Don’t let the sleazy Jacqueline Suzann title fool you: this is a serious—yes, essential—exploration of what it means to be a Trump, a book which demon Don’t let the sleazy Jacqueline Suzann title fool you: this is a serious—yes, essential—exploration of what it means to be a Trump, a book which demonstrates how a dark Trumpian well of family dysfunction forever marred the soul of our Narcissist-in-Chief, the Destroyer of Worlds (and the US Postal Service), the angry man-baby Donald J. Trump.
I’m not saying Too Much and Never Enough is a good book. It isn’t. Mary Trump—daughter of Donald’s older brother Freddie—is intelligent, and writes well enough, using the expertise she acquired from her doctorate in psychology to depict the compulsions of her extended family in a writing style mercifully free of jargon. Still, much of the book—particularly the middle part which describes how young Donald rose into empire while his older brother Freddie sunk further and further toward alcoholism and death—is oddly emotionless and uninteresting. What should be the heart of this bourgeois tragedy almost stops beating before the improbable and flamboyant conclusion.
Why the sudden dissipation of energy? I think Mary was too young to have witnessed the crucial event of this period, and is still, even now, too affected by the pain of being maligned and disinherited by her family to put the things in perspective. She is a solidly moral and deliberately well-adjusted woman ( the effort shows), but Mary lacks both the objectivity and transcendent compassion that could have brought these details to life.
Still, Mary does what she can, and, in many ways both small and great, she succeeds. Her catalog of the Donald’s vanities, business blunders and petty slights is memorable—the real estate overreaches. the unnecessary lies, the random insults, the boorish sexual comments, the cheap-ass holiday presents—all add memorable details to the portrait of our president. But her greatest contribution is her portrait of her grandfather Fred Trump, Sr.--real estate mogul, paterfamilias and stone-cold psychopath. This man whose determination to succeed at any cost, to create his own unscrupulous successor and to empower and coddle him (despite his evident incompetence) is ehat fashioned the frighteningly damaged man who is the “leader” of the United States today.
Here’s an excerpt I liked. It gives you a taste of Mary Trump at her best:
While Donald was cruising Manhattan looking for foreclosures, I was losing tens of thousands of dollars almost every week. On Fridays after school, I went to a friends house and we played our version of Monopoly: double houses and hotels, double the money … The only constant of that gaming was my performance. I lost every single time I played.
… I was allowed to borrow increasingly huge sums of money from the bank and eventually from my opponent. We kept a running total of my enormous debt by writing the sums I owed in long columns of numbers on the inside of the cover.
… I never once changed my strategy; I bought every Atlantic city property I landed on and put houses and hotels on my properties even when I had no chance of recouping my investments. I doubled and tripled down no matter how badly I was losing. It was a great joke between me and my friends that I, the granddaughter and niece of real estate tycoons, was terrible at real estate. It turned out that Donald and I had something in common after all.
Many questions whirled through my mind while I was reading this book, but the one that never left me was: who exactly is “Anonymous” ’ desired audienc Many questions whirled through my mind while I was reading this book, but the one that never left me was: who exactly is “Anonymous” ’ desired audience anyway? This self-styled member of the “steady state”—that small group of insiders determined to keep the U.S. on an even keel despite the erratic behavior of our ill-equipped president—having realized that their three-year’s effort has become a fruitless exercise, now pleads with the people of the nation to defeat Donald Trump at the polls.
So who are these people she pleads with? After all, almost half the country has already decided to vote against Trump, and at least a third—probably more—will vote for him again no matter what. Of the remaining 15 percent still on the fence, how many will be persuaded by a traitorous member of Trump’s inner circle, who even now—at this crucial time of decision—refuses to reveal her identity, to speak out in her own name?
Still, the book has redeeming qualities. The first fifth—the “Introduction” plus “The Collapse of the Steady State”—gives a vivid account of her own gradual—and gradually more fearful—awareness of how damaged and incorrigible Donald J. Trump really is. The next chapter—“The Character of the Man”—although it tells us things about Trump most of us already know—is organized instructively according to Trump’s relationship to the four cardinal virtues—prudence, justice, courage and temperance—and argues persuasively that our president possesses hardly a smidgen of the four.
The other two-thirds of the book—the condemnations of Trump’s faux conservative positions, his attacks on republican institutions, his affection for tyrants, the difficult position of his apologists—are subjects that have been treated before—and better—by the Never-Trumpers (David Frum, Charlie Sykes and Andrew Sullivan come immediately to mind.) Her dismissal of the 25th Amendment and impeachment are sound, yet contain no useful insights, and her final stirring “Epilogue”—in which she compares the American electorate to the passengers on Flight 93 on the morning of September 11th rings hollow coming from someone who still fearfully clings to anonymity, as does her plea to “the leftward-lurching Democratic party” to nominate someone who “campaigns on unity instead of ideological purity.” (My translation: “if you promise not to act like Democrats, maybe—just maybe—we’ll vote for you.” Hmm. Doesn’t sound like a Flight 93 sort of statement to me.)
