Stories from Slate

“It’s Been Chaos”

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 20:23:54 GMT

Last year, I began talking to a panel of Republican voters who weren’t fond of Donald Trump. I spoke to them during the primaries in March, after Trump became the presumptive nominee in May, and just before the election at the end of October. This was never a scientific undertaking—my sample size is tiny, found through my own social and professional networks. It’s just been a glimpse into the thought processes of some longtime Republicans who are deeply uncomfortable with the idea of Trump as the face of their party. With the 100-day mark of the new administration nearing, I thought I’d check in with them once again to see how they’re feeling about the Trump era.

Who: attorney, female, 53, California

Voting background before 2016: always voted GOP in presidential elections but abstained in 2008

How did you vote in November? Any regrets? I voted for Gary Johnson as the least worst of the batch. I have no regrets, especially because in deep blue coastal California it wouldn’t have made any difference.

How do you feel about Trump so far? What’s pleased/disappointed/enraged you? I think the administration has made some fantastic appointments. I know Neil Gorsuch a little, and he is great. Neomi Rao [Trump’s pick for “regulatory czar”] is wonderful. [Food and Drug Administration chief] Scott Gottlieb is great, too. But I think that this success is in spite of Trump. He is a walking dumpster fire. The palace intrigue and infighting is embarrassing, as are the crony corruption and conflicts of interest. The situations with Russia and North Korea are frightening, and I don’t think he has a clue. The Obamacare debacle was awful and showed the superficial connection he has with promises he made in the campaign.

Would you like to see a GOP primary challenger in 2020? If so, who? Sure, I would like to see a GOP challenger put us out of our misery. I’d like to see Trump impeached. I was a Carly Fiorina fan, but I think that is unlikely to happen. I am guessing that Trump has poisoned the well for business executives in national politics for some time.

* * *

Who: business owner and CEO, male, 45, Washington, D.C.

Voting background before 2016: always voted GOP in presidential elections, save for a Libertarian vote in 2004

How did you vote in November? Any regrets? As painful as it was, I voted for Hillary Clinton. No regrets—Evan McMullin wasn’t on my ballot.

How do you feel about Trump so far? What’s pleased/disappointed/enraged you? The Gorsuch nomination pleased me. The address to Congress was fine. Everything else has been a complete disaster. He is an awful president and an awful human.

Would you like to see a GOP primary challenger in 2020? If so, who? I seriously doubt it would happen, but if Ben Sasse ran, I’d quit my job and go door to door for him. And if they had the balls to do it, Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, or Lindsey Graham would also be infinitely more acceptable than a second term with this clown.

* * *

Who: civil litigation attorney, male, 47, California

Voting background before 2016: always voted GOP in previous presidential elections

How did you vote in November? Any regrets? I voted for McMullin by write-in here in California, as he was not on the ballot. I do not regret this “protest” vote.

How do you feel about Trump so far? What’s pleased/disappointed/enraged you? My feeling about the Trump presidency is that it is unfolding pretty much the way I would have expected. He has not changed his personality, character, or demeanor. He is still an undisciplined and needlessly provocative blowhard and bully. I am pleased with some things, like the Gorsuch nomination and appointment, and seemingly tougher action internationally, like the Syria bombing. I’m disappointed by the travel ban, failure of Obamacare repeal, and his continued unpresidential behavior.

Would you like to see a GOP primary challenger in 2020? If so, who? I would rather have someone else in that office such as Mike Pence or Rubio, but at this point I can’t say I would advocate a 2020 challenger merely because we have no idea whether this person would be viable or not. If the first term ends up being nondisastrous, no one will be able to dislodge him. If something really goes bad, certainly a possibility, he will likely not run for re-election.

* * *

Who: federal HR employee, female, 41, Kentucky

Voting background before 2016: voted GOP in every previous presidential election

How did you vote in November? Any regrets? I ended up voting for Clinton. I squeezed into my only pantsuit (which was a smidge too small) and marched to the polls with a smile on my face. I do not regret my vote in any way.

How do you feel about Trump so far? What’s pleased/disappointed/enraged you? Trump has, so far, mostly lived down to my expectations. Things haven’t been as dramatically horrible as I imagined, but it is still early days. His opportunities to start World War III/declare martial law/be impeached and replaced with Pence are still hovering out there with plenty of time left on the clock. The thing that pleased me most was the Gorsuch nomination. That was about as rational/normal of a pick as could have been expected for a Republican. I thought that the Democratic anguish over it was mostly political theater. The thing that’s annoyed me the most is actually the president’s supporters more than the president: The bald-face lying and flip-flopping doesn’t even earn a blink. The most crazy-making example was recently with the crocodile tears over Syrian “babies” with no recognition whatsoever that these are THE EXACT SAME BABIES they want to deny asylum to.

Would you like to see a GOP primary challenger in 2020? If so, who? A 2020 challenger for Trump is a pipe dream. Either he will be impeached, he will decline to run (probably some BS about how he’s “accomplished what he set out to do”), or maybe he will have Jared Kushner as his heir apparent (if Jared will be old enough by then) and spend his last few months lobbying to make the presidency a hereditary thing like being queen. In a perfect world, John McCain would magically be 10 years younger and be the Republican nominee, or maybe Jeb! (I still like Jeb!) But I’m too beat down by the system right now to even daydream.

* * *

Who: attorney, male, 34, Illinois

Voting background before 2016: voted GOP in every previous presidential election

How did you vote in November? Any regrets? I voted for Hillary. I don’t regret my vote, but I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

How do you feel about Trump so far? What’s pleased/disappointed/enraged you? Overall, I’m displeased by his presidency, but I don’t think he’s made any fundamental changes. I’m incensed by the nationality portions of the travel plan. I’m upset he bombed Bashar al-Assad, particularly because that’s one area where he promised to be better than Hillary. I’m not surprised Obamacare repeal failed because Trump campaigned on expanded government intervention into health care. I am a big fan of Gorsuch. I’m also relieved that (thus far) he is not weakening freedom of speech or separation of powers and that we have not lifted sanctions on Russia.

Would you like to see a GOP primary challenger in 2020? If so, who? I would like to see a primary challenge now, but that could change over the course of this presidency. Rand Paul would be my top choice, but I would also support Sasse or Susana Martinez. If Justin Amash become a governor or a senator or builds a viable following, I’d be very enthusiastic about him.

* * *

Who: tech worker, male, 41, Ohio

Voting background before 2016: voted GOP in every previous presidential election

How did you vote in November? Any regrets? Trump. And then I went and drank heavily. I still regret that my party nominated Trump and that any other choices were a vote for Clinton. That would have been a vote for the most corrupt presidential candidate ever and her party’s evil identity politics and outrage culture.

How do you feel about Trump so far? What’s pleased/disappointed/enraged you? Pleased: James Mattis. Gorsuch. Nikki Haley. Calling out media for their dishonest, agenda-driven reporting. Willingness to turn up the rhetoric against Syria, Russia, and North Korea. Demoting Steve Bannon.

Disappointed: The American Health Care Act was obviously Trumpified to the point where it wasn’t any better than the Affordable Care Act. When it went down, Trump went after his own party for defying him. He flip-flopped on Syria in five days. He’s insufficiently separating himself from his business interests. He’s keeping Bannon and Kellyanne Conway.

Enraged: The ridiculous tweets, the lies, and especially the wiretap accusation without evidence. (The accusation was so ridiculous that it distracted from the seriousness of the issue. We need to find out what really happened.) Sean Spicer is a buffoon. And the personality worship: Loyalty to principle over loyalty to Trump is viewed as traitorous.

Would you like to see a GOP primary challenger in 2020? If so, who? If Trump is collapsing, yes. But only time will tell. Pence would be fine—he’s too smart to get caught up in any potential corrupt activity, so he may be good. I still like Paul, Rubio, and Kasich.

* * *

Who: stay-at-home parent, female, 39, Virginia

Voting background before 2016: voted GOP in every presidential election

How did you vote in November? Any regrets? After much thought, I chose to vote for Trump. I felt it was better to take a chance on Trump, even though I was not a supporter, than to sit on my hands and vote third-party knowing that would only help Clinton win. I already disagreed with Clinton policywise in every way possible, but the more we learned about her criminal behavior, I just couldn’t stomach the idea of her winning. I have no regrets. Do I wish Trump was a little more polished? Yes. Do I wish someone could control his Twitter impulse? Yes. But all in all, I think he is trying to keep his campaign promises and improve the situation for all Americans.

How do you feel about Trump so far? What’s pleased/disappointed/enraged you? He has shown strength internationally. He has taken some positive steps for the pro-life movement. I’m very happy with his Supreme Court selection. I’m disgusted with the mainstream media’s coverage of him and his efforts, constantly trying to scandalize every move he makes, rather than evaluating him fairly and neutrally.

Would you like to see a GOP primary challenger in 2020? If so, who? Not at this time. I’m still waiting and watching. I like that he’s not beholden to anyone and yet willing to work with the Republicans, conservatives, and reasonable Democrats.

* * *

Who: attorney, female, 40, Virginia

Voting background before 2016: always voted GOP in presidential elections, save for a Libertarian vote in 2000

How did you vote in November? Any regrets? McMullin. Given that my state went for Clinton, I do not regret my vote. If I had lived in a state that I thought was up for grabs on Election Day, I probably would have voted for Hillary instead of third party.

How do you feel about Trump so far? What’s pleased/disappointed/enraged you? I am happy with the appointment of Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Most of the rest of what Trump’s done has been a disaster. I am appalled at the treatment of immigrants who are being deported after many years in the country with no criminal record at all or nothing more than a simple traffic stop (including driving without licenses, which they can’t get no matter how much they’d like to in many states). I am terrified by the capricious and aggressive conduct of foreign affairs right now. While I think the administrative state has become overly burdensome, his approach to improving that has been chaotic and poorly prioritized. I am extremely concerned about massive increases to military and law enforcement funding while cutting social services and many other important aspects of the federal budget. I’m glad the ill-conceived ACA replacement failed and just hope it stays that way.

Would you like to see a GOP primary challenger in 2020? If so, who? Yes, please! Maybe Sasse? I’d be open to see who comes forward with a moderate message of keeping the ACA goal of universal health care coverage, immigration reform, a more cautious approach to foreign affairs, and general good and efficient government.

* * *

Who: financial adviser, male, 31, Florida

Voting background before 2016: voted GOP in every previous presidential election

How did you vote in November? Any regrets? HRC. I have no regrets.

How do you feel about Trump so far? What’s pleased/disappointed/enraged you? This presidency so far has been an embarrassment to the country. This man knows nothing about foreign or domestic policy and has no ethos. A silver lining would be reductions in regulation, tax cuts, and generally being more pro-business, although I’m not sure how much of this gets done considering how ineffective Trump is. Gorsuch is also a major win long term, although I hated to see the Senate act like it did. I think the worst part is the fact that someone this incompetent is running the country and, to some degree, the world. When he speaks it seems as though he learned about the topic yesterday and came up with the “solution” at dinner. I honestly think Trump has been surprised to learn certain things about the government that most people know. “Health care is complicated” would be an example.

Would you like to see a GOP primary challenger in 2020? If so, who? I would love to see someone else run. Sasse from Nebraska is my favorite. But this has a zero percent chance of happening. The incumbency is really powerful. Trump has historically bad approval ratings, and betting lines still make him about even money to win re-election.

* * *

Who: retired attorney, male, 75, California

Voting background before 2016: voted GOP since Barry Goldwater, with one break for Ross Perot in 1992

How did you vote in November? Any regrets? I voted for Trump, but California voted for HRC. Not really any regrets given the reality of the choices. No other options.

How do you feel about Trump so far? What’s pleased/disappointed/enraged you? I feel OK about his presidency so far. Maybe a C-plus or B-minus. Positives include Gorsuch and the response to the Syrian gas attack. Also meetings with foreign leaders, especially Xi Jinping of China. I’m disappointed with the failure to repeal/replace (so far) the ACA and other similar legislative fumbles. I’m enraged (that is a little strong, but it’s your question) by the tweets. I say cut off his thumbs.

Would you like to see a GOP primary challenger in 2020? If so, who? At this point I would oppose any effort in the GOP to unseat Trump but would not close the door if future events warrant a change. It is too early to go there now.

* * *

Who: consultant, male, 64, Florida

Voting background before 2016: always voted GOP in previous presidential elections

How did you vote in November? Any regrets? McMullin—there was an extremely unlikely but plausible scenario where he could win if an electoral tie went to the House. I was operating on the certainty of a Hillary victory, meaning she would not need my vote. I could not vote for Trump. Had I known he could win, would I have voted for her? Ugh. Maybe …

How do you feel about Trump so far? What’s pleased/disappointed/enraged you? It’s been chaos. I’m pleased about the Supreme Court pick and the Syria response. I’m disappointed in the ACA replacement failure (which is holding up corporate tax reform). I’m enraged by the seat-of-the-pants (reckless?) management and the communication style—especially regarding foreign policy. Also the tweeting while watching Fox & Friends.

Would you like to see a GOP primary challenger in 2020? If so, who? Yes. Maybe Paul Ryan or Rubio or a player to be named later.

* * *

Who: retired executive, male, 76, New Jersey

Voting background before 2016: always voted GOP in previous presidential elections

How did you vote in November? Any regrets? I voted for Hillary. No regrets except for the outcome.

How do you feel about Trump so far? What’s pleased/disappointed/enraged you? No surprises. The erratic narcissism that defined the campaign has dominated Trump’s presidency thus far, with little hope for change. He doesn’t seem to be guided by either a governing plan or a moral compass.

Would you like to see a GOP primary challenger in 2020? If so, who? I will probably register as an independent now. I will keep an eye on what the GOP does, but if things shape up as in 2016 (i.e., dominated by the extreme right) I won’t go there. They’ve made it very difficult for center-right people like me.

Donald Trump Is a Terrible Negotiator

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 20:21:03 GMT

Donald Trump campaigned as a dealmaker. The entire premise of his candidacy was that he’d glower across a conference room table and, using his business guy skillz, defeat the enemies of American greatness to win the sweet end of the lollipop for his voters. He seemed to define good governance as little more than shrewd haggling. If Ronald Reagan was the Great Communicator, Trump would be the Great Negotiator.

So what kind of negotiator has he been since taking office? Is Trump, as he himself would put it, making good deals, or is he, as they say in modern business vernacular, getting his face ripped off?

It’s unfair to grade Trump solely on results at this point, as it’s early and many outcomes remain in doubt. But we can examine Trump’s negotiation ploys—the tactics he wields and the manner in which he wields them—to assess how likely they are to succeed over the course of his administration. Again and again with regard to looming negotiations that could define his presidency, Trump has gotten off on the exact wrong foot:

He’s sent confusing signals. He said he’d be OK with a one-state solution in Israel, before his U.N. ambassador clarified that only a two-state solution would do.

He’s made bold opening moves but then quickly backed down while receiving no concessions in return. He cozied up to Taiwan in an unprecedented manner, then acknowledged “One China” policy the instant China insisted on it.

He’s made false accusations that poison relationships. European countries do not in fact owe money to NATO.

He’s been ignorant, boorish, and short-fused. Upon hearing, apparently for the first time, about a refugee deal the U.S. cut with Australia, Trump became furious and hung up on the Australian prime minister.

But our richest case study so far is Trump’s push to pass the initial version of the American Health Care Act. We know Trump was “100 percent behind” the AHCA, that he “left everything on the field,” and that he was “the closer,” attempting to herd various parties into agreement. We also know that he failed—to the tremendous embarrassment of both the White House and the GOP. What can we learn about Trump’s negotiation style from the bill’s spectacular fizzle?

The first step in a winning negotiation, as any MBA course will teach you, is to understand the playing field. You need to burrow into the weeds on picayune issues so you know where opportunities for compromise lie. You need to zoom out and see the larger picture so you can suggest clever trade-offs. You must deeply grok the interests of all the players, and the stakeholders they answer to, so you can predict where they’ll bend and where they’ll stiffen.

As best we can tell from outside the process, Trump made zero effort to learn anything at all. He never studied the wonky details of the bill, according to reports. He was clueless about the broader history of the debate (“Nobody knew health care could be so complicated,” he marveled at one point). He never bothered to comprehend other interests—the ideological objections of the hard-line Freedom Caucus, the practical concerns of the moderate Tuesday Group, the alarm of an American public that gave the bill a 17 percent approval rating—so he could empathize and try to assuage them.

Having been too lazy, or too lacking in attention span, to do basic prep work, Trump then seemed to grow bored of the negotiation itself. Effective dealmakers are known for their patience and stamina, which lets them endure the emotional ups and downs of the process, ignore outbursts, and settle in for the long slog of achieving a lasting accord. Trump, however, grew restless within days after wading into the fray, issued an ultimatum, and imposed a tight deadline with no clear rationale. (Consider that negotiations over Obamacare dragged on for more than a year, while the AHCA give-and-take lasted 17 days.) The vote Trump tried to force never happened, and instead he simply scuttled the process before it had begun.

It’s true that a ticking clock can sometimes be a powerful negotiation tool. A person who needs a deal done by midnight is likely to offer deep concessions at 11:58 p.m. In an episode we did about time pressure in Slate’s Negotiation Academy podcast series, my co-host spoke to diplomat Richard Haass about the tactic.* Haass agreed that being up against a clock can “force compromise” and “focus the mind.” But artificial deadlines, like Trump’s, can backfire. Haass recalled Northern Ireland talks in which he set a firm date with the intent to “jam” the parties into an agreement, only to find this impeded a deal. “In order to make the compromises we wanted,” Haass noted, “they had to bring along their own internal politics. And they simply needed more time. We tried to move things faster than the domestic politics of one of the parties would allow us.” Which is precisely the problem Trump ran up against with Paul Ryan, who needed far more time to achieve compromise between his warring congressional factions.

Trump has suggested this was all mere prelude and that a new health care bill is still in the offing—maybe even in the next few days. But he made every effort to throw a wrench into potential future negotiations, too. In the wake of his defeat he blithely insulted groups he might need to work with next time by tweeting, for instance, that the Freedom Caucus is not “on the team” and that “We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!” He then suggested he might unilaterally end government payments that subsidize low-income people’s health insurance unless Democrats “start calling me and negotiating”—an empty attempt at extortion that soon withered, demonstrating poor understanding of both negotiation and of the political landscape. More recently, he set another arbitrary deadline, asking all parties to scurry around in hopes of getting something done to improve the cosmetics of the administration’s 100-day record. If a health care bill does happen, it will happen in spite of Trump, not because of him.

Given all this behavior, how seriously will anyone take Trump’s threats and deadlines next time? Why would you believe that Trump will earnestly consider your interests? Why would you accede to Trump’s demands when it’s clear you can wait him out and bait him into acting rashly? Instead of coolly staring down his foes across the conference table, Trump flipped the conference table onto his own foot, knocked a scalding-hot coffee carafe into his lap, and pelted himself in the face with a wide variety of danish.

People who practice negotiation at the highest levels treat it as a cooperative art. They don’t even refer to people across the table as “opponents”; they call them “negotiation partners” or, at worst, “counterparties.” Good dealmakers favor an extended, friendly schmoozing period before making declarations or getting down to brass tacks. They feel out the unstated interests that underlie the stated positions. They don’t treat deals as win-lose, “distributive” battles that divvy up value; they treat them as win-win, “integrative” collaborations that create more value for everyone. They agree on objective measures so both sides can assess the effects of a deal. They give careful thought to the implementation that will follow a negotiation, because a party that feels bullied or lied to is unlikely to respect the bargain that is struck.

Trump seems completely unaware of the best practices in the field he claims as his forte. When he talks about trade deals, he talks about “beating” other countries, not working together so both sides profit. He often declares his positions (“Mexico is going to pay for the wall”) early on, very publicly, before talks have begun—which both inflames the situation and leaves him no room to make concessions without losing face. He casts doubt on official statistics, which turns negotiation into a hopeless contest of dueling realities. He disparages people and countries he’ll surely need to work with down the line.

Instead of doing the hard work of real negotiation, Trump is obsessed with shallow persuasion tactics. He often employs a facile technique known as “social proof,” which boils down to insisting that everyone else is doing it so you should, too. (“Many people are saying …” is his favorite verbal construction.) He tries to skate by on charm instead of logic. (GOP reps said that in his calls to them during the AHCA fight, he didn’t bother to talk policy at all—he just shot the breeze.) He squints, acts tough, talks loud, and insists that people “come to me” instead of meeting them on metaphoric neutral ground. (By contrast, in our Negotiation Academy interview with super-negotiator H. Rodgin Cohen, he said being gentle and softspoken was an advantage because “very few people will give into a bully” and, what’s more, on the rare occasions you do need to yell, it’s “not lost in a cacophony of noise.”) It’s like everything Trump thinks about negotiation came from watching bad Hollywood movies.

Trump’s defenders argue that he cleverly stakes out extreme positions because they’re only a “first offer.” Making an outlandish opening bid—such as “Mexico is going to pay for the wall”—is known as “anchoring” in negotiation-speak. It’s a powerful tactic when your counterparty isn’t clear on the value of the thing you’re bargaining over, so you can psychologically sway them into accepting the way you’ve framed things. But it’s more consistent with a hardball, win-lose, used-car–salesman approach than with the sophisticated dealmaking required to pull off a complex, international agreement involving hot-button issues like border security and immigration. Anchoring is also counterproductive when you back down from your own opening bid while getting nothing in return. See, for instance, Trump’s demand to get border wall funding in return for averting a government shutdown. He quickly retracted it while recieving no concessions from the other side. That’s known as negotiating against yourself.

Trump’s simplistic ideas about how negotiation works are best exemplified by his impetuous withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This was a complex trade agreement toiled on for eight years by skilled trade negotiators from 12 nations. Trump unilaterally pulled out of TPP while receiving no concessions (from, say, China, which benefits tremendously from our withdrawal) in return. Why did he abandon the agreement? He claimed it was because he favors bilateral instead of multilateral negotiation. I presume this is because dealing with only one counterparty at a time is easier for him to wrap his head around. But multilateral negotiations create space for more nuanced trade-offs, allowing everyone to get what they want. (Think about multiteam sports trades where three teams can solve their problems at once.) With TPP, for example, developing countries in Asia gave us concessions on labor and the environment in return for our opening of Japan’s market to them. “It’s easier and more effective to negotiate with big groups,” says Caroline Freund, a trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “With TPP, we were getting a huge chunk of the world to agree to U.S. trade rules. Doing things bilaterally is much less efficient. You need to spend time negotiating each one, taking each one through Congress. It’s more difficult, time-consuming, and costly.”

All these missteps can be traced back to Trump’s fatal flaw as a negotiator: his narcissism. “Negotiators get themselves in trouble when they’re blind to the perspective of other parties,” says Don Moore, a professor of management at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, who has been writing about Trump’s negotiation style since the start of his campaign. “I see the Trump administration making huge errors in their engagement with our partners because they have no appreciation of the other side’s interests. They speak in ways that imply great ignorance about our partners on the global stage, and they’re deeply arrogant about the rectitude of their own positions. That alienates partners.”

There have been some isolated bright spots in Trump’s presidential negotiation approach. He seems to have in mind some kind of deal with China that would involve both trade issues and North Korea policy, which suggests a willingness to look for creative swaps. But perhaps the only element we could call an asset to Trump’s negotiation style, in terms of achieving deals, is his complete lack of core principles. It allows him to stay open to any agreement that will let him sign papers, take credit, and hold a photo op. “When you don’t know where you’re headed,” notes Moore, “any road will take you there.” I’m still wary about where that approach takes the rest of us.

*Correction, April 26, 2017: This piece originally misspelled Richard Haass’ last name. (Return.)

The Daily Show

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 18:26:16 GMT

On a Saturday afternoon in mid-March, Sean Spicer ran an errand at the Apple Store. There, arms laden with various chargers, he encountered a hailstorm of questions—far more aggressive than any he’d fielded in his weekday job as White House press secretary.

“How do you feel about destroying our country, Sean?” asked Shree Chauhan, an education policy worker who’d spied Spicer in his off-duty blazer and jewel-toned sport shirt and seized the opportunity to live-stream accosting him on Periscope. “Do you feel good about the decisions you’re making? Do you feel good about lying to the American people?”

Spicer parried the onslaught with a wan smile and mumbled non sequiturs. (At one point he muttered, “Such a great country that allows you to be here”—possibly an allusion to Chauhan’s skin color. She is Indian American and was, in fact, born here.)

The whole incident offered a glimpse into how a trained spokesman reacts when faced with untrained and unanticipated queries. Spicer didn’t look smooth and prepped. He got flustered.

Chauhan later wrote that she’d viewed her encounter in the wild as an opportunity “to get answers without the protections normally given to Mr. Spicer.” Which is sort of a strange thing to say, given that Spicer is in no way protected from facing questions. He spends most of his afternoons getting peppered with questions—it’s like the main thing he does.

Still, you get what she means, right?

There’s something about the pretense of the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, where Spicer plies his trade. The pomp of the White House seal, the stately traditions of the West Wing. The self-imposed, collective restraint of a professional media corps—even in the age of Trump, not a no-holds-barred Shree Chauhan among them.

Since Jan. 20, Spicer’s press briefings have become must-see TV for 4.3 million Americans, many of whom tune in desperately hoping for the thrill of a confrontational moment. All the liberals I know are now press critics, screaming into their laptops, suggesting cleverly phrased questions the reporters should be asking instead of the apparently toothless ones they’re asking instead. My boss thinks the press should take off the gloves and attack! My colleagues want to ban multipart questions! And my friends seem to know exactly how they’d break Spicer, if only they could get inside the room.

Well, I got inside the room. I spent several weeks attending White House press briefings at the start of the new administration, camping out in the back, jammed against the wall, at one point with a Daily Mail reporter sitting on my feet. I wondered: Are we doing these all wrong?

* * *

White House press briefings have always been, on some level, silly.

“Day in, day out,” says a person who worked in a past administration and was closely involved in its briefing process, “they’re of precious little value. If a White House wants to get news out, a press briefing is not the venue it’s going to use. As a result, press secretaries mostly play defense. They’re trying not to make news or be pinned down.”

Quick, name a newsmaking moment from a pre-Trump press briefing—any administration, any press secretary. C.J. Cregg doesn’t count. Having trouble? That’s because pretty much nothing of import has ever emerged from a press secretary’s mouth.

Yes, Richard Nixon’s much-loathed mouthpiece, Ron Ziegler, famously dismissed Watergate as a “third-rate burglary” from the podium, excused his own exposed untruths as newly “inoperative,” and stuck with Nixon until the bitter end. But Ziegler was the comic relief of the Watergate saga. He color-commentated on events that had accelerated beyond him. None of the reporting that brought Nixon down happened in the briefing room.

Before Spicer came along, the most notable briefing brouhaha of this century took place on Sept. 26, 2001, when Ari Fleischer—the first press secretary of the George W. Bush administration—told terrorized Americans that “they need to watch what they say, watch what they do.” The remark got seized on by left-wing columnists as an Orwellian threat. But in context it was harmless. (Ted Koppel said so at the time, and Christopher Hitchens agreed five years later in a column for Slate.)

On the vast majority of days, the briefing is a weird Kabuki ritual in which little of worth is revealed. Reporters sit in the 49 seats—or, if you’re like me or one of the other schmoes, stand against the wall or in a rear corner—and endure several minutes of Spicer’s prepared, pro-Trump propaganda, in hopes that he’ll call on them once the Q&A time starts. The TV correspondents up front are aiming to provoke a colorful exchange that they can edit into a network news snippet or a viral social media clip. The print folks are largely resigned to getting reaction quotes, not new details. I suspect the real reason some outlets are there is simply for the White House dateline or the visual of the North Portico in the background of the stand-up shot.

Briefings are often—as the Ziegler example underscores—a means of obfuscating the truth. Which is, in itself, a reason to engage in the process. The daily briefing creates an iterative record that helps us read Oval Office tea leaves. Carefully crafted press secretary sound bites will suddenly change a little or go out of fashion. Arguments get added or dropped. Themes get stressed with more or less urgency. These are useful clues to understanding the behind-the-scenes machinations.

But perhaps the briefing’s greatest value is symbolic: The White House steps into the arena each day and engages with the press. “The idea is that they believe in their policies, so they’ll stand up and defend them. Interlocutors will present challenges in that room, and they will be answered,” says one White House reporter. “But every single aspect of that has been undermined by the Trump administration.”

* * *

Some critiques of Trump’s press relations have been overblown. Access has in many ways been terrific so far—and that’s not even counting the gush of leaks. Trump invites reporters into the Oval Office more often than Obama did, and correspondents can randomly encounter the president and his senior aides while loitering in a nearby hallway—an area known as “upper press” that George Stephanopoulos, for instance, kept closed off to journalists during the Clinton administration. Trump also held a wide-ranging press conference a month into his administration where, for better or worse, he let loose. (Other parts of the executive branch have been much more worrisomely aloof. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has frozen out reporters almost entirely.)

There’s been fretting, most recently expressed in this New Yorker story about the briefings, that Spicer has shifted more questions toward right-wing organizations. It’s indeed dismaying that outlets controlled by Trump cronies like Rupert Murdoch and Christopher Ruddy have received favorable treatment. But while the New Yorker focused its ire on the execrable Gateway Pundit, that particular cretin hasn’t been given a single question. And the White House reporters from mainstream publications I’ve spoken to don’t seem to mind the overall mix of outlets Spicer’s calling on. On March 24, for instance, the Friday afternoon when the GOP health care bill disintegrated, you might have expected Spicer to cuddle up in the warm embrace of non-MSM outlets—yet his first five questions went to Reuters, Yahoo, the New York Times, the Associated Press, and Time.

Besides, with notable exceptions (including a couple of Skyped-in folks who’ve been nauseatingly chummy with Spicer), most questions from the right-leaning outlets have been legit. The Weekly Standard pressed Spicer on inauguration attendance claims; the Daily Caller and RealClearPolitics got tough on the bogus wiretapping accusations; even LifeZette asked a pointed immigration question in the first week. “It’s sometimes the questions from the right that Spicer has more trouble handling,” notes one correspondent, “just as the Obama administration sometimes had more trouble with the attacks coming from the left.”

Spicer has pulled occasional lame shenanigans, like excluding individual outlets from a gaggle or switching off briefing room cameras on a whim. These actions lie somewhere on the spectrum between encroaching autocracy and dick move. If anything, they’re efforts to distract and make the media a part of the story, as Trump did so effectively during his campaign and has continued to do with his “FAKE NEWS” tantrums. The press has an obligation to push back on behavior like this, and it’s done so, but we’re not in 1984 territory yet.

The real problem in the briefing room isn’t the kind of questions getting asked, who’s being allowed to ask them, or how they’re phrased. It’s the posturing of the press secretary and the brazenness of his lies. Consider that, during contentious moments in past administrations, press secretaries managed to remain collegial from the podium. Even deferential. Take a look at Dana Perino in 2007, defending Dick Cheney’s weird refusal to admit he was part of the executive branch. Perino is passive. She makes no attempt to control the room. Reporters bark out questions without raising their hands and (correctly) expect that she’ll respond. At one point, a reporter actually yells out “Yeah!” in solidarity with a colleague’s query. The balance of power lies in the seats, not at the lectern.

Or check out Jay Carney in 2013, putting a jolly face on the stumbling rollout of the Obamacare web site. He patiently back-and-forths with a single dogged reporter, ABC’s Jonathan Karl, dozens of times over a four-minute span. Carney’s attitude is waggish but jovial, never crossing into anger. Even defending President Obama’s “red line” statement about Syria, again in 2013, Carney is somber and respectful as he dodges roundhouse punches from Karl and from CBS’s Major Garrett. In all cases, the confidence and entitlement are on the side of the questioners.

Now watch Spicer’s press briefings over the administration’s first few months. You’ll notice the tonal difference is shocking. Spicer’s an alpha bully, often raising his voice in a threatening manner when a reporter touches a nerve. And the idea of a long, Carney-like give-and-take with Jonathan Karl is unimaginable. Whenever he’s under fire from a reporter who’s on a roll, Spicer simply cuts things off midquestion and calls on someone else. “He likes to Gatling-gun around the room,” says one White House correspondent. “He rarely lets a questioner build up rhetorical momentum.”

Spicer’s go-to move when he’s been cornered is to flip the script and recite a litany of media sins. He likes to couch these as “interesting” observations he’s made. Responding to a question, for example, about whether White House staff would know if Rep. Devin Nunes had checked onto White House grounds, Spicer wrapped up a long, nonresponsive media-crit digression by noting, “I think that that is interesting how no one seems to really cover the fact that a senior Obama administration with high-level clearances talked about the spreading of classified information for political purposes and no one seems to care.”

Whenever the corps does nail Spicer dead to rights, he has a fail-safe fallback: His words are ultimately meaningless. He’s an intermediary. He purports to represent the beliefs of a man whose first principles might flip upon viewing a Fox and Friends segment. Spicer can’t hope to capture the shifting, dispersing fog of Trump’s conceptual framework. At best, he can convey Trump’s id. And hope not to be contradicted later that evening by Trump’s tweets.

After Trump alleged that there were 3 to 5 million illegal votes cast in the general election and Spicer was confronted with the stark reality that there were not, he curled into a middle-man crouch: “The president does believe that,” Spicer said, distancing himself from Trump. “It’s a belief that he’s maintained for a while, a concern that he has about voter fraud.” A few weeks later, Jonathan Karl slyly countered this move by forcing Spicer to own Trump’s wiretapping accusations, asking if Spicer “personally believed” that Obama had tapped Trump Tower. Spicer again pulled the maneuver: “I get how that’s a cute question,” he said with a half-sneer, “but I’m not here to speak for myself. I’m here to speak for the president.”

Sometimes the intermediary acts more like a marionette. “You watch him get notes during the briefing,” says the person who worked for a past administration, referring to the Sharpie-scrawled slips that aides hand to Spicer at the lectern and that many theorize are coming straight from Trump, “and he reads them out loud immediately. We would never have done that! Read a statement from the podium that you’ve never seen before? No fucking way! You need to understand the limits of it, know exactly how to phrase it, sit down with the people involved. If you haven’t worked out the statement for yourself at some level, you’re just a mouthpiece, and that’s a bad place to be.”

The thing is, wanting to craft the statement in advance, wanting to take the time to pore over it and get it right would mean feeling it’s important for the White House to deliver some careful approximation of truth. What’s so disquieting about Sean Spicer is what’s so disquieting about President Trump: Neither cares about that.

* * *

The complete disregard for truth—even the purposeful dissolution of it—was plain to see on the now-infamous opening Saturday of the administration, when Spicer summoned reporters to the White House so he could treat them to an impromptu address about the inauguration crowd size. Nothing formal. And no questions allowed. Spicer just wanted to lie to their faces for six minutes.

“People around D.C. didn’t know who that was. Where was the old Spicer?” asks one White House reporter. “He was not dealing with reality. You’re thinking, What did I just witness? There’s the seal behind the podium. Is this real?”

It sure was, and it hasn’t let up. Trump keeps belching out obvious untruths (millions of illegal voters; Obama wiretapped Trump Tower), and Spicer then defends them even when faced with clear contrary evidence.

It’s infuriating. It’s tiresome. And it means the press corps is forced to treat Spicer like a fibbing toddler. They repeat the same questions over and over, in carefully tailored variations, so as to eliminate the possibility of childish semantic outs.

Here are some, but by no means all, of the follow-up questions reporters asked about Trump’s wiretapping claims during a single briefing session on March 6, the Monday after Trump’s batshit tweets.

Q: So explain this to me, then. You’re talking about not using anonymous sources. What is, then, the sourcing for the president’s tweet on Saturday morning?

Q: And does he believe it’s a FISA warrant. Is it some other—of surveillance?

Q: So he doesn’t know?

Q: But what sources?

Q: Sean, does he not know whether—what kind of surveillance it was?

Q: But when he published his tweet did he know what kind of surveillance?

Q: A clarification here. You’re talking about the president wanting to go to Congress, specifically on the wiretapping question, but this is information that is held by the executive branch. So why would the president, if it’s information the executive branch has—?

Q: I’m just wondering when you said that it’s pretty clear that there was some sort of intelligence or wiretaps and that that’s why we need to move forward with an investigation, is that based on people speaking on the record or anonymous sources?

Q: Thanks. Sean, doubling back to something we talked about earlier. President Trump accused President Obama of criminal conduct. One, can you tell us what his source was for that accusation? Two, can you tell us, unequivocally, that he was basing that on more than a talk radio report and a Breitbart article about that talk radio report?

Q: So maybe it was just based on the talk radio report?

Q: This morning, Kellyanne Conway went on Fox News and she said, “He’s the president of the United States. He has information and intelligence that the rest of us do not.” So that seemed to be referring not to these news reports you’re talking about but to specific, tangible evidence. So what can you tell us about what that evidence is, where it came from? And then secondly, if he has this evidence, why is he asking Congress to investigate?

Q: But I was saying, was there an on—you were being asked was there an on-the-record comment in advance of the president’s tweets to which he was basing his information? Did he have anything better than anonymous sources?

Evidenced here is precisely the sort of tenacious burrowing that my lefty friends so often claim is absent from the briefings. It’s the surgical prosecution they always plead for, dreaming of an “OH SHIT” moment. Yet the cumulative force of this interrogation did not move Sean Spicer to drop to his knees, clasp his hands, and beg Jim Acosta for forgiveness. And having watched nearly every briefing Spicer’s done—either live or on my laptop—I’m here to tell you it’s utter fantasy to imagine anything would.

* * *

“I think it’s good to occasionally poke the bear,” one correspondent tells me, when I ask him about confronting Spicer. “It might make Sean think about it driving home in his car when he’s alone. He’s not going to be the press secretary forever, but he’s going to have to live with what he’s said and how he’s behaved.”

But other correspondents find it less useful: “Sean has made a series of calculations that I don’t understand,” says one. “I guess existentially, you want someone not to be able to sleep at night if they’ve lied to you. But how he feels doesn’t affect how we do our jobs.”

So maybe ask yourself: What exactly do you want from the White House press corps?

Do you wish Major Garrett would rise to his feet and shriek, “Sean Spicer, you are a keg-shaped liar!”?

Perhaps you’d like Mara Liasson to clamber on her seat and yell, “Mr. Press Secretary, you’re a prole-gapping disgrace to the republic!”?

In other words, do you want conflict for conflict’s sake, producing heat but little light? Do you want the media to engage in a Trumpian manner, on Trump’s terms, granting you a dazzling show of resistance? That’d be entertaining, for sure. But I doubt it would provide what you’re really looking for, which is confession, self-flagellation, and remorse.

Instead, the press shows up each day to force the administration to present its case, which is often built on conspiracy theories and horseshit evasions. The reporters dutifully record the lies, as they always have, and keep pressing for the truth beneath, as they always have. That’s the simple value here. It’s the same old drudging, frustrating process, no more or less revealing than it’s been in the past—but more important now than ever. “We will continue to do our job and the truth will reveal itself,” promises one White House correspondent. “Lies collapse under their own weight. Liars eat themselves.”

At Spicer’s first officially scheduled briefing, Jonathan Karl (seated in that same front-row spot from which he’d once grilled Jay Carney) posed a sort of meta-query, in the wake of Spicer’s chilling opening gambit two days before. “Before I get to a policy question,” Karl began, “just a question about the nature of your job. Is it your intention to always tell the truth from that podium? And will you pledge never to knowingly say something that is not factual?”

Spicer at first claimed he’d be truthful. Then he danced around a bit. Eventually he turned the accusation back on the press. Karl got his answer.

“That Was My Play!”

Seth Stevenson — Fri, 17 Feb 2017 22:23:03 GMT

In a drafty arena on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, near the end of a full-pads training camp practice for an expansion, eight-on-eight indoor football team, I think I may have witnessed the future of sports.

It wasn’t a 470-pound tight end with a 9-foot vertical and a 3.2 40, or a genius new spread formation that aligns the center behind the tailback. It was just a few dudes with an app and a dream who, if all goes to plan, could fuse the gap between live sports, massive multiplayer videogames, and fantasy geek analytics. They are the minds behind the Salt Lake Screaming Eagles—the newest franchise in the 10-team Indoor Football League, where tickets start at $5 and players make $250 a game—and they’re embarking on the first steps of a seasonlong experiment in what is being termed “interactive football.”

A couple weeks ago, a few rows up in the near-deserted stands of the Maverik Center—a minor-league hockey rink where the Screaming Eagles will play their home games—I watched a dozen or so nonathletic folks in jeans and parkas thumb their iPhones and Android devices. They’d been waiting for a scrimmage at the close of practice to run a live beta test, and now showtime had arrived. “OK, pick your play!” shouted a man in a hoodie sitting in the hockey penalty box, glancing at a laptop screen. Using the play-calling function on the Screaming Eagles mobile app, this test group—comprising team owners, employees, and a few pals—scrolled through diagrammed play selections, not unlike the kind you’d see while playing a Madden NFL video game. Each voted for his or her favorite run or pass.

Meanwhile, down on the sideline, the Screaming Eagles’ burly, bearded head coach stared at a separate laptop, impatiently awaiting the results. Once the leading vote-getter locked in (in this maiden effort, the winning play was a simple curl route), the coach barked the call to his quarterback as the 25-second play clock ticked. The QB broke the huddle, sprinted to the line of scrimmage, and—having been issued marching orders by the people in the seats—completed a curl to a receiver who was tackled for a short gain.

Not much to look at, footballwise. The players still seemed wary. But shouts and cheers exploded from the stands, with phones raised triumphantly in the air. Then noses immediately returned to screens. No time to gloat—the coach and QB were antsy, peering upward, waiting for the fans’ next call as the play clock ticked down again.

It didn’t take long before the Screaming Eagles offense had driven the length of the field—in the IFL, it’s just 50 yards from end zone to end zone—and punched the ball in for a touchdown. “I voted for that play!” laughed a hefty guy in a baseball hat. “That was my play!”

“You called that? Great call!” shouted one of the Screaming Eagles players, pointing up into the seats.

Sohrob Farudi, the team’s majority owner, looked on with a wide, almost disbelieving grin. “This is exactly what we wanted,” he marveled. “The players thanking the fans for calling their number! This is just how we dreamt it.”

* * *

Farudi is a 39-year-old Los Angeles entrepreneur who, back in 2011, sold a company called Flipswap that he’d built around a real-time pricing engine for used mobile phones. Although he didn’t clear enough to fulfill his childhood dream of buying the Cowboys, in 2014 he did become a minority owner of the Arena Football League’s Las Vegas Outlaws. “That was the worst experience of my life,” he says now. His six-figure investment resulted in a still-ongoing lawsuit and a bitter public feud with co-investor Vince Neil—better known as the bleach-tressed lead vocalist of hair-metal rockers Mötley Crüe. The Outlaws went kaput after a single season.

Farudi vowed to try football ownership again, but this time he had a far bolder idea in mind. He longed to wed sports with mobile technology to somehow create a team that was completely interactive—run entirely by its fans. He found a few other folks entranced by the idea, formed an ownership group, and went hunting for a team to mess with. They settled on the IFL, which had been formed in 2008, because it let them start with a blank slate by buying the right to launch an expansion franchise. And so, in October 2015, Farudi’s group plunked down the $75,000 fee. And the wackadoo experimentation began.

When Farudi said he wanted the franchise to be run entirely by its fans, he meant that he wanted the franchise to be run entirely by its fans. He started by putting the new team’s geographic location up for a vote. Both Oklahoma City and Salt Lake were viable options, he’d determined, so he put up a poll on the team’s website. Once Salt Lake won, he asked the public to bestow a nickname on the team. About 36,000 votes came in, with “Screaming Eagles” beating out options like “Teamy McTeamface” and “Spaghetti Monsters.” Farudi says he was actually disappointed in the conservatism of the online hordes. He was rooting for a more offbeat choice to win because it would garner easy publicity, plus offer early proof that he’d respect the fans’ wishes no matter how unconventional.

Farudi’s a bit unconventional himself. His main business ventures currently include a wholesale marijuana edibles startup and an outfit that sells specialty cooking charcoal to restaurants. He’s young and clever, bored by the thought of running a regular old team, and absolutely tickled by the notion of introducing something wholly new to the world of sports. Guided by his thirst for novelty, he kept pushing forward, searching for more things that fans could vote on.

Screaming Eagles partisans chose the head coach, based on a selection of résumés and some interviews the team uploaded to YouTube. Fans chose a portion of the players on the roster, based on college stats and footage from training camp practices. For a small fee, Farudi let folks dial into a weekly conference call, giving input directly to the team’s president as “virtual general managers.”

But his driving vision has always been to let the fans call plays. Farudi didn’t want this to be a one-time gimmick, like voting on whether to receive or defer on the coin flip or letting a local celebrity call pass or run on the first snap after kickoff. He was determined to allow regular fans to choose every offensive play, in every possession, all game long. He’d also try to give them final say on any other in-game decision that could feasibly be put to a vote. Boot the next kickoff deep or attempt to onside it? Kick the extra point or go for two? Everything was fair game.

Farudi was convinced he could make it work, technologywise. Certainly the fans in the arena could watch the game live and make quick play selections on their phones, choosing between a few tailored options. In the training camp session I watched, spectators got 15 seconds to lock in their picks, which left 10 seconds on the play clock for the offense to get to the line and hike. Sure enough, after initial hiccups, the team fell into a rhythm and had little problem executing the beamed-in calls.

Streaming delays would prevent people watching a game online from voting in direct reaction to video footage. The fix for that was a quickie text readout within the mobile app—updating the current down-and-distance and time remaining—which would let fans vote without having to wait for the action to catch up on their live streams.

Until after the ball was snapped, only the Screaming Eagles coaches would be allowed to see the vote results. Otherwise an opponent’s defensive coordinator could simply look at his phone and know what play was coming. It’s true he could see which options were on the table for fans to vote on, but these would include enough variation to keep him guessing.

Perhaps the greater danger would be opposing fans hacking the process. What if they ganged up to click the Eagles into suboptimal play calls? What if they swamped the vote with demands to onside kick every time or go for a two-point conversion when a simple extra point would win the game? Farudi acknowledged there’d be no easy way to stop them. You can give the reins to the fans, but you can’t pick which fans take them.

* * *

The Eagles’ head coach, William McCarthy, won the gig with a 0.6 percentage point margin in the fan voting, mostly on the strength of a camera-ready, WWE-style personality that he unleashed in YouTube appearances. He’s a huge, bald, bearded guy, radiating toughness. Yet to watch McCarthy on the sideline is to observe a man who vacillates, moment to moment, between dictator and serf.

McCarthy’s coached for other IFL teams and various college squads, and when the team is on defense, he’s in his element. (Defensive play calls are not subject to the whims of Screaming Eagles rooters; there’s no time for fans to call defensive plays in reaction to the other team’s formation.) When his quarterback goes under center, though, he is suddenly, and very awkwardly, rendered powerless. He simply stares at a screen to see which play has been chosen, relays this info through his radio mic to the quarterback’s in-helmet earphone, and then prays that the wisdom of crowds applies to the gridiron.

The coach can tweak around the edges. For instance, were fans to call the same play three consecutive times, he might disguise it by varying the pre-snap motion of the receivers. In the final minute of the half or the game, he’s also permitted to seize control with a hurry-up offense that needn’t wait for fan input. And, before the game begins, McCarthy helps choose the fans’ menu of possible plays, in concert with the app designers and the team’s analytics chief (a former private equity analyst brought in by Farudi). Various down-and-distance situations each get buckets of plays, any of which McCarthy would theoretically be comfortable calling in that context. If he wants to make halftime adjustments after noting the other side’s weaknesses, he can ask the techies to ramp up how often fans will be offered the option of, say, a bubble screen

Still, compared with the tyrannical status enjoyed by most football head coaches, there’s a lot of passivity baked in to McCarthy’s role. And here one is tempted to muse on the risks of direct democracy and the perilous downsides of castrating expertise while empowering the unwashed masses. Because the single biggest impediment to a fan-run offense will almost certainly be the fans.

It’s a good bet that a fan collective will opt for a radically higher pass-run ratio than a professional football coach would. They’ll surely be more game to roll the dice on onside kicks and to go for two when the extra point would suffice. Sabotage by opposing fan bases could be entirely unnecessary—the Screaming Eagles fans might well sabotage themselves.

This could lead, in the end, to some interesting experiments in game theory, crowd psychology, and behavioral motivation. Suppose the team learns, through analysis of data from the first couple games, that fans are most likely to choose the play placed in the top right corner of the selection array? Would it start dropping the coach’s preferred choice in that precious on-screen real estate? If fans start voting for onside kicks all the time, the team could raise the threshold for a vote—requiring, say, 90 percent approval to attempt one. Should fans accept this? Would they rebel against these nudges? If they don’t, is the whole crux of the exercise diminished, ripping the power back out of the fans’ grip?

And what if you’re an opposing coach game planning for the Screaming Eagles? Will it be easy to analyze their tendencies, keeping spreadsheets of how fans have voted in given situations? Would you encourage your own fans to cross over and flood the ballot box?

This isn’t quite traditional sports, where coaches and athletes have autonomy. This isn’t e-sports, where gamers’ thumb dexterity determines their success inside a virtual world. This is, in essence, a melding of mind sports with live sports. From the app-wielding fan’s point of view, a Screaming Eagles football game is akin to a crowdsourced hand of poker or a committee playing one side of a chess match. The truth is, we’ve never really seen anything like this before, so we simply don’t know how it will turn out.

* * *

The Screaming Eagles’ ambitions shouldn’t obscure the reality that this is an arena-league football team, subject to the typical indignities that come with such an endeavor. The mascot wears an eagle costume copped secondhand for $2,500. The 66 yards of FieldTurf—$120,000 when bought by the now-defunct Richmond Raiders two years ago, then scooped up for $30,000 by Farudi when he needed to carpet the Maverik Center—is weirdly wrinkled in spots, bubbling up in an alarming manner. And then there’s the biggest buzzkill: For all your internet innovations, the fate of your franchise still depends on football players bashing into each other in meatspace.

This turned out to be the Screaming Eagles’ downfall on Thursday night, when they took the field for their first-ever game. Players danced onto the field to DMX’s “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem”—chosen by the fans, natch. The players had their Twitter handles sewn on the backs of their jerseys, instead of their names, because INTERACTIVE. There was a hype man who whipped the crowd into a frenzy. But once the whistle blew, things went south.

The Eagles’ initial offensive series ended with a fumble in their own end zone, recovered by the Nebraska Danger for a touchdown. I was watching the YouTube stream of the game, and the chat box got real snarky, real fast.

“That wasn’t the play I called,” typed one wag.

“I don’t remember ‘drop the ball in the end zone’ as a play option in the app,” replied another.

Facing fourth-and-15 from the Eagles’ own 1-yard line on the team’s next possession, fans voted to attempt a 57-yard field goal. Due to its low trajectory it was easily blocked and returned for a second Danger touchdown.

There were fun moments. When the Eagles scored their inaugural touchdown, spectators were invited to storm the field and participate in the post-TD celebration. Why not? They called the play. (The resulting penalty didn’t help the overall cause.)

The game ended with a score of Danger 78, Screaming Eagles + Screaming Eagles Fans 47 Like the game itself, the app experience was less than perfect. It was hard to feel directly engaged—particularly voting from a couple thousand miles away—when each play looked equally chaotic and equally likely to end in a failed quarterback scramble. That was less the fault of the fans than of the Eagles’ offensive line. Even so, voting for each play became a bit tiresome after a couple quarters. Seeing in-app updates that read, rather abruptly, “Your play won—interception,” did not ramp up my enthusiasm.

But this was one game in a long season. And it was the tentative debut for a wide-ranging new theory about how to manage a franchise. The app will improve. The Eagles’ pass protection might, too.

If all of Farudi’s ambitious plans come to fruition, it’s easy to imagine an array of new opportunities. Instead of the tiny, regional fan bases endemic to most second-tier athletic leagues, an interactive team might lure in sports geeks from across the country, or even around the globe. What stats-obsessed, all-22-film-watching pigskin head wouldn’t be intrigued to play offensive coordinator, analyze practice tapes, and pick which players will start and which will sit? In chat rooms, he might sway other fans to help test his theory about surprise onside kicks in the first quarter, by convincing them to vote en masse for a sneak attack right after the second offensive series.

And oh, the monetization possibilities. A fan could conceivably make in-app purchases that would inflate the value of his votes. Or he might shell out a hefty sum to call one play all by his lonesome. (For now, fans can earn Screaming Eagles “Fan IQ” points by answering trivia questions and reading news items about the team. Those with the most points will eventually be given various perks, and maybe have greater stature in the play-call voting.)

Farudi and his partners—their Santa Monica, California–based company is called Project Fanchise—have already bought another IFL team, the Colorado Crush, and are planning to make it into a second fan-run team before the season’s end. Farudi thinks he can convince every IFL team to go fan-run next year, transforming the acronym to mean Interactive Football League. He envisions it as a sports-tech playground, with sensors in the balls and cameras on the helmets.

Whatever happens with the Screaming Eagles, or the fan-dominated IFL Farudi pines for, I do think the future of sports lies in here somewhere. The early mistakes will be corrected. Someone will surely figure this out.

My bet is that this sort of interactivity will soon come to minor league baseball. The sport has lots of long breaks in the action that would make voting easy. It’s also rife with crucial yet relatively noncomplex decisions like whether to pull a pitcher or to pinch-hit for a batter. Wouldn’t you want to vote on something like that?

For now, we’ll just have to gawk at the Screaming Eagles and their noble mission. A team of the fans, by the fans, for the fans. There’s hope for democracy, yet.

The Best and Worst Super Bowl Ads

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 07:05:00 GMT

The lead-up to the Super Bowl normally brims with discussion of the ads teased in advance online. This year, that conversation got drowned out by a string of insane political events. The only spots that broke through the Trumpian din in the days before the game were those that tackled immigration as a theme: one from Budweiser, another from a building supply company called 84 Lumber. After kickoff, the ads hardly fared better. Many spots played it safe, with wan jokes that felt even lamer than usual. Several were pointedly diverse, or about diversity, but even these sentiments—though preferable to the in-your-face machismo that occasionally surfaces in Super Bowl ads—felt inadequate to the current political moment.

And once again, in what’s become a trend in recent years, the game outshined the commerce that enfolded it. The Patriots’ epic comeback meant that ad breaks played second fiddle to the action on the field. I confess I half-rooted against my own team at times this season—given that the owner, coach, and quarterback are buddy-buddy with our cretinous new president—but I’ve concluded I can love the art without loving the artist. Enjoying a masterful Pats win is akin to appreciating the works of Ezra Pound.

FIRST QUARTER

Google introduces Google Home, its new Amazon Echo rival, employing scenes of loving interracial and bilingual families. It’s amazing how an ad that would have seemed apolitical just a couple of years ago can suddenly feel like a fierce statement. Google’s Russian refugee co-founder, Sergey Brin, no doubt found it easy to sign off on the ad’s inclusive message.

The first Super Bowl ad from Michelin was filmed on location in South Africa, France, and China, depicting people driving home, lickety-split, to loved ones while avoiding fiery crashes thanks to their cars’ grippy Michelin tires. The Michelin Man (Bibendum to friends) is no longer a cartoon who interacts with real-world folks, as he used to in previous ads. Now he’s a ghostly presence who appears fleetingly in a windshield reflection or in the standing water that’s amassed in potholes.

Avocados From Mexico continues its goofy, entertaining run of big-game ads. This time, the concept involves a purple-robed, Illuminati-like group that tries but fails to protect the secret of avocados’ healthful benefits. The big laugh here: a ridiculous cameo from Jon Lovitz—putatively demonstrating the power of subliminal advertising—in which he appears for a split second as a giant head shouting, “Eat them!”

Skittles plays on that old trope in which a suitor tosses pebbles at a girl’s bedroom window. This time they’re Skittles, not pebbles, and instead of tapping on a pane, they lob straight into the maiden’s mouth—and then into her mom’s mouth, her dad’s, grandma’s, and eventually into the maw of some sort of random rodent. All of them emit vaguely sexual moans while enjoying the candy. The bizarre gag fell flat for me.

Busch runs its first Super Bowl ad in the brand’s six-decade history. A rugged outdoorsman yanks a sixer of Busch from the froth of a rushing river. (Busch has an official term for this proprietary maneuver: They call it, I kid you not, the “stream pull.”) He then opens a can, which makes a whooshing noise that sounds a bit like “Buschhhhhhh.” The plaid-clad man swears the beer has “the same great taste it’s always had—even the same sound.” Seems feeble to sell your beer on the basis of the sound it makes when you pop a can, given that we all recognize this sound as common to every canned, carbonated beverage on earth.

“This ain’t your daddy’s oil,” we’re told, as we look at a (bionic?) lady archer, a fashion model, and an astronaut. It’s a brazen attempt from the American Petroleum Institute to recast oil as the slick fuel of the future, instead of the carbon-spewing sludge of the past. Text runs across the screen, making proclamations like “oil gushes art,” “oil strikes a pose,” and “oil taps into potential.” I kept waiting for more honest statements like “oil starts wars” and “oil is gradually ruining the planet.”

SECOND QUARTER

Intel gives us scenes of Tom Brady at home, engaging in routine activities—spiced up by the company’s special video technology. Brady doesn’t have the acting chops of ubiquitous QB pitchman Peyton Manning, so Intel wisely mutes Tom Terrific until the ad’s kicker. Even then, Brady’s wooden line reading nearly sinks the whole endeavor.

Airbnb shows us a series of diverse human faces, as superimposed text delivers an inclusive message: “We believe no matter who you are, where you’re from, who you love, or who you worship, we all belong. The world is more beautiful the more you accept.” Good on them for making a statement with an ad that was a late addition, and—according to execs—an explicit rebuke of the Trump administration’s travel ban. A lot of tech companies will no doubt follow suit if reaction to the spot is positive. But it’s worth noting that Airbnb has been accused of some discriminatory behavior in its own right, with users screening potential renters based on race and other factors.

A funny swipe at bad reality TV introduces us to an online freemium game called World of Tanks—in which (I looked it up) players fight each other using various tanks. Who among us has not, on occasion, wished to obliterate reality TV, possibly via the crushing treads of an enormous tank? (As you chuckle at the parodic, fictional show “Teensy House Buyers,” be sure to remember that Geico did the same joke better 12 years ago—before the real-world tiny house movement even existed!)

A bespectacled Justin Bieber, dubbing himself a “celebration expert,” hawks the unlimited data plan from T-Mobile. The ad features a cameo from the Pats’ Rob Gronkowski—not participating in the Super Bowl due to recent back surgery. Gronk plays a semiverbal Neanderthal and, honestly, the role doesn’t seem to require much acting on his part. Bigger stretch for the Bieb to make those sober eyeglass frames look natural.

Honda employs impressive visual effects to bring a slew of celebrities’ yearbook portraits to life. Tina Fey, Robert Redford, Amy Adams, Viola Davis, and others pay homage to “the power of dreams.” The uncanny valley effect of these reanimated photos is a bit disturbing, and I’m not sure what any of this has to do with Honda—save that “the power of dreams” has been its long-running slogan. But this is a particularly appealing array of stars, and perhaps their collective belovedness will rub off on the brand.

Bai presents the night’s second ad from the “enhanced water” category (following a spot from PepsiCo’s new Lifewtr). It features Christopher Walken delivering a dramatic reading of *NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” as former ’Syncer Justin Timberlake looks on silently. This is one of many ads over the years that have relied entirely on Walken’s patented herky-jerky line delivery—just add, in this case, er, water. But Bai/bye is a nifty mnemonic, deftly associating the brand’s name with a memorable tune.

A trailer for Hulu’s new adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale imagines a dystopian future in which women have been totally stripped of their reproductive rights—aka summer 2017.

Febreze touts its odor-fighting spray as the perfect accessory for a smelly halftime bathroom break. Kathryn Hahn does excellent voice work here, but the ad’s finest moment is when it equates a steamship’s billowing smokestack clouds with the violent expulsion of a man’s flatus.

Michelob Ultra bought the first ad slot after kickoff last year, but the brand holds off until the second quarter this time around. Titled “Our Bar,” the spot uses the theme from Cheers to suggest that camaraderie can exist in gyms as well as in drinking taverns and that Michelob is the low-cal choice for fitness-driven suds guzzlers. But it’s an insult to Cheers’ memory: That show was about the wry commiseration of the downtrodden. This ad is about rah-rah, collective exultation.

Squarespace shows us famous actor John Malkovich battling with nonfamous fisherman John Malkovich over the rights to JohnMalkovich.com. It’s an odd sales pitch, in that Squarespace can help you build a web site but can’t actually aid you in wrestling a domain away from its current owner. I do, however, recommend checking out Malkovich’s menswear line if you’re into silk scarves, gabardine, and Mao collars.

HALFTIME

84 Lumber, a building supply retailer, runs a confusing ad that depicts what seem to be a Mexican mother and daughter attempting to illegally immigrate to the United States. The New York Times obtained some baffling quotes from the company’s owner (a Trump voter, by the way), who—I’m reading between the lines here—seemed to suggest she aired the ad as a means of recruiting cheap labor in the form of undocumented Mexican workers. The original version of this ad was rejected by Fox, apparently for being too political in nature, so 84 Lumber invited viewers to watch the full, unedited video on a website. Sadly, that webpage couldn’t handle the resulting traffic and was unloadable throughout halftime. This whole mishegas was, frankly, bewildering as a marketing strategy, yet one can’t deny that 84 Lumber garnered itself a heap of attention.

Expedia shows us a woman who expands her horizons with foreign travel. She witnesses soldiers guarding a border, and at one point embraces what appears to be a child refugee who’s making landfall in an inflatable boat. Another example of progressive sentiment from a tech brand. (Fun fact: There’s a close correlation between a state’s percentage of passport holders and whether it went for Trump or Clinton.)

The NFL promotes the league with a series of cute babies costumed as Super Bowl icons. Who can help but grin at the sight of a dour-faced Belichick baby in a cutoff hoodie, or a Michael Irvin baby sporting diamond earrings and a dapper ’stache? To be fair, though—for accuracy’s sake—shouldn’t we also have seen babies getting concussed, swallowing fistfuls of pediatric pain relievers, and punching girl babies?

THIRD QUARTER

Audi airs a 60-second ad in which a dad watches his daughter compete in a soapbox derby. Touting the company’s commitment to gender equality, the spot has the dad wondering whether his daughter will get equal pay for equal work. Another admirable message. And it’s nice to see brands feeling pressure to stay in the good graces of a gender-equity-favoring consumer universe. But I’d also note the spot suffers from a case of “as the father of a daughter”-itis.

The first Super Bowl spot for Procter & Gamble’s Mr. Clean includes a disquieting visual: Mr. Clean’s tight-denimed, gyrating ass. The ad’s twist is that Mr. Clean is in fact a regular husband doing housework—a husband who becomes suddenly attractive to his wife because he’s managed to, against all her expectations, perform some chores. “Clean enough?” the man asks his wife, looking at her with a dopey grin, proud of himself for deigning to do a little mopping. She rewards this behavior—which any adult should view as mere duty—by jumping his bones.

Budweiser runs a spot portraying its founder, Adolphus Busch, as a brave mid-1800s immigrant facing down discrimination from unenlightened Americans. The young German is greeted upon arrival at America’s shores with taunts like “You’re not wanted here!” and “Go back home!” Bud says the ad has been in the works since last spring. But immigration issues were a matter of campaign debate even back then—so kudos to the company for sticking with the spot despite the certain odds that it would kick up controversy. A relatively bold move for an old, massive, traditional brand. What’s remarkable is that this ad, too, would be completely uncontroversial in any other year, and yet in 2017 it’s reportedly sparking efforts to boycott Bud. (By the way, the ad apparently offers some alternative facts regarding Adolphus’ origin story.)

Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg continue to monetize their charming chemistry with an ad for T-Mobile, touting its unlimited data plan. It’s testament to the success of the marijuana legalization movement that, in a Super Bowl ad for a cellular carrier, Snoop is shown digging in his pockets for what we’re led to assume is his stash while Martha tosses out a series of casual weed puns. My favorite: “can ’o bisque.”

FOURTH QUARTER

Morgan Freeman shills for Turkish Airlines, and again some ad copy that might have washed right over me in prior years suddenly takes on poignant dimensions. “There are those of us,” intones Freeman, who are interested in “bridging worlds, finding delight in our differences.” Right on, Turkish Airlines. Your anodyne platitudes are, sadly, what we need right now.

Last year gave us the politically themed “Bud Light Party” ads starring Seth Rogen and Amy Schumer. The brand has stepped back from politics now, understandably. Instead, this year’s Bud Light spot shows us a spectral, floating bull terrier who encourages a young man to hang out with his friends more often. Why is this ghost dog here? It’s the 30^th anniversary of Spuds Mackenzie’s 1987 Super Bowl debut. Who is Spuds Mackenzie? That’s exactly what the millennial sitting next to me on the couch asked when this ad ended. Spuds was a thing, back then, for reasons I have a great deal of trouble explaining now. I also have trouble explaining why Bud Light would think the millennials its targeting with this ad would care about an ancient pop culture reference they’re far too young to remember.

Peter Fonda desecrates Easy Rider and the iconic, countercultural hero he portrayed in that film in an effort to sell Mercedes convertibles to nostalgic baby boomers. Fonda flashes a peace sign as he speeds away in his luxury car to the strains of “Born to Be Wild.” I guess it was 33 years ago now that Don Henley saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac, yet the perversion of 1960s ideals never quite loses its power to depress.

KFC introduces a new colonel. This time it’s Billy Zane. This is Zane’s best work since he appeared alongside Ron Perlman and Kimbo Slice in The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption.

And that’s it for this year. No doubt I dissed your favorite ad—or even failed to mention it. Let us know which spots you loved and loathed in the comments.

Stevie Wonder Is My Favorite Drummer

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 00:58:00 GMT

Every amateur drummer has a favorite drum idol. These musical crushes reveal which qualities the amateur prizes in a musician. Pyrotechnic virtuosity? Maybe you love Neil Peart. Clever atmospherics? Stewart Copeland. Understated, granite-solid steadiness? Charlie Watts.

People think I’m joking when I say my favorite drummer is Stevie Wonder. Some simply don’t think of him as a drummer at all and aren’t aware that’s Stevie on the skins for a host of his hits. (In fact, according to Mark Ribowsky’s Wonder biography, Stevie’s first paid gig was as a drummer. He was 8 years old and was paid 75 cents.) Others dismiss Wonder’s percussive talents as a footnote—mere trivia, given that we’re talking about the greatest songwriter alive.

But cue up Innervisions sometime. Focus on Stevie’s beats up and down the album—the driving thump of “Living for the City,” the rolling triplets of “Higher Ground.” It’s pretty much all him. Perhaps it should be no surprise that the ultimate musical natural (a child prodigy on multiple instruments) would be so at ease behind a kit. Yet I’m still amazed at how effortlessly Wonder places his personal stamp on his drum tracks. He sounds like no one else—no rock beast, no session pro. You can keep your Bernard Purdie grooves, your Steve Gadd flurries, your John Bonham thunder. I’ll take Stevie.

I’m far from alone. In 1974, Eric Clapton said, “Stevie Wonder has to be the greatest drummer of our time.” In 2013, Drum magazine wrote, “News flash for those who didn’t know: Stevie Wonder also happens to be one badass drummer.” One of Wonder’s producers claimed Wonder’s skill at drumming equaled his talent for piano and harmonica.

It’s his expressiveness that sets him apart. The pocket stays tight, but no two measures sound the same. Listen to the start of “Superstition,” from Talking Book—among the most recognizable drum intros of all time, built entirely on Wonder’s funky propulsion. The beat is somehow simultaneously rock-steady and ever-changing.

If there’s a single element that defines his sound, it’s his technique on the hi-hat—the two-piece, clamshell cymbal that can be hit while closed for a tight ticking sound or left wide open for a bigger splash. Wonder’s style has been described as a “slushy hi-hat.” It swings between closed and open and somewhere in between. Buffalo Tom guitarist and singer Bill Janovitz once wrote in particular awe of Wonder’s hi-hat work on the song “I Wish”: “Notice how on the doo-wop-influenced post-chorus breakdown, he opens and closes the hi-hat in a wholly unexpected and unorthodox way, creating a rhythmic hook under the actual melodic hook.” His playing verges on sloppy—sliding in and around the rhythm the same way his melismatic vocals slide around a pitch. But he creates more dance floor–worthy beats than any drum machine could hope to.

My favorite Wonder drum track comes on “Too High,” the first song on Innervisions. Subtle snare rolls, sudden tom-tom tumbles, jazzy ride-cymbal swings—they’re all scrumptious and all in the greater service of the song. This is not the approach of a hired drummer attempting to carve out his own terrain. It’s the work of a multi-instrumentalist composer who fits his vision for each part into an interlocking whole.

I could go on and on, but the first step is awareness. Now you know: On so very many of these perfect songs, it’s Stevie laying it down.

Oh, one last thing: He loves to take live solos. No Stevie concert is complete without Wonder making his way back to the kit, being helped onto the stool by his drummer, and cutting loose with one of the most joyous musical sights you’ll ever behold. Watch and listen to a genius at work.

Gilmore Girls’ Chris Eigeman on the Show’s Reunion

Stephen Metcalf — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 20:05:00 GMT

In the Slate Plus bonus segment of Wednesday’s edition of the Culture Gabfest, Gilmore Girls actor Chris Eigeman chats with hosts Stephen Metcalf, Seth Stevenson, and Julia Turner about the much-beloved show’s reunion on Netflix.

In the show’s fourth season, Chris originally played Jason, who was one of Lorelai’s paramours (and one of Luke’s rivals). What was it like for him to return for the revival of the series, and what was it like to get the entire key cast together again? What question is Stephen dying to ask Chris about the show?

Lastly—was the ending of the show satisfying? And what do the hosts think of the last four words?

*Correction, Nov. 30, 2016: A previous version of this page was mistakenly linked to an ad-free episode of the Culture Gabfest. The audio file has been updated.

How Trump Conned America

Seth Stevenson — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 13:09:00 GMT

I thought I’d gone out on the campaign trail to witness Donald Trump’s funeral. To delight in his comeuppance. To observe his passionate fans’ last moments in the sun, and to suss out where Trump’s true believers would turn in the throes of postelection despair.

Things didn’t turn out as planned. I’ll leave it to others to determine how Trump won. All I can report is what I saw from the most excited, energized chunk of his base. The adoring fans who stood in endless lines outside rallies, shuffling through the hot midday sunshine or the shivery nighttime cold. The red-hatted masses who packed drafty airport hangars and musty minor league hockey rinks—all because they hated me, and maybe you, too.

* * *

Monday, the last day of Trump’s 2016 campaign, began with a typical rally in Sarasota, Florida, in an arena thundering with chants of “Lock her up” and “CNN sucks.” I was huddled in the media pen with the traveling press, awaiting the moment Trump would point at us and incite his 5,000 minions to jeer. When the boos did rain down, they were as loud as I’d ever heard them—home stretch, final sprint, leaving-it-all-out-there boos. Trump pushed the same button again minutes later, and the boos were louder still. One lady leaned up against the pen’s barrier, flashing double-thumbs-down and a disquieting scowl.

When Trump arrived at the line in his stump speech about “the first 100 days of the Trump administration,” it was the press pack’s agreed-upon cue to gather up laptops and cameras and hustle onto the bus idling outside. We motorcaded through the streets with police lights twirling at every corner, slowed to a stop on the airport tarmac a few yards from the rolling staircase, scrambled aboard the charter 737, and roared aloft within moments.

So began a five-state, 15-hour, end-game dash. Raleigh, North Carolina. Scranton, Pennsylvania. Manchester, New Hampshire—where the entire Trump family took the stage amid laser lights and smoke. And then the last, postmidnight rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The identical routine each time: wheels down, motorcade to event, security herds us into the pen. Sit through boos from the crowd and ridicule from the stage. Security herds us out, back to the plane, wheels up, repeat.

By the third rally of the day, I’d begun to question why we were there. Yes, reporters were dutifully recording Trump’s outlandish promises, shameless untruths, and ignorant fuck-ups. (Unless they weren’t worth the ink amid the other, bigger fuck-ups. At one point on Monday, Trump referred to Haitians as Hispanics—a flub that I think went unreported but might have dogged Mitt Romney for half a news cycle.) Still, any Americans who hadn’t yet cared about this shit weren’t going to start now.

