George Packer's Blog, page 215

The Transcript of James O’Keefe’s Call to the Open Society Foundations

On March 16th, James O’Keefe III, the conservative activist, left a peculiar voice mail on the phone of Dana Geraghty, an employee at the Open Society Foundations, the nonprofit run by the billionaire George Soros. O’Keefe called Geraghty under false pretenses, claiming that his name was Victor Kesh, and forgot to hang up the phone. The full recording reveals an attempt by O’Keefe and several others to pull off an undercover sting of Soros’s group.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
James O’Keefe Stings Himself
James O’Keefe Still Hasn’t Found His Voter Fraud
Where’s George?

The Vietnam War Is Still Killing People

On Saturday, President Obama will set out on a trip to Vietnam, for a visit that’s being billed as looking forward to the future rather than back at the bitter history of the past. On the same day, a funeral will be held in Quang Tri province for a man named Ngo Thien Khiet.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Presidential Swag and the Gift Horse
Comment from the March 28, 2016, Issue
Obama Signs Executive Order Relocating Congress to Guantánamo

Will the New Overtime Rules Really Hurt Workers?

In 2008, Nancy Soehnle, a gas-station supervisor in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, sued her employer, Hess, for unpaid overtime. Neither party disputed that Soehnle worked seventy hours a week, mostly on non-managerial tasks, and was paid an annual salary of thirty-four thousand dollars, which amounted to about nine dollars per hour. The suit was unsuccessful. It didn’t matter, the Third Circuit ruled on appeal, that she “spent 85% of her time operating the cash register.” She was a “bona fide executive,” not entitled to extra pay.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Why Is the U.S. Perpetually Short of Nurses?
Why Did Jay Carney Use Medium to Criticize the New York Times?

The Dangerous Acceptance of Donald Trump

“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, / As, to be hated, needs but to be seen,” the poet Alexander Pope wrote, in lines that were once, as they said back in the day, imprinted on the mind of every schoolboy. Pope continued, “Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, / we first endure, then pity, then embrace.” The three-part process by which the gross becomes the taken for granted has been on matchlessly grim view this past week in the ascent of Donald Trump. First merely endured by those in the Republican Party, with pained grimaces and faint bleats of reluctance, bare toleration passed quickly over into blind, partisan allegiance—he’s going to be the nominee, after all, and so is our boy. Then a weird kind of pity arose, directed not so much at him (he supplies his own self-pity) as at his supporters, on the premise that their existence somehow makes him a champion for the dispossessed, although the evidence indicates that his followers are mostly stirred by familiar racial and cultural resentments, of which Trump has been a single-minded spokesperson.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Year of the Political Troll
Clinton vs. Sanders: Peace Is Still Possible
Daily Cartoon: Thursday, May 19th

Anthony Weiner and the Politics of Narcissism

Huma Abedin is thirty-nine years old; her husband, Anthony Weiner, is fifty-one; and each of them has been working full time in politics since they graduated from college. So “Weiner,” the extraordinary new documentary about them, which tracks Weiner’s attempt to recover from public disgrace by running for mayor of New York in 2013, is not only about a marriage but also about what it takes to be a political professional. In personality, they are opposites. Abedin, long Hillary Clinton’s closest aide and now the vice-chairwoman of her Presidential campaign, is more comfortable in back rooms than onstage. Her husband, who was a rising New York congressman during the George W. Bush Administration, is an antic creature of combative press conferences, rallies, and ethnic-pride parades, where the camera repeatedly finds him grabbing a flag and waving it around, like some American Gavroche. His mode of expression is calibrated liberal apoplexy.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Sympathy for the Dangerman
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James O’Keefe Stings Himself

On March 16th, a man who said his name was Victor left a voice message at the offices of the Open Society Foundations, which are funded by George Soros, saying that he was a potential donor. Then, he forgot to hang up the phone, and the machine recorded “Victor” and his staff describing what sounded like an entrapment scheme. This week, James O’Keefe, the conservative activist who has used undercover videos to try to embarrass Planned Parenthood, NPR, and ACORN, admitted that he was the caller and apologized to his supporters for the failed operation. On “The New Yorker Radio Hour,” the staff writer Jane Mayer goes through the voice-mail recording to see what it tells us about O’Keefe’s methods and the scope of his ambitions.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Transcript of James O’Keefe’s Call to the Open Society Foundations
Daily Cartoon: Monday, February 15th
Can #ShoutYourAbortion Turn Hashtag Activism Into a Movement?

Presidential Swag and the Gift Horse

In 1862, Abraham Lincoln wrote to King Mongkut, of Siam (the “King and I” king), to gently reject his gift of “a supply of elephants” with which to populate America’s forests. “This Government would not hesitate to avail itself of so generous an offer if the object were one which could be made practically useful,” Lincoln wrote. “Our political jurisdiction, however, does not reach a latitude so low as to favor the multiplication of the elephant, and steam on land, as well as on water, has been our best and most efficient agent of transportation.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Vietnam War Is Still Killing People
Comment from the March 28, 2016, Issue
Obama Signs Executive Order Relocating Congress to Guantánamo

Two of the World’s Greatest Shooters Consider the Four-Point Shot

If you’ve watched HBO lately, there’s a good chance you’ve seen a promo for the upcoming show hosted by Bill Simmons, formerly of ESPN and Grantland, called “Any Given Wednesday.” The ad, unapologetically cribbed from a scene in “Bull Durham,” is titled “I Believe” and shows Simmons spouting a string of alternately odd and obvious convictions—“soup is the perfect food,” “billionaires should pay for their own fucking stadiums”—among them, that the N.B.A. should introduce a four-point line. This is not a new idea, but it has gained a surprising head of steam lately, and for a simple reason: when the Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry has the ball, a thirty-foot shot suddenly appears as natural and possible as a twenty-three-footer, and sixty-two-footers are, somehow, not entirely unexpected.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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LeBron James and Steph Curry Remind Us Who They Are
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The Year of the Political Troll

For Democrats who have relished the spectacle of Republican infighting, this is an uncomfortable time. On Saturday, the Nevada Democratic Party convention descended into chaos after sixty-four potential Bernie Sanders delegates were deemed ineligible. Some Sanders supporters reportedly tossed chairs, booed the speakers, and vowed to disrupt efforts to award Hillary Clinton the nomination. Clinton backers, such as Stephanie Schriock, the president of EMILY’s List, called it “straight out of the Donald Trump playbook.” Nina Turner, a Sanders surrogate, told the Times that some of his supporters are planning civil disobedience and an effort to contest the nomination at the Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia. If Democrats believe “that that’s not going to happen, they are just sadly mistaken,” Turner said. “They have blinders on.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Clinton vs. Sanders: Peace Is Still Possible
Daily Cartoon: Thursday, May 19th
Megyn Kelly’s Guide to Surrendering to Donald Trump

Clinton vs. Sanders: Peace Is Still Possible

In many hard-fought political races, there comes a time when tempers fray and emotion takes over. Right now, the Democratic Presidential primary appears to have reached such a point, with people on both sides going at each other with gusto, and some of the media getting swept up, too.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Year of the Political Troll
Megyn Kelly’s Guide to Surrendering to Donald Trump
A Narrow But Significant Win for Hillary Clinton in Kentucky