Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 81

An 'Overheated' Hillary Clinton Departs a 9/11 Commemoration

Nearly a week after her coughing fit at a campaign rally in Ohio fueled conspiracy theories about hidden medical problems, Hillary Clinton is again facing questions over her health.

The Democratic presidential nominee left early during a ceremony in New York to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks because she felt “overheated,” her campaign said Sunday.

“During the ceremony, she felt overheated so departed to go to her daughter's apartment, and is feeling much better,” Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in a statement. Merrill pointed out Clinton attended the ceremony for 90 minutes before she was escorted out.

Video captured by an attendee and posted online shows Clinton standing arm-in-arm with a staffer as a black van approaches to remove her from the ceremony. Clinton stumbles as she steps off the curb toward the vehicle, and is helped inside by those around her.

Hillary Clinton 9/11 NYC pic.twitter.com/q9YnsjTxss

— Zdenek Gazda (@zgazda66) September 11, 2016

Clinton left the ceremony at about 9:30 a.m., according to The New York Times. Her daughter, Chelsea, lives in New York City’s Flatiron District, about a 20-minute drive from Ground Zero, where the memorial was held. Her campaign took more than an hour to offer an explanation of her sudden departure.

Clinton emerged from her daughter’s apartment at about 11:40 a.m., wearing sunglasses and waving to onlookers.

“I’m feeling great,” she said, according to reporters outside the building. “It’s a beautiful day in New York.” Clinton was driven to her home in Chappaqua, New York, without the press pool that usually follows her on the campaign trail.

Last week, Clinton began her speech at a rally in Cleveland with a coughing fit. “Every time I think about Trump, I get allergic,” she joked, and her voice remained hoarse for the duration of her remarks. That incident fueled conspiratorial whispers that Clinton was too sick to be president.

The latest incident in New York could revive criticism from the Trump campaign about Clinton’s physical ability to serve as president. Last month, Trump told rally attendees in Ohio he believed Clinton lacked “the mental and physical stamina” to be commander-in-chief. Later that month, Trump, challenged Clinton to release her medical records. “I think that both candidates, Crooked Hillary and myself, should release detailed medical records,” Trump tweeted. “I have no problem in doing so! Hillary?”

It’s customary for presidential candidates to release documents from their physicians attesting to their good health. In July 2015, three months months after announcing her presidential run, Clinton’s campaign released a typical two-page letter from her doctor saying the politician was in “excellent physical condition.” The letter said Clinton at the time took medication to treat hypothyroidism and blood thinners to prevent clots. Doctors found a blood clot in Clinton’s head in January 2013 during a followup exam for a concussion she suffered a month earlier.

The Trump campaign followed in December 2015, releasing a four-paragraph note in which the candidate’s doctor of 25 years said Trump “will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” That note’s lack of detail, and its language, have fueled their own set of questions.

A Police Scandal in Oakland

Prosecutors announced criminal charges Friday against seven Bay Area police officers for their roles in a sexual-misconduct scandal that rocked the Oakland Police Department and other law-enforcement agencies in northern California this summer.

Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley said the officers would face charges including forcible oral sex with a minor, lewd behavior, obstruction of justice, improper use of department computers, and failure to report sexual assault. Five of them are from Oakland, while the other two worked for the nearby Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department and Livermore Police Department.

Local investigators discovered the misconduct while investigating the suicide of Oakland police officer Brendan O’Brien in September 2015. During the investigation, a former sex worker who was 18 or 19 years old at the time claimed she had a sexual relationship with O’Brien.

The Los Angeles Times has more:

The scandal exploded in June, when the woman claimed in a televised interview to have slept with more than a dozen city police officers. Some of the sexual interactions happened when she was underage, she said, and the woman also claimed she had sex with some officers in exchange for information about planned prostitution raids.

The scandal soon widened, and members of four other East Bay law enforcement agencies were also accused of either having sex with the woman or engaging in other inappropriate conduct with her. Two Oakland police officers resigned as a result of the scandal, and three others were placed on administrative leave, city officials said at the time.

Fallout from the revelations also led to a massive shake-up in the Oakland Police Department’s upper ranks. Chief Sean Whent resigned on June 9, citing “personal reasons.” The East Bay Express, a local alt-weekly, reported the following day that Whent had been forced out by a federal monitor overseeing the department. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf tapped Ben Fairow, the deputy police chief for Bay Area Regional Transit, as Whent’s interim replacement.

Six days later, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf suddenly announced Fairow’s “immediate removal” from the post. Local news outlets reported shortly thereafter that he had admitted to having an extramarital affair over a decade earlier. She selected Paul Figueroa, a member of the department, to take over in Fairow’s stead.

