the world. The sleek curvature and durability of their chairs has made them a staple in offices and homes, although the current $5,000 price tag for an Eames lounge chair at Herman Miller rather belies the idea of producing low-cost, stylish furniture for the masses.

Eames Office

But it’s impossible not to sense the Eamesian influence in low-cost, flat-packed furniture sold at Ikea, or Crate and Barrel, or Target. The way-it-should-be-ness of their chairs so infuses modern design that their own works have inspired countless contemporary imitators—something Charles himself might have appreciated. “To be realistic,” Charles Eames once said, “one must always admit the influence of those who have gone before.”

Tristan Fewings / Getty Images

Much of their impact is harder to trace: The designer Dieter Rams, whose work for Braun is unmistakably felt in the work of Apple’s chief designer, Jonathan Ive, has credited them as an influence, and certainly Apple’s synergy of form and function, lightness of spirit, and commitment to process borrows heavily from the Eamesian model. Their belief that everyday objects can both define and provide meaning makes them one of the most enduring creative forces of the 20th century. They predicted the future even if they couldn’t describe it. “What is the future of design?”  Madame L’Amic asked Charles Eames at the end of their Q&A. His response: a montage of images featuring fruit, plants, and flowers, as if to point at how the encapsulation of function and beauty has really been all around us, all along.

In Photos: The Eameses' Influence

Sinjar Reclaimed

Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have taken control of Sinjar from the Islamic State, which captured it last year and set off a campaign of horror against the Iraqi town’s Yazidi minority.

Masoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, announced Sinjar’s capture  at a news conference on Friday.

“Sinjar is very important because it has become a symbol of the injustice against the people of Kurdistan,” Barzani said, according to remarks provided by the Kurdistan Region Security Council.

There were no definitive accounts of casualties on either side.

#Sinjar is liberated by #peshmerga. I congratulate ppl of Kurdistan, esp. the #Yezidis. We delivered on our pledge to liberate Sinjar. 1/2

— Masoud Barzani (@masoud_barzani) November 13, 2015

I warmly thank the US and other coalition countries for their air strikes in support of the #peshmerga forces to liberate #Sinjar. 2/2

— Masoud Barzani (@masoud_barzani) November 13, 2015

As we reported Thursday, Peshmerga, backed by U.S. airstrikes, and joined by Yazidi fighters, began an offensive to reclaim Sinjar from the Islamic State.

But the campaign was complicated by the presence of Kurdish fighters from the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The PKK and Barzani’s troops were operating in different theaters and made competing claims. Some of that tension appeared to spill over into Friday’s announcement:

President @masoud_barzani: Aside from the Kurdistan flag, no other flag will rise in Sinjar. This was a Peshmerga-led operation.

— KR Security Council (@KRSCPress) November 13, 2015

But that statement could also be a reference to the Iraqi government in Baghdad. Both the central government as well as the Barzani’s autonomous Kurdish government claim Sinjar.

In August 2014, Sinjar became the focus of international attention when the Islamic State captured the town and began a campaign of atrocities—including rape and enslavement—against the Yazidis. Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled from the town into nearby mountains.

How to Get Journalism Right, Via the Movies

And with that, the karmic balance is restored. Three weeks ago marked the release of Truth, one of the worst movies about journalism I’ve ever seen. This week, in contrast, brings the national opening of Spotlight, one of the best. (It is also one of the best films of the year. You can read David Sims’s review here.)

Truth told the story of the 60 Minutes crew that in 2004 broadcast allegations regarding George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard that were quickly discredited. Spotlight describes the 2001 reporting by an investigative team at The Boston Globe that cracked the Catholic priest abuse scandal wide open. Both are essentially structured as narratives of heroic journalism—the latter, accurately; the former, insanely.  

