The Commenters

I’ve been a journalist for long enough to be familiar with most of the job’s occupational hazards. I’ve angered powerful people without a legal canopy to protect me. My cursor has hesitated over the Send buttons of emails containing invasive questions. I know what it’s like to be chewed out, to have your confidence flattened, to junk entire drafts and start over from scratch. And yet, for most of my career, I never did attract a personal troll.

In this line of work, having a troll is the opposite of having a fan. It’s someone out there—across the astral span of the internet—who has decided to keep tabs on what you publish with the singular intent of mocking everything you write. Since I never had one, I wondered if people like this had gone extinct alongside the rest of the web I used to know. After all, digital media, and its trademark pugnacious tone, is basically defunct. The linear rapport necessary for a blogger to become someone’s nemesis simply no longer applies; the written word is on life support. At least, that’s what I thought—until I discovered the Slate comments section. At last, I had finally found my haters.

Slate’s comments section is not prominently advertised on the homepage, and when I was hired as a staff writer in the spring of 2023, I didn’t know it existed. But, sure enough, all of the articles on the website are studded with a button shaped like a speech bubble. Click on it, and a discussion thread quietly materializes at the bottom of the screen, revealing one of the last few remaining active commenting communities hosted by a magazine. The section possesses a distinctly Web 1.0 architecture: There are no reaction GIFs or YouTube embeds, and posters tend to distinguish themselves with multisyllabic usernames. Trawling through the comments feels a little bit like exploring the sediment of cyberspace. As such, the core clientele—about 200 strong—is composed of people who have been visiting Slate for a very, very long time. They are some of our most dedicated readers. They’ve also despised pretty much everything I’ve ever written.

Comments sections are, by nature, snarky. The format was devised to be a digital version of the newspaper’s good old-fashioned Letters to the Editor page—itself a receptacle for readers to loudly hector the opinion columnists they found annoying. Once considered default features, many of those sections disappeared as digital media matured, mostly because editors determined them to be hotbeds of inanity and harassment. (Recently they’ve made something of a comeback—earlier this year, the Atlantic reintroduced a comments board after abolishing it in 2018.) But Slate’s comments section has survived, and it has retained its characteristically adversarial register to this day. The threads bloom with treatise-length complaints, exasperating grammatical pedantry, and the usual flame-war material. Anyone who has ever written professionally has contended with some version of this, but what surprised me about Slate’s community was just how closely read the taunts in the comments section tended to be—particularly when they were channeled in my direction. Sure, I’ve been hit with plenty of run-of-the-mill drive-bys—“I really hope my Slate Plus dollars aren’t paying this guy,” reads one comment to my 2024 story about men wearing chains—but other insults reveal a profound metatextual fluency in my entire oeuvre. It’s as if the commenters are reading my work voraciously with the specific intention of obliterating me.

In the autumn of 2023, as part of Slate’s long-running Human Guinea Pig column, I was tasked with donning a Mario costume and busking for change in Manhattan. I think the story turned out pretty well, but the incident has been cited, derisively, in the comments section of dozens of articles I’ve written since. “You’ve never forgiven him for putting on that Super Mario costume in Times Square,” read one, left by user Muffin the Mule, about a story published almost three years after the Mario adventure. When I checked the comments on a story I wrote in the spring about Tucker Carlson’s gonzo ballcaps, one read, “Do you think Winkie wears the hat with his gold chain?” In another, about plastic surgery, I wrote that I left the house dressed in a chambray shirt and salmon shorts. This fairly normal outfit offended one user so much that he has made sardonic references to it on multiple occasions in the comment box.

You get the idea. It is not just that I get roasted relentlessly—it is that the roasts are meticulously tailored, leading one to believe that making fun of Slate writers is, for the commenters, among the prime incentives for visiting the website. And I am far from the only person here to get that treatment. Slate contributors far and wide have endured their own bespoke wisecracks, and that has nurtured a, let’s say, complicated relationship with the magazine’s comment box among the staff. One colleague told me that her mother has occasionally taken up in the comments herself, slinging zingers back at the trolls on behalf of her daughter. (My mom has done this too—I imagine it’s among the main reasons she pays for a Slate Plus subscription.) Another co-worker told me that she ventures into the comments on extremely rare occasions, often as a self-loathing exercise. (“The last time I checked on them was two years ago when I wrote a piece I was convinced was terrible,” she said. “I knew someone in there would agree.”) But the person on staff who possesses, by far, the most comments-related trauma is Slate Jurisprudence editor Jeremy Stahl. In his early days at the magazine, Stahl was made a community moderator of the Fray—the venerated message board that Slate operated in the 2000s. Even in those days, Stahl remembers, the tenor of the comments was largely the same as it is now.