Two days later, Figueroa also stepped aside and went on leave. Neither he nor Schaaf gave a reason for the sudden departure. Schaaf then placed the city’s police force under a civilian administrator until a permanent chief from outside the department can be found.

Star Trek and Two Sides of Hip-Hop: The Week in Pop-Culture Writing

The Beat Don’t Stop

Sasha Frere-Jones | The New Republic

“While The Get Down rockets through the Bronx in the summer of 1977, Donald Glover’s Atlanta slouches through the South of today. These two new shows bookend a 40-year period that has been defined by hip-hop, though they don’t see eye to eye on the power of music, socially, or culturally. The executive summary is that both are careful, concentrated TV shows that work in very different ways: The Get Down is a whirling, saturated, fantasy-friendly ‘yes,’ while Atlanta is a granular, stubbornly realistic ‘nah.’”

Pete Wells Has His Knives Out

Ian Parker | The New Yorker

“When Wells speaks, his fingers often flutter near his temples, as if he were a stage mentalist trying to focus. He ordered several plates of food; after hesitation, he asked for a glass of white wine. He does not follow Craig Claiborne’s practice, in the nineteen-sixties, of weighing himself every day, but he has begun to think of alcohol as calories that he can skip without being professionally lax. He is not fat, but the job stands between him and leanness: He can’t turn down food. ‘My body is not my own,’ he said.”

The Face of Television Is Changing

Alison Herman | The Ringer

“At their best, both Atlanta and Queen Sugar spotlight what there’s room for when blandly ‘universal’ shows and their often-patronizing tokenism no longer carry the sole burden of representation. Instead, Glover and DuVernay craft their own worlds on their own terms.”

Can Jonathan Safran Foer Make a Comeback?

Alex Shephard | GQ

“Foer presents life as a series of tests: It’s one reason he keeps coming back to the question of ‘choice’ in our conversation. Here I Am is no different ... Foer is adamant that he has passed the test of self-actualization, that his divorce was as healthy as divorces can be, that Here I Am is the product of who he is at this exact moment, that he does not think back on the precocious wizard who wrote two widely read books that made him a literary superstar.”

Star Trek’s 50-Year Mission

David Schilling | The Guardian

“But there’s no question that what defines Star Trek today is an egalitarian, pluralistic, moral future society that has rejected greed and hate for the far more noble purpose of learning all that is learnable and spreading freedom throughout the galaxy. That doesn’t exactly chime with the world we live in: one that is increasingly polarized, violent, and arguably teeming with existential despair.”

Why Do Funny Black Women Still Need to Be Trailblazers in 2016?

Tomi Obaro | BuzzFeed

“But in spite of Hollywood’s historically fickle relationship with them, black women are making their own way, distributing their work, stretching the boundaries of what we consider comedy, and supporting each other avidly, even as the Hollywood apparatus continues to imply that there can only be one funny black woman at a time (if at all).”

Blair Witch: Shaky Cams That Left Audiences Shaking

Marc Spitz | The New York Times

“The gothic nature of The Blair Witch Project seemed a bracing counterpoint to the modernity that marked much of American culture at the turn of the millennium. In an increasingly digital world, the feeling of something authentically creepy proved irresistible.”

The Link Between Whitney Houston and the Rise of Auto-Tune in North Africa

Jace Clayton | Pitchfork

“These effects flow from her masterful use of a technique called melisma. Technically speaking, melisma occurs when vocalists use melodic embellishment to extend a single syllable. Emotionally, it’s something else entirely, a mode of expression that bucks against the very limits of language.”

Dear America: Reading Through History

The morning of my fourth day of third grade, my teacher read Betty MacDonald’s Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle out loud to the class. At some point another adult came in and whispered something in the teacher’s ear. There had been an accident, they told us, at the World Trade Center, some 20 blocks from our school. Some kids’ parents might come pick them up early.

As it turned out, all kids’ parents did, sooner or later. My dad walked me home, and every store we passed along the way seemed to have a visible television replaying what I’d seen happening down Sixth Avenue before we walked north. Two buildings to which, as an eight-year-old, I’d given little thought, were burning down before our eyes. Everywhere, people stood clustered, looking upward. “It was the terrorists,” one said. The tourists, I heard. Of course. After all, until that day, they were the worst enemies I knew New York to have. I asked my dad if the bad guys would be arrested once the plane landed.