No, there was something else. An uncomfortable suspicion taking hold in me. I became convinced we weren’t at these rallies to observe. We were there to be observed.

Ever since the first Trump event I attended back in March, I’d wondered why his campaign was so intent on impounding us inside these press pens during his speeches. Was it to prevent us from speaking to rallygoers? If so, it was ineffective—you can chat with them all you want before or after the event or by beckoning them to the edge of the pen. Maybe it was meant to keep us from filming protesters up close? Again, didn’t work, as violent abuse of these dissenters was caught on camera again and again. The campaign itself has always claimed it was a security protocol, which made little sense, as everyone inside the venues has been swept by Secret Service—and if journalists can handle war zones, they can handle a little shoving.

Perhaps I’d been naïve, but it only now dawned on me, in the final week of the campaign, to my great horror, that the real reason they put us in the pen was so they could turn us into props. We were a vital element in Trump’s performance. He never once failed to invite his crowds to heckle us. He was placing us on display like captured animals.

And it worked. The press pack, collectively, looked nothing like the crowds at Trump events—particularly in more rural towns. We’d file into these places with our sleek luggage and our expensive tech gear and our better haircuts. We were far more diverse than the people in the stands. When the crowds lustily booed us, we’d sit there impassive and stone-faced, and this only further served to convince the rallygoers that we were snobby, superior pricks. The pen was an amazingly efficient means of othering us.

Behold, Trump said to his fans, I’ve rounded up a passel of those elites you detest. And I’ve caged them for you! Allow me to belittle them for your delight. Here, now you take a turn—go ahead, have at it! Do it again, don’t be shy! Under President Trump, the other elites will be in cages, too. We’ll lock them up, just like the chant goes. Just like you wanted. You’ll be their captors.

In retrospect, this was the core message of Trump’s campaign.

* * *

It’s so tempting to reduce Trump diehards to an angry composite. But each time I met individual rallygoers—I saw Trump speak in about 20 cities over the course of the campaign and would guess I’ve interviewed at least 200 people at his events—I’d be reminded that Trump’s core is in fact an angry tapestry. In Denver alone, I met a woman who’d gone to Caltech and had a Ph.D. in planetology; a man who was a director-level executive at a medical devices company; another fellow who was a V.P. of finance at a college. There were plenty of women, a fair amount of Latinos, and a handful of blacks. (The very first Trump supporter I interviewed, back in March, was a black woman who buttonholed me to say, “Donald Trump tells the truth.”)

There’s no denying racism is in the mix at Trump events. You’ll very rarely hear it explicitly stated (except maybe from the man on the stage), but you’ll hear a lot of coded language. The thing is, there has always been coded language coming from the right. In 2012, it was “lazy takers” mooching off “makers.” In 1988, it was Willie Horton coming for your family.* In 1980, it was the proverbial “welfare queen.”

The flood of Islamophobia this year, spurred by fear of terrorism, does feel new and is horrifying. (In Hershey, Pennsylvania, on Nov. 4, I spoke to a military vet who said, “We need to nuke the Muslims before they nuke us, or one morning we’re gonna wake up and New York and Tel Aviv are gonna be vaped.”) But from my own experience interviewing the hardcore Trump ride-or-die’ers at rallies, I just don’t think this was the driving emotion behind their entrancement.

Nor do I think it was all about NAFTA and TPP for the in-the-tank Trumpers. Not a single Trump supporter I spoke to, even at the Rust Belt rallies, brought up protectionism. They might say Trump will “bring our jobs back,” but they mean that in a general sense—they believe he’s a brilliant businessman with a nose for economic success. I honestly think Trump might have done just as well with these folks had he never mentioned NAFTA and simply promised, in his vague way, to get the economy humming again. His campaign was in no way about policy. It was the singer, not the song.

The one notion shared by every wildly enthusiastic Trumpist I met—both in my earlier stint covering his campaign and in this last week on the trail—was a firm conviction that Donald Trump is on their side in a war against elites. That he’d fight for them in their battle against the preppy eggheads who run the government, the financial system, and the media. I heard it over and over.

On Nov. 2 in Orlando: “He’s being honest about what’s going on behind the scenes. There’s so much corruption. I think even if he loses we have an awareness of that corruption now.”

On Nov. 3 in Jacksonville, Florida: “He’s not an insider politician. He’s gonna change stuff up. That’s what we need. No more insider deals in politics.”

On Nov. 4 in Hershey: “Donald Trump isn’t the establishment. I voted for Obama because he said he’d get rid of lobbyists, but he didn’t. Trump really is a people’s revolution.”

On Nov. 5 in Denver: “Fuck the federal government. Fuck them all. I have friends that are planning a tax revolt. I’ll move to the first state that secedes.”

A Rand survey in January, prior to the primaries—before Trump’s bandwagon had swelled with reluctant Republicans who’d preferred Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz—found that one criteria above all others predicted support for Trump (emphasis mine):

Among people likely to vote in the Republican primary, people are 86.5 percent more likely to prefer Donald Trump as the first-choice nominee relative to all the others if they “somewhat” or “strongly agree” that “ people like me don't have any say about what the government does.” Using statistical techniques, we can conclude that this increased preference for Trump is over and beyond any preferences based on respondent gender, age, race/ethnicity, employment status, educational attainment, household income, attitudes towards Muslims, attitudes towards illegal immigrants, or attitudes towards Hispanics.

The foundation of Trump’s movement is distrust of elites. It’s why Trump calls the system “rigged.” It’s why his closing pitch was “Drain the swamp.” It’s why he always makes sure to note that he was once “a great insider,” but now he’s “the ultimate outsider”—one who has no truck with the GOP establishment, one who talks like his supporters and not like a poll-tested bot. It helps explain why anti-Semites flocked to his movement, in the belief that Trump would bring down a sinister ruling class. It’s why, unable to trot out bankers from Goldman Sachs, he relied on the media to play villain. It’s also why Hillary Clinton was the perfect patsy to take an electoral fall. “Hillary says she’ll raise taxes on rich people,” said a 53-year-old woman in Hershey, “but I can’t see her doing that when the rich people are her friends.”

* * *

Trump wrapped the final rally of his campaign in Grand Rapids, in the wee hours of Election Day. And as we boarded our last charter flight, the mood in the press pack got loose and giddy. Champagne flowed as reporters tore down the tchotchkes they’d affixed to the airplane’s walls—their small effort to make this space they’d spent so much time in a bit more homey. Someone sledded down the aisle on a food tray as the plane’s nose elevated, speeding us away from the Rust Belt and back to glimmering New York. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d assumed—thanks to the egghead pollster elite—that Clinton had the presidency in the bag.

The plane landed in Newark around 3:30 a.m. As we loaded onto the charter bus to Manhattan, sleepy and tipsy, it was noted that Trump, to the very end, had never acceded to long-standing tradition by allowing the press pool on his own plane. There was also grousing about a minor but telling indignity: He hadn’t deigned, as every other candidate in memory had, to take an end-of-campaign group photo with his press pack.

I got back to my Brooklyn apartment around 5 in the morning. Hours later I saw all the same reporters at the Trump election night party, ashen-faced and tight-lipped. As we began to realize we weren’t done dealing with the least press-friendly candidate in history—that we’d be dealing with him for another four years, only now he’d be far more powerful—there were no angry throngs around to point and scream at us.

Instead, the luxe ballroom at the Midtown Hilton swelled with fancy people in suits and dresses. I talked to some bankers, and a lawyer, and a guy who ran golf courses for the Trump Organization. Their red “Make America Great Again” hats were jaunty, one-night-only accessories to their cocktail attire—not the deeply felt uniform of the folks at Trump’s rallies. Gazing around at the gilded scene, a feeling bubbled up within me. It was hatred of elites.

And as Trump took the stage to bask in his victory, I felt something else, too. Pity for the small-town Trumpists who thought they voted for one of their own but elected a man who mingles solely with rich assholes. Pity for the plutocrat-haters who’ve now ensured sweeping deregulation of financial institutions. Pity for the salt-of-the-earthers who are sick of Washington corruption yet elected a man who will surely preside over the most corrupt administration imaginable. Pity for all those excited rallygoers duped by a con man—an elite in sheep’s clothing.

Correction, Nov. 14, 2016: This piece originally misstated that the Republican Party used coded language about Willie Horton against Democrats in 1992. It was in 1988. (Return.)

Reporting From the Media Pen at the Edge of the Trump Victory Party

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 06:55:06 GMT

Election night at the Trump victory party in Manhattan’s Midtown Hilton was a tale of two rooms. In the main ballroom were the Trump VIPs in suits and cocktail dresses, growing looser and louder as the night went on. Down the hall in the media filing center, where rows of laptop-pecking journalists sat at long tables, the vibe was distinctly chillier. The first crack in the press corps’ collective, impassive façade came when Fox News (the only network playing on the dozens of televisions here) called Virginia for Hillary. I heard someone near me emit a quiet sigh of relief. Later, the mask dropped entirely: When some bad results came in from Wisconsin there was an audible “shit.”

The reporters at the edge of the ballroom floor, gazing at the party from its periphery, silently met each other’s tight-lipped, ashen-faced gazes. The reason we stood at the periphery was because we were not allowed to mingle with the Trump swells. I tried to wade in twice and was stopped and ejected both times by security. Press who wished to be near the action were sequestered in a pair of pens at the dark corners of the room.

I stopped a few Trump supporters who wandered into my vicinity. One of them, seeing my credential, asked me if Slate had predicted a Trump win. I hemmed and hawed. “I’d rather not talk to you,” he said. I asked him why. He just shook his head. Soon after, a Trump staffer walked by with a stack of red MAGA hats and tried to hand me one, though that press credential was large and visible. Perhaps they’ll be mandatory wear for those who wish to be White House correspondents?

I asked a few people if they thought the Republican Party would change under a President Trump. (The words President Trump caught in my mouth the first time I uttered them.) “A lot of Republicans who weren’t behind him are gonna have a lot of kissing up to do,” said a man who worked in the golf course division of the Trump Organization.

A trio of dudes in the hall outside had a different take. They were bankers in from out of town, and it turned out they were centrist Republicans who’d been Jeb Bush supporters in the primaries. They’d snuck in because they wanted to see the spectacle. “He’s crazy,” said one, leaning in close and speaking low. “It’s the end of days.”

Around 1 a.m., alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos took a strutting turn past the media tables, shouting things I couldn’t make out and throwing a piece of garbage in our general direction. A gaggle of reporters followed him out of the room, where he paused to give an impromptu press conference. “Donald Trump is ascending to the presidency as we speak,” he said, “on the back of your hurt feelings and ridiculous grievances. Social justice is over.”

It Will Never Be This Good Again

Josh Levin — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 21:49:16 GMT

This piece has been updated to reflect the Cubs' World Series win.

The Chicago Cubs are no longer massive losers. Early on Thursday morning, the Cubs earned their first World Series title since 1908, beating the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in 10 innings in a decisive Game 7. Fans of the Boston Red Sox got to know what winning felt like 12 years ago, when Pedro Martinez, David Ortiz, Dave Roberts, and friends took out the New York Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series and then the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. How does it feel for a downtrodden fan base to finally get the victory it’s been waiting for? On the eve of Game 7, Slate’s sports editor Josh Levin talked to Slate contributor, Massachusetts native, and Boston sports fan Seth Stevenson about that curse-breaking 2004 playoff run and whether he misses the high-stakes, high-anxiety days of pre-championship fandom. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What does it feel like in the immediate moments after your team wins the World Series?

With the Red Sox in 2004, it was as much about coming back from 3–0 to beat the Yankees as it was winning the World Series. What I remember is walking around the day after the Sox won the ALCS, with my Red Sox cap on and spotting other Red Sox caps, just nodding to each other and feeling full of goodwill and pride that whole next day.

The immediate feeling, it’s like an out-of-body experience, like you took a Vicodin and everything is wonderful and cinematic. A weight gets removed from you, this thing that you didn’t even realize was there on your shoulders. You feel weightless for a time—that will last for several days. It’s a sense that all is well with the universe.

How long did it take for that initial feeling to wear off? I imagine you’re thinking about it all the next day, and it’s all you’re thinking about. And then one day you realize you’re not thinking about it anymore.

Yeah, it probably took like four days. But even then it was still a significant part of my thinking. Through at least Christmas, I would think about it a lot, and it would feel so good. I went to the ring ceremony in Fenway on Opening Day the next year to write a dispatch for Slate. By then, that initial thrill had faded. It was a formal marking of, Yes, we did this, but that pure euphoria had faded.

What was it like watching the Red Sox, defending World Series champions, during that 2005 season?

In 2005, they made the playoffs and got crushed by the White Sox. It was pretty much the same team, and I remember thinking, What happened? The 2004 team seemed willed by the hand of God, and then the 2005 team just loses unceremoniously in the first round. It made it feel more like happenstance and less like destiny, but maybe it was destiny that was required to reverse the curse. I don’t really believe in fate, but the thought crossed my mind.

When they lost in 2005 and in the years after, did you feel content because the Red Sox had already won a championship?

Oh, for sure. The fact that they lost the next year, it really didn’t bother me that much. It was surprising because it really was the same team—it seemed like they would probably do it again, and then they just didn’t. It was maybe a little disappointing that they didn’t cement themselves as an all-time great franchise, but it didn’t hurt that much.

To compare that to the pain of 2003—when Aaron Boone hit that home run, that is by far, without any competition, the worst sports moment in my entire life. The morning after that happened, I remember thinking, Why do I watch baseball? Why do I spend months following the ups and downs of a team and knowing every last person on its roster and having strong feelings about middle relievers if it’s just going to build me up and create this intense pain and shame and a hollowness in my heart? I remember feeling very strongly the next day—maybe for a good three days after that loss—that I was going to stop watching baseball.

Losing to the White Sox in 2005 was nothing like that. I really couldn’t get too upset about it.

Do you feel like the massive accumulation of pain over the years was worth it in the end?

Yes, it was absolutely worth it. The way they lost to the Yankees in 2003 made it that much sweeter, and so powerful and so cathartic. If they’d done it without the loss from the year before, I would have been able to summon the pain of 1986 when I was in sixth grade. But it was so fresh in everyone’s mind, and it had been the worst way to lose. Looking back, I wouldn’t have wanted it to happen any differently.

When they won the World Series again in 2007, did you feel like there were diminishing returns?

Hugely diminishing. It was still really fun and really nice that they won, but it was not the same at all. They’d already broken the curse. They’d already avenged the horrible Yankees. It was just—it was really nice. I felt like a regular baseball fan again.

What has it been like to root for a team that—though it hasn’t won every year—is perennially a contender and successful?

It’s fun to be a Red Sox fan because they make the playoffs a lot. It’s a lot less fun when your team is mediocre or really has no prayer of making the playoffs. What’s fun about being a fan is watching your team in big games.

I wouldn’t really want to go back to how it was before 2004, although I do miss it sometimes. Watching the pre-2004 Red Sox was a completely different kind of fandom. It was like opera. It was life or death for me. I somehow felt like I couldn’t be a full person or a restful person until they won the World Series. After 2004, it was not that life-or-death feeling. It was not entwined with who I am as a person. It was just like watching baseball. I miss that passion, I miss that life-or-death, that whole-body feeling I used to have watching baseball. But it was kind of a relief to be honest, to just watch my team like a fan of any other team, to just be happy when they won and disappointed when they lost.

An Intriguing, Totally Not Recommended Method for Clearing Your Earwax

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 19:46:00 GMT

Every six months or so, I unfold a paperclip, slide one looped end into my ear canal, and scoop out a soft-serve, fragrant, orange-brown globule of wax.

(I’ve placed a paragraph break here as I presume you’ll take a few moments to visualize this, ponder it, and then vomit in a nearby sink or potted plant.)

My excessive earwax production is the third most repulsive thing about my body. The nail bed on my right big toe is so freakish that I will refrain from further mentioning it. The skin flap extruding beneath my left armpit is like another being that lives with me symbiotically.

But my earwax debilitates my everyday existence in a manner that these other grotesqueries do not. Allowed to mushroom unchecked, my wax achieves a hefty mass, eventually solidifying into a sort of goopy ear pudding that blocks my canals and deadens my hearing. It squishes around within its lair in a most disconcerting way whenever I move my jaw. It occasionally doles out a little bead of itself, like the tar plops in the famous University of Queensland pitch drop experiment, tumbling from the porch of my ear upon whatever unlucky surface lies below.

I don’t know why I manufacture so much earwax. Perhaps you will blame my lifestyle or diet. Sure, maybe. I tend to think it’s just genetic. We’re out there, we earwax machines. I’ve met us. We are an embarrassed, ashamed, semi-deaf clan.

In most people, earwax regulates itself, flaking out naturally. But for those of us with earwax overdrive, the natural process can’t keep up. Once the earwax pools into a substantial piece of matter, it’s not going anywhere without a shove.

My troubles started when I was a teen. For the first time, I found that wax had completely blocked my ear canal and made it difficult to hear. I visited a doctor. He used a giant water syringe to blast the wax out—like a firehose dislodging gunk from the bottom of a wastebasket. For a few days, I exulted in auditory glee. I think my brain had been compensating for the deadened hearing and now it felt as though I was listening to the world anew, every detail of sound magnified and heightened.

It didn’t last. Just a few months later, the wax was winning again. I went back to the doctor. He performed the same routine. And then again, a few months later. It became clear I would spend my whole life making annoying, tri-annual visits to an ENT. Unless, of course, I could find my own remedy.

Everything I read said Q-Tips were terrible—they just push the wax farther in, and compact it. Everybody halfway reputable agrees that ear candling is a quack cure, more likely to coat your ear canals in parrafin, or burn a hole in them, then it is to solve your wax problem. I did try those Debrox drops that promise to soften your wax so it drips out more easily. These drops had zero effect on my mass of orange ore.

I can’t recall any more if I spotted the technique somewhere on the internet. Or if a fellow wax sufferer suggested it. Or if I simply devised the method myself. But at some point I tried the paperclip.

First, I unbent it so it had two curved ends. Then, gripping one of those ends, I carefully used the other to explore the deepest recesses of my ear. When I (also very carefully) withdrew the clip, there was a jiggling mass of wax clinging to the metal. And, rejoice, my ear was suddenly unblocked and my hearing unimpeded.

I have done this same thing every few months since then, whenever my wax builds to an intolerable thickness. I perform the ritual in privacy, for I am certain that witnessing it would prevent most ordinary people from continuing to associate with me. I should note that the process includes a disquieting interlude in which I wipe the wax off the end of paperclip with a tissue, so that I may reinsert the clip into my ear for a second pass to excavate all remaining sludge.

Any licensed Ear/Nose/Throat doctor will tell you it is foolish to stick things in your ear. Okay, if you insist, here’s a quote from one: “When I read about you putting a paperclip in your ear,” says Dr. Steven Alexander in an email reply to an inquiry about my method, “I visibly winced and thought, ‘Please don't do that.’ The skin of the ear canal is delicate. Even rubbing it with a Q-tip is enough to cause micro-abrasions (and not-so-micro-abrasions, a.k.a. lacerations) that can subsequently become infected. And ear canal infections are often grown-adult-in-tears PAINFUL. Which is the main risk of trying to clean your own ears with various implements.”

Stipulated. It’s pretty dumb to do what I do. But I’ve been doing it for more than a decade now and have never had an ear infection. My much larger worry is that I might do physical damage to my eardrum or something, but Dr. Alexander says this is less common: “Sure, you can also damage your eardrum or (extremely rarely, your ear bones), but that's not really the problem we see from people cleaning their own ears.”

In fact, Dr. Alexander seems to concede that my method isn’t totally insane: “What you're doing is actually probably more effective than Q-tips because you're emulating a common instrument ENTs use—a looped curette, which gets behind the wax and pulls it forward. You have the potential to slip the curve of the paperclip through and behind some of the wax, and when you pull forward you may get lucky and create a small hole that you're able to hear through. The risk of infection, though, is still there, and you're leaving most of the wax in place and potentially packing some of it in harder such that when someone does eventually need to remove it for you, it's unpleasant for both of you.”

Again, stipulated. I’m an idiot. But I’ve gotten “lucky,” in terms of removing wax and restoring my hearing and not doing any damage, every single time for ten years running. I’ve stopped needing to visit a doctor all the time. Paperclips are cheap. My process takes just a couple of minutes every few months.

I do not recommend this solution to you. Of course I don’t! That would open up Slate to an avalanche of lawsuits from readers with blood streaming down the sides of their heads! No thanks!

But I wanted to unburden myself. I needed to tell someone that I do this. It was important for to me to assert, with conviction loud enough to be heard by even my wax-beset brethren: I stick a paperclip in my ear sometimes and then I pull it out covered in earwax. I may not be normal, but at least I can hear your cries of disgust.

Read more from Normal, Slate's pop-up blog about how you're supposed to do it.

“Plugging My Nose and Voting for Trump”

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 17:41:15 GMT

In March, I spoke to 13 Republican voters who weren’t fond of Donald Trump. In May, I spoke to them again. Now that we’ve reached the home stretch, I thought I’d check in one last time to see how these folks are feeling one week out, and if anything has changed.

This was never a scientific undertaking—my sample size is tiny, found through my own social and professional networks. I just wanted a glimpse of the thought processes of longtime Republicans who were uncomfortable with Trump as their party’s nominee. For this final edition, I invited my focus group to reveal who they’ll vote for, and to tell me their best-case and worst-case scenarios coming out of this election.

In terms of movement to or from the two major party candidates, Trump was the clear winner over this survey’s timeframe. Two people have gone from being probable Hillary Clinton voters to casting their votes for Gary Johnson. And two have gone from not voting, or writing in a different candidate, to becoming firm Trump votes.

Here are my panel’s replies (their answers have been edited and condensed):

Who: retired attorney, female, 52, California
Voting background: has always voted GOP in presidential elections but abstained in 2008
What she said she’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: probably not vote, possibly vote for Hillary
What she said in May: vote for Gary Johnson or not vote at all
What she says now: she’s voting for Gary Johnson

I am going to vote Johnson. Since I vote in California it doesn’t really make a difference. Best- case scenario: Clinton gets a resounding win in both the Electoral College and the popular vote. Worst-case scenario: The popular vote goes Trump, the Electoral College goes to Clinton, and Trump encourages violent protests. I think that is worse than Trump winning because things could get quite ugly at a time when we’ll need a new president to really tend to the office after all this silliness.

* * *

Who: stay-at-home parent, female, 31, Massachusetts
Voting background: has voted GOP in every previous presidential election
What she said she’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: vote for Hillary
What she said in May: vote for Hillary
What she says now: she’s probably voting for Hillary

I am so undecided. As a survivor of a sexual assault, Trump disgusts me to no end with his remarks and, undoubtedly, his actions. However, Hillary’s view on abortion is the main reason I am struggling so much with this election. She doesn’t seem just pro-choice, but almost pro-abortion. I have had three miscarriages that have only strengthened my view that life begins at conception. So these very different traumatic events in my life are now haunting me with both candidates.

The best-case scenario would be for Trump to win and for him to say, “Hey, this was fun, I’m gonna step down now and Mike Pence will be president.” The worst-case scenario would be for Trump to win and have the rest of the world first laugh at us, and then set Trump off, and then we end up with World War III. He’s not rational and not fit to lead.

I guess I am voting for Hillary because the murder and death she causes will be less likely to affect my child, while I truly am worried about increased terrorist attacks with Trump and his immature, smug inexperience.

* * *

Who: business owner and CEO, male, 44, Washington, D.C.
Voting background: has always voted GOP in presidential elections, save for a Libertarian vote in 2004
What he said he’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: pray
What he said in May: not vote
What he says now: he won’t vote or he’ll write in Mitt Romney

These candidates remain badly damaged human beings and neither are worthy of my vote. Since I live in Washington, D.C., I have the luxury of not mattering, so I’ll likely stay home. If I do go to vote, it will be because the race for our local ANC commissioner is close, in which case I’ll write in Mitt Romney for president.

Best-case scenario? Not sure there is one. Maybe Evan McMullin winning in Utah would be encouraging, in that at least one of our 50 states rejected this awful choice. A complete purging of the RNC leadership and the Trump enablers would also be a good outcome.

Worst-case scenario? They all seem to be worst cases. I hope Trump loses by a wide enough margin that it makes clear just how big a loser he is and damages his influence going forward. But that might mean Hillary would feel emboldened to double down on the crap that drives us all nuts—the inability to admit fault, and the tendency to insult our intelligence with the spin, distortion, and downright dishonesty. If she wins narrowly, she might be slightly chastised, but then the Trump idiots will carry on for four years about a rigged election and other nonsense.

* * *

Who: retired attorney, male, 74, California
Voting background: has voted GOP since Barry Goldwater, with one break for Ross Perot in 1992
What he said he’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: vote for Trump
What he said in May: vote for Trump
What he says now: he’s voting for Trump

I am sick about all of my choices and about our governance going forward. My biggest concern is the Supreme Court and I still don’t trust HRC with that. It is that simple, and that painful, considering Trump’s behavior. The list of judges he says he would nominate is solid. I have done some fairly serious research on them, and I am fine with the vast majority.

None of that means I would be happy with Trump. My hope would be that he’d develop a team of advisers and be guided by them. But I have very little argument to show any certainty in that hope.

* * *

Who: civil litigation attorney, male, 45, California
Voting background: has always voted GOP in previous presidential elections
What he said he’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: probably vote for Trump
What he said in May: 80–90 percent sure he can’t vote for Trump under any circumstances
What he says now: he’s voting for Gary Johnson

My final decision is to vote for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson. In retrospect, Trump could have won me over had he at any point in the campaign started concentrating on issues and otherwise not acting like a complete jerk. But Trump has to be Trump. And I’m not buying what he is selling. I find that he lacks the character, ethics, judgment, and temperament to be president and, even more important, is likely to take the Republican Party and the country in a policy direction with which I disagree.

* * *

Who: stay-at-home parent, female, 38, Virginia
Voting background: has voted GOP in every presidential election
What she said she’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: write in a different candidate
What she said in May: write in someone or leave her ballot blank
What she says now: she’s voting for Trump

I can’t believe I’m saying this but, as of now, I will be voting for Trump. I still find him to be a boorish pig. But as time has passed since the primaries, Hillary’s corrupt actions that amount to criminal behavior—and the media’s obvious (and now undeniable) collusion in covering them up—have moved me from not voting if he is the candidate to doing what I can to prevent her from getting elected. That includes plugging my nose and voting for Trump.

It is clear that Trump will have many checks on his actions as president—from his fellow Republicans, the Democrats, and most of all the media. But Hillary not only thinks she’s above the law, she’s proven she pretty much is. Her staff, as well as the media, will go to great lengths to cover up her actions. She is a much greater risk to our civil liberties than he is. I may not fully trust he will execute a conservative agenda, but I know without a doubt she will carry out her extreme liberal agenda. I have no choice but to hope and pray he will come through and protect the things I hold most dear, because I know she will destroy them.

* * *

Who: retired executive, male, 75, New Jersey
Voting background: has always voted GOP in previous presidential elections
What he said he’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: vote for Hillary
What he said in May: vote for Hillary
What he says now: he’s voting for Hillary

My resolution to cast my first ever non-Republican presidential vote remains solid. Driven by growing disgust for Trump’s candidacy (what he says, what he doesn’t say, and what he stands for) during the time since last we spoke, I am ready for Nov. 8 and will live with any discomfort I might have with the Democratic candidate. The lack of guts on the part of Republican leaders to repudiate Trump from the start of the primary to now has left the party in ragged shape and confirms my belief that drastic change is needed.

So, the best-case scenario for me is a stunning Democratic victory from the presidential level on down the ballot. From this disaster, the Republican Party just might realize that the country has changed–demographically and philosophically–and start to restructure from within so that candidates that I can vote for are presented.

I have two worst-case scenarios:

Trump gets elected and we have to deal with the domestic and international fallout for four years.
Hillary gets elected and the Republicans remain obstructive of any of her initiatives that might be helpful to our country, its people, and its economic growth, and little gets done.

* * *

Who: tech worker, male, 39, Ohio
Voting background: has voted GOP in every previous presidential election
What he said he’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: not vote
What he said in May: maybe vote Libertarian
What he says now: he’s voting for Trump

During the third debate, Hillary Clinton brazenly extolled what the Democrats have long denied: that they appoint justices to impose extra-legislative policy when the pesky Constitution gets in the way of their agenda. WikiLeaks has confirmed again and again not only how corrupt Hillary is, but that her corruption has metastasized to the entire Democrat Party.

I was going to vote Johnson, but the Democrat agenda must be stopped at all costs. It will be close in Ohio and so I now must vote for Trump—a man whom I genuinely despise. And then I will cry myself to sleep, weeping for my country. I will not watch the returns, go on social media for a week, or ever confess to anyone for whom I voted.

Best-case: Trump wins. The GOP keeps the House and Senate. Trump resigns right after and Pence takes the oath. (Trump doesn’t want to be POTUS anyway.) Worst-case: Hillary wins and Dems take Congress. We kiss inalienable rights, the rule of law, and the republic itself goodbye. The Great American Experiment will be over.

* * *

Who: attorney, male, 33, Illinois
Voting background: has voted GOP in every previous presidential election
What he said he’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: vote for Hillary
What he said in May: vote for Hillary
What he says now: he’s voting for Johnson—unless it’s close, in which case Hillary

Nothing has really changed. Unless the race tightens a bit, I’ll vote for Gary Johnson in hopes the Libertarians get federal election funding (I get the irony), but I’m definitely pulling for Hillary. If the popular vote tightens, I’ll vote for Hillary.

My worst-case scenario is that Trump wins. My next worst-case would be Democratic control of the House and Senate. I’m ambivalent about the Senate. I want my anti-Trump senator (Mark Kirk) to win, but I want the GOP to pay for nominating Trump, but I would also like to moderate President Clinton. So I guess I’d say my best-case scenario is that the GOP retains the House and Senate.

* * *

Who: federal HR employee, female, 40, Kentucky
Voting background: has voted GOP in every previous presidential election
What she said she’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: vote for Hillary
What she said in May: even more likely to vote for Hillary
What she says now: she’s definitely voting for Hillary

Since last time, the election has become much more personal for me. Like many women, I have personal experience with gropers. I moved halfway across the country to take a new job and get away from a boss who started casually putting his hand on my bottom whenever he walked past. The last straw was when he exposed himself to one of our paralegals. When she reported him, she got fired and branded “an attention-seeking liar.”

That is a long way of saying that the choice for me has become more emotional than practical. I don’t think that Trump views women as equal human beings. Therefore, any claims he makes concerning my welfare are suspect as soon as they leave his mouth.

I will be voting in person on the 8th (Kentucky doesn’t have early voting) and dragging my husband along. He has been threatened with months on the couch if he fails to make the right choice. Our votes are kind of symbolic, however, as Trump has had Kentucky locked up since they typed “Republican” after his name. Best case for me: Hillary in a dominant win, Senate slightly Republican. Worst case: Trump wins. I can’t even begin to wrap my brain around all of the horrible implications.

Nonpolitically speaking, it will be nice to have a relationship with my friends and family again. I haven’t spoken to my mother since we had a shouty telephone call about how gross it is that evangelicals are still supporting Trump.

* * *

Who: attorney, female, 39, Virginia
Voting background: has always voted GOP in presidential elections, save for a Libertarian vote in 2000
What she said she’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: not vote
What she said in May: might vote for Sen. Ben Sasse or might not vote
What she says now: she’s voting for Evan McMullin

I officially resigned my membership in the county Republican committee a month ago. I could no longer affiliate with people who embrace the label “deplorable” as something funny, and don’t consider the rampant racism and sexism of Trump’s supporters something, well, deplorable. I’m voting for Evan McMullin, who is on the ballot in Virginia. Best-case scenario is that Hillary wins but that third-party and write-in votes also make a strong showing, giving momentum to political change. Worst-case scenario is that Trump wins.

* * *

Who: financial adviser, male, 30, Florida
Voting background: has voted GOP in every previous presidential election
What he said he’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: vote for Hillary
What he said in May: vote for Hillary
What he says now: he’s voting for Hillary

If anything, it’s gotten worse. I suspected it might, but bragging about sexual assault was a nice touch.

The debates were humiliating for the country. I really enjoyed the talking heads saying Trump’s best moments came when he was taking on free trade. You would think the entire Republican Party is made up of steelworkers and coal miners. The only thing these two candidates agree on (publicly) is that free trade is bad. That’s pretty scary to me.

The conventions were both awful. I found Trump’s speech to be stunning. You would think we were living in hell. His negativity is inaccurate and isn’t helping anyone who is struggling.

Clinton basically trotted out the socialist manifesto. But the released WikiLeaks transcripts of her paid speeches were very comforting to me. I also enjoyed her explaining the Bernie voters—spot on. I would have voted for her anyway, but that helped.

* * *

Who: consultant, male, 63, Florida
Voting background: has always voted GOP in previous presidential elections
What he said he’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: probably vote for Trump … or wait, change that, Hillary
What he said in May: still on the fence
What he says now: he’s still on the fence

My indecision remains. Following the debates, I was trending toward an anyone-but-Trump position. But the process has continued to degrade both candidates. The case against either of them (while different) is extensive and obvious. Our state ballot is very lengthy this year with amendments to the state constitution, judges, charter changes, as well as congressional races. I have researched every issue/candidate and made informed decisions on my mail-in ballot. With one exception: president. The ballot sits on my desk awaiting my vote. I will wait until the last moment to avail myself of any additional information. I will not rule out a write-in.

The best-case scenario, if Hillary wins as projected, is to hold the majority in the House and Senate and hope that she can work with leadership to address issues in a more compromising, less partisan manner, and not abuse the power of the executive branch to dictate policy and regulation. Anything is possible?

America, There Is a Better Way to Vote

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 09:53:00 GMT

When the networks call it for Hillary Clinton on election evening I’ll bask in relief for six seconds or so. Then I’ll shift to raw anger: How could a major party grant a guy like Donald Trump a puncher’s chance at the presidency? This fiasco of an outcome—landing Trump one step from the White House—might have been avoided with a simple change to the GOP’s nomination process. Don’t blame Trump’s ascent on economic anxiety, or racism, or the media. Blame it on the way we hold elections.

Though he was beloved by a certain swath of voters, the fact is Trump left most Republicans cold. He won a smaller percentage of GOP primary votes than any of the party’s three previous champions. He holds the record as the GOP nominee with the most votes cast against him. Trump succeeded, especially early on, by commanding small pluralities within a very large field. There was a desperate thirst for a more traditional nominee, but the “establishment lane” candidates ate into each other’s support, divvying up the pool of votes from the sane folks who were disgusted by Trump.

Realizing this, some attempted to game the system and rally around a not-Trump candidate. Recall, for instance, Mitt Romney’s Super Tuesday directive urging Ohioans to vote for John Kasich and Floridians to vote for Marco Rubio, thereby keeping those states out of Trump’s hands. These trick-shot hijinks failed, in part because voters were loath to cast their precious votes for a candidate who wasn’t their actual top choice. In this context, Trump’s victory over a squabbling field of blander opponents can be viewed less as an indictment of GOP voters and more as an indictment of our stupid voting system.

Consider: Why were those primary voters forced to choose only one candidate from the overflowing platter of 16 or so GOP hopefuls? Why not make it a buffet? A ballot that insists you choose just one option doesn’t let you convey much information about your feelings and intentions. Your vote for Ted Cruz in the New Hampshire primary might have meant that you adored Ted Cruz; or it might have meant you could barely stand Cruz but you thought he was the guy with the best chance to derail the horrifying Trump Train. Similarly, your vote for Ralph Nader in the 2000 general election might have meant you thought Ralph Nader could legit win the White House; or it might have meant you were super jazzed to send a message about your progressive ideals, but, of course, when it got down to it you knew Al Gore would be a better president than George W. Bush and whoops, your bad, so sorry for the Iraq war. Given the wide range of things a vote can mean, shouldn’t we find a better way to let people signal what they actually intend on their ballots?

In his excellent 2008 book Gaming the Vote, author William Poundstone explored the problems with our current voting system. “The plurality vote we use in America is mathematically the absolute worst way to vote,” Poundstone told me by phone when I spoke to him recently. Why? For one thing, Poundstone estimates that roughly 1 in 10 of our presidential elections has been swung by a “spoiler” candidate who alters the outcome. The example that lingers in recent memory is that 2000 campaign, in which Nader siphoned votes from Gore and very likely threw the election to Bush. But it’s happened many times before—in 1848, 1884, and 1912, to name a few. Allowing the second-most-popular candidate to win a three-way race is a “catastrophic error,” in Poundstone’s view. And it could easily be prevented by switching to a different voting system.

Let’s say we switched from plurality voting to “approval voting”—in which you check the box next to every candidate you approve of (or, if your glass is half empty, every candidate you can tolerate). A left-leaning general election voter in 2000 might have checked both Nader and Gore, and left Bush’s box blank. This would express approval of Nader’s agenda, and help lift his party’s profile in the final tally, but would still help Gore (the far more electable candidate) win his battle with Bush.

Approval voting is particularly useful when a large field of candidates includes some “clones.” Clone candidates—competitors who aren’t sharply differentiated—often split votes and harm each other, even though they seek to advance similar viewpoints. Let’s imagine the GOP had used approval voting: Instead of agonizing over whether Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, or John Kasich was the best mainstream candidate to foil Trump and push the establishment agenda, a GOP voter could have checked the boxes next to all three. No need to game the system, coordinate a strategy with other citizens, or refrain from voting for the candidate you actually favor. And it just so happens that consolidating those three candidates’ votes would have beat Trump in each of the first three GOP contests.

It’s impossible to know for sure how things might have unfolded under a different system. For instance, some Ben Carson voters might have also checked Trump. Then again, some Cruz voters might have also checked Rubio. What we can be certain of is that we’d have avoided the vote-splitting problem, and that we’d have gotten a clearer picture of primary voters’ intentions. (In case you’re wondering, approving every candidate on the ballot is the same as not voting at all. But checking every one of the other 15 candidates while not checking Trump would still make a difference to the relative count.)

This year’s general election might also have offered a chance for approval voting to shine. Do you wish the Libertarian Party had a bigger voice in our politics, but are you afraid your vote for Gary Johnson would help elect Trump? Vote for Johnson and Clinton, problem solved. Are you a millennial who sweats Jill Stein because you’re hella woke but don’t want your parents to blame you for a potential Trumpocalypse? Bro, just vote for Stein and Hillary. For those who feel stifled by our manichaean two-party system, approval voting is an ideal change—almost certainly catalyzing more third party activity and attention, as you’re no longer “throwing away your vote” by throwing a bone to a quixotic choice.

This wouldn’t be a burdensome switch. Approval voting wouldn’t require us to design new voting machines or new ballots—the current ones could handle it, according to approval voting advocates. It’s also very easy to explain the approval concept to the public. You get it already, right?

There are other alternatives that would also be better than plurality voting. There’s ranked voting (order the candidates in terms of your preference) and range voting (give each candidate some number of points out of a possible total, like you’re doing a Yelp review), and infinite variations therein. Elsewhere in Slate, Evelyn Lamb demonstrates that there are empirical flaws with each of these alternatives, but the key fact remains: All are superior to the system we use right now.

So why are we stuck with a bad system? A lot of smart people are thinking about better ways to vote. You can go down a deep rabbit hole where terms like “Condorcet cycle“ and “Borda count“ get tossed around with ease, warring factions debate which voting method is best, and Nobel Prizes are won for doing the math. But primaries are controlled by the parties, and elected politicians have little motivation to change the structure that got them elected.

When Reince Priebus goes to the autopsy board on Nov. 9, with his party in disarray and his job on the line, he might consider changing more than just the GOP platform. He can’t choose his voters, but he can choose the way they vote.

How a Rival Political Operative in 1992 Handled a Dossier on Bill Clinton’s Secret Black Son

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 20:02:47 GMT

“You’re really gonna write about the Danney Williams thing again?” Steve Denari asks when I reach him by phone. “I hope you put it to bed.”

The “Danney Williams thing” is the musty allegation that Bill Clinton fathered an illegitimate black son. Naturally, it’s bubbled up into this year’s election cycle. The Daily Mail went there. InfoWars went there. The Drudge Report went there, too. The chairman of Utah’s Republican Party went there, live on CNN. It’s a reasonable guess that Steve Bannon, the CEO of Donald Trump’s campaign, would like to go there for Wednesday night’s presidential debate.

The rumor has bounced around since Clinton’s first run for president. In The War Room, a 1993 documentary about Clinton’s campaign team, a scene shows George Stephanopoulos fielding a phone call from Denari, then a Ross Perot campaign official apparently in possession of a fat dossier on Clinton’s supposed love child. With the rumor back in the news, I thought I’d track down Denari to find out how he’d gotten his hands on that dossier, and what he did with it after he hung up with Stephanopoulos.

I found him at the bottom of this press release announcing “a new convertible debt/equity fund” concentrating on the medical marijuana sector—known as the “Amerijuana Fund”—that Denari had apparently tried to launch in 2014. After some cagey text messaging (he said he was recovering from a surgery that made it hard to talk), he eventually agreed to get on the phone with me. He was reluctant to dredge up ancient history but willing to answer my questions if it meant setting the record straight.

Denari says he was the Chicago campaign manager for Perot in 1992, doing lots of regional media on behalf of the candidate. The love child dossier had arrived anonymously at the desk of the Illinois state director for the Perot campaign, who passed it along to Denari with the thought that he might mention it on air. It was the day before the election. Denari was scheduled to go on Bruce DuMont’s live national radio show that night.

The folder was two or three inches thick, stuffed with “copies of copies”—faxes, canceled checks, photos of Williams and a young Clinton juxtaposed. The checks were supposedly child support payments. “It was a phone book worth of stuff,” says Denari. “I didn’t have time to read it all. Anybody could forge it. You or I could.”

Denari suspected the materials had come from people on the Bush campaign who hoped the Perot team would do their dirty work. He decided he’d call the Clinton campaign to see what they’d say. So he did, an hour before DuMont’s show started. “I wasn’t just going to go out and mention something like this the night before the election. I wasn’t going to do it unless they gave me some kind of no comment—‘Do what you want, we don’t care.’ ”

“Believe me that it’s been looked at by every major national news organization,” says Stephanopoulos to Denari, unseen and unheard at the other end of the phone line, in the scene from The War Room. “And it is completely bullshit. If you went on the radio and said that Bill Clinton is the father of an illegitimate black child, you would be laughed at and people would think you’re crazy. … You will be embarrassed before the national press corps. Nobody will believe you. And people will think you’re scummy.”

Denari says that was good enough for him. He chucked the dossier in his fireplace. He never mentioned it on air. “I didn’t go with it because it wasn’t an honorable thing,” he says. “If it were real, I think it would have been released some other way than anonymously over the transom to the Perot campaign.”

That was that, until 1999, when Denari was awoken one morning by a phone call from a talk radio show in Denver. Matt Drudge and Lucianne Goldberg, the doyenne of Clinton smears in the 1990s, were guests on the show, and they’d decided to ring Denari to inquire about the dossier and demand he release the materials. (Presumably someone had rented The War Room from Blockbuster that week.) Denari told them he felt there was nothing worthwhile in the documents and that he’d destroyed them. Soon after the segment ended, Goldberg called him again and asked to put him in touch with a British reporter. “I thought I could finally squelch it,” says Denari. “I told him the same story.”

The resultant article, written by Daniel Jeffreys for the Daily Mail and published Jan. 8, 1999, was headlined “Could This Boy Bring Down the President?” It quotes Denari describing the dossier contents, including a photo putatively showing Clinton with Williams’ mother at an Arkansas nightclub. The article went on to claim that Denari was writing a book about the dossier and publishing its contents. “He writes this ridiculous story that I’ve got this stuff and am saving it for a book I’m writing,” Denari says now. “Lucianne Goldberg must have had some friendly over there. He made that story up. They’ll pimp anything over there.” (In his journalism days, Jeffreys had a rep for doing this sort of thing.)

At the end of the call in The War Room, Stephanopoulos hints that the Clinton campaign will remember Denari kindly if he refrains from mentioning the dossier on air. So I ask Denari if anything ever came of that. He says Clinton’s campaign manager, David Wilhelm, called him the day after the election to thank him and to invite him to some inaugural events, but Denari declined the invitation. When he ran for Congress against Denny Hastert in 1994, Denari says, he received no help from the Clintons. (To be fair, although he was running as a Democrat, Denari also failed to receive the support of the DeKalb County Democratic Central Committee, which endorsed the Republican Hastert—citing in part the fact that Denari had made that phone call to Stephanopoulos.)

Denari has lain low in this cycle. He says I was the first reporter to contact him about the Danney Williams story. He tells me he is now a “freelance strategic consultant” based in southern Illinois. His most recent brush with the love child story was eight years ago, when he made an 18-minute video about his part in the saga. He sent copies to Bill and Hillary Clinton, James Carville, Stephanopoulos, and Wilhelm. He sent me a copy, too, hoping it would help answer my questions. The video features Denari dubbing his side of the phone call into the scene from The War Room. It goes on to advertise a charity Denari was working with and closes with Denari asking Bill Clinton to be the executive technical consultant on a TV series Denari and his daughter were then trying to create.

As for Danney Williams, the alleged Clinton scion? He—or someone claiming to be him—has Twitter and Facebook pages that continue to assert his genetic link to the 42^nd president. A 1999 paternity test (using the DNA sequence taken from the semen on Monica Lewinsky’s dress and published in the Starr Report) failed to prove the claim. But a contemporaneous Slate story argued that the test was not definitive. The Danney Williams thing won’t be going to bed anytime soon. It seems as if it’s just now waking up from a short nap.

Where Trump Is Still King

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 11 Oct 2016 13:55:05 GMT

WILKES-BARRE, Pennsylvania—After a dismal weekend marked by leaked audio about vagina grabbing, a deluge of defections from Republican officials, a snorting and incoherent debate performance, and some deflating poll numbers, Donald Trump went to Pennsylvania as planned for a rally in Wilkes-Barre on Monday night. So I followed him, thinking I might find his core supporters feeling weak in the knees. Instead I discovered an arena full of deplorables—unbowed, undiscouraged, standing by their ogre of a candidate.

Very little had changed since the last time I visited a Trump rally, back in the primaries. Outside the venue, a woman dressed as Trump led a woman dressed as Hillary around by a metal chain attached to a neck shackle. Inside, a man wore a T-shirt that read, “She’s a cunt. Vote for Trump.” The crowd began to chant “CNN sucks!” all on its own, before anyone had even prompted it to. A solemn recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance bled into “USA! USA!,” which morphed into that old standby: “Lock her up! Lock her up!”

Scanning the mob of several thousand as best I could, I counted fewer than 10 nonwhite people. (I’d seen nearly as many nonwhite folks at the gas station a few blocks away when I filled up my tank.) Every speaker up on stage was white. Chris Cox, the 48-year-old founder of Bikers for Trump, began his remarks by crowing, “You might remember us from Cleveland, at the RNC, where we stood toe to toe against Black Lives Matter.” He later added a pun that delighted the gathering: “At least we’re not a basket of deportables.”

When Cox rejoined the crowd, I asked him how he felt about the elected Republicans who’d distanced themselves from Trump in the past day or two. “They will be weeded out,” he said. “When Donald Trump is elected, they’ll be the first to go. The people are taking over the Republican Party.”

Up in the stands, a 65-year-old woman in full Trump gear who’d driven two hours from central New Jersey told me that GOPers who disavowed Donald were “not true Republicans.” Even Paul Ryan? “I don’t care for him,” said the woman. “He’s a conservative Democrat. Trump is a real Republican, born and bred.” But Trump used to be an actual Democrat, I pointed out. “Just for a short time,” the woman insisted.

I asked her if the leaked footage of Trump yukking it up about genital assault had given her pause. “What he said is really vulgar,” she began, before telling me that she’d been crassly propositioned by multiple men at her workplace over the years. “I was demoted three times for saying no,” she said. And then, in a flurry of words that made little sense to me, she transformed her experiences with sexual harassment into a pro-Trump argument, concluding, very confusingly (and inaccurately): “That soap actress, she said no and he accepted it.”

Pennsylvania state Rep. Tarah Toohil was on hand, holding the book Clinton Cash in her hand and recommending it to all who’d listen. She told me she’d been holding back from endorsing Trump for a while but had finally decided she needed to do it. When, I asked? Sunday, after the Billy Bush brouhaha.

“You’re like a reverse commuter,” I said. “A lot of other elected Republicans went the other way this weekend.”

“They’re just doing it to be popular, to get elected” she replied. “I felt morally compelled.”

Did Trump’s comments not give her pause? “I’m a woman in a world where men are in power,” the 37-year-old Toohil said. “I’ve heard trash talk. It’s unacceptable, but he made a sincere apology. I don’t think he did those things. He was just an arrogant man boasting about women. You hear that stuff from the entertainment industry, and back then he was an entertainment guy.”

When Trump at last took the stage, it was as though his wretched weekend had never happened. He didn’t mention the Access Hollywood disaster at all. Instead, he played his old hits: “The Snake.” We’re gonna build that wall. Look at those dishonest reporters, they’re so dishonest, I have to tell you, such disgusting people. He read out poll numbers he liked (ones from idiotic online insta-polls) and said the ones he didn’t like must be “crooked” and “rigged” (ones from legit, scientific polls).

There were, however, a few new wrinkles since last I’d boarded the Trump train. Lately, Trump’s been urging his supporters to be freelance election observers in “certain communities”—even soliciting them to sign up for such duty on his website. He made further leering insinuations along these lines. “I hear such reports about Philadelphia,” he said. “I hear these horror shows, and we have to make sure we’re protected. We have to make sure this election isn’t stolen from us and isn’t taken from us. And everyone knows what I’m talking about.”

Trump also reprised a version of his debate breakout moment, when he threatened to toss Hillary in jail. It was back in July, at a rally in Colorado, that Trump first went from dismissing the “lock her up” chants to indulging them: “I’ve been saying let’s just beat her on Nov. 8. But you know what, I’m starting to agree with you,” he said then. By Monday night in Pennsylvania, the concordance was complete. “Lock her up is right,” he barked when the chants began, to the rabid glee of the crowd.

There was even a new nickname. Longtime Hillary confidante Sidney Blumenthal has become “Sleazy Sid.” Not bad! Not even wrong! But the target of the epithet is telling. This is no “Low-Energy Jeb” or “Lyin’ Ted.” The average voter has no clue, and doesn’t care, who Blumenthal is. It’s Trump’s dead-enders—the ones still trudging out to rallies to cheer on a confirmed cretin and then trudging home to wallow in the latest on Breitbart—who thrill to this stuff in their shrinking bubble, in their hate-filled arenas, in the grimy dusk of a dying campaign.

Apprentice Producer Mark Burnett Is Sitting on Hours of Trump Footage. Someone Should Leak That, Too.

Seth Stevenson — Sat, 08 Oct 2016 16:53:00 GMT

Back in June, I spoke to several alumni of The Apprentice production crew about their memories of Donald Trump. They recalled Trump talking about female contestants’ bodies and describing women by their breast size, even though he knew he was mic’d and could be heard by dozens of people. When I asked if there was any jaw-dropping, behind-the-scenes footage floating around, everyone told me that whatever exists would reside in the archives of Mark Burnett’s production house.

“Historically, the Mark Burnett crew is very loyal,” one Apprentice production assistant told me, “and the same people probably would have been used for all those seasons. If you try to talk to them, you will run into people concerned about violating that trust.” Indeed, I wasn’t able to get anyone who worked under Burnett to talk to me.

Burnett, who produced Survivor before he launched The Apprentice, and went on to create Shark Tank and The Voice, denied a report over the summer that he was helping to produce the Republican National Convention. When Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about Burnett’s being responsible for Trump during September’s Emmy Awards show, Burnett laughed it off to reporters afterward but did not explicitly support or condemn Trump. Here’s how Deadline Hollywood reported the moment:

“How do you feel about Donald Trump?” leaned one reporter backstage, refusing to accept Burnett’s polite response.

The reality TV guru dodged, “How much free media can any one person get?” indicating how Trump is the last person to be upset about his name being dropped on the show, whether it’s good or bad.

Said Burnett, “I think it’s an example really about how everything is changing whether it’s big business or politics.”

Burnett then ended his answer with an acronym that threw the whole press room off: “It’s all MFMO. It’s mobile first or media over.”

I have zero doubt that Burnett is sitting on hours and hours of damning Trump footage. Why he hasn’t released any—and whether he plans to—is a question only he can answer.

If you know of anything, or if you yourself have footage that you can’t wait to share with the world, please move on tips@slate.com very heavily.

Can Trump Feel Their Pain?

Seth Stevenson — Fri, 07 Oct 2016 20:31:30 GMT

Sunday night’s presidential debate is a so-called town hall—a format that shrinks electoral rigmarole down to faux-intimate scale. A handful of (Gallup-selected) citizens will be in the room, posing questions to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The candidates will mosey about and interact directly with these undecided voters.

The town hall concept was introduced at the presidential level in 1992. Bill Clinton requested it, and watching clips now, it’s easy to see why. He had an ease and empathy with people one on one, assuring them he was present and listening. By contrast, George H.W. Bush was so aloof (or bored, or antsy to get off the stage) that he at one point, disastrously, glanced at his watch on camera.

This year’s town hall debate will pose unique hazards and opportunities for the current candidates. Among them:

Stagecraft Foibles

In a town hall debate, there is nowhere to hide, everywhere to run. With barstools and handheld mics instead of lecterns, the candidates roam untethered around the stage. This is great if you’re a graceful cat like Barack Obama. Less great if you’re accustomed to immobile pontification.

Previous stagecraft disasters include:

Al Gore getting up in George W. Bush’s grill in 2000. The story goes that Gore had been coached to deploy his burlier physical size by sidling up to W, better allowing the cameras to capture Gore’s alpha stature. But Gore botched the tactic, clumsily getting too close in the middle of a Bush answer. Bush peered over at Gore, nodded nonchalantly, and seemed the opposite of intimidated. Gore looked like a weird guy who didn’t understand personal space.

John McCain meandering aimlessly in 2008. Juxtaposed with Obama’s svelte figure and elegant gait, McCain’s squat shuffling looked especially awkward. But things got worse when McCain began to wander the set with a purposeless mien, even managing to block Tom Brokaw’s view of his teleprompter and feeding into the perception of him as the old, out-of-touch guy in the race. The Daily Show skewered him for it.

Trump and Hillary are perhaps the most physically contrasting pair of major-party candidates in electoral history. When they are forced out from behind their lecterns, and potentially standing toe to toe, the sexual dimorphism on display could be striking. Trump dwarfs Clinton, in terms of pure mass. Will this make him look more formidable, as he gazes down upon her? Or will the gender dynamic backfire on him and make him appear menacing? Consider this moment from the 2012 debate, when Obama and Mitt Romney edged closer as they argued, heating up to a near physical confrontation—and now imagine Trump and Hillary facing off in the same posture.

Questions From Regular Schmoes

Some portion of the questions at town hall debates come from ordinary voters, and not from legacy media moderators with research teams behind them. That means the candidates might face less predictable inquiries. And it means the identity of the questioner will come into play.

During the 1992 presidential town hall debate, a voter asked George H.W. Bush how the national debt had “personally affected” the candidate and how Bush could find “a cure for the economic problems of the common people if you have no experience in what’s ailing them.” It was an oddball question, as the voter presumably intended to ask about the recession rather than the national debt. It was also framed in a way that a well-paid TV network personality would be unlikely to mimic, not being one of those “common people.” It threw Bush for a loop. He was forced to look this voter in the eye and say, “Are you suggesting that if somebody has means that the national debt doesn’t affect them?”

It’s one thing for a buttoned-up moderator to ask Trump about immigration policy. It will be quite a different vibe if Trump gets a question from a Muslim immigrant standing a few feet away and has to answer to her face. He hasn’t endured much back and forth at his enormous rallies, where he stands atop an elevated stage before thousands of supporters and jealously guards the only hot mic.

Clinton, meanwhile, seems to prefer the smaller crowds and more personal interactions afforded by town halls. Earlier this week, she received a town hall question from a 15-year-old girl asking about body image. Her response, directed at the girl, would not have been as compelling had the question come from, say, Jim Lehrer.

In a new twist this year, the debate commission has promised to consider questions from the internet. Among those in contention at the time of this writing: “As president, what are the steps you will take to address climate change?”; “How will you support a free and open internet?”; and “If elected, would you support the decriminalization or legalization of marijuana?” None of those topics came up when Lester Holt was doing the asking.

Rogue Moderators

Town hall debate moderation has been fraught from the start. It’s hard to know how much of a role the moderator should play when questions are coming straight from the voters. Should she ask follow-ups? Should she hone the questioner’s inquiry?

The moderator for that 1992 town hall was Carole Simpson—the first woman and first minority ever to moderate a presidential debate. She felt it was no coincidence she’d been assigned the town hall format, writing in the Atlantic years later:

Twenty years ago when the Commission tapped me to moderate the first town hall debate, I was told the members wanted it to be an “Oprah-style” show. (Is that why they chose a black woman?). … I was simply the figure you see at so many forums—a character I’ve come to think of as “the lady with the microphone”—albeit one who was an anchor for a major television network.

No other woman moderated a presidential debate until 2012, when Candy Crowley was assigned to, yup, that year’s town hall. In statements during the runup to the debate, she promised she’d be no wallflower, which concerned the campaigns: “Both campaigns are reportedly alarmed by her statements and have pushed back—but are also operating under the assumption that Crowley may play a greater role in the debate than they’d like,” reported the Christian Science Monitor. Crowley famously did interject, with a mid-debate fact check of a Mitt Romney claim about the Obama administration’s response to Benghazi. She drew fusillades of flak for doing so.

This year’s town hall debate will be co-moderated by Martha Raddatz and Anderson Cooper. They appear to have divergent ideas about their role, with Raddatz suggesting she’d like to dig into some of Trump’s views while Cooper is hoping to be hands off. They are sure to endure cruel scrutiny, whichever path they take.

Which candidate is more likely to benefit from the format? You’d have to bet on Clinton. She seems at her best addressing people individually, not speaking to an undifferentiated mass. Meanwhile, Trump practiced for Sunday by holding a quasi–town hall–ish event on Thursday evening in New Hampshire. He used a partisan moderator, didn’t let voters ask direct questions, and cut things off early. No report on whether he glanced at his watch.

“Two Crap Sandwiches”

Seth Stevenson — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 21:53:56 GMT

I first met Jonah Goldberg in 1997, when, as a young television producer, he worked down the hall from Slate’s bureau in Washington, D.C. Despite—or perhaps because of—our extreme differences of opinion, I’ve always enjoyed talking politics with him. Given the recent spate of conservative pundits and newspapers endorsing Hillary Clinton, I’d been wondering if Jonah, now a columnist for National Review, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times, had pondered doing the same. So I emailed him. Our edited exchange is below.

Seth Stevenson: You’ve said that living in Washington, D.C., gives you some relief from worrying about how to cast your vote, since the result there is not in doubt. But you still have a big platform that you could use to endorse a candidate. Given your distaste for Donald Trump, have you given any thought to urging your readers to vote for Hillary Clinton?

Jonah Goldberg: I have given some thought to endorsing Hillary Clinton, and every time I do I recoil in horror for many of the same reasons I recoil from the prospect of endorsing Trump. They are different people with different strengths and weaknesses, but both are flatly unacceptable to me.

My position in all this is really rather simple. I’ve never much cared about the idea that I might influence voters one way or the other. We think about that kind of thing institutionally at National Review, of course. But as an independent writer, I’ve always thought playing those sorts of games was corrupting. I see my job as telling the truth as I see it. Hillary Clinton will be bad for America. Donald Trump will be bad for America. I could spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure out which one would be worse—and I have many thoughts on the topic which I’m happy to share—but no matter how that question resolved itself, it wouldn’t change the fact that both are unacceptably bad. At least for me, I think it’s better to be honest and straightforward about that and let the chips fall where they may.

Many conservatives—including many friends and fans—don’t like that answer because they think I have to bend the knee to some abstract binary: If I’m not for Trump that means I’m for Hillary. This seems to me a confusion of the logic of voting (which itself is pretty faulty, voters have other options) for the obligations of a writer or analyst. Ted Cruz, before his prostration, told conservatives to vote their conscience. I’m going to speak my conscience.

When given a choice between two crap sandwiches on different kinds of bread, my response is “I’ll skip lunch”—and then I’ll tell you why.

OK, let me dig into some of this. It seems the reason some conservative pundits and editorial boards are endorsing Hillary is that they view Trump as an existential threat to the republic. Sure, the logic goes, Hillary is a liberal who will be very bad for the country in a run-of-the-mill way. But Trump is an outlier, a genuine danger to our democracy, uniquely unfit due to his temperament and lack of qualification. There is an element of genuine fear about what might happen under Trump. Does that argument not sway you at all?

I don’t dismiss that argument. I think a President Trump would strain the constitutional system the same way he tested the GOP party apparatus. I would expect a President Trump to give orders that violate the Constitution, and then we would have to see whether the system could respond adequately. Remember how he used to insist that he would bring back waterboarding and “a hell of a lot worse” tactics? When it was pointed out to him that military officers would be required to refuse unlawful orders, he said, in effect, “Oh, they’ll obey!”

He later backtracked, but I think it’s clear his instincts are utterly uninformed by constitutional norms. I hear a lot of Republicans telling me that they will manage President Trump, box him in, etc. I am extremely skeptical about the idea that President Trump will be more manageable than candidate Trump once he gets Air Force One.

So, again, I think it’s a legitimate concern.

But, I think it’s also very clear that President Hillary Clinton would have contempt for the Constitution just as Obama has (see Yuval Levin and Ramesh Ponnuru’s recent piece on this point). One could even make the case that she’s the greater danger on this front. The legal establishment, the bureaucracy, the media et al. will all either explicitly come to her aid or they will provide respectable cover, just as they did for Obama’s unilateral executive orders. One of the best things about a Trump presidency—shudder—might just be how he would elicit a healthy antibody response, forcing a new commitment to separation of powers. I’m not making the case for voting for Trump here, I think he could be a very, very dangerous president (particularly on the economy and foreign policy). What I’m saying is that America is a bit like the proverbial frog in the pot. Hillary would incrementally turn up the heat, which is at near-boil, while Trump would start at the boiling point.

But let me jump ahead and just answer the question I think you’re really getting at. I think in the short term there is a very good argument that Hillary would be worse for America than Trump. My chief worry, among many, is that Trump would be worse in the long term because he threatens to destroy modern American conservatism.

We can already see how Trump is basically refashioning conservatism (I would say “corrupting”). If Trump comes out for X, within minutes people who’ve spent decades opposed to X suddenly turn on a dime and start cheerleading for X. (See, e.g. Gingrich on NAFTA and NATO, Mike Pence on everything.)

A bunch of very smart conservatives have allowed themselves to be seduced by a very dumb idea. Specifically, they think that this problem will get better once he’s elected president. It won’t. It will get much, much, much worse. Once in office, I could very easily see him getting rolled by the bureaucracy and basically become a big government Nixonite (which is what he is in his heart already).

Or, the GOP will become a nationalist party instead of a sort of Toryish/classical liberal party. It will become protectionist, pro-authoritarian, and dirigiste. There’s already a lot of that in the Democratic Party, but a Trumpified GOP will stop offering an alternative to that and instead starting a bidding war on everything from entitlements to infrastructure spending. And I’m not even addressing the extent to which the GOP would fully surrender to leftist categories of thinking when it comes to identity politics—only in reverse. I’m against identity politics full stop, which means I’m against white identity politics at least as much as I’m against minority identity politics.

In sum, my biggest fear—or at least the fear I am most confident about—is that he will break the already-strained spine of limited government constitutionalism and classical liberalism in such a way that there will no longer be any check on the administrative state.

America can survive four years of Hillary Clinton, it can’t survive a political system divided by Sanders-style socialists and Trump-style nationalists.

But because I want my kind of conservatism to survive, I don’t think it makes any sense for me to endorse Hillary Clinton, who is open and honest about her contempt for my kind of conservatism. I want to be able to say five, 10, 20 years from now, “These are the things I believe,” without someone saying, “Oh yeah? Then why did you support Clinton or Trump?” You don’t hear a lot of people demanding that prominent libertarians choose between the lesser of two evils. I just can’t support either of these people. (Much like National Review couldn’t endorse Kennedy or Nixon—neither met the minimal standards for Bill Buckley’s understanding of conservatism.)

You are essentially making the same argument I hear 500 times a day from conservatives. They say, “If Hillary wins America is over.” You’re saying (or suggesting), “If Trump wins, America is over.” I have more faith in America and our system of government. Indeed, if we really are at a place where America’s survival hinges on a single election of a single officeholder for one branch of one of our governments, then America is already over. Because that’s not what America is.

I still sense a vast difference in amplitude here, though. Even if we stipulate that Hillary might use executive orders regarding, say, immigration or guns in ways that conservatives find unconstitutional, is that really equivalent to the concerns surrounding Trump—a trade war resulting in massive economic shock, an impulsive attitude toward foreign relations that ramps up the danger of sudden armed conflict, etc? I hear you when you say America is resilient, but aren’t the downside risks MUCH, MUCH more extreme with Trump?

They very well might be. But let’s be honest:

We don’t know.
My endorsement wouldn’t change facts on the ground at all.

All I can do is tell the truth as I see it and say they both stink. I don’t want to sound pretentious, but my wife sent me this quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn the other week and I’ve been sort of carrying it around in my head and my heart ever since: “You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”

How much of your reluctance is about Hillary herself and how much is about party platform? I could see myself voting for, say, Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush if they faced off against a Democrat I considered truly unqualified and dangerous. Are there specific Democrats who, if they were running against Trump, you would consider endorsing or voting for?

A lot of my reluctance is about Hillary Clinton. I do not think she’s an honest or honorable person—and I hate her ideological views. If it was someone whose politics I disliked but who I also thought was competent and decent, my calculus would be different. I suppose I could support Joe Lieberman (heck, William F. Buckley did—against a Republican!) or Joe Manchin or maybe a saner version of Jim Webb. But there aren’t too many centrist Democrats left. That said, if the Democratic nominee was, say, Tim Kaine, I doubt I would endorse him either. But it would be a harder case to make.

I know you’ve caught a lot of flak (from readers—and even from Sean Hannity!) for not getting on board with the GOP nominee, and you’ve stood your ground. How much more flak would you get if you endorsed a Democrat? Would it be a death blow to your personal brand as a conservative pundit? Does that factor into your thinking at all?

I’ll be honest: No career counselor worth a dime would tell me to endorse Clinton. It would do lasting damage to my “personal brand” (such as it is) with little prospect of winning me any lasting Strange New Respect from liberals, particularly since my ideology hasn’t changed—the GOP’s has.

But I try very hard not to think in those kinds of terms. After all, no career counselor would have told me to take my current stance either.

The smart play would have been to express misgivings, then just make the lesser of two evils case or the anti-anti-Trump case or just stay quiet entirely. That’s what a lot of people have done, some because they sincerely believe Hillary will be worse, some because it’s a safe-harbor position that maintains some credibility while at the same time staying on the right side of the TV/radio/book-buying base. I have some sympathy for that. What I have very little sympathy for is the asinine and ridiculous charge that people like me are doing this for some kind of personal gain. (If someone is paying extra for opposing Trump, my checks have been lost in the mail.) And I have no patience for the argument that Trump is some great world-historical figure who will make America great again with his Stakhanovite will and superior intelligence.

If you believe that junk sincerely, you’ve been conned and that truly makes me sad. If you don’t believe it, yet you’re still going around saying it because you think you need to out of party loyalty or to pander to your audience, that makes you a lying hack. One of the saddest and most sobering revelations of this whole experience has been to hear from people telling me how disappointed they are that I haven’t lived down to their expectations.

Ideology and competence aside, I simply cannot abide a president who mocks disabled people, insults prisoners of war and the parents of a dead American soldier, brags about the size of his member during a televised debate, bans media outlets from his events in fits of pique, and comports himself in a manner that attracts an inordinate level of support from anti-Semites and white supremacists. You find Hillary Clinton dishonorable, and I concede she has prodigious character flaws, but it’s hard to argue that she matches Trump’s behavior with regard to stuff like this.

You say that “because I want my kind of conservatism to survive, I don’t think it makes any sense for me to endorse Hillary Clinton who is open and honest about her contempt for my kind of conservatism.” But while I am very confident that conservatism can survive four years of Hillary Clinton, I’m not so sure civil society can survive four years of Trump. Does that stuff not give you extreme pause? Does it not make him a uniquely scary and reprehensible figure—one who must be stopped from reaching the White House at all costs, even if it means backing an unsavory opponent?

Hey look, you’re not going to get ahead of me on the issue of contempt for Trump. I think he’s dishonorable, vain, and goonish. It all gives me pause, and I’ve been criticizing him for a very long time (including back when a lot of liberals thought this was all very funny and delicious when it was a problem for the GOP). What you’re describing is the George Will position. He believes the first goal for conservatives must be to make sure Trump doesn’t win. I have sympathy for that, and there are days when I have more than just sympathy.

But it’s funny (though maybe not ha-ha funny) that many conservatives think this country will be “over” the moment Hillary wins. There are many liberals who think this country will be over the moment Trump wins. I still don’t believe that we live in that kind of country, in part because the still-functioning bits of the Constitution prevent it, and in part because the American people, for all their myriad and contradictory flaws and quirks, are still a good and decent liberty-loving people (albeit perhaps not as liberty-loving as I would like).

I have made a tactical or strategic or you might think idiotic decision to simply follow the course of Mencken and Nock, and express my position as honestly as I can. I will never vote for either of them, and I won’t let either of them turn me into a liar. That’s my safe harbor. Maybe that’s a dodge. Maybe it’s a delusion. Maybe history, or Future Jonah, or the race of super-intelligent bees who take over after we’ve nuked ourselves into extinction, will look back on this and see nothing but folly. But when it comes to scoring the follies of this nauseating election season, I think I will come out a lot better than most. And at least for now, it’s the only way I know how to get through the day or look at myself in the mirror.

I Watched the Presidential Debate With the Sound Off. Bugs Bunny Won.

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 04:19:14 GMT

It’s been said the best way to judge a presidential debate is to watch with the sound off. So I did.

It was liberating! Stress that accrued throughout the day—as I fretted for the fate of our republic—dissolved into the calming silence of a muted television. During the pre-debate runup, graphics swooped weightlessly across the screen, untethered to those urgent string sections. Teams of analysts flapped their gums, but no inanities reached my ears. So serene.

And then the candidates took the stage. Clinton covered more ground as they marched toward each other, racing across the carpet with her robotic, arm-pumping gait.

Once installed behind their lecterns, Trump leaned forward and gripped the sides of his as though he wished to pry its top off, while Clinton placed her hands gently before her on the flat surface. His suit jacket easily filled the full width of his split-screen half. Her narrower, flame-red-clad frame left open space at her sides.

As they started to speak, their hands rose and flitted. Her gestures rarely ventured beyond the silhouette of her torso. She often swept her hands inward, toward her heart. To emphasize a point, she’d indicate delicately with her right hand, as though placing a peach on a shoulder-level shelf. She sometimes offered tiny shrugs, while lifting her lower lip, in a manner that suggested she’d contemplated both sides of a thorny question and found no easy answer.

His gesticulating was far more kinetic, his hands chopping down from ear level toward the lectern, his arms swinging side to side. He forever seemed to be forcefully sweeping something off a table. He nodded decisively with each syllable, conveying certainty in what he said. When answering a question, he’d lean toward his mic, letting one shoulder drop, torqueing his upper body. His eyes and his whole posture repeatedly gravitated toward his rival, and it appeared he wished to challenge her. She’d observe him coolly, blinking, expressionless. On occasion she’d break into an incredulous smile, and once she laughed like a socialite who’d heard something naughty.

In 2008, political commentator Jeff Greenfield posited a theory in Slate about two types of presidential candidates. First there are the Daffy Ducks: “He fumes, he clenches his fists, his eyes bulge, and his entire body tenses with fury.” Then there are the Bugs Bunnies: “at ease, laid back, secure, confident.” Greenfield argues that the public always votes for the candidate more like Bugs.

If you watched with the sound off, Clinton was the Bugs tonight. When she spoke, she almost never bothered to look Trump’s way, even as he interrupted her, which he seemed to do a lot. Instead, she addressed the people at home. She didn’t seem to care much about her rival. The one time she did interact with him in a physical way, she shimmied with glee—shivering her shoulders, delighting in mockery.

