默默新聞08

2021年7月17日星期六

July 17, 2021

By Jamelle Bouie

Opinion Columnist

Hey there! For the last two and a half months I have been on parental leave, spending lots of time with our new daughter, who you'll have a chance to meet in this weekend's "Photo of the Week" section. But I'm back to work now (and mostly refreshed).

For my Tuesday column, I wrote about the Jan. 6 insurrection and the reasons Donald Trump has escaped any sanction or consequences. Part of the argument was a look at the fates of the leaders of the Confederacy, most of whom died free men. I gave a paragraph each to the postwar lives of the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, and its vice president, Alexander Stephens, and in particular, I cited their books, which were key texts for what would become the "Lost Cause."

There is absolutely no reason to read these books — the historian David Blight described Davis's book as "perhaps the longest, most turgid, and most self-righteous defense of a failed political cause ever written by an American" — but I think they are interesting as artifacts and oddities. Stephens's book is a remarkable attempt to wave away the historical record, an early instance of what we might call "disinformation."

Remember, Stephens did not just serve as the Confederacy's vice president; he delivered the most infamous speech in defense of the Confederacy, given two weeks before the attack on Fort Sumter. Called the "Cornerstone Speech," it takes its name from this passage:

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[The Confederacy's] foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

There is no doubt or ambiguity here. Stephens was as explicit as you can get and then some. Which raises an obvious question: How exactly does he backpedal from something as clear as his declaration, later in the address, that "the negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system"?

Well, he does it by just pretending he never said it. Here is Stephens in the introduction to "A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States":

That the war had its origins in opposing principles, which, in their action upon the conduct of men, produced the ultimate collision of arms, may be assumed as an unquestionable fact. But the opposing principles which produced these results in physical action were of a very different character from those assumed in the postulate. They lay in the organic Structure of the Government of the States. The conflict in principle arose from different and opposing ideas as to the nature of what is known as the General Government. The contest was between those who held it to be strictly Federal in its character, and those who maintained that it was thoroughly National. It was a strife between the principles of Federation, on the one side, and Centralism, or Consolidation, on the other.

As for slavery? It was now not the central issue of the war but only "the question on which these antagonist principles, which had been in conflict, from the beginning, on divers other questions, were finally brought into actual and active collision with each on the field of battle."

This is obvious nonsense to many readers now, and I have to imagine it was obvious nonsense to many readers then. But just because something is nonsense doesn't mean it can't be influential, and Stephens's attempt to distance the Confederate cause from slavery per se would have the intended effect. For decades, white Americans North and South would downplay slavery as the cause of the war, pointing instead to other, supposedly higher issues like "states' rights" and competing economic systems.

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In other words, the thing about propaganda and disinformation is that they work, and even if the truth eventually wins out, "eventually" can be a very, very long time.

What I Wrote

While on break I thought a lot about punishment and accountability or the lack thereof when it comes to certain kinds of revolt or rebellion. My Tuesday column touched on the subject:

We are not the only democracy to have had a corrupt, would-be authoritarian in high office. But we have had a hard time holding that person minimally accountable, much less keeping him out of contention for future office, which would have been accomplished had he been removed from the White House.

My Friday column stuck to the same time period but covered a different topic: the backlash to universal suffrage in the wake of emancipation in the South and demographic change in the North:

For as much as Jim Crow dominates our collective memory of voting restrictions, it is the attack on suffrage in the North in those last decades of the 19th century that might actually be more relevant to our present situation.

Now Reading

Arundhati Roy on the Covid catastrophe in India in The Guardian.

Ashton Pittman on racism and denial in the Mississippi Free Press.

Theo Whitcomb on rural Oregon's war on the homeless in The Baffler.

Adam Harris on the Republican Party's obsession with critical race theory in The Atlantic.

Jerusalem Demsas on the broken American housing market in Vox.

Allison P. Davis on the end of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian's relationship in New York magazine.

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Feedback. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to your friends. They can sign up here. If you want to share your thoughts on an item in this week's newsletter or on the newsletter in general, please email me at jamelle-newsletter@nytimes.com. You can follow me on Twitter (@jbouie) and Instagram.