The anti-parallels between the films are so acute that it almost seems as though the two could have been conceived as a package deal—say, as paired examples of don’t and do for use in a J-School seminar. Truth celebrated reporters who got their story—or at least significant elements of it—wrong. Spotlight celebrates reporters who got their story right. The former’s scoop (in addition to its inaccuracy) was incremental and a second-tier scandal at best. The latter’s scoop was shocking, revelatory, and far-reaching in its consequences. 60 Minutes rushed its story onto the airwaves to meet a set air date. The Globe resisted publishing until they had tracked down every lead, despite the risk that they might be scooped by the Boston Herald.

But beyond these particulars, what is perhaps most striking about Spotlight and Truth are the differing attitudes displayed by their journalistic protagonists. As the 60 Minutes team sees their story unraveling, they cling ever more tightly to it. Despite the movie’s Always Ask Questions mantra, the reporters never ask themselves whether they might have simply gotten it wrong. When they finally offer a correction, it’s treated as a betrayal of principle rather than the fulfillment of one, a capitulation to power rather than a capitulation to the facts and a duty to their audience. They remain self-righteous and defiant to the end.

In Spotlight, by contrast, the Globe crew is riddled with regret even after they’ve nailed one of the most important—and labor-intensive—investigative stories of the decade. Why didn’t they get to the story earlier, they ask themselves. How could they have missed something that was, to a considerable degree, hiding in plain sight? As the head of the investigative team, Walter “Robbie” Robinson (Michael Keaton), asks himself: “What about us? We had all the pieces. Why didn’t we get it sooner?”

The contrast is extraordinary: one news team that expresses no remorse at all for having dramatically botched a story; another that is filled with remorse that their groundbreaking, immaculately reported story wasn’t written years earlier. One movie offers a vision of journalism as antagonistic, obstinate, and obsessive, the other a vision that is open-minded, self-critical, and humble. And while the former traits certainly have their place within the field—and are in some cases essential—they are dangerous if not tempered by the latter.

We almost never know the whole story, if such a thing is even possible.

The Globe wasn’t alone in missing the priest scandal, after all. The extent of the abuse in and around Boston may have been unique, but related scandals unfolded in cities across the nation—and, to some degree, the globe. I am reminded, not at all happily, of an episode that took place during my stint as a deputy national editor at The Washington Post in 2000. A middle-aged man, obviously suffering from mental illness, showed up at the paper one day in the hope that we would run a piece about his abuse at the hands of a priest decades earlier. The details of his story were vague and at times contradictory. I suggested he go to the police—which, of course, he had already done, to no effect. I hooked him up with a reporter, and I think someone got him some immediate assistance. But I don’t believe anyone at The Post ever really followed up on his story. In all honesty, I’m not sure what we might plausibly have done differently. But that didn’t make me feel any less awful when the Globe’s revelations broke.

It’s not a phenomenon limited to people in the media, of course. Anyone who has lived in Washington, D.C. for any amount of time is familiar with John Wojnowski, who has stood witness in front of the Vatican embassy on Massachusetts Avenue while holding up signs—“Vatican Hides Pedophiles,” “Catholics Cowards,” etc.—almost every day for 17 years. I know I am not alone in viewing him quite differently after 2002 than I had before then. Motorists used to jeer at him and give him the finger; now, they tend to honk or wave in support.

Perhaps this is why Spotlight’s moral of humility is so powerful. There are so many things that we don’t know, so many assumptions that we don’t recognize as such, so many questions that we haven’t even thought to ask. Spotlight cautions us that we almost never know the whole story, if such a thing is even possible. It’s a worthy reminder, and not only for journalists.

Targeting the Islamic State’s Executioner

Updated on November 13 at 12:22 a.m.

A Pentagon spokesman says the U.S. is “reasonably certain” that Mohammed Emwazi, the Islamic State member better known as Jihadi John, was killed in a drone strike in Syria.

“We know for a fact that the weapons system hit its intended target and that the personnel who were on the receiving end of that weapons system were in fact killed,” Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said at a news conference. “We still have to finalize the verification that those personnel were specifically who we thought they were.”