My advice: read the first third and forget the rest.
Oh, one final note … I call Anonymous “she” because I am convinced the writer is female, and almost certain that she is Kellyanne Conway, with a little assistance from her husband George. Why? Mostly little things. First of all, she uses superlatives in praise of the women of history—like when she refers to the “brilliant” Abigail Adams. Abigail was a smart cookie, no doubt, but I sense something defensive in the size of the praise. Such language would come naturally to a woman who works for a political party that routinely denigrates her sex. Also, there is one instance in which Anonymous writes of a female White House employee, insulted by Trump, who comes to confide in her—something an employee would be more likely to do if “Anonymous” were a woman.
The thing that clinched it for me, though—slender though it may be—is the book’s treatment of Trump and the cardinal virtues. Although the concept stretches all the way back to Plato, the name “cardinal virtues” itself—with which “Anonymous” introduces the discussion—is a traditionally Catholic one, something Kellyanne would have learned in Catholic school, that would have been reinforced at her Catholic college (Trinity Washington University). The treatment itself, however, is based on Cicero. Why the shift from Roman Catholic to Roman? As soon as I asked the question, I immediately—as I am wont to do--imagined how it must have happened. I heard the voice of George Conway: “Your approach here, my dove, is transparently Catholic. You’ll give yourself away. Let me rewrite this section. I can muddy the waters a little with Cicero’s “De Officiis.” George Conway is a Harvard man, after all....more
Because I am a lazy reader, I dislike unreliable narrators: they make me work too hard. True, if the writing be fiction, and the writer be greatly gif Because I am a lazy reader, I dislike unreliable narrators: they make me work too hard. True, if the writing be fiction, and the writer be greatly gifted (Twain, Nabokov, Kesey, Banville), I may decide to enter—and joyfully enter—into their world. But if the writing is a memoir, and the writer is a second-rate political hack trying to make his million with a tell-all, who chooses to withhold from his readers the worst truths about himself, then my dislike soon turns to contempt and my interest flags. After all, why must I be the one who separates the hogwash from the hog?
That sums up the way I feel about Cliff Sims and his book Team of Vipers: My Extraordinary 500 Days in the Trump White House. This former Birmingham right-wing talk show host emphasizes his Evangelical roots (proud son and grandson of preachers, he puts into his book a photo of granddaddy Jimmy standing next to Cliffy during a West Wing tour), and is clever enough to be honest and open about unflattering facts already revealed about him by the press (his takedown of Alabama governor Bentley with a surreptitious recording, his offer of a job at State abruptly withdrawn, his humiliating exclusion from an Oval Office meeting honoring his college team the Crimson Tide), but, although he frankly acknowledges not living up to his own Christian ideals (“I had a warrior spirit,” he writes, “but lacked a servant heart”), he explicitly catalogs the failings of others while glossing over his own great sins.
Let’s take two examples: the Compiling of the President’s Enemies List and the Coming of the Mooch to the White House.
First, the Compiling of the Enemies List. After an embarrassing story appeared in Politico about the White House Communications team and its leaks, Trump’s body man Keith Schilling asked Cliff—who elsewhere in the book freely admits to being a leaker—exactly who he thinks is responsible for the majority of these leaks. Cliff shares his theory: it is the RNC loyalists (presumably Spicer, Priebus,etc), who bailed from the reelection campaign after the Access Hollywood tapes but later wormed their way into the White House, who are the problem (not of course the loyal ones who stuck around, like Keith, Hope, and Cliffy himself).
Later that day, Schilling leads Sims into the Oval Office:
”Give me their names,” the President intoned. Only in retrospect did I see how remarkable this was. I was sitting there with the President of the United States basically compiling an enemies list—but these enemies were within his own administration. If it had been a horror movie, this would have been the moment when everyone suddenly realizes that the call is coming from inside the house. . . .
I felt relieved, but I also felt—I don’t know—something very close to guilt. I had told the President the truth. I wasn’t making up lies about anyone. He had asked and I had given my sincere opinions. But in doing this I sense that I was losing myself in what I had rationalized as a necessary struggle for survival.
I missed Alabama. I missed my friends from church. . . I had lost the support of a community that made sure I wasn’t finding my identity in a job. After all, to paraphrase the Gospel according to Mark: What does it profit a man to survive in Trump’s White House but forfeit his soul?
About three months later (but—alas!—long before the above wise biblical reflection), we can see Sims once more plotting against his enemies Spicer and Priebus:
”No one knows this yet,” a close friend of Scaramucci’s told me, “but the President is probably about to make Mooch the new White House Communications Director. The problem, the friend explained, was that Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon were going to do whatever it took to keep him out. . . .
The whole thing felt like “Game of Thrones,” but with the characters from “Veep.”
Scaramucci was looking for advice on how to handle the entire situation, and our mutual friend thought I was in a good position to help him out, especially since I was so frustrated with Spicer.
Within minutes, I was on the phone to Scaramucci . . .
