These are gross generalizations, but I think they have some truth to them. The book achieves this mainly by tracing the lives of various individuals from different backgrounds through the years. But this is the direction we have to go in. He proposes a different vision, which he thinks offers brighter possibilities, centered around the concept of equality and non-demagogic appeals to patriotism. Human Rights in North Korea to Stay on UN Security Council Radar,US News is a recognized leader in college, grad school, hospital, mutual fund, and car rankings. I dont think you can persuade people. But underlying that there was a consensus about what the economy needed and what society needed. No matter what happens, Mr. Remnick told writers on one recent Zoom call, he would not ask them to cross virtual picket lines. Buy on Bookshop. I agree. But I mean it in a larger sense. And its legacy might be similar. The unionization effort has created an uncomfortable moment for the writers at The New Yorker, who have the kind of jobs and influence every journalist wants but few attain. In recent years, a small group of scholars has focussed on war-termination theory. Ben Rhodes was the Presidents speechwriter, foreign-policy adviser, and confidant. Smart America is where I mostly live, but its no longer a meritocracy, if it ever was. Its really early, and we dont know how much hes going to get done. How do you understand that? They also have deep confidence in his ability to make their work better. Am I really prepared to say its over? When he came back from book leave in mid-2013, Packers New Yorker editors suggested the idea to him. They arent particularly concerned with the terms of the debate in Washingtontime lines, benchmarks, departure dates, troop numbers. The union includes 120 people and there are about the same number of staff and contributing writers. Id call that Real America. Its all particularly personal at The New Yorker, where the campaign has pitted a culture built on personal relationships and deep trust against a group of employees who reject the idea that they should be subject to the whims of any boss, no matter how benign. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories, George Packer, a staff writer from 2003 to 2018, has covered the Iraq War for The New Yorker and has also written about the atrocities committed in Sierra Leone, civil unrest in the Ivory Coast, the megacity of Lagos, and the global counterinsurgency. Every passing year makes that clearer. . Those two things together, I think, have given us Real America. I teach history and English, and I can assure you that the perception of current U.S. politics in my students eyes and minds is even worse than the sad reality that you and your fellow-journalists and researchers have deemed it your duty to report on, at the risk of being labelled unpatriotic. But Democrats are just as scared. An organizer for the NewsGuild who was present, Nastaran Mohit, told the writers she had avoided involving them in the original organizing drive because she knew how close many of them were to management, and she was worried theyd snitch. Has the Arab League taken an interest in the plight of displaced Iraqis? (Ive had a front-row seat to that and continue to at The New York Times, and wrote about the trend last year.). patriotic feeling has to be tapped if you want to achieve anything big. Writers who are skeptical of the unions tactics some told me they object to its confrontational social media style have bitten their tongues or deleted critical tweets. I very much enjoyed this piece, because it seems to fit . And they all come, in some ways, from that original passion for equality. Betrayed started with a simple feelingdismay and anger at the news that Iraqis I knew were being abandoned to their fate. And its also becoming more illiberal. It has set off reflections on their status and revealed the rare bond and unusual deference many of them feel toward Mr. Remnick. "[4], Packer graduated from Yale College in 1982, where he resided at Calhoun College (now called Grace Hopper College). Instead, youll be speaking to them ideologically, and they might tune you out. Packer describes the decline of America from a very specific . But some also shun its blunt and adversarial language. Theres an overlap. The other thing that I hold some hope in, in lowering the temperature, is simply improving the material conditions of peoples lives through government. It doesnt help in policy because you wont know what works and what doesnt, and it doesnt help politically because I think most people still have the idea that individual effort makes a difference and that it should be rewarded. Amazon is good for online shoppers, but is it good for books? Other material is new. Packer's maternal grandfather, George Huddleston, Sr., had served eleven successive terms (19151937) representing Alabama's 9th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. And both are in an almost permanent state of conflict, in which the country really isnt progressing. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Compared to Iraq or the recession in rural North Carolina, I thought it would be relatively straightforward, Packer said. His essays and articles have appeared in Boston Review, The Nation, World Affairs, Harper's, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, among other publications. We had a President who sowed division, and the result is that hundreds of thousands are dead. Were loud. In November 2013, The Unwinding received the National Book Award for Nonfiction. She told them, two people in the room said, that the guild could protect them from being fired and could even defend them against misguided editorial choices, if, for example, an editor she cited Arianna Huffington suddenly wanted everyone to write about sleep. I think youre right. Bluntly, re: NewsGuild, what it comes down to for me is that I would never hire an agent who had lied to or about me, Mr. Taub wrote to a WhatsApp group for staff writers after the incident. But in times of widespread opportunity, the distance between gods and mortals closes, the monuments shrink closer to human size and the centrality of celebrities in the culture recedes. The New Yorker is now working out the final details of a contract, and people on both sides appeared optimistic they would reach an agreement this week. But the alternatives to American power will be even less appealing. Im really quite divided about this, Isaac. Exactly. Some of the material in this article is also drawn from reporting on this topic by my colleagues Noam Scheiber and Marc Tracy. The writers discussed whether they should follow their colleagues into the NewsGuild, and whether the magazine treated writers fairly. