George Packer's Blog, page 109

France’s Outsider Candidates Seize the Presidential Race

The public gymnasium across the street from my Paris apartment, in an unassuming neighborhood of the Nineteenth Arrondissement, has become an effigy for the city’s political class. One morning a few weeks ago, posters went up announcing a rally for Arnaud Montebourg, a former minister and perennial Presidential candidate, his bland smile stamped in rows across the building’s façade. A few days later, the French voted him out of the Presidential race. The posters were, inevitably, defaced. A strip torn from one of them ripped right through Montebourg’s teeth.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Will Putin Unite the European and American Right?
Street of the Iron Po(e)t, Part XVII
The François Fillon Experiment

Paul Ryan’s Craven Pact with Donald Trump

On Tuesday morning, at about the time that Donald Trump was casually threatening to destroy the career of a Texas state senator who had objected to laws regarding the forfeiture of property from drug suspects, House Speaker Paul Ryan and his colleagues in the House Republican leadership held their weekly press conference on Capitol Hill.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Betsy DeVos Confirmation Debacle
A New Live Series on the Trump Administration
A Temporary Reprieve for Some Iraqi Refugees

The Betsy DeVos Confirmation Debacle

In the middle of last week, as U.S. senators were being swamped by calls from constituents opposed to the appointment of Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary—as critics cited her unfamiliarity with the public-school system, in which she has never worked; raised questions about potential conflicts of interest, given her status as a billionaire with a wide range of investments; and challenged her ideological commitment to “school choice” above all other principles—the Washington Post ran a story with the headline “DeVos Questionnaire Appears to Include Passages From Uncited Sources.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Paul Ryan’s Craven Pact with Donald Trump
Sherlock Holmes and the Massacre at Bowling Green
A New Live Series on the Trump Administration

A Temporary Reprieve for Some Iraqi Refugees

On Friday morning, Khalas, who served as an interpreter for American soldiers in Iraq, waited for his wife, Nada, at Dulles Airport with a bouquet of peach roses and lilies. Marcia Maack, the director of pro-bono activities for the law firm Mayer Brown, was with him, in case Customs and Border Protection officers used the authority granted to them by President Trump to detain or attempt to return Nada to Iraq. Khalas and Nada had been granted Special Immigrant Visas for his service to the United States, but those visas no longer seemed to count for much.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Paul Ryan’s Craven Pact with Donald Trump
The Betsy DeVos Confirmation Debacle
A New Live Series on the Trump Administration

How President Trump Could Seize More Power After a Terrorist Attack

Since September 11, 2001, ninety-four people have been killed in the United States in ten attacks carried out by a total of twelve radical Islamist terrorists. Each of the attackers was either an American citizen or a legal resident. More than half of the ninety-four murders occurred last year, when Omar Mateen, who was born on Long Island, killed forty-nine people at a night club in Orlando.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Paul Ryan’s Craven Pact with Donald Trump
Sherlock Holmes and the Massacre at Bowling Green
The Betsy DeVos Confirmation Debacle

Donald Trump Is the “TV Reality” President

President Trump was up early on Monday morning, and, as usual, he was watching MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” How do we know this? Between six and seven A.M., Joe Scarborough, the show’s co-host, discussed the reports that Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, is the one directing policy in the White House. Scarborough showed the cover of this week’s Time magazine, which features Bannon along with the headline “The Great Manipulator.” Scarborough also showed a clip from “Saturday Night Live,” in which Bannon, presented as a skeleton in a black cloak, instructed Trump in the Oval Office before taking over his desk and consigning him to a smaller one. “I don’t know. Maybe Bannon is calling all the shots,” Scarborough said. “I still don’t think he is.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Loving, Warlike Unity of Gay Americans Against Trump
What Trump Wants Bill O’Reilly, and All of Us, to Forget
Daily Cartoon: Monday, February 6th

What Trump Wants Bill O’Reilly, and All of Us, to Forget

“Is there any validity to the criticism of you that you say things you can’t back up factually?” Bill O’Reilly asked President Donald Trump, in a pre-Super Bowl interview in the White House. The President had said, for example, that there were “three million illegal aliens who voted” in the 2016 Presidential election. O’Reilly tilted his head with the air of a man who expected that the two of them were about to make quick work of any misunderstanding about Trump’s relation to the truth. The President just shrugged.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Donald Trump Is the “TV Reality” President
The Loving, Warlike Unity of Gay Americans Against Trump
Daily Cartoon: Monday, February 6th

The Patriots Make Super Bowl History

Halfway through the third quarter of the Super Bowl, after the Atlanta Falcons scored a touchdown to go ahead 28–3 over a dazed-looking New England Patriots team, it appeared that the entertainment value of the game had peaked at halftime, when Lady Gaga dove off the roof of Houston’s NRG Stadium. The Falcons’ offense, led by their quarterback, Matt Ryan, was moving the ball as easily as it had all season; the Patriots, meanwhile, were making uncharacteristic mistakes. The announcers started reaching for filler, and the owner of the Falcons, Arthur Blank, travelled from his luxury box down to the sideline, the better to celebrate with his team. It was, as the TV talking head Skip Bayless declared on Twitter for history to remember, all over.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Patriots Owner Robert Kraft’s Balancing Act
The Longest Five Seconds in Football
Daily Cartoon: Monday, September 14th

For Syrian-Americans, the Travel Ban Feels Alarmingly Familiar

On Saturday morning, I woke up to a panicked message from my friend Kinan Azmeh, in Beirut. He wanted to know, “Do you think I can no longer go back to America?”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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The Best and Worst 2017 Super Bowl Ads
Our Part in the Darkness
A Jewish-Refugee Filmmaker’s Urban American Vision

Patriots Owner Robert Kraft’s Balancing Act

In January of 1997, the New England Patriots were set to face the Green Bay Packers in the Super Bowl. Up to that point in the franchise’s thirty-seven history, the Patriots had been an often maligned and mostly irrelevant team, and the week leading up to the game should have been an opportunity to bask in the elusive national spotlight. Instead, the days were dominated by news of an ugly feud between the Patriots’ owner, Robert Kraft, who bought the team in 1994, and his head coach, Bill Parcells, a holdover from the previous regime. The Patriots lost badly to the Packers, and after the game, Parcells didn’t fly home with the team. A few weeks later, the N.F.L. negotiated a deal letting Parcells out of his contract. The issue between Kraft and Parcells had been control; Parcells wanted to be in charge of drafting and trading players, not just coaching them. After the split, Parcells explained the tension by saying, “If they want you to cook the dinner, at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries.” Years later, Kraft blamed the rift, in part, on his desire to micromanage the team, telling USA Today, “Look, I was a new owner. I had a lot of debt. I had stardust in my eyes.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
In Defense of the Super Bowl
Bonus Daily Cartoon: Peyton Manning
Beyoncé Sacks the Super Bowl Halftime Show