* * *

Sometime that fall, I began reading Scholastic’s Dear America series. Each book in the series was a fictional diary of a fictional girl living through real historic events. On the front was a portrait of the girl and, below the title, an indicator of the event or era: The Diary of Clotee, a Slave Girl, Belmont Plantation, Virginia, 1859. The World War II Diary of Madeline Beck, Long Island, New York, 1941. The Diary of Zipporah Feldman, a Jewish Immigrant Girl, New York City, 1903. At the end of the diary, there would be a Historical Note providing further context and pictures and documents from the time and place in question, a history lesson in miniature.

The books that stand out most clearly in my memory are the ones where the girl witnesses some defining historical moment firsthand—the dropping of a bomb, or the arrival of the Nazis. I couldn’t tell you if I read the Oregon Trail diary, but I know exactly where I was and how my heart raced when I read Amber Billows’s Pearl Harbor entry (with a flashlight in my bunk bed on a class trip) or that Julie Weiss’s mother had killed herself after being harassed by Nazis in 1938 Vienna (in the backseat of my family’s station wagon on the FDR Drive.)

These diaries followed a similar arc: Their protagonists started out with basically good lives. Their frustrations were normal, adolescent ones. Their parents fought; they were waiting for their breasts to grow. And then one day, it happened: that defining moment. You, the reader, felt vividly scared to learn what the diarist had seen and heard and smelled, whom she might have lost. But unlike in real life, you’d seen it coming since you picked the book, with its rough-edged pages and smooth place-marking ribbon, off the library shelf. The defining moment had already defined history. It was easier to encounter that sort of news in the middle of a book that was guaranteed to keep going than it was to sense that your own life—which didn’t seem to have much to do with history at all—might have reached an inflection point, of sorts, in the middle of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.

Dear America was not my first foray into historical fiction, or even history. I loved the American Girl books and had dabbled in the old-school Childhood of Famous Americans biographies. But here was history in the first person. With Dear America, learning about history became almost a secondary concern. I read the books to learn about how girls—regular people, who might not have even known that their (fictional) lives had much to do with history—lived through it. (Unlike Anne Frank, whose diary I would read for the first time several years later, the Dear America girls, as far as I can remember, survived.)

It was precisely Dear America’s devotion to the bit players that appealed to me.

That sentiment would surely have horrified those who, unbeknownst to me at the time, had spent the preceding decade battling my educators and their ilk on the history fields of the culture wars. As others have noted, the 36 books in the original Dear America series were published between 1996 and 2004, right after the fierce debate over the National History Standards. The books’ focus on the subjective lives of insignificant, imaginary figures—girls!—was exactly the sort of thing Lynne Cheney warned of in her polemic “The End of History” when she wrote, “Imagine an outline for the teaching of American history in which George Washington makes only a fleeting appearance and is never described as our first president.” To minimize the roles of America’s great men for the sake of political correctness, critics of the new standards charged, would be to forsake the cause of history itself.

But it was precisely Dear America’s devotion to the bit players that appealed to me. The intimacy of the diaries, and the implicit agency of their protagonists, who told their stories for themselves, meant more to me in those months after 9/11 than any traditional history texts would have. I remember feeling, at the time, that other kids—kids who lived outside New York, or even uptown, for that matter—couldn’t possibly get it. For them, I thought, 9/11 must have been a faraway event, abstractly but not viscerally unsettling, much like the textbook version of history. Dear America was, on some level, a comforting reminder that I was not the first, nor would I be the last, to live through history in the messy, unfolding present.

I began keeping a journal of my own where, from time to time, I recorded both my mundane annoyances and my anxiety about the prospect of some other, unanticipated cataclysm. (One entry, from a weekend trip with my family outside the city: “Should I not be worried since I’m in the country?”) In fourth grade, when we learned about immigration, I wrote my own (decidedly unimaginative) fictional letters from immigrant girls: “I am right in front of the Statue of Liberty!” I tore through the Dear America books and their male-centric counterparts, My Name Is America, and even read a few from the Royal Diaries series (in addition, of course, to the more PG-13 Princess Diaries). History, I now knew for certain, was everywhere.

Dear America showed me, with an unshakeable force, what history could be.

Only later, as a high-school student who still loved history (though less so history textbooks), did I put all the pieces of that realization together. I learned the names of the historians who had studied “regular” people, demanding that their lives be taken seriously; those who insisted that Famous Americans weren’t the only ones whose childhoods might serve an educational purpose for young readers. I read Cheney’s “The End of History” and seethed at her logic. Without the efforts of those she lambasted, I understood, the books that quietly helped me make sense of the nonsensical world I found myself in might never have been written.