Photo of the Week

Introducing Julia Anne Bouie, born April 22. She is named for Anna Julia Cooper, an African-American scholar and public intellectual who counted Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, W.E.B. Du Bois and Carter G. Woodson as contemporaries. Born in 1858, Cooper lived to see the 1963 March on Washington. Julia is also named for her great-grandmother Anne.

Now Eating: Spicy Quinoa Salad With Broccoli, Cilantro and Lime

The big change to my diet while I've been on break has been much more fish. Some of that is fresh, but most of it is tinned — high-quality "conservas" from producers in Spain and Portugal. At first, I ate them with toast and a few accouterments. But lately I've been adding them to grain salads as an additional bit of protein. I made this salad earlier in the week for lunch and ate it with some smoked herring I picked up from Wildfish Cannery. Sardines and mackerel would work too. I encourage you to try whatever fits your palate! Recipe comes slightly adapted from the Cooking section of The New York Times.

Ingredients

2½ cups cooked quinoa
1½ cups steamed broccoli florets (about ⅓ of a crown), steamed for 4 to 5 minutes, then separated into smaller florets
½ cup chopped cilantro
1 to 2 tablespoons toasted pumpkin seeds (to taste)
1½ to 2 teaspoons minced serrano or jalapeño chile (to taste)
1 ounce crumbled feta cheese (¼ cup)
Freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
Salt to taste
1 garlic clove, minced or puréed
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 avocado, sliced

Directions

In a large bowl, combine quinoa, broccoli, cilantro, pumpkin seeds, minced chile, feta and freshly ground pepper. Toss together.

In a small bowl or measuring cup whisk together lime juice, salt and garlic. Add olive oil and whisk until amalgamated. Add to salad and toss together well. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Serve in a bowl with a tinned fish of your choice. Garnish each serving with a few slices of avocado.

IN THE TIMES

Charlottesville Removes Robert E. Lee Statue at Center of White Nationalist Rally

The statue was a focus of the deadly "Unite the Right" rally in 2017. The city removed it on Saturday along with a monument to Stonewall Jackson and a statue of Lewis & Clark and the Shoshone Indian Sacagawea.

By Hawes Spencer and Michael Levenson

The Subversive Joy of Lil Nas X's Gay Pop Stardom

A peek into a hot boy summer filled with new highs, disappointment and growth.

By Jazmine Hughes

Ibram X. Kendi on What Conservatives — and Liberals — Get Wrong About Antiracism

A challenging discussion on the hard, and sometimes unanswerable, questions around racism and public policy.

By 'The Ezra Klein Show'

Brent Staples

How the White Press Wrote Off Black America

News organizations are belatedly apologizing for racist journalism that alienated generations of African-Americans

By Brent Staples

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2021年7月16日星期五

The Daily: Interviewing the Interviewer, Again

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July 16, 2021

As you might have heard on the show, Michael Barbaro and his wife recently had a baby. Over the next few months, Michael won't be working every day, giving you the chance to hear from a broader set of voices on the show. Recently, we introduced you to guest host Astead Herndon. Today, you'll get to meet another one: Sabrina Tavernise, a national correspondent.

Then, read on for The Daily's 2021 summer playlist. If you've got a song that you've been grooving to this summer, send it to us at thedaily@nytimes.com.

Introducing Sabrina Tavernise

Host-to-host banter via Slack.Michael Barbaro

Michael Barbaro: So Sabrina, this is all about you, so let me start with a big ol' Daily-style inquiry. Where does the Sabrina Tavernise journalism story start? Don't hold back. I really do mean the beginning.

Sabrina Tavernise: Oh wow. Didn't realize this was the idea.

Michael: Oh yes. We are going there. So, where did you grow up?

Sabrina: A tiny rural community in western Mass., called Granville. It has lots of apples and votes Republican; 1,800 people.

Michael: That's small.

Sabrina: Yes, too small for a high school. And it is still shrinking. They just closed the primary school, because there aren't enough kids. It's beautiful though.

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Michael: It literally sounds like the kind of place Sabrina Tavernise writes about today. Changing. Shrinking. Uncomfortably.

Sabrina: Yes, in a way, yes.