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. An editor there, Daniel Menaker, wrote years later that he was embarrassed about the ineffectuality and yes, ordinariness of the Guild people wed come in contact with, but also that Mr. Shawns conduct had been revealing a classic case of liberals turning to the right when the capitalist chips were down just as I had been told, from my childhood on, liberals usually do.. While the union won headlines by marching to Ms. Wintours house, which was guarded, disappointingly, by two low-key men in shapeless cotton shirts, Ms. Wintour has no real involvement in The New Yorker. For example, in your Letter from Sudan, published in the magazine last year, you described the Sudanese politician Hasan al-Turabi right down to his flower-patterned polyester socks. Where do you get your inspiration? He has done more to pursue social justice than any President since Johnson. And underlying much of the 2021 labor tensions are political tensions. It doesnt happen in neighborhoods. The Depression that ended Fitzgeralds Jazz Age yielded to a new order that might be called the Roosevelt Republic. All rights reserved. The lesson is not to embrace one or the other; its to combine them with wisdom. What did George Toma say about why the Super Bowl 57 field was so slippery? The moment, of course, seems all the stranger, in that much of the conflict is playing out virtually, while everyone is working remotely. Many talk of him as an adored, slightly feared and somewhat distant father whose approval they always seek. I can do what you cant do. It is not the same as the ideal of everyone being equal, which is in the Declaration of Independence, because of course throughout our history lots of people have not been equal. One of the things Packer mentions is the Gazelle Project, referencing Stones book. The book proposes my own narrative, although it doesnt claim it as a narrative. In "Our Man," Packer, who recently joined the Atlantic after years writing for the New Yorker, conducted more than 200 interviews and had exclusive access to Holbrooke's diaries and private . In this episode, Andrew is joined by George Packer, the author of Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal, to explore the four narratives that now dominate American life: Free America, Smart America, Real America, and Just America. And that rebellion was out in the heartland. But the desire to be equal, I think, is still there as a driving passion. They also want to live normal lives, and they dont see that happening with an American departure. 2,141 likes. That dynamic's been entrenched for six, seven years now. The editor, who is 62, has also said he doesnt plan to follow the example of William Shawn, who ran the magazine until he was nearly 80 and the institution had become a kind of museum of itself. He is the author of several books, including The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, and The Assassins Gate: America in Iraq, which was named one of the ten best books of 2005 by the New York Times and won the New York Public Librarys Helen Bernstein Book Award and an Overseas Press Club book award. They sat in a big circle and, like the millennials only a few of them are, shared details of their own compensation arrangements. The Democrats did all they could in the early Obama years to find some common ground, even with large majorities in Congress. George Packer, resident egghead-journalist at the New Yorker - and Iraq war supporter-turned-"anguished" semi-recanter - is the latest "liberal" to turn his guns on Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald for their alleged devotion to libertarianism.A whole genre has grown up around this subject: Sean Wilentz, writing in The New . Without some emotional impetus, its impossible for me to spend months (in this case, three), travel thousands of miles, and take risks in reporting a story. The President and his new national-security adviser, John Bolton, are in an especially bad position to respond to the atrocities in Syria. For more information:. By Alexander Russo It's no simple task when journalists decide to write about their families' school choices and their children's classroom experiences. We are not just different but better, and in some ways we must crush you. Or has the threat to liberalism by Just America been overstated? A new mood of activism has swept through the home of the mascot Eustace Tilley. And that was a really potent story that Reagan told, and that the Republican Party lived by for decades, and to some extent still does. These are all obviously pie in the sky, because people are trying to do this and right now, with Congress, it isnt happening. When you say that if liberals do not engage in a certain form of patriotism then that space will be taken over by the right, are you talking about winning votes? Well be lucky if we do. Theyve agreed on a $55,000 starting salary and are hashing out issues like caps on potential health care cost increases, people familiar with the talks said even as the Guild threatens a strike. The Talk of the . Politicians are always letting the public off the hookit might be the most unforgivably dishonest thing they do. But why does neither of them appeal to you? New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Photograph by Ahmed Muhammed Ali / Anadolu Agency / Getty. The companys lawyers werent happy either, with the name at least, compelling the project to be called the Small Publisher Negotiation Program., Packer also included a suggestion from super-agent Andrew Wylie that publishers stop selling their books to Amazon altogether. It obviously has to do with leadership. Anyone can read what you share. But youre right: in politics, its barely got a toehold. Were arrogant. . She changed a bit during the campaign, but I think of her as something of a throwback. