George Packer's Blog, page 206

Gordie Howe Was the Ideal Canadian Athlete

Gordie Howe, who died today, was so much a legend—Mr. Hockey!—and so often referred to as the greatest player of all time, even lending his Number 9 to Wayne Gretzky (who turned it into his own 99), that it is surprisingly hard to put his achievements into clear relief. His persistence was such that, in memory, it overwhelms his peculiar excellence. The persistence was pretty startling. He played until he was fifty-two, long enough to skate professionally alongside his own sons. His accumulated stats include 2,421 games, 1,071 goals, 1,518 assists, 2,589 points, and 2,418 penalty minutes. Until Gretzky passed him, he held the professional records of 801 goals and 1,850 points. He seemed to play forever, and he forever played well, winning six M.V.P. awards and six scoring championships, too.

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Muhammad Ali at Fighter’s Heaven
LeBron James Versus the New Basketball Gods
The Outsized Life of Muhammad Ali

The Mistrust of Science

The following was delivered as the commencement address at the California Institute of Technology, on Friday, June 10th.

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Oh, How They All Laughed
An Ancient Flower Trapped in Amber
Gravitational Waves Exist: The Inside Story of How Scientists Finally Found Them

How to Break Out of Russia’s Political Prisons

In a country where people are regularly sentenced to time behind bars for staging a protest, writing a comment on a social-network page, or nothing at all, how does one manage to set fire to the door of the headquarters of the secret police and avoid a long prison sentence? The artist Petr Pavlensky stood outside a court that had just released him on Wednesday and explained, “The regime holds on to power by means of ceaseless terror. And the threat of terror feeds on fear.” Refusing to be afraid, it follows, is like cutting off the blood supply to a tumor.

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Julian Barnes and the Shostakovich Wars
Teffi’s “Memories” and the Women of the Russian Revolution
The Demise of RBC and Investigative Reporting in Russia

Do F.B.I. Stings Help the Fight Against ISIS?

On New Year’s Eve, in Rochester, New York, the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors announced a major arrest: twenty-five-year-old Emanuel Lutchman, who was accused of “claiming to receive direction” from a member of ISIS and planning “to commit an armed attack against civilians” during the city’s New Year’s Eve festivities. In an affidavit, an F.B.I. agent described Lutchman as “a self-professed Muslim convert with a criminal history.” In response to the arrest, Rochester cancelled a fireworks production scheduled for that night. But Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin tried to reassure the public: “Thankfully, law enforcement was able to intervene and thwart Lutchman’s deadly plans.”

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The Demise of Hezbollah’s Untraceable Ghost
The Dangers of the Ever More Powerful Presidency

How to Feel the G.O.P.’s Pain Over Donald Trump

This post is something of a public-service announcement for liberals and Democrats: I’ve discovered a new guilty pleasure that you might want to get in on. It’s perfectly legal and harmless; the main source of the guilt is that it can become compulsive. All you need is an Internet-connected Web browser. Then fire it up and type into the search box “Donald Trump” and “Republican Party.”

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Republican Senator Susan Collins Says She Might Support Hillary Clinton
How California Made Bernie Sanders a Better Candidate
Why Trump’s Canned Speech Won’t Help Him

Republican Senator Susan Collins Says She Might Support Hillary Clinton

This week, after Donald Trump said that Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge in a case against Trump University, had a conflict of interest because of his Mexican heritage, many Republicans distanced themselves from Trump and condemned the candidate’s remarks.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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How to Feel the G.O.P.’s Pain Over Donald Trump
How California Made Bernie Sanders a Better Candidate
Why Trump’s Canned Speech Won’t Help Him

How California Made Bernie Sanders a Better Candidate

Bernie Sanders, in this election season, has carried a varying set of ideals—some his own, and some projected onto him by others. On his long tour through California, he was often introduced by Tulsi Gabbard, the Hawaii congresswoman and military veteran, who envisioned in him a turn against warmongering and drone assassinations. At the big Sanders rally on Sunday in San Diego, Gabbard’s role was filled by Cornel West, who insisted that he could see a “Jewish prophetic tradition” running through Sanders, compared social justice to sex, and detected in the campaign a “love train” that emanated from art. A lot of this sounded like West; very little of it sounded like Sanders. West also said some things that seemed to cut to the heart of what the Sanders campaign has become. “The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak,” West said. America has been the scene for a great diversity of suffering, not all of which can be articulated by a single campaign. The surprise of the last weeks of the primary campaign has been Sanders’s evolution into a less static politician, whose socialism began to incorporate more varied ideas of suffering.

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How to Feel the G.O.P.’s Pain Over Donald Trump
Republican Senator Susan Collins Says She Might Support Hillary Clinton
Why Trump’s Canned Speech Won’t Help Him

Lessons About China and Race from a Detergent Ad

Here’s an origin story that’s likely unfamiliar to Western theologians, but that I was told in kindergarten in the city of Chongqing. A long time ago, God decided to put intelligent creatures on Earth. How would he make them? Over a heavenly fire, naturally. But God was so eager to examine his creations that he removed them from the heat too hastily. The first batch was therefore undercooked, pale of color, and pasty of mien. He made a second batch and left it in longer, but was dismayed to find that he had overcompensated: the figures were burnt a dark brown, which was not at all what he had intended. God resolved to try a third and last time, having learned from the failed experiments of his first and second efforts. This time, the figures were colored honey-gold, neither blanched nor burnt. “Ah!” God cried in delight. “Perfection!” “This is how the Chinese were made,” our kindergarten teacher said.

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The Maoism of Donald Trump

Why Trump’s Canned Speech Won’t Help Him

If Donald Trump ever copped to having a speechwriter, he would surely have the best speechwriter, the very best. A quality speechwriter, the kind who writes speeches like you’re not even going to believe, better than any speeches you’ve ever heard before—I mean, very, very, very good.

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Bernie Sanders’s Post-California Choice
Hillary Clinton Makes History
Donald Trump and the Legacy of Long John Nebel

A Lifetime of Keeping Score

When I first met Bob Rosen, on media row at Madison Square Garden, this past January, he was sitting with a scorekeeping book, tracking all the stats by hand, occasionally catching up during timeouts by consulting the game information provided for the press on computer terminals. The Knicks were playing the Celtics, and it was Hardwood Classics Night—the home team wore throwback uniforms, and big moments from past eras were celebrated during game breaks. When the Jumbotron played Knicks highlights from the nineteen-seventies, Rosen began telling me what turned out to be the first of many stories. He has loved the Knicks since their first game, in 1946, against the Toronto Huskies. When they beat the Lakers in Game 7 of the 1970 N.B.A. Finals, on a Friday night at the Garden, Rosen was unable to attend, he told me, because he was at the office of the Elias Sports Bureau, preparing statistics for the Sunday newspapers. But he wasn’t upset, he said. “First of all, it was on TV there at the office. Second of all, it’s not like they put me away and made me do something lousy. I was working, and I liked what I did.”

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The Golden State Warriors’ Beautiful Game
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Phil Jackson’s Summer Reading Assignments for the New York Knicks