Dear America didn’t spark my interest in history or even form the basis of my third-grade historical knowledge; but it showed me, forcefully, what history could be. It happens quickly, unplanned for. You can go to school on a Tuesday morning with the usual back-to-school butterflies and go to bed that night with a litany of new vocabulary words: terrorist, hijacking, rubble. The landscape of your childhood can change in a few minutes, and with it the significance of everyday acts. Very often, it takes a while to make sense, even to adults.

And, always, life goes on, inseparable from what may have happened. Exactly a year after 9/11, I used colored pencils to decorate my journal entry with pink hearts. Before school that day, a new cousin had been born. “At first I was worried because it was 9/11,” I wrote, “but soon my exitedness [sic] took over.”

Chelsea Manning's Hunger Strike

NEWS BRIEF U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning is launching a hunger strike from prison, her lawyer confirmed Friday.

In a statement, Manning, who is transgender, linked her attempt to end her own life in July to “the lack of care for my gender dysphoria that I have been desperate for.”

The Army filed additional charges against her later that month linked to her suicide attempt, for which she could face an additional nine years behind bars. Manning said Friday she was “being punished for surviving her attempt,” sharply criticizing the U.S. military for not providing her with psychological help. From her statement:

I am no longer asking. Now, I am demanding. As of 12:01 am Central Daylight Time on September 9, 2016, and until I am given minimum standards of dignity, respect, and humanity, I shall—refuse to voluntarily cut or shorten my hair in any way; consume any food or drink voluntarily, except for water and currently prescribed medications; and comply with all rules, regulations, laws, and orders that are not related to the two things I have mentioned.

This is a peaceful act. I intend to keep it as peaceful and non-violent, on my end, as possible. Any physical harm that should come to me at the hands of military or civilian staff will be unnecessary and vendictive. [sic] I will not physically resist or in any way harm another person. I have also submitted a “do not resuscitate” letter that is effective immediately. This shall include any attempts to forcibly cut or shorten my hair or to forcibly feed me by any medical or pseudomedical means.

Until I am shown dignity and respect as a human again, I shall endure this pain before me. I am prepared for this mentally and emotionally. I expect that this ordeal will last for a long time. Quite possibly until my permanent incapacitation or death. I am ready for this.

I need help. Please, give me help.

Manning is serving a 35-year prison sentence after a court-martial convicted her in 2013 for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks while working as a military intelligence analyst in Iraq. Among the documents were large caches of internal U.S. military reports about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as more than 250,000 State Department diplomatic cables.

An Overturned Conviction in the Rutgers Suicide Case

NEWS BRIEF A New Jersey appeals court on Friday overturned the conviction of Dharun Ravi, the former Rutgers University student whose roommate killed himself after Ravi covertly filmed him kissing another man.

Ravi was convicted in 2012 on 15 counts, including bias intimidation and invasion of privacy. A three-judge panel threw those out because of a change in state law made after he was convicted. That change concerned the bias intimidation law, which the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional.

Ravi will get a new trial now, with new charges, which include invasion of privacy, tampering with evidence, and hindering apprehension. The judges wrote they’d overturned Ravi’s conviction because evidence prosecutors had presented the jury tainted their “verdict on the remaining charges, depriving defendant of his constitutional right to a fair trial,” the Associated Press reported.

At the time of his trial, in 2012, Ravi’s case was an example of the type of bullying LGBT people endure, and how social media can invade a person’s privacy and be made public. Ravi was accused of setting up a webcam to spy on his university dorm roommate, Tyler Clementi, filming a few seconds of him kissing another man. Ravi then told others about it in texts and tweets. A few nights later, Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge.  

Although the appeals court overturned Ravi’s conviction, the judges were critical of what he’d done. The judges wrote that:

The social environment that transformed a private act of sexual intimacy into a grotesque voyeuristic spectacle must be unequivocally condemned in the strongest possible way. The fact that this occurred in a university dormitory, housing first-year college students, only exacerbates our collective sense of disbelief and disorientation. All of the young men and women who had any association with this tragedy must pause to reflect and assess whether this experience has cast an indelible moral shadow on their character.

Ravi had faced up to 10 years in prison during his trial. But he was sentenced to 30 days, more than $11,000 in fines, and community service. He ended up serving just 20, because he received a 10-day credit for good behavior.

Clementi’s family found little comfort in the judges’ criticism of Ravi. They told the AP the decision proves:

… how much more work there is to be done, and will push us forward with stronger determination to create a kinder, more empathic society where every person is valued and respected.