Meanwhile, Trump would listen with head tilted, lips pursed, eyes narrowed to slits—a sinister bearing that made him look angry, resentful, fuming like someone who’d been bested.

Is that what happened?

Some Expert Advice for the Person Playing Donald Trump in Hillary’s Debate Prep

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 14:41:00 GMT

The conventions are over, the nominees are no longer presumptive, the general election has begun. Assuming Donald Trump doesn’t back out, the next major campaign event will be the first debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton on Sept. 26—which means the two campaigns are likely starting debate prep right about now. How will Clinton train for an onstage battle with an erratic, hotheaded, know-nothing, spotlight-sucking opponent? We turned to Jennifer Granholm, former governor of Michigan and onetime Sarah Palin impersonator for Joe Biden’s debate prep, to find out. Before there was Donald, there was Sarah.

Seth Stevenson: How did it come about that you played Sarah Palin for Biden’s debate training in 2008?

Jennifer Granholm: I got a call from the campaign saying they wanted me to do it, I think because I was the only, at the time, other female governor with kids. So maybe they thought there would be an ease for me to play that role.

Had you ever done something like that before?

I’d never done it before. But I became a Palintologist. I totally studied her debates in Alaska, she’d had a number of them. My team put together briefing books about her, I watched all the videos of her, read all her position papers past and present. And I got up to speed on McCain’s positions, because she would have to absorb them. You have to embody the character. And you have to respect the character. If you want to play it in an authentic way, you have to respond as they would, taking on the good and the bad of the character.

How method did you get?

I wore my glasses. I tried to dress like I thought she might. I didn’t have her hair. But especially for the final practice runs, I did all that. For the smaller rehearsals you can just wear jeans. But for the actual timed practice debates you are acting like it’s the real thing.

How did the prep sessions work?

We did two or three actual timed debates. But you do a number of sessions leading up to that. So what the team did, they had rented an entire hotel in Delaware and they had basically built out the debate stage to the very inch—including the backing colors, the podia height, everything was mocked up exactly as the debate was going to be so that you can become comfortable as a debater. They give you some topics that they’re going to go over, so during the days you go out and run through that series of topics as your character. Joe Biden would get coached, and I would get coached. And they might come to me and say, “Be a little bit more this way, or that way, or try this answer to see if it throws him.”

Did you try to do her accent?

[Sarah Palin voice] You betcha! I’m not very good at her accent, I’m not Tina Fey, but I certainly tried to capture her accent and folksiness. I tried to be tough when I thought she would be tough and disarming when I thought she would be disarming.

How did Joe Biden respond?

Joe was so utterly delightful. With her, part of the challenge for someone like Joe Biden was he knew so much about policy, and the ways of Washington, and she knew so little, so the challenge was he didn’t want to come across as pedantic. He’s a folksy guy, too. But he couldn’t be talking in acronyms and using Washington speak. We’d try to get him to fall into that trap. Or try to get him to start mansplaining to her. It’s difficult for a man to debate a woman. Joe’s a great debater and great human being so we didn’t catch him much.

Speaking of someone who knows little about policy, do you have any advice for the person who plays Donald Trump in upcoming debate prep?

The big advice for someone playing Trump is you have to truly put yourself in the mind of Donald Trump. You’ve got to recognize and respect the fact that he won all these primaries, and didn’t win them for nothing. He’s got some real positive attributes that people who saw him in debates were attracted to. You can’t take it on as an impression like you’re Jimmy Fallon. You have to be Donald Trump and respect that person. For someone playing that character who actually supports Hillary Clinton, that will be a hard thing, to get into the mindset of him.

What kinds of things might a Trump portrayer have to focus on?

He has turns of phrases that he uses all the time. You have to know how he pivots. But there’s a trove of material to watch. When he’s asked a question he doesn’t know the answer to, how he goes to his stock phrases, how he slides out of answers. You have to memorize his MO. He will tell you that he’s very smart and I’m certain he will be prepared, they’ll have given him briefing books—whether he does the homework or not is another question. I actually still question whether there are gonna be debates, seems like he’s trying to get out of them.

What was the timing of the debate prep in 2008?

I was notified about 3–4 weeks before the prep sessions were going to happen. And the debate prep happened just a couple of weeks before the debate.

So they’re probably picking out a Donald Trump portrayer right now. Who should play him?

I’m ready! But obviously they need a man. Ron Klain will do the debate prep again I would guess, as he did for Joe Biden. I’m sure they’ve got a couple of people in mind. It has to be somebody who can be a good actor.

Does it have to be a politician?

I don’t think it has to be a politician. Politicians know the lay of the land, but you’re right, getting a nonpolitician might be a good idea. Maybe Mark Cuban, now that he’s on board. Get another billionaire.

If Sean Penn Were the Democratic Nominee

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 01 Aug 2016 22:18:00 GMT

Republicans have faced an excruciating choice in 2016: Get behind their own party’s mortifying nominee or cede the White House to a deeply despised rival.

It’s an easy call from the left side of the fence. Democrats are baffled when seemingly sane conservatives like Paul Ryan and John McCain promise to vote for the GOP’s loony new standard-bearer. We tut-tut. We roll our eyes. We s our gdhs.

But confronted with the same dilemma, I wonder how the left would respond. If a dopey populist surge somehow contrived to foist a wackadoo lefty nominee on the American electorate, how many of my fellow Democrats would feel obliged, for the sheer safety of the nation, to vote for an especially hated but well-qualified right-wing opponent? And how many would swallow hard and climb on board with the wackadoo?

Or, as Ross Douthat put it Monday morning:

Neither party has a monopoly on shortsighted, tribal behavior. It’s not difficult to envision Democrats supporting an absurd candidate out of inane partisanship or in hopes (even gossamer hopes) of a precious November win. Do you doubt me?

Let’s posit a Donald Trump of the left: a radical celebrity, with no prior political experience, who tosses his hat into the Democratic ring. Could be Kanye West, or Ben from Ben and Jerry’s. But for the sake of this exercise, let’s say it’s Sean Penn. Join me in a thought experiment that imagines Spicoli as Democratic nominee.

It’s a sunny Cesar Chavez Day at the beginning of our pretend election cycle. Mr. Penn has ventured far inland from Malibu, California, trailed by a teeming press pack, and is now standing with grave symbolic intent amid a field of budding artichokes. He kneels to pluck one from the earth, holds it aloft, and declares, in that raspy SoCal drawl, that his candidacy for the Democratic Party’s nomination will be dedicated to the migrants. To the pickers. To la raza. To the unions, the underprivileged, the 99 percent. Penn’s glamorous actress paramour stands beaming by his side as the cameras click.

Penn’s campaign launch meets with amused chuckles within the Democratic Party establishment. He’s a sideshow. A man whose most recent accomplishment is a voice role in The Angry Birds Movie. A man who’s attacked the media—with actual fists! A man who expressed heartfelt fondness for Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez and empathy for Mexican drug kingpin El Chapo. Penn brings star power to the process, but no one thinks he’ll get anywhere. So the Democratic National Committee holds its tongue.

It quickly becomes clear that a certain Bernie-ish swath of primary voters can’t get enough of Penn. He rants about social justice issues with a raw ferocity that packaged liberal politicians never quite muster. He rips into right-wing enemies with salty language and palpable anger. He’s a loose cannon on Twitter and seems nigh incorruptible. He commands the stage at large rallies, where folks come out just to see a Hollywood celeb. Over the summer and into the fall, he soars in the polls. Still, no one takes any of that seriously. It’s Sean Penn, after all.

The debates begin. Penn’s performance exposes policy ignorance, an unwillingness to do his homework, and a general dimness swirled with arrogance. But there he is, always at the center of the stage, always getting the most attention, fighting with the moderators. To his supporters, he can do no wrong. They point to his humanitarian work after Hurricane Katrina and the Haiti earthquake. They argue that the pseudo-journalistic trips he took to Pakistan and Iran constitute foreign policy experience.

And then the bomb drops: Penn wins Iowa. He’s on his way.

Stop here, my Democrat friends, and ask yourself how you’d react. Would you willingly cede the White House to, say, Ted Cruz if it meant keeping Sean Penn away from the levers of power? Or would you consider voting for Cruz just to stop Penn?

I’ve been posing this very question to my own friends, of late. Most scoff, arguing it’s a faulty analogy. Their initial objections break down like this:

Penn (or a similar Trump of the left) would be nothing like Trump, in that there would be none of the racism, the appeal to ethno-nationalism, or the authoritarian overtones.

My response: Sure, the outrageousness might take a different form, but I can actually envision a Penn platform offering plenty of “deal-breakers”—mooted and then walked back and then mooted again, in a Trumpian manner. Maybe he reiterates his respect for Hugo Chavez and declares there’s much we could learn from the way he ran Venezuela. Maybe he vows to disarm all U.S. police forces.

I can also envision similar character questions. Maybe our fictional Penn defends punching reporters and says he’d do it again. Maybe he talks about how he’d like to lynch Lloyd Blankfein, including a vivid description of the act. Would that be enough for you to abandon your own party’s nominee?
But Ted Cruz is not like Hillary Clinton. Cruz is an extremist! Hillary’s a moderate! Of course I’d vote for Mitt Romney/John Kasich if he were up against Sean Penn, but I just couldn’t pull the trigger for Ted Cruz.

My response: I’ve had several Republican friends say they could vote for Joe Biden, but they simply can’t cast a vote for Hillary Clinton. To them, she is a bridge too far. She represents everything that’s wrong with the left. The analogy is fair, when viewed through the eyes of a Republican voter.

And here’s where my friends really do themselves in. They start saying things like, “OK, but I am confident that Sean Penn would surround himself with people I trust more than the people Ted Cruz would surround himself with.” Or: “I’m not sure how much power the president really has. He’d just be a figurehead.” Or: “But I would have to vote for him because of the Supreme Court—I just can’t let Ted Cruz appoint any justices.” They can’t even hear themselves making the exact same excuses that Republicans have been making for supporting Trump.

I’m sure plenty of smart Democratic pundits would recognize the danger of electing someone like Penn, and publicly say so, just as some smart Republicans are doing. But people at the DNC might hope they could control Penn and might stick by him for “the good of the party.” Harry Reid would no doubt come out as a Penn-backer. Al Gore might see a chance to become relevant again. Cory Booker might do anything in hopes of securing a VP nomination.

Penn would have no experience. He’d have huge knowledge gaps and would be incompetent at the work of governing. His self-assurance in the face of his own ignorance would be galling. And yet, I’m not so sure that would be enough to turn the party apparatus against him.

The Bernie Sanders movement revealed a profound level of dissatisfaction within the Democratic ranks and a willingness to roll the dice with a nontraditional, more radical leader. The DNC effectively quashed this revolt, as the WikiLeaks dump demonstrated. But anyone watching the convention in Philadelphia could see that lefty anger has not been fully doused. Or, put in terms you’ll recognize from this election cycle: The party establishment paved the way for Penn to happen.

Why Is Everyone at the DNC Shouting?

Seth Stevenson — Fri, 29 Jul 2016 01:15:00 GMT

PHILADELPHIA—There’s been a lot of shouting at the Democratic National Convention. Cory Booker and Andrew Cuomo, in particular, abused eardrums of people tuning in to the TV broadcast. Jennifer Granholm—a notable shouter at the 2012 DNC—just did it again.

If you’re wondering why these folks don’t think to modulate, the answer has to do with balancing the needs of the room with the needs of the TV audience. What plays as vigorous and engaged inside a cavernous arena can play as loud and shrieky when observed from the comfort of your living room sofa.

This is actually something the speakers get coached on. There’s no need to yell to be heard over a raucous convention crowd—the mic is sensitive and plugged directly into the TV soundboards, so anyone watching at home will hear you just fine.

I spoke to veteran speechwriter David Litt—who worked in the 2012 DNC speechwriting operation—about this dynamic. Here’s what he told me:

If the crowd gets into it, you have to be more controlled. You don’t want to sound like you’re yelling. What Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton did really well is speak to the viewer at home. It’s a different set of skills. They’re not matching the energy of the crowd—they’re a little less, they’re letting the crowd come to them. Jennifer Granholm in 2012 had a good speech, but people in the room were going crazy. And what seemed energetic from her in the room and got people fired up, on TV it was adding 10 decibels. The Dean scream is another good example of that. To people in the arena, it didn’t sound like a huge moment, but if you’re right in the mic, it’s very different.

How to Write a Convention Speech for Two Anxious Teenagers

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 28 Jul 2016 19:32:38 GMT

PHILADELPHIA—For all the attention paid to blockbuster speeches by VIPs like Michelle Obama and Joe Biden, names like this make up a small percentage of the slate at the Democratic National Convention. On the undercard are dozens of speakers with far lower profiles—many unaccustomed to addressing a crowd, almost none experienced in addressing a television audience of 20 million. Folks like this get funneled through the convention’s speechwriting operation. And that’s where the not-inconsiderable task begins of making human beings sound like human beings.

Take, for instance, Jensen Walcott and Jake Reed, who’ll be on stage and TV tonight in prime time. These two 17-year-old friends got hired at a Pizza Studio in Kansas City, Kansas—both on the same day, both with the same level of pizza-related experience. Yet when they congratulated each other on Snapchat, the story goes, Jensen realized she’d been offered a lower salary ($8 an hour) than her male friend Jake ($8.25). She asked her boss to explain the pay disparity. Instead of getting justice, both teens got fired. Cue a ton of media coverage and, whoa, a tweet from Hillary Clinton:

Eventually, the teens were invited to speak at the DNC. “I wasn’t sure what I was going to talk about, besides just telling my story,” Jensen says. And here’s where the speechwriting machine kicks into gear.

Jensen and Jake were assigned one speechwriter from among the 20 or so who work in a basement space here at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia—where rough drafts fly off the printers at all hours and writers shout, “What did you think of that new last line?” across the room to colleagues. The teens’ designated speechwriter gave them a choice: Craft your own speech and I’ll edit it, or give me some bullet points, I’ll write the speech, and you can revise it. The teens chose the latter. So the speechwriter emailed back and forth with them, watched interviews they’d done on TV, and tried to capture their voices and story in just a couple hundred words.

David Litt helped write speeches for President Obama for several years, and he worked in the speechwriting boiler room at the 2012 DNC. (He’s at the convention this year as head writer and producer for Funny or Die’s politics arm in Washington, D.C.) Litt describes the whirlwind speechwriting experience at a convention as “all the intellectual work of speechwriting with all the energy of field organizing. It’s like taking final exams 12 hours a day for 10 days straight.” Most speechwriters work with 10 speakers at a time. Some speeches get locked down well in advance, but some are still in flux 30 minutes before showtime.

Amateur speakers like Jensen and Jake can in some ways be easier to deal with than a midlevel politician. “Some of these people have a stump speech they’re comfortable with,” Litt says, “and they’re also used to being the most important speaker everywhere they speak. You might be a congressperson who’s served for 18 years, but today you’re just one of dozens of warmup acts. In those cases, it’s about figuring out what to cut.

“The biggest reason it goes down to the wire is if you get a busy principal who doesn’t do any work in advance. If they’re not really engaged until the last minute, that generally ends in a rush. Maybe you tell them this 10-minute speech needs to be five minutes and they just don’t get back to you.”

Speechwriting on scene, for a live TV show, requires flexibility. “No one here would have expected that the opposing nominee would invite a cyberattack on the United States while the convention is going on,” Litt says. “And in a situation like that, it’s deciding whether or not to react. You don’t want to see something on Twitter and make the whole speech about that. But you also don’t want to be out of touch and not responding to issues people are focused on. I’d say that’s why the speechwriters get paid big bucks, but most of them are here as volunteers or taking huge pay cuts.”

The speechwriting team will work with a speech prep team (“a slightly different subgenre of professional services,” Litt explains) to walk the speaker through the whole spectrum of his or her performance. A keynote speaker might practice a speech several times over multiple days. But an amateur speaker will generally get only 30 minutes or so of prep, with one or two quick run-throughs.

“A lot of people aren’t used to talking for TV,” Litt says, “and when you’re in a huge room like this arena, you need pointers about how to respond. Because you might hear the crowd go crazy, and want to wait for them to stop applauding, but that doesn’t work on TV—you need to skip just a beat and then continue. Or someone’s shouting something, and you might want to react, but people can’t hear the shouting on TV so you’ve got to keep going or the viewer won’t understand what’s going on.”

Speaking in front of both a crowd and a TV audience requires a certain sort of emotional calibration. “If the crowd gets into it, you have to be more controlled,” Litt says. “You don’t want to sound like you’re yelling. What Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton did really well is speak to the viewer at home. It’s a different set of skills. They’re not matching the energy of the crowd—they’re a little less, they’re letting the crowd come to them. Jennifer Granholm in 2012 had a good speech, but people in the room were going crazy. And what seemed energetic from her in the room and got people fired up, on TV it was adding 10 decibels. The Dean scream is another good example of that. To people in the arena, it didn’t sound like a huge moment, but if you’re right in the mic, it’s very different.”

For Jensen and Jake’s speechwriter, the biggest challenge was the time constraint. In fewer than 300 words, the teens would need to tell their story, explain their connection to Hillary, and somehow hit on the theme of the convention: “stronger together.”

The first draft of their speech was split into two sections—first one teen speaking, and then the other. But Jensen and Jake asked for a little more back and forth. “He’s always finishing my sentences when we do interviews,” Jensen says. “We’re good friends, and we wanted people to see we have a connection.” And here’s where the convention theme got woven in. The teens wanted to express how important it is to “stand up for each other.”

The speech went to the research department, where it passed the fact-checking and plagiarism tests. The campaign signed off on the speech’s message. And on Wednesday afternoon, Jensen and Jake arrived at the arena for their walk-through. They were brought to the rehearsal space (actually, the Philadelphia Flyers locker room) with a practice lectern and teleprompters. “The teleprompters are huge and right in front of your face,” Jensen says, “so it was hard not to read along on them when Jake was talking. I had to remind myself to look at him instead.” They were reminded to talk over applause, instead of waiting. “The microphone is louder than the crowd,” Jensen notes, “so you don’t need to yell.”

Jensen got one main critique during her practice round. “Slow down. I’m a very fast talker. Especially when I’m nervous,” she says. “And I wasn’t nervous at all, but then I saw the Wells Fargo Center and how many people will be there.” I ask her what the biggest crowd was she’d ever previously addressed. “About six people.”

If all goes well, Jensen and Jake speaking to each other on national TV will sound like a reasonable approximation of Jensen and Jake hanging out with each other in Kansas. It turns out the process to achieve that effect requires multiple trained professionals and hours of effort. And that goes for all the other speakers, too. As you watch Thursday night, take a moment to consider the gears that turn behind the watch face.

Which One of These Americans Wore the “Make America Great Again” Hat the Greatest? You Decide.

Chelsea Hassler — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 13:46:00 GMT

CLEVELAND—Before the Democratic National Convention is gaveled into session, let's bring to a close our coverage of the 2016 Republican National Monster Truck Rally with a vote of our own. Of the 20 people below, all photographed at the RNC, who best wore his or her "Make America Great Again" hat?

Cast your vote at the bottom of the page, and check back to see how your pick stands up. You can vote as often, and for as many people, as you'd like.

My Quest to Find Jeb’s Delegates at the RNC

Seth Stevenson — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 14:50:50 GMT

CLEVELAND—They are the rarest of objects. Only three exist in the universe. Each one cost $53 million to make.

I speak, of course, of Jeb Bush’s delegates to the GOP convention. Jeb campaigned earnestly—and, yes, expensively—for the better part of a year, yet this lonely trio was the sum fruit of his efforts. These three brave souls were appointed his banner bearers and asked to trudge here from New Hampshire, to … do what, exactly? To register a pitiful scatter of votes for their guy—a man who wasn’t there and couldn’t win? To notarize the victory of his most despised rival? Or perhaps to insist, in some small way: Hey, Jeb existed.

In my imagination, these three knights of Jeb, trembling and unarmored, stand across a muddy battlefield from the 1,543 Donald Trump delegates. The Trump horde beats its chest, cackles derisively, rushes forward. The Jebbites close their eyes and await release from this cruel world.

Over the course of the convention, I became obsessed with the idea of finding them. I yearned to view the Jebbite trinity in the flesh. To hear their proud little voices piercing the Trumpian din. To me (with my documented soft spot for Jeb), they were somehow apart from the rest. A nobler breed. More precious than Rand Paul’s pair of delegates or Ben Carson’s magnificent seven.

As it turns out, Jeb’s delegates were seated comfortably somewhere down there on the air-conditioned convention floor, dotted among their friendly Republican colleagues, invited to assimilate. They were of little use to anyone—their numbers too few to sway any rules votes or be relevant in some sort of coup—and so could be safely ignored.

Eventually, via asking around and generally being a pest, I found my first Jebbite: His name was Paul Speltz. He was a kind, portly fellow with a head of snowy hair and an apple-cheeked visage—sort of like a well-fed, senior citizen cherub.

I asked him how it was that he had become a synecdochical representation of large-scale failure. Just kidding: I asked him how he’d come to be a delegate for Jeb. It turns out that Speltz has known the Bush family for decades. He’d served as an official economic emissary to China, designated by George W. Bush’s treasury secretary. And he’d supported Jeb while he was in the race.

“I just talked to Jeb yesterday,” he told me, during a break between speeches from the stage. “He’s down in Florida, relaxing. He thinks what’s going on here is very … interesting.”

I asked Speltz if he agreed with me that Donald Trump, character-wise, is everything Jeb is not. “Jeb Bush is earnest, warm, and a gentleman,” he replied without fully taking the bait. “Donald Trump is a new kind of candidate. He’s a different kind of a guy.”

At this point, Corey Lewandowski—one of Speltz’s fellow New Hampshire delegates, who also happens to be Trump’s awful former campaign manager—came into our orbit, standing a few feet away. I asked if Speltz held any grudge. “Corey’s a good guy,” he said. “I met yesterday with him to make sure he’d call out Jeb’s votes when he made our announcement to the convention. He did a good job. We accurately represented the voters of New Hampshire. I think Jeb won a couple of delegates in South Carolina, too, but they threw all their votes to Trump here. That was a little bit unfortunate. They could have given Jeb his delegates. Trump was going to win anyway.”

Surely, I thought, Speltz must harbor lingering resentment toward the nominee, given that Trump had seized every possible opportunity—during the primary campaign and even after it had ended—to cruelly insult Jeb. “It wasn’t Jeb’s style, it wasn’t his personal preference to have that be the tone,” Speltz said. “But that’s yesterday. There’s yesterday, there’s today, and there’s tomorrow.” Would he vote for Trump in the general election? “There’s a little time involved here—we are kind of watching,” he said. “But I’m voting for the Republican Party. The most important thing is to defeat Hillary Clinton. We’re Republicans and we’re going about trying to unite.”

This was not exactly what I hoped to hear when I began my quest: I was disappointed on Jeb’s behalf. Here was one of Jeb’s own very hard-won delegates ignoring Jeb’s clearly stated clarion call not to vote for Trump in November. What does $53 million get you these days, anyway?

And again, why were these non-Trump, off-message delegates even here? To wallow in the buffets? To watch balloons drop? To schmooze? Well yes, certainly to schmooze. But wasn’t there more to it than that? Were they not also on hand to each embody the ethos of the man who’d designated them his representatives?

Who, I wondered glumly, would be a full-throated champion for Jeb?

About an hour later, a second Jeb delegate arrived in the arena. Melissa Stevens is a 36-year-old stay-at-home parent and local town councilwoman back home in New Hampshire. She’d been a Jeb supporter since last summer, had done a lot of events, and had met Jeb and the Bush family. “I met a lot of candidates in New Hampshire, in hotel lobbies,” she said. “I never had any regret about choosing Jeb when I was deciding who to support.” She described him as friendly, intelligent, and “humble.”

On the first day of the Cleveland convention, Stevens told me, she’d proudly sported her Jeb T-shirt. A few Trump fans harassed her, but she didn’t care. “I wouldn’t be here without Jeb,” she said. “I felt I owed at least that much to him and to his supporters.”

Stevens refuses to fall in line with Trump. “I’ll leave my presidential ballot blank in November. Or I’ll write Jeb in,” she said. “Jeb presented concrete policy positions. He’s a wonk. He had a record I could look at in Florida. That made me comfortable. Trump hasn’t presented much in terms of policy detail, and he’s never served as a politician, so we really don’t know what we’re getting. That makes me nervous. ”

I asked her: Did it give her any pause that her cost to Jeb equaled the approximate annual GDP of Uruguay?

“I think I’m worth every penny,” she said with a huge grin.

There was one last Jeb delegate in the triumvirate. I waited and waited for her on the arena floor, but I never found her. She didn’t respond when I emailed, texted, and phoned. And thus, my mission failed. I had found a 66 percent majority of Jeb delegates, yet I’d fallen short in the end. It seemed vaguely appropriate: What was the Jeb! 2016 campaign all about if not brutally thwarted expectations?

Still, as I watched Trump speak on the convention’s final night—shuddering at the bleak vision of America he proffered, dreading a life lived beneath his thumb—it really did hearten me to know that out there in the crowd, staring back at him, was Melissa Stevens. Representing for Jeb. Refusing to bend the knee.

Cops Came to the Republican National Convention From All Across the Country

Chelsea Hassler — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 17:54:00 GMT

CLEVELAND—A total of 5,500 police officers were brought in from all across the country to protect the constituents and participants of the Republican National Convention. A California Highway Patrol officer told Slate's Seth Stevenson that his team was 300 strong here. A Kansas highway cop said he was one of 26. The Indiana State Police and the Florida Highway Patrol were both rolling more than 100 deep.

Cops of every stripe, from every corner of the country, have come because—in a common refrain—"Cleveland asked to help out." Below is a quick selection of some of the states and cities represented on the thin blue line.

A Love Supreme

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 15:38:00 GMT

CLEVELAND—I first ran into Mr. Vermin Supreme—a perennial presidential candidate, absurdist performance artist, and wearer of a rubber boot on his head—back in May, in Orlando, when he took the Libertarian Party's convention by storm. Supreme was particularly chuffed when I saw him, as he'd managed to win an actual delegate in the first round of the libertarians' nomination voting. (Given that eventual nominee Gary Johnson had fallen five delegates short of closing the deal in that round, one could argue that Supreme changed, in his own vanishingly small way, the course of the 2016 election cycle.)

Not long after this triumph, Supreme encountered my Slate colleague Jeremy Stahl at a Bernie Sanders rally in California. Supreme told Stahl he had a bone to pick with Slate: We'd used a photo I'd snapped of him to “take potshots” at the libertarians, in what he felt to be an unsporting manner. (The photo featured Supreme holding a piece of toast that bore his own image, seared into the bread.)

Well, fret not, fans of both Supreme and Slate, for this rift has now been healed. I bumped into Supreme here in Cleveland on Tuesday, on the city's Public Square. He'd come here in a quest to win a GOP delegate. He told me he thought he might get one if things went to a third ballot, which, sadly, they didn't. I cleared the air regarding our misunderstanding, and he assured me that no ill will remains. All Supreme cares about now is continuing to promote, far and wide, his platform: “The pony-based economy, mandatory toothbrushing laws, zombie apocalypse awareness, harnessing the awesome power of zombies for energy sources, and, uh, the other one.”

I Asked GOP Conventioneers About Roger Ailes. They Were Fair, Balanced.

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 14:51:00 GMT

CLEVELAND—“I think it’s more surprising that Roger Ailes is leaving Fox than that Donald Trump is the GOP nominee,” said Republican political strategist Mark McKinnon as he stood on the convention floor at the Quicken Loans Arena on Wednesday morning.

McKinnon was there to film an episode of The Circus, his Showtime series about the 2016 election cycle. McKinnon’s co-star on the show, Bloomberg Politics’ John Heilemann, stood nearby, and I asked him whether he thought Fox’s headline talent—hosts like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity—would abandon the network out of solidarity with Ailes. Heilemann thought not and, by way of explanation, rubbed the fingers of one hand together in the universal signal for “moolah.”

Outside the arena, pizza mogul and former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain wasn’t ready to give in. “You’re asking questions, but we don’t have the facts yet,” Cain said when I asked him whether he had any reaction to the Ailes news. Affirming that Ailes was a friend of his, he reiterated, “Let’s wait for the facts.”

Earlier this month, former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson sued Ailes, alleging that the Fox News chairman is a serial sexual harasser who among other things told her, during a meeting last fall, “I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better.” Since the suit was filed, more women have come forward with their own allegations of sexual harassment, and the network’s biggest star, Megyn Kelly, has reportedly told investigators that Ailes made unwanted sexual advances toward her a decade ago. Ailes is now negotiating the terms of his ouster.

There is no more awkward time for a politico to fall from grace than during a party convention. Just ask Dick Morris. In 1996, Morris—then President Clinton’s chief campaign adviser—resigned during the Democratic Party’s convention in Chicago, amid reports that he’d cheated on his wife with a sex worker. Morris created a doozy of a distraction on the day his boss was to deliver the capstone convention speech.

But Ailes means exponentially more to the Republican Party than Morris ever meant to Democrats. I decided to gauge how Ailes’ ouster was going over in the hallways and plazas of the RNC.

Some attendees weren’t aware of the matter. Some declined to comment—including former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. “I have no reaction,” said Lewandowski, when I buttonholed him on the arena concourse. “I don’t know him.”

Some folks quickly declared that, if Ailes did what he’s accused of, he should be fired. “If it's true he should be out,” said one woman. “In the 21^stcentury those things can't happen,” said one man.

But others were reluctant to judge Ailes’ behavior.

“I know he has girls, or women, that work at Fox charging him with sexual harassment,” said a bearded man in a cowboy hat, standing in an outdoor area within the security perimeter that’s been dubbed Freedom Plaza. “I don’t know the details. Maybe he was just complimenting how they look that day and they took it as something else. In Texas, we treat women with respect, and we're coming to a place where maybe they don’t like that, but they can let us know instead of trying to be litigious. We're not litigious in Texas. … Say I was her husband, and my wife tells me Roger Ailes said those things. I'm going to go to her work and I'll take care of it myself.”

“There’s more serious things happening in our country,” said a female Kansas delegate. “There’s Muslims coming here to try to kill us. I don’t need to know about someone’s sex life. Sometimes a man sees a woman and he just says things.”

Ailes has been brought low at the very moment his ideological legacy is being secured here in Cleveland. The Republican Party over which he long held sway is nominating for the presidency the embodiment of all that dyspeptic white grievance Ailes put on television. “Fox’s populist style didn’t look that much like the populism of the Goldwaterites or the religious right,” New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote on Wednesday. “But it did clearly resemble, and prepare the way for, the authoritarian and very New York populism of Donald Trump.”

How integral to the GOP was Ailes? Asked about the Ailes situation, one man in Cleveland replied, "We can't comment about that, we're working with the convention."

"But Roger Ailes is at Fox News,” the man was reminded, “not the RNC."

"They're the same thing," the man replied.

The Weirdest Merchandise at the Republican National Convention

Aymann Ismail — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 20:49:00 GMT

As you might expect, the streets outside the Republican National Convention in Cleveland are filled with vendors hawking political merchandise. Some is standard fare. Some is a little ... edgier. We took a tour of the booths to check out the 2016 presidential retail marketplace. Keep your eye out for Hillary cereal, Trump condoms, and all manner of outrageous offenses to taste.

Watch RNC Attendees Praise Melania Trump’s Best Line*

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 18:56:00 GMT

In the wake of the plagiarism scandal surrounding Melania Trump’s cribbing of Michelle Obama’s words, RNC attendees were quick to defend their nominee’s wife. Facts appeared to be somewhat optional in the defense of her opening night speech. That being the case, we hit the streets outside the convention hall, and asked about some of the other lines in her remarks—you know, when she talked about human rights being women’s rights (Hillary Clinton), and how immigrants have strengthened the fabric of American life (JFK).

The video above shows what we heard in response to the stirring section of Melania's speech in which she talks about fighting in the hills, and on the beaches, and how we will never surrender.

Rove in an Elevator

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 16:21:50 GMT

CLEVELAND—After I was turned away at the door of BuzzFeed’s rooftop party outside the GOP convention in Cleveland Tuesday night (LOL! WTF? FAIL!), I hopped on the first open elevator back down to street level.* I quickly discovered, to my surprise and delight, that this elevator contained Karl Rove, the political strategist in town on behalf of Fox News. As the doors slid shut, Rove turned to a man next to him—a slick-looking, older white fellow in a suit—and launched into what appeared to be a literal elevator pitch.

“I want to seize the moment here,” said Rove, in a buttonholing manner. “Did you get the information about FirstNet?” The other fellow’s back was to me. He seemed to nod. He might have mumbled something noncommittal. “There's a tremendous opportunity there,” Rove continued, “if you consider the possibilities.” At this point, the doors opened and the two men—along with a few other, seemingly unconnected folks—exited into the lobby.

What is the significance of this exchange? Difficult to say. But here’s some useful information:

FirstNet is America’s yet-to-launch, government-funded, theoretically fail-safe public-safety broadband network for first responders. As of June 30, a “secret evaluation team”—approved by and possibly composed in part of members of FirstNet’s board of directors—was still in the process of reviewing proposals to build out the network. The winning bidder will enter into an “unprecedented 25-year public-safety broadband deal,” but “details regarding the bidding cannot be disclosed by the government, including who is on the team evaluating the proposals and selecting the best bid.”

How Rove figures into this isn’t clear; I couldn’t find any mention of him in connection with FirstNet. I did find this story in the New York Times, however. It’s from December 2014 and is titled, “Board of Public-Safety Communications Network Is Criticized Over Conflicts”:

The board overseeing a $7 billion nationwide public-safety communications network paid ''no systematic attention to potential conflicts of interest'' among its members, several of whom have financial ties to the telecommunications industry, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Commerce Department's inspector general.

Members of the board of FirstNet, as the communications network is known, did not file timely public financial disclosure reports, the report said. The board's contracting practices also lacked the required transparency, the report said, resulting in inadequate oversight of hiring and the payment of erroneous costs during the board's first year in operation.

In one case, an ethics official took eight months to correct one board member's failure to disclose a significant financial conflict of interest. […]

Telecommunications companies stand to reap billions of dollars from the construction and operation of the FirstNet system, which was established in 2012 to address the communications failures among public safety officials on Sept. 11, 2001. Six of the board's 15 members are current or former telecommunications company executives, including the board's current chairwoman and its founding chairman.

The whole thing sounds totally above suspicion. No boondoggle here, no sir. I’m sure Rove’s interest in FirstNet stems wholly from his civic-minded longing to create a reliable comms system for America’s first responders. What sort of “opportunity” could be more exciting than that?

*Correction, July 20, 2016: This post originally misstated the date of the BuzzFeed party. It was Tuesday night, not Wednesday night.

Watch RNC Attendees Praise Melania Trump’s Finest Quotes*

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 05:09:00 GMT

CLEVELAND—Republicans outside the GOP convention today were eager to defend Melania Trump against charges of plagiarism: No big deal, only a few passages. So we thought we’d ask them about some the less-addressed lines from her speech. Like that moment when she called for us to defend our beaches against the Nazis. Or that stirring passage where she urged us to send a man to the moon.

As the video above shows, the breadth, muscularity, and originality inherent in Melania’s language is almost—but not quite—beyond belief.

At Trump’s RNC, Disloyal Swing States Sit in the Back of the Arena

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 18 Jul 2016 23:22:38 GMT

As Slate walked the floor of the Republican National Convention this morning in Cleveland, we noticed hometown GOP delegations like New York and Connecticut earned favored seating at the very front of Quicken Loans Arena. Meanwhile, potentially disputed states in the fall—Colorado, Virginia—were seated in the far back of the floor.

This seems especially notable in the wake of this afternoon’s Never Trump meltdown, during which the party tried to stage-manage dissent into oblivion. Not sure that's working.

Hillary Clinton’s Ads Are Using Trump’s Words Against Him in an Ingenious Way

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 19:11:53 GMT

The archetypal negative political ad shows the bad guy candidate in a black-and-white photo as a gravel-voiced narrator lists concerns about his record. Superimpose a few damning newspaper headlines, end with a tagline (“Wrong for your family! Wrong for America!”), and call it a day.

But the forces opposing Donald Trump seem to have settled on a different template. No narrator, no headlines. Instead, multiple anti-Trump TV ads in this cycle have featured Trump in his own words, framed to demonstrate how those words sound as heard through the ears of various, specific audiences. First women, then the disabled, and now children.

Back in May, there was a spot called “Speak,” from the Democratic Super PAC Priorities USA, that featured women lip-syncing to audio of Trump’s most misogynistic statements. (That ad was itself derivative of a previous ad from a right-wing, anti-Trump organization.) More recently, also from Priorities USA, came “Grace” and “Dante”—two ads in which a clip of Trump mocking a disabled journalist is contextualized via interviews with people whose lives have been touched by disability. In both cases, the idea is to foreground not Trump but rather his targets, forcing the viewer to contemplate how Trump’s words are received by the people who are in his crosshairs.

The Hillary Clinton campaign has evidently noted the approach, and is now emulating it. In a new spot from the campaign titled “Role Models,” we observe cherubic kids as they watch TV clips of Trump saying outrageous, offensive things. A Latino child watches Trump calling Mexicans “racists”; a young girl watches a clip of Trump hating on women. Again, Trump’s own words are being used against him. And again, instead of taking our cues from that gravel-voiced announcer of yore, we’re invited to view and hear Trump’s statements through the eyes and ears of the vulnerable. It’s a powerful framing device, and I expect we’ll see more of it through November.

The NRA’s First Trump Ad Is All About Benghazi

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 22:00:00 GMT

The National Rifle Association is wading into the presidential ad wars. The gun lobby’s political arm, the NRA Political Victory Fund, has released a new TV spot and will spend a reported $2 million to spread it.

The ad features Mark “Oz” Geist, a retired Marine who provided security services to the U.S. government in Benghazi at the time of the 2012 attacks. We watch Geist strolling the grounds of a cemetery as he speaks earnestly to the camera, mourning his “friends” who “didn’t make it.” The ad then abruptly transitions to the campaign. “Hillary as president?” Geist asks, before answering his own question: “No thanks.”

There’s a lot to wonder about here. For instance: Why does the ad show hundreds of graves when only four Americans died in Benghazi? And why does Geist appear to have been filmed inside a national cemetery when government policy explicitly prohibits filming ads in those locales?

But the more interesting question to me is: Who is this ad trying to reach, and why? One presumes that an ad aimed at the swing electorate would attempt to present a more nuanced case against Hillary Clinton than “No thanks.” This spot takes your Hillary hatred as a given, and assumes you already blame her for those deaths in Benghazi.

Given the way the spot begins—with a swipe at folks who threaten not to vote in November because their favored candidates didn’t win the nomination—it seems clear that the target here is GOP voters who aren’t yet sold on Donald Trump. It’s marketing that’s designed to rally the base around the Republican nominee, though it never names him until “TRUMP 2016” flashes across the screen at the very end.

Clinton and her allies outspent Trump on June ads in battleground states by a score of $26 million to zero. It might come as little reassurance for Trump fans that the first real effort to fight back isn’t even pretending to change hearts and minds—it’s simply hoping to shore up the GOP candidate’s fractured foundation.

“He’s Obsessed With Menstruation”

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 16 Jun 2016 18:54:00 GMT

We know about Donald Trump’s on-camera persona as the star of The Apprentice: his tyrannical management style, his gruff demeanor, his terse catchphrase. But what was Trump like between takes, when the cameras were off but the crew was watching?

Slate reached out to find people who’d worked on The Apprentice during Trump’s tenure. Most people we contacted declined to talk, citing nondisclosure agreements they’d signed as a condition of their employment on the show. But three were willing to speak—as long as we didn’t use their names. And one spoke to us on the record.

What do they recall about Trump’s on-set behavior? It’s a lot like his campaign behavior.

Yep, He’s a Misogynist

“He was always very open about describing women by their breast size. Any time I see people in the Trump organization say how nice he is, I want to throw up. He’s been a nasty person to women for a long time,” says one crew member. “My girlfriend at the time was a production assistant on the show and he made a comment about her, knowing that he was mic’d and that we’d all hear it. He said, ‘Who’s that hot little girl running around?’ For a second I was like, Cool, Donald Trump thinks my girlfriend is hot. But then I was like, Wait, an old man said something about my 28-year-old girlfriend. Take it easy, homeboy.”

“He would talk about the female contestants’ bodies a lot from the control room,” recalls one midlevel producer. “We shot in Trump Tower, the control room was on the seventh floor, and he walked in one day and was talking about a contestant, saying, ‘Her breasts were so much bigger at the casting. Maybe she had her period then.’ He knows he’s mic’d and that 30 people are hearing this, but he didn’t care. That’s kind of him. During the campaign, when he was talking about Megyn Kelly, I thought: He’s obsessed with menstruation.”

As Rumored, He’s Also a Germophobe

“He’s not good with people touching him, he’s very germophobic,” said one crew member. “We were instructed never to touch him—he wouldn’t shake hands,” said another.

He Takes Credit for Donations Without Actually Opening up His Own Wallet

“At a wrap party at the end of one season,” recalls a crew member, “he gave a speech to all the crew. And at the end of it, he rolled out a couple dozen bottles of Dom Pérignon for us to drink. We all applauded. It seemed really generous. I’d never had Dom before. But later we found out from the people on the production side that he’d forced them to pay for that, so his gesture really came out of the show’s budget.”

He Likes to Keep “a Fat Guy” Around

“There was a fat contestant who was a buffoon and a fuckup,” recalls the midlevel producer. “And he would fuck up week after week, and the producers would figure that he’d screwed up so badly that Trump would have to fire him. But Trump kept deciding to fire someone else. The producers had to scramble because of course Trump can never be seen to make a bad call on the show, so we had to re-engineer the footage to make a different contestant look bad. Later, I heard a producer talk to him, and Trump said, ‘Everybody loves a fat guy. People will watch if you have a funny fat guy around. Trust me, it’s good for ratings.’ I look at Chris Christie now and I swear that’s what’s happening.”

He Knows How to Manipulate an Audience

“He was always a narcissist, you can see that,” says Bill Pruitt, producer on Seasons 1 and 2 of The Apprentice, and later a producer on the reality shows The Amazing Race and Deadliest Catch. “But on the TV show, what you didn’t see, what we saw, was the evolution of a storyteller. You could see how keenly aware Trump became of the story he was telling as it was shaped by the producers around him—of Omarosa’s decline, or Bill Rancic’s rise to glory. Reality TV is the public pillory now, the grand coliseum where we give the big thumbs up or thumbs down. And it shaped him.”

“I’ve been struggling with the whole experience of watching Trump go from punch line to GOP nominee,” Pruitt says, “because of how it reflects on reality TV, which is the work I’ve been dedicating my life to for the last 10 years. The associations are glaring. Those in our business who hadn’t already taken stock of what we wrought, we’re doing it now. I might have signed an NDA back in the day that would allow someone to come after me, but I feel almost a patriotic duty to talk about this.

“Those of us involved in the show are proud of our work. But we might have given the guy a platform and created this candidate. It’s guys like him, narcissists with dark Machiavellian traits, who dominate in our culture, on TV, and in the political realm. It can be dangerous when we confuse stories we’re told with reality. We need to wake up—and that’s from someone who helped tell these stories.”

Are you a former Apprentice crew member or contestant with stories to tell? Email us at tips@slate.com.

The Ceiling Above Hillary Clinton Tuesday Night Was Not Glass

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 03:05:00 GMT

Hillary Clinton began her speech Tuesday night in the Brooklyn Navy Yard by asserting that those of us in attendance were gathered beneath not just a metaphorical but a literal glass ceiling.

It may be hard to see tonight, but we are all standing under a glass ceiling right now. But don't worry, we're not smashing this one. Thanks to you, we've reached a milestone. The first time in our nation's history that a woman will be a major party nominee.

We all looked up, to an overhang of ... mostly wood and metal. To be fair, there was a thin ribbon of windows. But Slate can report that Secretary Clinton began the biggest night of her life with a minor fib.

Libertarians Are Loons

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 31 May 2016 09:59:00 GMT

ORLANDO, Florida—It was just a couple of hours before the Libertarian Party’s final presidential debate. C-SPAN cameras were firing up; delegates were filing in. But one debate participant was still on the dance floor adjacent to the convention hall, swaying to techno music with a goblet of beer sloshing in his hand. John McAfee, founder of the eponymous anti-virus software company and a major candidate in the Libertarian race, had apparently eschewed traditional debate prep. Instead he was rocking out, pausing only to deep-tongue-kiss his wife—for what seemed an awkward and unnecessarily prolonged span of time—as his mesmerized constituents grew increasingly disquieted.

A young man in shorts and combat boots, spotting a break in the frenching, scrambled up to McAfee to shake the candidate’s hand and shout, “You’re awesome!” When I pulled this guy aside and asked why he favored McAfee, he began, “My main concern is interstate commerce legislation,” launching a runon sentence that somehow ended, after several minutes and some really surprising detours, with an avowal that “humans will be displaced by A.I. the same way we displaced the whales and the rhinoceroses, and so it’s important to remember that bigotry is better than slavery.” As he reached his conclusion, a woman suddenly towered over us on stilts, wearing 12-foot-wide strap-on butterfly wings and waving a McAfee campaign sign to the beat.

That pretty much sums up the Libertarian convention, which met in Orlando over Memorial Day weekend. Our current Donald Trump–shaped moment is almost certainly the party’s best-ever shot to a make an impact on a presidential election, as voters disappointed in their major party options look around for an alternative. But after spending 48 hours amid loony Libertarians, it’s pretty clear to me that the only way for the party’s ticket to succeed in a big way—to get on the debate stage with the major-party candidates in the fall, and to reach double digits in November—is for the ticket to leave the party behind.

The convention this year was subject to unprecedented levels of outside scrutiny, a result of 1) the widespread distaste for the two major party candidates and 2) the likelihood that the Libertarians will be the only third-party option to appear on all 50 state ballots in November. The mountain of media credentials issued, according to the party’s press operation, was 20 times larger than at any previous Libertarian event. Party chairman Nicholas Sarwark told me he’s “been on the phone with the press pretty much nonstop since Ted Cruz dropped out.” But while all this new attention was welcomed by the party chairman, the rank and file were much less prepared for it and much more ambivalent about it.

Some delegates seemed to resent the brighter spotlight, wishing things could go back to how they’d been before—a desire that, when voiced by men wearing T-shirts adorned with stipple-dot portraits of Friedrich Hayek, sounded a lot like a high school kid whining that his favorite indie band had signed with a major label. Meanwhile, others I talked to saw this moment not as an opportunity for Libertarians to meet nonwoke America halfway, but rather as a chance to let their freak flag flap before an exponentially wider audience. And oh, did it flap: Among the leading candidates for the party’s nomination were men who, by nigh any external standard, qualify as total nutters.

Consider: McAfee—who fled his own Central American residential compound while under suspicion by the Belizean government for the murder of his neighbor; who openly admits that said compound featured a harem of teenage Belizean sex workers; who likes to talk about the time a 16-year-old Belizean prostitute tried to shoot him in the head at point blank range; who bounced around the hotel halls wearing a three-piece suit and a pair of Nikes like some kind of Mad Hatter on meth—had regularly polled in third place for the nomination in the lead-up to the convention and even seemed to have a puncher’s chance to win. Further consider: He was barely the weirdest candidate on the scene.

Polling second coming into the convention, just ahead of McAfee, was a guy named Austin Petersen. Petersen’s 35 and looks 14, but question if he’s seasoned enough and he’ll yelp, “Tell that to the Marquis de Lafayette.” His go-to applause line: “I want gay couples to defend their marijuana fields with fully automatic weapons.” Polling fourth, one slot behind McAfee, was a fellow named Darryl W. Perry, who accepts campaign donations only in the form of precious metals and cryptocurrency and who opted to have his nominating speech delivered by an “erotic services provider” who goes by the moniker “Starchild.” Perry’s most animated moment in the debate came when he slammed his fist against his lectern, forehead veins a-popping, as he insisted that 5-year-old children should have the legal right to inject heroin without adult supervision.

At the middle of this madness—literally, given that he stood at the center lectern when the debate stage lights flashed on and the microphones went live—was Gary Johnson. Johnson served as the Libertarian presidential candidate back in 2012. He received 1 percent of the vote. You might also remember him as a generally respected former two-term governor of New Mexico who was re-elected by a solid margin.

Despite his establishment bona fides, Johnson is still outside the norm for a politician with White House aspirations. He believes in total abolition of the income tax, he has invested in a cannabis company, and he freely admits he’s consumed marijuana within the past month. But in the land of the freakish candidate, the merely refreshingly odd candidate is king. Johnson looks like a typical politician, with a typical politician haircut, and he exhibits no outwardly evident desire to surround himself with teenage sex workers. Perhaps because of this, or perhaps in spite of it, he was the clear favorite to win the Libertarian nomination as the debate kicked off.

And gosh did that debate demonstrate that the Libertarian Party isn’t close to ready—or maybe doesn’t ever want to be ready—for political prime time. The moderator routinely got the candidates’ names wrong. There was an audio failure that made them sound like they were speaking through kazoos. A man dressed as Jesus Christ walked directly in front of the stage, holding a McAfee sign aloft, and nobody bothered to stop him. Candidate Marc Allan Feldman (oh, right, there was a fifth candidate—an anesthesiologist whom no one had heard of and who had apparently never even voted until after he was 50 years old, who somehow also made it into the debate) performed a bizarre Libertarian rap that had him spluttering sputum into his microphone while delineating the principles of freedom.

Throughout all this, Johnson remained calm in the eye of the storm—even keeping his cool when he was roundly booed by much of the audience. The first boos came when Johnson admitted that, given the chance, he would have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Boooooooo! A second hail of raspberries came when Johnson, alone among the candidates, said he thought a driver’s license was a reasonable thing to require before allowing someone to drive. “I’d like to see some demonstration of basic competency,” Johnson acknowledged, rather meekly. Boooooooo! (Perry seized the moment, basically insisting that blind 4-year-olds should be legally permitted to drive without any sort of government imprimatur.)

When it was over, I found Johnson upstairs at the postdebate party in his campaign suite, looking mildly relieved. When I asked if he’d prepared any tactical plan to deal with these “nontraditional” candidates, he said, a little defensively, “I figure myself to be in the nontraditional category, too. But yeah, all you can do is provide the voice of reason. And I try to provide that all the time. There’s a vocal group in there, but I think—outside of a Libertarian convention setting—what I say resonates with most people in a big way.”

Johnson was guarded as we spoke, parrying my efforts to get him to admit that the core of his party is a pack of weirdos. So I threw him a change-up: As a marijuana user, did he prefer indica or sativa? (Indica is associated with a couch-bound “body high,” while sativa is associated with a thoughtful “head high.”) “I tell the truth,” he laughed, “and in fact I did some marijuana product four weeks ago. It was sativa, and it was one of the Colorado products. But I’m not doing any more right now. The knife needs to be sharp.” The fact that Johnson has managed not to get stoned for a full lunar cycle doesn’t exactly make him Mitt Romney, but I guess it’s a step on the path to becoming a more widely palatable mainstream candidate.

Delegate voting began the next morning. When the first wave of ballots came in, a little before lunch, Johnson was only five votes short of clinching the nomination. One vote had gone to Ron Paul (who wasn’t running). One vote had gone to Vermin Supreme (a longtime campaign performance artist who was wandering the convention hall with a rubber boot on his head). Sixty-three votes had gone to Perry (who, oh yeah, I forgot to mention, had spent a strangely inordinate amount of airtime during the debate talking about a trans adult film star named Buck Angel).

The media on hand got giddy: a contested convention at last! And now the arm-twisting of delegates began, as candidates wrangled votes for the second ballot. A group of Petersen supporters surrounded Johnson and chanted in his face, “Austin, McAfee, Perry! Anyone but Gary!” until Petersen came over and asked them to stand down.

The second ballot did it for Johnson. He got 55.8 percent. Petersen conceded, and when I last saw him, he seemed at peace—carrying what appeared to be an antique flintlock pistol through the halls of the hotel.

It seemed that Johnson’s pleas for compromise and maturity had, in the end, won over the room, despite the room’s misgivings. Johnson might be a squishy heretic who wants drivers to continue to obtain driver’s licenses. But he’s the closest thing this party has to a credible, mainstream advocate for its worldview. Johnson’s strong résumé and sane, non-Starchild-ish mien might even be enough to get him to 15 percent in the polls during this crazy election cycle (he’s already hit 10 percent in at least one of them), and that would mean appearing onstage at the big-league debates in the fall—alongside Hillary Clinton and Trump. Sure, Johnson’s a bit of a drip, with little charisma. But if he can articulate a moderate, Libertarian-ish platform, some disaffected voters might be tempted to give the party, or at least the candidate, a look.

Fresh off his second ballot victory, Johnson took the stage and begged the crowd to go ahead and nominate his vice presidential choice, former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld. The 70-year-old Weld had only been a Libertarian for two weeks and was guilty of many policy heresies in the eyes of party purists, but Johnson argued that he’d bring credibility—and a fundraising Rolodex—that no other candidate could offer the ticket. I guess Johnson knew that, for all their battiness, even the Libertarians want some standing in the process.

Earlier in the morning, I’d spotted Weld sitting all by himself in the back of the convention hall. I asked if I could talk with him, and he patted a neighboring chair and invited me to sit. He was studying an anti-Johnson leaflet someone had been handing out. “I always like to know what the opposition is saying,” he explained. “They don’t seem to like Gary’s advocacy for a consumption tax. But neither do I. I think it's regressive.”

Like Johnson, Weld got booed repeatedly over the course of the convention. Did he think he could square himself with a party that was putting up so much resistance? “I’ve read the Libertarian Party platform, and it’s pretty good,” he said, with the air of a man who is pleasantly surprised when he gets his car repair bill. “There’s not a lot in there that’s way out. It’s all principles of nonintervention and less government. Ninety-eight percent of it was music to my ears.”

Weld looked wildly out of place here. I couldn’t resist asking if he even knew the difference between indica and sativa. “I'm so sorry to say, but I’ve never smoked a cigarette of any kind,” he said. “I know—booooring.”

Weld failed to clinch on the first nomination ballot. As he waited for the revote, some candidates vying to replace Sarwark as party chair gave their speeches. The first of these put his cellphone on the lectern, played a song into the microphone, and stripped down to his underwear, shaking rolls of fat in some sort of demented burlesque. Several rounds of parliamentary debate followed, as delegates asked if it was possible to strip the stripper of his party membership. It was somewhere in the middle of this that Weld won the nomination on the second ballot.

Weld and Johnson walked together down the hotel concourse, headed for their first press conference as a united presidential ticket. They’d won the only real prize at stake in Orlando. No, not the hearts and minds of 1,000 diehard Libertarians. Weld and Johnson don’t need them—these guys can get free media on their own, and they can get their funding from their rich Republican #NeverTrump pals and maybe even from the Kochs. The only thing they needed from this convention was the ballot access. With that in hand, Weld and Johnson can now leave Starchild, and the butterfly woman, and Darryl Perry’s popping veins, far behind.

The press pack trailed the newly anointed duo as they veered into an ancillary ballroom, where the regular convention attendees were not allowed to follow. The weekend was over, and it was suddenly clear that the freaks had lost. We passed a woman who angrily hissed: “Congratulations, establishment!”

New Pro-Hillary Super PAC Ad Looks a Lot Like the GOP Effort to Stop Trump

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 17 May 2016 21:19:00 GMT

Priorities USA, a pro-Hillary super PAC, has dropped a pair of new ads attacking Donald Trump. If you paid close attention to the primary battle on the Republican side, one of these ads might look awfully familiar.

First, go back to mid-March, when a conservative anti-Trump super PAC called Our Priorities aired an ad titled “Quotes.” In the spot, ordinary women of all ages—standing before a featureless background—read aloud past statements in which Trump spewed vicious, misogynistic bile.

Now, check out this new Priorities USA ad, titled “Speak,” part of a $6 million media buy airing on TV from Wednesday through June 8 in Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Nevada. In the spot, ordinary women of all ages—standing before a featureless, white background—lip sync to audio recordings in which Trump spews vicious, misogynistic bile.

The Los Angeles Times described “Quotes” as one of the “most effective” ads from this entire election cycle, as determined by political science researchers (though it premiered too late to make a difference in the race). Priorities USA clearly agreed the formula was a winner. Justin Barasky, communications director for the PAC, confirmed as much in a phone interview. “The Republican efforts to stop Trump taught us a lot,” said Barasky. “They spent too little, too late. But we focus-grouped what they did. We tested it to see what worked.”

Again and again, pundits have marveled at Trump’s ability to survive his own outrageous behavior: mocking the disabled, scoffing at prisoners of war, combing his hair like that. It’s as though Trump moves within some sort of force field, letting him say or do whatever he likes with little personal repercussions. As the candidate himself once put it: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters.”

These ads are a sneaky effort to circumvent Trump’s hypnotic hold over America. They do it by putting distance between Trump’s ugly quotes and Trump’s mesmerizing, Teflon persona. The notion they bank on is that anyone but Trump caught saying the very same things would be hounded off the national stage. The remedy they settle on is that Trump’s words are best used against him by placing them in other people’s mouths, where they suddenly seem harsher, and where voters can ponder them in isolation.

The masterstroke is in casting women as the vessels for Trump’s blustery rot. We’re forced to weigh the dignity of these everyday women against the denigration of Trump’s woman-hating words. And we’re made to realize how juvenile—how small—Trump’s statements sound when they’re severed from the fancy suits, the high-rise podiums, and the alpha-male body language.

“All I Can Say Is That This Is a Very Dumb Country”

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 12 May 2016 20:57:06 GMT

Back in early March, I went looking for GOP voters who didn’t love Donald Trump. This was not a scientific undertaking—my sample size was 13 people, found through my own social and professional networks. I just wanted a glimpse of the thought process of longtime Republicans who were uncomfortable making Trump their party’s nominee. How did they plan to vote in November, should Trump in fact make the ballot versus Hillary Clinton?

At the time, when Trump had won New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada but was not yet a lock, two of them said they’d vote Trump in the fall; five said they’d vote for Hillary; and six were on the fence, planned to sit out, vote third-party, or write someone else in. This week, I checked back with these same voters. Now that Trump has indeed become the presumptive GOP nominee, I wondered: Would these folks fall in line, given that Trump has the party’s imprimatur? Would any be pushed further toward Hillary or a third-party candidate? Here’s what I found.

Who: civil litigation attorney, male, 45, California
Voting background: has always voted GOP in previous presidential elections
What he said he’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: probably vote for Trump
What he says now: 80-90 percent sure he can’t vote for Trump under any circumstances
Change of heart: yes

The reality of the apparent Trump nomination has me dispirited. I am 80-90 percent sure that I cannot vote for Trump under any circumstances, even if he put a solid conservative on the ticket, a result that I don’t anticipate. While he may be slightly better than Hillary on a number of issues, he is unpredictable and unmoored. I guess I would rather have a predictable and reliable adversary than an unpredictable and unreliable leader.

I find him temperamentally unsuited for the presidency. The man is an ass. I enjoy him for entertainment value, but this is serious business, and he is not a serious man. One keeps waiting for him to be more presidential, to say, “OK, the fun and games are over, but I’m a serious guy who understands this is a big deal.” I get no sense of that from him.

I am looking at voting for Gov. Gary Johnson [who will likely top the Libertarian ticket]. If an independent Republican or conservative ran, I would likely vote for that person even though I don’t support drafting such a candidate.

* * *

Who: retired attorney, male, 74, California
Voting background: has voted GOP since Barry Goldwater, with one break for Ross Perot in 1992
What he said he’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: vote for Trump
What he says now: vote for Trump
Change of heart: no

I’m in pretty much the same place, although I will confess that the recent Bret Stephens piece in the Wall Street Journal made me say, “Hmmmmm.” I will also say that there is much time and opportunity for external matters (the economy, China and the Pacific, Putin, ISIS, etc.) as well as the candidates to make significant changes. Heck, maybe my son and daughter-in-law could even convince me that they are right and I am wrong. But to answer the question, I still think (note well: think, not feel) that Hillary is not worthy or trustworthy, and I’d rather roll the Trump dice.

* * *

Who: federal HR employee, female, 40, Kentucky
Voting background: has voted GOP in every previous presidential election
What she said she’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: vote for Hillary
What she says now: even more likely to vote for Hillary
Change of heart: no

Trump sickens me even more now than when you first asked me. I was on a business trip with a Trump fan who told me, “I just think he’s funny. I love that he says exactly what he thinks! I just want to see how much he can get away with!” As if it was all a big joke, pure entertainment. It is terrifying. I don’t see how any thinking person could be anything but insulted by his candidacy.

Also, my husband is in the Army. The thought of Trump as his commander in chief terrifies me. I think I first started to despise Trump when he belittled John McCain. Hillary isn’t my first choice to lead the military, but she is the best of bad options. Again, at least I feel like she would engage in critical thinking before taking action.

On the Hillary side, I would say that my support is solidifying. I could still be tempted by [Mitt] Romney or [Paul] Ryan, but Hillary is close enough to the middle for me to be comfortable. Her detailed plans appeal to me. Even when I disagree with her, I feel like she has put enough thought into her opinion for me to respect it. I also see her as someone who can keep all the plates in the air. Finally, I am really ready to vote for a woman. I know it is a weird thing to be so affected by, but Trump’s rant about the “woman card” really pissed me off. Even as a relatively young woman, I’ve had to fight for credibility and equal opportunities. Hillary went through worse. Hearing Trump make his stupid, sneering remarks made my blood boil. Hillary has put in the time and effort to earn my vote. So, yeah, firmly in Hillary’s camp now.

* * *

Who: business owner and CEO, male, 44, Washington, D.C.
Voting background: has always voted GOP in presidential elections, save for a libertarian vote in 2004
What he said he’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: pray
What he says now: not vote
Change of heart: not really

Trump has done nothing to disabuse me of the sentiments I formed months ago. And Hillary will always be Hillary: fundamentally untrustworthy. Short of a Romney third-party candidacy, I will likely just not vote. And I will take some pleasure in watching Trump come apart at the seams this fall. Hillary is miserable, but she’d at least preserve the republic for a [Marco] Rubio or Ryan to inherit in 2020.

* * *

Who: retired attorney, female, 52, California
Voting background: has always voted GOP in presidential elections but abstained in 2008
What she said she’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: probably not vote, possibly vote for Hillary.
What she says now: vote for Gary Johnson or not vote at all
Change of heart: not really

I remain as baffled and appalled as ever. If the California general election ballot looks the way I think it will, I will probably vote for Gary Johnson or just not vote the top of the ticket.

* * *

Who: attorney, female, 39, Virginia
Voting background: has always voted GOP in presidential elections, save for a libertarian vote in 2000
What she said she’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: not vote
What she says now: might vote for Sen. Ben Sasse or might not vote
Change of heart: no

My feelings about Trump haven’t changed. I have always planned to go to the polls in November to cast my ballot to support re-election of my Republican congresswoman, but I am still not sure which, if any, vote I might cast for the presidential race. Over the past month as Trump’s nomination started to look inevitable, I have seen a lot of my friends declare on Facebook that they are no longer Republicans. I’ve essentially been crying out to them, “No, don’t leave! There’s a lot more to it than the presidential nomination! We can’t just drop out and let the mobs take over!” That’s why I’m convinced we need someone to rally around so those of us who lean right but are deeply unsettled by the Trump phenomenon (and all that gave rise to it) don’t feel completely voiceless and powerless and give up on political engagement.

I like the talk I’m hearing of Sen. Ben Sasse potentially running as an independent (or however he might be designated on the ballot). I think there needs to be an additional incentive for conservatives who identify as #NeverTrump to go to the polls to vote for the Senate and House races. I would support him running for this reason. I think Hillary’s election is pretty much inevitable at this point, and unlike Trump at least she’s predictable and pragmatic, so it doesn’t deter me knowing an independent run has almost no chance of actually winning the presidency. I’m most concerned about holding the Senate GOP majority at this point, to check and balance her. That’s how the Constitution designed our government to be, after all.

* * *

Who: retired executive, male, 75, New Jersey
Voting background: has always voted GOP in previous presidential elections
What he said he’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: vote for Hillary
What he says now: vote for Hillary
Change of heart: no

My Trump revulsion factor has actually gone up quite a bit since March. I was looking for discussion on policies and programs to solve issues facing the U.S. But Trump has spent his time attacking individuals, groups, and even nations without spending a minute on solutions below the 50,000-foot level. I tuned him out. Hillary has the qualifications and experience, and I will comfortably cast my first-ever Democratic vote for her in the general election. Maybe the Republican Party will wake up if the loss is large enough. Probably not.

* * *

Who: stay-at-home parent, female, 38, Virginia
Voting background: has voted GOP in every presidential election
What she said she’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: write in a different candidate
What she says now: write in someone or leave her ballot blank
Change of heart: no

Nothing has changed for me, except for my growing disdain for both candidates. I’m hoping that a third-party candidate emerges. I don’t have my eye on anyone—I’m waiting to see who comes out, and I’m hoping and expecting it to be better than the presumptive nominees at this point. I’ll still vote the down ballot and might leave the presidential slot empty. It’s an ugly place to be, as someone involved in politics who pays attention and cares about the outcome, but I can’t bring myself to vote for either of these two candidates. Any opportunity that Trump is given to show his character and extend his hand to conservatives and other people for whom he has not been their first choice he just throws it in their faces and says, “I don’t need them anyway. I don’t care about them anyway.” He’s very dismissive. That kind of attitude, I can’t appreciate it. It makes me angry.

* * *

Who: attorney, male, 33, Illinois
Voting background: has voted GOP in every previous presidential election
What he said he’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: vote for Hillary
What he says now: vote for Hillary
Change of heart: no

I’m still definitely with Hillary and will never vote for Trump. I guess if Hillary is going to demolish Trump (say, more than 10 percent but maybe even 20 percent), I’d vote for Gary Johnson if he gets the libertarian nod. If there’s even a remote risk Trump might be president, I’ll vote for Hillary. I think my view of Hillary has improved slightly, but that’s probably due to the fact that I’m supporting her now, and the people left in the race are so horrendous. I expect she’ll do a job similar to Obama, which I can live with. If Hillary effectively tacks to the center, I could see myself voting for her and not Johnson even if she’s winning by 20 points.

Trump’s views on monetary policy, changing libel laws, and encouraging violence from his supporters has hardened my opposition (if that was possible). I think Hillary looks better in light of a [Bernie] Sanders campaign that’s become increasingly negative and in light of some Sanders supporters (not all) that have become more unhinged. The calls on Hillary to drop out because of criminal activity at the State Department (which I thought were bogus when they came from the right) are particularly disturbing.

* * *

Who: tech worker, male, 39, Ohio
Voting background: has voted GOP in every previous presidential election
What he said he’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: not vote
What he says now: maybe vote Libertarian
Change of heart: not really

I gave $100 to the Libertarian candidate Austin Petersen. Nothing has changed about my opinions on Hillary or Trump. Trump taking over the GOP is like Germany invading and occupying France in World War II. Those who support him are collaborators or “Vichy Republicans.” The rest of us are free Republicans in exile. We will liberate the party some day. Just not sure when.

* * *

I pretty much checked out of the election two months ago. I saw it as a no-win situation. All the candidates are horrible. Hillary is a liar and a pretty horrible human being, but I believe that for the most part, the reasons I don’t like her are because she made tough decisions and did what she thought was best, even though it meant people weren’t going to like it. However, I feel like she is the best option to continue with the status quo. She has the experience necessary with foreign leaders. Right now she’s the lesser of two evils and the least likely to propel us into World War III. I don’t see how the nation can benefit from someone like Trump, who is so oblivious and ignorant, in office. Also, this is all I can think of when I consider the election:

* * *

Who: financial adviser, male, 30, Florida
Voting background: has voted GOP in every previous presidential election
What he said he’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: vote for Hillary
What he says now: vote for Hillary
Change of heart: no

Nothing has really changed. I’m voting for Hillary in all likelihood. I hope she moves to the middle and paints herself as a get-something-done-pragmatist (we’ll see). I would not vote third-party unless it was Sanders versus Trump. I have spent the last few months arguing the merits of socialism, which I find as ridiculous as Trump’s entire candidacy. All I can say is that this is a very dumb country. I pray that Hillary wins, and a Republican who supports free trade can beat her in four years.

* * *

Who: consultant, male, 63, Florida
Voting background: has always voted GOP in previous presidential elections
What he said he’d do in March if Trump became the nominee: probably vote for Trump … or wait, change that, Hillary
What he says now: still on the fence
Change of heart: hard to tell

With Hillary and Trump, it’s a tie with me right now. I find them both to be unacceptable. I’m going to take my responsibility seriously and vote for one, but it’ll be a game-time decision.

My concerns about Trump right now have less to do with his boorish behavior and more about his stated positions on debt, monetary policy, immigration, and so forth. But so far, I haven’t seen or heard anything from Trump that I would regard as coherent policy—45 percent duty on Chinese goods, deport millions of people, reduce our presence in NATO, give a haircut to U.S. bondholders. He has shown no grasp of economic or foreign policy.

I guess if I had to vote today, I’d vote for Hillary. But that’s just a real close call. I think she’s unqualified based on character and past behavior. To some extent, the running mates might have something to do with my ultimate decision.

It’s entertaining—that’s the only redeeming thing about this whole process.

In Search of the End of Bernie’s Campaign

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 05 May 2016 21:45:01 GMT

Three Sundays ago, just before the New York primary, I went to the enormous Bernie Sanders rally in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, to observe 28,000 Bernistas basking in afternoon sun and each other’s wokeness. Art-mope rockers Grizzly Bear played a three-song set. Actor Justin Long gave an intro speech during which he apologized for being rich. And then, at last, greeted by Beatlemania-level cheers, Bernie emerged to yell about fat-cat billionaires and imminent revolution.

Bernie had just won seven primaries in a row and gone hard after Hillary Clinton in their debate at the nearby Navy Yard. Everybody in the park seemed jazzed. Confident in their cause. Buoyed by the swell of their numbers.

You know what happened next: Hillary crushed him in New York. She crushed him again the next week in a flurry of “Acela primaries.” The delegate dorks were calling time of death on Bernie’s nomination run—practically backhoe-ing dirt over his campaign. Still, he didn’t drop out. Many assumed he’d now tone things down, stop criticizing Hillary, and play nice until he disappeared. So I flew to Indiana, the next state on the primary roster, to catalog a campaign on its last legs.

When I got there, it appeared no one had told the Hoosiers to give up the fight. At a Bernie rally in Bloomington, corn-fed college kids packed an Indiana University theater to capacity, leaping to their feet for standing O’s each time Bernie lifted his voice a notch or two above his usual bellow. A few days later, their compatriots in South Bend stuffed a convention hall to the gills, queuing up for blocks just to catch a glimpse of the sparse snowdrifts cresting Bernie’s dome.

Tuesday evening in Louisville, with Bernie doing Kentucky campaigning as he awaited Indiana results, 7,000 people stood in an outdoor, riverfront park despite the cold wind and threat of rain. These Louisvillians were every bit as pumped as their Brooklyn brothers and sisters had been a few weeks (and many delegates) before. They were psyched to boo Wall Street greed, and applaud criminal justice reform, and buy Bernie T-shirts and buttons and pins and hats and stickers.

At one point, a buzz spread through the crowd and people began to look intently at their phones. Bernie paused amid a sentence about Hillary’s Iraq War vote to make eye contact with someone offstage. “I think we don’t know,” he said hesitantly into the mic as a huge smile crept across his face. “Let’s hold off, it’s not for sure.” But it was for sure: He’d won Indiana. He was rolling on, delegate dorks be damned. Suddenly, his supporters didn’t seem quite so pitiable or naïve.

* * *

When Bernie first pinged my radar, last summer, he struck me as another in a line of irascible outsiders who tickle a certain subset of the Democratic electorate. You’ve seen cults spring up before around these high-minded, vaguely difficult men. Bill Bradley in 2000. Howard Dean in 2004. Ralph Nader in 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008 …

You can spot the type by their rumpled suits and aloof manner. See if any of this sounds familiar: Howard Dean received a flood of internet donations from an army of excited young voters. The gruff Vermonter (!) called his Democratic opponent, John Kerry, “the lesser of two evils.'” The New York Times noted Dean’s indifference to style by marveling that he “wore the same suit for weeks on end.”