Michael: GRANVILLE, MASS. — I write about these kind of towns all the time.

Sabrina: Hahahahahaahah

Michael: So what came next?

Sabrina: I had studied Russian in college. I wanted to go to Russia. I sent my résumé to dozens of places in Moscow. None took me. I called the National Audubon Society in Alaska and someone named Bucky told me there was an opening for a translator going to a nature preserve near Magadan.

Michael: Magadan, Russia, that is. (I had to Google that). Well, wow. Thanks, Bucky!

Sabrina: I spent two months on an uninhabited piece of land strewn with rusty barrels of oil with like 30 high school kids and a few educators. On my way back to Anchorage at the end of the summer, I met someone who was leaving a U.S.A.I.D. funded job in Magadan. A kind of school that taught Russians about capitalism.

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I worked there for two years. My Russian got really good. I sometimes went on a radio program out there. Then in 1997, I moved to Moscow. I had no plans. But I had great Russian. I made a list of the things I liked to do and was good at, and didn't like to do and was bad at. Basically journalism came out on top because I had this instinct to write home about everything that I was seeing. And trying to convey the wonder and the sense of the absurd in everyday Russia. It was the same instinct for being a foreign correspondent.

Michael: So, why Russian language and why Russia, of all places?

Sabrina: Complete accident. I had to take a language requirement. The wall was falling. I chose Russian.

I loved the challenge of trying to figure out: Where is this country headed, based on its distant past (I was reading its history), its current events (I would soon be covering them)?

Michael: What kept you there and drew you in?

Sabrina: It sounds cheesy, but it is true: The people. Russia is such a weird place. Dark in so many ways, but also utterly fun-loving and throws caution to the wind. Every day might be your last, so let's spend everything right now and have a really good time. A disaster, but a really charming one.

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It was also the place I grew up — spent most of my 20s. Owned my first car. Had my first car stolen! Met my husband.

Michael: Caution to wind indeed!

So once you find yourself in Russia, having mastered the language and deciding that journalism is the best way to communicate everything you're experiencing and observing, how did you go about finding a reporting gig? What was your big breakthrough in the field?

Sabrina: I applied all over and didn't get hired. But there was this new news agency called Bloomberg News. They had one guy in a conference room in a hotel in Moscow called the Olympic Penta. He gave me a short writing test and then basically hired me on the spot. So then it was just me and him working in that conference room. Competing with Reuters staff of 50-60.

I remember at the time no one knew what Bloomberg News was. I stood up at a press conference and asked the prime minister, Chernomyrdin, a question, and he told me to identify myself. Then he was like, "Look, I know your name is Bloomberg, but what damned agency are you from?"

Michael: It's amazing to think that there was a time when Bloomberg News was a young, struggling upstart.

Sabrina: Yes. In Russia, it was totally new. They later hired a bunch of people and got a fancy office. But it started small!

I worked there for about 2 years — through a financial crisis, which was really, really hard. Then, The Times was trying to supplement its international business coverage, so it hired stringers in a few places — Moscow, Rio, London, Shanghai. I became the Moscow one.

My first big story was the sinking of the Kursk submarine — all of these sailors knocking desperate morse code messages as it sank. Everybody died.

Michael: I remember it well. It was a horrible tragedy.

I'm also curious how and why you ended up in Iraq. If my memory serves me, you spent time there covering the war. That feels like a big scary decision.

Sabrina: Yes good memory! I went to Iraq at the tail end of the invasion — basically as the looting was finishing in the spring of 2003.

It was the first time I'd covered anything outside Russia. It was very new for me.

And it was the first time I'd ever been in a war. Journalistically, it was hard; I didn't speak Arabic. I eventually found a translator I really bonded with and we spent most of the war together. She was a divorced mother of two from a secular Shiite family.

I remember we would go to the main Baghdad morgue every month to get their numbers for body counts. And as the war ramped up, the statistics kept going up and up and up — 1,000 a month, then 2,000 and then 3,000. All these bodies from different cleansings in different parts of the city.

It was like watching a society split apart — and America had set it all into motion.

Michael: So, once again, you are covering fatalism and tragedy.