“It was, for a while, a very hostile, troll-y commenting community,” Stahl said. “They said some of the meanest things anyone has ever said to me. It was a bummer.”

This all brings me back to my personal troll. Unlike some of my fellow Slatesters, I’ve never felt especially victimized by the comments section. I have thick skin, and I’ll happily admit that I have a perverse fondness for the backlash that results from an incendiary blog. (I’m also white and male, which excludes me from some of the gnarlier flavors of trolldom.) But if I’m being honest, there is one user who has a unique talent for vexing me. He posts under the username Flexo, and he is the person who has picked on me the most during my time at the magazine. I’ve gotten to know his rancorous countenance well over the months and years, as my byline has become flush with essays. In fact, when I take my ambling scrolls into the comments section, my eyes instinctively seek out his name. I think I’m morbidly curious to see if I’ve finally won Flexo over. The answer—eternally—is no.

“This guy is far and away the worst writer I’ve ever read. I feel like I need to have a lime bath to disinfect myself after using the word ‘writer,’ ” wrote Flexo beneath the aforementioned Tucker Carlson piece.

“Don’t post here, it only encourages him,” he commented on a story I wrote about a viral dieting trend. “Winkie is a blight on what still passes for journalism,” he added.

“Never heard of him. Winkie is the worst.” This is Flexo one more time, offering his assessment on a profile I wrote about the right-wing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe. Someone responded to him saying that I “like the obscure” in my writing subjects and enjoy “being on the edge of a movement.” To which Flexo countered: “A bowel movement?”

It goes without saying that Flexo and I have not met, nor have we ever spoken to each other. This is how it always is between a writer and their commenters, and as such, I’ve never been quite sure how to interpret the flavor of his smarm. Is my dear Flexo just an ordinary jerk? Is he trying to offer me some tough love? Did one thing gradually transform into the other? Really, all of those questions led me to another question: How much does Flexo hate me, really? The only thing I knew for sure is that, for better or worse, the people at the bottom of my articles—the ones responsible for the thousands of comments tapering off into an infinite scroll—are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most dedicated readers I’ve ever had, in a moment in media history when “having readers” is harder than ever. Despite all the negativity, a clear kinship exists between us. With Slate’s 30th anniversary around the corner, I wanted to get a better sense of their relationship with me—and the magazine as a whole.

That meant I needed to give Flexo a call.

*****

In order for this project to work, I needed to create a dossier of my biggest haters. Evan Urquhart, Slate’s veteran community manager, agreed to help. I gave him 30 usernames to help me track down. Urquhart seemed to do this out of love for the community he has helped steward for more than a decade. He struck a considerably different tone than Stahl did. I think he knew what I was up to.

“Our commenters are really funny, and really smart. Some of the meanness is more like their love language,” he told me. “Our community is made up of lovable, crotchety grumps. God bless them.”

And so, armed with my dossier, I fanned out dozens of emails to the denizens of the Slate comments section. This presented another challenge: Was I crossing some sacred line? Especially when the commenters in question have said so many nasty things about your work? I worried that seeing my name pop up in the commenters’ inboxes might come off a little intrusive, or perhaps even narclike—a fracturing of a trust. And seriously, I wasn’t here to settle scores. Instead, I told these commenters that I was working on a story about Slate’s longevity, and that I wanted to know what has kept them around the magazine across so many different eras. That was basically true, as far as I was concerned.

Flexo replied in less than 15 minutes.

“You sometimes drive me crazy, but I do love our community, and none of it would be possible without the writers,” wrote Flexo, striking a much more conciliatory tone than I had grown accustomed to. “We have a great community and it’s nice you recognize that. This was a very nice email to send.”

One week later, I jumped on the phone with him. After years orbiting around the exterior of the comment box—peering inside with macabre curiosity to witness the ways I’ve annoyed the regulars most recently—it felt a bit like making first contact.

Flexo, as it turns out, is a 62-year-old guy named Ron who lives in the Pacific Northwest. I learned that he holds a degree in physics from the University of Oregon, and that he worked as a professional musician for decades. He told me that he loves jazz, and onetime Slate staff writer Jamelle Bouie, and that he hated my longform feature about the Creed cruise. (It wasn’t about the writing, Flexo told me. He just can’t stand the band’s music.) Most importantly, I learned that he isn’t active on any forms of social media. Facebook bores him, and he doesn’t have accounts on Twitter or Bluesky. No, the only place that Flexo posts is the Slate comments, which he visits almost every day.