Or what about this, again from the Times, but now referring to a different schlumpy, unsociable candidate: “Mr. Bradley inspired some people with the impression that he was above politics, running less as a 21^st-century politician than as an Old Testament prophet, and he deliberately packaged himself as the package-less candidate, wearing scruffy suits and disdaining the hurly-burly of political attacks and counterattacks.”

The Times at one point linked Bradley and Nader by terming them both “distinctly uncuddly.” It went on to note that Nader was “cranky” and that he “regards Hampton Inns as the height of luxury because they have serve-it-yourself breakfasts in the lobby.”

When Bernie hit the scene, he immediately took up place in this club. The Times marked his arrival, impressively, by pulling off an unkempt and irascible twofer: It questioned Sanders about his tousled hairdo, which in turn prodded Bernie to bristle at the paper’s frivolity. No surprise that Bernie eschewed a tuxedo when he attended the formal White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday. His refusal to ditch his humble blue button-down was solidly on brand.

What I’m saying is: There’s a fanbase out there for a candidate who can manage to exude this aura of purity, clearly. Some voters long not for a give-and-take politician but for a monk—a man descended from a worthier, less venal plane. Bernie’s campaign does nothing to discourage this notion: At the close of each rally, at the moment Bernie ends his speech, David Bowie’s “Starman” blasts from the public address system. “There’s a starman waiting in the sky. He’d like to come and meet us but he thinks he’d blow our minds.”

It’s not that Bernie’s supporters don’t care about issues. Of course they do. Every vote, for any candidate, is a hazy mélange of head and heart. We weigh candidates’ platforms against each other, but we also vote for a persona. A vibe. And to some extent, voting is a means of self-flattery—we use our ballots to reassure ourselves that we are hard-minded realists, or measured centrists, or fire-breathing radicals.

When I interviewed people at Sanders rallies and asked what had drawn them to Bernie, a few people led with corporate greed or getting money out of politics. But the vast majority—at least 80 percent—didn’t mention policy issues at all. Nobody praised Bernie because he wants to reinstate Glass-Steagall or hated on Hillary because she merely wishes to impose a risk fee on large financial institutions. It was all stuff like this:

“Bernie has imagination,” said a 75-year-old woman in Bloomington, who wore a hat with a flower in it. “We need visionaries.”

“With Bernie there’s sincerity. There’s authenticity,” said a 38-year-old man in Indianapolis wearing sunglasses and a Bernie T-shirt.

“Bernie is everything that’s good and right and fair in the world,” said a 57-year-old, skinny, heavily tattooed woman in South Bend.

Meanwhile, here’s what people said about Hillary:

“Hillary’s a typical, mainstream, corporate-owned politician.”

“I can’t trust her.”

“I don’t know what Hillary stands for. Maybe if she came out as a lesbian and let her freak flag fly …”

Of course, none of those previous cantankerous, disheveled dudes got nearly as far as Bernie has. Howard Dean didn’t win a single primary, dropping out after he finished third in Wisconsin. (Dean immediately launched a progressive PAC, which has recently been backing Bernie Sanders.) Bill Bradley quit after getting whupped by Al Gore on Super Tuesday, and he eventually exited politics to become an investment banker. (His seventh and most recent book has a hilariously marmish title: We Can All Do Better.) Ralph Nader’s quixotic third-party campaigns never amounted to much, unless you count that time he helped get George W. Bush elected. (Nader was last seen calling Donald Trump “a breath of fresh air” in an interview on the Fox Business Network.)

Meanwhile, Bernie has won 19 primaries. He’s attracted more individual donors than Barack Obama did in 2008, he raised more money than Hillary through the end of March, and he’s outspent every other 2016 presidential candidate. He’s poised to roll off a string of new primary wins in Appalachia this month. He will almost certainly prevent Hillary from getting enough pledged delegates to clinch the nomination before the superdelegates work their backroom magic. This may be a zombie campaign, but the end-of-the-road vibe I went looking for in Indiana wasn’t there. It’s not so much that his supporters are delusional about his odds. It’s more that, for once, the monk keeps winning, and they simply refuse to let the movement die.

* * *

Two weeks after Bernie suffered his dismal loss in New York, I watched about 100 Sanders volunteers gather for “get out the vote” training inside a dreary, linoleum-floored function room at Local 481—the Indianapolis chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. After a briefing from a pair of national campaign staffers, they were invited to ask questions.

One woman inquired about “voting irregularities,” and who she should call if she witnessed something suspicious. (She’d read that thousands of people—surely people clamoring to vote for Bernie—had been shut out of the New York primary.) Another woman wondered what she should say to persuade Hillary voters they were making a grave mistake. (The national staffers urged her to talk up things she loves about Bernie, not things she “hates about other candidates.”) Meanwhile, behind me, an obese man grunted at random intervals to no one in particular: “The national media won’t cover Bernie!” “Getting slandered by Hill-bots!” “I’m very disappointed in the DNC!”

At the close of the meeting, I went up to ask Aaron Robinson, the 39-year-old stay-at-home dad who’s the Indiana campaign chair for Sanders, where he thought the campaign was headed. “At this point it looks like we’re gonna go to a contested convention,” he said, “and then anything can happen. When Bernie was running for mayor of Burlington he won by 10 votes. So it’s not over.” Bernie himself held a press conference last week in which he suggested that a contested convention would be the fairest resolution.

I asked Robinson what he’d do if Hillary won the nomination and faced Donald Trump in November. “I would write in Bernie Sanders,” he said. “Hillary is part of the problem. I know that would be almost throwing away a vote.”

Roughly 90 percent of the Bernie supporters I spoke to vowed they’d never vote for Hillary. Not even against Trump. Those who said they were willing to vote for Hillary in the fall sure didn’t sound excited about it: “It always takes Hillary a very long time to do the right thing,” said a 28-year-old woman in Indianapolis.

These folks might come around, as the PUMAs did in 2008. But if they’re taking their cues from Bernie, he hasn’t called the dogs off yet. At almost every rally I attended in Indiana and Kentucky, he continued to mention Hillary’s speeches for Goldman Sachs and how much she got paid for them. Every mention of “Secretary Clinton” was met with lusty boos from the crowds, which Bernie seemed to relish. In Bloomington, a man shouted, “She lies!” and Bernie snickered in what appeared to be an appreciative manner.

Bernie’s still grumbling a lot about the “corporate media.” So are his supporters. At the South Bend rally, an intro speaker complained that the press doesn’t pay enough attention to Bernie. The crowd spun around to glare at us, up on our riser, and booed us heartily. One guy flipped me double middle-fingers. It might as well have been a Trump rally.

But you know what? I get where they’re coming from.

* * *

I confess I can’t prove this, but I have a hunch that a lot of the mainstream, center-left media sort of wants Bernie to go away. Maybe it’s because we think he can’t win in November. Maybe we deem his policy proposals pipe dreams. Maybe we wish he’d quit dinging Hillary, because it helps the other side. Whatever the reason, while we spent a whole lot of time rubbing our hands together at the prospect of chaos in Cleveland, I haven’t seen many left-wing pundits give succor to Bernie’s call for a contested Democratic convention—even though his case is at least as legit, or maybe moreso in a strict delegate sense, as John Kasich’s or Ted Cruz’s ever was.

On the south lawn of the Indiana Statehouse, four days before he won the primary, Bernie took the podium at a sun-splashed Friday-afternoon rally, this time in front of a bunch of stained-sweatshirt steelworkers from USW Local 1999. The union had assembled to protest the closing of an Indiana manufacturing plant. Carrier, a heating and cooling company, is firing 2,100 employees and moving jobs to Mexico. (You may have heard Donald Trump bluster about it in his stump speech. Or perhaps you saw the viral cellphone video of a Carrier bean-counter reassuring workers that it was “strictly a business decision”—to which the soon-to-be-jobless Carrier employees retort, “Fuck you.”)

From the Statehouse steps, Bernie again hollered at the powers that be. He railed against job-exporting trade deals like NAFTA (which came courtesy of Bill Clinton) and TPP (which Hillary lobbied for, before later expressing reservations). “No more Clintons!” people shouted in the crowd. Bernie scoffed at the gall of Carrier’s parent company, which made $7 billion in profit last year and gave its outgoing CEO a $172 million retirement package, yet somehow couldn’t dredge up the cash to pay American workers a living wage.

I took a breath and reminded myself about the Kaldor-Hicks criterion, and how American consumers benefit from trade deals, and how capital will always move faster than labor so maybe these steelworkers ought to, like, suck it up and retrain to be home health care aides, and how, yes, Hillary has put forth some fairly sensible initiatives to help struggling manufacturing communities.

But a targeted tax incentive doesn’t stir the soul quite the same as an old man shrieking with righteous anger at the top of his lungs. And Bernie’s right: It is fucking outrageous. Our country is a vicious swamp of greed. It’s very hard to fault laid-off steelworkers for wanting to lynch the oligarchs and burn the whole goddamn system to the ground.

Bernie channels their outrage—truly feels it—in a way Hillary doesn’t and never will. And it’s fair for these voters to question whether she’s got their back the way Bernie does—given how palpably furious he is, and given that he’s made the fight against corporate avarice the central plank of his campaign. Hillary’s paid speeches to Goldman Sachs are not irrelevant. It’s not absurd to expect a little purity from our politicians.

I voted for Hillary in New York and I’ll vote for her again in the fall. I think she’ll make the best president of any remaining candidate, from any party. But those Bernie supporters who continue to show up for him—craving him, finding salvation in him, even as eggheads on CNN and Slate tell them he doesn’t have a prayer—I don’t think they’re immature or deluded. I don’t think they’re silly. I don’t even think they’re wrong. I went to Indiana in search of the end of Bernie’s campaign, but it’s still going. I don’t mind that.

This Election’s Speeches Have Been Awful

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 17:32:50 GMT

On Wednesday, Donald Trump gave a foreign policy address billed as a first step in seeming “presidential.” He used teleprompters and everything! Yet his language—scripted in advance, and then read from a screen—was still boring. No stirring metaphors, no clever similes. Really, no effort at all to raise up his rhetoric.

That should come as no surprise. This election cycle has sorely lacked soaring oratory. “It’s something I’ve been talking about with people recently,” said Peter Wehner, deputy director of speechwriting during George W. Bush’s first term. “There have been no memorable speeches. It’s been a barren wasteland.”

In an effort to understand why we’re being deprived of high-flown language this year, I spoke to eight top-level speechwriters from both sides of the aisle—some of whom wished to speak anonymously, all of whom have worked for presidents, vice presidents, or governors. I wondered: Is the flat language simply the nature of these particular candidates and their personalities? Or does it have more to do with the tenor of our Twitter-ized times? And what, if anything, do we miss out on when our politicians don’t bother to couch their ideas in elegantly crafted paragraphs?

Jeff Nussbaum, a speechwriter friend of mine who has previously written for Vice Presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden, theorizes that the deficit of speechy speeches is a result of the electorate’s seeming thirst for authenticity. “The political season launched with Ted Cruz making an announcement speech that looked and felt unrehearsed,” said Nussbaum. “And I think it was a calculation he made. If there’s been a rhetorical metanarrative this season, it’s that authenticity beats polish. We’ve thrown out the rulebook, and one of the things that’s been thrown out to some extent is standing up at a lectern and delivering a traditional speech. It’s been a really bad year for teleprompter operators.”

Donald Trump’s appeal stems in large part from his un-politician-like behavior. He’s repeatedly boasted he doesn’t use a teleprompter at his rallies, instead communicating with off-the-cuff, improvisatory riffs (or tweets). Trump’s rah-rah spiels feature simple applause lines (“We’re gonna build that wall!” or “We’re gonna knock the hell out of ISIS!”) and call-and-response sessions (“Who’s gonna pay for it?” “Mexico!”). His elementary vocabulary and playground taunts are apparently part of his charm.

Hillary Clinton has never been much of an orator. Even when given good lines to sell, she struggles to muster a lofty, inspiring tone. She seems far more comfortable answering town hall questions that let her demonstrate how dutifully she’s done her policy homework. She’s also hemmed in by her brand positioning as a pragmatic technocrat. “She’s especially hindered in her ability to paint a grand, optimistic vision,” says Paul Glastris, a former speechwriter for Bill Clinton. “She’s aware that the more lofty and grandiose she sounds, the more unrealistic she sounds.”

Bernie Sanders reportedly eschews speechwriters altogether. He composes his own speeches, using blunt, stripped-down language to artlessly hammer at his themes. His supporters recite his greatest hits—“millionaires and billionaires,” “$27”—along with him. He effectively conveys his worldview. But his speech is not elevated. “He’s energizing thousands of people,” says Glastris, “so it’s working for him. But you don’t feel that you’re listening to a statesman who’s walking you through difficult territory and then persuading you that he’s considered all sides.”

As for John Kasich and Ted Cruz: With the possible exception of Cruz’s Trump disses (“New York values” and “sniveling coward”), which are not about establishing Cruz’s platform or vision, neither has uttered a single scripted phrase that’s broken into the national consciousness.

A few speechwriters I spoke to noted that Marco Rubio was the candidate most prone to using highfalutin oratory. If anything it hurt him, precisely because it made him seem so familiarly political at a time when the electorate has lusted after novelty. “Rubio has a compelling life story to tell,” said Wehner, “and he can deliver a rhetorically impressive speech that moves people. But there just wasn’t much audience for that in the Republican Party this year.”

Rubio’s penchant for the well-turned phrase brutally backfired on him during his infamous New Hampshire RubioBot meltdown, when he repeated the same carefully prepped sound bite over and over. “Rubio really put a dagger in overly crafted and overly rehearsed speech with that glitch,” says Nussbaum. Accidentally repeating his perfectly crafted line revealed the machinery beneath. And that became a liability—it made him sound scripted and phony.

To be fair, it’s possible that we’ve all been spoiled by Barack Obama. Speechwriters from both parties acknowledged the president’s singular gift for oratory. Obama effectively launched his political career with his “there’s no red America, there’s no blue America” speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. His concession speech after losing the 2008 New Hampshire primary was so lyrical that Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am turned it into a song.

At an existential moment for Obama’s 2008 campaign, when the Jeremiah Wright controversy exploded, Obama opted not merely to respond to the accusations of the day but instead to offer a wide-ranging, stunningly ambitious speech on the topic of race in America. You could imagine Carly Fiorina employing a similar tactic this year after Donald Trump mocked her appearance—stepping behind a podium to speak expansively and elegantly about, say, her notion of feminism or what it means to be a woman in power—but she declined to seize that opportunity.

Few politicians have the ability that Obama does to make scripted, fussy language sound natural and uplifting. And that’s been true forever. “It’s pretty abnormal to have a consistently high level of rhetoric in our country,” says Ted Widmer, a foreign policy speechwriter for Bill Clinton who edited a two-volume anthology for the Library of America titled American Speeches. “We spend more time in the valleys than on the peaks.”

So does it matter that we’re deep in the valley this cycle? Do we lose anything when our candidates speak plainly? I think we do. Sure, we can wade through sound bites and tweets to get the gist of what a candidate thinks. But oratory is a vital skill for a politician who wishes to command the world’s stage. A crafted speech, replete with well-turned phrases, a forceful worldview, a link to compelling biography, and an orderly presentation of a tight argument, is a unique opportunity for us to judge a candidate’s capacity both to reason and persuade.

Such a speech is also a gift to the listener. “Aesthetics matter in the life of a country,” Wehner insists. “Art, music, and rhetoric all matter. There are words that elevate the human spirit and words that pull down the human spirit. And we often think of presidents because of a phrase, not a policy. ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’ ‘Ask not what your country can do for you.’ ‘Tear down this wall.’ ”

It seems unlikely that we’ll add “We are going to win so much, believe me” to that pantheon.

Game of Thrones Podcast

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 05:03:36 GMT

Here’s a free preview of Slate’s Game of Thrones podcast, a TV Club series that’s just for Slate Plus members. If you are not yet a member and would like to listen along as we recap each episode of the show’s sixth season, learn more at Slate.com/GameofThrones.

In this edition of the podcast, Seth and June recap the Season 6 premiere:

You can listen to our discussion of Season 4 here. For more info on how to subscribe to our members-only Slate Plus podcast feeds, go here.

What They Teach You at Umpire School

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 10:00:04 GMT

The Dream Deferred

I first visited the Harry Wendelstedt School for Umpires as a 24-year-old Newsweek reporter back in January 2000. I’d begged my editor to send me because I’d been floored by the opportunity the school promised: Take a five-week course and, if you finish around the top 20 percent of your class, get hired straight into the minor leagues—calling outs and balks and ground-rule doubles in small-town ballparks across the country. Could it really be that simple to launch a career in the national pastime? And a clashing companion thought: What brave soul would volunteer for the workplace abuse that umpires endure from angry players, managers, and fans?

I observed the school for a couple of days, touring the facilities in Daytona Beach, Florida, and writing a short squib for Newsweek’s front section. It wasn’t nearly enough. As I watched those students in their dorky, pressed-and-creased umpire slacks, jogging across infields and yelling stuff, and making weirdly specific arm gestures, I yearned to don the protective equipment and get behind the plate myself. Heck, what if I was a natural? The rewards could be huge: Umpires who make it to the big leagues fly first class, stay in luxe hotels, make mid-six–figure salaries, and appear on TV every night while enjoying an inches-away view of the best baseball in the world. Beats journalism.

Alas, I went home. Time passed and life intervened. The dream sank into hibernation.

But this January—after more than a decade and a half, and with the help of some new Slate Plus members—it reawakened. I enrolled in the Wendelstedt School like any other student. (The school comped my tuition; Slate paid for travel, room, and board.) I completed the two-week “fundamentals” curriculum and received a state-accredited diploma.

So now you can call me “ump” (though we prefer “umpire”), or you can call me “blue” (though we often wear black these days—who’s blind now, pal?). But if I don’t cotton to your sass I am fully empowered to eject you from the premises.

So please get your emotions under control. Before I boot you, I’d like to tell you what I learned.

The Students

We came to umpire school on all sorts of missions.

The self-proclaimed “oldest rat in the barn” was a 62-year-old semiretired endocrinologist from Key West. He gives back to his community by umpiring Little League games. He wanted to get better, and he had the spare cash and the free time, so he figured why not attend the premier umpire school in the country? He clearly felt it was worth it: You should have seen his face light up when MLB ump Dana Demuth gave him a personalized tutorial on the finer points of pitch-calling.

Near the other end of the age spectrum was a 20-year-old kid who’d been a cashier at a grocery store in Wisconsin. He’d seen a TV documentary about MLB umpires and became obsessed—even memorizing their uniform numbers. (Classmates would quiz him during downtime: “Angel Hernandez?” “55.” “Laz Diaz?” “63.”) With no prior experience, he signed up for the school on a whim, shelled out his $3,500 or so for tuition, room, and board, and hustled down to Florida to follow his dream. He gave his all, transforming his persona from meek to blustery in the span of a few days.

Several of the students seemed to have been born with an odd love for officiation. These dudes had been reffing basketball and soccer games since they were 12. Canadians among them reffed ice hockey, too. Something about the clarity of rules, and the reassurance of order and adjudication, appealed to the deepest reaches of their brains. Hall monitor types. Authoritarians. I did not identify with them, which was the first indication that I might not be temperamentally suited to umpiring, but more on that later.

There was only one woman at the school. She was Taiwanese and had come from Taiwan with a small group of professional umpires who wanted to learn from the best in the sport’s founding heartland. She was the only one of her crew who spoke English, so she served as a translator and ambassador. She was little and smiley but had a growl when she needed it. Everybody loved her.

The bulk of the students were ex-jocks who’d washed out of college baseball and were looking for a way to hang around the game. You could see how athletically gifted they were in the way they leapt from behind the plate after the ball got put in play. They somehow looked coordinated and cool even in those gray, pleated polyester pants that look less like sportswear and more like what you’d wear to fax something.

We all boarded in the same mildewed hotel in Daytona Beach, eating buffet meals together, nodding in the hallways and elevators. For a few days, we shared the hotel with a bunch of folks who’d come to town for a jet ski convention, during which the halls reeked equally of marijuana and gasoline. Summoned to my balcony by a commotion in the wee hours of a Saturday night, I gazed down at men drunkenly pushing Jet Skis into the hotel pool—and then revving them up and doing flips with them.

One evening in the dining room, a friendly 25-year-old umpire classmate named Alex sat next to me with his loaded buffet plate. We got to chatting, and I asked him what had brought him to the school. Alex told me he was a drummer in a successful “Americana band” in San Francisco, but he’d long been umpiring on the side to supplement his income—making $45 for a seven-inning weeknight high school game or maybe $500 for a weekend tournament. He loved to be around the sport, and even felt he could express his personality in the way he handled games and made calls. Enrolling in the school was his way of getting serious about umpiring.

“You know, it’s kind of like being a touring musician,” Alex mused a few nights later, talking about that ump life as we rolled frames at the bowling alley across the street from the hotel. “Lots of travel, lots of downtime. And I can always go back to music if being an umpire doesn’t pan out. I’ve just got to give this a chance while I’m still young.”

The Training

If you’ve never called “OUT” at the top of your lungs, punctuating your scream with a mid-air fist clench, I can assure you: it’s satisfying. In the opening days of umpire school, we did it over and over, lined up in formation on outfield grass under Florida sunshine, about 130 identically dressed, aspiring umpires OUT-ing in unison.

Our instructors were professional umpires, some from the minors and some from the bigs, and there was a distinctly militaristic vibe in the culture they strove to create—as though they were drill sergeants and we were raw recruits. We weren’t allowed to be hesitant, or soft-spoken, or shlumpy. In all things, we were required to commit to maximum aggression. It felt as though we were prepping for martial conflict. Our emotional bearing was the most important foundation to build.

“Ready … call it!” instructors shouted through bullhorns. “He’s out!” we were to respond as one, pounding with our right fists on an imaginary door. At first our voices wavered, our raised arms noodled, and our overall mien lacked sternness. But the instructors would not brook any wussitude. They got in our faces. They demanded volume. By the sixth or seventh “HE’S OUT!” we looked far more authoritative, fists fierce, vocal cords growing hoarse.

After we’d gotten these stationary calls down, we began practicing on the move. Three quick steps, come to a stop, settle in to watch the (imaginary) tag at second base, then rise up to make the call with finality. It felt absurd. It looked more absurd.

Here, see for yourself:

But it’s vital to get these mechanics—the physical gestures that accompany a call—down cold. You can’t be thinking about body language when you make a controversial ruling in front of a stadium of frothing fans. Reflexively confident posture and crisp movements help sell the call, even when you’re not sure you got it right. It felt like playacting at first, but after a while my accusatory HE’S OUT bark felt natural.

By day two we were drilling “hat and mask work.” The home plate umpire must smoothly whisk off his protective mask the moment the baseball gets put in play. He must do this without jarring loose the hat he wears beneath the mask, thereby causing it (the hat) to blow across the infield in a supremely undignified manner. Any action that makes an umpire look foolish, or casual, or dorky, or in any way less than 100 percent serene, is considered highly unprofesh. After a few days of drills, and much shaming from instructors, I could yank off the mask without my hat coming along for the ride.

Soon, we were umpiring simulated games and calling plays on the basepaths. These scenarios become terrifyingly complex. Did the pitcher have his foot on the rubber when he threw that pickoff attempt into the stands (in which case the runner is awarded one base) or was his foot off the rubber (in which case the runner is awarded two bases)? Quick! Decide! The variables ramp up. More baserunners. Infield fly rule a possibility. Catcher’s interference. Balks. Sometimes I would rip my mask off, rise up, get set to make a call, and just freeze without saying anything. Once, when I tore off my mask to watch an outfield hit, my hat came loose and blew into my face so I couldn’t see. I mumbled something quiet and incoherent while half-raising one arm and using the other to corral my cap as the whole field stared at me in disgust.

I figured I’d be decent at the book learnin’ aspects of the course, but our classroom work was no easier. Turned out I didn’t know the rules of baseball half as well as I thought I did. Our written exams—closed rulebook, no cheating—asked questions like: What’s the maximum legal circumference of a catcher’s mitt? How much pine tar can be on a bat handle? What is the minimum distance to the left field fence in a ballpark constructed after 1950? This stuff gets headspinny even when you’re sitting with a pencil and plenty of time to think. Imagine standing on the field, thousands of bloodthirsty fans awaiting your ruling after the pitcher balks, the catcher commits interference, and a batted ball strikes a baserunner headed for third—all on the same play. (Correct call, after a comically Byzantine order of operations: The runner is awarded third base and the batter returns to the box with the same count.)

The final and in some ways most intimate piece of the umpiring puzzle is balls and strikes. You lean over the catcher’s shoulder, your breath on his neck, facing the oncoming heat. We practiced with motorized pitch machines—pitch after pitch, forcing our eyes to track a foam ball through the zone without moving our heads. Sometimes, the ball breaks in unforeseen directions. What seems like an easy call from your couch, with the k-zone superimposed on your TV screen, becomes less obvious when you’re squatting behind the catcher and a rocket-fueled, tailing fastball paints the edge of the plate. MLB umpire Ed Hickox described for us what it’s like to call a Clayton Kershaw curveball that seems headed for a hot dog vendor behind the first-base dugout, then somehow breaks across the zone at the last moment: “It takes an extra second to let your mind accept it, but damned if it’s not a strike. And that’s why you wait to make the call until you’ve got it clear in your head. Those 50,000 people in Dodger Stadium didn’t know I initially had the motherfucker as a ball.”

In all our field work, three concepts were paramount: 1) Get into proper viewing position so you’re not “looking up the ass end of a play,” and then come to a stop before the play happens. You can’t see what’s going on when your angle is changing and your head is bouncing. 2) Take your time before making any ruling. Like Hickox said: Take a slow breath and get it straight in your head before you commit to a self-assured STRIKE ONE or SAFE or HE’S OUT. As the instructors reminded us: “It ain’t shit until you call it.” 3) Never, ever, ever convey doubt. Even if you’re wracked with doubt. Own the call, sell the call, and stand by the call.

There has to be an ultimate arbiter so the game can move along. That’s you. Until you’ve ruled, everything remains in dispute, and the proceedings come to a halt. It’s almost more important to issue a final ruling than it is for that ruling to comport with reality. (Unless you get to the big leagues and there’s video review, in which case your preliminary judgments will get overturned by an all-seeing eye. It sounds belittling.)

The Mentality

When I first visited the school back in 2000, I was fascinated to learn that the instructors were all huge fans of the cop show NYPD Blue. They talked about it constantly. It occurred to me that yes, of course, umpires identify with cops.

It makes sense: You’re defending the thin line between order and chaos, enforcing the rules. You’re nobody’s friend, and you take guff from all sides. You’re expected to perform perfectly from day one. You’re dressed in a uniform that signals authority but also makes you a target of derision and hostility. Hickox, who actually works as a police detective in the offseason, noted that he’s required to write up a report after both an arrest and an ejection.

In the minor leagues, umpires work in pairs. Which means you have a partner and you watch each other’s backs. You never doubt your partner on a matter of judgment, and if you suspect he’s misinterpreted a rule you don’t make it obvious. You might develop a signal (say, taking off your hat in a certain way) to let him know you want to confer.

At school, we were taught to view our classmates as a band of brothers, a fellowship of noble adjudicators. We were enlisting for a career in which we’d field abuse from all sides. Only those of us who relished that thought, and were excited to cover for each other, had any hope of going far.

Because authority depends on the perceptions of those who are subject to it, umpires are obsessed with maintaining a commanding presence. Our voices were to be loud, thick, and monotone, our manner laconic, our faces untroubled. We were expected to have our clothes clean, ironed, squared away. We were directed to a local tailor who would hem our pants. A surprising amount of discussion centered on whether to tuck our warm-up windbreakers into our waistbands.

When I arrived at school, my hair was a bit shaggy and I wore my eyeglasses during drills. But after a day or two, this felt all wrong. I got a buzz haircut to match the instructors’ trim styles. I ditched my glasses even though I couldn’t see quite as well. Perfect vision seemed less important than not looking dorky on the field.

Back in 2000, I’d overheard the instructors talking about a student named Mike. Mike wore thick eyeglasses and jogged in a kind of flouncy way, and his general bearing was pretty nerdy. “He makes all the right calls,” one instructor said to another, “but he doesn’t have the look.”

This seemed crazy to me. What did it matter how he looked if he was correctly arbitrating the game?

Brent Rice was a classmate of Mike’s in 2000. Brent graduated near the top of his class, umpired in the minors for a while, and is now the chief instructor at the Wendelstedt School. I remembered him from my prior visit. When I asked him about Mike, he knew exactly who I meant. He recalled that the late Harry Wendelstedt, the school’s namesake and a legendary MLB ump, had actually helped Mike pay for more slender corrective lenses to make his glasses less obtrusive—so he wouldn’t look quite so bookish.

Mike was good enough to umpire in the minors, where Brent worked with him. And sure enough, Brent told me, Mike had problems because he didn’t look the part. Players and managers assumed they could dominate him and gave him a hard time. Eventually, he quit to be an accountant.

The Arguing

When you tell people there’s an umpire school, they always ask if there’s a class on arguing. There is, sort of. As the course goes on, the instructors start to question your calls more aggressively to see if you keep your cool. Later, they perform a simulated dugout-clearing brawl, although I left the school too early to participate in it.

Chief instructor Brent Rice knows what it’s like to stay cucumber cool in the face of outlandish behavior. He was behind home plate for perhaps the most ridiculous baseball tirade of all time. Watch Rice keep his wits as minor league manager Phil Wellman has a meltdown—at one point using the rosin bag like a grenade that he throws at Rice’s feet. Rice ignores it and calmly folds a new piece of gum into his mouth.

I asked Rice to let me in on the secrets of ejections: Are there certain words that get a manager run immediately? Not exactly. There are basically three ways to get tossed: 1) Keep jawing after the umpire has given a warning and drawn a line in the sand. 2) Say something personal about an umpire, or an umpire’s family. 3) Get physical.

Umpires have a phrase to describe giving someone the boot: “Adios, Jones!” Say it while jabbing your index finger skyward. It’s liberating.

The Career

Let’s say you graduate from umpire school with top marks. You keep your cool when a 250-pound first baseman is shrieking in your face. You remember intricate, nested clusters of rules within eight seconds while people are shouting at you. You can see around a sprinting baserunner while ripping off your mask without sending your hat on a journey. What happens next?

First, you go to a sort of one-week polishing camp run by Minor League Baseball. If all goes well there, you’re hired and await your assignment. Rookie ball is a typical first rung on the umpiring ladder.

You make about $2,000 a month. You drive yourself from ballpark to ballpark. Your travel expenses are covered. You work about three hours a day, outside, watching baseball. All of which sounds pretty great to a 22-year-old dude with no wife, no kids, and no yen to work in an office.

As you move up, crowds get bigger. Where you once might have umpired Little League games with 40 spectators, now you’re in front of 3,500 people, then 7,500. You start and stop the game. You decide if a rainstorm warrants a postponement. You’re managing unpredictable situations with other people’s money and satisfaction on the line. It’s a heady dose of power for someone barely out of college.

At umpire school, the pro baseball players were a specter—an imaginary presence on the basepaths. We kept getting told how unbelievably fast they are once you get to the minor leagues. (And how dumb, and how quick to argue.) You’d better anticipate where they’ll go next, because you’ll never catch up without a head start. And oh, the pitchers: There’s a world of difference between calling a “right down the dick” (charming umpire slang for “straight”) 75 mph fastball in a rec league and calling a heralded pro prospect’s slider that zags in over the edge at 89.

If you make it to the show—which might take six or seven years, or more—everything changes again. The crowds are 45,000 now and the fastballs push 100. The egos are bigger. The stakes are higher. Some grocery cashier in Wisconsin might even memorize your uniform number.

That Wisconsin kid didn’t make the final cut. Neither did the endocrinologist, though he wasn’t trying. But my friend the Americana drummer got the nod. He’s currently waiting for his minor league assignment. I can’t wait to reverse-heckle him when he comes through town: “Great call, blue! Way to move to a terrific vantage point on that play!”

I won’t be joining him in the pros. I’m not right for the job; I know that now. Relative to my classmates, I was somewhere in the middle of the pack when it came to the basics. I move reasonably well. I have decent instincts. I learned the rulebook. But I have a couple of fatal flaws, too.

I have limited reserves of concentration. I can see myself getting lost in thought in the middle of a game, contemplating some abstract notion, and completely missing a play. I also hate to make decisions. It’s nightmarish to think I’d be forced to make lots of high-stakes decisions quickly with thousands of people watching. And that’s the whole gig.

But perhaps most important, I have no aura of authority. I’m soft-spoken, and chill, and deferential, and the opposite of intimidating. I’d probably resort to ejecting the ballboy in the second inning in a futile effort to establish some cred.

My last day at the school, I was calling balls and strikes with the pitch machine, being tutored by Demuth, the MLB umpire. During a break, while the machine was reloaded, I goaded Demuth into showing me his third-strike call. The “punchout” is an umpire’s signature mechanic. A third-strike call is the one place where he is allowed, even encouraged, to demonstrate some flair. When minor league supervisors assess rookie umps, they sometimes tell them to work on their punchout. Demuth’s punchout is a flick of the right arm followed by a jab. Streamlined and badass.

Demuth then asked me to show him my own punchout. I didn’t have one. I knew some umpires like the “rip the phone book in half” move, or the “start the chainsaw” move. I decided I’d go as big as possible, hopping backward while doing a sort of furious ninja strike. As I did it, I pulled my right calf.

I tried to hide the pain from Demuth, but inside I was yelping. I could barely walk, so I stood still and hoped my discomfort wasn’t obvious. Demuth gave me an encouraging review of my punchout form. When he turned away, I found the nearest place to sit down and let the pain radiate through my body. That was the moment I knew I wouldn’t make the show.

Still, my two-week course diploma qualifies me to umpire high school games. I already have the gear: my mask, my athletic cup, my polyester slacks, my home plate brush. I might get out there one day and make some calls, bark at some kids, try to nail down that punchout.

If you see me, keep your lip in check or it’s adios, Jones!

What Happened to the National Enquirer’s Ted Cruz Story?

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 13 Apr 2016 15:45:00 GMT

After a National Enquirer story late last month quasi-alleged that Ted Cruz has serially cheated on his wife, rival candidate Donald Trump emerged as a fan of the paper, directing our attention to scoops of yore. “They were right about O.J. Simpson, John Edwards, and many others,” noted Trump in a campaign statement. Implication: The Enquirer might be right this time, too.

Does Trump have a point? The Enquirer indeed found photos of O.J. sporting Bruno Magli shoes he claimed he’d never worn (which bolstered bloody footprint evidence introduced at the Juice’s civil trial). And the paper’s been spot-on in uncovering the scandals of some previous presidential candidates. Ask Gary Hart (photographed with paramour Donna Rice aboard his lap), Jesse Jackson (busted for fathering a love child), or, most famously, Edwards (caught lying after he knocked up not-wife Rielle Hunter). Given these past reportorial triumphs, should we be inclined to trust the supermarket tabloid’s highest-profile move of this election season? Was the Enquirer’s wafer-thin piece alleging that “political operatives” are “digging into at least five affairs Ted Cruz supposedly had” just the first stab at a bigger story to come?

I spoke to former Enquirer editor-in-chief David Perel—the chief orchestrator of the Enquirer’s Edwards reporting, now editorial director of In Touch magazine—to ask what he thought of Trump’s laudatory comments. “I wanted to call him and thank him,” said Perel, “and then tell him to make sure to buy In Touch. Because that’s where the people who reported those stories are now. I brought them with me.” When I asked Perel about the Enquirer’s recent Cruz headlines, he saw zero comparison to his Edwards bombshells, for which the Enquirer received Pulitzer consideration. “No one has printed a story that says Ted Cruz had an affair and here’s the proof,” said Perel. “It’s not a parallel.”

The Edwards story was an Ahab-like mission for Perel, requiring about 18 months of on-the-ground reporting and what one of his former colleagues estimates to have been about a half-million dollars in personnel and budgetary expenses. It began with Perel assigning a “ghost squad” of reporters to secretly track Rielle Hunter’s movements for months on end—resulting in a 2007 story that alleged Edwards’ infidelity. When Edwards haughtily denied the scoop while continuing to campaign for the 2008 Democratic nomination, and no mainstream media outlets picked up the scent, Perel remained undaunted. In July 2008, he sent his team to stake out the many entrances to the Beverly Hilton hotel after he got a tip that Edwards would be meeting Hunter and their out-of-wedlock infant there.

Reporter Alexander Hitchen was on that Enquirer ghost squad. He staked out Hunter for months from a rented cottage in North Carolina. He trailed her to L.A., where he stayed up for 36 hours straight to at last catch Edwards red-handed. He eventually confronted the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee and 2008 Iowa caucus second-place finisher across the threshold of a public bathroom next to a Trader Vic’s in the Hilton basement. Edwards had fled there in retreat from the cameras, refusing to come out. “It was low-lit, but you could still see the color run out of his face,” recalls Hitchen. The somewhat comic video evidence that resulted brought Edwards down, forcing him to confess that he’d lied about cheating on his terminally ill wife (though he continued to deny he’d fathered a child with Hunter until he at last admitted paternity in 2010).

Hitchen was among the reporters who followed Perel to In Touch, where, last year, he helped break the story that reality TV star Josh Duggar had molested underage girls. When I asked him about the Enquirer’s recent Cruz coverage, he was circumspect. “I’m waiting to see where they’re going with the story,” he said. “Given the backlash from Cruz’s people, and the accusations leveled against the Enquirer, I would have thought that they’d be pushing the story further by now. Why aren’t they pulling out some more revelations about it? It feels strange that it was just a one-off.”

Beyond the fact that the Enquirer’s Cruz reporting is barely sourced and presents no documented evidence of any kind, there are other compelling reasons not to put much stock in it. For one, it’s been suggested that Trump has grown “cozy” with the Enquirer and its CEO, David Pecker. The Enquirer has even endorsed Trump’s presidential bid. New York magazine has hinted that Trump previously planted a negative story about Ben Carson within the tabloid’s pages. With Cruz emerging as Trump’s last rival, perhaps it’s no shock the paper has set its sights squarely on the Texas senator.

There’s also the Enquirer’s longstanding, well-earned, dubious reputation. Watch Ric Burns’ documentary Enquiring Minds to get the full sordid tale of the paper’s history, which includes mafiosi, ill-gotten photographs, a longstanding practice of paying sources, and some brilliant distribution innovations. (The Enquirer pioneered those racks holding magazines in your supermarket checkout aisle and sold the excess space in the racks to other publications.) From its inception, the Enquirer was designed to push the boundaries of decent journalism, and it has published lots of hokum. Consider, just in this election cycle, the Enquirer’s claim that Hillary Clinton is an alcoholic who’s suffered three strokes and is battling multiple sclerosis. “Failing health and a deadly thirst for power are driving Hillary Clinton to an early grave, The National ENQUIRER has learned in a bombshell investigation,” began the story, before predicting that Clinton only had six months to live. (The story ran six months ago.)

Current Enquirer editor-in-chief Dylan Howard declined to discuss the paper’s ongoing Cruz reporting, or to address the Trump endorsement. But he did defend the Enquirer’s honor in an email exchange. When I asked him why we should believe the paper, given some of the more outlandish stories it’s printed, he replied: “If you think The National ENQUIRER is reporting about aliens today, you have not picked up the magazine for a very, very long time!”

As for paying sources—a longtime, controversial policy at the paper—Howard praised the practice. “I consider tabloid checkbook journalism more effective and reliable than regular reporting,” he wrote me, “ especially considering the checks and balances that we have in place for information provided by sources. We only pay for information once it is considered credible and accurate.” The Enquirer paid sources during the Edwards investigation, but Howard says it has not (yet) paid any sources while reporting the Cruz story.

Still, the Cruz rumors have lingered, with Cruz’s wife, Heidi, still addressing the “garbage” allegations in an interview with Megyn Kelly on Fox News on Tuesday night. Perhaps the reason more outlets haven’t outright dismissed the story stems from sheepishness at having ignored the Enquirer’s Edwards scoop for so long. Edwards’ infidelity had been an open secret among journalists at various prestige publications, yet they all failed to track the story down. “A number of news organizations with resources far greater than The Enquirer’s, like The New York Times, say they looked into the Edwards matter and found nothing solid enough to report,” the Times’s media desk wrote the day after Edwards’ confession. “Some of their comments point to a lack of interest in a story about the private conduct of an also-ran presidential candidate, and a distaste for following the lead of a publication they hold in low esteem.” The headline on a subsequent postmortem from the Times’ public editor was “Sometimes, There’s News in the Gutter,” and the story quoted the Times’ then-executive editor Bill Keller saying, '”There was a tendency, fair or not, to dismiss what you read in the National Enquirer.”

Howard acknowledges he has a different standard from other outlets. “My line is further in the journalistic distance than most editors’,” he emailed me. “We win by publishing the truth, and exposing malfeasance or corruption. Therefore, the line about what is okay to publish, and how we get that information, is often considered moveable—given each individual story’s circumstance.” The line when it comes to Ted Cruz and his marriage still seems to be way beyond the horizon at this point.

Negotiation 101

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 21:39:29 GMT

To listen to this episode of Trumpcast, use the player below:

Subscribe in iTunes ∙ RSS feed ∙ Download ∙ Play in another tab
Slate Plus members: Get your ad-free podcast feed.

Slate contributor Seth Stevenson talks to professor Aaron Wallen of Columbia University about negotiation tactics.

Follow Seth on Twitter: @stevensonseth
Find us on iTunes: Trumpcast

Podcast production by Henry Molofsky and Jayson De Leon.

A Week on the Trail With the “Disgusting Reporters” Covering Donald Trump

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 00:01:00 GMT

On March 11, an hour before the scheduled start of a Donald Trump rally in Chicago, I checked into the venue’s media pen—a rectangle of metal bike racks corralling the press—and introduced myself to a few of the journalists there. I was talking to Sopan Deb, a CBS News reporter who’s been following the Trump campaign for months, when the first protest erupted in the crowd. Trump supporters had encircled some guys wearing “Muslims United Against Donald Trump” T-shirts. Deb excused himself, hoisted his video camera onto his shoulder, and sprinted out of the pen for a better angle on the hubbub.

When he returned, he set down his camera and resumed chatting with me as though nothing had happened. A newspaper writer sidled over to join our pleasant conversation. Within a minute or two, another protester was yelling. My new pals swiveled their heads, quickly pinpointed the disturbance, and raced back into the crowd.

Was this the normal gig? “Totally normal,” said Deb, safely in the pen once more, unfazed by the brewing rancor. “People think it’s new, but this has been going on at Trump rallies since at least November. There’ll be 10 more of those tonight.”

As the planned start time for the event drew near, a pair of men with Trump pins on the lapels of their suits sealed the media pen’s exit. “They’re not allowed to leave anymore,” I overheard one suit instruct the other. “Not until he”—the “he” being Trump—“has left the building.”

The flare-ups continued and intensified. Police swarmed into the stands. Everyone was on their feet, shouting and pointing. When a PA announcement informed us that the event had been canceled, the place detonated.

Reporters scurried to edges of the media pen, still hemmed in, and leaned their cameras over the barricades. Realizing this was folly, they soon mounted a jailbreak. I followed them and found myself amid a churning mob on the arena floor—scuffles everywhere, people shrieking at each other, ripping signs from hands, knocking hats from heads, shoving, stumbling. The cameras raced from one brawl to the next.

When the bedlam flowed outside, I went to a spot where protesters were screaming at people trying to exit the parking garage in their cars. Trump supporters on the garage’s upper levels were jeering at the protesters below, throwing popcorn. “Oh, you’re gonna spit on us now?” said an angry protester, looking up into what did appear to be a hail of expectoration. I saw a newspaper reporter I’d just met inside wading into the fray with her notebook in hand, trying to gather quotes.

The next morning, scanning news about the rally, I learned that Deb—while attempting to film the ruckus in the streets—had been thrown to the ground by Chicago cops, handcuffed, arrested, and detained in jail.*

* * *

Jeb Bush rallies were not like this. Covering a Jeb event meant freely mingling with 40 people sitting calmly on folding chairs. Covering a Trump event is like watching a 1970s Black Flag concert from inside a shark cage.

What’s it like to be on the Trump beat all the time? To have enlisted for the noble civic duty of election reportage, only to find yourself smack at the center of tinderbox crowds and pro-wrestling atmospherics? Is it tough to endure the troubling, media-bashing behavior of the Trump campaign itself?

I followed the circus from Chicago to Cleveland and then down to Florida for a series of rallies, hanging out with Trump’s press pack along the way to find out. When they weren’t busy darting from one skirmish to the next, several Trump reporters (who spoke anonymously because they were not willing or permitted by their news organizations to go on the record) described their experiences out on the trail.

The first thing they all said about Trump’s press operation was that “there is no Trump press operation.” There’s just Hope Hicks, a twentysomething former Ralph Lauren model who’s never previously worked in politics. She functions more like a celebrity PR shop than a political communications team. And she remains a remote figure. On other campaigns, the press operatives develop chummy relationships with the press corps. “There’s no collegiality,” said one reporter. “No one’s getting dinner with Hope.”

While Hicks writes up the emails and press releases, Trump is his own media strategist. And in some ways he’s the most accessible candidate of all—as long as you’re a TV host like CNN’s Don Lemon or MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough. But there’s no behind-the-scenes information coming from his campaign, no one else but Trump (and occasionally his campaign manager) to talk to. Where other candidates might have a dozen aides a journalist can develop as sources, along with donors and pollsters and ad-makers who’ll leak inside scoop, with Trump there’s none of that. Maybe you get some state-level operatives on the phone, but it doesn’t matter because they never know anything. “You don’t get sourced up like you normally would,” one reporter told me. “It all happens on the surface. You just try to interpret it.”

Asking policy questions is like throwing a rock down a bottomless well. “If I have a question about women’s issues, or Hispanic issues,” said one reporter, “it’s not like they point me to specific press liaisons who handle those. There aren’t any such people.” Most policy queries simply go unanswered. When a response does come back, it’s rarely sufficient. “There’s no point anyway,” said another reporter. “You might get a response to a question about immigration policy, but the next day on TV, Trump will contradict it.”

And of course there are the lies. Politico Magazine tallied more than 60 in a week of Trump appearances. At a rally in Boca Raton, Florida, on March 13, I heard him utter at least two bald untruths in the first two minutes of his speech (he said there were 25,000 people at his Chicago rally when the arena holds fewer than 10,000, and then he repeated the falsehood that no one had been injured at the event). But journalists I talked to who continue to report the lies as such don’t feel their efforts have much effect. “How many times can you write that the same statement is untrue?” mused one reporter. “At some point, the lie stops being news.” And debunking a claim doesn’t stop Trump from making it again.

The hokum washes over you after a while. A reporter sitting next to me at the Saturday rally in Cleveland chuckled when Trump bragged there were 29,000 people in the room. “That can’t be remotely possible,” she said, lifting her head for a moment to assess the crowd, then giving up and returning her gaze to her laptop. A fire marshal later announced the attendance had been about 7,000. The lie, though, never made it into her piece. Why bother to spend the time and column space to correct a silly exaggeration, when this same man has said he might want to summarily execute enemy combatants and defile their bodies? You need to pick your battles.

“We used to fact-check everything, every day,” another reporter told me, “but it gets hard to keep up.” For a writer filing on deadline an hour after a rally ends, there’s not enough time to thoroughly fact-check the dozens of fabrications that spilled from the stage. It’s also hard to know who the fact-checking is for. At this point, anyone who hates Trump has ample evidence he’s a liar. And anyone who loves Trump doesn’t care.

* * *

The more time I spent with the Trump press pack, the more sympathy I had for them. They display equanimity in the face of outrageous behavior. They display physical courage in the face of near rumbles. Perhaps I’m a fragile soul—Trump would no doubt come up with a snappy epithet to encapsulate my wuss-itude—but I’m not sure that I could handle the emotional rigors of their workplace.

The Thunderdome vibe at Trump events set my teeth on edge. Each time the mood tautened, I’d wonder: Is this the day a truly tragic thing happens? I found it unsettling that the loudest cheers at these rallies—the moments when the crowd would unleash pure glee and actual fist pumps—came when Trump would direct his security team to eject a protester by shouting, “OK, get him out!” The press isn’t allowed to exit or enter the designated pen while the rallies are happening, which means you can either stay inside to get separation from the crowds (and a usable workspace) or stay outside to get close-up footage of altercations happening amid the throngs (unless, as in the case of a Sun-Sentinel reporter, you’re threatened with arrest for doing so).

I also could not abide large, repeated doses of in-person Trump. It infuriated me when he’d pause between telling blatant whoppers to point at the media pen and say, “Those are very dishonest people, I have to tell you.” On cue, his minions would spin around and boo us.

Sometimes, he gets personal with the press. At one rally, Trump referred to NBC News reporter Katy Tur as “little Katy, third-rate journalist” while she was in the pen, surrounded by his riled-up groupies. In February, Tur tweeted about another special moment on the trail:

“Sometimes we get tense,” another journalist told me. “I’m surprised there hasn’t been an incident of someone throwing a blunt object and hitting a reporter in the head. I wouldn’t be shocked if it happened.”

The longtime Trump embeds are a close-knit group. They gossip and commiserate. After Deb’s arrest, there was a flurry of texts coordinating ways to help, checking on the latest updates. They have to remind themselves not to get inured to their surroundings. Things that a year ago might have seemed monumentally loony, or off-the-charts unacceptable, now barely raise an eyebrow. “I think we need troop rotations for the embedded reporters,” suggested one writer. “You need a fresh set of eyes to say, ‘I can’t believe what I just saw.’ ”

Despite the heavy adjectives getting thrown around—fascist, demagogue, authoritarian—the beat reporters I spoke to mostly felt they couldn’t use that kind of language. Opinion writers, sure. But straight news journalists felt the best they could do was catalog the madness and let the American citizenry decide. Some writers objected to the idea that they were giving Trump too much coverage—after all, he’s the GOP front-runner, and this campaign is something we’ve never seen before. At least one writer did, however, feel the situation was different when it comes to cable news, where Trump’s thirst for airtime and the networks’ thirst for ratings can profoundly skew the calculus.

As the Trump campaign has accrued power, its treatment of the media has grown ever more worrisome. Reporters told me that Trump is incredibly attuned to his coverage in a way that other presidential candidates aren’t. The campaign will sometimes single out specific outlets for vindictive treatment. The Des Moines Register, the New York Times, BuzzFeed, and Univision were all denied access to Trump events in the wake of running negative coverage. Both the National Press Club and the White House Correspondents’ Association have already felt compelled to fire their first meek shots over Trump’s bow.

Trump’s campaign manager, former New Hampshire state police officer Corey Lewandowski, was recently accused of physically accosting a female Breitbart reporter. Whatever the severity of the manhandling, the campaign’s response in the aftermath has been, to use a favorite Trump word, “disgusting.” Despite photographic evidence and an immediate eyewitness report from a trustworthy Washington Post writer, the campaign continues to deny that the incident ever happened. Hicks attacked the Breitbart reporter’s integrity, releasing a statement including this line: “We leave to others whether this is part of a larger pattern of exaggerating incidents, but on multiple occasions she has become part of the news story as opposed to reporting it.” Lewandowski tweeted that the Breitbart reporter was “delusional.” There’s no shame, no accountability, no decency. “Trump surrounds himself with a bunch of dicks,” shrugged one writer, referring to Lewandowski, and other reporters I spoke to tended to agree. On Saturday, Lewandowski was again caught getting rough on camera, this time with a protester in Arizona, and again the campaign denied it despite visual evidence.

A couple of journalists on the Trump beat were already beginning to express concern about how the media might fare under a Trump presidency, if he should win. The previous two presidents have been imperfect in their treatment of the press—both Bush and Obama closed ranks and tightened access in ways that previous administrations hadn’t—but basic norms pertained. Would Trump honor quaint traditions regarding White House press coverage? No one knows. “It’s occurring to me that it’s a really fucking slippery slope,” said one reporter. “I’ve been assuming the White House Correspondents’ Association would negotiate for traditional access and protocols. But I’m applying a rational schema to this. What’s to prevent Donald Trump from just getting rid of the WHCA? Trump doesn’t let the press pack on his plane now, something that other candidates all do. Would President Trump let reporters on Air Force One?”

Campaigns can provide a window into how an administration will be run. The vast machinery of American governance might in many ways keep an outlandish President Trump in check. But there’s not much to prevent Trump’s White House press shop from resembling his press shop now: capricious, inscrutable, vindictive, insulated. I’m imagining President Trump communicating solely via tweets and phone-ins to cable news shows. I’m imagining the New York Times—a paper that Trump says “allows dishonest reporters to totally fabricate stories”—getting barred on a whim from the White House briefing room. I’m imagining journalists emailing policy questions to press secretary Hope Hicks and receiving no response. (Hicks did not respond to emailed questions for this story.)

* * *

On Tuesday night, as the primary returns rolled in, reporters flocked to the luxurious confines of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s personal residence in Palm Beach, Florida. Some of us had dressed more formally than out on the trail, to match the surroundings. The balmy, scented air wafted over us as we strolled across the lawns and proceeded through the Secret Service security check at the door. Once inside, we mingled beneath the gaudy chandeliers of the enormous Donald J. Trump Ballroom, waiting for the man to appear.

As we were enjoying Mr. Trump’s hospitality, another reporter was being turned away at the Mar-a-Lago gates. Politico writer Ben Schreckinger had been previously approved for credentials, only to have them revoked after he wrote a negative piece about Lewandowski. He was told to leave the grounds. Later that evening, Trump would call Schreckinger “a dishonest, third-rate reporter with a failing outlet that will soon be out of business, hopefully.”

Sopan Deb had made it past the door. He was sporting a new abrasion beneath his chin, where he’d made contact with Chicago pavement four days before. The police would later drop the charges against him, and he seemed to be taking the whole thing in stride. But getting arrested wasn’t even the first unfortunate personal incident Deb had endured while on the Trump trail. At a January rally in Reno, Nevada, a Trump supporter asked Deb if he was taking pictures for ISIS (adding, “Yeah, I’m talking to you” when Deb looked at him in shock). I asked him if, given the unique nature of this campaign and his experiences covering it, he feels any special responsibility to raise alarms in his work. “All I can do is my job,” he said. “Whether my reporting makes any difference is out of my control.”

Trump had taken questions from the press during his previous election night celebrations at Mar-a-Lago. The first time, a reporter told me, he’d seated his rich friends and Mar-a-Lago Club members in the front two rows and put the press behind them. The next time, Trump’s friends had been given the front seven rows, pushing the press farther back. But Tuesday night, as Trump basked in victory, there were a full 16 rows of rich pals—500 or so elegantly dressed Palm Beach dandies—banishing reporters to the rear of the ballroom, about 40 yards away from Trump’s podium.

I asked my press pack friends how they were going to ask him questions from this distance. They weren’t sure. They guessed they might be given microphones. One print reporter assured me she had a really big voice.

It turned out not to matter. Though the event had been labeled a “press conference,” and we’d all obtained credentials on that basis, Trump gave a short speech—Lewandowski grinning at his side—called reporters “disgusting,” and then exited the room without fielding a single question. My friend with the big voice shouted, “This is supposed to be a press conference! Aren’t you going to talk to us?!”

We could hear her loud and clear. But Trump strolled past without acknowledging her. If you want a picture of a future Trump presidency, imagine a reporter shouting questions into an empty void.

*Correction, March 21, 2016: This piece originally misstated that reporter Sopan Deb had been detained in jail overnight. He was detained for several hours, but not overnight. (Return.)

Vote Trump, Vote Hillary, Stay Home, Pray

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 10:45:00 GMT

The specter of Donald Trump as nominee has begun to loom large, and it’s freaking out a certain subset of the Republican Party. Some GOP pundits have already declared, with God as their witness, that they will never vote for Trump. (See, for instance, “With God as My Witness, I Will Never Vote for Donald Trump.”)

Last week, the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza rounded up comments from prominent conservatives who are deeply disquieted by Trump and are grappling with a dilemma: If Trump’s on the GOP ballot in November, what’s the plan? Stay home on Election Day? Pray for a third-party candidate to appear? Write one in? Hold your nose and vote for Trump? Or—horrors—cast a vote for Hillary Clinton?

I wanted to hear from some non–pundit-class folks. So I put out a request to friends and colleagues to spread the word: Send me Republicans who feel uncomfortable about the rise of Trump. This could not be a less scientific survey. It’s a tiny sample, and my network skews toward Republicans more educated and affluent than the working-class voters who’ve been associated with Trump’s ascent. (Though it’s worth noting that Trump’s appeal is more broad-based than some give him credit for—he’s done well with all sorts of demographics.) I just wanted to listen to people describe how they’re wrestling with a difficult question, while understanding that it’s March, and plenty of minds can and will change between now and November.

Below are condensed and edited interviews with Trump-averse Republicans, conducted over the past week by phone, email, and text chat. As you’ll see, most are assuming Hillary will be the Democratic nominee. For the purposes for this piece, so are we.

Who: civil litigation attorney, male, 45, California
Voting background: has always voted GOP in previous presidential elections
What he’ll do if Trump is the nominee: probably vote for Trump

“Donald Trump is an amusing character but a con artist. He’s an excellent marketer and a shrewd guy who has recognized a political moment and is going to ride it. I think he doesn’t have the temperament to be president. I have friends I’m trying to talk out of supporting him. I would consider writing in a protest vote for a Libertarian.

“But honestly, Trump is smart enough that he’d pick someone for VP who’s generally acceptable to people like me, and then I’ll probably hold my nose and vote for him. I might consider a different Democratic candidate, but I just couldn’t vote for Hillary.

“It does concern me a little that there could be a great disaster on his watch—an error of judgment that would be very serious, that Hillary probably wouldn’t make. I don’t think he would push the button or actually round up people and send them to Mexico. But when I say that it makes me nervous because all sorts of dictatorial leaders were not taken seriously before they came to power. I guess I can’t imagine that that sort of thing would really happen here.”

Who: retired attorney, male, 74, California
Voting background: has voted GOP since Barry Goldwater, with one break for Ross Perot in 1992
What he’ll do if Trump is the nominee: vote for Trump

“I’m no Trump fan. But I would vote for Trump over Hillary. I recognize the arguments against Trump—I don’t think they’re frivolous, or mindless, or foolish—but I truly believe Hillary would be dangerous. I agree there are some aspects of Trump and his bombast that would make me and others uncertain about how he would behave. But he has been successful in business in part because he surrounds himself with good people, good advisers, good architects and engineers. He understands what he doesn’t know. Trump would not be so foolish as to start a war with Russia or Syria or Iran. I can’t guarantee it, but that’s what my gut tells me. I trust the system to constrain Trump way more than I trust Hillary.”

Who: federal HR employee, female, 40, Kentucky
Voting background: has voted GOP in every previous presidential election
What she’ll do if Trump is the nominee: vote for Hillary

“My biggest objection to Trump is that he is an ugly human being exploiting the ugly impulses of others. I don’t even think he is a real Republican. I think that people are latching on to him because they are angry and afraid and feel like ‘their’ America is moving on without them. I’m a military spouse, so I am extra disposed to lean right. But that is something else Trump does to annoy me. He tries to use veterans as props.

“It is honestly not that much of a stretch for me to support Hillary (although my dearly departed father is no doubt spinning in his grave). I think she is the only person close to a moderate that is left. Also, it is time for a woman!”

Who: business owner and CEO, male, 44, Washington, D.C.
Voting background: has always voted GOP in presidential elections, save for a libertarian vote in 2004
What he’ll do if Trump is the nominee: pray

“I have thought about this endlessly. For me it comes down to: pray for a viable third option, write in, or simply abstain. (Being a D.C. resident provides some measure of relief here.)

“Hillary makes this such a tough decision. I think many Republicans could cross the aisle, but not for her. What makes this so much more complicated than Democrats realize is that HRC is no ordinary Dem. Had it been Kerry or Obama or O’Malley, pulling the lever would have been a wee bit easier. But actually voting FOR Hillary is like succumbing to everything you know is profoundly wrong in this world. The closest comparison would be if somehow Kanye West hijacks the Democratic Party and says the most outlandish things, but locks down the nomination. Mainstream Dems would be like damn, I can’t vote for that jackass. But what if the Republican nominee were Ted Cruz?”

Who: retired attorney, female, 52, California
Voting background: has always voted GOP in presidential elections but abstained in 2008
What she’ll do if Trump is the nominee: probably not vote. Possibly vote for Hillary.

“Trump is a dangerous megalomaniac. Quite possibly the shallowest person in the public eye I can imagine, outside of a Justin Bieber–type celebrity. He has no humanity. He has no tolerance for different opinions. I am awestruck at how awful he is. I can’t describe in mere words just how appalling he is. My friends feel the same way. I don’t know anyone who isn’t mortified, and that includes friends and family who aren’t political, people who just read the paper occasionally.

“If the general election were held today, Trump against Hillary, I would not vote. I get a feeling from Hillary that she believes she’s entitled to break the rules if she thinks it’s a good idea, I find that arrogance objectionable. I don’t see any bigger goal for her than just her own power. But I do think underneath it all, she at least has some sympathy for civil liberties and for separation of powers. There’s some there there—while with Trump, he might wake up one morning and decide to invade Mexico. If Hillary starts showing something more than just a quest for power and authority than I’d vote for Hillary. There’s no scenario under which I’d vote for Donald Trump.”

Who: attorney, female, 39, Virginia
Voting background: has always voted GOP in presidential elections, save for a libertarian vote in 2000
What she’ll do if Trump is the nominee: not vote

“Trump represents a complete coarsening of the political discussion. I don’t see him standing for any principles. Certainly none of the principles that have caused me to vote Republican in virtually every election. I’m concerned about his cavalier attitude towards the Constitution. I don’t believe he would see himself as being bound to uphold the First Amendment and other constitutional rights. Most of my friends are appalled. I’m surprised, though, that there is a significant minority who are cheering him on or are OK with him. I’d say it’s 50-50 among my friends—half would hold their nose and vote Trump, half would not vote at all.

“I won’t vote for Hillary first because I’m pro-life. But there are no Democrats I can think of that I would vote for.

“I’ve been volunteering for the local Republican Party for eight or nine years now, recruiting volunteers and organizing them. There’s always been a small number who have had outrageous positions on things, and I’ve tried to avoid them. But most of them care about the country and good government and electing trustworthy people. If Trump is nominated, those volunteers will not lift a finger for him whether they vote for him or not. He’s driving people who care most about politics and who we elect out of being active, and into despair about our political process.”

Who: retired executive, male, 75, New Jersey
Voting background: has always voted GOP in previous presidential elections
What he’ll do if Trump is the nominee: vote for Hillary

“Trump is a quirk of the times—no governing or legislative experience, gravitas, no redeeming social skills save celebrity, and no views on his fellow man that I can subscribe to—yet he persists. Assuming that Trump is the Republican candidate, not voting is not an option. I would swallow hard and vote for Hillary Clinton because she has the necessary experience, and because the standing of the U.S. in the world would not be compromised as I believe it would be if Trump were elected.”

Who: stay-at-home parent, female, 38, Virginia
Voting background: has voted GOP in every presidential election
What she’ll do if Trump is the nominee: write in a different candidate

“I think Trump is completely unpresidential. I think he’s childish. I think he has no policy plan, and any inkling of a plan that he’s articulated is not conservative. I think he’s a misogynist, a racist, and a bigot. I have a problem with the way he deals with people he disagrees with. We need to be able to work together and present viable options for good government policy. His recent comments about free speech and limiting it—that’s not a conservative value. Some of my friends have already said they won’t vote for Trump if he’s the nominee.

“I think Hillary is a criminal, I think she’s going to be indicted, as she should be. She’s someone else where I don’t think you can trust anything she says. I’d have to see if a third-party candidate comes forward, or write in someone else.”

Who: attorney, male, 33, Illinois
Voting background: has voted GOP in every previous presidential election
What he’ll do if Trump is the nominee: vote for Hillary

“My objections to Trump? 1) His ban on all Muslim immigration, and my worries that he could evolve to curtailing the rights of Muslim-Americans. 2) His promise to deport all illegal aliens, even those raised here. 3) His support of Putin. 4) His anti-free trade stances. 5) His incitement of violence at rallies and his other authoritarian tendencies. 6) His “take the oil” stance that appears like an endorsement of 19^th-century style imperialism.

“I’m half-Japanese and half-white, and I guess the most alarming thing is that, as a rare minority Republican, I haven’t felt excluded from the party or conservatism because the racist part of the coalition hasn’t really had much power. Now they’re about to win the nomination.

“I’m not a fan of Hillary at all. If it were constitutional, I’d rather even have a third Obama term. But if Hillary wins the nomination, I’d vote for her (and donate and possibly campaign too) over Trump. If Bernie wins the nomination, I’m voting third party.”

Who: tech worker, male, 39, Ohio
Voting background: has voted GOP in every previous presidential election
What he’ll do if Trump is the nominee: not vote

“As a Republican, there is no way in hell I would vote for Donald Trump. He lacks the intellectual curiosity, integrity, humility, and temperament required of a good leader. He is a crony capitalist and would introduce government-enforced religious discrimination, both of which Republicans are supposed to abhor. Oh, and there is the fact that he is not a Republican, not by label but by policy. I am no ideological purist, but he isn’t even close. So if he gets the GOP nomination, I will show up on voting day and leave a big, fat blank in the section for POTUS.”

Who: stay-at-home parent, female, 31, Massachusetts
Voting background: has voted GOP in every previous presidential election
What she’ll do if Trump is the nominee: vote for Hillary

“Trump is too arrogant, hypocritical, and bigoted. His lack of experience doesn’t help. He is unwilling to compromise or even hear people out with opposing views. He is childish in his responses, and I am terrified for how that would translate with foreign policy.

“If it’s Trump versus Hillary, I would vote Hillary and probably cry and go to confession. It would be pretty horrific, and I would not advocate for her in any way whatsoever, but instead plead for others to just not vote Trump. I would also be looking into third party candidates a bit more.”

Who: financial adviser, male, 30, Florida
Voting background: has voted GOP in every previous presidential election
What she’ll do if Trump is the nominee: vote for Hillary

“I was a strong McCain and Romney supporter. But Trump’s policy proposals are absurd. He makes racist statements, thus confirming everything Dems suspect about Republicans. And he is a loose cannon—basically in the Sarah Palin wing of the party. A person who lacks the basic qualifications (sanity) to have nuclear weapons.

“I would vote for HRC, no doubt. I think she’s smart. I think she won’t blow up the economy like Sanders would. But she is basically a corrupt politician. On a human level she bothers me because I can see how full of shit she is, but she won’t ruin the country. If Bloomberg ran, I would vote for him. If Sanders is the Democratic candidate, I’d vote a write-in. Trump and Sanders are absolutely unsupportable in my view. “

Who: CEO of a corporate consulting firm, male, 63, Florida
Voting background: has always voted GOP in previous presidential elections
What he’ll do if Trump is the nominee: probably vote for Trump … or wait, change that, Hillary

I first talked to this man Thursday, and this is what he had to say:

“The crux of the problem for people like me is how can we vote for Hillary but how can we vote for Trump? I’m damn near close to not being able to vote. With Trump, there’s no substance there. No accountability in terms of anything he says. He’s reckless, he’s dangerous, he’s egocentric, he’s childish, he’s petulant. What he’s capable of, that’s the frightening thing. He’s just such a loose cannon, he seems to do or say anything he wants. I hope some of that is positioning on his part and would come under control. I haven’t researched Trump’s positions enough yet because I’m so opposed to him. But in the end, if I don’t discover anything new about him that I don’t know now, and if I’m being honest about how I feel about Hillary versus perhaps a somewhat muted Trump, I would have to hold my nose and vote for him against Hillary. It’s conceivable, if Hillary was indicted and Democrats came up with someone other than Bernie, someone more moderate—I might even give Joe Biden a second look over Trump.”

A few days later, he changed his mind:

“When we talked on Thursday, I was right at the tipping point, but I was hoping that Trump might start acting differently, toning it down and creating a little more credibility, so that I could take a risk on him. But in fact what he did is go the other way. It gets worse day by day. Throwing the water bottle. The David Duke thing—a white supremacist, and then Trump thinks he can lie about it after. It’s a farce.

“So I don’t want to be that guy that says I’m not going to vote and not take that responsibility. Hillary is the tallest midget in the room. At least she’s not an impractical ideologue, and I think she’d operate with some level of common sense. I think we have a responsibility to vote, and if push came to shove, I could not take the risk of putting Trump in that position.”

Damn, Spaniel.

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 20:17:00 GMT

Daaamn, spaniel.

Read more in Slate:

What Is “Damn, Daniel” and What Makes It So Good?

Jeb Bush Was Not a Joke

Seth Stevenson — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 18:57:00 GMT

Jeb Bush’s extremely bad week began last Monday evening in the Charleston Convention Center. Facing anemic poll numbers and dwindling campaign cash, he needed something big. And so—before a couple thousand South Carolinians, a bank of news cameras, and a flock of reporters who flapped in like vultures placidly eyeing a wounded animal—he deployed his final line of defense: his big brother.

There was good ol’ Dubya, moseying out to raucous applause. The Decider is edging up on 70 now, exhibiting far less hair and notably slurrier diction. But durned if he didn’t unholster that squinty-eyed, chest-forward ’tude that the folks still love. There were shouts of “We miss you!” as he spoke.

George praised his little bro’s “humility” and “quiet conviction.” He reminded us that “the strongest person usually isn’t the loudest in the room.” As introductions go, it was nigh apologetic—like Eeyore was about to step to the lectern.

But the Jeb who took the stage was pumped. He boomed at the mic, opening with a dramatic warning that our world was being “turned asunder.” Jeb had seen an optometrist earlier that day, ditching his doofusy glasses for contact lenses. He’d adios’d his quarter-zip dad sweater in favor of a suit and tie. He was sporting a slicker haircut. He’d pulled out all the stops.

It sure felt like a last stand. Not just for Jeb Bush’s campaign, but maybe for Jeb Bush’s basic dignity as a human being. For the tattered legacy of the Bush family. For the remnants of an embattled GOP faction. Even, one might argue, for the quaint notion of civility in public life.

Anyway, none of it worked. I saw people leaving once Dubya was done, and after it became clear that Laura Bush, also sitting on stage, wouldn’t be speaking. They stepped on discarded “Jeb!” placards as they headed for the exits.

By Wednesday afternoon, after this desperate kick for the surface, Jeb’s campaign was sinking to previously uncharted depths. Around the same moment that popular South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was endorsing Marco Rubio, Jeb was addressing a modest gathering inside a gazebo at the Summerville Country Club, a little inland from Charleston. Things quickly went to a very sad place. By the time the event was over, multiple attendees had expressed their sympathy for Jeb—how sorry they were that he’d failed to stop Donald Trump from stealing his lunch money.

“I loved your brother. Can you be in that category?” inquired an older man, rather doubtfully. “Can you be a sumbitch?”

“I will be tough. I will be resolute. I will be firm. I will be clear. I will be determined,” Jeb answered. He rattled it off with that low-key affect of his, standing about 30 yards from the tee box on the sixth hole of a golf course. It was the least sumbitchy thing you ever saw in your life.

At one point, Jeb unleashed a bitter rant. “It’s all been decided, apparently,” he said. “The pundits have decided. We don’t have to go vote, I guess. I should just stop campaigning, maybe?”

“No, no,” a few people in one corner said.

By Saturday night, it was all over but the crying. And then the crying happened, too. Standing in front of volunteers in a small function room at the Columbia Hilton, Jeb choked up as he announced he was suspending his campaign. People in the crowd dabbed at their eyes.

I asked a man with a “Jeb!” sticker on his blazer lapel if he was surprised that Jeb had quit the race. “I’m not surprised that Jeb Bush was a statesman to the end,” he said, defiance in his voice. “The Republican Party may have moved, but Jeb Bush hasn’t.”

And that, I think, was his virtue and his downfall.

* * *

I never expected to like Jeb. Boarding school toff. Political scion. Staunch pro-lifer. NRA favorite. Oh, and ugh, the Terri Schiavo stuff.

Still, I couldn’t help but warm to him as the campaign wore on. And then even pull for him, a little. It was partly the pathos. Jeb felt somehow more human than other candidates. Vulnerable, struggling, unable to conceal flashes of fear and melancholy.