The Atlantic’s Week in Culture

Don’t Miss

Always the Sidekick—Lilian Min questions why East Asian actors continue to play only supporting roles in big-budget action movies, despite Hollywood’s efforts to court the Chinese box office.

Warner Bros.

Film

Clint Eastwood, Bard of Competence—Megan Garber examines the director’s portrayal of everyday miracles in his newest film, Sully.

The Silliness of Sully—Christopher Orr reviews the disappointing new Clint Eastwood film that is maybe only rescued by Tom Hanks, who plays the eponymous heroic pilot.

Netflix

Television

What to Watch This Fall—David Sims looks ahead to a television season full of reboots, revivals, adaptations, and some original stories.

Atlanta’s Magic Is in the Details—Vann R. Newkirk II revels in the subtleties and surrealism of Donald Glover’s new FX show.

The Pointless, Nasty Spectacle of the Comedy Central Roast—David Sims bemoans the growing irrelevance of the annual special.

The Corner of Hollywood and Motherhood—David Sims finds joy in the bitter humor of FX’s new comedy Better Things, starring Louie’s Pamela Adlon.

The Quiet Tragicomedy of One Mississippi—David Sims identifies the real-life struggles and empathetic humor at the heart of Tig Notaro’s new Amazon series.

RCA Records

Music

Sia’s Wonderful and Sad Music Video for Orlando—Spencer Kornhaber unpacks the singer’s newest song in light of other artists’ tributes to the tragedy in Florida.

Carly Rae Jepsen, the Most Useful Pop Star—Spencer Kornhaber celebrates the unique ferocity and utility of the singer, in light of her latest release.

Lady Gaga’s Seriously Stomping ‘Perfect Illusion’—Spencer Kornhaber revels in the highly anticipated head-rush of a new single from the pop star.

M.I.A. Claims Victory, in Her Way—Spencer Kornhaber listens to the latest (and supposedly last) release from the rapper who chose her politics over celebrity.

Mike Morgan / Grand Central / Zachary Bickel / The Atlantic

Books

The View From Baltimore—Zach Hindin reviews The Cook Up, a memoir by D. Watkins that explores drugs, race, and class for audiences living in different Americas.

Characters Don’t Change, but Readers Do—Joe Fassler talks to the novelist and poet Alice Mattison about her literary influences, as part of The Atlantic’s ongoing “By Heart” series.

The British-Iranian Woman Sentenced to Five Years in a Tehran Prison

NEWS BRIEF Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a dual British-Iranian citizen, was sentenced to five years in prison by Iran’s Revolutionary Tribunal on unknown charges, Reuters reports.

Devastated & outraged by news that #FreeNazanin has been sentenced to 5yrs, but no charges - UK gov must act now https://t.co/CHNBRsSxwN

— Free Nazanin (@FreeNazanin) September 9, 2016

“Nazanin confirmed this sentence to her husband in a phone call today (9 September). She is expected to serve her sentence in Evin prison,” her family said in a statement Friday.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a 37-year-old charity worker with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was traveling from Tehran to her home in London with her two-year-old daughter on April 3 when she was detained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport. In August, when Zaghari-Ratcliffe first appeared in court, the Associated Press reported she was accused of taking part in the “design and implementation of cyber and media projects to cause the soft toppling of the Islamic Republic.” Since then, she has remained in detention for 159 days and is currently being held in Tehran’s Evin Prison, known for housing political prisoners.

Monique Villa, the CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, issued a statement condemning  the sentence, which she called a “terrible situation.”

“I have instructed the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s lawyers to find out what these charges are and I know that Nazanin’s family has asked the same of their lawyer in Iran,” she said.  

The ruling comes days after the United Kingdom and Iran restored full diplomatic relations for the first time in five years. Though relations were never formally severed, both countries closed their embassies after Iranian protesters attacked the British embassy in Tehran in 2011. Though the U.K. has previously advocated for Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release, Iran has refused to grant the request on the grounds the country does not recognize dual nationalities, and therefore does not grant requests for consular access.

British officials, however, said they would continue to press for access to Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

“We are deeply concerned by reports that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been sentenced without confirmation of the charges made against her,” the British Foreign Office said in a statement.

Since her detention, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, began a petition calling on former Prime Minister David Cameron and current Prime Minister Theresa May to intervene on his wife's behalf. It has earned more than 800,000 signatures.

Amnesty International UK issued a petition Friday calling on Boris Johnson, the British foreign secretary, to advocate on Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s behalf.