There is a long history of people, adrift in the frigid expanses of cyberspace, finding close fellowship in unexpected places—be it a niche subreddit, or a lonely Discord outpost, or the stately vestibules of World of Warcraft. The saga of Flexo, and the underbelly of Slate as a whole, is proof that the same dynamic can be replicated in a venue that exists primarily for readers to gripe about Dear Prudence letters. That makes it a testament to the tenacity of digital communion. For instance: Flexo has an Instagram account, but it is set to private, and he follows only 13 people—all of whom are fellow Slate commenters. They hang out sometimes, offline. (“I’m friends with several regulars,” he said.) Together, they work around the limited social features of our commenting interface—no direct messaging—by ferreting over burner emails to each other. (“It’s like a Slate-only email address,” Flexo said.) Failing that, Flexo is happy to treat Slate the same way you or I might treat Nextdoor. A few months ago, Flexo offered up a characteristically off-topic comment on a random Slate story complaining that one of his amps was on the fritz. Another user, who lived in Flexo’s area and had some mechanical know-how, replied, right there in the comments, offering his help.

“He wrote, ‘Swing the amp by my house, I can fix it,’ ” Flexo said. “I’m like, ‘Are you serious?’ ” He was, and he took care of it.

All of this is to say that Flexo is not some nihilistic troll. His participation in Slate’s discourse isn’t driven by the arbitrary destructiveness of, say, the average Twitter shitposter. Flexo has an investment in Slate, mostly because without Slate, its comments section would cease to exist. This is the symbiosis that defines the community, and it’s also why former Slate staff writer Dan Kois always thought that the comments section might as well exist in a “different universe” from Slate proper. I get what he means: While the community relies on Slate’s infrastructure and is fluent in the magazine’s tone, the section also possesses its own hermetic culture—one replete with idiosyncratic norms and insulated memes, like a Petri dish embedded in the HTML of one of the few publications to survive the wipeout of digital media. As for why these folks have stuck around despite their occasionally acrimonious attitude toward Slate itself, Kois just thinks that’s an immutable reality of the internet. If you build it—if you provide a blinking text box and the chance to pester an author—they will come.

“It’s like that scene in Jurassic Park with Jeff Goldblum,” Kois said. “Life finds a way. Wherever there’s a little crack, they will flourish.”

by Luke Winkie, Slate |  Read more:

Image: Mark Alan Stamaty
[ed. I've often wondered about Comment Section personalities. What do they hope to accomplish? Maybe in this case just the name Winkie sets them off.]

Agricultural ‘Guest Workers’ in WA Describe Their Lives and Ambitions

The majority of the 400,000 or so agricultural “guest workers” in the United States last year were Mexican men who left the border on chartered buses and rolled, almost nonstop, to American farms and orchards. The first worker I met — in Mattawa, Grant County, — was young and, according to Wendy Lopez, who manages the housing complex where he’d been dropped off a few hours earlier, here on his own. This was supposed to be his first big money-making day in America, but so far, things weren’t going well for him.

Wendy got on her phone to make an appointment for him at a mental health clinic. Away from home for the first time, she told me, he was overwhelmed by anxious thoughts and dark emotions. For now he stood in a hallway, looking at the floor.

Mattawa is in sage steppe desert country. The guest worker housing complex Wendy Lopez manages — built and operated by the Washington Growers League, a nonprofit association — was designed so that contingents of men can live in dormlike units, sharing sleeping quarters, bathrooms, elbow room and kitchens. Wendy led me into one that was empty due to disrepair, turned on the air conditioning and the lights in that order, then went out and soon came back with two men who’d agreed to be interviewed: Odilon, 50, and his son Víctor, 25, from the state of San Luis Potosi in Central Mexico.

We shook hands, then sat. Neither Odilon nor Víctor asked me why I wanted to interview them. I explained myself anyway, thinking I should. “People drive by you every day while you’re working,” I said — or something like that, with Wendy interpreting — “but they don’t know anything about you. Do you think it would be good for them to know some things about you? If you do, tell me what they are and I’ll write them down.”

****

“Guest worker” is an oxymoron. Guests don’t work; to the contrary, hosts do. “Guest worker” is an odd way to refer to people who earn wages by crossing a border in two directions annually. Most come into the U.S. in early spring and leave in late fall.