He also showed compassion on the trail. Take this, from a British journalist who, for unclear reasons, felt compelled to stand up at Jeb’s event in Greenville on Friday and say this: “My job as a columnist is to follow these rallies. I haven’t heard any other candidate give a long period in their speech to talking about people with learning disabilities, to talk about people at the bottom of the pack. And whatever happens to your campaign, sir, that heart you should be really proud of.” I concur, randomly effusive British journalist.

But what sealed it for me was Jeb’s backbone. You heard me right: Poor, sweet, pitiful Jeb was the one guy with spine. The only GOP candidate who made it a point to denounce Trump’s worst barbarities. I watched him do it again and again on the trail. “He’s entertaining,” he’d say of Trump, “unless you’re a woman, or Hispanic, or a disabled person. But it’s not so entertaining when you get disparaged.” Or: “It’s not strong to denigrate people. It’s a sign of weakness.”

Of course, those should be obvious sentiments. Any good-hearted fourth-grader knows as much. And yet Jeb stood alone among his colleagues, shouting, “You can’t insult your way to the nomination!” into a pitiless void. The other guys allowed—and continue to allow—Trump’s vile hate to go unchallenged. “The country is angry,” they say. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.

* * *

Jeb had all manner of deficiencies as a candidate. Among them, as so often is the case with tragic protagonists, his own family. Third time was not the charm. “Bush fatigue” was a major stumbling block.

It’s a little unfair to tar Jeb with the sins of his brother when they’re so unalike. As Dubya spoke in Charleston last week, he carefully painted Jeb as the beta sibling. Dubya reminisced about sitting in the stands with Jeb at Astros games when they were younger: George would watch the action on the field while Jeb would be “writing love letters to his future wife.” The two men’s grandkids have bestowed on them different, and telling, nicknames: “Jeb is ‘Gampy’ and I’m ‘El Jefe,’ ” said Dubya with that staccato chortle. “In case you’re not bilingual, that means ‘the boss.’ ”

Jeb might have more of his father in him. The WASPy reserve. The considered restraint—a quality that Newsweek, back in 1987, labeled the “Wimp Factor.” But Jeb has never shown Poppy’s killer instinct. Former Slate editor Michael Kinsley once termed G.H.W. a “grandee with a switchblade.” You don’t get the sense Jeb is keen to shiv anyone.

Along with Bush money and Bush connections, Jeb also inherited the Bushian infelicity with language. Not once have I seen him make it through a speech without mangling some phrase or stumbling on his words. Likewise, he’s burdened with the Bush men’s awkward sense of humor. His jokes rarely land.

The albatross of his family aside, this was never going to be Jeb’s election cycle. He’s far too temperate. His stump speech promised a “steady hand” at a time when there’s zero demand for steady hands. To get traction in 2016, you gotta pledge to burn the whole mofo down.

Even within the “establishment lane,” Jeb was especially ill-suited to our moment. Go ahead, feast your eyes on Rubio and Haley—a pair of attractive, multiculti 44-year-olds who resemble “a Benetton commercial.” Now direct your gaze to pasty, 63-year-old Jeb—campaigning not with Nikki Haley but with Lindsey Graham and a couple of wrinkled Navy admirals. Jeb was saddled with a surname, a team of advisers, and a policy slate that all smelled like yesterday’s fish.

To the extent that he’s a guy who thrived in a previous era, awoke to a new epoch that rejects him, and needed radical retraining to get the job he wanted, Jeb’s not unlike those left-behind Trump voters we keep hearing about. Another outmoded white dude.

* * *

There I go again, letting Trump dominate the conversation. “The front-runner,” as Jeb called him on the stump—skirting proper nouns as though Trump were Voldemort—looms over all. But if there’s a single person who’s suffered most under the Donald’s vicious reign—I’m not talking about poll results, but personally, emotionally—that person has to be Jeb.

It was painful to witness. A sort of atavistic predator-prey relationship. Trump would pin Jeb down, toy with his quarry, flay the skin off piece by piece. Watching Jeb on the debate stage, I could feel the prickly heat bloom across his nape whenever Trump attacked. Jeb would rock back and forth, his shoulders bobbing, an awkward rictus grin spreading across his face. I’m quite familiar with these involuntary responses. I, too, am a man deeply averse to conflict.

I spotted Jeb as a fellow introvert right from the start. Shy recognize shy. It must have been a singular torture to campaign for president with this personality suite. Jeb can’t saber-rattle like his brother. He can’t cornpone like Lindsey Graham. His battle with Trump was a classic clash of phlegmatic versus choleric—never a winning matchup for the quiet guy.

“Introverts grind. They set goals,” said Jeb at a town hall in Columbia Thursday night, when asked if his ailment had a silver lining. “Introverts like to listen,” he added. Every profile of Jeb notes how comfortable he is in smaller settings, soaking up information, diving into nitty-gritty details. A voter in the audience at the Summerville event—a disabled veteran—stood up and described a meeting he had with Jeb and other wounded vets a few years ago. “I was so impressed,” he said, with evident gratitude, “because you took out a pen and notebook and just listened for three hours. I don’t think any other candidate would do that.”

You can’t deny his rigor. He produced a 47-page policy pamphlet that he called “the short version.” He could discuss “recourse debt” and “forbearance rates” when asked about student loans. When one voter mentioned that she had a special-needs child, Jeb spoke with tremendous passion and fluency about educational solutions for developmentally disabled kids.

Please recall that Trump mocked a disabled man by making gimpy arm motions.

* * *

Last week, after Jeb’s Myrtle Beach event ended, I went around asking attendees if they’d been won over. There was general assent that Jeb was “a good man.” But multiple people said they were still leaning toward Rubio or Kasich.

One woman confessed that she wasn’t a Republican voter at all. She just wanted to scope out the GOP candidates who came through town, in case any reached the White House. I asked her which one of them she’d choose, if forced. “Probably him,” she said, nodding toward the scrum of people taking selfies with Jeb. As she said it, I realized I felt the same way.

Look, I know he wanted to eliminate the estate tax. I know his brother was an awful president, and I know he was a terrible candidate. But it’s a shame that we caricaturized him out of existence this past year. He’s more than his unfortunate exclamation point. He’s not a walking sad-face emoji.

Given that the president serves as an avatar for our nation—the face we show the world, the mirror that reflects who we are—integrity in a candidate is no small thing. Earnest attention to detail is to be applauded. Willingness to listen is a mark of solid judgment. Empathy for the afflicted bespeaks good character.

Shit matters, is I guess what I’m saying. The Republican race snipped its strongest tether to decency when Jeb Bush bowed out Saturday night.

Morning in … Canada?

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 17:46:12 GMT

When news broke on Monday that a Marco Rubio ad promising “Morning Again in America” illustrated that promise with video footage of a harbor in Vancouver, British Columbia, it was only the latest in a series of stock footage gaffes that has besmirched this presidential election cycle. Previous shameful moments: Rand Paul, putatively showing us everyday Americans who endorse him, used photos of Germans. And Donald Trump, in an ad about America’s porous borders, instead used footage of people crossing into a Spanish enclave in Morocco. (“No shit, it’s not the Mexican border,” his campaign manager frothed to NBC News, “but that’s what our country is going to look like.”)

These things happen. Who among us hasn’t used a composite image of Turkish air force jets soaring above the Russian navy Black Sea Fleet in an attempt to honor American veterans?

“It’s the No. 1 peril in using stock,” one Democratic political advertising vet told me. “Whenever there’s an election in Kentucky, somebody uses a photo of a miner and that miner is actually in Europe. And it ends up in a news story every time.” It’s such a problem that the stock services have begun providing suites of images guaranteed to be shot in the USA, or even in specific states.

These mistakes happen in part because of the sheer amount of stock required to do political messaging these days. With emailed newsletters, Web videos, and Twitter/Facebook/Snapchat/Instagram feeds joining old standbys like postal mailers, TV ads, and lawn signs, there’s an unquenchable thirst for new images and footage that people haven’t seen before. “I tell the new hires at our agency that a lot of their job will be hunting around on Getty, Corbis, and Shutterstock,” says the ad guy, referencing a few of the leading stock services. “It’s hard to find fresh stuff. Every ad about Medicare uses the same three images of seniors looking at their bills and shaking their heads. You might have to wade through a hundred pages of stock photos to find the one that feels new, powerful, authentic, and not cheesy.”

The danger of using stock that feels stale? You end up with something like this parody of generic stock gone wrong. Or you paint a picture that doesn’t look like real life. “We’re often representing unions or middle class people,” says Lisa Suchy, of the Democratic political marketing firm Mack Sumner Communications. “And a lot of the images on the stock sites are of beautiful models, not of real people with dirt under their fingernails.” Suchy says she’s a fan of Shestock, a service that features photos of everyday women taken by female photographers. “I think it’s a unique mission,” says Suchy. “It’s pictures of real women doing everyday things, not of the dressed-up supermodel or the flawless, skinny businesswoman.”

In recent years, as the costs of photo equipment, production, and distribution have gone down, there’s been an explosion in options and a drop in price for people who buy stock imagery. “It’s possible to make an entire, high-quality ad now from stock,” says the Democratic ad guy, “in a way that it wasn’t 10 years ago. You can make things with a scope and scale you could never afford if you were paying for your own shoots.”

Consider this Chris Christie ad from January, titled “Strong and Clear”:

This ad was made by Damien Harvey of Agentia Creative. Harvey’s a longtime Republican ad producer who’s worked for outfits like Mitt Romney’s super PAC and for the Koch-sponsored Freedom Partners. Last week, just before the Christie campaign came to a close, Harvey walked me through the choices he made as he pieced this ad together, alternating stock images with footage of Christie that came from the campaign itself.

:07 – A photo of Hillary Clinton, bought from the Associated Press

“AP Images is a big go-to place for high quality news-style photography,” says Harvey. “I got Hillary standing with a teleprompter because of the association with Obama using teleprompters.”

:09 – Dissolve to a photo of hands holding an Obama “Hope” poster, bought from Shutterstock

“For republicans, that poster might as well be Stalin. It’s such a negative image burned in the brains of conservatives and it makes our voting public cringe. I’m trying to say that Hillary is just a different version of Barack Obama—that’s what we get across doing that dissolve.”

:10 – A burning building with gunmen inside, followed by a burning car, both images bought from the stock site Pond5

“Benghazi is very real for Republican voters, and especially for conservatives. My idea was in talking about Hillary’s foreign policy, let’s create a visual narrative with an attack on a building and a clichéd, burned out, exploded car.”

:12 – Men with their faces covered, holding machine guns, standing in front of what appears to be an ISIS flag

“I love this shot. It’s really hard to find ISIS imagery that you can buy. So I took a still frame from one of ISIS’ own videos that you can find posted on YouTube.”

:15 – Footage of what appears to be Middle Eastern people burning American flags, bought from Pond5

“Everyone’s seen flag burning a million times, but I like how it cuts to the next shot.”

:18 – Footage of a rocket taking off

“The rocket is from a YouTube of an Iranian test video they released. I purposely picked it because there’s something to me about nuclear doom when you see a rocket taking off in the middle of a desert. It’s a real potential nightmare and it’s about us giving the Iranians that ability.”

:23 – A montage of faces, all photos bought from Shutterstock.

“Here I’m trying to mix some real commercial-style, Madison Avenue emotion into the spot. So instead of showing a sidewalk with a thousand people on it, why not go into the stock library and do a face montage, picking out solid, quality faces that look like real Americans. And a baby. Because babies always work. Airplanes, trains, and babies.”

Harvey wouldn’t reveal the prices he paid for these images. Expenses can add up. According to the Democratic ad-maker I spoke to, the highest of high-end national ads—with lots of quick cuts and only top quality footage—might incur up to $50,000 just in stock costs.

But on the bottom end of the scale, 100 bucks can secure you a decent photo or a brief time-lapse image. The economics of stock are such that some ad agencies hired by campaigns just buy photos of their candidate from Getty instead of hiring a professional photographer to document campaign events. Super PACs and other entities that aren’t allowed to coordinate with campaigns are even more likely to turn to stock services. Again, the danger here is that the stock image you slap on your mailer is in fact a photo of a convicted Belarussian pederast who just happens to be a doppelgänger for your candidate.

Given the prevalence of negative ads, many stock photo searches by political campaigns are actually for photos of their opponents. And here the criteria are very different. “I think photographers used to weed out the bad photos they took of candidates,” says Suchy. “But now they seem to have learned that if they leave a few of those in, they’ll still get bought by somebody. In 2012, we found one of Romney with his mouth hanging open that we used all the time.”

A Cold One With Donald

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 11 Feb 2016 17:06:09 GMT

When George W. Bush edged out John Kerry in 2004—a vote result that prompted one British paper to ask, “How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?”—a theory formed to explain how Bush, with the fetid albatross of the Iraq War dangling from his neck, won: He’s the “guy you’d want to have a beer with.” A Zogby/Williams poll that fall had indeed found that 57 percent of undecided voters would rather drink with Bush than with Kerry. Left-wing pundits who were baffled that Bush had been awarded a second term seized on this as the only possible explanation for his appeal.

Over time, “guy you’d want to have a beer with” became the agreed-upon narrative of Bush’s campaign wins. Uptight Al Gore and pinot-sipping John Kerry just weren’t desirable barstool neighbors, the now-cemented conventional wisdom holds, while Bush could sell himself as someone whom you’d like to sip a Coors adjacent to. As things in Iraq kept going south, lefties like Bill Maher and Elizabeth Edwards invoked the beer thing as a cautionary tale, tsk-tsking America for thinking it was a good idea to choose the leader of the free world on that basis. The drinking-beer-in-candidate’s-vicinity rationale had cropped up here and there before 2000, but ever since W. it’s been a key indicator—used to predict or explain all sorts of election results.

I haven’t seen a ton of data this cycle on the beer question. But an online poll back in November, conducted by NBC News and Survey Monkey, asked registered voters which Republican presidential candidate they’d “most want to have a drink with.” Donald Trump won with 16 percent. Ben Carson got 11 percent. Marco Rubio came in tied with Carly Fiorina and Chris Christie for a distant third, way down at 4 percent.

I don’t want to put an inordinate amount of stock in one online poll. Or, for that matter, in a reductive theory about election psychology. But it does occur to me that, for a certain swath of voters, there has never been and perhaps never will be a candidate you’d be more eager to have a beer with than Donald Trump. What other presidential hopeful seems so up for anything? So full of ribald stories and high-gloss gossip? So unguarded and unpredictable? What other candidate calls his opponent a “pussy” on camera and then just owns it? Dude seems like he’d be fun after you got a couple shots in him.

Of course, Trump doesn’t drink. Neither did W. The want-to-have-a-beer-with metric is metaphorical in nature. It’s more a measure of the voter’s own id and imagination than of the candidate’s likely behavior if thrown into a prolonged, casual social interaction with an unknown citizen. (A 2005 story in the Onion was titled “Long-Awaited Beer With Bush Really Awkward, Voter Reports.” Noting the poll numbers on the beer question, the story envisions W. tippling an O’Doul’s with a blue-collar Pennsylvanian and failing to connect on any level.)

Still, knocking one back with a candidate appears to be an activity voters like to ponder. Consider this January message thread on the conservative Internet forum Free Republic, in which “Freepers” discuss whether America would prefer to have a beer with Trump or Ted Cruz. Among the comments posted:

“Beer with Trump in a heartbeat. Feel like I could just be myself and he’d be himself. Don’t know what I’d get with Cruz, but it feels like it could be a bit boring.”

“I don’t think Trump is afraid to speak his mind. The rest of Washington DC … forget about it.”

“I like Cruz but I would rather hang out with Trump.”

“[Trump]’s got a wicked sense of humor and it certainly wouldn’t be a dull conversation.”

Cruz himself recognized this deficit at a GOP debate in October when he was asked to identify a weakness. “If you want someone to grab a beer with,” he said, “I might not be that guy.” Noting this, the Dallas Morning News quoted a polling expert who “suspects [Cruz] has some internal polling that says it’s a vulnerability.” Cruz suggested that he could instead be the guy who safely drives you home after the beer is done. Meanwhile, when questioned about his decision to call Ted Cruz a “pussy” in front of one of his frothing crowds, Trump answered, “We were having fun … Every once in awhile you can have a little fun.”

But is “fun” all we’re looking for when we say we want to have a beer with a candidate? I’d like to have a beer with Hillary and quiz her about her relationship with Sid Blumenthal or drink with Jeb and explore twisted Bush family dynamics, but this is clearly not our general understanding of the want-to-have-a-beer-with concept. With Gore and Kerry, there was an element of stuffed-shirtness that came into play—a sense that someone is or isn’t relatable. A 2004 Pew poll found that swing voters, by an 18 point margin, felt Bush was more of a “real person” than Kerry.

There’s some mild sexism inherent in the want-to-have-a-beer-with formulation. It sort of implies a traditionally male manner of interaction. Shoulder to shoulder. Eyes on the football game. Insecurities swallowed. In 2008, there was talk that Hillary was winning “beer-track” Democrats while Obama dominated the “wine-track.” But it’s telling that we don’t ask which candidate you’d most want to be in your book club.

A January Washington Post story claimed that “Who would you rather have a beer with?” is a “way pollsters shorthand” the question of “likability.” But I’m not sure that totally captures it, either. Trump is freewheeling and unpredictable, which makes him entertaining company, but is he likable?

I think Trump voters would flock to him at their corner tavern like high school beta males flock to the cafeteria table headed by the alpha dude in a letter jacket. They turn their faces to him with awe. He mocks their adversaries. Trump promises again and again that we will “beat” China, and Mexico, and ISIS. But these aren’t the opponents his constituency truly wants to defeat. Trump voters fear they’re losing a battle against Obama, and Hillary, and gay people, and Black Lives Matter, and politically correct multicultural elites. That’s who they want Trump to wallop.

For the people who want to drink with Trump, he is their champion. He assures them that, as long as they’re hanging with him, they’re champions, too. Nothing tastes better than an ice-cold bottle of winning.

The Best Super Bowl Ads

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 05:12:00 GMT

Last year, the Super Bowl ad mood was decidedly somber. It’s not every day a consumer-facing brand makes a spokesperson out of a tragically deceased young boy. This year marked a clear return to lighthearted tropes of yore: animals, topical jokes, and a passel of celebrities. The result was less of a downer. But this was an evening of meh—a sloppy game, with few memorable moments, paired with a forgettable slate of ads.

FIRST QUARTER

The first ad after kickoff appears at first to be a pitch for new cross-training sneakers. We observe fit young men and women exerting themselves—running, weight training, shadowboxing. Just when we’re ready to hear details about heel-strike cushioning, we discover this is in fact an ad for a beer. Michelob Ultra, with its 95 calories and 2.6 carbs, declares itself “brewed for those who go the extra mile.” I’m a firm believer in the value of rehydrating with alcohol immediately after exercise. But when I think Michelob, I think husky 48-year-old guys at the corner tavern after a softball game, desperately pretending that drinking three light-bodied lagers is a healthy choice. Perhaps this campaign will reel in a younger, more co-ed crowd.

Snickers dumps nougat all over our collective memory of Marilyn Monroe. I’ve never been a fan of using ghosts as spokespeople (and in this case, two ghosts: Marilyn’s, plus the ghost of Willem Dafoe’s career), but this seems particularly weird. Does the resurrection of a suicidally depressed mid-century actress make you hanker for a chocolate bar?

Last year, Avocados From Mexico became the first fresh produce brand to make a Super Bowl commercial (hat tip: The Produce News). This year, the coalition of avocado sellers solidifies itself as one of the better Bowl advertisers around. In an absurd, chuckle-inducing spot, a group of extra-terrestrials tours a museum of Earth culture that features Chia Pets, Scott Baio, airplane travel (presumed to be a form of torture), and, best of all, avocados. Why advertise avocados? The corporate giants behind this ad dominate the market share of avocados sold in the United States, so any general boost to avocado demand helps their cause.

Hyundai highlights the Elantra’s remote start feature by showing people running away from bears in a forest, reaching their (remotely unlocked) Elantra just in time. I know you’re thinking this so I’ll be the one to say it: At a moment when The Revenant has raised global awareness around the hot-button topic of bear rape, do we really want to fill our airwaves with casual, commercialized scenes of aggressive bear pursuit? It’s no laughing matter, Hyundai.

Apartments.com exhumes the theme song to The Jeffersons in an ad featuring Jeff Goldblum and Lil’ Wayne. “Movin’ on Up” (perhaps the greatest sitcom theme song of all time) was intended as an ode to black socioeconomic ascendance, with lyrics like “took a whole lotta tryin’/ just to get up that hill.” It’s a minor desecration to see it employed in a pitch for an apartment search site. And I’m left wondering what makes Apartments.com better than its many alternatives—the ad made no effort to demonstrate the product’s benefits. I did enjoy Goldblum’s casual song stylings and Lil’ Wayne’s punny cameo as “Weezie.”

A Doritos ad has a fetus ejecting itself from its mother’s womb because it can’t wait any longer to try a Dorito. My heart goes out to this premature infant—it won’t be able to digest any kind of solid food, never mind the stomach-jarring spiciness and palate-shocking crunch of a Dorito chip.

A PayPal ad claims its online payments system is “new money.” Hmm. Not sold on this. I’d argue PayPal feels more like 1999 money. Newer money seems to flow through PayPal’s corporate sibling, Venmo, which is a favorite of the kids these days. And maybe the newest, hottest money of all is Snapcash? Anyway, to me, PayPal screams “money that bought DVDs on eBay at the tail end of the Clinton administration.”

Audi imagines an astronaut, referred to as “commander,” who’s lost his lust for life. He barely eats the food put in front of him. He wistfully recalls favorite moments in his spacerocket. The only way to snap him out of his funk? Hand him the keys to an Audi R8, capable of going 205 mph, while the chorus of David Bowie’s “Starman” revs into gear. The notion: Anyone driving this car will experience reclaimed pep, a renewed sense of “command,” and a general feeling that the lead is back in his pencil. Niggling question: If this older chap is sound enough in mind and body to drive a sportscar at high speeds on public roads, why has he been issued a home health aide?

The animating idea behind Mountain Dew’s “puppymonkeybaby“ is that this beast comprises three great things, just as Mountain Dew Kickstart is made from three ingredients. Those ingredients are “Dew, juice, and caffeine,” so, first of all: That sounds like an 11-year-old made it in a bathtub. And second of all: This spot seems destined to garner attention—no doubt #puppymonkeybaby will trend if it hasn’t already—and that’s half the battle in the ad wars these days. The puppymonkeybaby cuts through the cultural clutter because the puppymonkeybaby is such a disquieting image. It’s a mélange whose sum is far creepier than its adorable parts. (And am I wrong to be wigged by the fact that presumably this creature has human genitalia?)

National treasures Key and Peele re-team in an ad for web site builder Squarespace. This pair is known for creating indelible comic characters. But 30 seconds isn’t nearly long enough for “Lee and Morris,” a couple of amateur sports commentators who host a webcast called Real Talk, to take shape. Luckily, this campaign has a sizable online component—worth checking out to watch Key and Peele work their magic at greater length.

Rocket Mortgage promises to let you “get a mortgage on your phone.” Tagline: “PUSH BUTTON, GET MORTGAGE.” I admire efforts at convenience. But the ad asks, “If it could be that easy, wouldn’t more people buy homes?,” and then posits that more homebuying would goose the American economy. As I recall, in the mid-2000s we dabbled in making sure mortgages were super easy to get, and embraced the idea buying lots of homes would goose the economy. Results were … mixed.

SECOND QUARTER

In what will surely be a theme that gathers steam as the presidential election nears, Bud Light hops on the political parody train. America is invited to join “The Bud Light Party,” headed up by Seth Rogen and Amy Schumer. Couple of interesting things about these celebrity spokesperson choices. Rogen seems more likely to tipple a Belgian in a bottle than a domestic in a can, no? As for Schumer: It’s fascinating that this brand, once famous for bikini model ads, now shoves feminist icon Schumer front and center. She’s no sexual object here—though she does nail an off-color “caucus” joke. Instead, she’s one of the frat guys. She’s Seth Rogen in a dress. Or perhaps it’s fairer, at this point in their careers, to say that Seth Rogen is Amy Schumer in a suit. (Also present: the suddenly ubiquitous Michael Peña, representing the Latino voters/drinkers all candidates must court. Meanwhile, America would unanimously confirm the appointment of Paul Rudd to basically any cabinet position.)

Hyundai envisions a place called “Ryanville“ where every single citizen is Ryan Reynolds. Is this in any way an intriguing notion for any of us? Like, we are hounding for more Ryan Reynolds in our lives? Just can’t get enough Ryan Reynolds? I mean, RyanGoslingburgh, sure. (RyanO’Nealtown, too. Don’t start, he was great in Barry Lyndon.)

Look in the mirror, America. You are a bunch of constipated opioid addicts. I hope this ad that carefully explains how opioid-induced constipation is different from regular kinds of constipation helps bring you some measure of relief.

Laundry detergent Persil runs its first-ever Super Bowl spot. Often, we wonder why companies bother to advertise during the Super Bowl, but this is a perfect spot for Persil. The brand has only been for sale in the U.S. since March 2015, and is not well known among American consumers. Almost everybody does laundry—men, women, all age groups. The Super Bowl is an effective place to reach us all at once, and to boost awareness of a product that’s available in giant stores like Walmart but that people might not be familiar with yet.

HALFTIME

Amazon’s first-ever Super Bowl ad is for Echo, its voice-controlled music player/digital assistant. Within this celebrity stew (I confess I wouldn’t turn down an invite to party with Jason Schwartzman and Missy Elliott) lurks a classic demo ad in which the spokesperson (here, Alec Baldwin) runs the product through its paces. We get a look at what the Echo can do. We also get a look at some surprisingly solid comedic timing from Dan Marino.

THIRD QUARTER

Mini taps into our age’s obsession with identity. Serena Williams insists the Mini Clubman is not a “chick car,” and then Abby Wambach insists it’s not a “gay car.” Those happen to be the very stereotypes currently associated with Mini owners. The rest of the ad—featuring celebrities of dubious appeal, like Randy Johnson and Harvey Keitel—is an effort to “defy labels” and, in doing so, welcome other buying demographics. Whether this’ll work remains an open question, but I’d like to note that I’m fond of the name “Clubman” because it sounds antiquated in a pleasant way.

Honda differentiates its Ridgeline pickup by adding speakers inside the truck bed (thereby entertaining a flock of sheep as the pickup-borne shepherd makes his tour of the farm). This seems like a small-bore product attribute to tout. We’ve given up on towing torque and cab capacity? It’s all about speaker placement now? Meanwhile, as a citizen, I guess my concern regarding these truck bed speakers is that they’re less likely to be used in an open sheep field than at a traffic light on a busy main drag, imposing top-volume Toby Keith on all in the vicinity.

FOURTH QUARTER

The NFL presents a “Super Bowl Babies Choir,” composed of kids all born nine months after Super Bowl victories (the spawn of parents who celebrated the big win with the big nasty). Cute idea and cute kids. But, if I may, a question for you, Mr. Goodell: Where are the Patriot babies in this NFL-sponsored ad? Four super bowl victories since 2001, sir. That equates to Super Bowl babies who are 15 years old now, some 13s and some 12s, and no doubt a slew of adorable infants named for Malcolm Butler. You couldn’t find a spot for these kids in the ad? I guess because you couldn’t fit them all? So many little champions.

I’m accustomed to Axe ads where the underlying message is that if you spray Axe on yourself, bikini babes swarm like flies. (Flies that want to have sex with you.) This ad appears to be a new direction for the brand, encouraging young men to eschew the hunt for six-pack abs and instead embrace their distinctive noses, their high-energy enthusiasms, and even, it seemed, cross-dressing. Nary a bikini in sight. This is affirmation marketing—a product to help you find the strength within. The closest analogue that comes to mind is also from the grooming space: Dove is forever promising women they can love themselves if they just buy the right moisturizer. Maybe we’ve achieved a modicum of gender equity here.

Kia conjures a “Walken closet”—a storage place in which Christopher Walken sits at the ready, prepared to offer advice on which car to buy. A groan-making pun. But truly excellent stuff from Walken, replete with his signature sing-song line readings and some yeoman prop work involving a sock puppet. (Almost certainly his best performance since Man Makes Chicken With Pears.) Still, I don’t buy the ad’s thesis—the suggestion that the protagonist is taking a walk on the wild side, renouncing his colorless life, by stepping into a white, mid-size Korean sedan—and Walken’s likening the Optima to “the world’s most amazing pair of socks” seems like an ill-conceived sales pitch.

T-Mobile has Drake recreate his “Hotline Bling” video for an ad about cell phone service limitations. I’m amazed at how powerful the color affinities have become in the wireless branding battle. A competitor can flash a little yellow and we all know it’s gibing at Sprint; orange for AT&T; red for Verizon. The strength of these color links at this point rivals red-Coke/blue-Pepsi and red-Avis/yellow-Hertz. (Meanwhile, Drake’s endorsement game is approaching “will.i.am wearing a Target logo on his hat“ levels.)

A Budweiser entreaty against drunk driving offers cheeky reproach (Helen Mirren will deem you a “human form of pollution” and a “pillock”) instead of typical dire warnings (spinning police lights, flashbulb mug shot). There’s a dual purpose here, though, for never have burger and Bud seemed so temptingly paired as when set before a ravishing Helen Mirren. Who among us wouldn’t long to sit beside her in that banquette, sipping a cold brew, suggesting we order an Uber together?

Colgate implores us to turn off the tap while we’re brushing our teeth. While not getting preachy, the ad demonstrates how thoughtlessly wasteful we can sometimes be—and what a precious resource water remains for much of the globe. I don’t leave the water running while I’m brushing. But I’ve been known for indulgent bathing. I might think twice the next time I’ve already shampooed and I’m still lingering in the shower.

And that’s a wrap on Super Bowl 2016. No doubt I’ve dissed an ad you liked or, worse, neglected to mention it. You can make your arguments for your favorite spots in the comments.

The Iowa Delusion

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 00:10:43 GMT

Readers of the New York Times’ website late on the night of the Iowa caucus results were treated to a shifty bit of cognitive dissonance. “Cruz Wins in Iowa, Dealing Trump a Humbling Loss,” read the banner headline. Immediately below, the subhead asserted, “Rubio Finishes in Strong Third Place.”

It seems illogical to conclude that a second-place finish is a “humbling loss” while finishing third—just so we’re clear, worse than second—is “strong.” But here we have a textbook example of that venerable election year phenomenon known as the expectations game. How does the game work? Polls in the lead-up to the caucuses (polls that were, in hindsight, wrong) suggested Donald Trump would win outright, and thus anything less was considered a disappointment. Meanwhile, Marco Rubio “outperformed” his poll expectations (which were also, in hindsight, not a reflection of reality), so he gets proclaimed a victor.

All across the media this twisted logic bloomed. The Washington Post deemed Rubio a “winner” because “he made a strong run at Trump,” while Trump got classified as a “loser” whose second-place finish (again, you understand, ahead of Rubio) might represent “a catastrophic hole that will bring the whole enterprise down.” Politico’s Dylan Byers tweeted that Rubio had secured a “win for [the] establishment” and that Trump had suffered a “clear loss.” Further examples abound.

Rubio himself, in a postcaucus address that sounded a lot like a victory speech, proudly embraced his tertiary status. “So this is the moment they said would never happen,” he began, beaming. “For months they told us we had no chance … but tonight here in Iowa the people sent a very clear message.” Indeed. Very clearly, more of them voted for Trump. A couple thousand more of them.

It’s a collective hallucination. Like we’ve all made a pact to disregard the actual vote tallies. You could plausibly argue that Trump and Rubio finished in a dead heat, since each garnered seven precious Iowa delegates. But Trump as obvious, clear-cut loser? A visitor alighting from a distant solar system might make befuddled inquiries regarding our planet’s conception of math, and ordinal numbers, and “losing.”

The Iowan Trump voter, too, is surely miffed at this willful misinterpretation. Does her Trump vote count less than her neighbor’s vote for Rubio? Yes, polls suggest that Rubio voters decided in the final few days before the caucuses, while Trump voters had made up their minds weeks or months ago—but in our political system, one vote remains one vote no matter how early the voter resolves her allegiances within her own mind. Trump backers might also fairly note that their squad is not some small, ragtag faction. There were 45,000 votes for the cotton candy–haired cretin—more than George W. Bush notched in Iowa in the 2000 caucuses. And a second-place finish is far from a death knell: Eventual GOP nominee Mitt Romney finished second in Iowa in 2012.

So why this strange compulsion to invent a storyline that doesn’t conform to the raw data? It could be in our nature: There exists social science evidence suggesting that third place feels somehow better than second place. Third place is redolent of fierce effort narrowly paying off—you’ve barely clawed your way onto the podium and are thrilled merely to be relevant. Second place, by contrast, feels more like “not first place.”

But at its core, the expectations game is a media-created phenomenon. It stems from overemphasis on predictive poll results—which, we’ve been reminded again and again—are notoriously unreliable, particularly in the early stages of a campaign. You can’t really fault the media for reporting poll numbers. Polls offer general guidance about which candidates most intrigue voters and therefore which candidates merit further scrutiny. The problem comes when journalists use those faulty poll numbers to set faulty expectations (Trump’s a newfangled electoral juggernaut!) and then rip into candidates who inevitably fail to meet them (Trump’s a laughingstock!).

It would be less annoying if the expectations weren’t so fluid and arbitrary. What about the fact that Rubio spent substantially more time and money in Iowa than Trump did—shouldn’t that make Rubio’s third-place finish less impressive? Or what about the consideration for the larger time frame: Think back to last summer, when Trump was still a punchline and Rubio was a serious GOP heavyweight being groomed for the throne. Who’s exceeded those expectations over the past several months? Back then, which would have seemed the bigger surprise: Rubio finishing in the top three in Iowa? Or the guy the Huffington Post relegated to their entertainment section finishing second, drawing a yuuuuge number of votes and rolling onward to New Hampshire with a solid edge in the polls there (we think)?

The media’s disregard for cold, hard facts in favor of an imposed narrative construct is far from a motiveless crime. Journalists crave an entertaining story arc, and a good arc requires frequent changes in fortune. Someone newly up, someone newly down—even if the ascendant fellow hasn’t yet reached the heights of the fellow in mild decline. But this season’s expectations game seems especially egregious. I suspect this is partly a function of anti-Trump bias. It’s fair to say that, among media elites, there is general distaste for the short-fingered authoritarian. You can sense the glee brimming within that Times headline—the eagerness to humble Trump by labeling his failure to win “humbling.” (He certainly doesn’t sound humbled now.) Trump-hating Times columnist David Brooks even seized on Trump’s second-place finish to write something of a eulogy. Brooks claims that Trump’s supporters “didn’t show up” (except for the 45,000—almost unprecedented in an Iowa caucus—who did) and marvels at “the amazing surge for Marco Rubio” (which, one more time, to be clear, surged Rubio to 2,000 fewer votes than Trump got).

The most insidious thing about the expectations game is that it might matter, even though it shouldn’t. Without a drumbeat of coverage insisting, in the absence of any tangible evidence, that Rubio was surging this fall—my Slate colleague Josh Voorhees, writing in October, ascribed this to “a bored political press corps”—perhaps the high-heeled perspirator would have done even worse than runner-runner-up in Iowa. Massaged perceptions do help sway the citizenry. When the media peddles the idea that Trump is fading while Rubio is gaining steam (on its face a nonsensical proposition: There has been only one voting contest, only one real data point, and thus there’s no up or down progress to plot), it can become a self-fulfilling notion. Imagined momentum turns into real momentum. It’s only human: People want to align themselves with the go-getter on the make, not with yesterday’s flavor.

Of course, the game cuts both ways. If Trump finishes first in New Hampshire next week, amid another close three-way result, the expectations machinery will clank back into gear and start composing “art of the comeback” headlines (even though Trump has led New Hampshire polls for months). If Rubio finishes third again—remember, that’s a “strong” finish—this time an identical result will mean he’s missed a chance to “consolidate” his Iowa gains. As one of America’s shrewdest strategists once said: “Some things never change. The game is the game.”

The Downton Abbey Podcast

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 18 Jan 2016 03:05:49 GMT

This is a free preview of Slate's Downton Abbey podcast, a TV Club series that’s just for Slate Plus members. If you are not yet a member and you'd like to listen along as we recap each episode of the show’s final season, learn more at slate.com/downton.

In this edition of their members-only TV Club podcast, Outward Editor June Thomas and contributing writer Seth Stevenson discuss the third episode of Season 6 of Downton Abbey.

For more info on how to subscribe to the Slate Plus podcast feed, go here.

Previously:
Episode 1
Episode 2

Downton Abbey Podcast: Recapping the Season 6 Premiere

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 05:04:02 GMT

Crack open some Veuve Clicquot and enjoy this free preview of Slate's Downton Abbey podcast, a TV club series that's just for Slate Plus members. If you are not yet a member and you'd like to listen along as we recap each episode of the show’s final season, learn more at Slate.com/Downton.

In this edition of the podcast, Outward Editor June Thomas and contributing writer Seth Stevenson discuss the Season 6 premiere.

For more info on how to subscribe to the Slate Plus podcast feed, go here.

The U.S. and Cuba Are Finally Meeting to Settle Old Beef Over Property Claims

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 17:29:00 GMT

The U.S. State Department meets with the Cuban government Tuesday to begin official negotiations over outstanding claims of American individuals and corporations who fled Cuba during the Cuban revolution and whose property was seized by the Castro regime. Settling the claims is a vital precursor to lifting the U.S.-imposed trade embargo and to fully normalizing relations between the two countries.

The roughly 6,000 claims were valued at $1.9 billion in the 1960s. The bulk of the claims belong to individuals (houses, land, securities that were held in Cuban banks), but the highest-value claims mostly reside on the ledger sheets of companies like Coca-Cola, IBM, and Starwood Hotels. For more detail on the claims—including an interview with a claimant, a look at some shady speculation and trafficking in the claims over the years, and what shape a resolution might take—read my November Slate story.

In a conference call Tuesday morning, presenting his findings after a yearlong examination of the claims issue, Brookings Institution senior fellow Richard Feinberg predicted the two sides might come to the table with “maximalist” negotiation stances. The U.S. could conceivably demand full restitution at 100 cents on the dollar plus accrued interest, while Cuba has issued counterclaims for economic damage resulting from the decadeslong embargo. (Feinberg thinks the State Department will “dig in its heels” on America’s fundamental right to impose trade sanctions in the national interest, noting that severe sanctions served as leverage in the recent nonproliferation negotiations with Iran.)

Despite the distance between the negotiating partners, both sides have a real interest in getting this done, and a framework for a claims settlement might be nailed down as soon as 2016. Many observers believe President Obama craves a Cuba opening as part of his legacy, and there’s uncertainty over how the process might turn if a Republican president is elected in November. For individual claimants, a settlement might produce a windfall. For Cuba, a settlement might be one element of a grand bargain with the U.S.—including a wave of new American investment and development aid, and a radical transformation of the foundering Cuban economy.

Send Seth Stevenson to Umpire Camp

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 16:29:00 GMT

Update, Jan. 4, 2016: Success! We crossed the 1,000-new-members line just before Christmas, and Seth got on a plane for ump school yesterday. To read his updates, click here.

Fifteen years ago, when I was working at Newsweek, I convinced an editor to send me to Wendelstedt Umpire School in Daytona Beach, Florida. Existing in various forms since 1938, and taken over in 1977 by the legendary MLB umpire Harry Wendelstedt, it is the most prestigious umpire school in the country. A couple dozen MLB umpires have come through its classrooms and training fields as students, or instructors, or both.

I was fascinated that there existed an academy for umping—a breeding ground for future recipients of hateful words and gestures lobbed by fans, players, announcers … pretty much everyone. Were they instructed on how to handle the onslaught of abuse? Schooled in the art of remaining impassive as managers launched spittle at their faces?

Almost immediately after arriving on ump school campus, I was masked up, adjudicating balls and strikes, and, best of all, asserting my dominance over any who questioned my calls. Barking at dudes. Scowling behind my mask. I was happy.

Sadly, that magazine’s expense account had its limits. They paid for me to attend the school for only a couple of days. So I had to leave just as I was beginning to express real flair in my out calls—sometimes throwing in a sideways sashay. But I wasn’t ready for this umpiring journey to end.

During my short stay, I’d managed to fill up my notebook with material. For instance:

The faculty of the Wendelstedt school is made up in large part by active MLB umps. These are the guys you’re always yelling at through your TV. Off duty, they have tales to tell and dirt to dish. (Not to be confused with cleaning dirt off the dish.)
Umpire school includes a major in-classroom component, with excruciatingly difficult written exams. The to-the-letter rules of baseball are far more complex than many fans realize. Even hardcore seamheads would likely be stumped by the toughest quiz questions.
There are ump school sessions in which the teachers act as angry players or managers, arguing a call with gusto. (And by “gusto” I mean graphic genital profanities. This is the most fun part for the teachers.) Ump hopefuls are graded on their ability to listen to complaints without losing authority, to move things along, to keep their cool and not alter the game with ill-advised ejections but to stiffen their spines and run the bums if it becomes necessary.
Umps relate deeply to police officers. Both are sworn to uphold the line between order and chaos. Both take flak just for doing their jobs. Both work alongside partners, in uniform, and develop an us-against-the-world mentality. Almost all the umps I talked to back then were way into NYPD Blue.

I returned to New York poised to file an award-winning piece of journalism. But this was a print weekly, and space was severely limited. I watched as the magazine’s higher-ups allocated column inches to stories about an elementary school shooting (some things never change), the upcoming 2000 election (spoiler alert: American voters will perpetrate a gruesome error), and the newest Smashing Pumpkins album (“pouty solipsism”). My umpire school dispatch was granted less and less room until, in the end, I was allowed to write a tiny squib—a couple hundred words, more a graphic with bullet points than an actual article. It offered a few tips on umpiring technique, but failed to capture the soul of the man in blue. “How dare they?” I thought, stewing at my desk, behind my umpire mask, which I’d taken to wearing during moments of anxiety and resentment. If only I could eject them from the building.

Since then, I’ve yearned to return to umpire camp—to get the story and do it right. I have begged my Slate editor, Julia Turner, again and again. Each fall sees me bounce into her office at some point, certain this will be my year. But Julia never swings at my wild pitch. It’s always “Wait ’til next year” and “We’re not eating those hotel costs so you can live out some weird authority fetish” and “Didn’t I turn this down last year?” and “I definitely turned this down last year.”

I get it. Julia needs to make tough choices. But you have an easy choice: Join Slate Plus. We’ll give you VIP access to Slate, with exclusive content from your favorite Slate writers and podcasters and a bunch of other fun goodies.

You should sign up for Slate Plus no matter what you think of me, or of umpires, or of umpire learning institutions. But I’ve somehow convinced Julia to go for this plan: If we get 1,000 new members to join Slate Plus, she’ll send me to ump school at last.* I’ll get to fulfill my long-deferred dream. And you’ll be supporting important journalism. (Other Slate journalism. Not this ump school story, which is maybe not so important, comparatively.) If all goes to plan, sometime in 2016 I will lovingly produce the in-depth, passionate, richly comical, profoundly edifying umpire school story I’ve wanted to write for the last decade-and-a-half—and Slate Plus members will get exclusive access to my audio diaries, special features, and more.

What do you say? Yup. PLAY BALL!

We'll update this landing page as we make progress toward our goal.

Caps for Sale

Aymann Ismail — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 10:45:00 GMT

What do Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Jeb Bush all have in common? A hat factory in Newark, New Jersey.

In 1992, Mitch Cahn quit his Wall Street job and bought a bankrupt baseball hat factory. He couldn’t compete with overseas manufacturers on cost, so he catered to a specific market: people who want their hats made in the United States. His customers include the military, progressive companies, and political candidates. Since 2004, Unionwear has made the promotional campaign hats for pretty much every Democratic presidential primary candidate—and for a bunch of the Republicans, too. In 2008, Cahn’s unionized workforce made the hats for both Obama and McCain.

Watch the video above to meet Cahn, take a tour of the Unionwear factory, and learn which political hat is outselling all the others in the 2016 campaign.

Correction, Dec. 7, 2015: This video originally misidentified several years on a chart showing the decline of U.S. apparel manufacturing employees from 1989 to 2000. The video has been updated.

Claimed

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 02:02:00 GMT

Back in April, at the Nasdaq marketplace in Times Square, a few hundred interested parties gathered for a daylong conference. It was labeled the “Cuba Opportunity Summit: High-Velocity Growth.” Wharton faculty organized the event. CNBC financial reporter Michelle Caruso-Cabrera hosted it. The scent of predatory capitalism wafted through the air.

There were cruise-line executives eager to anchor in Havana Harbor. Pharma folks thirsty to hire Cuban scientists at fractions of the salaries of American lab workers. Hoteliers, telecoms guys, retail bankers, and agriculture experts. A handful of international lawyers to grease the wheels. A sprinkling of Cuban diplomats in the back of the room, taking notes.

The spectacle of American companies scrambling to storm Cuba’s shores would have seemed far-fetched—even laughable—just a few months prior. But a startling December 2014 announcement from President Obama set the greed machine whirring. Obama’s intent was clear: We will seek some sort of détente with Cuba. We will move to normalize. And down the line, maybe sooner than later, there will be commerce.

Thomas Herzfeld was among the panelists at the Cuba Opportunity Summit. Back in 1970, 25 years old and not long out of the military, Herzfeld had been the youngest managing partner at a New York Stock Exchange firm. He got an ulcer, so he moved to Miami to relax. Surrounded down there by Cuban exiles, managing their money, he began to develop an understanding of the opaque Cuban economy. He eventually formed the Herzfeld Caribbean Basin Fund, which is listed on Nasdaq (ticker symbol: CUBA). Under American law, he wasn’t allowed to invest directly in Cuban entities, but he found ways to stick his nose into nearby operations that offered exposure to the island.

Now 70, tall, handsome, and elegantly dressed, Herzfeld was every bit the wise old Cuba hand at the Wharton event. From up onstage, he warned attendees that a “carpetbagger” approach would not sit well in Havana. He enthused about entering “one of the last true emerging markets” and building a new Cuban middle class. He delightedly noted that Cuba’s railroads are built with the same gauge as ours.

And then, shifting tone, he brought up something that sounded like a stumbling block. “There is the issue around prior claims,” he said gravely. He talked about how to vet and value these claims. He spoke of “vulture investors trafficking in claims” and the difference between “real claimants versus claims speculators.” He mentioned, in an offhand manner, perhaps designed to pique the crowd’s interest, that he’d devised an airtight plan to solve this claims problem.

My ears perked up. This was near the end of the day, and no one else—amid all the gushing about a brand new Cuba—had mentioned anything about “prior claims.” Were they a potential monkey wrench in the greed machine?

When I set out to understand these difficult-to-value assets and the speculators they’d attracted, I discovered that the Cuba claims are much more than a roadblock. They offer a stark snapshot of the past: old grievances, ramshackle farms, decaying factories, Cold War geopolitics. Yet they have the power to shape the future. Handled badly, they might derail the Obama administration’s efforts to reconcile with Havana; handled shrewdly, they might help pave the way to a 21^st-century Cuba.

Meanwhile, all around the claims, sharks circle and nip, smelling opportunity.

* * *

After Fidel Castro took power in 1959 he nationalized the Cuban economy. He seized the sugar mills. The power plants. Oil refineries, department stores, hotels. Some of these belonged to Cubans. But others belonged to American citizens doing business on the island. Within a couple of years, all the Americans in Cuba fled, leaving this property in Castro’s hands.

Governments expropriate stuff all the time. Even capitalist governments. In America, we call this eminent domain, and the state compensates the people it takes the stuff from. Castro, too, acknowledged the principle that he owed these people something in return. But he never paid up. Eisenhower tried to force him. So did Kennedy. No dice. And so, in retaliation, we slammed Cuba with a trade embargo—one that’s now lasted more than 50 years.

Starting in 1964, the U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission created a registry to record the assets yoinked from Americans who’d been in Cuba. (The FCSC calls itself “a quasi-judicial, independent agency within the Department of Justice which adjudicates claims of U.S. nationals against foreign governments.” Since its establishment in 1954, it has completed claims resolutions against countries including Libya, Panama, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam.) After Castro took power, 5,913 individual Cuba claims were certified. They were assessed at a total value of $1.9 billion at the time they were seized.

The largest of these so-called “U.S.-certified” claims were corporate. The Cuban Electric Company, an American-run entity that Castro nationalized, had its claim valued at about $268 million. Exxon had a claim for $72 million. Coca-Cola for $28 million. Woolworth for $9 million. If you look through the Walt Disney Productions claim, you’ll see line items like $12,300 worth of color 35 mm feature film prints.

There were family claims, too. Estates had been taken. Modest sugar plantations. Even items along the lines of, as claims experts will put it, “great-grandma’s 1953 Chevrolet.” The dollar value of the tiniest claims wouldn’t buy you a decent lunch in Miami these days. You can explore the claims in our interactive chart.

All these claims, great and small, have lain around for decades—gathering dust and (as stipulated by the FCSC) 6-percent annual, noncompounding interest. They’ve grown to a collective worth of just about $8 billion. In theory, the U.S. State Department is authorized to broker a deal with Cuba that will settle all the claims at once. The claimants can also, experts seem to agree, attempt on their own to reach individual agreements with the Cuban government. But to date, as far as anyone can tell, not a single claim has been settled.

The claims have faded out of view over the years. I, for instance, have long been aware that I can’t legally buy Cuban cigars in New York, yet I’d never quite realized that the trade embargo’s origins were specifically tied to these claims. Or that, under the Helms-Burton Act, the trade embargo can’t be lifted until the claims are resolved. I’d never heard of the claims. Nor, when I asked, had any of my generally well-informed friends.

Even some of the claimants have stopped paying attention. Some companies long ago wrote the claims off as losses, to take the tax benefit. The Cuban Electric claim, through various corporate shufflings, has fallen onto the balance sheet of Office Depot—which has zero emotional link to the decades-old injustice. The Woolworth claim now belongs to Foot Locker.

Family claims have been handed down through four generations, diluted by the branching of heirs, coming to rest in the hands of descendants who’ve never been to Cuba and can’t be bothered to hate communism. Their old family mansion might have been divided into 16 apartments by now, sheltering Cuban families who’ve lived there for 40 years in multiple generations of their own. It’s messy. Some claimants have given up hope of seeing any return.

It’s tough to feel deep sympathy for the long-ago losses of a giant corporation—especially since American companies have a less-than-stellar record of operations in Latin America. Likewise, it’s tough to muster tears for heirs to Anglo families that were rich and powerful enough to own holdings in Cuba 50 years ago. (The claims of native Cubans who fled the revolution dwarf, in dollar terms, the claims of people who were U.S. nationals. These exile claims comprise a separate, in some ways broader, fight. But they’re not covered by the FCSC, and they don’t stand between Obama and restored relations.)

There’s an almost funny disconnect embedded in the fact that these claims were carefully recorded by the FCSC down to the last nickel, engraving into the ledger the sacred notion of individual property rights. The entire project on the Cuban side—the very basis of the move to nationalize farms and businesses—was to sweep away the principle of property. For Cuba to admit that the claims are important and just is tantamount to acknowledging the foundations of capitalism.

* * *

If, as everyone assumes it will, Cuba does eventually wish to transition to some form of capitalism—craving an economic recovery that features U.S. investment—it actually bolsters the claimants’ leverage. Because if the claims aren’t settled there will always be encumbrances on the disputed properties. They will be, in a practical sense, haunted. A risk-averse hotelier might be scared to develop a new resort with an inchoate claim on it when, somewhere down the line, an heir could show up, point to a certification, and demand her great-great-grandparents’ land. You’d have a quagmire of lawsuits and attorney fees and treble damages and delays.

Knowing this, from time to time, a few enterprising hustlers have eyed the claims while licking their chops. They sniff around the claim holders. They make enquiries to open-minded Cuban officials over backroom mojitos. They conjure up schemes to sidestep the U.S. government and cut their own deals.

For a long while, the prospect of settling the claims through official state channels seemed a remote fantasy. Cuba and the U.S. had hunkered into a stalemate. There was no hint of perestroika on the horizon. Which made each individual claim, considered as a financial asset, a strange sort of duck.

Imagine your grandparents, who were U.S. citizens, owned a farm in Cuba that got seized by Castro. They fled with nothing and, understandably, they were pretty raw about it. So they got their claim certified by the FCSC for $1 million. That was back in the 1960s. A few years ago, you inherited the claim.

What good did it do you? What you had was a piece of paper from Uncle Sam certifying that you were owed a certain amount by Cuba. Maybe, sometime in the future, if our pals in Havana decide to play nice, you might see some fraction of that amount as compensation for your grandparents’ troubles. But the piece of paper was worth nil to you in the here and now. You might have reasonably concluded, after research and reflection, that the claim would never get paid, given that it had lain dormant since 1967. And here is where the hustlers step in.

One day, out of the blue, I knock on your door. “Hello there,” I say, “I’m an international lawyer well-connected to the Cuban government. I’d like to represent you in your efforts to resolve your claim. I guarantee you I’ll get 100 cents on the dollar. Don’t settle for anyone who promises less! You’ll just need to pay me a small contingency fee—say, 30 percent of whatever we do end up recovering.” If I talk a good game, especially with a Cuban accent, you might believe I’m your white knight who’s going to close a favorable, backdoor deal.

Or maybe: “Hello there,” I say, “I represent a group of wealthy investors. We’d like to outright buy your $1 million claim. We’ll give you $250,000 for it.” If you’ve abandoned all hope of getting back your million (never mind the years of interest on top), my offer might sound like a decent exit strategy. Suddenly, your worthless piece of paper is a liquid asset. And, after all, it wasn’t your sweat that went into that farm. Cold hard cash would feel like a windfall. Benjamins from heaven.

Timothy Ashby was one of the people knocking on doors. In a previous life, Ashby had been a political appointee under President Reagan, as a deputy assistant secretary of commerce in the International Trade Administration. Around 2006, having re-entered private life, he devised an ingenious scheme that centered on the Cuba claims. He planned to buy them up, one by one, until he amassed a big chunk of them. Maybe he’d corner the market. Then, having puffed himself into a major player, he’d go straight to the Castros. Let’s forget about the U.S. State Department, was his idea. Let’s hash this out between us, negotiate a swap. You give me something good, and we can put these nagging claims in your rearview mirror.

Ashby is based in London these days, but when I met him it was in Lower Manhattan. He’d come to speak on a panel about future opportunities in Cuban tech. (“There’s huge potential,” he said, giving me a snippet of his elevator pitch. “I’ve been formally advising the Cuban government about the development of its IT sector. There are Cuban software engineers there with Ph.D.s who get paid $300 a month.”) After he slid two different business cards across the table to me—one for a London law firm at which he is not officially on staff, another for a company called Pembury Capital that lists him as CEO but doesn’t have a website—I asked him to recount his claims saga.

He explained that, along with investment partners, he established a claims holding company called Siboney that was registered in the Isle of Man. He began to locate claimants and make offers. A few of the claims Siboney bought were hotels. A few were prime agricultural acreage. In all, he managed to purchase nine claims for a total of $4.5 million. “We paid an average of 28 cents on the dollar,” he tells me—a huge discount to the original value FCSC had assigned to the claims. Ashby reckoned their actual worth, if he could somehow negotiate a deal with Cuba that put the properties back in play, was more like $55–60 million. When Siboney asked BNP Paribas to value the claims, says Ashby, they agreed the value was in the tens of millions.

“For example, one of the claims we bought was the Hotel Kawama claim,” Ashby tells me, “on a huge beach right near the marina. It had belonged to a family in California. The father died, and we bought the claim from the son for $1 million. It’s a run-down hotel now, operated by Cuban state tourism. We were talking to the Cubans about razing it, replacing it, bringing in new foreign investment.”

But then the Bush administration shut him down. Anti-communist, Castro-hating conservatives didn’t like the idea of an American wheeling and dealing in Havana. Ashby was told he’d need a license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control if he wanted to buy more claims, or swap the ones he owned, since a foreign country—namely, Cuba—had an interest in the underlying properties. Ashby asserts that Cuban American former Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart (whose aunt, weirdly, was the first wife of Fidel Castro) “personally intervened and persuaded the Bush White House to deny me the OFAC license. He didn’t want the claims settled. He wanted to keep the gun at the head of the Cubans.” Díaz-Balart did not respond to multiple inquiries left with his law office.

* * *

Under the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, the trade embargo can’t be lifted until the claims are resolved. (Lots of other things need to happen as well, but the claims are a clear sticking point.) Many Cuba experts I spoke to theorized that Obama desperately wants to make normalization part of his legacy. Which suggests that the claims issue, long on the back burner, might soon come to a boil.

The administration’s loosening of Cuba strictures is already moving at, as one expert put it, “breathtaking speed.” First, there was the December 2014 statement that got the ball rolling. Then the opening of embassies and the removal of Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Traveling to Cuba has gotten far easier for U.S. citizens. Companies like Airbnb are already earning revenue from Cuban operations. New commerce regulations were announced in September and were expansive. For the first time ever, there is explicit authorization for U.S. companies to establish physical office space in Cuba and to hire local Cuban agents.

The fact that this has happened with no movement on the claims must be, for some claimants, galling. It seems clear the administration will do all it can to ease commerce with Cuba short of openly violating Helms-Burton. It’s fair for claimants to wonder if their claims will be brushed aside—an afterthought in the rush to open up the island.

Under U.S. law, the State Department has the power to “espouse” the certified claims, which means it can broker a blanket deal with Cuba to resolve all the claims simultaneously. There’s clear motivation for State to sweep the claims away, given the administration’s broader goals. Yet none of the experts I spoke to knew for sure how espousal would work.

Would there be a tribunal to hear each claim individually? Would corporate claims be split from family claims? Big claims separated from small claims? Would there be one lump settlement for everyone? One hundred cents on the dollar, or more like 2 cents? Could payment be in cash, or in Cuban sovereign bonds, or something more complex? Could a claimant opt out of the deal if she didn’t like it?

The State Department has said very little on the matter. I asked for answers to the above questions and others. A State Department representative, after a week’s deliberation, emailed the following comment: “The resolution of outstanding U.S. claims remains a priority for the U.S. government. We raised claims during re-establishment talks and discussed property claims in the bilateral commission meeting on September 11 in Havana. We are not in a position to address specific time frames at this point.”

I’ve talked to several lawyers who represent certified claimants, and almost none of those claimants were willing to speak with me. I was told that claimants are wary of tipping their hands before a final negotiation—be that negotiation with the State Department or with Cuba or with a speculator. After so many years of inactivity, the last thing claimants want now is to say something impolitic that might scotch the deal.

I did manage to speak to one certified claim holder. Tim Claflin is a 72-year-old investment manager in Boston. His great-great-grandparents were in the shipping business, ferrying cargo between Boston and Cuba. During a financial downturn they foreclosed on a mortgage, which was how they came to own a 30,000-acre sugar plantation, replete with a refinery, on the Cuban coast. Claflin visited it once, on his spring school vacation, when he was 8 years old. Castro confiscated the property 10 years later.

“We filed a 30-page claim,” says Claflin. “The acreage, the cattle, everything.” (You can read the adjudicated claim here. It includes an itemized list of lost items, including $54,000 worth of molasses.) The Claflin family claim was one of the largest noncorporate claims certified by the FCSC. It was valued at $11.7 million at the time it was seized. With simple 6-percent interest, it’s now worth more than $40 million.

“We used to check in every five years or so with the government,” says Claflin, “when somebody died or something, to make sure they had all the right names and addresses for us. But last time they said we shouldn’t bother. They said they’d find us when a settlement happens.”

Over the years, Claflin has gotten many knocks at his door. “Some people want to represent me on a contingency basis and take 20 percent of the settlement,” he says. “I was also approached seven years ago by a group represented by Tim Ashby. They made me an offer of about $1.2 million, but I didn’t think it was enough, so I turned it down.”

The Claflin claim illustrates some of the complexities that can gum up the issue. For instance, Tim Claflin is only one of 25 heirs to this claim, so any agreement will need to be coordinated with other stakeholders. What’s more, the Swiss cement company Holcim made a deal with Castro years ago to build a factory on the Claflin land—it’s unclear what legal entailments might come into play if the property were ever returned to the Claflins. There are also, almost certainly, Cuban families who’ve been living on other parts of the plantation for multiple generations. Claflin has no urge to kick them off their plots.

“I think Obama wants to finish this before he’s out of office,” Claflin says, “so he’s not going to spend time to fight for the best deal. I’ve been told I can expect 4 percent of the original claim.” That would be $468,000. Claflin doesn’t sound thrilled, but he doesn’t seem to think there’s much he can do at this point. If a settlement comes down, he’ll assess his options then.

* * *

No one seems to think Cuba has enough hard currency to pay off $8 billion in claims. That’s more than 10 percent of the current Cuban gross domestic product. But for every pessimistic claimant glum at the thought of settling for pennies on the dollar, there’s an optimist who sees the claims as a golden opportunity—not just a means of satisfying claimants but as a way to jumpstart the Cuban economy. Tom Herzfeld is one of these dreamers. After I watched him speak at the Wharton Nasdaq conference, where he coyly mentioned his plan to resolve the claims and boost Cuba in one fell swoop, I got in touch with him to ask him how he’d do it.

The headquarters of Thomas J. Herzfeld Advisors are in a stylish building in South Beach, Miami, just down the hall from Elite Model Management. Herzfeld’s conference room is plastered with framed press clippings about himself. (He claims to have been quoted in more than 2,000 articles.) To scan the photos that accompany these stories, dating back to the 1970s, is to watch an evolution in the tie and lapel widths native to Florida executive fashion.

Herzfeld is so old-school that he still keeps paper charts. When I visited his office, he jovially displayed the ledger in which he tracks, in pen ink, the Herzfeld Caribbean Basin Fund, which he started in 1993 as a way to bet on the opening of Cuba. There’s a page in the ledger where he needed to Scotch-tape an extra sheet of graph paper at the top, flopping beyond the margin, to contain a skyward-shooting line. That’s where the fund spiked on news of restored U.S.-Cuba diplomatic relations.

Herzfeld can’t invest directly in Cuba for now. He tries to find things like cruise lines, regional airlines, shipping companies, and other businesses that will surge when the walls come down. He sallies out on his yacht sometimes to count containers on Miami cargo ships in the harbor, keeping tabs on the comings and goings of freight. One of his more esoteric holdings—almost a curiosity at this point—is stock in the long-dead Cuban Electric Company. This means he has a piece of the Office Depot claim.

Herzfeld hopes to convince claim holders to swap their claims for shares in a new fund he’ll launch—a fund that doesn’t exist yet. In return for owning half the equity in the fund, and for making those pesky claims go away, the Cuban government would offer an array of developable properties for the fund to invest in. Herzfeld says he’s identified all the properties he needs. None have prior claims attached to them. The fund would partner with investors to build hotels on these properties or to mine nickel from them or to grow vegetables in their soil. This way the claims will evaporate, the claimants will receive liquid shares in the fund that they can either hold or sell, and the Cuban economy will crawl out of the past and into the future.

He says he’s circulated the plan to officials at the State Department and within the Cuban government, and he’s brought it up with claimants. “Everyone loves the idea,” he assures me. When asked why he in particular should be the one to run the fund, he cites his experience, his knowledge of the Cuban economy, and the simple fact that it’s his idea. He also notes his noble intentions. “It would be the least profitable thing we do here,” he says. He promises he’ll forego any monetary benefit beyond a 1-percent management fee.

“That would still be nice for Tom,” a skeptical Cuba expert chuckled when I described the plan. Even if all the other steps miraculously fell into place—claimants exchanging their claims, the Securities and Exchange Commission approving the fund, OFAC licensing it, the State Department stepping aside, and Cuba offering up land on a silver platter—it seems possible that running such a fund could be farmed out to a bigger player like Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley.

Herzfeld’s plan is not the only one of its kind. The 1898 Company, a Spanish outfit, has similar thoughts about bringing investors together with claimants to develop desirable properties. Raúl Valdés-Fauli, a Miami lawyer whose family owned a bank in Cuba, once tried to organize claimants into a cohesive bargaining group that would have pushed for a similar claims-for-equity swap. Tim Ashby foresees an approach in which Guantánamo gets tossed into the mix—in exchange for settling the claims and closing the prison, maybe the bay gets transformed into a free enterprise zone for U.S. businesses, with high-speed Internet cables snaking undersea from Florida.

“There’s room for creativity here,” says Richard Feinberg, an international political economist who’s working on a Brookings Institution research paper about the claims. “Let’s see the claims not as a problem but as a solution. That’s the beauty of economics—it’s not a zero-sum game like geopolitics or military security affairs. We can put together solutions in which everyone is better off.”

In all these proposals, even the ones that might serve to enrich their proponents, the driving impulse to lift up Cuba seems heartfelt. Tom Herzfeld envisions his plan as a way for Cuba to save face, to escape the claims without hemorrhaging money, to give the claim holders more value than they could expect from a straight cash settlement, and to create jobs for a new Cuban middle class that he’s certain will thrive. “There’s a lot more at this stage of my life than another dollar,” says Herzfeld. “I’d like to be remembered for something more than just making a lot of money.”

Still, there’s irony in the fact that all these guys are pitching market economics as the solution to the claims issue. It’s like Cuba merely took a timeout from capitalism—a hiccup in history. And now that timeout is ticking to an end, and everybody knows it. Fidel Castro is 89 years old. Younger Cubans want the Internet and premium cable and, like, a living wage. Meanwhile, many assume that Cuba’s savior will be … complex, rapacious capitalism. Those young Cubans—well-educated and healthy, thanks to the communist system—comprise a highly attractive workforce that will perform skilled labor for absolute peanuts. Every part of the U.S. financial apparatus is poised to pounce.

The beautiful dream of the revolution has ended poorly, and the claims have come to seem like strange bookends on either side of it: At first they were a tally of the merchantry and profiteering Castro squashed; now they’re an opportunity to let a thousand Starbuckses bloom.

* * *

In September, Akerman LLP—a law firm with perhaps the premier Cuba practice in the U.S.—held a conference call to advise American companies on the latest rules of engagement. Everybody is panting to launch enterprises in Cuba, but no one is clear on what exactly is legal. A leisure-group executive asked a question about risk adjustment. An exec from Western Union asked if regulations had changed with regard to cash remittances. Representatives from Visa and Carnival Cruise Lines hopped on the call to pose queries.

One of the Akerman lawyers hosting the call and fielding questions was Pedro Freyre. Freyre’s family owned properties in Cuba. (“My grandfather’s house is beautiful—every time I’m in Cuba I drive by it. The house I was born in is occupied by a Cuban official agency.”) Freyre now works in Akerman’s Cuba practice in Miami. He mostly counsels businesses and investors on how to legally get involved with Cuban development. But he also advises a handful of claimants.

“I certainly don’t convey to my clients that they’re going to get 100 cents on the dollar,” he says. “I manage their expectations. But in order to build a solid foundation for a new relationship with Cuba, you have to clear out the bad stuff. You need to address it. You can’t let it fester.”

Freyre favors a simple, win-win solution. Claimants would drop their claims in exchange for tax credits from Cuba. If the claim holder wants to go back and invest in the island, he or she could do so with a major tax break. But the credits would also function as liquid assets, with a busy secondary market—if a hotelier decides to build a resort, he could buy up a bunch of tax credits from claimants at a discount. The claimants get an easy exit and cold hard cash; the developer reduces his costs. “I think Cuba will want something simple,” says Freyre, “and I think they’ll want to settle this all at once.”

Cuba’s taken a tough stance on the claims. It cheekily argues that the trade embargo has cost it more than $100 billion over the decades so, really, the U.S. should be making restitutions to Havana. “They’re really good negotiators,” says Freyre. “They’ve acknowledged that they owe some compensation. They’re willing to discuss it. But they don’t give up a lot. They don’t see themselves as over a barrel. They think this is a respectful conversation between equals.”

I asked Freyre why Americans harbor such excitement about Cuba. Even if things were running smoothly, this is a country of less than 12 million people with a GDP equivalent to a midsize U.S. city. Its infrastructure is in disrepair. It’s small potatoes, in the grand scheme.

Freyre lit up. “It’s the forbidden fruit!” he said with a big smile. “You’re right, this isn’t China or Mexico or Brazil, in terms of scale. But it’s a stunningly beautiful place, with hundreds of miles of untouched, pristine beaches. It’s fertile—it could be the provider of winter vegetables to the U.S. East Coast tomorrow. The people are funny and good-looking and smart, and I’m not just saying that because I’m Cuban. It has 99-percent literacy—Florida is 80 percent. The life expectancy is one year less than in the United States—in Haiti, expectancy is 63. These are things that don’t happen in other parts of Latin America. If you’re Hyatt, or Google, or Apple, or Chiquita, you look at Cuba, and you say, ‘Oh my god, this is a fantastic place.’ ”

Freyre’s office is papered with photos and drawings of Havana. He jumped to suggest Cuban restaurants for me to try while I was in Miami. He twinkled as he described his travels back to the island where he was born. He implored me to make a visit.

“I’m a lawyer, I’m a rational guy,” he says, “but I’m a believer in mythology. There’s a mythical Cuba. There’s a Cuban magic. You’ve got to go. When you go, it will grab you. The moment you land at the airport and drive into the city, you’re gonna see row upon row of abandoned factories that were privately owned. You’ll see the faded old signs of restaurants that used to be there. You drive the bumpy road that takes you around the port, and you’ll see the abandoned oil refinery, the old dockyards. In the city, you’ll see the icon, the Habana Libre hotel—that used to be the Hilton, OK? And it’s frozen in time since 1959, with burst pipes and water splashing in the lobby. These are the claims. And you’ll see the potential.”

I Slept All Night in a Sensory Deprivation Tank. This Is My Story.

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 13:08:00 GMT

Two years ago, I wrote for Slate about sensory deprivation tanks, those contraptions that let you float in skin-temperature water, enveloped in darkness and silence. While reporting that piece, I heard an intriguing rumor: One of the float tank enthusiasts I spoke with claimed to know a person who slept in a tank at night—every night. In fact, this person had become so accustomed to sleeping inside a tank, my source said, that she could no longer fall asleep outside one. When she traveled, she was forced to find a tank at her destination and beg the owner to make it available in the wee hours.

I couldn’t shake this thought from my mind. I’d adored my midday floating sessions. So restful and meditative, I’d come out feeling like I’d ingested a cocktail of sedatives and ’shrooms. And that was just an hour in the tank. Might a long night’s journey into the void be even more restorative and trippy?

I emailed Gina Antioco, owner of Brooklyn’s Lift/Next Level Floats, to ask if she’d let me sleep in one of her tanks overnight. She was game. What’s more, she said, she’d been meaning to try this again herself. She’d given it a go once before but hadn’t managed to fall asleep. She wondered if the second time might be the charm.

I arrived at Lift at about 11 p.m. on a weeknight. Gina told me we needed to wait for a couple floaters to finish before she could lock the entrance door, shut down the lobby, and let the sleepover begin. “One of the guys in the tanks right now is a DJ,” Gina explained. “He plays sets at a major soundcamp at Burning Man. I want him to compile some music to play over the speakers in the tanks when the session is beginning or ending.” The DJ at last emerged, dazed and relaxed, in the manner of all first-time floaters. He said he was envisioning music that sounded like a forest, alive but calm. We bid him goodbye and then Gina began to program the tanks for our overnight.

In a float tank, you lose all sense of time. A minute can feel like an hour, and vice-versa. I told Gina I didn’t want to be in the tank with no clear end point—wondering if I’d been forgotten and it was now 25 years later. I’d fail to relax unless I knew I’d be awakened at a set time. Because of some quirk in the tanks’ control systems, it turned out the latest Gina could program the music and lights come on in the tank was 5:30 am. I said that’d be fine. To be honest, I had grave doubts I’d make it that long.

Over the years, I’ve slept in all manner of ungainly milieus. An Indian train bunk with a colony of roaches scuttling next to my head, a boat at anchor in violent swells, the concrete steps of a friend’s apartment building when I arrived late and drunk and he wasn’t yet home. When I moved into my first apartment, I neglected to obtain a mattress before nightfall, so I slept on the hardwood—cheekbone to floor wax—and still caught a good six hours of nod.