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Patriotism, to me, is closer to what Im trying to describe because its like loyalty. New Yorker writer Packer (Interesting Times: Writing from a Turbulent Decade, 2009, etc.) Its a pretty radical solution, if you think about what it would do to their sales he said. . Do you think youre more likely to say, when looking back on Just America in this period, Wow, that was a crazy time that many of our institutions on the left went through, and they did a lot of harm, or You know what? Hillary Clinton stepping down as Secretary of State. But that is precisely the problem: Packer - I believe, and please correct me if I am wrong - has no training in North Africa's history and politics and I don't think he has spent much time there except for these quick hit trips for the long New Yorker piece (again, please correct me if I am wrong). But other tensions revolve around the sense that the junior jobs only rarely offer promotions into the ranks of writers, and no clear career path. Ably guided by moderator Dorothy Wickenden, Ryan Lizza, Hendrik Hertzberg, and George Packer engaged in a spirited and relatively unepigrammatic discussion about . But I have also come to believe that Iraq represents a larger failure than just that of individuals in the Bush Administration or the Administration as a whole. 1960) is a US journalist, novelist, and playwright. Free Americans' individualistic, leave-me-alone conception of . A new mood of activism has swept through the home of the mascot Eustace Tilley.CreditNick Little. He summarized what he saw as the consensus view in another WhatsApp message to colleagues. In 1976, a group of employees got fed up with flat wages and, among other things, a 50 percent cut to the magazines annual psychiatric benefit, and brought in the union (then the Newspaper Guild) to set things right. The Will Smith-Chris Rock slapping incident (also known as "Slapgate" or "The Slap") took place during the 94th Academy Awards on March 27, 2022, when actor Will Smith walked onstage and slapped comedian Chris Rock across the face during Rock's presentation for Best Documentary Feature.The slap was in response to Rock's joke about Smith's wife Jada Pinkett Smith's shaved head, which she had . Can the rightward forty-five per cent of the country at this point be talked to? She joined the L.A. Times in 2010 as staff writer in Books and left in 2018. George Packer broke with the magazines tight-lipped traditions by sharing details of his own deal with Cond Nast. And we can get into the reasons why, but I think its both increasingly illiberal philosophicallywhich scares me, since we have so much illiberalism in our society right nowand its politically perverse and fails to understand American voters in some basic ways that it needs to if it wants to make real change. One point of view is that you have to be aware of racism and different identities and different inequalities if you want to take the step of improving everyones life. By the whim of the editor, she replied. The magazine was once a charity case among flush glossies, but its subscription business, which boomed in the Trump years, has given its editor unique leverage: The New Yorker avoided companywide layoffs last year, and has also been left out of the rest of Cond Nasts painful drive toward centralization. How did Betrayed come together? But the other chunk of the story is how much Gutekunst wants to see more of Love in the regular season. By George Packer. Obama did what you are talking about, in terms of making compromises in the way he talked about certain issues. In addition, he has written two novels, The Half Man and Central Square., 2023 Cond Nast. He has tried to be reassuring, even as the prospect of putting out the print magazine without editorial staff members looms. And one thing thats interesting about both Real America and Just America is the rate of change, how fast theyve come on and how quickly theyve seized a lot of cultural groundat least, a lot of the discourse, if not the institutions of power. Right. Projects on that scalewhich is where national service comes in againseem like a better way than just attempting to give a big speech in the Obama mode, saying, There is no Red America, there is no Blue America, because that doesnt work. Comment. In the best tradition of Carlyle and Swift, he spends much of the first half of the book . Some of the writers are also worried about the impact of a strike. When Wilson added some steel to his idealism and, as Roosevelt had been urging, brought America into the Great War, his decision ended in a bitter peace in Europe, a period of reaction in America, Wilsons political and personal self-destruction, and the groundwork for the next world war. And that has left the most prominent writers mainly watching from the sidelines in recent weeks as a bitter labor dispute has consumed their beloved magazine. A lot of people think of Just America as a response to Trump, too, which is why its interesting that youre defining it as just as much a reaction to Smart America. The New Yorker staff writer George Packer answers readers' questions about his article " Betrayed," from the issue of April 2, 2007. George Packer (born ca. The New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm was asked during a libel case how compensation was set. Maybe publishers need to think disruptively and not be victims., Maybe, he added, they should think a little more like predators., [For the Record, 1:15 p.m. PST Feb. 10: An earlier version of this post misquoted author George Packer as saying, Maybe publishers need to think destructively and not be victims. He used the word disruptively, not destructively.], Join Carolyn Kellogg on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
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