Emwazi is the British-accented masked man seen in several Islamic State videos executing the group’s hostages. The Defense Department, in a statement Thursday, said Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born Briton who earned the monicker Jihadi John, had been targeted by a U.S. airstrike on Raqqa, Syria.

Warren said Friday the attack was carried out by a drone using a Hellfire missile.

Earlier, the BBC quoted an unnamed U.S. military source as saying there was a “high degree of certainty” Emwazi was killed in Thursday’s strike near Raqqa.

Emwazi can be seen in the videos showing the killings of Steven Sotloff and James Foley, the American journalists; Abdul-Rahman (Peter) Kassig, the U.S. aid worker; David Haines and Alan Henning, the British aid workers; Kenji Goto, a Japanese journalist, and other hostages released by the Islamic State as part of its chilling propaganda efforts.

Speaking outside Downing Street on Friday, British Prime Minister David Cameron called the strike an “act of self-defense,” adding it was the “right thing to do.”

“We have been working with the United States literally around the clock to track him down,” Cameron said. “This was a combined effort, and the contribution of both our countries was essential. Emwazi is a barbaric murderer.”

Cameron added it was still uncertain whether Emwazi was killed, but said the strike “will demonstrate to those that would do Britain, our people and allies harm we have a long reach, we have unwavering determination and we never forget about our citizens.”

Emwazi is one of many Western-raised Muslims who joined the Islamic State, the group that now controls large parts of Syria and Iraq. As my colleague Adam Chandler reported in February:

While Emwazi was born in Kuwait, his middle-class background and academic success—he reportedly graduated from the University of Westminster with a degree in computer programming—position him within a seemingly counterintuitive frame for a foreign ISIS recruit. As Karen Tumulty notes on Twitter, "'Jihadi John' from an upscale family, as was Osama bin Laden. Both contradict thesis that radicalization about economic frustration."

How Emwazi, 27, transitioned from a student in a Western capital to a force of malice in an Islamic terror group in the Middle East will be the subject of analysis and conjecture as Western governments continue to grapple with ISIS's surprising ability to recruit on a global scale.

Reactions to the airstrikes were mixed.

Diane Foley, James Foley’s mother, told ABC News:

Diane Foley: “Huge effort to go after deranged man when can’t make half that effort to save hostages while young Americans still alive”

— Jon Williams (@WilliamsJon) November 13, 2015

Bethany Haines, the daughter of David Haines, told ITV News:

After seeing the news that 'Jihadi John' was killed I felt an instant sense of relief, knowing he wouldn't appear in anymore horrific videos.

He was only a pawn in Isis's stupid game but knowing it's over that he's finally dead still hasn't sunk in.

As much as I wanted him dead I also wanted answers as to why he did it, why my dad, how did it make a difference?

Stuart Henning, Alan Henning’s nephew, said on Twitter:

Mixed feelings today wanted the coward behind the mask to suffer the way Alan and his friends did but also glad it's been destroyed

#ActualWorst, Round Two: Marnie Michaels vs. Matt Bevers

Throughout the month of November, we’re soliciting readers’ help to definitively answer an age-old question: Who is the actual worst character on television? We reviewed your submissions, did our own research, and came up with a list of 32 characters across four different categories, who’ll go head to head over the next four weeks until one of them is crowned as the most despicable, unlikeable, flat-out awful (fictional) person on the small screen.

This bracket, while intended to determine the relative awfulness of characters on television, is subject to the fact that “worst” is a complex superlative that can incorporate a number of different qualities. In no way are we suggesting that being a narcissistic 20-something is equivalent to, say, killing people and eating them. Rather, our goal is simply to map out which of these fictional characters we love to hate and which we hate to love.

See the bracket in its entirety here.

The Case for Marnie (Girls) HBO

Why this character is the actual worst: When people use “pretty girls” as an epithet, they’re talking about girls like Marnie Michaels. She’s a high-strung, annoying perfectionist who jumps to judge others, while her own life is a professional and moral mess. She manipulates men into having sex with her out of insecurity, including at least two of her best friends’ ex-boyfriends. Worst of all, she’s fake, offering false-toned apologies and always performing for those she’s trying to impress.