Yet there’s one scenario in which I can’t sleep for more than about a minute at a time. I just can’t snooze on my back. I’m a stomach sleeper. And for obvious reasons, stomach sleeping won’t work when you’re floating in water. The concentrated Epsom salts in the tank make you so buoyant that there’s no danger you’ll accidentally roll over in your sleep. So I wasn’t scared of drowning. But I was scared I wouldn’t be able to drift off.

I said goodnight to Gina, entered my float room, stripped naked, showered off, killed the lights, and stepped into the tank. Soon, I remembered the many joys of floating. My brain slowed down. My thoughts became sparse, and wispy, and then disappeared altogether. I heard disembodied voices, including someone singing the Cars song “Drive.” I contemplated my place in the universe and also Ric Ocasek’s place in the universe, which seemed all the more poignant because he hadn’t been the lead singer on that song and I wondered if he ever felt sour about that.

At one point, I thought I saw bright lights. But there were no lights in the tank. I must have been dreaming—confirmed by the fact that I came to with a start, my limbs twitching. It was just a split-second of slumber. It had happened once before in a tank, on a sleepy afternoon. But in neither case had I achieved full-on, REM shut-eye.

I had no clue if it was 1 a.m. or 3 a.m. One floater I’ve met told me that the first time he tried it, he was supposed to float for only one hour, but the guy forgot about him and left him in there for several hours. It was a transformational experience. “I can’t describe it to you now in a way that wouldn’t devalue its meaning,” he said to me. It seemed he now divided his life into the eras before and after that long sojourn in the tank. Would this happen to me? Would I emerge a changed person?

I began to get restless. I was exhausted, given the late hour, yet I was still awake. And my physical discomfort was growing. I yearned to flip over onto my tummy so I could sleep for real. I contorted myself as far sideways as I could. I had my left eye submerged. Some salty water trickled into my nose and burned my left nostril.

I tried to wrangle myself into a comfortable position, locking an arm behind my head and crossing one foot beneath another. But I always reverted to my standard, belly-up ragdoll look, limbs akimbo. The water is so thick that it locks you into place as though you’re molded in Jello. I felt like Damien Hirst’s shark.

Suddenly, some hokey zither music blared over a set of speakers I hadn’t known were there. This was my alarm. And guess what? It had woken me up. I’d been totally out. I have no idea how long I was under, but it was long enough to count as real sleep.

I emerged, showered off, put on my clothes, and turned on my phone. It was only 4:30 a.m. Something had gone wrong, and the alarm went off an hour early. I’d been in the tank for a total of about five hours, some solid portion of which was spent asleep. I thought of stripping down and getting back in, to see if I could fall asleep again (less nervous about the whole thing now that I’d tried it), but the zither was blasting and the tank had begun some sort of auto-filtration sequence. So I left. On my way out, I saw Gina asleep on a couch in the lobby. She must have given up long before. I locked the entrance door behind me.

As I walked home through pre-dawn Brooklyn, I considered whether I should try this again sometime, with no set alarm—see if I could make it through the night. But the notion made me squirm. It was a struggle to fall asleep in the tank, my nose aflame with salt, my spine unhappy. I will absolutely float again. But the difference between an afternoon and a midnight float is like night and day.

Read more from The Drift, Slate’s pop-up blog about sleep.

One of My First Journalism Assignments Was About Phantom Menace—and It Made Ron Howard Hate Me

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 03 Nov 2015 13:02:00 GMT

The flood of hopes and fears unleashed by recent Star Wars: Episode VII trailers has me nostalgic for the salad days of Star Wars: Episode I hype. When I began working for Newsweek in January 1999, my very first assignment was to write a roundup of Phantom Menace buzz. The trailer had debuted a couple months before, the movie was coming out in May, and excitement was off the charts.

The short piece I wrote laid out some of the concerns Star Wars superfans harbored in advance of the film’s release. There were worries it would rely too much on cheesy CGI. People fretted that the tone of the trailer seemed way too upbeat, not dark enough. Skeptics pointed at George Lucas’ less-than-reassuring track record since the first trilogy: He’d produced Howard the Duck and Willow, and hadn’t directed a film in 22 years.

I also repeated rumors that 9-year-old Jake Lloyd, who was playing Anakin Sywalker, couldn’t act. I noted that he’d received the nickname “Mannequin Skywalker.”

This last bit stuck in the craw of a certain Hollywood macher. Within days, actor/director Ron Howard sent a letter to my editor complaining about the item. “While your ‘Buzz Wars, Episode One’ piece was generally snide and insipid,” wrote Howard, “the pot shot [sic] at nine year old Jake Lloyd was down right [sic] irresponsible … As someone who was acting professionally at an early age, I can assure you that nine-year-old Jake is quite capable of reading, understanding, and feeling the full humiliation of a piece like that.” Howard also offered a mini-review of The Phantom Menace, as he’d seen an early version: “[I]n my opinion, Jake Lloyd is terrific in the film (which, by the way, is truly amazing).”

Newsweek ran the letter under the headline “Pick On Someone Your Own Size.” My editor had my back. But I noticed just a smidge of extra scrutiny given to the next few things I wrote. Getting shade from Opie was a bumpy way to start a job.

A few months later, along with several Newsweek colleagues, I went to an advance screening of The Phantom Menace in a grand old cinema with a huge balcony. The place was packed to the rafters with journalists, VIPs, and contest winners. We were fully primed to get our minds blown. When the movie ended, there was all-around good cheer and raucous applause.

I didn’t get it. I thought the film suffered from every single flaw that fans had anticipated: It had cheesy CGI, was too sunny, and George Lucas seemed totally out of touch. I also thought Jake Lloyd, kid or not, was a putrid actor. Over time, most of you have come to agree with me.

Post-script: Jake Lloyd swore never to act again, reportedly destroyed all of his personal Star Wars memorabilia, and was last seen this summer being arrested after leading police on a 117 mph car chase. George Lucas was roundly criticized for the shoddiness of the second Star Wars trilogy and also for the weird racism in it. Ron Howard soon after directed the 2000 meh-fest How The Grinch Stole Christmas. I quit Newsweek the following year and came back to Slate. The Phantom Menace remains among the top 20 highest-grossing movies in history and also among the most weirdly racist ones.

Read more in Slate about Star Wars:

Donald Trump Tweeted the Democratic Debate, and It Was Glorious

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 03:53:48 GMT

Tweeting from his phone—possibly while golfing, no doubt from somewhere superlatively sumptuous—Donald Trump offered his real-time take on Tues night’s debate. How did the Donald size up the Democratic field?

His pregame breakdown demonstrated that Trump has zero time for losers on either side of the aisle:

As the debate got rolling, Trump whined that there were too many ads. Classic Sanders-style socialism from Trump. We all remember when The Apprentice ran ad-free on PBS.

The bulk of Trump’s tweets eschewed substantive criticism, instead tarring the slate of Dem candidates as a collective snore. But Trump did poke at Hillary Cllinton’s soft spots—Iraq, her private email server, and her flip-flop on the Trans-Pacific Partnership:

He also twisted Bernie Sanders’ response on the Black Lives Matter question (Sanders never said “only”), while chiding Hillary for ducking it (and blaming Anderson Cooper—first-name basis!—for letting her):

He later took the candidates—and by extension, I suppose, CNN—to task for not grabbing low-hanging veteran fruit:

But the highest crime in Trump’s kingdom is to seem anything less than off-the-cuff. Only nerds study and prepare! Cool kids wing it!

By the same token, in Trump’s world being the executive of an actual city (oh, and by the way, Martin O’Malley also ran a state) is a lesser qualification than building golf courses and appearing on a reality television program:

Trump spent lots of time retweeting sick burns from his millions of followers:

Including an elliptical “jabroni” reference to Trump’s past association with professional wrestling:

Trump paused, a bit more than an hour in, to take a quick, unscientific poll—asking who was winning so far:

To which, of course, countless minions replied, “Trump!”

Trump at one point accused Jim Webb of “not doing well!” This is a classic Trump insult technique, in that the besmirchment can’t be countered. What are you gonna say—“Am too doing well!”? (Trump employed the same tactic against Rand Paul in a Republican debate, firing off a “You’re having a hard time tonight” in Paul’s direction. How does he parry that? “Nuh-huh, I’m having an easy time tonight”?)

Trump’s only compliment was for Sanders. It appeared to be in reference to Sanders’ declaration that America was tired of hearing about Clinton’s emails. If so, was a nod to tactical acumen, not policy choice. And no surprise that Trump’s kind words were reserved for a move by Sanders that was, at its root, a dig at the media.

Trump’s final assessment had little to do with any of the candidates’ stated positions, or their internecine disputes. Leave it to the reality TV celeb to judge every contest as a battle of STAR power:

It’s like Trump thinks the election is American Idol, and he’s somehow both Kelly Clarkson and Simon Cowell at the same time.

Think of the Children!

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 17:32:11 GMT

If you watched any televised sports this weekend, you know that commercial blocks now function merely as holding spaces for the latest ads from DraftKings and FanDuel. These two fantasy sports websites have been pumping out “insane” levels of marketing spending for the past few months. They’ve also garnered huge venture capital investments and billion-dollar valuations. They’re even in cahoots with the professional sports leagues—the NBA, MLB, and many NFL teams have inked agreements, and on Tuesday the NFL Players Association signed a deal that opens the door for NFL stars to appear in DraftKings ads.

For those who’ve somehow avoided the onslaught of promotion and media coverage, a quick explanation: DraftKings and FanDuel are daily fantasy sports betting sites. In the morning, you wager real money and select a squad of pro athletes whose cumulative stats over the day will form your overall score. Then you win or lose cash at the end of the night depending on whether your score bests those of your online fantasy opponents.

Given all the dollars sloshing around, the assault on the TV airwaves, the participation of the pro leagues, and the hot-button issue of sports gambling, it was inevitable that at some point there would be a backlash. Earlier this month, a congressman called for a hearing into the websites’ legality. Last week, an ESPN anchor argued that daily fantasy sports are just old-school sports betting in disguise, and a Washington Post column dubbed them “sports betting on steroids.” And on Monday, Deadspin—a decent bellwether for smart-set sports fan emotions—casually referred to daily fantasy sites as “loathsome and exploitative.”

So what’s the problem? Part of the pushback is just that the sheer amount of ads is obnoxious and invites resentment. But there are more substantive concerns, as well. The major critique from daily fantasy haters has been that the average mook who wagers on fantasy sports is almost guaranteed to part with his money. Only a few megatalented, industrious bettors actually rake in winnings on these sites. One study found that the top 1.3 percent of daily fantasy players take 91 percent of the profits—everybody else is basically blowtorching hard-earned cash. (Sample Bloomberg headline: “You Aren’t Good Enough to Win Money Playing Daily Fantasy Football.”) The critics hold that we need to protect small-time fantasy sports sad sacks from themselves.

Do we? Some fantasy bettors surely play (and lose) too often. But any form of legalized wagering can and should find ways to prevent or minimize problem gambling, and there are some simple ways to do this for fantasy sports. Daily fantasy sites have already put some caps on players’ betting. (For now the caps are still quite lenient, but there are ways to ensure they are strengthened through legislation.)

The truth is that 80 percent of players on these sites lose less than $10 per month, a fair price to pay for entertainment, an occasional burst of adrenaline, and feeling more attuned to the sports they spend so much time watching on TV. How is paying for a full day of supercharged sports excitement any worse than buying government-sold lottery tickets?

Another pertinent comparison comes from the mainstream world of finance: online trading. Amateur stock picking is an equally effective way to hemorrhage cash, and online brokerages and fantasy sports betting sites are making the exact same pitch to consumers. Consider this ad for E-Trade. In it, a woman is so focused on spotting investment opportunities that she ignores the man standing next to her. There’s a reference to E-Trade’s “investing insights center,” the “guidance” portion of the site’s complex dashboard. The voice-over narration from actor Kevin Spacey is all about using your perceptive smarts to beat the crowd and reap stock picking rewards: “When others focus on one thing, you see what’s coming next. You see opportunity.”

Now look at this ad for DraftKings. In it, fantasy sports players are so focused on their squads that they ignore everyone around them. There’s a shot of a fantasy sports player looking at a complex dashboard. The voice-over narration from actor Edward Norton is all about using your perceptive smarts to beat the crowd and reap fantasy sports rewards: “There’s a game within the game that requires a different set of skills. … We train, and we win.”

These are identical come-ons, flattering folks into thinking they can outthink the competition and get rich doing it. Both mislead the minnows they are targeting, downplaying the risk of being swallowed by sharks.

The most commented upon fantasy sports shark, Saahil Sud, studied math and economics at Amherst College and spends up to 15 hours per day poring over spreadsheets to put together his fantasy team entries. He’s up against people who watched that DraftKings commercial and then filled out their lineups on the can during a 10-minute break at work.

Likewise, stock market sharks are likely to have degrees in math or economics or computer science, and will work long hours poring over research and making investigative phone calls. They are up against people who watched that E-Trade commercial and then made a bunch of hunch-fueled stock picks on their laptops while putting their kids to bed.

It’s always dangerous to make bets in an environment that requires skill, unless you’ve dedicated your entire life to mastering that skill. Middling fantasy sportsters who play too much will get creamed. Middling retail investors who make too many stock trades will get hammered.

So do we want to ban E-Trade along with DraftKings? It’s true that online brokerages aren’t just about day trading and market timing. Some minnows use them wisely, to buy and hold diversified stock indexes. But we don’t force everyone to use them that way—we just offer coaxing regulations, like increased taxes on capital gains from short-term holdings, to encourage prudent behavior. We can use similar inducements to shape the behavior of fantasy sports players.

The broader critique of daily fantasy betting is an older and more traditional one: that fantasy sports play is gambling, and gambling is bad. But the fact that some fantasy players consistently win demonstrates that if anything can be considered a game of skill—the technical loophole under which these forms of betting are considered legal—it’s fantasy sports. I’d even argue that traditional sports betting—e.g., taking the Cowboys against the spread—should be legal online.

Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA, agrees. He feels that we’ll never get rid of the desire for sports betting, and so it “should be brought out of the underground and into the sunlight where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated.”

Countries like the U.K. have allowed online sports betting for many years, tweaking limits and safeguards over that time.

The issue doesn’t even appear to be particularly controversial over there. When I tried to suss out new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s stance, I couldn’t find a single thing about sports betting on his otherwise detailed website. I did locate a few Corbyn votes for more regulation around the margins. But I also stumbled on a news story that suggested Corbyn had laid a 50-pound bet on himself as a 100-to-1 shot to win the next election.

Last I checked, there is still an England. Legalized sports betting didn’t lay U.K. society to waste. Nor will daily fantasy sports destroy America. Though I still wish they’d tone down the ad buys.

Why Are Boston Accents So Wicked Awful in Movies? A Video Explainer.

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 12:39:00 GMT

Johnny Depp (in Black Mass, due out Friday) and Chris Pine (The Finest Hours, coming next year) are the latest actors to attempt Boston accents. Early footage suggests they are also the latest to fumble them, at least partly. Why does Hollywood almost always get the tricky Beantown dialect wrong?

In the video above, Boston native Seth Stevenson demonstrates the do's and don'ts of non-rhoticity, the intrusive r, and the broad a. Soon enough, you'll be pahking cahs, sawring wood, and taking a bahth.

Thanks to Professor Thom’s in New York for use of its bahh.

The Culture Gabfest “Binocular G” Edition

Willa Paskin — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 18:01:19 GMT

Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 364 with Willa Paskin, Dana Stevens, and Seth Stevenson:

Subscribe in iTunes ∙ RSS feed ∙ Download ∙ Play in another tab

And join the lively conversation on the Culturefest Facebook page here:

Go to slate.com/cultureplus to learn more about Slate Plus and join today.

This week on Slate Plus, the hosts pay tribute to the end of Key & Peele by talking about their favorite sketches from the show.

On this week’s Slate Culture Gabfest, the critics discuss FX network head John Landgraf’s recent comment that a glut of TV programming is overwhelming viewers. Have we really reached #peakTV and does it matter if we have? Next up, Documentary Now is a new mockmentary series on IFC created by and starring Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, and Seth Meyers. Does it work as a full-length TV show, or would it work better as an SNL sketch? Finally, Google recently ditched its famous logo causing a stir in the tech world last week. Will Oremus joins to discuss what the new font signifies about the company.

Links to some of the things we discussed this week follow:

“The Mad Men Economic Miracle” by Adam Davidson in the New York Times Magazine
Mr. Robot
UnREAL
Rectify
“Your TV Small-Talk Is Ruining Dinner Parties” by Daniel Engber
Serial
Bloodline
The Good Wife
Mad Men
The Wire
The Americans
Transparent
How To Get Away With Murder
Orange Is the New Black
Documentary Now!
Nanook of the North
Grey Gardens
VICE the TV show
The Thin Blue Line
The Skeleton Twins
Spellbound
Mad Hot Ballroom
Grizzly Man
Hands on a Hardbody
The New York Times Now app
Will Oremus’ piece on the Google redesign in Slate: “Google’s New Logo Looks Simple. It Isn’t.”
“Google Is Now Alphabet. Here’s Why It’s Hard to Evolve.” by Will Oremus in Slate

This episode of Slate’s Culture Gabfest is sponsored by Warby Parker, a new concept in eyewear. Warby Parker makes buying glasses online easy, risk-free, and most of all, enjoyable. Get free three-day shipping on your final frame choice when you go to warbyparker.com/CULTURE. The Culture Gabfest is also sponsored by Harry’s, the shaving company that offers German-engineered blades, well-designed handles, and shipping right to your door. Visit Harrys.com for $5 off your first purchase with the promo code CULTURE.

Endorsements:

Willa: Carly Rae Jepson’s album Emotion

Seth: The reality TV show Kid Nation on YouTube

Dana: The Art of Hermann Zapf on Vimeo

Outro: “Little Edie’s Military Flag Dance” from Grey Gardens

You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.

This podcast was produced by Ann Heppermann. Our intern is Lindsey Albracht.

American Ultra

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 19:21:56 GMT

When Sergio Leone cast Henry Fonda as a villain in Once Upon a Time in the West, the actor was best known for playing humble good guys and soft-spoken sweeties. So Fonda, attempting to look like “a son of a bitch,” arrived on set with brown contacts over his baby blues and a ruffian’s moustache atop his upper lip. Leone was displeased—it was precisely the gentleness of Fonda’s face that he’d been planning to exploit to jarring effect. When Fonda’s character killed a helpless child in one famous scene, Leone made sure to focus on those kind blue eyes.

What azure peepers were to Fonda, jittery discomfort is to Jesse Eisenberg, who is forever twitching and glancing shoe-ward. In a review of this summer’s The End of the Tour—a film in which much of Eisenberg’s dialogue is punctuated by nervous, joyless bursts of laughter—New York Times critic A.O. Scott theorized that the actor’s “genetic material is at least 25 percent weasel.”

From his callow teen jerk in The Squid and the Whale to his implacable Zuckerbot in The Social Network, there’s long been a dickish undercurrent to Eisenberg’s performances. One presumes he’ll dust off similar moves when he plays cerebral supervillain Lex Luthor in next year’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. But in the new action-comedy movie American Ultra, Eisenberg engages in some Fonda-ish shtick-flipping—a trick not unlike the one he’d previously pulled in 2009’s Zombieland. He makes no effort to hide his halting demeanor, but instead of snappish and guarded, here it comes off as sweet and vulnerable. Likewise, his dorky body language (all inward cant, concave chest, pigeon toes) still defines him visually. But now it’s deployed as a juxtapositional joke—as when Eisenberg’s character, Mike, trembles and mewls after he skillfully snaps the neck of an enemy.

Just as The Big Lebowski transformed the Philip Marlowe archetype into a bumbling stoner, American Ultra turns Jason Bourne into Jason Bong. When first we meet Mike, he’s a small-town convenience store clerk with a prodigious pot habit. He’s a mess of a guy who can’t cook an omelet without setting his kitchen on fire. He’s continually disappointing his devoted girlfriend (played, with orange-dyed hair and a flannel wardrobe, by Kristen Stewart) before puppyishly begging her forgiveness.

Then one day, Manchurian Candidate–style, Mike’s hidden telos is activated when a visiting stranger recites a string of nonsense phrases. Turns out Mike was a dormant CIA sleeper agent—trained in the murderous arts—whose memory was wiped and replaced with a benign cover story. Now he suddenly finds himself brimming with tradecraft secrets, able to summon martial arts moves and firearms expertise. Soon, he’s on the run from CIA heavies determined to neutralize their rogue asset. Can Mike escape their clutches even as he fires up yet another joint?

We initially wonder why K-Stew’s character has shackled herself to this deadweight dude, as the two mope around their house listening to records and toking up (their exhalations bolstered with thick CGI clouds of smoke). But then the film posits an appealing fantasy for every woman who’s felt stuck with an aimless, bumbling man: Don’t worry, girl, just say the magic words and he’ll magically morph into a hypercompetent superspy.

American Ultra is all genre send-up, with not just Eisenberg but his fellow actors playing off their established personae. Connie Britton uses her maternal vibe to become a caring but tough CIA handler. (“Are you my mom?” a confused but hopeful Eisenberg asks her at one point.) Topher Grace’s constipated, milquetoast mien serves him well as an evil agency bureaucrat. Tony Hale, best known as Buster on Arrested Development, brings the silly to a small but funny role.

The cast is game. Stewart, in particular, gives her all, evincing genuine emotion when her on-screen boyfriend is in peril. She seems like she’s in a better movie than the one on the screen—one where the relationships and the stakes actually feel real.

In the end, American Ultra is doomed by its nondescript script. Cheeky action spoofs are a dime a dozen these days. Even relatively straight modern spy films, like Kingsman: The Secret Service and The Man From U.N.C.L.E., knowingly wink at their audiences. A mere clever conceit isn’t enough, and here, the action smells stale and the humor staler. There’s no explosion we haven’t seen before, no quip that feels fresh and new. I suggest you save American Ultra to stream on a lazy snow day this winter—even then, the deep sleeper who needs to be awoken might be you.

Make Hats Great Again

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 18:40:54 GMT

In late July, while touring the Mexican border in Laredo, Texas, Donald Trump wore a baseball cap. This might seem a less-than-noteworthy development. One assumes Trump wore the hat mostly just to corral his cotton-candy hair on a windy day. Yet the online reaction was swift and torrential.

Some wondered why a man worth more than TEN BILLION DOLLARS chose a hat that looked to cost about $5.99. Many others, meanwhile, wondered where they could buy one for themselves. The Trump campaign store in Manhattan sold out of the hat within hours, and his website scrambled to make them available for order. One online retailer rushed to fill the void with a line of knockoffs.

Why did the donning of casual headwear become a subject of national fascination? It helps that The Donald is piping hot at the moment, a figure who spurs endless curiosity. Everything he touches turns to tweets. And oh, that photo: the pursed-lipped, squinty-eyed Trump frowning under his new chapeau. Juxtapose almost anything with Trump’s sour puss, and you’ve got yourself an indelible image.

But the fuss was in large part about the hat qua hat. Its text, “Make America Great Again”—a shameless rip-off of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign slogan “Let’s Make America Great Again.” (Note how Trump tweaks it to be both less inclusive and more bossy.) The hat’s foamy front—apparently made from a repurposed beer koozie. The double divots framing the central peak. And of course the braided rope that elegantly stretched across its brim.

The “rope hat” style is on trend these days. Gnarly skateboard periodical Thrasher Magazine sells them in several colors, highlighting—in rather Trumpian language—the “classy woven rope” that distinguishes its design. Urban Outfitters offers a circa 1992 Wu-Tang rope hat. Vintage rope hats routinely show up on Etsy. In June, a bit more than a month before Trump wore one for the cameras, Golf Digest asked, “Are rope hats back to being cool?” after one appeared atop the head of 26-year-old PGA tour pro Harris English. This was no mere trucker hat. The rope is a distinctive touch.

There’s a fine line here between retro chic and just, like, dorky 9-hole golf course wear. But Trump manages to walk this tightrope with ease. He’s got that quirky, aging rich guy cool—the same kind that turned grandfatherly, 74-year-old Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s fetish for Nike Lunar Force 1 sneakers into a minisensation in New England last year.

And then there’s the matter of the hat’s lettering. Rendering Trump’s slogan in all caps may actually reduce its legibility, since the lack of shape contrast slows down readers. But so what? “Donald Trump is an all-caps kind of guy,” says Steven Heller. Heller, co-chair of the MFA in design at New York’s School of Visual Arts, recently analyzed Trump’s typography choices for Wired—beginning with the giant, brass-colored, “TRUMP TOWER” sign over the entry of Trump’s flagship Fifth Avenue building. Heller notes that the sign’s typeface, a slab serif style that is likely either Stymie Bold or Lubalin Graph, is very similar to the one Playboy used for its gentlemen’s clubs in the 1960s. Classy. Luxurious. Heller authored Iron Fists: Branding the 20^th-Century Totalitarian State, so he is an authority when he describes the all-caps, chunky serif aesthetic of the hat as “imperial.”

There’s a hat on sale in the Hillary campaign shop that nicely highlights the differences between the two candidates. The Hillary hat has a complicated stitching pattern and colorful underbrim and looks like it was lovingly designed by professional milliners. I’ve repeatedly asked the Trump campaign for their hat’s origin story, and they’ve not yet gotten back to me with an answer, but to my eyes the Trump hat looks to have been thrown together last-second by a frazzled intern. Which seems par for the course. Everything about Hillary screams “careful preparation” while everything about Trump screams “winging it.”

Jerry McLaughlin, co-founder of Branders.com, spent 15 years making merchandise for political campaigns. In his eyes, the purpose of all this swag is not for the campaign to make money. “Generally, they might end up making a few bucks,” he says. “But this is not a meaningful source of revenue for them. It’s not a commercial enterprise. It’s more, ‘Let’s not lose money doing this.’ ” Even the Obama campaign’s reported $40 million revenue from its high-fashion 2012 merchandise line was a drop in the bucket, to McLaughlin’s thinking. “It’s still small numbers compared to the billion dollars it takes to run a presidential campaign.” And that’s when you have Anna Wintour shaping your products.

Surprisingly, McLaughlin doesn’t even consider campaign merch a form of advertising. He doesn’t think seeing a Hillary hat on someone else’s head will turn you into a Hillary voter. “It’s more that it cements the wearer closely to the candidate,” he argues. “I wear your hat and, because I’ve announced publicly my affiliation with you, I find myself more committed. I’ll take more actions on behalf of you. Subconsciously, by wearing the gear, we get ourselves more deeply involved.” This is key when it comes to squeezing more volunteer work out of supporters or further donations as the election approaches.

I don’t think Trump has put nearly that much thought into his hat. But that’s the beauty of Trump. The hat is random and startling, and so is the Donald, and therein lies the key to much of the media coverage both get. Trump’s current hold on America’s attention derives mainly from two sources: 1) the angry conservatives who genuinely admire his alpha-dog persona (the sorts of voters who might earnestly wear hats much like this one); 2) the amused gawkers who can’t get enough of his ringmaster antics (the sorts of voters who might ironically wear hats much like this one). It’s working for him so far, publicity-wise. But we’ll see how long this fragile coalition can hold. Heavy is the head that wears the mesh-backed, adjustable crown.

Mistress America

Seth Stevenson — Fri, 14 Aug 2015 13:28:58 GMT

The opening scene of director Noah Baumbach’s first movie, Kicking and Screaming—released 20 years ago this fall—took place on graduation night as the final moments of university ticked away. Its central characters were confident seniors, big fish in a little liberal arts pond, loath to leave this mastered domain for the unknown universe beyond.

Baumbach’s new film, Mistress America, dramatizes the exact opposite end of the undergrad experience. We fade in on arrival day at Barnard. Our protagonist is Tracy, a jittery frosh—wary of her classmates, bewildered by the campus social scene, and deeply unsure of herself.

Baumbach nails those first, flop-sweaty days of college with a spot-on montage: Tracy, overcome by buffet abundance, piling her dining hall tray with both pizza and cereal; Tracy vulnerably dropping her stapled short story into a wall-mounted file holder at the student literary mag; Tracy self-quashing a nascent crush when she spots the boy holding hands with someone else in the quad. The frog-voiced young actress Lola Kirke inhabits Tracy’s insecurity with aplomb. It’s a charming opening reel, and the film feels on track to become the wittiest highbrow college comedy since, well, Kicking and Screaming. Until Greta Gerwig happens.

Sitting alone in a diner, alienated from her classmates, feeling desperate (if we weren’t clear on this, Paul McCartney’s “No More Lonely Nights” helpfully plays on the soundtrack),Tracy is driven to phone the one non-Barnard person she knows in New York. It’s Brooke (played by Gerwig), the daughter of Tracy’s mom’s new fiancé. From the moment Tracy meets her stepsister-to-be in Times Square, the Brooke show begins—and the film deflates.

Baumbach and Gerwig, a romantic twosome IRL, collaborated beautifully as co-screenwriters on 2013’s Frances Ha. That bouncy dramedy let Gerwig’s innate sweetness perfectly balance out Baumbach’s bitter edge. Gerwig, as the titular Frances, was a vision of delightful pluck. In Mistress America, Gerwig plays the flip side of Frances: Brooke is antic, but not harmless. And Frances’ pluck has turned dangerously delusional.

Baumbach and Gerwig have both noted in interviews that Mistress America is in part inspired by those 1980s comedies—like Something Wild and After Hours—in which a preppy square falls under the spell of an outrageous bon vivant. Kirke holds up the square end of this bargain, believably portraying Tracy’s sad-sack ennui. But Gerwig doesn’t quite pull off the Auntie Mame counterpoint. She’s a supremely likable actress, to be sure, but she lacks the lightning-bolt charisma it would require to be convincing as a figure Tracy gloms onto out of rapt fascination. Brooke’s array of downtown hijinks are neither daffily fun nor darkly subterranean enough to captivate. Maybe that’s the idea: that Tracy is so sheltered, so empty, that even this dim wattage draws her like a moth to flame. But dim wattage is not the stuff of entertaining, antic comedy, which is what Mistress America strives to be.

The disconnect between the movie’s goals and its actual comic energy becomes most evident during a road trip to Greenwich, Connecticut, where Brooke plans to cadge money from an old friend who’s married rich. The movie grinds to a halt as what had been a sharp-eyed campus tale turns into a baggy, failed screwball farce. The script gets stagy, the jokes fall flat, and the manic pacing doesn’t make up the difference. Baumbach has always composed angular, complex dialogue, and has always managed to neatly walk the tightrope between juicy and overwritten. But here the lines get run-on, a little too packed with pretension, and become uncomfortably chewy mouthfuls for his actors.

There are chuckle-inducing moments toward the end of this Connecticut sojourn, when the banter gets flouncier and the mood nearly achieves liftoff. But for the most part, the stabs here at quick-paced, shouty rage come off as second-tier David O. Russell. I yearned for the laugh-out-loud fluidity of, say, Russell’s Flirting With Disaster—a rare example of modern screwball done right.

The film goes back to Barnard for its denouement. And we’re reminded that it never should have left. I’ll watch anything this auteur puts out, and I’m not sorry I watched this film—even Baumbach’s misfires have oodles more verve than the personality-free product Hollywood often puts out. But I can’t help but mourn what might have been: a second Baumbach campus classic just as good as his first.

The Culture Gabfest “Lite in August” Edition

Stephen Metcalf — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 13:27:08 GMT

Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 360 with Stephen Metcalf, Julia Turner, and Seth Stevenson with the audio player below.

Subscribe in iTunes ∙ RSS feed ∙ Download ∙ Play in another tab

And join the lively conversation on the Culturefest Facebook page here:

Go to slate.com/cultureplus to learn more about Slate Plus and join today.

This week on Slate Plus, the critics talk about their experiences at summer camp.

On this week’s Slate Culture Gabfest, the gabbers tackle the rebooted cult classic Wet Hot American Summer, which Netflix recently released as a TV show. Was it worth reviving? Next, Jessica Winter joins Seth and Julia to discuss The End of the Tour, a film about an interview between journalist David Lipsky and novelist David Foster Wallace. How accurately did it capture the experience of interviewing someone for a profile? Finally, the critics weigh in on the Great Air Conditioning Debate of 2015. Is air conditioning a wasteful indulgence and evidence of office sexism, or is it critical to public health?

This episode of Slate’s Culture Gabfest is brought to you by Next Issue Media. If you want premium content and don’t have time to find it, Next Issue lets you dive deeper into the world’s most popular magazines anytime, anywhere, using your phone or tablet. Next Issue is offering a free trial for Culture Gabfest listeners. Go to nextissue.com/culture.

Links to some of the things we discussed this week follow:

Wet Hot American Summer (the movie version)
Wet Hot American Summer (the Netflix version)
The Arrested Development reboot on Netflix
Airplane!
30 Rock
Cannonball Run
Willa Paskin’s Wet Hot American Summer review in Slate
The End of the Tour
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky
“Finding Myself in David Foster Wallace’s Notebook” by Seth Stevenson in Slate
“The Depressed Person” by David Foster Wallace in Harper’s Magazine
“Review: ‘The End of the Tour’ Offers a Tale of Two Davids” by A.O. Scott in the New York Times
David Foster Wallace’s “This Is Water” commencement speech at Kenyon College
“Inside David Foster Wallace’s Private Self-Help Library” by Maria Bustillos on The Awl
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
Almost Famous
“Energy Consumption in Buildings and Female Thermal Demand” by Boris Kingma and Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt in Nature Climate Change
“Hot and Bothered” on the fervid crusade against air conditioning by Daniel Engber in Slate
“In Defense of Office Air-Conditioning” by Jonathan Chait in New York magazine

Endorsements:

Julia: The podcast The Moment With Brian Koppelman, particularly the recent episode featuring David Lipsky.

Seth: Unfinished novels like Pale King by David Foster Wallace and The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Steve: The folk singer Laura Marling.

Outro: “Catapult” by R.E.M.

You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.

This podcast was produced by Ann Heppermann. Our intern is Lindsey Albracht.

Hillary Wants to Tell You About Her Mom

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 22:24:39 GMT

The Spot: We see Hillary Clinton addressing us, in close-up, interspersed with old black-and-white photos of her now-deceased mother, Dorothy. After recounting the details of her mother’s grim childhood—“abandoned by her parents at age 8, sent from Chicago to L.A. to live with grandparents who didn’t want her”—Clinton explains that she’s running for president so that she can help people like her mom. “I think about all the Dorothys all over America,” she says, as the scene switches to a shot of Clinton shaking the hand of a small, smiling girl. The closing image is a photo of Clinton and Dorothy, side by side, both in blazers, both sporting carefully coiffed bobs.

Early in the presidential election cycle, campaign ads are often gauzy. Lots of fawning biography swaddled in vague fluff. Voters are getting to know the candidates. Introductions are in order.

Unless you’re Hillary Clinton, in which case no introduction is needed. Clinton is so familiar a figure that at one moment during one of her first two ads—a pair debuting on Tuesday in Iowa and New Hampshire, her first broadcast sortie of the 2016 cycle—the voice-over announcer pauses amid his recap of Clinton’s résumé and nods to the viewer: “You probably know the rest.”

Indeed we do. We know a ton about Hillary Clinton. Especially those of us who live in Iowa and New Hampshire, two early primary states that were blanketed with Clinton ads back in 2008. And yet these new Clinton spots are light on policy and heavy on character-building backstory—as though Clinton were another fresh-faced newb in need of contextualization. Why is Clinton’s campaign spending $2 million to fill five weeks of summer airtime with get-to-know-me ads, when everybody out there knows her already?

Perhaps it’s because the Clinton people already know is not a Clinton they particularly like. In the Quinnipiac University national poll released last week, 51 percent of registered voters expressed an unfavorable opinion of Clinton, versus only 40 percent favorable. A mere 37 percent felt Clinton was “honest and trustworthy.” (Newly buzzworthy potential rival Joe Biden was deemed honest by 58 percent of respondents.) Most worrisome of all for the candidate who fancies herself a champion of ordinary Americans: 52 percent of pollees said Clinton doesn’t care about the needs and problems of people like them.

These ads were reportedly filmed before those dismal numbers came out. But they address the same, longstanding weaknesses of Clinton the candidate. She is widely respected but not widely adored. It seems she’s subverted the ancient gender stereotypes: Few doubt her take-charge toughness—58 percent of those polled agreed she has “strong leadership qualities.” But she’s always had trouble when it comes to forging an emotional connection with voters.

Thus this reboot, with imagery that’s all warm and fuzzy. We don’t encounter Clinton seated behind a desk—she’s in a living room, with flowers and throw pillows. She isn’t wearing her no-nonsense navy pantsuit—she’s clad in cheery jewel tones.

And what’s she talking about? Not foreign policy. Not immigration. Not even the economy (save in the most general sense). Nope, the Clinton we meet in these ads wants to chat with us about her mom.

“Her parents abandoned her when she was just 8 years old,” Clinton tells us while we see a black-and-white photo of her mother, Dorothy, as a child. “She was mistreated,” Clinton says. “But she never gave up.”

The legend of the self-made person—one who overcomes his bleak beginnings to find success—is a beloved trope in American society. It’s especially cherished by politicians, who tout humble origins as evidence of their empathy for working-class voters. Sometimes, when a candidate’s own story isn’t quite squalid enough, he’s forced to reach back a generation or two in order to find some laudable bootstrapping. Mitt Romney, for instance, would speak from the stump about his dad’s early struggles, because Romney himself grew up cosseted in wealth and privilege.

Clinton is pulling a similar stunt here, eliding her upbringing in an affluent Chicago suburb, and instead seizing on her mother’s hard-knock narrative. But Clinton’s message runs counter to the usual self-made mythology. Where Romney used his father’s story as proof that poor Americans can leap ahead through their own hard work, Clinton uses Dorothy’s story to illustrate the notion that it takes a village to pull on those bootstraps. It was with the help of people who “showed her kindness” and “gave her a chance” that Dorothy climbed out of poverty. “When she needed a champion,” Clinton tells us, “someone was there.” Self-reliance will get us only so far. We need someone—maybe someone in the White House—who’ll fight for us.

What kind of people does Clinton envision herself fighting for? Clinton says she’s “doing this,” and has “always done this,” for “all the Dorothys.” Who will get Clinton’s attention if she’s elected?

Just look at the faces in these ads. There aren’t any men in hard hats, or on factory floors, yearning to save their blue-collar manufacturing and construction jobs—the kind of guys who seem to overpopulate other candidates’ ads. In Clinton’s new spots the regular folks on display are almost exclusively women and small children. A mom fixing her daughter’s hair. A mom kissing her daughter goodnight. Clinton bending down to take the hand of a pretty little girl. The final image of the spot titled “Family Strong” shows Clinton cradling her infant granddaughter, as the voice-over notes the former senator’s “new title: grandma.”

These ads are, in their words and their imagery, very pointedly about intergenerational female bonds. Women looking out for each other. Looking out for their mothers and their daughters. It’s like a Barbara Kingsolver novel up in here. Clinton will surely target other groups in subsequent spots, but this first salvo suggests that her campaign is, at its core, focused on the female vote.

Consider: The oddest, most jarring moment in either of these ads arrives with their brief, lone reference to Barack Obama. Obama is never mentioned by name. He’s instead labeled, by way of praising Clinton’s magnanimous decision to join his Cabinet, as “the man who defeated her.”

The man who defeated her! In the primaries. Seven years ago. Let us marvel at the astonishing subtext of this phrase. He’s not the two-term president from Clinton’s own party who bested two Republican foes. He’s, above all, the man who defeated Hillary Clinton. Emphasis, I might argue, on man.

Accompanying this phrase is a remarkable visual choice. It’s a photo of Obama seated at a conference table. At the center, in the position of power. We can see only the back of his head and the back of his enormous leather chair. The angle of the photo places us behind him. Below him. Looking up at him. He is above us and does not see us. We’re completely shut out of the group. It’s almost as though we’ve been denied a seat at the table.

DoubleX Gabfest: The Manic Panic Armpits Edition

Noreen Malone — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 14:18:46 GMT

Become a fan of DoubleX on Facebook. Leave us love letters and see what other listeners are saying about the Gabfest. Send us an email to doublexgabfest@slate.com.

Listen to the DoubleX Gabfest by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

Subscribe in iTunes ∙ RSS feed ∙ Download ∙ Play in another tab

On this week’s Gabfest, Slate’s June Thomas and Seth Stevenson join New York editor Noreen Malone to talk about the trend of women growing and dyeing their armpit hair, the Center for Medical Progress’ Planned Parenthood videos, and the female gaze from the street to the screen.

Other items discussed in the show:

“Women Who Dye Their (Armpit) Hair,” by Andrew Adam Newman in the New York Times
“Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Pit Hair,” by Allison P. Davis and Kathleen Hou in the Cut
New York Daily News and E! report on celebrity armpit hair
The Center for Medical Progress’ edited videos, full videos, and transcripts about Planned Parenthood.
“Planned Parenthood Tells Congress More Videos of Clinics Might Surface,” by Jackie Calmes in the New York Times
“How the Planned Parenthood Video Was Used to Attack Breast Cancer Funding,” by Amanda Marcotte in Slate
“Meet Your New Fantasy Man: The Emotional Bodyguard,” by Allison P. Davis in the Cut
The video “Notes on the Gaze” by Chelsea McMullan on Nowness
Wesley Morris reviews Magic Mike XXL in Grantland
Magic Mike vs. Magic Mike XXL in a charticle by Eliana Dockterman in Time

Summer Movie Club: On the next episode we’ll talk about Ridley Scott’s 1991 film Thelma & Louise.

DoubleX recommendations:

June recommends Lea DeLaria’s new album of David Bowie covers, House of David.

Noreen recommends “My Mistake” by Cam, Ashley Monroe’s new album The Blade, and Monroe’s song “Weed Instead of Roses.”

Seth recommends the Nina Simone documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone?

This podcast was produced by Ann Heppermann. Our intern is Jessie Chasan-Taber.

DoubleX plugs:

Loyal fans of Slate’s DoubleX, please remember to like us on our Facebook page. Send your emails to doublexgabfest@slate.com. Tell us what we should cover in the next edition.

A U.S.-Japan Robot Duel Is Coming. Time to Rewatch a Great Transnational Bot-Battle Movie.

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 07 Jul 2015 16:24:28 GMT

Rejoice! This is how everlasting world peace begins.

MegaBots, an American robotics company, recently challenged Japan’s Suidobashi Heavy Industries to a giant robot fight. Now the challenge has been accepted. “We can’t let another country win this—giant robots are Japanese culture,” explained Suidobashi's CEO, talking smack as he picked up the gauntlet. And so the robots shall duel. We can all look forward to a glorious gnashing of metal.

But there's something far more important at stake here than mere corporate robot supremacy. I've been waiting for this day since 1989, when I first watched Robot Jox, the greatest transnational robot-fighting movie ever made. Robot Jox envisions a post–World War III future when all state-level conflicts have been outlawed. Sovereign disputes are instead settled via giant robot combat, with humans operating the robots from inside (much like this regular panda operates a giant, robot panda). In the robot melee featured in the film, the battle is over nothing less than possession of Alaska and all her natural resources.

I strongly encourage you to watch the Robot Jox trailer. Here is some representative dialogue, from a robot jock who is yelling at a rival robot jock as both are poised to strap into their robots: "I'm gonna get in this thing and I'm gonna kick your [cut to robot explosion that obscures the next word]."

Perhaps now you can understand why I'm so excited by the prospect of this upcoming U.S. vs. Japan robot donnybrook. I know where it leads. It means our future is safe, now. To paraphrase John Lennon and Yoko Ono: WAR IS OVER! (IF YOU WANT GIANT ROBOTS TO FIGHT EACH OTHER)

The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in July

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 01 Jul 2015 12:13:43 GMT

Every month, a number of movies and TV series leave Netflix streaming, sometimes only temporarily, usually because licensing deals have expired. Several new titles arrive in their place. So what’s coming this month, and which of these new arrivals should you watch? Below, we’ve chosen the best new movies and TV shows coming to Netflix Instant streaming in July 2015. Plan your Fourth of July–weekend marathons accordingly.

Bulworth
Arriving: July 1

In the wake of the Charleston massacre and the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police, it’s an interesting, uncomfortable time to revisit 1998’s Bulworth. The bleak, often-hilarious comedy features director Warren Beatty as suicidal, Clintonesque Sen. Jay Bulworth, who, in a personal nadir, buys a $10 million life insurance policy and orders a hit on himself. Knowing he’ll be killed in days, Bulworth starts speaking very frankly about the Democratic Party’s apathy toward black Americans. (At a black church: “You got half your kids out of work and the other half are in jail. Do you see any Democrat doing anything about it? Certainly not me! So what’re you gonna do, vote Republican? Come on! Come on, you’re not gonna vote Republican. Let’s call a spade a spade!”) Sleep-deprived in the extreme, Bulworth starts mimicking black culture on the campaign trail, rapping horribly and parroting the word-for-word arguments of poor, smart, neglected-by-Washington black people he meets and parties with in South Central Los Angeles. On television and at campaign stops, Bulworth punctuates speeches about government corruption and inequality with baroque profanity, and he constantly smokes weed and drinks. The movie’s racial calculus is informed by a white-guilt fantasy of black culture and the ghetto—everyone black is authentic and colloquially wise—but the movie still provides a lot to enjoy, including a memorable soundtrack that features the unstoppable hit “Ghetto Superstar.” Beatty, Halle Berry, Oliver Platt, and Don Cheadle give great performances, and the film offers a searing, existential lament about politics and race in America.—Seth Maxon, nights and weekends homepage editor

Grandma's Boy
Arriving: July 1

Watch Grandma's Boy because it features Linda Cardellini, at peak levels of relatable fetchingness, busting out a life-changing karaoke rendition of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It.” Because it should have made Nick Swardson a (okay, maybe Rob Schneider-level) comedy star solely on the strength of his smacktalk when he crushes a videogame opponent: “New high score, is that bad? What does that mean? Did I break it?” Because High Times named it Best Stoner Movie at the 2006 Stony Awards, and it boasts a scene in which titular grandma Doris Roberts gets unwittingly blazed to the bejeezus bells. Because its end credits song—“Grandma’s Boyee,” by Kool Keith and KutMasta Kurt—is mostly just a straight recitation of the film's plot, including lyrics like, “He’s looking for a small space to light up his bong at Nana’s house.” And watch it because Slate's own Reihan Salam, in a magisterial 2006 piece titled “Masturbation and Solitude,” called this movie “the most thoughtful meditation on the plight of the beta male that I’ve ever seen,” and wagered that merely watching it could rescue humanity from a “Spenglerian spiral of misery and torment.”—Seth Stevenson, frequent contributor

The Secret of Roan Inish
Arriving: July 1

Perhaps the most unlikely film of writer-director John Sayles’ career, The Secret of Roan Inish was mostly ignored back in 1994, when it was released. A quiet, odd fable set in an Irish fishing village, the meditative Roan Inish tells the story of a young girl exploring the myth of the selkies, half-seal, half-human creatures of Irish legend. It’s a great under-the-radar family pick that will appeal to curious 9-to-13-year-olds, while reminding their parents of the storytelling skill Sayles (Eight Men Out, Lone Star) has brought to his finest projects.—Dan Kois, culture editor

The Wrecking Crew
Arriving: July 30

You may have never heard of the Wrecking Crew, but I can guarantee that you’ve heard them. The group of crack Los Angeles studio musicians that assembled under that name in the ’60s played on a truly absurd number of classics, from artists including the Beach Boys, the Monkees, the Crystals, Nancy Sinatra, Elvis, Sonny & Cher, and more—altering the way that musicians would play many of these songs forever. But it’s only with this documentary that they’re getting the kind of widespread recognition they deserve. I’m not sure if this labor of love ever would have gotten the kind of attention it has if it weren’t for the Oscar-conquering success of the similarly-minded 20 Feet From Stardom last year—the movie first premiered to raves in 2008, before languishing for years on the shelf—but I’m glad it did. —Forrest Wickman, senior editor

The Guest
Arriving: July 25

David (Dan Stevens) shows up at the front door of a family grieving a fallen son in Afghanistan. He says he served with the son—and they invite him to stay. Oops! Before long, David’s no-nonsense charm gives way to a demented homicidal agenda. It’s hard to pin down all the influences on Adam Wingard’s strange, sexy comic thriller, but B-movie fans of all stripes will find much to admire in a delirious movie that sends up a half-dozen genres at once. Watch with something strong to drink.—Jeffrey Bloomer, associate editor

Also arriving:

July 1

Alive
An Honest Liar
Bad Hair Day
Bionicle: The Legend Reborn
Dave Attel: Road Work
Death in Paradise, Season 3
Hostage
Invizimals: The Alliance Files
La Reina del Sur
Octonauts, Season 3
Piglet’s Big Movie
El Senor de los Cielos, Seasons 1-2
Saw V
Set Fire to the Stars
Shooting Fish
Underworld: Evolution
Velvet, Season 2

July 3

Knights of Sidonia, Season 2

July 4

Faults
Hell on Wheels, Season 4
White Collar, Season 6

July 7

Monster High: Scaris, City of Frights
Witches of East End, Season 2

July 9

Monsters: The Dark Continent
Serena

July 10

Chris Tucker Live
Violetta, Seasons 1-2

July 14

Bad Ink, Season 1
Bible Secrets Revealed, Season 1
Creep
Goodbye To All That
Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanleys Island of Dr. Moreau
Preachers’ Daughters, Season 2
Storage Wars: Texas, Season 1
The Killer Speaks, Season 2

July 15

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus
H20 Mermaid Adventures (five new episodes)
Penguins of Madagascar
The Physician

July 16

Changeling

July 17

BoJack Horseman, Season 2
The Human Experiment
Tig

July 18

Glee, Season 6
Java Heat

July 23

Teacher of the Year

July 28

Comet
Marvel’s Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., Season 2

July 30

Almost Mercy
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Season 5

July 31

Turbo Fast, Season 2
Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp

Tsarnaev Speaks

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 23:27:59 GMT

BOSTON—Survivors of the Boston Marathon bombing gathered in the Moakley Courthouse on Wednesday morning, transforming the hallways into a forest of prostheses. Their friends and families were here to offer emotional, and sometimes physical, support. The attorneys had come, and the judge, and the media scrum. And of course the defendant, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, had been dragged here in chains.

Yet it wasn’t clear, in a certain sense, precisely what we’d come here for. Yes, this was the day of Tsarnaev’s sentencing, and a separate day of sentencing for a guilty defendant can serve an important purpose. Victims can make statements they hope will sway the judge to throw the book at their aggressor. The defendant might try to persuade the court, through a show of remorse, to exercise mercy and reduce his time in jail.

But there was almost nothing left to be decided here. In a federal death penalty trial, it’s the jurors, not the judge, who determine the defendant’s fate. And the jurors in this case had already condemned Tsarnaev to die. At the court today Judge George O’Toole had some technical business to attend to—for instance, he issued sentences for the non-capital crimes Tsarnaev had been convicted of. But given that Tsarnaev faces the death penalty, the exercise with regard to these lesser offenses was moot.

So what were we looking to achieve on this day? Was it mere formality? Or were we after something more? What sort of closure did we hope to find?

In part, this was a day to ensure that victims’ voices were heard. Many survivors who had not testified during the trial now came before the court. They spoke of lost limbs, broken bones, impaired hearing. Months of surgeries, ongoing pain, derailed careers, strained marriages. Flinching at sudden noises. Waking from nightmares, screaming. Each had lived, and was still living, a tragedy, and it was proper to let them unspool their burdens to us before this proceeding came to an end.

Some spoke bitterly about the things they would never regain. Some instead chose to emphasize the beauty they’d discovered ever since this ugliness had engulfed them—the selfless help they’d received, the communities that had grown out of the trauma. One man expressed his wish that the people of the world could come together in this aftermath and find a way to coexist.

Jennifer Rogers, sister of slain MIT police officer Sean Collier, used part of her statement to air her frustration with the press. She described her “first media assault,” which came shortly after she’d gone to the hospital where Collier was brought after he was shot. “She was young looking and blended in quite well,” Rogers said of the reporter she encountered. “And I saw how our grief would be treated: as a salacious story. Soon after, the press was on the porch of a neighbor’s house trying to get pictures of us crying. I’ve had to call the police because this was a regular occurrence. … The media know my phone number and email, and they stalk us on Facebook.”

But many of the victims—and especially the ones who’d lost the most—turned their sights on Tsarnaev. Patricia Campbell, whose daughter Krystle died on Boylston Street, trembled and cried as she looked at Tsarnaev and said, “I feel your parents brought you here for a reason, for a better life. And intellectually you’re pretty bright. You could have helped your brother get help. I know life is hard but the choices you made are despicable.” She then broke down, losing control. “I don’t know what happened! … I don’t know what to say to you!”

Krystle’s friend Karen McWatters, who lost her leg in the bombing, said Tsarnaev “can’t possibly have had a soul to do such a horrible thing.” She shook her head at the legal effort to portray Tsarnaev’s brother Tamerlan as the real perpetrator. “What a cowardly defense,” she complained.

Again and again, the victims wondered if Tsarnaev felt remorse. And if he did, they asked, why hadn’t he shown it? Over and over, they mentioned his demeanor during the trial.

Jennifer Rogers described the way he walked into the courtroom surrounded by marshals each morning, “his head held high with a swagger in his step like he was entering a party with his entourage.”

“Everyone has watched you basically gawk at the horrific footage with little to no remorse,” said amputee Rebekah Gregory, addressing Tsarnaev directly. She noted she’d seen him “fiddling with your pencil and cracking jokes with your attorney.”

“The first time I saw you in this courtroom you were smirking at all the victims,” said Ed Fucarile, whose son Marc lost his right leg. “You don’t seem to be smirking today.”

When I wrote about Tsarnaev’s slouchy, fidgety bearing earlier in the trial, Susan Bandes, a professor at the DePaul University College of Law, emailed me a study she’d done on defendants’ body language. “There’s no clear way to communicate remorse,” she argued in her email. She may have a point. But certainly, if Tsarnaev wanted to convey how seriously he was taking these proceedings over the last few months, he could have sat up straighter. He could have shaved, and trimmed his indulgent mop of hair. He could have put on a tie. Even today, as victims spoke directly at him, some of them mentioning their frustration that he didn’t look at witnesses as they spoke, Tsarnaev continued to stare at the wall or at his knees.

And remorse seemed to be the only thing the victims wanted from him. They expressed a deep, profound need for him to see the error of his ways. Bill Richard, father of 8-year-old Martin, who was killed by the bomb Tsarnaev carefully placed a few feet behind him, noted that he and his wife had opposed the death penalty for Tsarnaev. “We’d preferred he have a lifetime to reconcile with himself what he did that day,” said Richard, “but he will have less than that. Until the day he asks for reconciliation this all hangs on him. And on the day he meets his maker may he understand what he has done and may justice and peace be found.”

Other victims, one after another, pleaded with Tsarnaev to think about what he’d done, to apologize. But he remained a cypher. It seemed we’d never know whether Tsarnaev felt any contrition whatsoever.

And then, to the amazement of many who’d been following the trial, defense attorney Judy Clarke announced that her client would speak. Tsarnaev rose to his feet. He talked softly, and calmly, almost politely. He praised Allah and Muhammad, and he noted that this is the month of Ramadan—a month of “mercy” and “reconciliation” and a month “during which hearts change.”

“You told me how horrendous it was, this thing I put you through,” he said of the witnesses who’d taken the stand. “I wish that four more people had a chance to get up there but I took them from you.” And then it came. An apology. “I am sorry for the lives I’ve taken, for the suffering I’ve caused you, and for the damage that I’ve done.”

It was, at last, the remorse everyone had begged him to express. But somehow it didn’t sound like remorse. It sounded more like a stone-faced military general, speaking from the podium after a battle victory, allowing that he felt some mild regret regarding the collateral damage that was necessitated by the greater mission of the war.

His speech was anticlimactic. I don’t know what we were expecting, all of us brought together today to train our full focus on a young man who has displayed no shred of humanity. Tsarnaev never said that he wished he hadn’t detonated that bomb. Nor had he taken the stand during the trial to explain his actions—that would have meant facing a withering cross-examination. Instead, he spoke in this controlled, protected setting, where no one could interrupt him or ask him questions or in any way invade his walled-off mind.

When Negotiating a Square Deal, Be Careful With Round Numbers

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 13:36:00 GMT

In the world of head-to-head negotiations, the person who first suggests a dollar figure must do so carefully. The opening episode of Slate's Negotiation Academy (a podcast series I co-hosted) addressed this concept, with behavioral economist Dan Ariely explaining the importance of "anchoring": If I'm selling you a used curio, and we’re haggling over it, and neither of us is exactly sure what the curio’s proper value is, I'm better off naming an extremely high number right off the bat—instead of waiting for you to make a (presumably much lower) initial offer. By acting first and throwing my inflated number out there, I can psychologically "anchor" the bargaining around it. It's a powerful tactic that gives me an advantage as the negotiation proceeds.

Now comes news of some further tactical wisdom regarding initial prices. A paper released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research argues that significantly different negotiation outcomes will result if that initial number I put forth is a rounded-off figure (such as $500) as opposed to a more precise amount (such as $498.92). The study found that, in an online bargaining situation that mimicked a traditional, back-and-forth negotiation, setting my initial price as a round number was likely to net lower counteroffers (5 to 8 percent lower, on average). But those counteroffers came more quickly (6 to 11 days sooner), and the probability of an actual sale was increased (it was 3 to 5 percent more likely that an agreement would be reached).

This is not the first time that round numbers have come under scrutiny. In a 2013 interview with NPR host Robert Siegel, Columbia Business School professor Malia Mason—using data obtained in part from Zillow real estate listings—suggested that the use of round numbers in a negotiation is generally a sucker’s play:

SIEGEL: And first, give us an example. What do you mean, don't pick a round number?

MASON: So if you're negotiating for, let's say, a car, you're buying a used car from someone, don't suggest that you'll pay $5,000 for the car. Say something like, "I'll pay you $5,125 for the car," or $4,885 for the car.

SIEGEL: Why should that be a more successful tactic of negotiating?

MASON: It signals that you have more knowledge about the value of the good being negotiated.

SIEGEL: Somebody says 5,000 to me and I think, ah, they don't know much. But if they say, $5,123.50, I think, boy, they must have looked up some table of the values of used cars, or something.

MASON: Correct.

But in their NBER paper, researchers Matthew Backus, Tom Blake, and Steven Tadelis note that posting a round number has uses, too. There seems to be something about a round number that indicates a seller’s willingness to bargain. The authors of the study term it a “cheap-talk signal.” Buyers pick up on it. So the resultant agreed-upon price might be lower, but the offers come quicker and a sale is more likely.

Feel free to apply this wisdom to your next negotiation session. Are you a seller who absolutely needs the sale to go through, needs it done quickly, and can afford to sacrifice a little on the price? Then go ahead and round off.

No word in the study on how this technique interacts with anchoring high, but it does seem possible to name a number that’s both lofty and round. Just ask Dr. Evil.

I Double-Apple Dare You

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 21:59:00 GMT

As Apple Watches sprout on wrists across the land—finally appearing in stores, arriving in mailboxes at last—I’ve begun to note a new phenomenon I’ll term the “double Apple.” The double Apple occurs when a person thumbs an Apple iPhone while he wears an Apple Watch. The mere sight of a double Apple makes me retch a little.

On sheer aesthetic grounds, the double Apple is way too matchy-matchy—like sporting a Ralph Lauren horse on both your baseball hat and your breast pocket. Mild allegiance to a brand is fine, sure. But allowing a brand to completely define your visual presence is awfully dorky. Unless you’re a professional athlete draped headband to sock in your sponsor’s logo, it’s a look best avoided.

The double Apple also defeats Apple’s plan to position the Watch as a cool fashion product for cool fashion people. Because there’s very little that’s cool about using multiple computers at the same time. Functional, maybe. Productive, fine. Cool? Nope.

Besides, I’d thought the very purpose of the Watch—fashion aside—was that you’d rarely need to pull your phone out of your pocket anymore. Why buy the Watch otherwise? I’m loath to add yet another gadget to my routine (a gadget I must recharge every single day) for no real reason. I’m not in need of a watch qua watch. I’m not pining for another random screen to stare at all the time. This device would only be useful to me to the extent that it improves my mobile life—mostly by letting me stow my phone away in my pocket where I can forget about it.

The double Appling I’ve witnessed suggests the Watch won’t help me make my no-phone vision a reality. But perhaps those double Applers have been doing it wrong. So I decided to find out for myself. I obtained an Apple Watch and then, over a period of a week, tried to excise my iPhone from my life. I’d be allowed to look at my phone while in my apartment, or while sitting at my desk at work, but otherwise I’d abandon it in my pants. Could I go a full week without committing any double Apples in public?

At first it wasn’t tough. The Watch notified me when I had a new email, a text from a friend, or a Slack message from a co-worker. An occasional glance at my wrist (or, in some cases, a pleasant haptic tap from the Watch to my skin) alerted me to incoming missives, and I could read them and then quickly dismiss them when I saw they weren’t pressing. So far, so good: phone safely tucked in pocket, Seth safely updated on the state of his inbox.

Meanwhile, there was a lot of fun to be had with the Watch. I got the $400 version, with aluminum casing and a rubbery “sport” band. (It has the same functionality as the $17,000 model made with 18-karat gold.) The design is clever and responsive, shrinking the iPhone interface to a screen the size of a 50-cent piece. You can choose your own watch face options, ranging from traditional to modern looks, and then customize with different modules—outdoor temperature, moon phase, calendar updates, and so forth, all visible on the Watch’s main screen.

Some of the functions embedded in the device feel positively futuristic. For instance, you can make a phone call from your wrist—though I wonder how often you’ll actually want to do that. The Watch employs a little speakerphone instead of an earpiece, so out on a street corner anyone can hear your amplified conversation. Not much privacy there. Also, it feels awkward to speak into your raised wrist with your elbow cocked. Perhaps this wrist-talking posture will, over time, seem less tragically dorky. For now it’s dorky times four.

I enjoyed the Watch’s ability to measure my heartbeat. But this soon got boring. With each similar reading, I’d think to myself, “Yup, that’s another reading within a few BPMs of my standard resting pulse rate. Way to go, heart.”

I also liked when the Watch prodded me to stand up after I’d been sitting down too long and then congratulated me with a gentle haptic tap once I got to my feet. But when it’s measuring things like steps walked or flights of stairs climbed, the Watch is really just a glorified, radically more expensive Fitbit.

In the end, it’s the ability to see notifications on the Watch, without resorting to looking at your phone, that holds the most utility for its user. And for a time, I experienced Watch notifications as a delightful release from my usual phone dependence. Brief fiddling with the Watch felt more discreet than reaching into my pants and pulling out a big rectangle to cradle in my palm. I especially appreciated this during leisure activities. For instance, I played hooky to fit in a round of golf one afternoon and was able to leave my iPhone in my golf bag the entire time. It felt as though an encumbrance had been lifted. My pants pocket was blissfully empty as I played, yet the Watch still made sure I wasn’t missing important work stuff. I even loaded in a golf app to check my distances to the greens just by looking at my wrist.

Of course, there did eventually arrive a few messages that I couldn’t ignore, which was OK—at least when it came to texts. The Watch lets you answer texts with preprogrammed, canned replies. Or you can use its voice recorder to dictate responses. The voice recognition software is excellent and will pretty faithfully transcribe your spoken words into written messages. Easy peasy, no phone. (Though again, the act of talking to a watch doesn’t quite feel natural. At one point I refrained from dictating a text message while sitting in a restaurant because I didn’t want the nearby table of attractive women to see me mumbling into my fist.)

Problems set in when it came to email. The Watch lets you read it but doesn’t allow you to respond in any way. A must-answer email will send you scrambling to your pocket for your phone so you can peck out an answer. (Double Apple!) I was once forced to violate the terms of my experiment when I got an email that couldn’t wait for a reply until I got back to my desk.

Other limitations began to appear, as well. On the subway, I like to read books or full news articles on the big screen of an iPhone 6 Plus. The Watch doesn’t let you read books at all (its screen is probably too small for that to be a pleasant experience, anyway). And as for news, the New York Times and CNN Watch apps are indicative: Instead of full stories, they show you headlines and a couple of sentences. For true reading nourishment—be it a novel or an in-depth newspaper feature—you’ll need to trot out your phone once again. Likewise, the Twitter app on the Watch shows only a couple of tweets at a time, and you can’t click on any links, as the Watch has no Web browser. This, for me, eliminates the purpose of Twitter.

Which points to a general feeling I had as I attempted to use only the Watch: I was making myself stupider. Reading headlines instead of stories. Reading tweets instead of links. Not reading books at all. Even my text message replies were getting dumber because I was dictating instead of typing them and couldn’t edit them once the voice recognition had taken its stab. (I was better off just deleting and starting over.) I ended up keeping my texts very short and simple to save myself hassle. I’m normally a verbose text banterer who carefully crafts and revises witty text replies to friends. The Watch made me sound curt and unimaginative.

More disquieting: After a few days, that stream of notifications that I’d enjoyed at first—thinking they’d unbound me from the tyranny of the phone—began to feel oppressive. The Watch became a leash. With my phone, if I want to take a break from my mobile life, I can always leave it in my pocket. But the Watch is sitting right there, already out in the open, tempting you. It takes discipline not to swipe and see what you’re missing. And yes, I could have turned off the Watch’s notifications. But then I’d just have, like, a watch.

I wouldn’t bet against Apple. I’m sure future apps and hardware advancements will make the Watch a far more useful device. There are some basic problems with this initial product that will no doubt be improved. For instance, the Watch is designed to sleep when your wrist is lowered to save battery life, but it doesn’t always manage to wake when you tilt the screen up to your eyes. Few things are less useful than a pricey watch that has no face. I looked particularly chumpy on occasions when I was, say, standing on a subway platform, and was forced to herky-jerk-pronate my forearm several times in a row before I could summon the Watch to life.

But that’s a relatively straightforward fix. The bigger question is whether there are fatal limitations to this form. Will there ever be a watch screen on which I will want to read a book? Will it ever not look dorky when I talk into my sleeve? Where will we settle on the continuum of notification—will we really want to receive a gentle tap on the wrist every time somebody wants to reach us? Or will that soon seem more like an annoying yank at our coat sleeves?

In the end, the Watch—in its current iteration—is fundamentally unnecessary. You don’t need to subject it to a phoneless stunt to see that. It’s a failed fashion accessory that, in my view, will never be as aesthetically pleasing as a classic mechanical wristwatch. The Watch does almost nothing your phone can’t already do and, crucially, doesn’t obviate the need to look at your phone even as you’re wearing the watch on your wrist. To avoid double Appling, I had to refrain from answering important emails until I got to a desk. I was forced to risk looking like a dope by talking into my ulna. I needed to forgo reading books and news articles while in transit.

I confess it was a relief when I ended the experiment at the end of the week and was free to pull my phone back out of my pocket without guilt—settling in to read an entertaining book on the subway with my phone’s expansive screen, or carefully crafting a typed text message that might make a friend chuckle. Even though I still have the Watch and could put it on if I wanted to, I’ve stopped wearing it entirely. Unstrapping it from my wrist kind of felt like unshackling a handcuff.

Grim Carnival

Seth Stevenson — Fri, 15 May 2015 23:43:17 GMT

It took the jury about 14½ hours to decide it wanted to kill Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. I take longer than that to pick out a pair of pants when I’m shopping online.

Still, it’s more time than it took a jury to sentence Timothy McVeigh to death—and he committed perhaps the most analogous federal crime in recent memory. The two cases both offered clean scenarios: no doubt about who did it, no doubt that the offense was horrific. If you believe in capital punishment as a valid form of justice, these would seem like pretty good moments to impose it.

I did find some of the jury’s reasoning, as recorded on the verdict form, baffling. Only three out of 12 jurors agreed with the defense team’s contention that Tsarnaev would not have committed any of his crimes if not for the influence of his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. That’s nuts. Tamerlan was clearly in the driver’s seat, in my view. Without Tamerlan, I think Dzhokhar is three bong hits deep and playing Xbox this afternoon. Likewise, only five jurors agreed that Tamerlan had become radicalized first and then encouraged his younger brother. Again, I’m not sure what trial the rest were watching—to me, the evidence was clear that, however radical Dzhokhar eventually became, Tamerlan was the one who arrived there first.

On the all-important question of remorse, the jury was clear: They agreed with the government’s contention that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had shown none. Was it his defiant manifesto inside that dry-docked boat? Was it the middle finger he was caught flipping by the security camera in a courthouse holding cell? Was it his slouching and fidgeting, his inscrutable expression, as he listened to victims describe the devastation that he’d wrought? Unless and until jurors speak to the media, we won’t know.

Defense attorney Judy Clarke’s stellar record has taken a ding here. She spared Ted Kaczynski, Susan Smith, and Jared Loughner from execution, but couldn’t do the same for Tsarnaev. At least, not yet. No doubt, we’ll get years of appeals in this case before Tsarnaev is killed. If he’s ever killed at all.

The most obvious grounds for reversal: the grounds of the courthouse. Or rather where they’re located, walking distance from the finish line of the marathon. The defense team fought hard to move this trial to another city. Judge George O’Toole—stubbornly, in my view—refused to let the case leave, arguing he could seat an unbiased jury. This even though the crime had been waged in many ways against the city itself, had riveted everyone in Massachusetts for the better part of a week, and had shut all of Boston down for an entire day as citizens were ordered to shelter in place during the manhunt.

Today, thanking the jurors for their service, O’Toole told them they’d acted “on behalf of a community seriously aggrieved.” Whoa, hold on a second. I thought they’d rendered a verdict on behalf of the victims and their families or, more technically, on behalf of the United States government. The very notion that they were acting on behalf of all of eastern Massachusetts would have been, reassuringly, taken out of play if the trial had been shifted to, say, Washington, D.C. There it would have been heard by a jury feeling no pressure to quench a regional thirst for vengeance.

I don’t quite know where to place Tsarnaev in the taxonomy of monsters. This wasn’t a moment of clinical insanity, like James Holmes in that Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. This wasn’t 17 years of targeted assassination attempts, like the Unabomber. This was a tragically misguided political statement from a 19-year-old idiot. Several months of planning and a week of mayhem from a dorm-room jihadi.

“’t’s morbid, watching a poor devil on trial for his life,” says Miss Maudie in To Kill a Mockingbird, explaining why she declines to go to the courthouse to watch Atticus Finch argue on behalf of Tom Robinson. “Look at all those folks, it’s like a Roman carnival.” And it was, a bit. The similarities between that fictional case and the real one that concluded on Friday end there. But the description still feels apt. Photos of carnage and testimony from weeping victims as we all looked on, gawking: groups of students lining up to observe the proceedings as a form of civic education, throngs of media cracking gallows jokes in the overflow viewing areas. I would say the only indisputably good thing to come out of today is the fact that it’s all over. But it’s not. We’ll reconvene some day, with Tsarnaev’s life still hanging in the balance.

Grim Business

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 14 May 2015 03:04:16 GMT

“This is by no means a mathematical or mechanical process,” said Judge George O’Toole as he instructed the jury a few moments before they heard closing statements in United States v. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Yet O’Toole had just presented the jurors a verdict form, the pages of which ask them—once their deliberations begin—to tally up their votes on a list of pros and cons guiding their decision to kill Tsarnaev or spare his life.

One checkmark on the fry-the-bastard side of the ledger; another in the lock-him-up-forever column. Given the cavalcade of complicating factors the two sides have asked them to consider, I bet at least a few jurors wish they weren’t banned from using laptops in the deliberation room. It might be useful to whip up an Excel spreadsheet to track the stats.

The defense offered 21 “mitigating factors” meant to convince the jury that Tsarnaev would be more justly punished by a lifetime in prison than by death. Among them:

He was but 19 years old.
He acted under the influence of his older brother.
“Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has expressed sorrow and remorse for what he did and for the suffering he caused.”

The government countered with “aggravating factors” meant to justify Tsarnaev’s execution. Some of these must, under the law, be established before a jury can impose death. Others were tacked on at the prosecution’s discretion. They included:

The existence of planning and premeditation.
The notion that the crime was “especially heinous, cruel, and depraved.”
“Dzhokhar Tsarnaev demonstrated a lack of remorse.”

You may note fairly stark disagreement on one of these points. Is Tsarnaev remorseful or not? The jury has little evidence with which to settle the dispute.