And all of that lays the groundwork for the Modern Sabrina, who returns to the U.S. and spends years translating this country to Times listeners, telling remarkable stories about unforgettable characters (Abraham Davis) and deep-seated conflicts (abortion) as a national correspondent and, lately, translating the dense but important world of demography — unlocking the data that tells us who we are, what we are up to, what we want, our divisions, our inequities. Basically, whether we are living up to our expectations for ourselves. And it's in this role that Daily listeners really meet you — and love you.

Sabrina: Thank you! It was a hard transition from being abroad, but one I eventually managed.

Michael: I feel your bio perfectly set you up for this moment when we asked you to help host the show, because you've covered such big and rich and varied subjects around the globe. What's the transition been like from reporter/Daily guest to having hosting responsibilities?

Sabrina: Hard! I love audio. Definitely my favorite medium. But I'm not used to actually creating it. So there's a learning curve. But I love it.

I still feel like that cartoon T-rex trying. Like I have these really powerful legs from running but I'm being told that the one thing I need to do now is pull-ups and so I'm trying to do pull-ups with these little, undeveloped arms. And no one cares how fast I can run.

Michael: I love that metaphor. Hosting is… weird!

Sabrina: Hard! Yeah. It is weird. but great!

Michael: When I think of the history of the show, I think of so many episodes we made with you that felt like watershed moments for The Daily. Especially the two-part history of Roe v. Wade. It was as if we'd all walked around for years thinking we knew what that case was really about, and then you told us a story that made clear we didn't.

So Sabrina, I've now kept you for 45 minutes (!) Any final thoughts? On The Daily? Hosting? The heat? We have to find a way to cover this heat in New York on the show.

Sabrina: Hahahaha. Final thoughts: I love the show. I feel honored to be part of it.

Talk to Sabrina and Michael on Twitter: @stavernise and @mikiebarb.

Presenting Our Annual Summer Playlist

Our playlist wouldn't be complete without a couple of bangers by Lil Nas X.Emma Mcintyre/Getty Images for Spotify

We're officially midway through the summer. It's been a hot and sticky one, but many are feeling jazzed up like it's 2019 again, releasing pent-up energy after more than a year in lockdown (cue "Hot Girl Summer").

Music has been a refuge for our team throughout the pandemic, so we were excited to put together this year's summer playlist. You can follow the full playlist on Spotify, and below is a taste of what you'll find. (Though some tracks are best for adult ears only.)

"Liz" by Remi Wolf: "This song is so fun and soulful, with an irresistible dash of funk grooves to make you move. I love attempting Remi's vocal runs and riffs on this song. My neighbors probably don't, though." — Sydney Harper, a producer
"Caribbean" by Astro: "I miss Astro. The group spent a few years making super fun synth tracks about rabbits and dolphins and druids and then they peaced out. They lived in a world of eternal sunshine and summer, and I wish they would come back." — Michael Simon Johnson, a producer
"Goosebumps" by Travis Scott (featuring Kendrick Lamar): "This is my 1-year-old daughter's number one. She can't stop herself when it comes on Hot 97; she has to move." — Paige Cowett, an editor

"Bodies (Intro)" by Jazmine Sullivan: "I'm suggesting the first song on Jazmine's album "Heaux Tales," but every track on the record is both a banger and a short story. Interspersed are vignettes from conversations with women in Jazmine's life about their relationships and sexuality. Listen in full on a Sunday morning, then put it on repeat." — Stella Tan, a producer
"Saana" by Ebo Taylor: "I listen to Ebo Taylor while skateboarding in Prospect Park. His music keeps me in good spirits, even as I fail for the thousandth time at trying to land an ollie." — Dan Powell, a sound designer and composer

On The Daily This Week

Monday: How Evanston, Ill., became the first American city to approve a reparations program to address historical racism.

Tuesday: Allen Weisselberg, Donald Trump's former moneyman, may be key to holding the former president legally accountable for his conduct as a businessman. But will he flip?

Wednesday: How much is climate change to blame for the extreme heat in the Pacific Northwest?

Thursday: What prompted Cuba's largest protests in 30 years?

Friday: We speak to a survivor of one of Canada's residential schools for Indigenous children.