Worst moment/s: Being drawn in by the artist Booth Jonathan with the worst pick-up line in all of history; singing a ballad-version of Kanye West’s “Stronger” at her newly successful ex-boyfriend’s work party to get his attention; every time she sleeps with someone else’s boyfriend. And: Marnie and Desi.

Worst trait/s: She’s taken with fame, flattered easily, and willing to make a jerk of herself to win approval—mostly from (really lame) men.

Redeeming moments/qualities: In spite of herself, Marnie can be generous. She’s the first of the girls to be really patient with Shosh; she pays Hannah’s apartment bills. They’re rare moments of non-self-absorption, but they’re redeeming. —Emma Green

The Case for Bevers (Broad City) Comedy Central

Why this character is the actual worst: Ugh, Bevers, whyyyyyy. Why do you have to ruin everything? Why do you have to be so gross? Why do you have to be such a freeloader? Why do you have to be so Bevers?

Worst moment/s: Nothing, and I mean nothing, beats the great shoe-pooping incident of season one, episode seven. Not even the time Bevers stupidly screwed up the one favor he could have done for Abbi—helping pick up her crush’s mail from that weird warehouse on North Brother Island.

Worst trait/s: Bevers has no boundaries. None. And he’s as clueless as he is shameless. He masturbates in the living room of an apartment where he does not live. He tries to whip it out at parties. He eats all of Abbi’s food—including ice cream while mostly naked in her bed when she's not home. And he POOPS IN HIS SISTER’S SHOE at a party, then lets Abbi take the fall for it in front of her crush. As Abbi put it to him: “You have a way of tainting everything I love.”

Redeeming moments/qualities: Even though everything Bevers touches turns into a disgusting bodily fluid, he actually means well. Bevers almost (chokes back vomit) has a certain sweetness to him. Which doesn’t make him any less revolting, but may count for something. Then again, ugh, Bevers. —Adrienne LaFrance

Yet Another Report Excuses Police in Tamir Rice's Death

A report commissioned by the Cuyahoga County prosecutor has found that officers acted reasonably in the shooting of Tamir Rice, an unarmed 12-year-old boy whose death was captured on surveillance camera.

The report is the third independent report Prosecutor Timothy McGinty has released. Two previous reports also found that Officer Timothy Loehmann acted reasonably. Activists and Rice’s relatives have charged that the reports are being released in an attempt to justify a decision not to charge Loehmann for Rice’s death. It has now been nearly a year since Rice’s death, but there have not yet been charges.

The new report is by Ken Katsaris, a police consultant and trainer in Florida. Katsaris concludes, in short, that based on what the officers knew and what they could observe, all of the actions they took were within reason, since they had no way of knowing whether the toy gun Rice had was real or what he was doing. Katsaris’s report ends with a stunningly ill-chosen linkage of Rice’s death and professional consequences for Loehmann, saying both are “tragedies”:

This unquestionably was a tragic loss of life, but to compound the tragedy by labeling the officers [sic] conduct as anything but objectively reasonable would also be a tragedy, albeit not carrying with it the consequences of the loss of life, only the possibility of loss of career. But based on the circumstances outlined above, this outcome for the officers would be to judge them by other than the Court decisions on the use of deadly force, the State law, training provided by the State of Ohio, the CPD, and the recognized and accepted National Police Best Practices.

In Rice’s case, as in many cases of alleged police brutality, there are two separate planes of discussion. The first is the question of whether officers did was strictly allowed under the rules. Unsurprisingly, reviews by law enforcement tend to lean toward vindicating police decisions. (This is one reason why so few police officers are prosecuted for the many cases in which they shoot civilians—their actions are usually ruled justified.)