I guess it should have concerned me more than it did that I was now involved in a plot to undermine the White House Chief of Staff. But it didn’t even cross my mind. This was the Trump White House and this sort of thing happened every day.
No, not really. At least not on this scale. Not the toppling of the Chief of Staff. And do you notice what important detail Sims leaves out but which is obvious from the context? He never says explicitly, “Then I made the decision to pick up the phone and call Scaramucci.” It’s not quite the same thing as mistakes were made, but if you ask me, it’s damn close.
Funny, though. When Cliff Sims named his book Team of Vipers, he was clearly thinking of Matthew 12:34: “O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things?” It’s a shame he didn’t read a little further, down to Matthew 12:37: "For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned."...more
First published anonymously (“by a Pedestrian”) in New-England Magazine, IX (November and December 1835), These four fragments were originally part of First published anonymously (“by a Pedestrian”) in New-England Magazine, IX (November and December 1835), These four fragments were originally part of Hawthorne’s first grand conception The Story Teller in which the stories of the eponymous hero—a young vagabond named Oberon—would be told within the context of a series of American scenes:
With each specimen will be given a sketch of the circumstances in which the story was told. Thus my air-drawn pictures will be set in frames, perhaps more valuable than the pictures themselves, since they will be embossed with groups of characteristic figures, amid the lake and mountain scenery, the villages and fertile fields, of our native land.
"The Notch," and "Our Evening Party among the Mountains" are each part of a mountain context originally intended to frame “The Ambitious Guest” and “The Great Carbuncle”) and “The Canal Boat” chosen as a context for “A Rill from the Town Pump” and “Wakefield” (four stories later published in Twice-Told Tales.
Although Hawthorne soon abandoned the grand project of The Story Teller as unwieldy, he couldn’t bring himself to reject these “sketches from memory,” and later published them under that title in Mosses from the Old Manse. I am glad he did so. Their prose possesses a narrative simplicity, a natural descriptive grace very different from the later, nuanced, allegorical Hawthorne, and it is pleasant to contemplate these early examples of a young literary giant at work.
Here, for example is Hawthorne’s description of “the diversified panorama along the banks of the canal.”:
Sometimes the scene was a forest, dark, dense, and impervious, breaking away occasionally and receding from a lonely tract, covered with dismal black stumps, where, on the verge of the canal, might be seen a log-cottage, and a sallow-faced woman at the window. Lean and aguish, she looked like Poverty personified, half clothed, half fed, and dwelling in a desert, while a tide of wealth was sweeping by her door. Two or three miles further would bring us to a lock, where the slight impediment to navigation had created a little mart of trade. Here would be found commodities of all sorts, enumerated in yellow letters on the window-shutters of a small grocery-store, the owner of which had set his soul to the gathering of coppers and small change, buying and selling through the week, and counting his gains on the blessed Sabbath. The next scene might be the dwellinghouses and stores of a thriving village, built of wood or small gray stones, a church-spire rising in the midst, and generally two taverns, bearing over their piazzas the pompous titles of "hotel," "exchange," "tontine," or "coffee-house." Passing on, we glide now into the unquiet heart of an inland city--of Utica, for instance--and find ourselves amid piles of brick, crowded docks and quays, rich warehouses and a busy population. We feel the eager and hurrying spirit of the place, like a stream and eddy whirling us along with it. Through the thickest of the tumult goes the canal, flowing between lofty rows of buildings and arched bridges of hewn stone. Onward, also, go we, till the hum and bustle of struggling enterprise die away behind us, and we are threading an avenue of the ancient woods again.
Have you ever looked at President Trump when he juts out his jaw in a pursed-lip scowl, and said to yourself: my God, look at him, he's a dead ringer Have you ever looked at President Trump when he juts out his jaw in a pursed-lip scowl, and said to yourself: my God, look at him, he's a dead ringer for Mussolini? Have you then listened to what he says, and come to realize that he sounds a lot like Mussolini too?
In this focused and disciplined book, Madeleine Albright draws upon her experience. In foreign affairs (as National Secirity Council member, United Nations ambassador, and first woman Secretary of State), as well as her memories as a child refugee World War II era Czechoslovakia, to gives us a brief history of fascism in the 20th century, and warning about its dangers to the world in general—and America in particular—in the age of Trump. I enjoyed her book, and found both the history and the warning to be valuable.
She begins with the origins of Fascism and accounts of the rise to power of both Mussolini and Hitler. She is very good at choosing details with contemporary resonance (Mussolini liked to have his picture taken with his shirt off, Hitler couldn’t sit still and preferred oral briefings), but at her best when she demonstrates that Fascism rarely comes to power by the violent overthrow of a democracy, Instead, through a peaceful—though anomalous—election, a leader with Fascist instincts comes to power, and then proceeds to inflame public opinion and disparage tradition norms so that the constitution itself may be altered or ignored.