The government noted Tsarnaev’s calm purchase of a gallon of milk at Whole Foods 20 minutes after the bombs went off. They read aloud the “glib commentary” of his tweets from the hours and days that followed: “Ain’t no love in the heart of the city.” “I’m a stress-free kind of guy.” They presented the now-famous image of Tsarnaev flipping the bird at a courtroom security camera, offering it as proof that he is “unrepentant.”

For its part, the defense pointed to Monday’s testimony from Sister Helen Prejean (the Catholic nun and death penalty opponent made famous by the film Dead Man Walking), who met with Tsarnaev multiple times in prison. She claimed he told her, his eyes lowered, his voice sincere, that “no one should have to suffer” the way the victims did. We’ll have to take her word for it regarding Tsarnaev’s feelings on this matter. He declined to take the stand himself to make apologies or express any sorrow. This is his right—and the jury was instructed to infer nothing from it. Tsarnaev also declined to sit up straight or appear to be engaged in any way at all as witnesses testified about the day he blew off their legs or murdered one of their family members. Judge O’Toole reminded the courtroom Wednesday that the “demeanor” of the defendant during the course of the trial is not meant to enter the jury’s consideration. Still, it’s hard to believe it hasn’t lodged in the backs of the jurors’ minds.

Most of the other factors offered up by each side are pretty indisputably true. It’s hard to imagine, for instance, that absent the influence of older brother Tamerlan, Tsarnaev would have morphed into a violent jihadist. Nor would any reasonable observer deny that the Tsarnaevs’ choices of target and weaponry were, indeed, heinous.

Defense attorney Judy Clarke reminded jurors that several of Tsarnaev’s teachers had found him hardworking and respectful, and that some of his friends who testified thought he was a nice guy. She asked the jury to weigh that information in their decision. Prosecutor William Weinreb began his rebuttal by agreeing with Clarke that yes, the jury should indeed weigh all these things. For instance, he suggested: They might choose to weigh the aggravating factor that Tsarnaev shredded an 8-year-old’s body against the mitigating factor that his elementary school teachers spoke well of him. “That’s entirely up to you,” he said, with his trademark, deadpan snark.

Weinreb then cannily turned the defense team’s witnesses against them. He pointed out that the stream of attentive, dedicated teachers, coaches, and mentors that came before the court to describe what a lovable kid Tsarnaev had been contradicted the defense team’s claims that Tsarnaev’s rough upbringing played a role in his crimes. He in fact had all the support any kid could need, Weinreb argued. He also had a car, a cellphone, a laptop, high-quality public education, good medical care, and lived walking distance from Harvard Square. Described by Weinreb thusly, Tsarnaev’s childhood sounded positively cushy.

But the most interesting fight between the government and the defense wasn’t over the past. It was over the future. Clarke told the jury they were making a decision about not just who Tsarnaev was, but “who he is and who he might become.” She asked the jury, “Is his a life worth saving? Is there hope for him? Is there hope for redemption?” She framed the choice to spare him as a noble decision—one coming from a place of strength, granted by people wise and secure enough to bestow mercy.

Weinreb offered a different vision of the decades to come. If Tsarnaev were allowed to live, would he spend his days in prison staring at a wall, thinking about his victims? Or would he instead be thinking about “himself,” about “his penpals,” about “his next workout.” Weinreb asked us to imagine Tsarnaev living out his days eating, praying, exercising, reading magazines, all the while safe and well fed. “Maybe he’ll even write a book,” Weinreb snarked with disgust.

Whether Tsarnaev will be executed has been basically the only open question since the moment he was captured alive. We’re now about to find out the answer. Should the jury believe the defense when it says that Tsarnaev is “not the worst of the worst”? Or the government when it claims Tsarnaev is “callous” and “inhumane”?

The discussion inside the jury room will no doubt be intense and surreal, as 12 citizens from very different walks of life debate the gravest decision any of them are ever likely to make. And there’s no good ending here. Snuffing Tsarnaev might bring a measure of solace to some who deserve it, and I hesitate to begrudge them that. But it won’t resurrect the dead, or reattach lost limbs. Throwing him in a cement cage for 70 years isn’t a happy answer, either. Option one: He lives out the long life he denied his victims, unchanged and untouched, thinking his despicable thoughts all the way to the grave. Option two: He undertakes a journey of self-transformation and repentance. But it doesn’t much matter, because there’s no possibility of parole. (Even if he does figure out what he did wrong, do we really give a shit? He’s a day late and four dead, innocent people short.)

I don’t think either of these punishments will deter the next wannabe jihadi. I don’t think either punishment will balance the scales in any way. I just want to turn the clock back to a sunny Marathon Monday, amateur runners nearing the finish line with big smiles on their faces, friends and families cheering, the whole afternoon a celebration of human endeavor, and community, and civic joy. That can’t happen. Instead, we must do this grim business.

The NBA Draft Is Broken

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 13 May 2015 18:42:16 GMT

This is the year that NBA tanking went off the rails. The Philadelphia 76ers, for starters, exemplified a whole new level of basketball seppuku with a team so willfully awful that the New York Times Magazine felt compelled to publish a feature story about their willful awfulness. The Sixers’ smarty-pants front office—Philadelphia’s general manager, Sam Hinkie, has a Stanford MBA, as the profiles of the team’s losing ways inevitably noted—believes that the best way to make a bad team good is to first make it horrific. By descending into “tank mode,” the Sixers hoped to lose enough games that they’d receive one of the valuable first picks in the upcoming NBA draft.

The team’s multiyear experiment in trading better players for worse ones and stockpiled draft picks is the grandest of the tank projects, but it’s not the only one. The New York Knicks, Los Angeles Lakers, and other teams were accused of plunging into the tank for large swaths of this season. Which is sad. Tanking makes for ugly basketball and it throws off competitive balance. It encourages teams to sit their most exciting players (as, for instance, the Knicks did with Carmelo Anthony) or just trade them away (as the Sixers did with nearly every decent player on their roster). Perhaps worst of all: Fans of tanking teams find themselves not only watching putrid hoops but also perversely rooting against their hometown squads. You know something has gone awry when Knicks coach Derek Fisher feels pressure to apologize to fans for winning.

How to solve the problem? The best tanking solution would be relegation, as happens in European soccer leagues. Each year, the bottom three teams in the continent’s top divisions are kicked out of the league and relegated to a lower one. Regrettably, with NBA teams currently selling for $2 billion apiece, it's unlikely we'll get owners to agree that a few of them should be banished to the D-League each year to compete against the Sioux Falls Skyforce. (No one believes this will happen—otherwise we’d see a bidding war for last year’s champion, the Fort Wayne Mad Ants.)

A more likely solution would be for the NBA to flatten out the lottery odds. Right now the worst team has a 25 percent chance at the top pick while the 14^th-worst team has a 0.5 percent chance. We could switch to a true lottery, in which all 14 non-playoff teams would get an equal 7.14 percent chance at the top pick. Or, more progressively, we could massage the system so that each team’s odds are closer but not equal. But this still wouldn’t entirely remove the incentive to tank. Besides, NBA owners recently rejected a plan along these lines.

Another draft scheme that’s gotten lots of attention is “the wheel”—a system in which the draft order would be set far in advance so that a team’s draft position would have zero to do with its on-court performance. This would eliminate any reason to tank, but it would also do nothing to help bad teams get better. The worst team in the league might end up picking dead last in the draft. The best team might pick first. Making the rich richer and the poor poorer would be an unacceptable outcome of any lottery reform. As horrible as the status quo is, some version of reverse-order drafting—and the increased parity it helps create—is still a worthy goal. So the problem seems intractable.

But fear not, NBA fans! A superior answer exists, and a friend of mine has invented it. It’s fair, it’s elegant, and it’s fun. My friend calls it the “You’re the Worst!” draft.

How would it work? On the day before the regular season began, the NBA would hold a “You’re the Worst!” draft. Selection order for the YTW draft would be determined like any standard reverse-order draft—the team that had the worst win-loss record in the previous season would pick first, the team that had the best record would pick last. But the teams wouldn’t be drafting players. They’d be choosing the rights to another team’s position in the next NBA draft.

So, for example, the Minnesota Timberwolves, who finished this season with the worst win-loss record, would have the first YTW pick in the fall when the 2015–16 season started. One day before opening day, all of the league’s general managers would gather together in a room. The T-Wolves would look around that room and decide which team they thought would finish worst in 2015–16. (They would not be allowed to choose themselves, tempting as that might be.)

Minnesota general manager Milt Newton might predict that the Knicks would be the worst team next season. In which case he would shout, “You’re the worst!” while pointing at Knicks President Phil Jackson, stealing the Knicks’ position in the 2016 NBA draft. If the Knicks indeed finished worst next year, the T-wolves would then receive the top pick in the 2016 draft. If the Knicks finished with the third-worst record, the T-Wolves would receive the No. 3 pick. If they made the playoffs in the final spot, Minnesota would be stuck with the 15^th pick, and Newton would probably be fired.

After the Wolves picked, Jackson and the Knicks, with their second-worst record this past season, would look around the room, predict which remaining team might perform most horribly in 2015–16, and select that team’s 2016 draft pick. Preferably while pointing and shouting, “You’re the next worst!”

Let’s look at how things would have panned out if we’d held a YTW draft for the 2014–15 season. Since the Bucks accumulated the worst win-loss record last year, and the 76ers appeared to be clearly the worst team entering this season, the Bucks would've selected the 76ers first in the YTW draft. It turned out that the 76ers earned the third-worst record, so the Bucks would be getting the third pick in this June’s NBA draft.

Here’s how the 2015 NBA draft might look if there’d been a YTW draft on Oct. 27, 2014, the day before this season started (we’ll use SCHOENE projections from the start of the season as a proxy for how general managers might have projected other teams):

Denver Nuggets (The Nuggets had the 11^th-worst record in 2013–14, so they’d pick 11^th in the YTW draft; the Timberwolves were projected to be the 11^th-worst team this season, so the Nuggets would have stolen their pick. Since the T-Wolves finished with the league’s worst record, the Nuggets would get the first pick in June’s draft.)
Sacramento Kings (seventh-worst record in 2013–14, steal New York Knicks pick)
Milwaukee Bucks (worst record in 2013–14, steal 76ers pick)
Boston Celtics (fifth-worst record in 2013–14, steal Lakers pick)
Philadelphia 76ers (second-worst record in 2013–14, steal Orlando Magic pick)

It’s a pretty good result. Although the Bucks, last year’s worst team, wouldn't end up with the first pick in this year’s NBA draft—something that often doesn't happen anyway, due to the lottery—the new positions still would be heavily weighted toward the bottom feeders. And note that while in the real world the scrappy Celts will be punished for fighting hard to make the playoffs, in a YTW world they would have suffered no ill consequences. Though the Timberwolves wouldn't receive the first pick in the upcoming player draft, despite finishing with the worst record, they would own the YTW No. 1 this fall, which would very likely pay off in 2016.

The obvious benefit of this system is that no team would have an incentive to tank throughout the season (barring collusion). Just think about how this season could have been different. If the Knicks didn’t derive a direct benefit from being so terrible, would they have shut down Carmelo? Would the 76ers dare to build a team so nakedly atrocious? Perhaps, near the end of the year, teams might tank to have a better pick in the upcoming YTW draft. But looking at the above top five picks, there would be a lag to that benefit and it wouldn’t guarantee a ton of value.

Another benefit to the “You’re the Worst” system: It would be exciting! A big problem with “the wheel” reform approach is that it gets rid of the lottery, and the lottery—for all its flaws—is amazing theater. With YTW, we’d replace the lottery with even better drama. Wouldn’t you tune in to see Newton, or better yet Wolves president and coach Flip Saunders, walk up to the podium on national television, look Phil Jackson straight in the eye, and say, “You’re the worst!”? (OK, it would be more like, “With the first pick in the preseason selection-order draft, the Timberwolves select the Knicks.” But the implied insult would be there.) Just like with the real draft, there could be three minutes of commentator analysis between picks.

Because NBA fans have long memories, animosity would instantly sprout. Consider: If the Knicks visited Philadelphia right after calling them “the worst,” the Philly crowd might get rowdy. It stinks to root against your own team, but it’s hella fun to root against other teams. Players would also be eager to prove rival teams’ projections wrong. Ultimately, YTW would enhance—wait for it—competitiveness!

Teams could still trade picks under YTW. You could trade for a team’s YTW selection before the YTW draft, or you could trade for their NBA draft selection after it.

To be sure, this system is not perfect. It might take a casual fan a few run-throughs to understand. And it puts a heavy premium on the forecasting skills of NBA front offices. Nerdy spreadsheet jockeys would become even more valuable than they already are. But it might be better for Sam Hinkie to put his geek skills to use in the service of predictive analysis—or maybe even figuring out how to help his team win—instead of searching for the most efficient way to lose.

Commandant Goodell’s Kangaroo Court

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 12 May 2015 21:48:09 GMT

On Monday, the NFL announced its punishment of Tom Brady and the New England Patriots for the so-called “deflategate” scandal. The sentence was harsh. Brady received a four-game suspension, while the Patriots were docked two draft picks, including a first-rounder, and fined $1 million for allegedly tampering with footballs before this year’s AFC Championship game. One thing is clear in the aftermath of this over-the-top discipline: NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and his kangaroo court got it wrong yet again.

Let’s leave aside the scientific inconsistencies and methodological flaws that mar the official inquiry by attorney Ted Wells into the cheating allegations. Let’s ignore the fact that little was proven here, and that the Wells Report merely asserts it’s “more probable than not” that Tom Brady was “generally aware” of purported air-pressure shenanigans. Let’s forget, for the moment, a bedrock American principle: The accused is inflated until proven wilty.

In short, let’s assume Tom Brady knew that something was being done to those balls on his behalf, and that he deserved to be penalized for this transgression. Is this punishment proportionate to the crime? No, of course not. It’s absurd. Here’s why:

The NFL’s letter outlining the penalty cited “the club's prior record”—namely, the Spygate scandal—as a factor “in determining the discipline in this case.” Leaving aside the fact that Spygate was an overblown misdemeanor punished with unduly harsh measures, the important thing here is that the Patriots already did the time for that 2007 crime. If you recall, they forfeited a first-round pick in the 2008 draft and Bill Belichick was fined a league maximum $500,000. And the people blamed for that infraction—namely Belichick—are not even the same people being blamed for this one. Why are the Patriots as a franchise being repunished for a years-old mistake they previously made amends for, and for which the primary culprits were completely different than the current ones? If we’re going to start using teams’ past transgressions as a basis for levying present-day punishments, no team’s record is clean.

The letter also cites as a factor in the harsh punishment “the failure of Tom Brady to produce any electronic evidence, despite being offered extraordinary safeguards by the investigators to protect unrelated personal information.” Yikes. What kind of totalitarian inquisition was this? Brady answered the investigators’ questions in person. His reluctance to turn over emails and texts was perfectly reasonable—would you trust the NFL to safeguard your private communications with your friends, family, and superfamous, smokeshow wife? A football-related matter does not give the NFL broad license to poke around in a player’s personal files. Go get a warrant, NFL. Where are we meant to draw the line here? If the NFL had demanded to search Brady’s home, or to audit his financial holdings, would Brady have not been within his rights to refuse, according to Torquemada Goodell?

The league’s manual of operations actually suggests a penalty for ball alteration: "If any individual alters the footballs, or if a non-approved ball is used in the game, the person responsible and, if appropriate, the head coach or other club personnel will be subject to discipline, including but not limited to, a fine of $25,000." To be sure, this language makes allowance for a penalty harsher than that fine. But by specifying the $25,000 figure, the manual clearly suggests a reasonable starting point. How did we get from $25,000 to $1 million, a first- and fourth-round draft pick, and a four-game suspension? The real-world penalty is wildly out of line with the suggested censure, by orders of magnitude. Why did the NFL ignore its own (however vague) guidelines?

The Atlanta Falcons were recently punished by the NFL for pumping artificial crowd noise into their stadium to gain an edge. This petty misdemeanor seems about on par with deflating footballs: Neither was likely to make much difference to a game’s final result. (As the NFL’s letter to the Pats notes, “There seems little question that the outcome of the AFC Championship Game was not affected” by the illegal deflations. The Pats won that game 45-7.) So, what was the penalty for the Falcons? A $350,000 fine, a docked fifth-round draft pick, and a suspension for a team executive. Why were the Patriots hit with such comparative severity for a crime of similar magnitude?

What’s more, the apparently grave sin of altering a game ball has not previously drawn much attention from the NFL. In 2012, the Chargers were almost certainly applying a sticky substance to footballs, and when busted they attempted to impede the investigation. The penalty? A $20,000 fine, and none of the rigamarole the Patriots organization was forced to endure. Just this season, during a game between the Vikings and the Panthers, sideline attendants were caught on televised video holding footballs in front of a heater, which—if my newly robust understanding of the ideal gas law is correct—would have produced profound changes to the air pressure within those footballs. The NFL acknowledged it was aware of this outlawed activity. Did the league dock any draft picks or levy fines and suspensions? Nope. What changed when it was the Patriots? I’m guessing it’s that the Patriots are under far greater media scrutiny, and that the Pats are easily the most envied, and thus hated, team in the league.

I’m willing to concede that Tom Brady and a couple of shmoe ballboys might have circumvented a rule about football air pressure. But I don’t see how these penalties are just. They seem outlandishly inflated.

Hang Up and Listen: The Hours of Something Approaching Pleasure Edition

Josh Levin — Mon, 11 May 2015 20:42:03 GMT

Listen to Hang Up and Listen with Josh Levin, Mike Pesca, and Seth Stevenson by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

Subscribe in iTunes ∙ RSS feed ∙ Download ∙ Play in another tab

Become a fan of Hang Up and Listen and join the discussion of this episode on Facebook here:

In this week’s episode of Slate’s sports podcast Hang Up and Listen, Josh Levin, Mike Pesca, and Seth Stevenson talk about the Wells report on the Patriots’ underinflated balls and whether Tom Brady’s alleged ball crimes are more like a huge watermelon of a deal or a shriveled grape. They also talk about Bill Simmons’ imminent departure from ESPN, where he should land, and what it means for his website Grantland. Finally, they assess the rise of daily fantasy sports and what it could mean for the future of pro sports and of gambling.

Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned on the show:

Ted Wells’ Deflategate report.
The text exchanges between Patriots employees Jim McNally and John Jastremski.
ESPN.com’s Mike Reiss runs through various questions about the Wells report.
The website Your Team Cheats.
The New York Times’ Richard Sandomir broke the news that ESPN would not renew Bill Simmons’ contract.
Back in September, Deadspin’s Barry Petchesky reported on “How Bill Simmons Lost Bristol.”
The “conflicts with ESPN” section of Simmons’ Wikipedia page.
Slate’s Justin Peters pleads with ESPN to save Simmons’ website Grantland.
In the New Yorker, Ben McGrath writes about the rise of daily fantasy sports.
Major League Baseball has partnered with DraftKings, while the NBA has a deal with FanDuel.

Hang Up and Listen’s weekly Waggoners:

Mike’s Waggoner: Starting a movement to nickname the Mets the “Flushing Fastballs.”

Seth’s Waggoner: The Brooklyn Nets’ in-arena experience has not been up to snuff.

Josh’s Waggoner: Wrestling legend Captain Lou Albano appears on Fox’s Lie Detector in the dumbest moment in American history.

On this week’s Slate Plus bonus segment, Seth Stevenson, Josh Levin, and Mike Pesca are joined by Slate’s Will Dobson to discuss whether Paul Pierce’s bank shot was a classic sports moment. Visit slate.com/hangupplus and try it free for two weeks.

You can email us at hangup@slate.com.

YouTube Killed the Studio Audience

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 11 May 2015 01:00:01 GMT

Attending the taping of a late-night TV show is not a comfortable experience. First, you’ll stand in line on a city sidewalk for hours—chilled by wind, or baked by sun—being herded like a fatted calf to an abattoir. Upon arriving at the head of this line, you’re often tagged with a wristband and instructed to return in an hour so you can stand in a different line. When you finally enter the building, you’ll be squeezed into a musty back hallway or a barren anteroom. Here, you’ll cool your heels for a second eternity, pondering whether the free tickets these shows all hand out are somehow far too pricey.

Once you’re seated inside the studio (and warned never to look at your phone lest you be summarily ejected) you’ll often sit on your hands for another soul-sapping half-hour—watching production assistants and camera operators mill about on an otherwise empty stage. At some point, a warm-up comic will bound from the wings, accompanied by a brief fanfare of rock music.

This man will wear jeans and touch his hair a lot. He will probably tell you his Twitter handle. You’ll be so ecstatic that something—anything at all—is occurring that you’ll forgive him for being a chump. He will tell four jokes before commencing the warm-up process, which will mostly entail him commanding you to applaud for no reason, again and again, as he complains that your applause should be far more robust. You’ll then be forced to laugh aloud on cue—looking around in discomfort at the rictuses of your neighbors.

I’d been to a few of these things before. There was an early ’90s Leno taping in Los Angeles—they took audience suggestions on index cards pre-show in those days and, to my adolescent pride, Jay used a Dan Quayle joke that I’d submitted—followed by more recent visits to Fallon and Stewart. But as the final days of Letterman approached, I decided to see as many tapings as I could fit into a few weeks. I thought maybe that by observing these shows up close and in person, I might reveal the seams of their construction. What is the atmosphere like at each? Do we miss anything important when we watch at home? So I embarked on a late-night safari.

I headed to Late Night With Seth Meyers, where the guy who warmed up the crowd seemed visibly nervous, as if he would mess up the show by being lame. The five-piece band played desultory pop covers during breaks but, because regular bandleader Fred Armisen was absent, they weren’t allowed to interact conversationally with Meyers. This made them seem like a backup wedding combo that is tolerated but not beloved. Meanwhile, the most jazzed the studio audience ever got was when a young woman sitting in front of me spotted Lutz from 30 Rock in the wings. She yelped with glee, and Lutz happily gave us all a big wave.

At The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore, I was seated next to some pleasant Minnesotans who had been waiting outside for a full three hours before the show even began. For their troubles, they got a warm-up comic making some feeble jokes about getting high. Poor Wilmore is still learning the ropes, so you can hardly blame him for botching some segments. But still, the flubs meant that each segment—his monologue, his interviews, and his end-of-show wrap-up—had to be immediately repeated. “Pretend you’ve never heard the jokes before and laugh louder,” a stagehand suggested. What stands out most when you watch the show live is its lack of fluidity. It’s just waiting … re-taping … waiting again.

John Oliver didn’t so much as glance at us, after his pre-show greeting. He sat at his desk and stared straight into a camera lens while reading from a teleprompter, delivering gag after gag as I disappointedly realized that we, the sad sacks in his tiny, tiered amphitheater, were serving as nothing more than a fleshy laugh track. Oliver was squarely focused on his real audience, by which I mean the TV/internet audience out there, instead of on the weirdo shmoes who’d been ushered in to fill up the seats.

None of these shows had much in the way of set design. Just a few haphazard tchotchkes and some wall decor that doesn’t show up in the camera frame anyway. Wilmore and Oliver play in small, black boxes inside buildings on desolate Midtown side streets. Meyers at least has exposed brick walls and some Rockefeller Plaza provenance: He boasted during his pre-show chat that Studio 8-G was previously home to luminaries like Phil Donahue and Rosie O’Donnell.

All three of these dudes did these brief audience meet-and-greets before the tapings began. They stood near the first row of seats and nervously parried a smattering of inquiries, acting deeply guarded, seemingly eager to dispatch with this chore and move on to the part of the show that actually goes on the air. Oliver’s production assistants repeatedly warned us not to ask anything “personal.”

I’d begun to wonder what we were doing there. I suppose a live audience helps the host know which kinds of jokes are generally working. But is that really helpful? Did they need the ambient noise of coughing and throat-clearing to make the set feel more alive? Wouldn’t a regular old laugh track and an occasional recorded, piped-in sneezing sound do the trick just as well, or better? It was hard to see why these shows went to the trouble of dealing with seats, or tickets, or us.

And then I saw Letterman. It felt almost regal to enter the Ed Sullivan Theater beneath a lit marquee on 53^rd and Broadway instead of through some unmarked, dented metal door on an industrial block of Hell’s Kitchen. The theater for the Late Show With David Letterman seats 450 people instead of 100, and its rococo balcony offers a glorious vista over the sprawling stage where the Beatles first performed in America. Instead of bathing us in washed-out, piped-in music, or a half-hearted pop quintet, Paul Shaffer and the CBS orchestra rocked us with a wall of sound, including a horn section that blasted riffs clear to the theater rafters.

It’s no surprise, of course, that the studio audience experience is radically different at the Late Show than it is everywhere else. An upstart talk show on Comedy Central is a very different breed than a late-night legacy brand on a major network. But still, it was hard not to sit in that Late Show studio audience and feel—for the first time—indispensable. Letterman puts on a show. He presents fully-rounded entertainment, and he feeds off the energy in the room. This is a big, brassy venue with a live orchestra, instead of a cramped black-box studio with somebody’s iPod plugged into ceiling speakers. And Letterman needed us there.

Compared to broad-shouldered, commanding Letterman, Oliver and Meyers seemed like slight, mincing fellows in overtailored suits. Dave appeared to delight in chatting with the audience, basking in our attention. He asked us where we were from, and darned if he couldn’t make a connection with everyone who spoke. He asked a Southern Californian about the status of the San Onofre nuclear plant, and quizzed a Chicagoan about the then-upcoming mayoral runoff election, all the while demonstrating an electric intellect and a well-informed, wide-ranging curiosity. He handed $50 cash to a woman sporting a vintage Letterman T-shirt he hadn’t seen in a while. He won us all over. He made us all love him, even though we loved him already.

Once the show began, stagehand Biff Henderson launched into a bit—just as he’s done for the last 30-odd years—racing out the theater doors, exploding onto the proscenium in that giddy, Letterman-y manner. Biff retrieved milkshakes from a nearby fast-food restaurant. Both Dave and Paul actually sipped their milkshakes even when the cameras weren’t rolling because, apparently, they just enjoy milkshakes.

I realized with a start that I’d been watching bandleader Shaffer, drummer Anton Fig, and bassist Will Lee play in and out of commercial blocks since I was in elementary school. They were still bringing it—and still betraying an unexplainable predilection for 25-year-old Living Colour songs. Three decades of spending their weekend evenings together. I found myself wondering what on earth they’d do when it was over.

Grandiose as it sounds, watching Letterman pace the stage, charisma still radiating, I couldn’t help thinking that this guy represents the last vestiges of the monoculture. The fortress of macro-entertainment has crumbled. The new late-night shows have no prayer of reaching all of America, all at once. They can’t rely on a docile audience that will patiently sit through the second celebrity guest and into the loopy, end-of-hour conversation with Fran Lebowitz, or the time-filling, willfully bizarre skit with Chris Elliot.

You can see it in the way the other hosts plod wearily through their audience interactions, passing time until the cameras roll again: They barely knew we were there. These shows are designed to chase likes and shares, to be easily chopped up into discrete grabs for elusive virality. There’s no need to put on a really big show in a really big theater when your end goal is a 30-second clip that will play in a tiny frame on someone’s Facebook feed. The studio audience is a vestige, too. But at Letterman, at least for one more week, a live taping still feels magical.

What It’s Like to Hit a Man

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 07:07:00 GMT

I was visiting Los Angeles a while back when a friend invited me to the boxing gym he trains at. I’d never boxed before and I love to experiment with new sports. Plus, the gym, Wild Card Boxing, is semi-legendary. It’s run by superstar trainer Freddie Roach and it’s where former “Fighter of the Decade” Manny Pacquiao frequently prepares for fights. (Pacquiao’s been training there for his match this weekend against the undefeated world champ, Floyd Mayweather.) I decided it might be fun to check out the scene.

We went on a weekday afternoon, when Wild Card was sparsely populated with a few 19-year-olds hoping to become the next Pacquiao and a few 40-year-olds hoping to shed their love handles. My friend, Mike, introduced me to his trainer, who gave me a rudimentary lesson on proper stance and then had me throw some air punches. He snickered at my form in a gentle way. I observed myself in the wall-length mirror—stiff, tentative, frequently off balance—and I couldn’t help but snicker too.

I was nowhere near ready to engage in actual boxing, which was fine by me. The trainer just had me jump rope or do crunches and pushups. I donned borrowed gloves to hit the heavy bags that swung from the ceiling. It was a terrific workout, and more interesting than plodding on a treadmill. I came back several times over the next couple of weeks, whenever Mike invited me.

The day before I was to fly back to New York, Mike took our trainer aside toward the end of our session. I’d been asking Mike a lot about what it felt like to square off against a human being instead of a lumpy leather bag. Mike decided I needed a taste before I left. So he pleaded with our trainer to let us spar, just a little. The trainer was reluctant. But he agreed to let us throw a few punches—so long as everything was choreographed. We’d be going half-speed and we’d know exactly what was coming.

I slipped on puffy headgear and a pair of gloves, and stepped into the ring. I faced my friend and assumed my dopey stance. And then, at our trainer’s command, I looked Mike dead in the eye and launched my fist at his head.

There was no real contact that day. No damage. We parried each other’s telegraphed punches for a while, then touched gloves and climbed out of the ring. As Mike gave me a ride back to my flat, he asked me what I thought. I confessed that the moment when I’d thrown that first punch at him had been among the strangest, most exhilarating experiences of my life. And then I told him I was going to find a boxing gym in New York.

* * *

I’m blessed to have suffered very little violence in my life. I got into a playground scrap in fourth grade. I was mugged on Halloween by some teens from another town when I was in high school, and endured a black eye. I broke up a few drunken party fights in college, once tumbling off a porch within a scrum of flailing bodies. I also used to hang out with a person who—under the influence of various chemicals—would once in a while become unhinged and rageful, all wild eyes and threats of physical harm. I stopped hanging out with that person.

Myself, I’ve never harbored an urge to beat anybody up. In that instant before I first unleashed my fist at Mike’s face, I could sense myself struggling to punch through millennia of human social compacts, years of conditioning from my parents and teachers, and, not for nothing, the deep-seated pacifism (you might term it “wussiness”) that dwells within me.

Yet by the time my arm extended and Mike casually batted away my glove, it had already stopped seeming weird. As I was firing off my second punch, I saw how natural it felt. How genetically equipped we are to hit things. The act of throwing a punch felt not just normal but even, I realized with some disquietude, fantastic. It tingled dark, submerged tendrils curled inside my brain.

And now I’m forced to complicate my earlier claim. It’s true that—except for maybe once or twice in my life, under extreme circumstances—I’ve never wanted to hit an actual person. But at least once a week, or maybe more, I do want to hit.

When I get upset while thinking about my work, or about dating, or about that idiotic comment I made last night at a cocktail party, an impulse surfaces. It’s an impulse to slam my fist against something hard. It almost twinges my bicep, the compulsion is so strong.

I very rarely indulge it. I absolutely never do when anyone else is looking. But I can’t pretend the impulse isn’t there.

I know I’m not alone. You’ve seen it. Highway drivers smacking palms against steering wheels. Baseball pitchers punching dugout walls. Children throwing plastic toys at their mothers’ faces.

You feel it too. I’ve asked around. Every male friend I put the question to admitted that, yes, during moments of deep frustration, they want to hit things. Most, though not all, of my female friends said they’ve yearned to hit things too.

What an odd, counterproductive desire. There’s a wide disconnect between, say, the cerebral problems I face in my job and the physical solution of whacking my fist against a table. It’s no solution at all. It makes nothing better. Anyone who knows me would say I’m not an especially angry person. Yet I can’t tell you how many times—dealing with a story that isn’t coalescing, that’s bumping up against my limitations as a writer—I’ve felt an itch to chuck my laptop against the wall.

Throwing a punch at a real human being tapped into these feelings in a way I hadn’t been expecting. They’re feelings that, as Homo sapiens, we’ve got baked into our DNA. No, they aren’t a part of my surface life, or of the surface life of anyone I know. But they are there. Underneath. I wasn’t ready to stop exploring them.

* * *

Gleason’s Gym has been at the center of the New York boxing scene since 1937. Jake LaMotta, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, and dozens of other boxers have trained there over the decades. It’s been the backdrop for countless movies and television shows. Its current location, in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn, is also a short bike ride from my apartment, which sealed the deal.

I scanned the Gleason’s website to find a trainer, not quite knowing what I was looking for (except that I wasn’t ready to pay top dollar for a famous name). Something about Shawn Raysor’s ad jumped out at me. Maybe it was his amber-tinted sunglasses. Maybe it was that he listed his hourly rate as “recession workable.” Maybe it was his claim that he was “Old School & New School” and a “Trainer of lions, tigers, & bears.” I emailed him, and we arranged to meet at Gleason’s on a weekday morning.

There is no flash at Gleason’s. It’s all cement and peeling paint, and the air smells like the rancid hand sweat that oozes from the insides of boxing gloves. People wear gray sweats and stained white T-shirts. I couldn’t find Shawn, so I sat on a bench next to one of the raised boxing rings, watching the two men inside stalk each other in circles, hurling their fists and then slumping into exhausted hugs.

Shawn showed up 20 minutes late, shambling into the gym, apologetic. He was gaunt and stooped, shuffling and raspy-voiced. He immediately told me to jump rope. When he thought I’d jumped enough, he sent me into an empty ring to shadowbox, examining my form. After a while, we moved to pad work. I put on a pair of gloves, and Shawn slipped flat, padded mitts onto his hands. He held them up to show me where to punch. He led me through simple combinations—jab, jab, straight right; jab, straight right, left hook. He’d lightly smack me with a lightning-fast mitt to demonstrate when I was leaving parts of myself exposed. It was shocking the first time he did it. I jumped back and curled up, completely unaccustomed to having someone unexpectedly hit me.

When an hour was up, he sent me home—sopped in sweat, hands on hips, doubled over—and told me to come back tomorrow. So I did. A couple of days later, I came back again. I kept coming back, twice or thrice a week, for months.

Everything in boxing is three minutes on, one minute off. That’s the interval of the rounds in a bout, and that’s how you train. The electronic bell high on the wall of the gym counts out these rounds, one after another, all day long until the gym closes for the night. When the bell sounds to open each round, the gym fills with the clicking of jump ropes, the thud of gloves hitting pads, and the thappita-thappita of the little speed bags that hang like figs. When the bell sounds again, there is a minute of relative peace. And then comes the ding that launches us back into three minutes of fury.

It’s all supremely humbling, at the start. Things you might think are easy are anything but. Have you tried to jump rope for three minutes straight? You figure it can’t be difficult—little girls on sidewalks do it. And then 45 seconds in, you’re panting and your legs are tangled in the rope and your heart is like a drumroll.

Or try holding your fists up next to your cheeks for three minutes, without a break, like you’d do in a fight. Go ahead, try it at your desk. Maybe grab a stapler in each hand to simulate the weight of boxing gloves. Don’t dare let those hands drop before the round is over—that’s how you get clocked across the jaw. Every time your elbows sag, hear Shawn’s voice in your ear: “Hands down, man down.”

At first, I’d get comically tired after a few rounds of activity. Slowly, though, I became fitter. And then fitter. The workouts were more intense than anything I’d ever done for a team sport. They needed to be. You don’t want to get punched in the stomach if you don’t have abs like a flagstone patio. You can’t fight back if you’re breathing too hard to throw a punch.

Not that I was fighting anybody yet. I wasn’t permitted to spar. Shawn said I wasn’t ready. “We’re doing LSD, baby,” he said with a smile. “Long. Slow. Drive.” (Much of Shawn’s instruction came couched in similes involving either drug use or sex. For instance, he showed me how to properly hit the speed bag by miming a hand job. “Like when a chick is jerking you off, Seth.”)

The more time I spent training, the more I longed to face off against another fighter. It was like practicing tennis drills for six months straight without ever playing a set. I ached, to a degree that made me uncomfortable, to learn what it’s like to solidly connect with someone else’s cheekbone. I hankered—and this seemed far more perverse, but I could not deny it—to feel what it was like to absorb a hellacious punch to the gut.

At some point I saw a notice advertising a fantasy boxing camp run by Gleason’s. It was a four-day weekend in the Catskills, held at a resort hotel. There’d be lots of current and former pro boxers on hand to train me. There’d be lots of sparring with fellow amateurs. On the final night, according to the brochure, they’d match me up against another camper for a three-round bout—complete with an announcer, a referee, and a trainer in my corner.

I signed up. It was a month away, but already I had butterflies. When I told Shawn my plan, and asked him to help me prepare, he seemed to think the whole thing was silly. But he went with it. “We’ll get you ready, baby,” he said. “You gonna whup somebody’s ass, Seth.”

He started pushing me harder to build my cardio. He began to smack me more fiercely during our pad work when I left my chin out, getting me used to being hit with force. A few days before the camp began, not wanting me to get up there without having popped my cherry, Shawn at last agreed to let me climb into the ring against a few of his other clients. My first opponent would be a smiley, slender, South Asian yuppie named Vik.

The instant the bell rang to start our round, I waded directly into a flurry of Vik’s punches. I had zero plan and instantly forgot everything Shawn had taught me. My headgear got knocked sideways across my face, so I couldn’t see. Still I kept trudging into Vik’s onslaught. I was nothing but chaos and adrenaline. I was nearly hyperventilating. Shawn eventually yelled at me to fall back and take a timeout.

Vik was in awe at my blend of intrepidness and incompetence. “For a rookie, he can take a punch,” he marveled to Shawn, as I wheezed and coughed and straightened my headgear with my gloved paws.

I sparred a few more rounds that night with some of the other dudes, all relatively athletic and all with more experience than me. I settled in a little, and even landed a few solid hits. But each exchange of punches remained a blur. And I came out on the wrong end of almost all of them. On the subway home, I discovered that the side of my abdomen was throbbing with pain, like I’d been stabbed. It was a spot where I’d taken a hard hook to the body. It stung way worse than I’d thought it would. My feelings about the fantasy camp began to drift from excitement into apprehension.

* * *

“I don’t just want to hit them. I want it to hurt,” said Heather Hardy, a pint-size pro boxer, instructing us in the nuanced art of doling out damage on the first day of camp. “I want them to be scared of my hands,” she said. As a group of us stood in a circle on an empty indoor tennis court, she used me as a dummy, demonstrating how she might punch my flank—not a wild lash but rather a targeted strike up under my ribs so as to inflict maximum organ discomfort.

The pros and ex-pros at the camp showed a level of innate athleticism that instantly distinguished them from regular campers. Hardy could flit around like an electron—there was zero chance you’d lay a glove on her. Juan Laporte, a former world featherweight champ, was built like a cinder block but moved like an octopus. Even Iran Barkley, a middleweight and light-heavyweight world champ in his prime but now hulking and potbellied, still floated around the camp with the smooth grace of a placid whale.

We campers were less silky in our movements, but made up for this with flaily enthusiasm. We came from all sorts of backgrounds. Evan, by far the most talented and experienced among us (he’d been sparring every week for a long time, and was confident in the ring), was a 34-year-old music video director from New York with tattoos on his arms and neck. Jeanine, in her 50s, was an attorney from St. Louis who did amateur matches on weekends. Al had been on a path to become a pro boxer until he quit the sport at age 26 and went into the lingerie business to earn more money. At 66, he made a comeback, doing local amateur fights. At one point he got his occipital bone broken by a 21-year-old. “He swung at me after the bell,” said Al at dinner in the hotel one evening, still looking raw about it. “Al’s style is that he would come right at you like a freight train,” said his wife, looking at her husband the way a teenage girl looks at the varsity quarterback. “The kid was scared of him.” Now in his late 70s, Al still comes to the camp but mostly referees.

Boxing is not about self-defense. (If that’s what you need, you’re better off with krav maga, the brutal Israeli combat technique that’s the choice of security professionals everywhere.) There is, to be sure, a balletic elegance to boxing, and a strategic complexity that rewards the perceptive fighter. But you can also find these elements in sports that don’t involve beating the shit out of another person. What draws the recreational boxer to the ring, and to this camp? Why would these folks wish to spend a long weekend, and a couple of thousand bucks, learning how to better bludgeon human skulls?

Al told me that as he entered his 60s, “I felt like I had something to prove to myself,” and so he got back into fighting. More than one of the male campers mentioned that he’d been bullied as a kid, and ever since had been obsessed with the idea of feeling tough and invincible. Dave, a sales guy in his late 30s, said it was about “getting stuff out”—after punching a heavy bag for an hour at the gym, he was much more relaxed, at least for a little while. When I asked Jeanine the lawyer, she seemed to be most enthused about how strong the training made her body. But she did brag about how thrilling it was to be in the ring facing off against other women.

The camper I grew closest to, over meals and between training sessions, was a 65-year-old, white-haired, Upper West Side clinical psychologist named Scott. He and I were fast friends. We both enjoyed talking about the more atavistic, emotional nuances of the sport. Scott told me he does “rage work” with his psychotherapy patients sometimes, letting them physically express their anger by, say, hitting a pillow.

In time, Scott disclosed to me that he’d been violently abused in his youth. He still had “body memories” from his early childhood—they were all deep dread. He’d come to the camp for the first time last year. When he got into the ring for his assigned fight, it brought up all sorts of unresolved turmoil. “The depth of the terror and the way it took over my body startled me,” he told me. But he came back this year to do it again.

* * *

On day two, the instructors decided to throw me into the ring for a round to get a sense of my ability level, and to start figuring out who they might match me up against for our marquee fight the following night. “Are you ready for this?” asked Terry Southerland, the former pro who would be in my corner for my match.

I peered into the ring that had been set up at one end of the tennis courts. My opponent for this diagnostic sparring session would be Sonya Lamonakis. She is currently the women’s world heavyweight champion of the International Boxing Organization. She is 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighs 215 pounds. She’s built like a tank. A very ornery tank. I was most definitely not ready.

“We’re just playing around, we’re not gonna kill each other,” said Sonya as we touched gloves. She must have noticed the abject terror in my eyes. The bell rang, and I tried to remember everything I’d learned—the combinations, the techniques. Sonya let me throw punches at her for a while. It took me about 10 tries to land a glancing blow. “Good job,” she said. Then she fought back.

Have you ever been whapped really hard in the head with a thickly stuffed pillow? Imagine that times 30. That’s what it feels like when a 215-pound world champ punches you in the temple while you’re wearing protective headgear. I really did see the proverbial flashbulbs. I tried to parry her next punch, but I was already too dazed by the first to accomplish anything. And her hands were so fucking fast. I couldn’t tell where they were coming from. She kept hitting me. The ring felt tiny. I wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go, and besides, I didn’t want to look like a coward. Fear built and swelled inside me. I didn’t have much experience with feeling physically threatened by another person, and the rush of chemicals and emotional reflexes was overwhelming. I prayed for the bell to ring.

Back in my room after, showering off and getting ready for dinner, I felt spacey and sluggish. I’d developed an atomic headache. My ribs ached. I kind of wanted to get in my rental car and drive home right that second. Skip the rest of the weekend. Never set foot in a boxing ring again.

The next morning at breakfast, when my eyes happened to meet Sonya’s in the buffet line, I felt a zap of vestigial fear in my body. It was absurd to react to her this way. All the pro boxers I met at the camp were warm and kind. And in “real life,” Sonya is very nice, as I learned over later conversations with her. She’s a public school teacher in the Bronx (thus her boxing nickname: “The Scholar”), and I was utterly safe eating eggs and toast in her vicinity. But physical violence will do that. Sonya’s fists had made me timid on a primal level.

* * *

That morning, after breakfast, we got our fight assignments. Campers like Evan, with years of training behind them, would get to fight a retired pro in true fantasy camp style. Campers like me, who’d been boxing for less than a year, got matched against other campers. I looked at the schedule sheet taped to the wall and had mixed feelings when I saw that the evening matches would pit me against Scott, my closest camp friend.

Part of me was disappointed not to be fighting a person much scarier and stronger than I was. That would have allowed me to reassure myself I’d overcome any lingering cowardice from yesterday. And it would make for a more glorious capstone to the quest I’d been on ever since I threw that first punch back in Los Angeles.

But my headache from yesterday was still throbbing. A big part of me exhaled at the thought of fighting Scott instead of a more intimidating foe. Just as Sonya’d had 40 pounds on me, I had 40 pounds on Scott. I was 25 years younger, too. I respected Scott’s boxing skills, but the sheer physical gulf between us made me much less worried that he could really hurt me. I still felt nerves, but I didn’t feel dread.

As for Scott, the whole lead-up to our match, he said later, was a miasma of anxiety. “Having done it last year gave me no insulation this year,” he told me. “If anything, the fear expanded and filled me the entire day.”

The judge and announcer for our fight night was an actual World Boxing Council official named Chuck Williams. Chuck is in his 80s. He’d at one point told me a story about how, when he was in his 70s, he’d helped a flight attendant by punching out an unruly fellow passenger on an airplane. Chuck was big on the gut-check aspects of the sport. “Anyone can get in the ring the first time, when you don't know what to expect,” he said to me at lunch that afternoon, before my match. ‘But anyone who gets in the ring a second time doesn't ever have to doubt their fortitude again.”

I tried to watch the early fights on the card, but I was too jittery to pay attention. One of the teenagers that had been there throughout the weekend (Gleason’s runs a program for disadvantaged children called Give a Kid a Dream, and buses a flock of kids up to the camp each year as a special treat) saw me standing alone, nervously putting on my wraps, and he offered to help. Wraps are the gauzy ribbons that you loop around your hands to protect them beneath your gloves. Kevin threaded the rough-woven fabric across my palms and over my knuckles, down into the webbing between my fingers and around my thumbs at their roots. I tried to breathe deeply and release the tension gathering in my shoulders.

And then it was fight time. Terry, my corner man, helped me step into my padded abdominal protector while he pulled my headgear down around my ears. I chomped on my mouth guard and ducked between the ropes into the ring. “Jab and move,” Terry said, miming some little combos. “You got this.”

At the bell, Scott and I strode to the middle of the ring and circled each other. We threw halfhearted jabs. We were tentative. To be honest, I think there was some profound emotional shit going on at the beginning of the fight. Scott was battling ghosts from his childhood. I had leftover demons from the whupping Sonya’d administered. There was also the unfortunate coincidence that Scott is an older, white-haired psychologist and that my father is an older, white-haired psychologist. (The Freudian complexities at play here are not something I wish to fully interrogate right now.)

I landed a few combinations toward the end of the round, and my movement loosened up. I went back to my corner at the bell, and Terry squirted water into my mouth from a bottle. “Keep doing what you’re doing.” he said. “You’re all over him.”

In the second round, I fought a little harder. I didn’t want to punch Scott full strength, given our size disparity, but I started to throw my flurries a little quicker. I connected with a bit more authority.

Then came a moment when Scott was shuffling away from me and he opened himself up, flatfooted, so that he faced me dead-on. At that same moment, I threw a straight right that hit Scott’s headgear squarely at his forehead. He tumbled backward onto the mat.

I could not believe I’d just knocked down a 65-year-old man. I rushed over to see if Scott was OK, holding my hands up in aghast apology. But with my gloves still on, I realized it looked like I was raising my fists to menace Scott as I stood over his crumpled body. Referee Al stepped in and pushed me toward my corner. “Nice!” said Terry. “You’re looking like a champ out there!”

Scott was fine. He’d been knocked off balance, not knocked silly. Still, I pulled my punches in the last round. I used proper technique, and I looked for openings, but I tapped Scott instead of hitting him. Any fear or panic present earlier in the weekend had ebbed away. It was replaced by a rising tide of guilt.

* * *

The next morning at our final breakfast before heading home, Heather Hardy complimented me on my performance. “You looked pretty good out there,” she said, and there was general assent from other people at the table.

“I don’t feel great about it,” I said, looking around to make sure Scott wasn’t near enough to hear me.

“Why? Because he’s older than you?” asked Terry. “He got in the ring. He was throwing punches at you. He knew the deal. If you want, I’ll find you a 65-year-old man who can beat your ass. There’s plenty of ’em.”

Scott bore no ill will toward me. We had a nice talk before we parted ways, and we exchanged contact info. He said he planned to come back to the camp again next year. It was an ongoing journey for him.

Not for me. I was done.

A few days after I got home, Shawn texted me to ask how it went and to see if I wanted to schedule another training session. I told him I needed to take a break for a while. I said I’d get in touch with him in a couple of months.

By the time I did, Shawn had died. He’d had brain tumors, it turned out, and his health fell apart quickly. I didn’t know he’d passed until I saw it on Facebook through one of his other clients whom I’d trained with a few times. I wished I’d been able to see Shawn once more. I’d have liked to buy him a drink so I could thank him. He’d prepared me to fight as well as anybody could have. If he’d asked me why I wanted to stop boxing, here’s what I would have told him:

I loved the choreography of the movement and the flow of combinations. I loved how strong and fit I’d become—at 40, amazingly, I was in the best condition of my life. I loved the camaraderie after a sparring session or a fight, when you’re all jazzed on adrenaline and eager to dissect every punch and counterpunch.

I don’t, however, want to get hit in the head, which I worry will deaden my brain. I don’t want to get hit in my gut, which aches for days. More than these: I don’t want to feel fear. I don’t want to impose fear on others.

That urge to violence I feel when I’m frustrated, that twinge in my bicep, that abstract desire to hit: It hasn’t left me. If anything, I now picture hitting things with better form. With more specificity to my technique. My savage urges have taken on martial discipline, but are as emotionally incoherent as ever. I asked a psychologist my dad put me in touch with—a guy named Brad Bushman who studies this stuff—whether boxing was a good way to help vent these feelings or whether it simply gives them more tangible expression. “Boxing to reduce anger is like using gasoline to put out a fire,” he wrote me in an email. “It just feeds the flame.”

I still do the workouts Shawn taught me. I still shadowbox to stay fit and limber. I will be watching the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight with elevated interest—observing the rounds unfold with more insight and empathy than I would have before I’d tried boxing for myself.

But I doubt I’ll ever throw another punch at a person. Not if I can help it. I don’t have anything to prove.

Better Tread Than Dead

Alison Griswold — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 16:21:49 GMT

Sitting down at work is out because, as we are often told these days, sitting is the new smoking. Now everyone stands at her desk. Or, better yet, pedals, or even wobbles. Office-design firms, spotting a profitable opportunity, have developed all sorts of new ways to work, if not smarter, at least fitter. We at Slate are eager to help combat the sad, daily decay of white-collar America’s health, and so we decided to experiment with one of these newfangled contraptions. Here, writers Alison Griswold and Seth Stevenson discuss what happened when Slate installed a treadmill desk in its New York bureau.

Seth Stevenson: Ali, it has now been a few weeks since we put a LifeSpan treadmill desk in the Slate office—sort of like a science experiment, with our colleagues as the guinea pigs. For readers who aren’t aware, a treadmill desk is exactly what it sounds like: a standing desk, but instead of just standing you’re strolling on a treadmill. You can raise or lower the desk part to different heights. The LifeSpan brochure promises that treading while working can “improve mental clarity, increase creativity, enhance productivity, and bolster the bottom line.”

What do you think? Fair claims?

Alison Griswold: Hey, Seth. Mental clarity, that’s a big marketing claim! But I’ll definitely vouch for the treadmill desk in terms of increasing productivity. Treading is particularly great for combating the dreaded midafternoon lull. It’s significantly harder, if not quite impossible, to doze off while walking on a treadmill than while sitting at your desk.

Stevenson: It’s true, it would take pretty serious napping skills to sleep while treading. And unlike on those days when I slump in a desk chair for nine hours straight, taking breaks to tread seems to prevent the pooling of blood in my feet and the ache-y compression of my spine. Sitting KILLS, Ali!

Griswold: That’s what they keep telling us these days. Though if, as the logic goes, regular exercise doesn’t undo the cumulative harm of sitting, I’m not entirely sure how an hour or so of treading does either.

Stevenson: One article in Nature states, “Active workstations (that is, treadmill desks and pedal desks) in particular represent a potential strategy for mitigating the diminished EE (energy expenditure) inherent to contemporary office-based workplaces, but only if they are scalable.”

I’m not at all sure what most of that means, but it sounds vaguely positive. And generally, people around Slate have been huge fans of treading.

Griswold: I mean, the treadmill might be the most exciting addition to the office since the Solowheel, and much less dangerous. Slatesters have definitely been pro-treading, with a lot of interest coming from women. Any theories on why?

Stevenson: I’m reluctant to make gender-based generalizations, especially in print. But I would say that the women around the Slate office seem, on balance, a little more prone to eating healthy things at lunch. And thus, by extrapolation, perhaps they are more eager to try out a putatively healthier way of working? That’s just a guess. And lest we misinform, I hasten to add that Slate dudes have been using the desk, as well. (I just used it today!)

Griswold: I’m also reluctant to make gender-based generalizations. But I’ve been keeping a log of who signs up, and easily 90 percent of the slots are taken by Sladies in any given week.

Stevenson: What’s your theory?

Griswold: Perhaps Slate women are more health conscious, or maybe we’re just more adventurous!

Stevenson: When we first started looking into the idea of a treadmill desk, I’d thought it would be a desk for one person who would tread on it every day for eight hours a day. But once we realized it was best as a shared amenity for the office, with people from various departments and rungs on the office ladder hopping on for an hour each, maybe a few days a week, I think we collectively decided it was a real benefit to Slate’s workforce.

Griswold: For sure. It’s funny because my understanding is that the various companies who make treadmill desks tend to market them for individual office use. Peter Schenk, president of LifeSpan, says they aim to sell treadmill desks to “companies and individuals in every industry” and to “make them affordable for everyone, with a baseline model costing just $1,300.” Here I have to disagree a bit, because $1,300 per desk doesn’t strike me as cheap, and the model we borrowed actually retails for $1,999. Treadmill desks are also cumbersome. You’d also need a huge office space to fit enough units for each or even most employees to have one. So really, I’d say the treadmill desk doesn’t make much sense for individual use.

As a shared resource, though, it’s great. You can easily cycle half a dozen people through the same treadmill desk on a single day. And it seems like that’s what most people want. They’d much rather be able to tread for an hour or so a few times a week than be expected to use it for multiple hours every day.

Stevenson: We put the desk in our office kitchen, out of sight of the main office area. Would you have felt more self-conscious about treading if you were in plain view of everyone working at their desks?

Griswold: Maybe a bit. I kind of liked having it in the kitchen. It really felt like a break from work, even though you were still working, plus it was close to the water fountain. But it wasn’t like people didn’t see you there—I think more people talked to me while I was on the treadmill in the kitchen than when I’m sitting right next to them in the office.

The treadmill is social! Maybe that’s where we should stick new Slate employees so they get to know people.

Stevenson: It’s true. People would go into the kitchen for coffee or to, like, toast a bagel, and they’d stop to chat as we treaded. Which was a pleasing development. One of our colleagues suggested that all cocktail parties should be conducted while on treadmills. It gives you something to do during awkward conversational pauses, and you feel less bound to make eye contact.

Griswold: Not just a colleague—our editor, Julia! Let’s just quote her directly: “All cocktail parties should be on the treadmill. Makes you feel less restless standing still holding a cup.”

Stevenson: Speaking of restless, at what speed did you tread at?

Griswold: At first I was doing the treadmill in two-hour shifts at a speed of 2.0, or 2 miles per hour. But frankly, I thought that was kind of slow. I run a lot, and walking a 30-minute mile just didn’t cut it. It was like being stuck on that narrow Christopher Street sidewalk in the West Village behind a frustratingly slow walker.

Stevenson: My understanding is that the desk was sent to us with a max speed of 2 mph, but this did not satisfy Ali “Speed-Treader” Griswold, and so you took matters into your own hands ...

Griswold: I prefer “treadmill tsar.”

Stevenson: Elaborate, Treadmill Tsar.

Griswold: Well, we had a somewhat extensive back and forth with the press person who was helping us out with this whole thing, but as you’ll recall on this particular point he wasn’t exactly helpful.

Stevenson: He thought that treading faster than 2 mph was a safety concern?

Griswold: He was worried we would film ourselves going “comically fast, for entertainment’s sake.” Treadmill desks, he said, are “walking machines, and if the user can’t type accurately, breaks a sweat, or sounds out of breath, they’re misusing the product.”

Anyway, I argued that for me, going faster would be part of using the product correctly, and that presumably it was in LifeSpan’s interest to help users do that. He wasn’t persuaded, though. So I called up another person at LifeSpan, who very kindly walked me through the process for overriding the 2 mph speed limit. And now it goes up to 4 mph!

Stevenson: Could you actually tread and work at 4 mph? That seems brisk!

Griswold: You can but I wouldn’t recommend it. Four miles per hour is, like, awkwardly between jogging and walking. It’s kind of the worst. But I was a big fan of something like 2.5 or 2.6.

Stevenson: A lot of Slatesters seemed to tread at around 2 mph. Though an advertising operations manager in our office said she varied speed—2 mph for responding to emails, 1.7 when she was using a touchy interface on her computer that required her hands to be steady. For me, anything above 1.2 mph seemed crazy. First of all, I don’t want pit stains at work. You people must be in terrific shape to do an hour in a heated office climate without so much as breaking a sheen. But secondly, it’s just too jouncy. I couldn’t think, let alone type, when I was walking any faster than a slow amble.

Griswold: Hm. I like walking faster because it’s more robotic, and I think the best treading takes the minimal amount of mental effort. But the “sheen” was definitely a factor for a lot of people, and why many steered clear of mornings—they didn’t want to be sweaty and be stuck with it for the rest of the day. I’ll admit though that the one time I was really trying to file on a tight deadline I dropped down to 2.0. Which reminds me, what kind of work did you do on the treadmill desk?

Stevenson: I loved answering emails on it, or reading things on my computer (or, gasp, reading things that I’d printed out). I did my expenses at 1.2 mph and that seemed like a perfect scenario—distracting myself from mindless drudgery while getting some light exercise, to boot. I didn’t attempt to write a story while treading, though. I need pretty deep concentration to write, and even the slowest of treads would jar me out of the mental zone just far enough that I think writing would be tough. Most of the feedback we got suggested that other people felt similarly: Treading is ideal for when you’re cranking out emails or clicking around the Web.

Griswold: Ugh, I need to do my expenses. Maybe I should hop on after we finish this conversation. But actually, I was able to write on it. One day I was treading when Venmo pinged me about a security enhancement they’d made in response to an article I wrote. So I blogged that while treading. It might have been my finest journalistic moment to date.

Stevenson: That’s what makes you Tread Tsar. Another practical question: How high did you like to set the desk? It’s adjustable at the press of a button, and I found people’s preferences varied. Some liked it down low enough that they could type on their laptops with their arms hanging. I liked it up high, so the screen was at my standing eye level. (I’ve never understood posture or ergonomics so probably no one should listen to me.) How about you?

Griswold: I honestly don’t remember where I settled. I remember not being sure what the optimal height/angle was for the desk. But a couple people in the office said they actually thought treading improved their posture! So that’s cool.

Stevenson: Pretty much any standing posture is better than any seated posture, right? Unless you’re me. Which brings me to the padded wrist-rest thing. I loved it but for the wrong reasons. Basically, I settled into a slightly bizarre preferred treading mode: I slowed the machine way down to like 0.5 mph, so I was just putting one foot in front of the other, more trudging than treading. Then I hunched over and put my elbows on the wrist rest. The effect was kind of like I was using a walker. I’m a weirdo and, not coincidentally, my back always hurts. But I found this position and speed very meditative. Like I was walking across a swimming pool with a kickboard under my arms. And I got a lot of reading done like this.

Griswold: It’s not just you. That seems to be a preferred posture (slouch?) for many treadmill desk users. Though those are also the people I do fear may actually nod off and glide right off the back. Guessing none of that falls under “recommended use,” but whatever works, right?

Stevenson: I’ve seen people treading in winter boots, in business shoes, and in Chucks, in jeans and in dresses. Did you put on different attire on days you knew you would be treading? Do you think this would be an important consideration for offices with less, ahem, casual dress policies than Slate maintains?

Griswold: I brought sneakers one day early on, but then decided it was a hassle and stuck with treading in my normal attire. Jeans, dresses, boots, flannel, etc. A couple people advised treading in layers so you could strip down if it got hot. But yeah, I think it’s safe to say that Slate’s version of “business casual” is much more conducive to treading than other interpretations.

Stevenson: Overall, I think we agree that the desk has been a surprisingly delightful edition to our office environment. In the LifeSpan brochure, there are these dystopian photos of empty offices filled with treadmill desks, and I’d envisioned hordes of workers treading their lives away in a Black Mirror-esque tableau.

But having one desk, separating it from the main office floor, and letting people use it as much or as little as they wish, seems to work quite well for Slate.

Griswold: Absolutely. I’ll take shared treading any day over that communal gerbil-wheel office.

Stevenson: OK, Ali, my mental clarity is flagging—need to hop back on the desk right now. Feel free to stop by and say hi. I’ll be the guy with the 2 mph glow.

A Smorgasbord of Excuses

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 00:05:31 GMT

BOSTON—On Monday, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense team launched the case for not killing their client. How will they convince jurors to spare the defendant? With simultaneous appeals to their capacities for mercy and for vengeance, it appears.

Defense attorney David Bruck’s opening statements promised evidence along these vectors:

We’ll hear from a scientist who studies how teens’ brains mature. He’ll speak to whether Tsarnaev’s youthful gray matter was a factor in his poor decision-making.

We’ll learn about Tsarnaev’s relationship with his older brother, Tamerlan, whom the defense will portray as a domineering zealot and the bombing mastermind.

We’ll get some Tsarnaev family history, with a look at the unique psychology of his immigrant parents.

We’ll even take a detour into the history of the Northern Caucasus region, with a professorial lecture about “who the Chechnyan people are.”

It’s a broad canvas. I’m not sure any one of these tacks, on its own, can sway a jury (if that jury is otherwise predisposed to ending Tsarnaev’s life). And Bruck had to walk a very fine line. Essentially, he conceded that there could be no excuse for Tsarnaev’s crime—right before he offered up this smorgasbord of excuses.

Monday’s witnesses all talked not about the younger Tsarnaev, but about Tamerlan. The goal was to illustrate how radical Tamerlan had grown by the time of the bombing in 2013. To this end, we heard from the imam at a Boston mosque whose sermons Tamerlan twice interrupted, shouting in objection when the imam counseled his flock to blend into the social fabric of America. We also heard from workers at a Middle Eastern food store in Cambridge, where Tamerlan once complained when he saw halal turkeys on sale for Thanksgiving-observing Muslims. Tamerlan was no fan of assimilation, it seems.

After a trial full of talk about radicalization and jihad, it was refreshing to see some moderate Muslims come before the court Monday. That imam Tamerlan argued with had previously worked as a program manager at Microsoft before becoming involved with various nonprofit Islamic organizations in Boston. He focused his lectures on ways to integrate Muslims into American life and help them “participate in the prosperity of the whole society.” Those food store workers who took the stand were nice, normal guys who had no time for Tamerlan’s extremist rants.

But with regard to the matter at hand—whether to execute Tsarnaev—Monday’s testimony was surprisingly thin gruel. The prosecution pounced on it. Said a prosecutor during the cross-examination of one of the food store workers: “So all you can tell us is that one day in 2012, Tamerlan came in and said you shouldn’t sell turkeys?” The man acknowledged as much. The prosecutor declared that he had no more questions, and he did it with mild disgust.

Later, the defense put on a music teacher from the Cambridge public high school that Tamerlan and Tsarnaev attended. The teacher talked about the day in 2004 when he broke the news that Tamerlan wasn’t good enough at piano to play in the school’s spring concert. The teacher didn’t feel physically threatened, exactly, but he assured us he could sense that Tamerlan was very bummed. Again, the cross was brutal: “We’re talking about a class that Tamerlan took in 2004?” asked prosecutor Nadine Pellegrini. “So that was nine years before the bombing?” The teacher agreed. “And he wanted to be in jazz ensemble, but he couldn’t really play the piano well?” The teacher assented to this, as well. End of cross. I had to wonder why the defense had bothered to call the poor guy to the stand. Is this truly the best they can do?

One of the more interesting figures in this case (a person who’s barely been mentioned until now) is Tamerlan’s wife, Katherine—a suburban girl from Rhode Island who met Tamerlan in a Boston club, then converted to Islam and began to wear the hijab after Tamerlan impregnated her. Monday, we heard from Katherine’s mother and from her best high school friend. They testified that Katherine became increasingly obsessed with Islam as she spent more time with Tamerlan. We also saw text messages between Katherine and the best friend from the day of the bombing. In a curious exchange, Katherine reacts to the news with a bit of moral equivalence: “A lot more people are killed every day in Syria and other places,” she texted her friend. “Innocent people.” Whether Katherine had prior knowledge about the bombing has not been addressed in the case, and is one of the great untold tales of this whole proceeding.

The fact remains that none of Monday’s testimony, taken on its own, explains what could compel Tsarnaev to set a bomb on the ground four feet behind a row of children. But the defense hopes that the more they round out a portrait of this man as a human being—with stories about his brother and his sister-in-law—the harder it will be for the jury to kill him. A story in the Boston Globe Monday noted that the prosecutors always refer to “the defendant,” while the defense attorneys always refer to “Dzhokhar.” It’s an effort to remind jurors that he is a person, not merely the enactor of these crimes.

Defense attorney Bruck actually used the word “context” in his opening statement. He employed the now-infamous photo of Tsaranaev flipping the bird as his example. Taken as a still image, it conveys defiance and lack of remorse. But when you learn that Tsarnaev had “just been unchained after who knows how many hours,” and that his “facial expression looks like a sneer until you know he’d been shot in the face” and was still debilitated, argued Bruck, the “shocking gesture wasn’t quite as advertised.”

I’m not sure that all the context in the world can prevent this jury from seeking vengeance. Neither is Bruck—which presumably is why he threw out one more reason not to kill Tsarnaev. During his opening statement, Bruck displayed a recent New York Times aerial photo of the Colorado federal supermax prison where Tsarnaev will spend his entire life if he’s not executed. Bruck noted that prisoners see only a patch of sky and nothing else. There are no media interviews and no autobiographies permitted. Tsarnaev would face “a lifetime of thinking about what he did.” In choosing between death and life in prison without possibility of release, Bruck drew the distinction as such: “One punishment is over quickly, although after more media attention and fame and notoriety. The other punishment is over decades while he is locked away and forgotten.”

It’s such a delicate dance for the defense. Find it in your hearts, they ask the jury, to view this person as a human being. Then find it in your wills to decide that the most brutal punishment is to banish him to a hellhole that will utterly strip him of his humanity.

More Like Crappyish

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 21:33:16 GMT

Shalom Auslander, creator of the new Showtime series Happyish, is a gloomy, guilt-ridden, miserable man. Professionally. That’s his schtick. Raised an Orthodox Jew, the fortysomething Auslander now makes his living peddling angsty personal essays about his tortured relationship to pornography, or to defecation, or to humanity in general. He’s declared, “I hate mankind.” He’s called life a “festering pile of maggot-ridden shit.”

Misery loves company, they say, and perhaps that’s what Showtime’s banking on here. Maybe millions of depressives will tune in to commiserate with Thom Payne (get it? pain!), the dour protagonist Auslander has conjured for his show and, it seems clear, has modeled on himself. Based on what I’ve seen from the Happyish pilot, I won’t be among the millions.

Which is a shame. I harbor high hopes for all Steve Coogan vehicles. I’ve been a Cooganhead since the Alan Partridge days, up through 24-Hour Party People and, more recently, The Trip and its sequel. Coogan is masterful at portraying characters who conceal a stubborn core of decency beneath a layer of oily, amoral smarm.

As such, Coogan is perfectly suited to play someone like Thom Payne—an advertising executive who despises his industry and himself. The show opens as Payne is mourning the arrival of his 44th birthday and, with it, a suite of middle-age health concerns and a terror of being left behind at work. His ad firm has recently been annexed by a pair of young whippersnappers with lots of new ideas. “I expect to be replaced by a fucking app,” his boss frets.*

Our modern moment is ripe for meditations on contentment and how best to find it. Just this week, a book review in Quartz assessed “the happiness industry,” arguing that when it comes to seeking bliss, we’re doing it wrong. But the exploration of happiness in Happyish is, unhappily, much too glib.

Thom Payne is not unhappy in an interesting way. He’s a garden variety misanthrope, deeply unsatisfied despite his lucrative job, his loving wife, and his healthy son. He nurses many trivial, trite resentments. He rails against the creep of social media and corporate brands into everyday life. He calls people he doesn’t like “Satan,” and his metaphor for enduring workplace indignities is that he’s “got to suck some cock.” In short: He’s the guy at a party you smile wanly at and then quickly flee from. (I hear you saying, “This sounds like Larry David! I love Larry David!” He’s not Larry David.)

We’re meant to marvel at the show’s highbrow references to luminaries like Samuel Beckett and Albert Camus. But there’s no actual grappling with the ideas of these authors—just some cherry-picked quotes to lend the show a gloss of smartitude. This is refrigerator magnet philosophy.

Happyish seems at pains to distinguish itself from Mad Men, another show that dramatizes anhedonia in the world of marketing. “Fuck Mad Men,” says Payne in a meta-moment during one of his many overwritten voiceover monologues. Oh, please. Happyish has none of the careful ambience or thematic complexity of Mad Men. Instead, it leans on tired jokes about vaginal rejuvenation and Viagra. It’s more akin to a show like Californication—another Showtime series that papered empty pretention over crass sex humor and called it a day.

Happyish was originally meant to star Philip Seymour Hoffman. He filmed a pilot before he died. It’s not possible to watch the show starring Coogan without wondering how it might have been different starring Hoffman. Perhaps the soulful gravitas that Hoffman always managed to bring to his schlubbier roles might have played better than the manic sputtering of Coogan. But I doubt it. The cast is not the problem with this show. Talented actors like Coogan, Kathryn Hahn, Bradley Whitford, and Ellen Barkin are all quite capable of bringing zingy dialogue and nuanced characters to life, when provided with such. Here, they’re provided material that’s neither very good nor very bad. It’s just kind of … crappyish.

If you’re looking for art about midlife angst and the search for meaning in a fast-paced, superficial world, may I instead recommend Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young? Or, even better, Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero. Misery loves company, but it also loves a light at the end of the tunnel.

*Correction, April 24, 2015: This article originally misattributed the quote, “I expect to be replaced by a fucking app,” to Thom Payne. It is actually spoken by Jonathan Cooke. (Return.)

No Sweat

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 07:15:00 GMT

For many years, whenever I saw a fully grown adult zinging around a city on one of those stand-up scooters, I’d feel a twinge of contempt. Scooters have always, to me, seemed childish. The purview of 6-year-old kids wearing purple safety helmets. Or perhaps of techie dweebs who kick-glide down the corridors of Silicon Valley corporate campuses—but I confess I tend to imagine those folks possessing the emotional maturity of 6-year-old kids.

What makes a grown-up choose to ride a nonstandard personal conveyance? This embrace of the childlike has always seemed to me less about function and more about projecting an air of “zaniness.” (Or of defiant self-conception: “I’m a unicycle guy! Deal with it!”) The average person thinks to herself: Couldn’t that fellow on the scooter just ride a regular bike? Couldn’t that woman on the Segway just, like, walk? Couldn’t that dude on the unicycle take a look in the mirror and ponder the life choices that led to him riding a unicycle?

And yet: As populations flock back into urban areas, and housing costs drive some of us farther from city centers, a transportation challenge has emerged that just might bring certain sorts of unorthodox personal vehicles into play. Probably not the Segway. (Sorry, Segway.) Or the unicycle. (Not sorry, unicycle.) But there’s a niche out there for, say, the foldable electric scooter. And the time has come to cut adult riders of these goofy vehicles some slack.

Maybe you live a mile and a half from the nearest subway station. Or perhaps you take the light rail to work, but after you hop off the train it’s still a 2-mile walk to your company’s headquarters. Distances like these can require 30 minutes of walking, or more. They add enough time to your commute that you might be tempted to give up on public transport altogether and drive a car or (if you can afford it) spring for an Uber instead.

The particular challenge faced here is called, in transport circles, the last mile problem. How do you cut that half-hour of walking down to an eight-to-10-minute ride using some sort of interim vehicle—a compact conveyance that fills the gap between home or work and the nearest public transportation hub?