There was a time — the Great Depression — when the United States didn’t need guest workers. There were enough impoverished people inside our own borders to do all the poorly paid agricultural work that needed doing until, in the early 1940s, millions of them left the country in uniform. At that point the U.S. turned to Mexico to meet its wartime farm labor needs, bringing people across the border on short-term work contracts. For several decades this arrangement went forward as the Bracero Program. Today it’s known as H-2A.

“H-2A worker” isn’t any clearer than “guest worker,” though, as a term pointing at a reality. “H-2A” is a visa category, like “B-2” for tourists. The United States offers four different “H” visas, all of which allow holders to work here for set durations. There is, for example, an H-1B visa often used for hiring in academia, medicine and technology, among other fields, and an H-2B for landscapers and construction workers. The people I interviewed hold H-2A visas, which allow them to come here for agricultural work. All were hired by labor contractors in Mexico and live here in housing provided by the orchardists who employ them. Some orchardists pay the Growers League or other contractors to provide housing; others provide it on private land.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, almost 36,000 H-2A positions were certified in Washington state for 2024. Washington accounts for more than 9% of H-2A visas nationally, and Washington employers are among the top 10 in the nation in H-2A hiring.

****

Víctor didn’t say much. Every once in a while his father, Odilon, looked at him to see if he agreed about something, or wanted to corroborate, embellish or modify something, but mostly Víctor didn’t. Instead he sat patiently while his father talked.

Odilon is a stocky, broad-faced man whose close cropped black hair stands up like bristles. After we’d spent some time together calculating, I understood that in Mexico he makes about $600 a year doing construction work, and that Víctor makes about $400 doing, as Víctor himself put it while chuckling, a little of everything. Víctor is the oldest of six children, and some of them earn money too, and so does Víctor’s mother. In the end, the family of eight makes about $1,500 a year in Mexico. That didn’t make sense to me at first, because Odilon had said earlier that his family spends $100 a week on food alone, and when I did the math on that it seemed to say they could eat for only 15 weeks every year, assuming they spent all their money on food. I was explicating the financial mystery of this aloud when Víctor cut me off to say, “That’s why we come here.”

Odilon said he and Víctor have been coming to Mattawa as guest workers for the past six years on six-month contracts. He added that he has three daughters legally eligible to be guest workers, but since they were female, he explained, their chances of obtaining visas were slim. Among his family members, only he and Víctor come year after year for half-year stints of earning dollars. Together they bring home $30,000 annually, he said, and who would pass that up? [...]

After the Bracero guest worker program was discontinued in 1964 — largely due to pressure from labor unions — Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz tried to replace the 180,000 Mexican workers who would not be coming back for the 1965 farm season with American high school boys through a program he called the A-TEAM, which was an acronym for Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower.

It didn’t work. Wirtz was only able to recruit 3,300 young athletes. Some quit after a few days; others went on strike. As for the Braceros, a lot of them crossed the border in 1965 and returned to their American jobs. Farm work was done that season mostly by the same people who’d done it before, but now it was illegal for them to be here.

Bad policy often repeats itself. At a news conference last summer in Washington D.C., the federal government’s Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, pledged a 100% American workforce. “There are 34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program,” she said. “There are plenty of workers in America.”

Odilon and Víctor support seven people on the $30,000 they jointly make annually as H-2A workers. If the two of them were among Rollins’ able-bodied Americans on Medicaid, their family would be living far below the federal poverty line, which for them would be $47,340 a year.

You’re looking at a “FARMWORKERS WANTED” ad. Fifteen thousand dollars for six months. Yes or no? Take the job or not? Now pretend you’re Odilon and Víctor in Mexico looking at the same ad.

American food security depends on people who cross its southern border. H-2A visas exist so they don’t stay.

*****

Odilon and Víctor left, and in came Daniel, 31, a slight and gentle man who, while soft-spoken, isn’t reticent. Daniel, in fact, spoke unilaterally often, and extensively too, as if there were things that needed to be understood that I was failing to ask him about. [...]

We went over the numbers together: in Mexico, Daniel makes about $2,500 working as a lawyer each year. In the U.S., he makes another $8,000 picking fruit. He owns a house, but he and his family moved out after living there for only 15 days because, he said, “someone fired a gun at us.” He rents it out now, so there’s income from that, too.