The Quiet Tragicomedy of One Mississippi

The comedian Tig Notaro’s stand-up set Live, recorded in 2012, was a candid retelling of a hellish year in her life—a life-threatening battle with pneumonia, followed by the death of her mother from a freak accident, followed by the end of her long-term relationship, followed by being diagnosed with breast cancer. It was a spontaneous piece of bravura storytelling, made all the more gripping by the fact that Notaro could actually mine great jokes from the awfulness of her recent experiences. Now, her new Amazon show One Mississippi is aiming to do the same, dramatizing her return home to bid farewell to her mother while dealing with a cancer diagnosis. Just like Live, it’s a comedy—but a sometimes extraordinarily depressing one.

One Mississippi is the latest entry in an ever-expanding world of half-hour TV comedies that deal with difficult, downbeat story topics. You’re the Worst detailed its protagonist’s battle with clinical depression, Bojack Horseman is an animated show about a selfish narcissist that is anything but whimsical, and Amazon’s Transparent is a bracing, challenging work that is nonetheless unsparing about its ensemble’s many dysfunctions. Though her comedy can be heartbreakingly personal and raw, Notaro has always been a gentle storyteller, a dry-witted but affable presence who succeeds onstage by humorously defusing even the saddest stories. One Mississippi is true to her personality as a performer: It explores painful topics, but with intense empathy for both its characters and its viewers, as if holding their hands through its toughest moments.

As a piece of stand-up performance, Live was a largely unplanned recollection of Notaro’s personal crises. She had emerged in the alternative-comedy scene as a deadpan master of the absurd, someone who would devote a whole national TV appearance to dragging a stool across the stage or who would do an impression of “curtains opening” by breathing stiffly through her nose into the microphone. After her terrible year, she told The New Yorker, she appeared onstage at the L.A. club Largo, and her life story just poured out of her; “It felt so silly and irrelevant to think about that stuff, observational jokes about bees and stuff, in light of what was going on with me,” she said. “It’s weird because with humor, the equation is Tragedy + Time = Comedy. I am just at tragedy right now.”

In that formula, it seems that Notaro has finally arrived at something closer to “comedy.” Her cancer is in remission after she underwent a double mastectomy. She’s also married to the actress Stephanie Allynne, who recently gave birth to twin boys, a journey she covered in last year’s Netflix documentary Tig. There’s an almost therapeutic self-awareness driving One Mississippi. It squeezes many of Notaro’s real-life hardships into an even tighter timeline, then digs in deep, exploring her personal journey through illness and grief while also unpacking the complex family dynamics at work in her suburban Mississippi hometown.

Notaro is playing a character called Tig Notaro, tweaked slightly from a stand-up comedian to the host of a The Moth-style radio show where she shares personal stories from her life. It’s a slightly clunky framing device, and Tig’s occasional monologues into the microphone often serve the show poorly: One Mississippi’s narrative works better when it isn’t trying to connect the thematic dots too clearly. The same goes for Tig’s L.A. girlfriend (played by Casey Wilson), an obvious airheaded stereotype who seems immediately doomed as a long-term romantic option for her wry, witty partner. It doesn’t help that Allynne, Notaro’s real-life wife, pops up as a possible love interest named Kate, though perhaps only the most die-hard Notaro fans will instantly make that connection.

It’s in the silent, withdrawn moments that One Mississippi really thrives.

These more outsized figures might have been the work of One Mississippi’s co-creator Diablo Cody, the writer and director behind films like Juno and Young Adult and the TV series The United States of Tara. Cody can be a wonderful writer, but she prefers wilder storytelling twists and extroverted characters, which makes her an odd match for Notaro’s understated approach. Notaro is quite charming in the lead role, but she’s more often than not a restrained presence. This makes sense for the autobiographical story being told, but it means One Mississippi can be quiet and slow-moving. Though the half-hour running time on every episode helps with that, the efforts to push things along with slightly bigger personalities sometimes feels jarring.

Aside from Notaro, the main standout of One Mississippi is John Rothman, the gruff character actor viewers might recognize from one of a thousand in television and film, who plays her stepfather. If this is a tale of emotionally guarded people, Bill is inside a fortress, primly telling his wife’s children that he’ll have “have no legal connection” with them the day their mother dies. In a different show, this would be shorthand for a character’s cruel dismissiveness, but Rothman plays it as if Bill is offering comfort, as if the lack of bureaucratic worry might help. In fact, the most compelling arc over the course of the season is Notaro’s halting attempts to connect with Bill, and it’s in these silent, withdrawn moments that One Mississippi really thrives. Like Notaro’s stand-up, One Mississippi leads with the tragedy—but it’s the way it guides viewers through that tragedy that makes it memorable.