So it was in the days of Benito, Adolph, and Josef, and so it has continued with the autocrats of the last thirty years. (Some of whom Mrs Albright has met and describes from a first hand perspective.) Often, as with Chavez, Erdogan, and the leaders of the illiberal democracies of contemporary Poland and Hungary, each man may begin by expressing a concern for his people, but as time goes on, the autocrat widens his power and crushes all forms of opposition.
The last few chapters, of course, are devoted to the question of Trump. I think the following passage will give you idea about how Madame Secretary feels about the bull in our red-white-and-blue china shop:
Trump is the first anti-democratic president in U.S. history. On too many days, beginning in the early hours, he flaunts his disdain for democratic institutions, the ideals of equality and social justice, civil discourse, civic virtues, and America itself. If transplanted to a country with fewer democratic safeguards, he would audition for dictator, because that is where his instincts lead. This frightening fact has consequences. The herd mentality is powerful in international affairs. Leaders around the globe observe, learn from, and mimic one another. They see where their peers are heading, what they can get away with, and how they can augment and perpetuated their power. They walk in one another’s footsteps, as Hitler did with Mussolini—and today the herd is moving in a Fascist direction.
This most personal and self-reflective of all Hillary Clinton’s books may not have taken a village to rear, but it did take half a squad: two speech w This most personal and self-reflective of all Hillary Clinton’s books may not have taken a village to rear, but it did take half a squad: two speech writers (Dan Schwerin expository specialist, Megan Rooney narrative specialist), one researcher (Tony Carrk), and—of course—Hillary Clinton herself. But—wait a minute!—in the "Acknowledgments," right after Schwerin, Rooney, and Caark, comes a list of seven trusted advisers followed by another list of approximately ten dozen names of other people who also contributed their advice and insights. So I guess it did take a small village after all.
That’s Hillary for you. Scrupulous and precise (no anonymous ghost writers for her!), generous in her praise and acknowledgment, but so conscientious and exhaustive about every facet of her life and campaign that, after awhile, the eyes of even the most sympathetic acolyte must glaze over, the head of the most attentive reader begin to nod.
Yes, What Happened is quintessential Hillary. Which is why this “personal, self-reflective memoir” is 469 pages long (that is, if you don’t include the twenty page index).
Okay, just to let you know where I’m coming from: I voted for Bernie in the Ohio primary (as a DSA member for twenty years, I figured I owed him that much), but as soon as the last primary was over, I took off my very cool Shepard Fairey “Bernie” tee and exchanged it for a not-as-cool “Hillary” shirt. You see, I’ve always had a soft spot for Hillary. As a democratic socialist, I was of course frustrated with the way Bill and Hill moved the Dems to the right, but, since I’m almost as old as they are, I can remember how disheartening it was to be “clean for Gene” (McCarthy) and “on board for George” (McGovern), and then watch the Republicans win five out of six of the next presidential races. Sure, the Clintons' program was too centrist, detailed, and super-wonky for my taste, but at least they figured out how to win an election. Later, I sensed that, underneath the plate armor she donned against the attacks of the (very real) “vast right wing conspiracy” there was a woman who genuinely loved her husband and who cared for America’s least fortunate citizens, particularly its women and children. And when, in October of 2015, I watched all eleven hours of the Benghazi hearings (I’m retired now) and saw how seriously she kicked herself some Freedom Caucus butt, I began to look forward to the idea of President Hillary.
But back to the book. I’m sure it was a chore to write, and it is often a chore to read, what with the exhaustive lists of the people—the famous of course but also the humble (but exemplary)—she encountered on the campaign trail, her typical domestic routines (far too much information), and her extraordinarily specific plans for how President Hillary intended to make America better (I’m sorry, but you lost, and the detailed aspirations of a presidency which will never happen are best left to the specialists now). Moreover, even when the information Hillary and Co. gives us is worthwhile, it is often overly specific. For example, I was interested to learn that, in the wake of her loss, Hillary embraced the yogic practice of alternate nostril breathing; I did not, however, need to have this practice described to me in a paragraph of 150 words.
I have heard some say that Hillary is bitter and hateful in this book, but I did not find this to be true. She does have a few harsh words for Bernie (as well as some kind words too), but I think she is fair to him: his Santa-of-the-left routine did make her sound like a “spoilsport schoolmarm” and his attacks on her as the Candidate from Wall Street may well have hurt her in the general election. Her harshest comments, however, are reserved for the two people she sees—understandably—as most responsible for costing her the election (Comey and Putin), and for one other target, of which I heartily approve: Matt Lauer, the disgraced moderator of what was supposed to be a “Commander-in-Chief Forum,” who made it all about “but her emails!” once again. Trump? I detect no malice here: She treats him as a natural disaster, a four-year tornado that must be guarded against.
What are the best parts of the book? It is good on her emails, Russian involvement in the election, and the role of women in public life and politics, but it is even better when it tells a personal story or expresses a private sentiment about a particular event or person: the Commander-in-Chief Forum, the Final Debate Where Trump Looms, election night, Marian Wright Edelman, Dorothy Rodham, Bill Clinton.