I told Daniel that Americans would be surprised to hear that a Mexican lawyer comes to the United States every year to pick fruit for six months. It happens, he explained, because good-paying legal jobs in Mexico are hard to come by. Daniel has a degree and some experience but, in his words, “doesn’t know the right people.” He’d been coming to the U.S. to pick fruit for four years, and hoped that, if he did so for a few more, maybe between stints he would impress the right people and land a good paying law job at home.

Daniel said he’d agreed to be interviewed because he wanted to meet someone who had an important job. He wanted to talk about important things, he explained, with important people. What did he mean, I asked, by important people with important jobs? Lawyers, politicians, professors, journalists, people like that, he answered. He wanted to listen to how they spoke and ponder how their minds worked.

Daniel told me I should read his favorite book, “El Hombre Mediocre,” or “The Mediocre Man,” written in 1913 by an Argentine named José Ingenieros. It explained everything, he said ambiguously. Later I found a bad English translation. It’s philosophy of the loosely academic sort, written by a man influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson and by the 19th century English sociologist Herbert Spencer. “El Hombre Mediocre” begins this way: “When your visionary bow aims toward the stars and you unfold your wings toward such unreachable loftiness, eager to perfection and rebellious to mediocrity, you carry deep within, the mysterious spring of an Ideal.”

That was Daniel, it seemed to me — despite the mangled translation — in the throes of his life. [...]

H-2A is controversial. Some critics, advocating for an end to the program, believe there’s no point in tinkering with, modifying or reforming something that, in their opinion, is intractably unjust and inhumane at its core. Farmworker unions and labor advocates have compared it to slavery.

One problem is extortion. Odilon told me he sends home $15,000 during his stints of work in the U.S.; Daniel said he sends home $8,000. Given that there are hundreds of thousands of Mexican men in the United States each year on H-2A visas, it’s safe to assume that billions of dollars leave the American economy annually and end up in Mexico as personal earnings. Bad things can happen when money moves like that. For instance, labor recruiters who arrange for H-2A visas — and are paid for their services by American employers — might demand fees from people like Odilon and Daniel, whose accumulated dollars make them vulnerable generally. (That’s why they’re referred to in this story only by their first names.) [...]

Meanwhile, there’s broad support in government and agribusiness for the H-2 program. Its growth, supporters argue, would allow for the deportation of workers here illegally while insuring a reliable and stable workforce. This, though, is just their short-term solution. “Ultimately,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said last July, “the answer on this is automation.”

by David Gutterson, Seattle Times |  Read more:

Images: Ivy Ceballo/The Seattle Times

via:

Why Everybody Loves Glen Campbell

[ed. Nice tribute.]

In 1960, a country boy named Glen Campbell showed up in Los Angeles with a guitar, a pompadour hairdo, and a lean, hungry look. He was blessed by fate, and soon started playing on hit records. He was always on the radio.

But there was a catch—they weren’t his records. Campbell was just a member of the band, and the public didn’t know his name. Even so, what amazing company this young man kept: He now played guitar for Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Phil Spector, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Bobby Darin, Sammy Davis Jr., the Everly Brothers, Doris Day, and dozens of other superstars.

This all happened because he had earned the respect of some lesser-known peers, the first-call musicians who worked in the trenches during these sessions. Nowadays they are known collectively as the Wrecking Crew, and are acknowledged as the leading studio players of the era. Glen Campbell would be remembered today, even if he had never released a single record under his own name, just for his membership in this elite cohort.

He deserved every bit of his new-found success. Rock star Leon Russell, who also worked in these sessions, called Campbell the “best guitar player I'd heard before or since.” Songwriter Jimmy Webb later declared that Campbell could match up with “any guitar player in the world, from George Benson to Eric Clapton.” Eddie Van Halen was so desperate to get a guitar lesson from Campbell, that he traveled all the way to Arizona just to make it happen.

Campbell was that good.

There was, of course, a tiny problem. Glen didn’t know how to read music. So he sometimes asked the other musicians to play a new song without him the first time, so he could hear what was happening. But for the second run-through, Campbell was ready and contributing.

He played for union scale in those early days. That meant $65 for a three-hour session. In the early 1960s that was solid money. Back in Arkansas, Glen had picked cotton for $1.25 for every hundred pounds—that was more than a whole day’s work. Music was a much better option. And Campbell was in the studio constantly now. In 1963 alone, he showed up on 586 recorded songs.

But this young man hoped for more. Glen Campbell wanted to be a star. And he tried everything to make it happen. But nothing worked. [...]

Was there anything left to try? Yes, there was.