The second is whether the actions that are legally permitted are right and just—whether there’s a gap between what police deem justified and what citizens find acceptable. For example, when video of Sandra Bland’s arrest was released, experts generally said that what Texas Trooper Brian Encinia did was within his rights—but many questioned the wisdom of his approach. Reports like Katsaris’s may find officers’ actions to be justified, but in doing so they raise the question of whether, as the old expression has it, the scandal is what’s legal. Comparing the death of a child to a police officer losing his job isn’t likely to help.

Good News for a Goodfella

Leave it to a veteran wiseguy to outsmart the prosectors.

A jury in Brooklyn acquitted Vincent Asaro, an aging member of the Bonnano crime family, Thursday on charges related to the famous 1978 Lufthansa heist, immortalized in the 1990 film Goodfellas.

Asaro, 80, was on trial for a long slate of crimes, including planning the $5 million theft at John F. Kennedy Airport and various other acts of racketeering and extortion. He was also charged with killing a man (with a dog chain) who owned a warehouse where Asaro had stored stolen goods, which had been raided. But a jury rejected the entire set of charges against Asaro. Late in the trial, some harsh scrutiny had fallen on Gaspare Valenti, a cousin of Asaro’s who was the prosecution’s star witness. The defense painted him as a career liar desperate for money.

Asaro was always said to be a soldier, not a high-ranking member of the mafia. But the trial produced a colorful series of scenes harking back to the great mob movies. Witnesses and family members arrived shielding their faces from cameras. Asaro has a tattoo reading “Death before dishonor.” There was a dramatic retelling of the $5 million Lufthansa heist, classic nicknames—“Johnny One-Arm,” “Skinny Don,” “Good-Looking Sal”—and straight-from-Scorsese exchanges between prosecutors and Salvatore Vitale, another gangster-turned-informant:

“How does money flow in an organization?” [prosecutor Nicole Argentieri] asked.

“Up,” he replied.

“What about orders?” she asked.

“Down,” he replied.

What is the boss’s role? Ms. Argentieri asked.

“He’s God,” Mr. Vitale responded.

He added that loyalty had to be to the Mafia once someone was made, or inducted. “You can’t play on the sidewalk and live in the street. You’re either all sidewalk or all street,” he said. Asked to elaborate, he said, “You can have a business, but if the family calls, you’ve got to go.”

Asaro’s trial has been labeled as likely the last great mafia trial. If so, it represents how far the mob has fallen from the flashy, dangerous elegance of Goodfellas and The Godfather. Not only did the U.S. Attorney’s office fail to nail their man, the trial concerned a man who was far removed from the heights of a boss like John Gotti—in both raw power and in glamor. Recordings made by Gaspare while wearing a wire depicted Asaro not as a dangerous outlaw but as a sad, old man.

“I don’t come out early no more,” he said on one recording. “Where am I going? I got no place to go.” And in another: “I can’t win. I can’t win. I just can’t win. I can’t win! I just can’t win.”

Thursday’s verdict proved he wasn’t entirely right about that.

A Six-Figure Settlement on Campus Free Speech

As debates roil over free speech on American college campuses and as mechanisms that critique Israeli policies continue to divide, the universe delivered a perfect enmeshing of both stories in the Land of Lincoln.

On Thursday, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reached a settlement with Steven Salaita, a professor who had a job offer revoked by the school after he tweeted incendiary statements about Israel during the country’s war with Hamas in Gaza last summer. Here was one such tweet:

At this point, if Netanyahu appeared on TV with a necklace made from the teeth of Palestinian children, would anybody be surprised? #Gaza

— Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita) July 20, 2014

The university was bombarded by letters from angry students, parents, donors, and alumni, which ultimately led to the scuttling of his appointment by the college’s trustees. At the time, University Chancellor Phyllis Wise argued that Salaita’s beliefs were not the issue, but rather the tenor of his statements:

What we cannot and will not tolerate at the University of Illinois are personal and disrespectful words or actions that demean and abuse either viewpoints themselves or those who express them.