My advice? Don’t read it if you’re a Hillary hater. But even if you’re not a hater, I’d advise you to skip a little, skim a lot. Life is too short for you to do as I did and read the whole darn thing through. But by all means dip into it, spend a little time with it, and you may find much here to interest you, more than a few things to anger you, and one or two things to make you cry.
I’ll end with one of my favorite parts, where Hillary talks about Bill and their marriage:
My marriage to Bill Clinton was the most consequential decision of my life. I said no the first two times he asked me. But the third time, I said yes. And I’d do it again.
I hesitated to say yes because I wasn’t quite prepared for marriage. I hadn’t figured out what I wanted my furture to be yet. And I knew that by marrying Bill, I would be running straight into a future far more momentous than any other I’d likely know. He was the most intense, brilliant, charismatic person I had ever met. He dreamt big. I, on the other hand, was practical and cautious. I knew that marrying him would be like hitching a ride on a comet. It took me a little while to get brave enough to take the leap….
We’ve certainly had dark days in our marriage. You know all about them—and please consider for a moment what it would be like for the whole world to know about the worst moments in your relationship. There were times that I was deeply unsure about whether our marriage could or should survive. But on those days, I asked myself the question that mattered most to me: Do I still love him? And can I still be in this marriage without becoming unrecognizable to myself—twisted by anger, resentment, or remoteness? The answers were always yes. So I kept going.
In We Were Eight Years in Power, Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of Between the World and Me (2015), has given us not only another essential work of African In We Were Eight Years in Power, Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of Between the World and Me (2015), has given us not only another essential work of African American literature but also a classic example of American prose.
Although it lacks the concentrated power and beauty of Between the World and Me, there is a good reason for this, for it is a collection of eight essays written for The Atlantic Monthly over a period of eight years, the years of the Obama presidency. In the prefatory “notes” to each essay (and year), in which the author provides both the context of each composition and its role in his growth as a writer, Coates admits that, for the first four of these years, He was still learning his craft. Yet even these four essays (shorter than the rest, they comprise the first third of the volume) reveal Coates to be a writer of great promise and penetrating intellect, and the remaining five—including the epilogue—are texts which I hope will be studied in high schools and universities for years to come.
Of the first four essays, I particularly recommend “This is How We Lost to the White Man,” about Bill Cosby’s black activism, and “American Girl,” about Michelle Obama as a child of the middle-class Southside Chicago neighborhoods. In the Cosby essay, although Coates does not agree with Cosby’s “pants on the ground” harangues targeted at black youth, he makes it clear that Cosby is an extension of the “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” tradition of black activism, stretching from Booker T. Washington through Marcus Garvey to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. In “American Girl,” Coates argues that Mrs. Obama was ideally suited to be the first black first lady because she is the product of a large stable, middle class black enclave (one of the few in the US), and because this background allows her to exude a confidence in herself and her worth which registers (even to white people) as distinctly American.
It is the last essays of the book, however, dealing primarily with the present day consequences of slavery (“The Case For Reparations” and “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration”) and with the presidency of Obama (“The Fear of a Black President” and “My President was Black”) which form the heart of the book. “Reparations” and “The Black Family” are primarily expository, demonstrating how slavery continues to wound the black citizen in the 21st century, plundering him of what little wealth he acquires through red-lining, real estate scams and municipal fines, and marginalizing him through a racially charged definition of family (courtesy of Daniel Patrick Moynihan), all of which makes mass incarceration inevitable, which in turn creates the basis of a new Jim Crow and opens up further opportunities for plunder.
The other two essays, although their content is primarily factual, are highly personal too. They are of course about Barack Obama, about how fear of a black president may have caused him to be too cautious and how racism continually obstructed his presidency's final years, but they are also about Coates himself. Coates, an atheist and pessimist, profoundly doubts the president’s message of hope and change, and yet can’t help but be profoundly moved, not only by the undeniable fact of a black president, but by the character and particular genius of Barack Obama the man.
I must single out for special mention, though, the “epilogue,” an essay entitled “The First White President," in which Coates makes the argument that Trump is the “first white president” because he is “the first president whose entire political existence hinges on the fact of a black president” :
To Trump whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies.The repercussions are striking: Trump is the first president to have served in no public capacity before ascending to his perch. Perhaps more important, Trump is the first president to have publicly affirmed that his daughter is a “piece of ass.” The mind seizes trying to imagine a black man extolling the virtures of sexual assault on tape (“And when you’re a star, they let you do it”), fending off multiple accusations for said assaults, becoming immersed in multiple lawsuits for allegedly fradulent business dealings, exhorting his own followers to violence, and then strolling into the White House. But that is the point of white supremacy—to ensure that that which all others achieve with maximal effort, white people (particularly white men) achieve with minimal qualification.
I should know better than to pick a book totally on impulse. It seldom works. Lord knows it didn’t work this time.
Banished is the memoir of Lauren Dra I should know better than to pick a book totally on impulse. It seldom works. Lord knows it didn’t work this time.