 

Around this same time, Glen Campbell rebranded himself as a surf musician, and got a choice gig with the Beach Boys. That’s quite a feat for a kid from a landlocked state. For a time, he actually replaced Brian Wilson as lead singer with the band. You might think this would turn him into a superstar, but fans wanted Brian back, and had no interest in celebrating his successor.

At this point, I would have given up and gone back to Arkansas. Campbell had made enough cash from those Beach Boys gigs to lease a Gold Cadillac, and could have returned home in grand style. But he was determined to try his luck one more time, and Capitol Records—then flush with cash, due to all those Beatles hits—still had money to burn.

That’s when they finally struck gold, or a gold record, to be more precise. Gentle on My Mind, released in August 1967, not only got Campbell on the charts but earned him two Grammy awards. He was now on a rapid trajectory to stardom, and would never look back.

During the next 34 months, Campbell released twelve more albums. This staggering output not only happened while he was concertizing and touring, but Campbell was now also acting in Hollywood movies. Adding to the craziness, he launched his CBS television show The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour in 1969. [...]

 

Glen Campbell now saw his name in lights—as they say in show business. That was quite a change for someone who had grown up without any lights, or even electricity, in the family home. That was back in Billstown, a city so small that it didn’t show up on road maps.

His father was a sharecropper, and the family only ate what they grew or hunted—and sometime there wasn’t enough for the large Campbell family (which produced twelve children). There were days when Glen stayed inside his classroom during school recess, because it was cold and he didn’t own a coat. “We didn’t just endure poverty,” Campbell recalled, “we wore it.”

In his autobiography, Campbell tells of the time his father gave up all hope, and decided to commit suicide. The story is half a tragedy, and half a miracle:

Dad couldn’t bear the pressure of not being able to provide the bare necessities for his large family any longer. So he took a shotgun and headed into the woods. He loaded the weapon and was about to put the barrel in his mouth when he was distracted by a squirrel running down a tree branch. He shot and killed it. Almost instantly another came down, and another. My dad was crying and shooting his gun, and the family had eight squirrels for supper….Dad lived an additional forty years.

The father was a survivor, but his son was destined for greater things and, like Johnny B. Goode, that little country boy could play the guitar. He got his first instrument at age four—a three-quarter size Sears Roebuck model that cost five dollars—and was gigging and going on the road while still a child. He joined his uncle’s band and they made the move to Albuquerque when Campbell was seventeen. Six years later he came to Los Angeles. And six years after that, Glen Campbell was a superstar.

He enjoyed every bit of it. Campbell built the first million-dollar house in Laurel Canyon—a 16,500 square-foot home on seven acres. He later bragged that he had “stayed in smaller three-story hotels.” But he could afford it—he was now making $50,000 or more in a single night.

But the enjoyment soon turned sour. “There were times when I was too drunk to recall what I did or with whom I did it,” he later admitted. He sometimes got bad write-ups in the press for the times he faltered on-stage.

In his autobiography, Campbell admits his failings, but can’t resist pointing out that the same journalists who criticized him were also drinking and using drugs, although nobody called them out. But the reality was that Campbell was under the bright lights, front and center, night after night—undergoing a kind of scrutiny no music critic ever faces.

The pressure was intense. “In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I didn’t have a career,” he later mused. “My career had me.”

by Ted Gioia, Honest Broker |  Read more:

Image: uncredited; publicity photo

The Secretive Bilderberg Group Is a Key to Understanding the Global Power Elite

Most countries in the western world operate under a practically unquestionable assumption that they are democratic, in the sense that there is a plurality of different interests in society at any given time and each of them has an equal opportunity of gaining significant political power.

The very concept of an elite class, with more influence than mostly everyone else, is deemed a relic of history. C. Wright Mills, author of The Power Elite, explained that these understandings have a certain romantic appeal, because a supposed balance of interests, without elite interference, makes “each of them really quite impotent, then no one set of higher circles and no manageable set of institutional arrangements can be held accountable for the events and decisions of our time.”

But in a world of constant conflict, economic strife, and political hypocrites, perhaps it is at least worth considering the other side of the argument for once?

In Mills’ conceptualisation of a power elite, he explained how a uniquely powerful grouping of economic, political, and military interests emerged after World War II that had the means to make decisions with significant consequences for the whole of American society.

The narrow and centralised group of individuals at the apex of economic, political, and military hierarchies constituted an elite with the technical and institutional means of power, which are beyond the reach of ordinary people. Far from conspiratorial, this was a group seeking to maintain its position of social power via the maintenance of its own coincidence of shared interests.