(In other tweets, Salaita assailed those who defended Israel as either “hopelessly brainwashed” or “awful human beings.”)

The decision to revoke the job offer from Salaita, who had quit his previous job, sold his house, and moved to Illinois, ignited another round of outrage among free-speech activists and those in academia who saw the encroachment of partisan politics into an academic appointment.

Salaita filed two lawsuits, which are now settled. As The Chicago Tribute reports, Salaita drops his lawsuits and “the university admits no wrongdoing.” Salaita’s job offer is still off the table, but he will receive $600,000, in addition to $275,000 in legal fees. Notably, some of the funds used to pay the settlement will be taxpayer money.

Salaita, who has since found a home at the American University of Beirut, issued a statement on his Facebook page.

We settled the case against UIUC today, and I am deeply grateful for the support and solidarity from so many individuals and communities. Together, we sent a strong message to those who would silence Palestine activists and limit speech on campus. The activists, students, academics, and others who spoke up with petitions, demonstrations, and investigations proved that grassroots organizing can make a difference. This is an important victory, even if the bigger fight isn’t over. At this point I am ready to move beyond this particular matter and continue doing what I love—teaching, writing, organizing, and contributing in whatever way I can to struggles for justice.

John Mulaney: Comedy’s Comeback Kid

John Mulaney knew exactly what he was doing naming his new stand-up special The Comeback Kid. The title ostensibly comes from the story he closes the hour with, about meeting the original “Comeback Kid” Bill Clinton in 1992, but it also marks the triumphant return of Mulaney, one of comedy’s ascendant stars, after his self-titled Fox sitcom proved to be a rare but massive misstep in 2014. The Comeback Kid, which debuts on Netflix on Friday, is his first special since the remarkable New In Town three years ago, and it’s a reminder of everything that makes Mulaney so singular: storytelling rich with well-observed details, delivered with the confidence of someone decades older than 33.

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Mulaney's Weird, Dark Edge

There’s a reason Mulaney, who started out writing for Saturday Night Live (where he created recurring characters like Stefon), was long touted to one day assume its Weekend Update chair. He has the snappy poise of comedians of yore like Johnny Carson or Chevy Chase, mixed with just enough self-deprecation to ground him in comedy’s current era. Still, it’s rare to see a stand-up these days who isn’t couched in layers of irony, engaging in some depressing soul-baring, or looking to make broader political statements, which makes the simplicity of Mulaney’s approach all the more welcome.

Mulaney the sitcom felt like an unnecessary throwback, a quasi-Seinfeld revival about a struggling comedian living in New York City with his cynical roommates. It had an acidic edge that occasionally shone through its formulaic presentation, but after being rejected by NBC and acquired and majorly revamped by Fox, it never seemed to find its footing. It was eventually dismissed to jeers from critics and rock-bottom ratings—the first real blunder in Mulaney’s career. Hired at SNL in 2008 (at the age of 26), he became one of the show’s behind-the-scenes stars over six years, also releasing two great stand-up albums (The Top Part and New In Town) before debuting his sitcom.

Since then, Mulaney’s toured this act around the country and honed it for this Netflix special (while also writing the best episode of IFC’s Documentary Now, a brilliant spoof of Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line called “The Eye Doesn’t Lie”). Some of the material in The Comeback Kid feels very new, while other bits have popped up in his acts without making it to one of his albums, including his show-stopping Bill Clinton story (his family’s history with the former president is both deep and surprising). Mulaney hammers it all together into a seamless hour that reflects his new-found status as an adult: He’s married now and has a white French bulldog named Petunia who’s become an Instagram star, and who introduces the show. He possesses a little more world-weariness, even if he never mentions his travails in network-sitcom land.