Banished is the memoir of Lauren Drain, a young woman who was expelled from the Westboro Baptist Church for talking to “boys.” You know the WBC, don’t you? They are the ones who show up at the funerals of homosexuals and military men carrying “God Hates Fags” and “God Hates Dead Soldiers” signs, and who, a decade and a half ago, shocked all of the U.S. with signs which proclaimed “Thank God for 9/11.”
I had never heard anything about this book, but I picked it up, eager to learn a few facts about America’s most despised church.
The most important thing I learned was a crucial point of theology that often gets lost in the shuffle. The Westboro Baptist Church, Lauren Drain tells us, is not picking on gay people. No, it is really telling us that “God Hates Everybody,” or at least 99.99% of the world. The Westboro, a congregation of fanatic hypercalvinists, believe that everybody is going to Hell except for a predestined remnant. And who, pray tell, is that remnant? The Westboro Baptist Church, of course.
Drain also does a good job telling us about the structure and daily operations of the church. It is primarily a family operation, of which Pastor Fred Phelps—at least at the time of writing—was the inspiration and figurehead. But the organization and operation of the church was in the hands of Fred’s daughters, of which Shirley was the eldest and most powerful. All the daughters are4 lawyers, and the church keeps excellent files, not only on every issue they might want to picket on behalf of, but also on the particular trespass laws of the states they were planning to picket in. If you were tempted to dismiss the Phelpses as a bunch of brainless hillbillies, you would be wrong.
Picketing, of course, is this church’s most important activity, and the Phelps sisters organize their picketers like an army, deciding where and when to employ various members, and rigidly dictating how their picketers must act. Yes, the Phelps family church is certainly a well-oiled hate machine.
Outside of this, there’s not a lot to say about the book. Lauren Drain—even with the help of Lisa Pulitzer, her ghost writer—is not deep enough or observant enough to tell us much about her own inner spiritual journey or the dynamics of her own family. Lauren obviously has her share of daddy issues (and her daddy, the Phelps church videographer, has way more issues than she does), but psychological complexes without insight don’t add up to a book.
The sad truth is that Lauren Drain comes off as shallow and superficial, more concerned with her status in the church, her clothes, and her make-up, than with a richer spiritual life. This isn’t her fault, for the Westboro church, with its relentless monitoring of its members, and its legalistic standards, inevitably fosters shallowness and superficiality.
Still, her voice is not compelling, her insights are not deep, and this is not a memorable book....more
Twenty-six months after Lee surrendered to Grant, the thirty-one-year-old Samuel Clemens, a ‘special traveling correspondent” for San Francisco’s Alta Twenty-six months after Lee surrendered to Grant, the thirty-one-year-old Samuel Clemens, a ‘special traveling correspondent” for San Francisco’s Alta California newspaper, boarded the recently decommissioned USS Quaker City—a steamship once active in enforcing the Union blockade—and embarked on a five-and-a-half-month “pleasure excursion” to Europe and the Holy Land. The Alta California payed Clemen’s $1,250 fare (more than $20,000 in today’s money) in return for a series of letters describing the travelers’ adventures, but Clemens—then known only as an itinerant reporter and a minor regional humorist—got more out of the deal than just a fancy trip. Two years later he published The Innocents Abroad, or the New Pilgrim’s Progress (1869). The American public not only loved it for its humor, but also valued it as a travel guide. In spite of the classics that came after, it was always his best-selling book. By 1870, Mark Twain had become a household name.
Twain’s tone can often be uneven and problematic, and this is doubly true of Innocents. He alternates plain-spoken folksy humor with flowery praises for the scenery, and it is often difficult to tell whether Twain is satirizing the boorish American, or whether he is indeed the American boor personified. (His almost complete lack of appreciation for the paintings of Italy particularly irritated me. Yes, I know, there are a helluva lot of Madonnas, but still.) Some of the flowery passages are impressive: his descriptions of Venice and the Acropolis at midnight are excellent. But it is the blunt, skeptical Twain that is the most memorable, always suspicious of the historicity of an ancient tradition—particularly if it is being used to pick an American’s pocket. (His treatment of the landmarks and relics of the Holy Land are some of the funniest passages in the book.)
For the Twain fan, one of the interesting things about this book is its unevenness, its variability of tone. It shows us a writer who is in the process of crafting his voice, and, by the end of the journey, he has found it.
Here are few excerpts showing Twain’s range. First, Twain the skeptic’s exposes the “English Spoken Here” fraud of the shopkeepers of Paris.
In Paris we often saw in shop windows the sign “English Spoken Here,” just as one sees in the windows at home the sign “Ici on parle francaise.” We always invaded these places at once — and invariably received the information, framed in faultless French, that the clerk who did the English for the establishment had just gone to dinner and would be back in an hour — would Monsieur buy something? We wondered why those parties happened to take their dinners at such erratic and extraordinary hours, for we never called at a time when an exemplary Christian would be in the least likely to be abroad on such an errand. The truth was, it was a base fraud — a snare to trap the unwary — chaff to catch fledglings with. They had no English-murdering clerk. They trusted to the sign to inveigle foreigners into their lairs, and trusted to their own blandishments to keep them there till they bought something.