The Right's Putin Derangement Syndrome

Donald Trump just can’t quit Vladimir Putin. For a 24-hour stretch starting Wednesday night, the Republican nominee returned to his praise for the oppressive Russian strongman, throwing his campaign off balance and throwing the Republican Party into disarray.

If there are lessons to be drawn from the stint, there are two: First, Trump can only ever stay on message for so long; and second, his admiration for Putin is not just a strange affectation, way of trolling the left, or product of his former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s influence. It’s a genuine affinity.

A certain amount of credit has to go to Matt Lauer, in the midst of his much-maligned moderation work at the Commander in Chief Forum on Wednesday. Lauer asked Trump about his past comments about  Putin, and Trump happily delivered a strong dose of additional praise. To wit:

On Putin: “Well, he does have an 82 percent approval rating, according to the different pollsters, who, by the way, some of them are based right here.” (Trump’s faith in polls to determine rightness remains unshaken.)
Asked by Lauer, “Do you want to be complimented by that former KGB officer?” Trump relied, “Well, I think when he calls me brilliant, I’ll take the compliment, OK?”
Trump also said of Russia, “Now, it’s a very different system, and I don’t happen to like the system. But certainly, in that system, he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.”

These comments are roughly in line with what Trump has said about Putin in the past. But it was just a start.

Related Story

Trump's Turn Toward Appeasement

On Thursday, vice-presidential nominee Mike Pence, who has sometimes played the role of cleaning up when Trump went too far, opted instead to agree.

“I think it's inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country. And that's going to change the day that Donald Trump becomes president,” Pence told CNN.

A few hours later, Trump conducted an interview with Larry King, the aging broadcaster whose show is now carried on RT, the Kremlin-controlled news and propaganda station. King asked him about suggestions that Russia was behind hacks of Democratic officials’ emails, and Trump demurred. “It’s probably unlikely,” he said. “Maybe the Democrats are putting that out, who knows?” Trump didn’t offer support for his contention; U.S. intelligence officials have said they believe Russia was behind the digital break-in.

Trump also blasted the American press. King started the interview by asking what had surprised him the most about the campaign. “I think the dishonesty of the media,” Trump said. “The media has been unbelievably dishonest.”

It was a bizarre scene: Trump was attacking the U.S. media while sitting for an interview with a media outlet of a regime that has not only clamped down on journalists but also in some cases is widely believed to have had them killed.

It is difficult if not impossible to recall an instance where a leading American politician blasted U.S. leaders while speaking to a foreign propaganda outlet. One can only imagine the reaction if, say, Barack Obama had done something like this during the 2008 election—or even if Hillary Clinton had done so. (Eyebrows were raised at her recent statement on Israeli TV that ISIS was praying, “Please, Allah, make Trump president of America.”)

Bloomberg’s Kevin Cirilli reports that Trump’s campaign claimed it believed the interview would be on King’s podcast, not on RT. If so, that’s a sign of extremely shoddy advance work by the Trump campaign, but given Trump’s eagerness to praise Putin, the excuse is tough to credit.

It’s surprising that the Trump campaign bothered to put up any defense at all, as he has otherwise been open about his admiration. The presidential campaign has produced an efflorescence of affection for Putin among Republicans and conservatives, those who would in normal times have denounced Putin as an oppressive dictator; a bloodthirsty enemy of liberty; and a geopolitical menace whose expansionism threatened the Pax Americana.

One might diagnose it as Putin Derangement Syndrome—the product of Republican hatred for Obama and their distant view of a faraway strongman who represents his opposite, for good or ill. The party of “My Country, Right or Wrong” has been overtaken by cheerleaders for a brutal leader in Moscow.

There have always been elements of the right who were willing to overlook the flaws of strongmen who espoused some of the right causes. See, for example, William F. Buckley’s admiration for Francisco Franco—or for that matter, more recent National Review writers like Jay Nordlinger, who, reviewing a biography of El Caudillo last year, wrote, “He was a dictator, and that should settle the matter, as we are good liberal democrats. But does it? There are dictators and there are dictators, and mature people acknowledge degrees.”

But Putin, as an avatar of reborn Sovietism, fell in a different category. Just four years ago, Mitt Romney was warning that Russia was “our No. 1 geopolitical foe” and saying, “Russia does continue to battle us in the U.N. time and time again. I have clear eyes on this. I'm not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia, or Mr. Putin.” The statement was roundly mocked by progressives at the time, and while the “no. 1” designation may still be up for debate, Romney’s statement at the very least looks a great deal more prescient than he was given credit for. In the wake of Putin’s annexation of Crimea, the DNC hacks, and Russian intervention in Syria, many of the liberals who mocked Romney are now saying much the same thing.