Indeed, Mills argued that “to accept either view – of all history as conspiracy or of all history as drift – is to relax the effort to understand the facts of power and the ways of the powerful.”

Writing in the 1950s, Mills’ conceptualisation of an elite was rooted in facts of power that existed, for the most part, within the nation state. One big exception to this was the Bilderberg Group that formed in 1954, which brought together elites from across the world into a transnational network. The group’s official website states that it was developed in response to opinions “expressed by leading citizens on both sides of the Atlantic.”

It fails to say how non-leading citizens, the general public, had a say in its organisation or operation. The World Economic Forum, Trilateral Commission, and Atlantic Council serve as similar transnational elite knowledge networks where individuals with shared, and in this case globalist, interests can work to further their own agenda. Since the era of globalisation moved political and economic power beyond any single country, so too have elites transcended the bounds of the nation. The problem, then, is that how do the masses, bound within borders, stand a chance of influencing the decisions that this transnational elite are making?

To think of institutions like the Bilderberg Group as inconsequential is to underestimate the role they play in constructing a global ideological consensus among elites that is then brought home and applied to the “nation.” Bilderberg allows elites to interact and acquire a shared education in how to think about the world in globalised terms. While it is an unofficial institution, in the sense that is it not legally constituted, the decisions it makes are subsequently endorsed by official agencies like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and national governments.

This is especially true of its neoliberal economic position. If there is a global ruling class, as critical political sociologists have identified, then to constrain political analysis to only the official institutions of the nation, and omit anything akin to Bilderberg, is a major misunderstanding of the ways of the powerful in modern times.

The Bilderberg Group’s powerful members come from across the world and represent the political, economic, military, technological, and ideological spheres of globalisation. There is absolutely no representation of alternative interests and ideological positions, such as small business, populists, socialists, or nationalists. [...]

Understanding the Bilderberg Group as the center of an elite knowledge network is far more accurate than any simplistic, and often naïve, claim to the contrary; especially from those that would malign it with the catch-all, ignorant label of “conspiracy theory.”

Knowing that the locus of political, economic, and military power now resides offshore helps to explain the pandemic of political disaffectedness sweeping across the planet. Some even see this as the emergence of a global civil war, which is surely the last thing the world needs at this very moment. Apparently, Bilderberg’s secretive nature is to ensure its participants can “speak freely in an environment of trust,” but precisely what would these people, who themselves claim a proclivity for transparency and democracy, want to speak about free from public discussion, criticism, and alternative points of view?

The public, rationally, can only surmise that it is nothing good. Unless politicians revert to assuming their proper role as national, and local, leaders, responsible for their own constituents’ needs as opposed to those of transnational corporations, the global crisis of democracy is surely set to continue.

by Stuart J. Hooper, The Wire | Read more:
Image: Reuters/File
[ed. The Press are typically excluded (see list of 2026 attendees here) and all discussions are conducted under the Chatham House rule (meaning you can use and report what you learned, but you cannot share who you got it from, nor their affiliations). See also: At Bilderberg’s bigwig bash two things are guaranteed: Kissinger and secrecy (Guardian).]

A Place Among the Fiddlers

I got off Interstate 81 to give my soul a break. The back roads of southwest Virginia wind, crest, and plunge through lush valleys of oak, poplar, birch, and maple trees. It’s easy to lose track of time and distance there. People drive slower. Cows graze in pastures. And there are no placards festooned with Motel 6 and Starbucks logos, flattening the American landscape into a homogeneous blur. Any signs you might see are low to the ground and handmade, protesting a data center, for instance, or thanking Jesus.

I’d gone to this rural pocket of the country for the 90th annual Old Fiddler’s Convention in Galax, an independent city of just under 7,000 near the North Carolina border whose population, for six days in early August, balloons to around four times that. They arrive in RVs and Casitas, camper vans and cars to stake out 20-by-35-foot plots in Felts Park, a 28-acre fairground in the heart of Galax, transforming it into a massive, muddy parking lot sprinkled with portable toilets and a cluster of food trucks, offering loaded potatoes, funnel cake, and blooming onions.

The Old Fiddler’s Convention—or just Galax, as the diehards call it—is the oldest and largest fiddlers’ convention in the world, a place where banjo pickers, guitar players, and other maestros of old-time strings gather to see how they stack up. Founded in 1935, Galax has been canceled only twice since then: once during World War II, due to travel restrictions, and again in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many Galaxers have been going every year for decades, some for as long as they’ve been alive.

