Isaac Chotiner successfully profiles Ross Douthat; Jill Lepore unsuccessfully meditates on Elon Musk. Is The New Yorker the opiate of the educated liberal masses?
Loved this "He is someone who refuses to obscure his vastness and power with the artful deployment of a self-effacing or do-gooding persona; his existence thus always risks being a reproach to those of us who follow the rules, in our small ways, and are rewarded for it, in small ways, and would like to believe that such a relationship between virtue and reward scales up to infinity."
I, too, admire the sentence, but question the claim. Doesn't Musk's jokey "nerd" persona imply a claim to desert (i.e., as the successful engineer, hence, ultimately, a member of the meritocratic PMC) and hence amount to a kind of self-effacement? The true aristocrat, let alone "god-emperor" remains elusive, I think. (His transhumanist consort seems to aspire to the condition more than he.)
Agree completely about the "self-mediated Douthat," lol. I'd begun the Chotiner piece when it first came out but quit at Douthat's "nice secular people" being "blind to some obvious supernatural realities about the world." If they're obvious how can you be blind to them, but more to the point, the secular view, as I understand it, is that the supernatural is precisely that which is not a part of the reality of the world. I finally finished the article, but I'm still not convinced Douthat is anything more than a conservative Catholic hack who's mastered the kind of rhetoric pleasing to liberal ears, as you point out.
Well but I find him much more appealing than that. I think he's really good at distilling complex subjects and ideas into short form opinion journalism, which is a valuable talent.
This is great stuff! It's been a minute since I regularly read the New Yorker, but all your critiques seem right and I thought the stuff about Elon was well-said.
I've been thinking about this idea of what is "safe" for progressives to like and support with regard to comedy recently. I was talking with a friend who used to be a Chappelle fan, but when Chappelle "sinned" against the left's sacred cows, he was no longer safe for my friend and became persona non grata. Yet he still likes Bill Burr, who manages to toe the line just enough so that progressives can feel like they are still being transgressive like they used to be.
Of course what they don't seem to see is that what makes someone "safe" or not is much more based on frivolous cultural shifting of the goal posts than any serious moral argument. Case in point is the recent issue with Hasan Minhaj, who by any reasonable moral consideration is way worse than Chappelle. Yet, many progressives will still stick with Minhaj and defend him since aside from that one transgression he still tells them all the social justice-y stuff they want to hear.
I'm so out of the loop on comedy these days. Is there anyone new who's interesting? I mean genuinely interesting, not Bo Burnham "interesting." (To be fair, I think Burnham is talented, just not nearly as interesting as he gets credit for being.)
I love Bo, but that's also because I love music and think his comedy benefits from his incredible talent. But I'd point to two people, who have a podcast together called Tuesdays with Stories: Mark Norman and Joe List. Here is list's most popular special, though I think his recent ones are even better (but that one is still really good): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odtAJ2kPdqc&t=907s
Loved this "He is someone who refuses to obscure his vastness and power with the artful deployment of a self-effacing or do-gooding persona; his existence thus always risks being a reproach to those of us who follow the rules, in our small ways, and are rewarded for it, in small ways, and would like to believe that such a relationship between virtue and reward scales up to infinity."
I, too, admire the sentence, but question the claim. Doesn't Musk's jokey "nerd" persona imply a claim to desert (i.e., as the successful engineer, hence, ultimately, a member of the meritocratic PMC) and hence amount to a kind of self-effacement? The true aristocrat, let alone "god-emperor" remains elusive, I think. (His transhumanist consort seems to aspire to the condition more than he.)
Hmmm. Will have to ponder that. I feel like maybe that was the case for a while but the Twitter purchase pushed him past jokey nerd vibe.
Agree completely about the "self-mediated Douthat," lol. I'd begun the Chotiner piece when it first came out but quit at Douthat's "nice secular people" being "blind to some obvious supernatural realities about the world." If they're obvious how can you be blind to them, but more to the point, the secular view, as I understand it, is that the supernatural is precisely that which is not a part of the reality of the world. I finally finished the article, but I'm still not convinced Douthat is anything more than a conservative Catholic hack who's mastered the kind of rhetoric pleasing to liberal ears, as you point out.
Well but I find him much more appealing than that. I think he's really good at distilling complex subjects and ideas into short form opinion journalism, which is a valuable talent.
This is great stuff! It's been a minute since I regularly read the New Yorker, but all your critiques seem right and I thought the stuff about Elon was well-said.
Great analysis of these two pieces, and of the New Yorker style, and what its purpose is today. Really enjoyed reading this.
I've been thinking about this idea of what is "safe" for progressives to like and support with regard to comedy recently. I was talking with a friend who used to be a Chappelle fan, but when Chappelle "sinned" against the left's sacred cows, he was no longer safe for my friend and became persona non grata. Yet he still likes Bill Burr, who manages to toe the line just enough so that progressives can feel like they are still being transgressive like they used to be.
Of course what they don't seem to see is that what makes someone "safe" or not is much more based on frivolous cultural shifting of the goal posts than any serious moral argument. Case in point is the recent issue with Hasan Minhaj, who by any reasonable moral consideration is way worse than Chappelle. Yet, many progressives will still stick with Minhaj and defend him since aside from that one transgression he still tells them all the social justice-y stuff they want to hear.
I'm so out of the loop on comedy these days. Is there anyone new who's interesting? I mean genuinely interesting, not Bo Burnham "interesting." (To be fair, I think Burnham is talented, just not nearly as interesting as he gets credit for being.)
I love Bo, but that's also because I love music and think his comedy benefits from his incredible talent. But I'd point to two people, who have a podcast together called Tuesdays with Stories: Mark Norman and Joe List. Here is list's most popular special, though I think his recent ones are even better (but that one is still really good): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odtAJ2kPdqc&t=907s