Clinton was perhaps cynical in invoking the most famous of Republican Cold Warriors on Thursday, saying, “What would Ronald Reagan say about a Republican nominee who attacks American’s generals and heaps praise on Russia’s president?” but it does seem likely the Gipper would be taken aback.

Some Republicans continue to view Putin dimly. Many conservatives, including my colleague David Frum, were quick to condemn Trump’s and Pence’s comments about Putin. Responding to Trump’s comments on Thursday, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said that “Putin is an aggressor that does not share our interests” and “is acting like an adversary.” But Ryan continues to back Trump for president, and bristled at reporter’s questions about the nominee.

Other Trump backers tried to write his comments off as simple negotiating—buttering up a potential counterpart. But Trump’s long roster of praise suggests something more than mere posturing. He’s taken up the banner carried by some conservatives who have objected to Barack Obama’s approach of foreign policy retrenchment. (The extent of that retrenchment, of course, is debatable: Obama has also deployed American troops across the globe and begun wars in Libya and Yemen.) One of those conservatives is former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has become one of Trump’s closest advisers and top surrogates.

While some of Obama’s critics see him as lawlessly defying the Constitution, this camp sees him as insufficiently willing to act, authorized or not. In 2014, for example, Giuliani unfavorably compared Obama with his Russian counterpart. “Putin decides what he wants to do and he does it in half a day, right? He decided he had to go to their parliament. He went to their parliament. He got permission in 15 minutes,” he said. When Neil Cavuto (of all people!) pointed out that was because of the perfunctory approval of a rubber-stamp Duma, Giuliani replied, “But he makes a decision and he executes it, quickly. Then everybody reacts. That’s what you call a leader. President Obama, he’s got to think about it. He’s got to go over it again. He’s got to talk to more people about it.”

Another convert to the argument is Hugh Hewitt, the conservative intellectual and talk-show host who drew some of the first serious blood from Trump during the GOP primary, revealing he didn’t know the difference between Kurds and the Quds Force, nor what the Nuclear Triad was. But Hewitt has since come around on Trump, and his defense of Trump’s praise for Putin is instructive.

Putin's an evil man. POTUS a good but incompetent man. Putin has served his country's national interest better. https://t.co/6R2N0dajHM

— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) September 9, 2016

2. Crimea, cyber-espionage, intimidation of Europe...this is great power politics that, while morally repugnant, is effective.

— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) September 9, 2016

3. When Nixon met with Mao it didn't make Mao any less the greatest murderer of post WW 2 era, but most historians rank him effective leader

— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) September 9, 2016

Like Trump, Hewitt begins with a caveat insisting he doesn’t like certain things about Putin, then blows right past it with praise for Putin’s supposed efficacy.

Whether or not Putin is truly effective is a different matter. Like Hewitt, one could discount certain elements of Putin’s human rights record. Even then, it's hard to make the case: Putin oversees a shattered Russian economy, a cratered ruble, bare shelves, a potentially overextended military, strangling sanctions, and widespread corruption. This is a peculiar definition of the “national interest” by any standard, and that’s still leaving out the cyber-espionage, the brutal repression in Chechnya, the likely assassinations of political opponents, and the annexation of Crimea.

But these comments from Trump, Giuliani, and Hewitt make clear that Putin’s refusal to be bound by either law or propriety is not an unsavory side effect of his strong leadership—they are a feature. (The last 24 hours is, among other things, a useful revelation about what Hugh Hewitt views as effective governance.) The willingness to override or work around constitutional boundaries, or the checks and balances imposed in a democratic system, is the hallmark of a leader; rule of law is a sign of weakness. The press is dishonest and despicable; therefore, Putin’s willingness to shut down the independent press and assassinate pesky reporters is in fact virtuous. Power politics, even at the expense of ruining the national treasury, is a game to be played grandly. (The U.S. tried that in Iraq, with disheartening results.)

This should also give voters some sense of how Trump might govern—his attitude toward check and balances, the free press, and the rule of law, both domestically and internationally. He has already made his view of the press well-known, and blacklisted publications he doesn’t like from covering rallies. (That embargo is apparently now being lifted.) In a Trump administration, it’s likely that the GOP would hold both houses of Congress.

But would a Republican Congress be willing and able to stand up to President Trump acting extralegally? The muted reaction to his Putinphilia over the last months suggest they wouldn’t––and neither would much of the conservative media.