One classic solution is the bicycle. But while bikes can be a lovely part of any multimodal commute—breezy, scenic, elegant—they’re not always a perfect choice. For one thing, bikes are large. It’s possible to schlep a bike down into the subway or strap it to the exterior of a bus, but this process is not, as Uber flacks might say, “frictionless.” Storing your own bike can be impractical if you live in a small apartment, and locking a bike outside overnight risks theft. Some cities offer bikeshares—a commuter may dislodge a bike from a dock conveniently located next to a train stop, and then pedal to another dock closer to her end destination—but many cities don’t, and even those that do don’t put docks everywhere you need them. Folding bicycles mitigate some of these problems, but still: Sometimes you don’t want to cycle (or, by the same token, rollerblade) in your nice work clothes, fearing that you’ll gush rivulets of sweat on your way to a client meeting. Maybe you just don’t fancy an exercise session at the end of a long, wearying day, and thus prefer a much lazier means of propulsion.

Whatever the reason, you might find you pine for something powered by a motor but small enough to carry onto a train. Well, lucky for you, there are some compact, motorized, last-mile transport solutions. I tested out a few to see if they might improve my commute without making me feel like a total doofus.

Boosted Dual
$1,299
Maximum speed: 20 mph
Range on one charge: 6 miles
Time to fully charge: 90 minutes (60 minutes for a 90 percent charge)
Motor power: 1,500 watts
Weight: 15 pounds
Doofus factor: Moderate. Skateboards retain some residual punk cool even after you motorize them.

The Boosted board seems nigh futuristic in its capabilities. It’s a skateboard with a motor teensy enough to fit beneath the board’s deck yet strong enough to zoom you along at 20 mph on flat ground. Lest you doubt this thing’s torque: It can power a 185-pound person up a 20 percent incline.

You operate the board with a wireless remote control wand, smoothly accelerating or decelerating with a subtle nudge of your thumb. At 38 inches long and weighing 15 pounds, the board is small and light enough to strap onto a sturdy backpack, stow under a desk, or tuck between your knees aboard a subway. Until the hoverboard goes mainstream, this is as close as you’re gonna get.

Still, it’s imperfect. Unless you’re already comfy rolling around town on a regular skateboard, don’t expect to feel comfy climbing aboard one that cruises at the speed of a moped. Sharp turns are out of the question unless you’re Tony Hawk. No matter how much I cantilevered my weight side to side, I could achieve nothing more than a slow, gradual arc. More troublingly, there’s nothing to hold onto when you brake hard, so you simply fly forward off the board and hope to hit the ground running—instead of tumbling. One look at the company’s safety FAQ (e.g., “Remember that your board may lose power and brakes at any moment”) suggests that riding this thing may not be for the faint of heart.

Tellingly, most of the videos on Boosted’s site seem to feature experienced boarders on wide-open roads, in no danger of encountering traffic, free to carve long, graceful turns. In this situation—as I found when I brought the board upstairs to a huge, uninhabited floor in Slate’s building and put it through its paces—the board is tremendous fun. If your commute is, say, through the empty roads of a little-trafficked office park, you’ll be thrilled. If you’re attempting to carve serpentine turns in Midtown at rush hour, you might get splatted.

Solowheel Classic
$1,595
Maximum speed: 10 mph
Range on one charge: 10 miles
Time to fully charge: Two hours
Motor power: 1,500 watts
Weight: 25 pounds
Doofus factor: Unimaginably high. Just off the fricking charts.

The Solowheel springs from the eccentric mind of Shane Chen, the inventor of other quirky personal transport devices such as the Hovertrax (a sort of segmented skateboard) and the Aquaskipper (a sort of … gosh, I’m not really sure … maybe a kayakcycle?). Combining the gyroscopic sensors of a Segway and the inherent absurdity of a unicycle, the Solowheel is, as its name suggests, one single wheel. You stand on platforms that have been bolted to both sides of this wheel. When you lean forward, the wheel’s motor engages and zooms you forward at speeds up to 10 mph.

In videos, you can watch people zipping around on the Solowheel like it ain’t no thang. Just straight chilling, standing on a wheel, rolling down the road. Looked like fun! When I tried it myself, I found it nearly impossible to balance on the Solowheel for more than about three seconds. That gyroscopic balancing mechanism works on the front-to-back axis, but there is no balance-assist offered when you accidentally lean side to side. Despite many, many attempts, I could never advance more than 4 feet before toppling over. In the meantime, the insides of my calves were rubbed raw as I squeezed the Solowheel between them.

I am a relatively coordinated, athletic person. But I wondered if perhaps I was an outlier—the lone weirdo who somehow can’t manage to master the Solowheel. So I asked several Slate colleagues to give it a go. Not one of them was able to stay atop the thing (as you can see in the video we made). Between the roughly 20 of us who tried to ride the Solowheel in a simple straight line without falling off, I think we managed to cover a cumulative 15 feet. And again, there were bruised and abraded legs along the way. Many awkward, involuntary dismounts. No one could imagine getting the hang of this. Certainly not riding it on a busy city street.

When I spoke to Joalene Jolivette, the marketing director at Solowheel’s parent company, Inventist, she acknowledged that there’s a learning curve. “People really struggle at first,” she said. “The average person can’t just step on and go. It’s the same with when you learn a bike, or windsurfing or rollerblading. It takes a while, but once you get it, it’s a piece of cake.” Jolivette suggested that after three or four days of 20- or 30-minute practice sessions, anyone can get the knack for it.

She might be right. But I put in about half that time and could already see it wasn’t worth my while to go any further. Keeping the Solowheel balanced and upright—if I ever managed to do that—seemed akin to the workout I’d get from an intense yoga session. And that’s just to go in a straight line. Steering this device by twisting my weight side to side seems like it would require Olympic-level physical skills. Meanwhile, a folding bike would weigh the same, take up about the same amount of space, never need to be charged, go as fast, and look about one-eighth as dorky. I’m all for exotic inventions, but the Solowheel seems pointless.

EcoReco M3 E-Scooter
$999
Maximum speed: 20 mph
Range on one charge: 20 miles
Time to fully charge: 4.5 hours (2.5 hours to 85 percent)
Motor power: 250 watts
Weight: 34 pounds
Doofus factor: Significant but not debilitating. Requires overcoming some ingrained biases regarding the propriety of scootering as a grown-ass person.

I absolutely loved tooling around Manhattan on the EcoReco, a device that’s like a child’s scooter that’s been ’roided up by an electric motor. You stand on it, holding upright handlebars, and kick with your foot to start. It accelerates smoothly and silently as you pull on its throttle trigger. It has a reassuring, bicycle-style brake on its handlebar for when you need to come to a quick stop. I had zero trouble controlling its speed, steering it around corners, or gracefully hopping on and off.

When folded—a process easily accomplished in a few seconds—the EcoReco can be stowed under a desk or in a hall closet. It’s no problem on a moderately populated subway car. In a packed subway, it’s a bit bulkier than you want it to be, but not unmanageable.

I actually looked forward to running errands around the city so I could take this thing out for a spin. People in the office also begged to give it a try. When I lent it out, folks of all shapes and sizes came back from their scooter jaunts with smiles on their faces. Save, that is, for one fellow who forgot to let go of the throttle after his dismount, squeezing the accelerator even though he was no longer on board. The scooter zoomed into a printer, creating much commotion but no lasting damage.

The EcoReco was designed by an electrical engineering Ph.D. named Jay Sung who previously studied photonics and plasma lasers. The scooter’s motor is remarkably quiet, yet it had no problem powering me up an incline. The whole thing feels sturdily built, with an aluminum and stainless steel body and a pair of solid rubber tires that won’t go flat. The tradeoff here is that, at 34 pounds, it was heavier than I wanted it to be when I lugged it down a flight of stairs or through a subway turnstile. Smaller riders in particular might have trouble hefting the scooter in its folded form—though Sung envisions people mostly walking the scooter at their sides during moments when they can’t ride.

The foldable electric scooter is still a relatively new product category, and there aren’t a ton of competitors out there. Sung mentioned Go-Ped as a quality alternative (though he claims the EcoReco’s motor is more efficient and quieter), but I couldn’t get my hands on Go-Ped’s comparable I-Ped2 model, which retails for anywhere from $1,149 up to $2,540 depending on motor and battery options. I did try:

Myway scooter
$1,499.99
Maximum speed: 15-18 mph
Range on one charge: 15–20 miles
Time to fully charge: Four hours
Motor power: 250 watts
Weight: 29 pounds
Doofus factor: Same doofusyness as the EcoReco

The Myway will be distributed in the U.S. as the Jetson Myway and available for sale on Amazon starting sometime in the next few weeks—according to Josh Sultan, CEO of Jetson Electric Bikes. The Myway’s specs are nearly identical to the EcoReco’s. It’s a few pounds lighter but no less awkward a bundle to carry when collapsed.

Instead of the EcoReco’s solid wheels, the Myway’s tires are inflatable, which creates a slightly less jouncy ride but also introduces the hassle of pumping them up and the possibility of a flat. (A different EcoReco model offers inflatable tires as an option.) In general I found the Myway’s motor slightly louder than the EcoReco’s and less smooth to accelerate. Otherwise, this is basically the same product. I’d choose the EcoReco based on price and on my slight preference for its overall design.

But, the overarching question: Would I actually buy and use any foldable electric scooter in real life? I must confess, the experience of bopping around the city on a scooter offered a form of pure, childlike joy, and was practical to boot. I briefly gave serious consideration to integrating an e-scooter into my life. That is, until I learned one crucial piece of information: Motorized scooters are not street-legal in New York.

Before I realized this, I actually scooted right past a cop who saw me and didn’t stop me. Also, I’ll note that electric bicycles are similarly banned, yet at any given moment on a Manhattan street corner you can watch about 400 takeout food delivery guys cruising by on them. Still, laws are laws—though I think we should eventually find some way to issue permits or otherwise allow these things, since I can now attest that e-scooters provide both utility and delight.

If you live in California, or other states where electric scooters are tolerated, I heartily recommend the EcoReco. And if not, may I suggest a nice, superlatively compact, folding Helix bike?

Update, Nov. 28, 2016: This video has been removed pending the resolution of a licensing claim.

Tsarnaev’s Smirk

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 22:38:00 GMT

BOSTON—We assembled in Boston’s Moakley Courthouse this morning for a proceeding so stark it felt more like ancient Greek drama than like a Tuesday in 2015. It’s not often that I’m party to a ritual in which a man’s life hangs in the balance.

“It is impossible for me to overstate the importance of the decision before you,” said Judge George O’Toole to the jury as the sentencing phase of United States v. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev began. Once both sides have had their say, these jurors—having already pronounced Tsarnaev guilty on all counts—will face the most binary of choices: Kill the man? Or let him live?

There was little unexpected in prosecutor Nadine Pellegrini’s opening statement. She displayed pictures of the four dead victims, repeatedly calling them “beautiful” and noting that none would ever see their 30^th birthdays. She described the grief their families had felt every day since they’d been murdered. She ticked off a list of aggravating factors that might convince the jurors that Tsarnaev deserves to die—among them, the planned and premeditated nature of the bombing, the “heinous, cruel, and depraved” method used to kill, the excruciating physical pain the victims would have endured in their final moments, and the vulnerability and innocence embodied by 8-year-old Martin Richard.

Pellegrini did have one surprise up her sleeve. As she drew to her conclusion, she informed the jury that on July 10, 2013, about three months after the bombing, Tsarnaev had been left alone in a room with a camera (it appeared to be a holding cell) here inside the courthouse. “He had one last message to send,” she said tartly, as she unveiled a big poster. It was an enlarged photo of Tsarnaev—wearing orange prison scrubs and scowling furiously—as he flipped his middle finger directly at a ceiling camera in the cell.

We don’t know if he’d just been denied lunch, or if a guard had just elbowed him in the stomach and thrown him against a wall. But without any context, this was an ugly portrait of the defendant. It sat before the jury as Pellegrini gave her final assessment of him. Tsarnaev, she asserted, was “unconcerned, unrepentant, and unchanged.” He was “without remorse.”

Defense attorney Judy Clarke declined to make her opening statement Tuesday. She’ll wait until the prosecution’s rested, then start fresh, creating her own portrait of her client. She will no doubt attempt to paint Tsarnaev as a patsy of his older brother, Tamerlan. As a regular teen who fell under the influence of a domineering family member. She’d begun to present evidence to this effect during the guilt phase of the trial. But one thing she did not—or could not—present was evidence that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has felt any of the remorse that the prosecution says he is devoid of.

This is crucial, I feel, to Tsarnaev’s fate. I could see the jurors forgiving him for becoming Tamerlan’s dupe. But not if they think he still can’t admit the error of his ways and would do it all over again. If the jurors believe Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has shown no remorse, they will be hard-pressed to show him any mercy.

Where does the truth lie? Has Tsarnaev changed his mind about what he did? We just don’t know. We can’t know unless he testifies as much, or someone else does on his behalf. We can see, however, his body language in the courtroom. And though it’s risky to read too deeply into slouches and tics, Tsarnaev certainly hasn’t made much effort to appear chastened or regretful before the jury. The closed-circuit cameras that were broadcasting from the courtroom to the media room Tuesday were not high-resolution enough that I can 100 percent swear by this, but: I’m pretty sure that after Pellegrini showed that photo of him flipping the bird, Tsarnaev smirked.

Before this trial began, during jury selection, I’d have bet good money that Tsarnaev would escape capital punishment. Judy Clarke is known as one of the best lawyers in the world when it comes to securing evildoers life without parole instead of state-imposed death. And she needs just a single juror to find, within him or herself, a shred of sympathy for Tsarnaev. In order to execute, the jury is required to be unanimous.

Now, though? After this same jury convicted Tsarnaev on all 99 questions at issue in the guilt phase—even though some of them were far from no-brainers? After seeing that scowling photo and watching Tsarnaev’s jaunty posture these past several weeks? I’m not so sure.

Nor am I sure what I would do in the jury’s shoes. Of course, we’ll wait to see what sort of defense gets presented on his behalf. It’s still possible, if improbable, that he’ll speak for himself. But if I imagine that the trial were ending right now and I were asked to make a ruling on his life … I’d be torn. I am opposed to capital punishment on the grounds that I simply don’t trust the state to apply it fairly, competently, and without racial bias. But in this specific case, where the killer has admitted his guilt and the crime is so abhorrent? It’s less clear-cut to me.

Whenever people learn I’m covering Tsarnaev’s trial—whether it’s around the table at a Passover Seder or out at a bar after pickup basketball—the question always comes up. Some feel the harsher punishment is to chuck him in a box for the next 70 years. (Not for nothing: a box the New York Times calls “a cleaner version of hell,” and one that seems specially designed to drive its inhabitants insane.) Others, including people I might not have expected, have been more implacably vengeful in an Old Testament sort of way. “I don’t want him eating food,” said one friend. “I don’t want him breathing air. I don’t want him moving around in his body.”

We do know what Martin Richard’s parents think. Bill and Denise Richard, who watched a son die and a daughter lose a leg, wrote an open letter to the Justice Department suggesting a plea in which Tsarnaev would be spared but would spend life in prison and would waive all appeals. Basically, they want him to disappear as soon as possible.

It’s easy to believe that at least a few of the jurors have been made aware of this letter. It ran on the front page of the Boston Globe on Friday while court was not in session. Will it affect the way they treat Tsarnaev?

This letter is one of the many reasons that this trial should never have been held in Boston. Another? The Boston Marathon—full of tributes to the heroes and remembrances of the victims from 2013—was run just yesterday. The finish line was a not-very-long walk from the courthouse door. People walking the streets still had on their official warmup jackets, and the marathon signage was everywhere you looked.

The judge asked jurors not to watch the race, or read about it, or talk about it. Did they obey this order? And did they shield their eyes from the Richards’ letter? Have they been fully insulated from the rapt, furious attention of the city around them? I wouldn’t bet my life on it.

The Wolf of Wall Tweet

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 20 Apr 2015 20:12:00 GMT

On the afternoon of Friday, March 27, as several news outlets reported at the time, somebody apparently made $2.4 million from a tweet. That tweet was a bit of breaking news from Wall Street Journal writer Dana Mattioli:

Quicker than any human seemingly could have done it, someone—or rather something—bought $110,530 worth of cheap options on Altera, a company that makes digital circuits.* Over the next several minutes and until the end of the day, as humans digested Mattioli’s takeover rumor at human speed, Altera’s stock price rose. When all was said and done, those cheap options had resulted in a $2.4 million profit. Speculation immediately centered on the idea that an automated program (a “bot”) had scanned the tweet, interpreted its meaning, and instantly bought those options based on an algorithm. The robot had read the tweet and made a killing on it before anyone knew what was going on.

On April 6, a Reuters report disproved the initial hypothesis. In fact, Reuters reported, the trade occurred 19 seconds before the tweet, and one second after a headline appeared on the Dow Jones Newswire.

I know a guy—a human guy—who was on the other side of that trade. And he says this wasn’t the first time it happened to him. He’s convinced someone’s figured out an algorithm that’s faster than anything he’s ever seen before. So fast, he fears, that it might eventually put him out of a job.

My friend is a stock options market maker on Wall Street. You can buy an option from him that gives you the right to purchase a stock at some point in the future for a price you agree upon now. Let’s say a stock is right this second selling at $30 per share. You buy a truckload of options that grant you the right to buy the stock at $35 per share any time within the next hour. Those options are worth peanuts at the moment—they’re “out of the money” and thus cost very little to buy—but if the stock somehow zoomed up past $40 in the next 10 minutes, they’d suddenly be worth a fortune.

Explaining exactly how my friend’s job works in the real world gets really complicated really quickly, but you can think of him as a bookie. He makes it possible for you to place bets that a stock will go up or down. Like a bookie, he’s essentially playing defense while the bettors are playing offense. He wants to set a betting line that reflects realistic odds. But if one bettor knows something everybody else doesn’t (say, that the team’s star quarterback won’t be playing on Sunday, or that Intel is about to buy the team), then my friend can get slammed.

On the afternoon of Friday, March 13, my friend noticed something strange. A rumor exploded that (as news outlets later reported) Exxon might buy a company called Whiting Petroleum, and in an instant—before any human could have possibly acted on it—someone had “lit up the options market.” Trading was halted, but by the time it reopened, the damage had been done. “I personally lost $100,000 in one second,” says my friend. His firm lost more. As for whoever or whatever it was that bought the options? “I’d guess they made between $1 and $2 million. Which is not bad for one second.”

Next came the famous $2.4 million Altera windfall on March 27. And then on Wednesday, April 1, when the drugmaker Receptos was involved in takeover rumors, it happened again. Shares in Receptos leaped, but not before somebody had already bought a slew of options at lightning speed, banking another tidy sum. (My friend’s firm escaped dramatic damage in these instances, losing less than $30,000 between the two. Others were surely less lucky.) In each of these cases, the buyer appears to have responded within moments to a tweet, or possibly to a phrase posted in some other online venue—nailing down the precise trigger is difficult.

Could it be a human and not a bot making these trades? My friend doesn’t think so. The complexity of the orders would slow a person down too much to be feasible. “It would be impossible for me to do. By the time you could read the news, process it, and press the ‘buy everything’ button, it would take too long. The speed is unbelievable. They’re buying everything within like 3 seconds of it coming out, which is not possible for a human.”

Could there be more than one single outfit behind these three trades? Again, my friend thinks no. He says that a firm called Lime Brokerage was named on all three trades. Lime wouldn’t have placed these trades directly; it facilitated them for someone else. But my friend is confident that whoever’s using Lime to place these trades is the same person. “My job is basically being a pattern reader,” my friend says, “and on these three trades the pattern was identical. It’s the same guy.”

When I spoke to Lime’s chief operating officer, Tony Huck, he said he thought it was unlikely one of Lime’s clients had made the trades. While he acknowledged it was possible, he said that options trading is a small part of Lime’s business and that with regard to these incidents, “It doesn’t fit the profile for how our clients trade and for the size that they trade.” I checked back with my friend. I then got in touch with Lime once more to tell the firm I’d seen a trade ticket suggesting it was the brokerage of record on one of these trades, made on the Miami Options Exchange (where Lime is one of 41 registered members). Lime asked for time to respond, but given several days and several more requests from me, the company did not comment further.

If you’ve read the Michael Lewis book Flash Boys, you know about the high-frequency trading wars. But the story here was a little different. Those HFT guys were detecting that someone had interest in buying a stock at $5 a share, and then, using technological hocus-pocus, jumping in to buy it first before immediately reselling it to the person at $5.01 a share—over and over, in tons of different stocks, making tiny gains at massive volume.

What we’re talking about here are options trades based on breaking rumors. And because options are derivatives—you’re buying the right to buy shares, not the shares themselves—it’s possible to achieve larger wins for a smaller outlay of cash. What makes these particular trades so striking is that they were made at the very tail end of the day, when the bought options were all only minutes from expiring. The odds that any given stock will suddenly rocket in the next few minutes are extremely low, which makes buying expiring options cheap and the bet very lucrative if it pays off. Consider that if the purchaser of those Altera options had taken his $110,530 and simply bought regular stock in Altera with it, he would have cleared about a $34,000 profit by the end of the day. Instead, using options, he made $2.4 million.

Bots that make trades based on news content have been around for years. Some news outlets, such as Bloomberg and Dow Jones, have even designed news feeds that are meant to be read by computers instead of humans. They send information directly to the robots in more easily machine-interpretable formats. There have also been reports about hedge funds that trade based on sentiments expressed in tweets. In the case of the Altera incident, though, a bot appeared to read a rumor, understand it, and instantly execute an options strategy based on it. And for my friend—at least in his corner of the business, a corner he’s worked in for seven years—this felt like something radically new. “It used to feel like a race that we could win or lose,” he says. “But whatever algorithm they’ve developed, we are now completely helpless. Sitting ducks. This is by far the most advanced version of this we’ve ever seen. It’s at a totally different level.”

It also feels pretty far from the theoretical purpose of options trading. Options are meant to provide insurance (a “hedge”) against potential losses in a stock position. Market makers like my friend create the environment in which to buy the insurance. This bot instead treats that market like a roulette wheel—except it knows exactly where the ball will land. “If someone else has what we call the ‘future script,’ ” says my friend, referring to the crystal ball of the algorithm bot, “it really feels like they’re just robbing you. Yes, what they’re doing is legal, and you can say fair is fair, the person with the fastest computer gets all the money. But think back to 1995, when the point of options was still insurance, and imagine telling someone that there’s a firm that makes a computer that can read a tweeted rumor and buy stocks one second later to make millions of dollars. It would seem crazy, but that’s where we are.”

To be fair, there is risk for the bot-users, too. “Automated trading on Internet content is a highly competitive business,” says Paul Tetlock, a Columbia Business School professor. “Many firms have started and failed.” Things can go horribly awry for the bots. Tetlock pointed me to an example in which a 6-year-old news story about United Airlines’ 2002 bankruptcy somehow reappeared online in 2008. “As algorithms traded on this stale news,” Tetlock explained to me in an email, “United’s stock price plummeted by 76 percent within minutes.” But the price almost fully rebounded within the day.

And bot errors aside, Tetlock sees little reason to be morally concerned about these sorts of developments—even if it means we end up with a market that’s just bot versus bot. “So the smartest geeks are reaping more of the gains from trading relative to people with the quickest fingers or the best personal connections,” Tetlock wrote me. “If humans’ programs are better at trading on news than humans themselves, it’s not clear why markets would be harmed. In such a world, stock prices would react quickly and accurately to new information.”

There’s another risk, as well, In addition to the bots-gone-wild hazard: A few amazingly well-designed bots might drive everyone else out of the game. That could shrink the market and make it far less useful. “If everyone gets the same information but they analyze it in different ways, or believe different things,” says Kenneth Ahern, a professor at the University of Southern California’s business school, “the market should provide the best price. But if you have a barrier to entry where some are so much faster than others, prices will be biased. Still, it might be that they’ll only be biased for 15 minutes. I haven't seen enough evidence yet to say we should regulate it. My concern is always over whether the regulators will do better than the market will.”

You needn’t weep over my friend or his firm losing money. You might even cheer the ingenuity of a person who programs an algorithm to read tweets and profit off them. My friend, of course, has a different perspective. For him, it feels like someone is reaching into his pocket and taking money out: “It’s like they’re insider trading on the news.”

*Correction, April 21, 2015: This article originally misstated that a purchase of options on March 27 immediately followed a tweet by journalist Dana Mattioli. It occurred 19 seconds before the tweet and followed a newswire post by one second. The article and its headlines have been updated to reflect this. (Return.)

“Can a Show That Is One Big Flashback Really Have a Cliffhanger?” and Other Questions From Better Call Saul’s Episode 10, “Marco”

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 03:00:00 GMT

Listen to Episode 10 of Slate TV Club’s Better Call Saul podcast:

Subscribe in iTunes ∙ RSS feed ∙ Download ∙ Play in another tab

In the latest episode of Slate’s TV Club podcast about Better Call Saul, June Thomas and Seth Stevenson recap the season finale, “Marco,” reflect on the past 10 episodes, and predict what will happen in Season 2.

Also, Seth uses the word telos liberally throughout the podcast.

Plus, the hosts tally up the responses to last week’s listener challenges, and Seth recklessly issues a new listener challenge, despite this being the final podcast of the first season. (Oh, what the heck. Send your responses to podcasts@slate.com. They’re due sometime in early 2016.)

Slate Plus members get early access to the TV Club’s podcasts about Better Call Saul, immediately following the broadcast on AMC. If you want early access, sign up for Slate Plus at slate.com/saulplus.

Just discovered our Saul podcast? Catch up on episodes below.

Email: podcasts@slate.com

The Hidden Ferris Bueller Easter Egg in the Better Call Saul Finale

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 07 Apr 2015 17:41:00 GMT

This week’s season finale of Better Call Saul featured a mini-tribute to director John Hughes. While on a trip to visit the Chicagoland area, Bob Odenkirk’s character, Jimmy McGill, makes a 911 call and identifies his location as “an alley southeast of LaSalle and Shermer.” LaSalle is a major thoroughfare in Chicago. But based on a thorough Google search, there appears to be no Shermer street, avenue, or boulevard anywhere in the city. Neither does there seem to be a street named Shermer in Cicero, Illinois—Jimmy’s other main Land-of-Lincoln haunt. Whence the fake name?

Shermer, Illinois, is the fictional town that features in myriad John Hughes works—from Sixteen Candles to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to Home Alone, and more. (Several Hughes fanatics have tracked down his films’ imaginary Shermer locations.) Hughes grew up in Northbrook, Illinois, which was originally called Shermerville. He went to Glenbrook North High School, which is located on Shermer Rd in Northbrook. Cementing the connection: In Better Call Saul’s very next scene, Jimmy’s friend Kim calls him on his mobile phone. “Is this Ferris Bueller?” she asks. ‘I don’t want to interrupt your big day off.’ ”

The episode itself featured Jimmy engaging in a series of escapades that require minor deception—accompanied by his slightly less magnetic sidekick, Marco. Shades of Ferris and Cameron? Only Vince Gilligan knows for sure.

Teen or Terrorist?

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 07 Apr 2015 00:24:00 GMT

BOSTON—A music video was perhaps the last thing one expected from today’s closing statements in United States v. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. But as prosecuting attorney Aloke Chakravarty concluded the government’s argument, he cued up a montage on the courtroom’s screens. The courtroom’s speakers played a nasheed—an Islamic chant frequently associated with jihad—that Tsarnaev was apparently fond of listening to on his iPod.

We were shown a photo of Tsarnaev sitting below a black flag with Arabic writing (one the prosecution had painted as a jihadi emblem). “This is how the defendant saw his crimes,” said Chakravarty. The pulsing nasheed incantation continued to fill the room as images of the marathon bombing site flashed. It was as though we were watching an ISIS recruitment video.

“But this is the cold reality of what his crimes left behind,” Chakravarty interrupted. The music stopped. The images continued. Bloodied people, mangled limbs, anguished faces. Silence in the courtroom. The reason the Tsarnaev brothers detonated those bombs, said Chakravarty, “was to tell America that we will not be terrorized anymore. We will terrorize you.”

Chakravarty’s statement was careful throughout to paint Tsarnaev as a terrorist. As a man acting in the service of a radical ideology. “You can tell by the defendant’s expression,” said Chakravarty as he displayed video of Tsarnaev strolling down Boylston Street with a pressure-cooker bomb on his back, “by the casual way he walks, that he is entirely untroubled by what he is about to do. Because for a year he has been listening to terrorist songs, and reading terrorist literature, and he thinks that what he’s about to do is right. … That day they felt they were soldiers. They were the mujahedeen.”

This was a lot of talk about motive, given that the vast majority of the 30-count indictment against Tsarnaev has nothing to do with the why of his crimes. What matters is only that Tsarnaev enacted them. The government has marshaled swathes of evidence to prove that he did, and the jury will be very hard-pressed to decide that he didn’t. (Particularly since Tsarnaev’s own defense team acknowledged “It was him” on the opening day of the trial and then put up only four witnesses against the prosecution’s 92.)

To be sure, there was some legal purpose to Chakravarty’s musical montage. Counts six, seven, and nine, for instance, relate to “bombing a place of public use” and require the jury to find that a crime “was committed in an attempt to compel the United States to do and to abstain from doing any act.” Chakravarty needed to cement that impression. But he did so again and again.

Why the emphasis on where Tsarnaev’s head was at? The truth is this trial has never been merely about guilt or innocence. The true battle is the one for Tsarnaev’s life. Will he spend it in prison, with no possibility of parole? Or will it be extinguished by the jury’s decree?

Tsarnaev’s defense attorney, Judy Clarke, again admitted her client’s guilt in her closing. “For this destruction, suffering, and profound loss, there is no excuse,” she said, “and no one is trying to make one.” She then spent the rest of her statement trying to make one.

Clarke’s argument was entirely about the why of things. About the relative roles played by the two brothers. For her, the most important facts to note are that Tsarnaev’s older brother Tamerlan was the first to download radical jihadi materials from the Internet, before passing them on to Dzhokhar; that Tamerlan bought the detonating devices, the pressure cookers, and the backpacks to hide them in; that Tamerlan walked in the lead down Boylston Street while Dzhokhar followed; that Tamerlan (Clarke alleges, though the government disagrees) fired the real pistol while Dzhokhar stood behind him armed with a measly pellet gun.

Again and again, Clarke referred to the fact that Tsarnaev was 19 years old at the time of these crimes. She reminded the jury that his Internet activity was largely about checking Facebook. (She didn’t mention that his 10^th most visited site was pornhub.com, though it was there for the jury to see in the evidence.) She kept uttering variations on the phrase “a kid doing kid things” or “a teenager doing teenager things.” Clarke pooh-poohed the government’s effort to paint Tsarnaev as “a jihadi in the making.” She instead recalled that he was “flunking school and making lame excuses about it.” She pointed to his tweets quoting Nas and Eminem, and read aloud ones he’d written about wanting to sleep a lot. “That sounds like a teenager to me,” she said. It was as though there were a neon sign over her head blinking “THINK OF THIS EXCEEDINGLY YOUNG MAN AS A HUMAN BEING, NOT A MONSTER.”

Perhaps the strongest evidence of Tsarnaev’s thinking during his crimes is the essay he scrawled while hiding inside the dry-docked boat where he eventually was found. His brother was already dead, and Tsarnaev knew he would soon either die or be caught, and thus we can assume—as the government argued— this was the message he hoped the world would take from his crimes. Tsarnaev carved into the boat’s slats, “Stop killing our innocent people and we will stop.” There it is, in the prosecution’s view: the proof that Tsarnaev conceived of himself as a terrorist, killing innocents for political purpose.

Clarke asked the jury to consider the context—the fact that Tsarnaev was wounded and bleeding (though, as the government noted, he’d been strong enough to pull himself up into the elevated boat without a ladder) and had just escaped a hail of bullets. “What he doesn’t write in here,” she noted, “is what you might think a violent jihadi would write. ‘Death to America.’ He doesn’t write that.”

True. But he came pretty close. Clarke also failed to be convincing when she argued that Tsarnaev hadn’t targeted children at the marathon. Video footage clearly shows him standing directly behind a line of kids, clear as day, with plenty of time to notice them and contemplate what was about to happen. He could have chosen somewhere else to plant his bomb.

It’s safe to assume the jury will return a guilty verdict sometime in the next few days—for most of the 30 counts in the indictment, if not all. Judy Clarke knows this, and even welcomed it. “The horrific acts that we’ve heard about deserve to be condemned,” she said as she concluded, “and the time is now.” Her implication: The time for vengeance and justice is now because we don’t want you to seek them in the next phase of the trial, when the jury will decide whether or not to execute Tsarnaev.

Noah Baumbach’s Golden Years

Seth Stevenson — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 16:13:40 GMT

While We’re Young, the new movie from director Noah Baumbach, begins with a few lines from Henrik Ibsen’s The Master Builder. Ibsen’s aging character Solness wonders if he should “open the door” to the younger generation, fretting that they might “break in upon me” and seek “retribution.” Roughly 90 minutes later, as the movie’s end credits roll, we hear the gentle strains of Paul McCartney’s “Let ’Em In”: “Someone's knockin' at the door / Somebody's ringin' the bell / Do me a favor, open the door and let 'em in.” In the space between, two Gen Xers get their doors kicked down by a pair of millennial younguns.

This isn’t the first time Baumbach’s offered a cinematic snapshot of life-stage anxiety. Kicking and Screaming centers on that fraught moment at the close of college when aimlessness melds with the terror of exiting childhood’s cocoon. Frances Ha captures the transition from young adult to just plain adult—that sobering process in which ambitions get rudely re-aligned to circumstance. Now comes While We’re Young, which is—from its on-the-nose title, to its portentous Ibsen reference, to its soundtrack’s repeated use of David Bowie’s “Golden Years”— Baumbach’s most explicit look yet at one of life’s angsty microphases.

Fortysomethings Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) are childless and bored, unsure what’s left to do before death, when they serendipitously find a twentysomething couple (played by Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried) to hang out with and borrow some pep from. All goes smoothly at first. Later, it becomes unclear who’s borrowing what from whom.

I ♥ Noah Baumbach, and found plenty of classic Baumbachian slyness to love in While We’re Young. If you’re like me, you’ll chuckle at the metajoke that casts Beastie Boy Ad-Rock, the coolest Gen Xer of all, as a dorky dad with a herniated disk. And you’ll encounter no shortage of shiny, angular dialogue: Seyfried’s character initiates a date by asking, “You wanna get some goat?” and later wearily proclaims, “If I stay here any longer I’ll girl interrupt.”

This is, however, easily Baumbach’s broadest film. It features a dopey drug sequence in which vomiting gets played for laughs, and a “douchebag” shaman administers ayahuasca before bragging about his yacht. The entire scene might just as well have shown up in an assembly-line Vince Vaughn comedy. The film’s third-act plot turns are way tidier, way more Hollywood, than we’ve been trained to expect from Baumbach’s previous New New Wave oeuvre. At one point, character development is signified by Ben Stiller stuffing a recently acquired trilby into a garbage can—a worn-out midlife crisis gag that also shows up in a Lowe’s advertisement getting heavy rotation during NCAA tournament games.

As a Baumbach maniach, I adored this film and hope others will, too. But there’s no doubt that While We’re Young plays like an attempt to appeal to the (slightly) baser instincts of a (slightly) wider audience. Stiller’s character is a 44-year-old filmmaker, a “purist” who’s won critical acclaim from some quarters but has a “fucked-up relationship with success”—in that he’d like a whole lot more of it. Baumbach is a 45-year-old filmmaker who’s created a string of gimlet-eyed little movies that delight people like me but that might not be quite the collective triumph (in terms of either top-shelf artistic recognition or wild box office success) that I would guess he envisioned for himself back when he directed his first film at 26.

While We’re Young ends on an up note, but it’s a forced one. At its core this movie is a meditation on the bitterness of middle age, when we inevitably begin to both revere and resent youth. Stiller’s character evinces the small-c conservatism that nearly always accompanies our advancing years. He scoffs at the next generation’s slipping ethical standards and lack of discernment—at one point complaining that they can’t distinguish between The Goonies and Citizen Kane. “Different things matter now,” he’s gently told. That gives him no solace.

In a 2013 New Yorker profile, Ian Parker posited that Baumbach’s burden over much of his career has been “ruefully noting that, in the nineteen-seventies, someone who had made work like this might have had a reputation as a mainstream director.” He quotes Baumbach describing his own fucked-up relationship with success, through the lens of Baumbach’s attitude toward the viewers of his films: “Probably, at some level, I’m not quite letting you laugh, and then getting annoyed when I don’t get the laugh.” In 2012, Baumbach shot a big-budget, high-profile pilot for HBO, attempting to adapt Jonathan Franzen’s book The Corrections into a prestige series starring Ewan McGregor and Chris Cooper. It was the biggest project he’d ever taken on. It was not picked up.

You can feel Baumbach striving for a departure here, the next step in the accessible career The Corrections might have made for him. And he succeeds in some ways. While We’re Young is an odd combination: It’s a parable about a director coming to grips with his telos—made by a director hoping to swerve toward a new telos. But look closely at his characters and you’ll see that, no matter what sorts of contexts this auteur creates for them, no matter how rosy their denouements, they all end up linking smoothly into an unbroken chain of protagonists who are self-absorbed, self-flagellating, and profoundly disappointed.

In All Good Things, Andrew Jarecki Revealed the Real Reason He’s Obsessed With Robert Durst

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 16 Mar 2015 23:41:28 GMT

Read all of Slate’s coverage of The Jinx.

Late Sunday night, having finished The Jinx, suffering from insomnia and still haunted by THE BURP, I decided I’d Netflix All Good Things—the lightly fictionalized 2010 biopic that was director Andrew Jarecki’s previous filmic foray into the life of Robert Durst. In considering the twinned challenges of capturing a fictional Durst in the pages of a script versus capturing the real-life Durst on tape, I noted some revealing contrasts. All Good Things fails as cinema, but it succeeds in laying bare the personal underpinnings of Jarecki’s 10-year obsession with Durst, and helps explain why Jarecki seemed to feel a connection to Durst even as it became hard to deny that the older man was a brutal killer.

All Good Things begins with its version of Durst (here named “David Marks” and played by Ryan Gosling) on the witness stand in his trial in Texas. But he’s not being questioned about the murder and dismemberment of which he’s been accused. He’s being asked to talk about his dead mom—thus framing the film as a look at Durst’s family and how it might have shaped Bob into the man that he became. This scene segues into the opening title sequence, in which Jarecki simulates home movies (made to look decades old) of Robert as a boy, frolicking on a large lawn with his family. Robert’s mother is shown laughing and skipping. Robert’s father is shown as a looming, unsmiling, distant presence.

The film goes on to posit that Robert’s fragile psyche got twisted by his domineering dad. Seymour Durst (here “Sanford Marks,” played by Frank Langella) steps in at key moments to belittle Robert. To tell him he’s a bad husband. To convince him that, no matter what she says, his wife Kathie (Kirsten Dunst as “Katie”) wants him to be a powerful businessman and not a happy hippie. Durst’s dad urges Bob to give up his bohemian dream of running a health food store and instead button up and join the family’s lucrative Manhattan real estate business. He squashes Robert’s soul, and a demon emerges from the wreckage.

There is truth to this sketch of the Durst father-son dynamic. But a 2010 New York Times story about the facts behind the film had this to report about Durst’s real-life father:

Real estate executives describe the elder Mr. Durst, who died in 1995, as a tiny, polite if eccentric man, a skilled negotiator but one who rarely raised his voice as Mr. Langella’s menacing character does.

“Seymour had no resemblance to the hulking Langella,” said Nick Chavin, a real estate advertising executive who worked for him. “He was a sweetheart.”

Robert Durst said that while he found Mr. Langella to be “not bad” in the role, his father was never as “sharp and aggressive when it comes to me.”

You know who really did have an intimidating dad—one who steered his son away from creative pursuits, and tried to mold the boy in his own image? Andrew Jarecki. Jarecki’s father Henry had been a psychiatry professor at Yale before switching careers and becoming a wealthy commodities trader and financier. Here are newspaper quotes from Andrew, some dating to long before the filming of All Good Things:

“I was getting ready to go to graduate school [in 1985] for directing when my father, a very Teutonic, work-oriented, taskmaster type said, `That artistic stuff is great but you need to learn what a treasury bill is.”

“He wanted to capture me into business.”

[W]ould-be auteur Andrew Jarecki says he was urged by his “German-overbearing, capitalist” father to put business fundamentals before pleasure.

Jarecki went to work for his father for a time, joining the family firm and, according to the Australian Financial Review, “dribbling numbers into a giant book.” Jarecki’s first real success came as the one of the co-founders of Moviefone, a business he started in part with a $15 million loan from the financial services company where his father was chairman. It was only after Moviefone got sold and Jarecki netted a big payday that he pursued filmmaking, his original love.

It’s the nature of fiction that the auteur can’t help but smudge his fingerprints all over the story. And so All Good Things focuses on what I now see as distinctly Jareckian psychological concerns: overbearing papas, and the struggle to find creative freedom and individuality under the thumb of a pragmatically-minded patriarch. It’s easy to imagine this being the emotional through-line that drew Jarecki to Durst in the first place, and let him sympathetize with Durst over the years. But All Good Things is, in truth, more Andrew than Bob.

Gosling’s performance, for instance, doesn’t emulate Durst’s physical tics—the blinking and gurning, the headscratching and facerubbing. (Here Durst himself would add: “And the burping.”) He cuts a far less oddball figure than the Durst we see in The Jinx. At the time All Good Things was released, Durst told the New York Times that Gosling was “not as good as the real thing,” and he was correct. Gosling fails to capture Durst’s quiet electricity and the eerie diffidence that masks his underlying will.

Gosling’s Durst is, one must say, too recognizably human. Too relatable. The Durst of All Good Things is a pretty regular guy, aside from the murdering. He acts more like how Andrew Jarecki might imagine himself acting if he were pushed a million steps too far by his uneasy relationship with his dad.

Roger Ebert wrote in his 2010 review of All Good Things, “I don’t understand David Marks after seeing this film, and I don’t know if Andrew Jarecki does.” That’s because Jarecki tried to make sense out of something that makes no sense. In The Jinx, we see the actual Robert Durst, a guy who only remotely resembles a human being. He seems to have a few crossed wires in his head. There is no simple answer, no tidy biographical explanation. With this story, that’s the reality.

Can the Apple Watch Take on Rolex?

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 18:36:31 GMT

The new Apple Watch is a different flavor of product than we’ve grown used to from the Cupertino cabal. In many of its incarnations, the device will compete less with Samsung, Google, and Microsoft than with Seiko, TAG Heuer, and Rolex. So should the watch industry—like the personal computing and smartphone industries before it—be scared that Apple’s about to eat its lunch?

It’s worth noting that watchmakers have seen techie timepieces come and go for decades with little effect on the marketplace. Joe Thompson, editor in chief of WatchTime, wrote a cranky column in 2013 in which he recalled a bunch of meh smartwatch launches over the years: the Seiko TV watch in 1983; Microsoft SPOT watches in 2003; the Pebble Smartwatch and Samsung Galaxy Gear in 2013. Smartwatches have “consistently flopped,” wrote Thompson, noting that one major reason they’ve failed is that they just look way too geeky.

The kind of person in the market for an elegant Rolex would be repulsed by the clunky lines of a Galaxy Gear. The question now is whether a $17,000 Apple Watch Edition, outfitted with an 18-karat gold case and leather band—and sprinkled with magical Jony Ive design dust—can tempt this sort of buyer. And what about the stainless steel Apple Watch, with prices ranging from $549 to $1,099—can it lure people who otherwise might have bought a comparably priced Seiko or TAG?

The clear comparative advantage of a smartwatch is functionality. The Apple Watch lets you make and receive freaking phone calls. Your Rolex doesn’t do that. But it’s been a while since functionality was the reason anyone bought a mechanical watch—meaning one that uses a spring and gears, as high-end luxury watches do, instead of a cheaper quartz crystal. For one thing, the crystal is more accurate. Did you know that a $75 quartz Swatch will keep more accurate time than a $5,000 mechanical watch ever could?

And no one buys cheap dumbwatches merely for their functionality anymore, either—aside from a few specific cases, like a runner who buys a Timex digital because he doesn’t want a phone jouncing in his pocket. If the need is a device that lets us keep track of time, set alarms, and make sure we don’t overcook our pasta, well, these days we all have cellphones for that.

I’ve never bought a Rolex. But as I see it, the main reasons to buy one are:

You want people to know you’re rich enough to afford a Rolex.
You appreciate the brand’s noble century of tradition, and its place of honor on the wrists of various famous people through the decades. You want to be a part of that.
You are tickled by the notion of wearing a perfect little machine on your wrist—teensy gears, and a tiny spring that if well cared for will still oscillate when you hand off the watch to your granddaughter 60 years hence. You hanker for, as legendary watch executive Jean-Claude Biver has described it, “eternity in a box.”

So how does Apple’s top-end product compare to Rolex on these axes?

Those in the know will clock the golden hue of your Edition and will be hip to its price tag. It will be thus be impressed upon them that you are rich. Mission accomplished.
I guess some people venerate Apple’s place in history the way others venerate Rolex’s. But it’s not like Pablo Picasso and Martin Luther King wore the Apple Watch. These days, in particular, wearing a mechanical watch has become a statement about the buyer’s appreciation for classics. Wearing a spanking new space-age Edition doesn’t tick quite the same box.
There are those who worship at the temple of Apple design. They will no doubt be early buyers of the Apple Watch out of sheer admiration for its sleekness and utility. Wearing it will let them signal their affinity for Apple’s aesthetics. But that’s a very different impulse, I think, from yearning to watch the gears spin through the window on your watch. Digital and analog wonderment are not the same. And it’s no small thing that digital technology becomes obsolete. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe the use of precious metals will make all the difference, but it’s hard to imagine stylish people slobbering over vintage Apple Watches in 2065 the way those people now slobber over a 50-year-old Rolex. Tell me, how much did you get on eBay for your first-generation iPhone?

In sum, don’t expect someone who’d buy a $14,000 Rolex, or a $17,000 Audemars Piguet, to be dissuaded from that purchase just because the Apple Watch Edition is now on the scene. If anything, Apple’s arrival might be accretive. For instance, my impression is that most women are left sort of cold by expensive mechanical watches (the kind where the point is that they have complexly engineered guts), but I could imagine rich women who are addicted to their iPhones falling in love with both the look and the functionality of, say, the 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition with the bright red leather band. A lot will depend on whether she feels comfortable talking to her wrist in public. But people in this stratosphere of wealth can afford his and hers luxury watches—maybe Rolex for him and Apple for her. Or haute de gamme watches and Apple Watches for both.

As for slightly less expensive watch brands, some might be in profound trouble. Imagine a young, up-and-coming professional—the kind of person who might stretch to buy a Tudor for a few thousand dollars, or an entry-level TAG Heuer for $900. Will he consider that hard-earned cash better spent on an of-the-moment, super-functional Apple Watch? Is that a more potent status symbol for his crowd? If so, a brand like Citizen or Seiko selling watches in the $500 range should be positively terrified.

Back in September, the aforementioned Jean-Claude Biver (the head of the watch division at LVMH, which includes brands like Hublot and TAG Heuer) gave an interview to Forbes in which he pooh-poohed the coming Apple Watch. Biver said that on first look Apple’s watch “lacks soul” and is “not sexy at all.” He said he “wouldn’t call it a watch” but rather an “information tool to be worn on the wrist.” Biver concluded by declaring “at present, the Apple Watch cannot compete at all with European watches.”

A few months later, in December, after he’d also become interim CEO of TAG and perhaps gotten a clearer look at the writing on the wall, Biver announced plans for a TAG smartwatch. Around the same time, Movado hired Jo An Lawson, formerly of Apple, as its general manager of wearable devices. Montblanc stuck an ugly digital device into its watch straps. And the co-inventor of the Swatch said, “Anything in the price range of 500 francs to 1,000 francs is really in danger.”

The very bad news for these companies is that in terms of aesthetics, Apple seems to have knocked it out of the park. Benjamin Clymer, founder of the influential watch publication Hodinkee, writes “The overall level of design in the Apple Watch simply blows away anything—digital or analog—in the watch space at $350. There is nothing that comes close to the fluidity, attention to detail, or simple build quality found on the Apple Watch in this price bracket.” We’re talking physical stuff here, not just the amazing software. Clymer was especially impressed with Apple’s straps and bands. He raved, for instance, over the meshy, metallic “Milanese loop” option, which makes it look like you’ve got a watchband made of chainmail.

Still, Clymer thinks there’s a silver lining for the watch industry. He says there are “millions of us who would never trade a Rolex in for an Apple.” He says the old kind of watches “are so timeless, so lasting, so personal.”

I myself sometimes wear a Seiko 5 automatic, even though it’s a $70 analog watch with a fabric strap and it only tracks the date and time. Why do I (and many others) love this watch? Because I cherish the idea that, for less than $100, I can strap a whirring precision device onto my wrist, packed with gears and wheels and a pivoting rotor. Did I mention it’s self-winding, powered solely by the motion of my arm? It’s so simple yet so astonishingly complex. How cool is that?

Cooler than an Apple Watch, in some ways. Not nearly as cool as an Apple Watch in lots of other ways. My Seiko 5 won’t take photos, measure my heartbeat, or let me check Facebook. But those aren’t the only things that make me tick.

Who Still Wants a BlackBerry?

Seth Stevenson — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 15:12:48 GMT

When Apple puts out a new iPhone, the world stops to let Tim Cook lead it through a slideshow. Each time Samsung launches a new Galaxy flagship, we get weeks of anticipatory leaks and rumors. But when BlackBerry announces a new phone? The universe yawns.

Which is fair. Back in 2009, BlackBerry boasted, by at least one measure, a more than 40 percent share of the smartphone market. By the end of 2014 that slice of the pie had dwindled to 1.8 percent. Nobody pays attention anymore because nobody’s using BlackBerrys. Ever since the iPhone launched in 2007, customers have steadily migrated to phones with big touch screens.

So I found it poignant when BlackBerry rolled out a brand-new model called the “Classic” (now available for $449 unlocked, or for less with a contract at Verizon or AT&T). BlackBerry had flirted in recent years with iPhone-aping designs like the Z30, but the Classic is a throwback to the BlackBerry phones of yore—with a physical QWERTY keyboard and a stout, old-school look. It evokes those salad days when legions of loyal customers referred to their devices as “CrackBerrys.” With the company’s best years seemingly behind it, it’s no surprise BlackBerry longs to hearken back to happier times.

But I was curious about the other side of the equation. Who is this phone for? Are there really diehards out there who pine for a retro BlackBerry? Is there a cadre of fierce BlackBerry revanchists hiding among us?

When I asked Donny Halliwell, a senior product marketing manager at BlackBerry, about the target customer for this phone, he described this person as a “tech conservative” and a “mature power professional who’s come into their career.” Reading between his lines, I got the sense there was one word Halliwell had studiously avoided: “old.” We might deduce that the sort of customer he’s talking about, much like the company itself, would love to relive those glory days of the mid-2000s—the prime of life, when one still had hair and one didn’t need to learn how to use a touch screen.

Halliwell noted that folks who work “in government, the financial sector, and other regulated industries” constitute a major swath of the BlackBerry customer base. So when we talk about these “mature power professionals,” we’re talking about Wall Street executives, law firm partners, and senior government officials. If there’s anything “cool” about BlackBerry these days, it’s that it counts among its user base people like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, David Cameron, and, coolest of all, Frank Underwood.

Given this impressive client roster—hey look, Eric Schmidt, too—I couldn’t help but wonder: Would using a BlackBerry Classic make me feel (even more) mature and powerful? Would I begin to gray at the temples the moment the device was in my palm? Would wing tips sprout on my feet, and cuff links pop to life on my wrists?

Sadly, no. None of these things happened. Nor did I suddenly “come into my career,” much as I prayed for whatever that would mean. Instead, over the weeks I played with the Classic, what mostly happened is I came to understand why it is that only 1.8 percent of smartphone users choose BlackBerry.

I’m going to pause here to ask you some questions: Do you like smooth, responsive touch screens? How about intuitive menu systems? Do you enjoy taking crisp photos and looking at big, sharp images?

If the answer to these questions is yes, I can assure you that you don’t want a BlackBerry Classic.

This simply isn’t the phone to buy if you want to flick around through groovy apps, play frivolous games, or snap cool photos. The Classic’s screen is dwarfed by the new generation of smartphones—meaning, for instance, that you can only see a few tweets at once instead of a long Twitter timeline, and games get squeezed onto a teensy patch of real estate. The camera is substandard—the difference in image quality between this and an iPhone is immediately apparent to anyone with eyes. Apps don’t look as pretty or operate as smoothly. And that’s if you can find the apps at all.

Instagram, for example, is not available for BlackBerry. True, there are “client” apps that manage to replicate it. Halliwell noted that “if you Google around” you can usually find a “workaround” for most missing apps. But I don’t want to Google around. I don’t want workarounds. I want Instagram. And I want to use it with a decent camera.

Of course, you probably suspected all of this already. People don’t use old-school BlackBerrys for fun. They use them for work. For making phone calls, or sending text messages and emails.

When I canvassed friends to see if any were BlackBerry users, the only two who used BlackBerrys by choice were both real-estate agents. One had turned the other onto the phones’ utility. These guys often need to type long, detailed, precise emails while standing outside on a street corner in Manhattan. For this type of task, they favor the physical BlackBerry keyboard.

They’re far from alone in adoring that keyboard. No less a luminary than Kim Kardashian West has gushed: “[I]f you have an email and you need to type fast, you need to have that keyboard.” Amazingly, this is one of the few things she has ever said that she wasn’t paid to say.

Fellow celeb Ryan Seacrest loves the keyboard so much he helped back the Typo2—a product that grafts an imitation of the BlackBerry keyboard onto an iPhone. The idea is to marry Apple’s magical touch screen with BlackBerry’s clicking QWERTY. It’s a decent effort, though when I tried the Typo2 on an iPhone 5s I found its keys were too small and too tightly spaced. The keyboard prosthetic also makes your iPhone bigger in your pocket, throws off its balance in your hand, and covers up the iPhone home key—which means you can’t use your Touch ID fingerprint to unlock the phone or to approve app purchases. (It’s still worth trying the Typo2 if you can’t give up your iPhone but you crave that BlackBerry feel. It’s a clever enough copy that BlackBerry has filed a patent infringement lawsuit.)

I feel Seacrest. By which I mean I understand the fetish out there for physical keyboards. When Michael Jackson died in 2009, I wrote a quick reaction for Slate entirely on a borrowed BlackBerry—rolling two beers deep in the bleachers at an Orioles game—and found I could type on that keyboard just as fast as I could conjure up thoughts.

But that was 2009. Touch screens have come a long way. The iPhone 6 Plus I’ve been using lately has a large, nicely spaced touch-screen keyboard even when you hold the phone vertically. (It’s in fact too large to use with one hand, but that’s a story for a different gadget review.) My thumbs scud across the 6 Plus screen with ease, and the occasional fat finger mistype is a nonissue given Apple’s rapidly improving autocorrect software. What’s more: I like not needing to depress anything. It’s much easier on my thumb joints to lightly tap. It’s no coincidence there’s a repetitive strain injury known as “BlackBerry thumb.” Oh, and those loud clicking sounds! I much prefer the near-silence of a touch screen. I don’t need long, noisy key travel reminiscent of an IBM Selectric.

BlackBerry does possess one clear advantage over its competitors: It’s the choice of IT departments everywhere—especially in government and in those regulated industries Halliwell mentioned. Why? Its platform is secure. To get into the reasons behind this would require a treatise on the nature of the QNX Neutrino microkernel, and neither you nor I want that. But it’s fair to say that BlackBerry has been working hand in hand with IT departments for a long time, creating a protected environment that allows organizations to control features and usage for their armada of corporate mobile phones. In fact, BlackBerry has lately been trying to leverage its security know-how by melding iOS and Android handset options with BlackBerry’s putatively safer software network.

The vast majority of people I know who still use BlackBerrys indeed do so because it’s mandated by the IT people at their workplaces. This is the case with Barack Obama, too. The president has said he “is not allowed, for security reasons, to have an iPhone”—though he was recently spotted eyeing the Bahraini ambassador’s iPhone 6, looking suspiciously covetous.

Sorry, Mr. President. Off-limits for now. I wonder if Obama wishes he could be like most of my friends who have BlackBerrys for work: They keep another phone as a sidepiece—treating it sort of like a lover while they treat the BlackBerry more like a spouse. A safe, nagging, frumpy, boring spouse.

The Implacable Bomber

Seth Stevenson — Fri, 06 Mar 2015 02:45:48 GMT

Wednesday evening, a few hours after she’d testified about the explosion that shredded her leg, Rebekah Gregory posted an open letter to Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. She revealed that Tsarnaev wouldn’t look her in the eye as she sat on the witness stand. And she wrote about the strength that she took from facing him down. “I looked at you right in the face ... and realized I wasn't afraid anymore. And today I realized that sitting across from you was somehow the crazy kind of step forward that I needed all along.” (She also reminded Tsarnaev that she’s free to enjoy her life now while he sits in a cell awaiting a verdict on his life. “So man that really sucks for you bro,” she concluded.)

If there’s been one sliver of light amid all the darkness we’ve heard about in the last two days—listening to witness after witness describe the worst 30 seconds of their lives—it’s been watching these survivors take the stand without fear, alive and plucky, grateful to the brave people who rushed in and helped them. There were even a few lighthearted moments this morning when Jeffrey Bauman took the stand, after walking to the front of the courtroom on two prosthetic legs. Bauman recalled he woke up in the hospital the day after the marathon and saw his best friend John Sullivan in the room. “I knew I wasn’t in heaven,” said Bauman, “because Sully was there.” The courtroom erupted with a burst of pent-up laughter. “Nah, he’s a good person,” said Bauman. When Sullivan handed him a pad to write on—Bauman was still intubated and couldn’t speak, but knew the extent of his injuries—he wrote “Lieutenant Dan” on the paper, referencing a legless character in Forrest Gump. “I was just messing with him,” he explained Thursday with a grin.

Save for Bauman’s upbeat testimony, however, this was not a day of levity. We heard, for instance, police officer Frank Chiola describe his attempt to resuscitate Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old woman who did not survive. When he compressed Campbell’s chest, he said, smoke came out of her mouth.

Roseann Sdoia spoke of the moment that she realized she was going to lose her right leg. “I looked down, I had to do an assessment,” said Sdoia. “I tried to remember if I’d been wearing strappy sandals that day. And I remembered I wasn’t. And then I realized that was just my foot dangling.” A photo of Sdoia exhibited to the jury, taken moments after the blast, made clear why she’d been confused.

Officer Lauren Woods recounted the last moments of Lingzi Lu, a 23-year-old Boston University grad student who died on Boylston Street. Lu was vomiting over and over, so Woods tried to clear out her mouth to let her breathe. “Stay with us,” she said to Lu, “You can do this, stay strong.” After Lu died, Woods stayed with the body, explaining, “She was part of the crime scene now.” When Lu’s parents came to Boston from China, Woods took them to the spot where Lingzi had died and prayed with them.

The day ended with the testimony of William Richard, the father of 8-year-old Martin. Richard calmly narrated the events of that marathon Monday, which had ended with his wife blind in one eye, his 6 year-old daughter Jane missing a leg, and Martin dead. The prosecution at one point asked Richard to annotate a photo taken the afternoon of the marathon, showing his family standing next to the race route just before the first explosion. “That’s me,” he said, circling himself with the telestrator. “That’s Jane, with two legs. And that’s Martin.” Looming behind them in the photo, we could see a familiar, unsettling image—a skinny young man in a backward baseball cap. “Did you ever see this person with the white hat turned backwards?” asked the prosecutor. Richard appeared to briefly glance at Tsarnaev and answered: “Until today, in person? No.”

With the defense team having allowed on the first day of the trial that their client is indeed the bomber, it is in some ways a strange exercise to hear this litany of heartbreaking stories. Of course, the prosecution must fulfill its duty—dotting i’s and crossing t’s to secure a guilty verdict—and no one would wish to deny the victims and their families the right to testify against Tsarnaev in court. But I would guess that many of the jurors would prefer to just convict Tsarnaev right now, sparing themselves future days of disturbing testimony from the witness box and horrifying images on the courtroom’s television screens.

For their part, the lawyers have moved on to the next stage of the battle—the part where they try to paint Tsarnaev as either a remorseless murderer or a troubled patsy. Thursday, they squabbled over whether mentions of U.S. actions in the Middle East would be allowed in this part of the trial. When Officer Chiola compared the scene on Boylston Street to things he’d witnessed as a Marine in Iraq (“It took me back,” he said, his voice choked with emotion), the defense immediately objected and Judge George O’Toole agreed, asking Chiola to limit his recollections to the day at issue. The defense also halted Officer Woods when she revealed that her cousin had died in Iraq and began to explain that this affected the way she dealt with Lingzi Lu’s death.

Later, with the jury and the witnesses out of the room, the two sides had it out. “This military theme” is “peculiarly prejudicial,” argued defense attorney David Bruck, given that his client is an immigrant Muslim. “It sets up an ‘us versus them’ framework,” said Bruck. Judge O’Toole sided with him. “I don’t want to hear the word Iraq or Afghanistan until we get to that later stage of the case,” said O’Toole.

But that later stage is here, given the defense’s concession of guilt. The jury is already beginning to decide whether they will let Tsarnaev live or put him to death. And it’s not at all clear which is the more fitting outcome. Does Tsarnaev think that death equals martyrdom? Would allowing him to live mean his side has “won,” thus granting him a victory he doesn’t deserve? And which is the more severe punishment, anyway? Would you rather be executed or spend 60-odd years in a box? I’m not even sure I can answer for myself.

At the beginning of the day, before the jury came in, Bruck made a strange request of the judge. He asked that one of the cameras in the courtroom be turned off. It’s a camera that allows the media—those of us who sit in an overflow room and watch the proceedings on closed-circuit TV—to get the same head-on view of Tsarnaev that the witnesses get as they sit in the box. Bruck complained that none of the media in the courtroom get this view, and that it invades the “privacy” the defense team would like to have when they confer with their client. Judge O’Toole did not make a ruling but said he’d consider the issue.

I’m quite certain that what’s bothering Bruck is the proliferation of media stories describing Tsarnaev’s disquietingly casual affect—his toe-tapping, his beard-fiddling, the way he leans back in his chair with his collar open like he’s a Hollywood studio exec at a pitch meeting. We in the media get a great view of this behavior from that camera. Of more concern to Bruck should be the fact that the jury gets a clear look at it, too.

If I’d done something as evil as Tsarnaev has done, the worst punishment I can imagine—worse than death or a lifetime of prison—would be if I were forced to watch, hour after hour, as a parade of people faced me and told me in chilling detail about the day I robbed them of their limbs, or killed one of their children. That’s Tsarnaev’s punishment right now. It doesn’t seem to bother him much.

“It Was Him”

Seth Stevenson — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 01:09:44 GMT

At this morning’s opening statements in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the alleged Boston Marathon bomber, two things became clear: 1) The prosecution has amassed mountains of evidence implicating Tsaranev—the heft of it certain to be convincing, the grains of it certain to be horrifying. 2) The defense team doesn’t care. For them, this trial will begin only after Dzhokhar is found guilty.

A few minutes before 9 a.m., prosecutor William Weinreb stood alone near the center of the courtroom, staring at the empty jury box. He fiddled with his lectern and microphone. He appeared to be steeling himself to deliver his opening monologue. Soon the jury filed in, the judge offered opening remarks, and then Weinreb began to describe in detail the death, anguish, and destruction wrought by the bombs that exploded near the marathon finish line in April of 2013.

He spoke of surveillance tapes that show Dzhokhar at the scene of the crime, lingering just behind a group of children—among them Martin Richard, an 8-year old boy who was ripped apart by the explosion from Tsarnaev’s backpack bomb. Weinreb talked of other footage, as well: video of Dzhokhar, 20 minutes after the bombs went off, calmly shopping at a Whole Foods grocery store, where he purchased a gallon of milk and then switched his mind and exchanged it for a different gallon of milk. Weinreb quoted from Dzhokhar’s Twitter account in the wake of the bombing (“I’m a stress-free kind of guy”), from text messages he sent to a friend (“I saw the news. Better not text me. LOL”), and from the screed Dzhokhar penciled on the hull of the dry-docked boat that he hid in during the police manhunt (“I ask Allah to make me a shahied to allow me to return to him and be among all the righteous people in the highest levels of heaven”).

Weinreb concluded by showing the jurors photos of the four dead victims. First came pleasant-faced Sean Collier, the MIT police officer whom Dzhokhar and his brother Tamerlan allegedly shot point-blank in the head three times. Then a photo of 29-year-old Krystle Campbell, here looking happy and lounging in a Tom Brady football jersey—as the jury looked at her face, Weinreb told them that “her back was burned red.” Lingzi Lu, the 23-year-old Boston University graduate student, was pictured sipping from a coffee mug as Weinreb mentioned the “perforating holes in her legs.” And finally Martin Richard, the tiny 8-year-old from Dorchester, wearing a green T-shirt and a wide smile. “Martin Richard was only 4 feet 5 inches tall and weighed 80 pounds,” said Weinreb, “so the bomb damaged his entire body.”

Of Dzhokhar, Weinreb said, “He believed that what he had done was something good. Something right. He believed he was in a holy war.”

A little less than an hour after Weinreb began, defense attorney Judy Clarke took the lectern for her response. Her manner was more folksy than Weinreb’s. Where the prosecutor had offered rat-a-tat facts, one gruesome reality after another, Clarke slowed down to speak to the jury as though they were having a coffee together. Like they were discussing a mutual friend who’d made a bad life decision.

“The circumstances that bring us here today are still difficult to grasp,” she said. “We’re going to come face to face with unbearable grief, loss, and pain caused by a series of senseless, horribly misguided acts carried out by two brothers—26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev and”—here she gestured toward the young man sitting a few feet away at the defendant’s table—“his younger brother, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.”

This was an unconventional opening argument. In her first paragraph, Clarke freely admitted her client’s guilt. “There’s little that we dispute,” she acknowledged of the government’s case. And then came a sentence you’ll very rarely hear from a defense attorney: “It was him.”

But Clarke then shifted gears, anticipating the jury’s confusion. “So you might say,” she posited, voicing the question they were no doubt now asking themselves, “’Why a trial?’”

The unspoken answer: Because this jury will decide whether Dzhokhar lives or dies.

Much earlier this morning, before the jurors were brought in, Judge George O’Toole had issued a ruling on the prosecution’s motion to exclude “mitigation evidence.” This means evidence that doesn’t speak to whether Dzhokhar committed these crimes, but rather evidence that helps to explain why he might have done it. Namely, that he was influenced and controlled by his radicalized older brother, Tamerlan.

The prosecution wants this first phase of the trial to be strictly about determining Dzhokhar’s guilt, which shouldn’t be a challenge. But the defense hopes to begin laying groundwork for the more important second phase, when the jury will decide (presuming they’ve already convicted Dzhokhar) whether to execute the defendant or to lock him up in a prison for life. Clarke’s specialty is to secure the latter fate for her clients no matter how diabolical their crimes. She’s successfully saved the lives of the Unabomber, Jared Loughner, Susan Smith, and Eric Rudolph—a pack of murderers who today sit in prison instead of on death row.*

Judge O’Toole granted the motion to exclude mitigation evidence, with some minor caveats. That didn’t stop Clarke from trying to slip in mitigation, wherever she could. Her strategy is evident: She hopes to humanize Dzhokhar for the jurors. And thus she showed them a photo of a cute, fresh-faced, tween Dzhokhar being bear-hugged by his much larger, more menacing, stubbled older brother. She suggested that while Tamerlan spent his time on the Internet “immersed in death and destruction and carnage in the Middle East,” Dzhokhar spent his time “doing things that teenagers do—Facebook, cars, girls.”

Though Judge O’Toole, sounding quite cranky, halted Clarke midsentence at one point to inform the jury that they will hear only “very limited evidence” regarding Tamerlan’s effect on Dzhokhar, Clarke ignored him and kept plowing along in the same vein. “Dzhokhar became vulnerable to the influence of someone he loved and respected very much,” she said. “He must be held responsible. But he came to his role by a very different path than the one suggested to you by the prosecution. It was a path paved by his brother.”

When opening statements concluded, the government’s presentation of evidence began. And we saw the shape of this first phase of the trial. In truth, both sides are already fighting over whether Dzhokhar should be killed or spared. The prosecution—while fulfilling its duty to prove Dzhokhar was culpable—will be mostly focused on painting Tsarnaev as a callous, evil monster. The kind of guy who shops for milk after he kills a little kid.

Along with photos and videos of the chaos, with blood and shrapnel and shredded limbs everywhere, the government presented the testimony of people who’d witnessed the hellscape. We heard from Shane O’Hara, the manager of a sporting goods store near the finish line of the race. “It was like a scene from Saving Private Ryan or Platoon,” he says of the moments after a bomb detonated, “something I never thought I would see in real life.” The prosecution played video from inside O’Hara’s store, showing people ripping T-shirts off the hangers to use as tourniquets and gauze. O’Hara admitted that, as the manager, he’d briefly worried about all the inventory, which brought a chuckle. But then he broke down on the stand. “There are things that haunt me,” he said. “Making decisions. Who needed help first, who needed more. That was never my role to make that decision, but you felt you had to do that.”

We heard from Rebekah Gregory, a woman whose leg—torn apart in the blast—was amputated just a few months ago, after 17 surgeries failed to repair it. She’d spent the week after the bombing in a medically induced coma. We heard from Karen McWatters, who lost not just her leg but her close friend, as she held Krystle Campbell’s hand while Campbell died. “I got close to her head and we put our faces together and we tried to talk to each other,” said McWatters on the stand. “And I didn’t see how bad her injuries were. She very slowly said that her legs hurt. And we held hands. And her hand went limp in mine. And she never spoke after that.”

Sydney Corcoran, a 19-year-old woman with long, dark hair, recalled waking up on the sidewalk in pain. “I remember a man putting his forehead to mine and telling me I was going to be okay and I just needed to hold on,” she said. “He was telling the people around him that I was going white. And I could feel my body getting tingly, and I was getting cold. And I knew I was dying.” She was brought to an ambulance with minutes to spare before she would have bled out. But she didn’t think her parents, who’d been standing next to her, had made it. “I thought I was an orphan,” she said, through tears. Her mother lost both legs, but both parents survived.

As all these people speak, and weep, sitting a few feet in front of Dzhokhar and facing him, I wonder what he has in his head. Judy Clarke once said of her clients, "They're looking into the lens of life in prison in a box. Our job is to provide them with a reason to live."

But for a man in those circumstances, Dzhokhar looks strangely unperturbed. He has a casual demeanor in the courtroom, wearing his collar open and two buttons undone. He taps his fingers on his attorneys’ binders to play imaginary piano chords. He leans back in his chair, and his feet waggle underneath the table. He smiles a fair amount during interstitial moments.

What goes through his mind as he sees this footage, and hears from these people who’ve lost limbs, who’ve lost friends, who feared they would die? Does he simply look at all these white Americans telling their sad tales and equate them to the woes of innocent, civilian Muslim victims of American bullets and bombs? Does he feel twinges of remorse, now that he’s forced to contemplate the residue of his actions in gruesome detail? Or does he spend his time wondering whether this jury will spare his life or put him to death?

When the day ended, Judge O’Toole reminded the jury not to discuss, read about, or give any thought to the case until they returned to the courthouse tomorrow morning. “There are plenty of other things to think about in your life,” O’Toole suggested.

Sure, I guess. But I find it impossible to believe that any of these jurors can clear their minds of the gory images they saw, or of the testimony they heard. And they haven’t even heard the worst of it yet.

*Correction, March 5, 2015, 12:13 a.m.: This article originally misspelled the moniker “Unabomber.”

What Has Downton Learned From Reality TV? We Discuss the Latest Episode.

June Thomas — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 13:02:00 GMT

Each week, Slate culture critic and Outward editor June Thomas will join frequent contributor Seth Stevenson to dissect the latest developments on the new season of Downton Abbey.

In this installment of the podcast, Thomas and Stevenson discuss the dowager countess’ romantic past with Prince Kuragin, how Rose’s quick thinking earned Lord Sinderby’s trust, and what lessons Downton Abbey has learned from reality TV.

Spoilers for Episodes 4 to 9 will be made available to Slate Plus members on Sundays at 10 p.m. Eastern, at the conclusion of the PBS broadcast—and to non-members on Tuesdays morning. (Want early access? Join Slate Plus!)

Note: As the name implies, this podcast contains spoilers, and is meant to be listened to after you watch each episode.