Second, Twain the romantic describes the city of Venice:
We see little girls and boys go out in gondolas with their nurses, for an airing. We see staid families, with prayer-book and beads, enter the gondola dressed in their Sunday best, and float away to church. And at midnight we see the theatre break up and discharge its swarm of hilarious youth and beauty; we hear the cries of the hackman-gondoliers, and behold the struggling crowd jump aboard, and the black multitude of boats go skimming down the moonlit avenues; we see them separate here and there, and disappear up divergent streets; we hear the faint sounds of laughter and of shouted farewells floating up out of the distance; and then, the strange pageant being gone, we have lonely stretches of glittering water — of stately buildings — of blotting shadows — of weird stone faces creeping into the moonlight — of deserted bridges — of motionless boats at anchor. And over all broods that mysterious stillness, that stealthy quiet, that befits so well this old dreaming Venice.
Third, Twain the cynic takes us on a tour of the grottos of the Holy Land:
They have got the “Grotto” of the Annunciation here; and just as convenient to it as one’s throat is to his mouth, they have also the Virgin’s Kitchen, and even her sitting-room, where she and Joseph watched the infant Saviour play with Hebrew toys eighteen hundred years ago. All under one roof, and all clean, spacious, comfortable “grottoes.” It seems curious that personages intimately connected with the Holy Family always lived in grottoes — in Nazareth, in Bethlehem, in imperial Ephesus — and yet nobody else in their day and generation thought of doing any thing of the kind. If they ever did, their grottoes are all gone, and I suppose we ought to wonder at the peculiar marvel of the preservation of these I speak of. When the Virgin fled from Herod’s wrath, she hid in a grotto in Bethlehem, and the same is there to this day. The slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem was done in a grotto; the Saviour was born in a grotto — both are shown to pilgrims yet. It is exceedingly strange that these tremendous events all happened in grottoes — and exceedingly fortunate, likewise, because the strongest houses must crumble to ruin in time, but a grotto in the living rock will last forever. It is an imposture — this grotto stuff — but it is one that all men ought to thank the Catholics for. Wherever they ferret out a lost locality made holy by some Scriptural event, they straightway build a massive — almost imperishable — church there, and preserve the memory of that locality for the gratification of future generations …. The old monks are wise. They know how to drive a stake through a pleasant tradition that will hold it to its place forever.
Oh, I almost forgot. The Quaker City cruise not only made Sam Clemens famous: it got him a wife as well. One of the friends he made on the voyage was Charles Langdon, who showed him a photograph of his sister Olivia. Twain later declared it was love at first sight. Soon after the Quaker City returned to New York, Sam and Olivia had their first date: they attended a reading by Dickens. On February 8, 1870, Sam and his beloved “Livy” were married....more
This second volume in the graphic biography of civil rights stalwart John Lewis begins with the Freedom Riders and Parchman Farm and ends with the Mar This second volume in the graphic biography of civil rights stalwart John Lewis begins with the Freedom Riders and Parchman Farm and ends with the March on Washington and the fatal bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Avenue Baptist Church. Just as in the first volume, the stark black-and-white illustrations complement the somber and often disturbing events, but now, as the atmosphere becomes darker and more intense, the illustrations become more cinematic, more ominous.
In addition to the powerful portrayal of the dramatic events, I like the way the narrative includes realistic details of compromise and weakness: MLK’s refusal to join the Freedom Riders by saying he wishes to chooses his own “Golgotha” and then being mocked as “De Lawd,” Stokely Carmichael’s dangerous intransigence, the March on Washington’s reluctance to accept the services of accomplished organizer Bayard Rustin because he was was openly gay, and Lewis himself frustrated by demands that he alter his speech until he is persuaded by his idol A. Phillip Randolph. And as before, we see all the great turmoil and petty trials of the past framed by the story of Barack Obama’s first inauguration.
This is both a great graphic narrative and an accessible and accurate history of a crucial period in American history, a time filled with bravery and heroes.
You should buy it and read it. Come to think of it, buy all three volumes, and give them to a young person you love....more
Have you ever wondered what became of the Scotch-Irish, who dug America’s coal, forged America’s steel and built America’s automobiles, who worked for Have you ever wondered what became of the Scotch-Irish, who dug America’s coal, forged America’s steel and built America’s automobiles, who worked for the American Dream Monday through Friday. prayed to The Good Lord on Sunday, and revered F.D.R. and J.F.K. every day of the week? The last thing I heard, they elected Donald Trump. And I am still looking for explanations.
If you want somebody who knows Appalachian culture from inside to explain it all to you, I highly recommend Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. Vance has his roots in Eastern Kentucky, a troubled childhood in the rustbelt city of Middletown, Ohio, and yet has succeeded in graduating from Ohio State and matriculating from The Yale Law School. He tells us about his family of “crazy hillbillies,” and, in the process of telling us the story of his family, he tells us the story of America too.