Mulaney’s first two albums were very much about wrestling with what it means to be a grown-up. (Though his clean-cut image wouldn’t suggest it, he’s a recovering alcoholic with plenty of stories about his younger self.) In The Comeback Kid, many of his more reflective bits focus on his growing admiration for his conservative, straight-laced father and the quiet battle of wills he fought with his children. The Comeback Kid isn’t trying to tell one large story—Mulaney is very much an anecdote comic, relating lots of little tales over the course of an hour. But if the show has a tragic hero, it’s his dad, whose firm principles get hilariously upended in the final line of the final story, with the kind of unexpected punch Mulaney has long excelled at delivering.

What next? With his track record, Mulaney could stick with stand-up comedy forever and maintain his perfect batting average. But as The Comeback Kid reminds fans, he’s a magnetic screen presence with a specific, nostalgic take on growing up and navigating adulthood. His old-school style might have pushed him toward trying to rescue the ’90s sitcom, but he should never have taken on such a thankless task. Hopefully he’ll find more success with other mediums in the future. For now, The Comeback Kid is the perfect new calling card to build on.

Why Sweden Tweaked Its Migrants Policy

The fragmented European response to the migrant crisis splintered further Thursday when Sweden announced it would impose temporary border controls, a move that goes against European Union’s open-border policy.

Swedish officials say the checks, which will last  for 10 days, will help them register the thousands of asylum-seekers entering the country, according to the BBC. Officials stressed the checks were put in place to maintain order and maintain security, and said anyone requesting asylum would not be turned back. They also said the controls are in line with EU rules.

EU law allows people to move freely without passports within the internal borders of the Schengen area, which comprises of 26 European countries, including Sweden. Stefan Lofven, the prime minister of Sweden, said Thursday the most severe migrant crisis since World War II has created a dire need for “another system” of intra-bloc travel. Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, agreed.

“I have no doubt without effective control of our external borders, the Schengen rules will not survive,” he said Thursday.

Sweden, a country of 9.6 million, is taking in more asylum-seekers per capita than any other European nation. About 10,000 asylum-seekers arrive in Sweden each week, and the country has run out of short-term space to house them, according to The Guardian. Nearly 200,000 migrants are expected to arrive there this year.

Sweden’s border policy is one effort of many in a months-long frazzled and uncoordinated European response to a historic influx of migrants and refugees, many of whom are fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere. European and African leaders met in Malta this week to discuss the crisis, but the fruits of the meeting have already been labeled as falling short of what’s needed. European leaders on Thursday signed an aid deal worth $1.9 billion with African leaders that would help in repatriating migrants who are not granted asylum in European nations. (About 150,000 people from African countries have crossed the Mediterranean this year.) But Macky Sall, the president of Senegal, said the agreement could still “be improved” and argued “you cannot insist on Africans being readmitted to their countries of origin when you are welcoming Syrians and others.”

European nations have largely acted alone in attempting to manage the crisis. Hungary—the major transit country for people trying to reach Germany, Sweden, and other, richer nations— constructed razor-wire fences along its borders with Croatia and Serbia last month. Slovenia, to which thousands flocked when Hungary became nearly inaccessible, began building its own barrier with Croatia on Wednesday. Germany, which openly welcomed Syrian refugees in August despite EU rules, announced this week it would send more Syrian refugees back to the first EU country they entered in cases when that is a “realistic possibility.” Berlin excluded Greece, the first point of entry for most asylum-seekers, from the measure, a decision that has riled the Hungarian government. And Finland’s interior ministry said recently that due to a surge in the number of asylum-seekers, authorities “are no longer able to provide them with as high-quality reception services as before” and “are prepared to resort to tent and container accommodation.”

EU leaders did mostly come together on plan in September, agreeing to distribute 160,000 migrants across the bloc. But the progress on that has been meager, with only 130 resettled so far.

Swedish authorities have already begun monitoring trains and ferries arriving from mainland Europe. Fredrik Bengtsson, spokesman for the Swedish Migration Agency, told the BBC the organization was transporting people at border by bus to its offices for registration, but “once they get there quite a lot don’t enter and get registered but disappear.”