The News
4.5.24. America's passive aggressive foreign policy, NCAA stats, and Danny McBride on moving to Charleston
Our weekly roundup of the news, some trends, and our thoughts — plus a reading list for the weekend.
Gaza: Seven World Central Kitchen aid workers were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza this week. Netanyahu called it a mistake. Chef José Andrés, the founder of World Central Kitchen (and an overall very well-liked person), is not mincing words. He told Israeli TV, "The airstrikes on our convoy I don't think were an unfortunate mistake. It was really a direct attack on clearly marked vehicles whose movements were known by everybody at the IDF.” Juliette Kayyem, professor and CNN National Security Analyst (whom we have also interviewed) discussed the conditions of these “mistakes.” She says, essentially, there are none “in a war like this.” Nearly 200 humanitarian workers and over 32,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza. Isaac Chotiner interviewed Aaron David Miller, former State Department official, about Biden’s mixed Israel policy for the New Yorker. At one point Miller calls America’s strategy “passive-aggressive” and Chotiner says, “I’m surprised the Administration doesn’t have a little bit more pride. Someone might say, ‘Why is the most powerful country in human history essentially taking orders from a country that relies on it for aid? What exactly is going on here?’”
Women in sports: Caitlin Clark, the 22-year-old University of Iowa point guard, and Angel Reese, the 21-year-old LSU forward, are making people watch women’s college basketball in record numbers. ESPN says 12.3 million people watched the rematch of last year's NCAA women's tournament final, with a peak audience of 16.1 million viewers. Making it the "most-watched women’s college basketball game EVER on ESPN platforms." Clark is currently the highest-scoring athlete in the history of college basketball. Even Vogue published an article about the appreciation of women’s basketball for the first time. Another rivalry we are following in women’s sports: Athing Mu and Keely Hodgkinson — two young, record-breaking track stars headed for the Paris Olympics this summer to compete in the 800-meter race.
Recommended Reading (lots to carry you through the weekend):
An essay in The Baffler by Sam Adler-Bell on letting go: “My answer, which I take to be a good, solid American answer, is fuck the present, marry the future, and kill the past.”
An essay in The American Prospect by Dara Lind on immigration: “It’s important to understand that there are two different policy questions when it comes to humanitarian migration: how to select people to settle in the U.S., and how to support them…Giving immigrants the ability to work legally in the U.S. soon after arrival, housing and language access if needed, and sponsors who can serve as both safety net and mentor is the difference between the major-city failures we see in national media and the successes, in communities from Maine to Iowa, that we don’t.” Our interview with Ireen Bloemraad which we recently republished is a good read on this idea as well.
This article in The Guardian about whether to leave or not to leave your hometown: “At 18, I secured my ticket out and moved to the nearest big city for university; my sister stayed at home. Nearly 20 years later, this choice we made as naive teenagers – whether to leave or remain – still seems to hang over us, making our differences appear an ever-widening chasm.”
This piece in the Atlantic on religion as a way to hold back American hyper-individualism: “And America didn’t simply lose its religion without finding a communal replacement. Just as America’s churches were depopulated, Americans developed a new relationship with a technology that, in many ways, is the diabolical opposite of a religious ritual: the smartphone…Digital life is disembodied, asynchronous, shallow, and solitary.” Lonna Atkeson talks how the loss of religion impacts American life in our interview with her.
A GQ double feature. The UK and US editions had good interviews this week with Danny McBride and Kirsten Dunst: “If McBride was reaching new heights personally and professionally, he told me over dinner, it was because living in Charleston had reframed some of his early assumptions about how the entertainment business had to work. ‘Moving here helped put it in perspective, and it makes me just really appreciate what we do. You’re like, Oh, this is a pretty fun career,’ he said. ‘If you’re not having fun making it, if you’re not enjoying it, what’s the fucking point?’”