The hillbilly seeking the American Dream in industrial Ohio was always “a stranger in a strange land”, for he cleaved to his Appalachian identity—the church in the wildwood, the old folks in the hollers—and returned to the welcoming hills every chance he could get. But economic decline left its mark on both mountain culture and urban manufacturing. Opportunities shrunk, hard liquor was supplemented by painkillers and heroin, church attendance fell and so did belief in the American Dream.
J.D.’s were most powerful influences were his grandparents Mamaw and Papaw: fierce, hard-drinking battlers with a proud belief in individual honor and family solidarity. They might beat their kids, sure, only when they deserved it...but no outsider better say one harsh word to them, much less lay a finger on them. They probably did their own children little good—especially J.D.’s mother, addicted to heroin and a bewildering succession of men—but by the time J.D. needed them they had mellowed a little, and gave him the love and determination he needed to succeed.
The early chapters about family are compelling, but the last few chapters, touching on the cultural hurdles a hillbilly in a high class East Coast law school must overcome, are fascinating too. J.D. shows us how many things the upper middle class takes for granted—how to dress for an interview, how to schmooze a prospective employer, how to strive for what you really want not what you’re supposed to want—are difficult for a young man from a poor background.
J.D. Vance’s insights are noteworthy not only because of his family background but also because of his political philosophy. He is a conservative, one of those cautious, reflective conservatives who are growing increasingly rare these days. (Former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is one of his heroes, David Frum is a former employer and mentor). He is critical of specific government practices (the high barriers grandparent’s face if they wish to be foster parents, for example), but he also realizes that government has a role—although limited—in raising the Appalachian people from poverty. The major responsibility, however, he puts squarely on the shoulders on the hillbilly himself:
There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day.
Here is where the rhetoric of modern conservatives (and I say this as one of them) fails to meet the real challenges of their biggest constituents. Instead of encouraging engagement, conservatives increasingly foment the kind of detachment that has sapped the ambition of so many of my peers...What separates the successful from the unsuccessful are the expectations that they had for their own lives. Yet the message of the right is increasingly: It’s not your fault that you’re a loser; it’s the government’s fault.
I don't make a habit of idolizing people, and if I did, TV journalists would probably be near the bottom of my list. But I'm willing to make an except I don't make a habit of idolizing people, and if I did, TV journalists would probably be near the bottom of my list. But I'm willing to make an exception in the case of NBC's foreign correspondent Richard Engel. After all, the guy's intelligent, self-possessed, brave, and almost as handsome as the young David Duchovny. He is fluent in Italian, Spanish, and Arabic, and bought a house in Sicily with his blackjack winnings. In addition, I just discovered something else: Richard Engel is a man who can write.
Okay then. I officially idolize Richard Engel. In fact, I'd like to be Richard Engel.
Richard was always single-minded and ambitious. Growing up in an affluent, much-traveled Manhattan family, Richard dreamed from the age of fourteen of being a foreign correspondent. (“I'll have an apartment overlooking the Champs-Elysees, and I'll wear a white suit and smoke cigarettes out of a bone-holder. That was the vision.”). He studied International Relations at Stanford, but when he graduated in 1996, he no longer dreamed of Paris. He wanted to go where the big foreign stories would emerge, and that meant the Middle East.
He first worked as a free-lance in Cairo, where the contacts he developed with the Muslim Brotherhood led to some measure of success. Soon after he arrived in Egypt, the terror attacks began: the Europa Hotel, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the massacre at Deir el-Bahri across from Luxor. All this was newsworthy, sure, but Engel wished to be closer to the center: he moved to Israel in time for the Second Intifada, to Iraq just before the American Invasion (Engel was the only American journalist to stay in Iraq for all of the war). Later, he became NBC Bureau Chief in Beirut just in time to cover the Israeli-Hesbollah conflict. Then came the Afghanistan election of 2008, the Arab Spring, the revolt in Libya, and the conflict in Syria where Engel and his crew were kidnapped and held captive for five days before they managed to escape.
In this memoir of his twenty years as a foreign correspondent, Engel tells us of all these places, all these experiences, without false humility or bragging. He gives us the facts and tells us how he felt , but—like a good journalist—he lets us make up our minds for ourselves.
And what does he think about US involvement after twenty years at the shifting center of the storm? He thinks Saddam was a bad man who deserved to be removed, but that Bush pursued the invasion so recklessly and prepared for the transition of power so ineptly that he virtually guaranteed the chaos in which an ISIS would inevitably ferment, giving every jihadist in the Middle East a destination, a motive, a cellular infrastrucure ideal for 21st century terrorist communication, and a big bunch of Americans to kill smack dab in the middle of the neighbor's back yard. But Obama too earns his share of the blame. His incinsistent policies, confusing signals and intermittent attention have added to the region's uncertainty and contributed both to the general unrest and to the unresolved conflict in Syria.
This is a very good book. It is short, exciting, well written, and serves as an excellent introduction—or refresher course—to what has been going on in the Middle East for the last twenty years....more
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