There are scads of rules: If you play clawhammer-style banjo in the bluegrass band competition, you will get disqualified. Same if you play bluegrass-style banjo in the old-time competition. If you break a string while performing, you must stop immediately. Playing time during competition is limited to two minutes and 30 seconds. And, crucially, no electric instruments of any kind are allowed, either on stage or in the tightly packed fairgrounds, where self-described hillbillies, accountants, firefighters, and session musicians pick day and night in blistering, impromptu jams amid the RVs.

One does not merely attend Galax. It’s not a music festival. There are no headliners, and no full-set performances. There is a single stage, and over the course of six days, contestants take it one after another to play one song for a panel of judges and a smattering of spectators. There are more than a dozen categories, little changed in the past century: old-time fiddle, guitar, dulcimer, folk song. Cash prizes for individual players range from $35 to $285; a campsite and contestant pass together cost $175. “The prestige of being judged a ‘winner at Galax,’ and the respect for one’s musical talent that goes along with it, far outweighs any monetary award,” wrote Fred Burton in the March 1984 issue of Bluegrass Unlimited. [...]

 

My first jam came on Day 0, after the rain abated and I’d set up camp. The Old Fiddler’s Convention wouldn’t officially start until Monday night, with the astoundingly good kids’ competitions—the reigning bluegrass fiddle champion herself, Hollace Oakes, was 14 when she won the adult contest last year—but everyone in Felts Park was eager to pick.

Tara wanted to introduce me to Bill and Nancy Sluys, a couple in their early 70s who’ve been going to Galax every summer for some 50 years. We walked to their site, where Bill, a towering figure with a steady voice and a long, white, braided ponytail, emerged from their Airstream to invite anyone who might “wish to partake” to join Nancy and a few others inside. I told Bill I’d thought of bringing edibles to Galax, but the convention website said state laws concerning drugs and alcohol are “strictly enforced,” and Google’s AI bot, Gemini, warned that law enforcement would be crawling Felts Park with K-9 units, even though recreational cannabis is legal in Virginia for adults over 21.

Bill laughed and said that hasn’t been true in more than 40 years, though it used to be, on account of a music festival that happened once, half a century ago, about 15 miles up the road. Stompin 76 featured Bonnie Raitt, John Prine, and other big names from the time. The festival attracted a huge crowd, including a motorcycle gang that allegedly wanted to keep the party going after the festival wrapped, so they rolled into Galax on their hogs, stocked with methamphetamine, moonshine, and guns. Mayhem ensued. The authorities cracked down after that, ostensibly to maintain law and order in fiddleland. By the mid-’80s, they realized that the Old Fiddler’s Convention really was a family affair and let the fiddlers be.

A group of six or seven people had gathered outside the Airstream by this point, all brandishing instruments. Bill, who grew up on Long Island, assumed his position behind an aluminum upright bass from the 1930s, while Nancy, a fiddler and banjo player roughly half Bill’s height who grew up in Connecticut, emerged from the Airstream with her fiddle. She sat down on a folding chair, called “Soldier’s Joy” in the key of D, and kicked it off at breakneck speed. This was an old-time jam, and “soldier’s joy” was a Civil War-era euphemism for morphine. Galax had begun. [...]

An old-time jam goes something like this: Anywhere from two to umpteen musicians gather in a circle, knee-to-knee, and someone—usually the fiddler—calls a tune. Before you know it, you’re carried away by a cyclone of fiddles, mandolins, banjos, and guitars, all locked into a swirling rhythm that can, when it’s good, take you to church.

by David Alm, Longreads |  Read more:

Images:Terry Eiler; David Alm

[ed. I used to play in song circles at parties in Alaska. They're fun. If you're not quite up to par (skills wise) just play a little softer and go with the flow. The groove will come.]

The Mastermind

He built Seahawks Super Bowl winners from scratch — twice: What’s John Schneider’s secret?

The timing wasn’t ideal, but Marshawn Lynch insisted.

In the aftermath of the 2015 NFC title game, which sent the Seattle Seahawks back to the Super Bowl after a thrilling come-from-behind victory over the Green Bay Packers, NFL agent Doug Hendrickson celebrated at the home of Lynch, Hendrickson’s client and the Seahawks’ mercurial star running back.

During the festivities, Lynch got serious, then gave Hendrickson a mandate: Negotiate a new contract with Seattle. Immediately.

That was a little complicated. Lynch held out ahead of the season in an effort to force a new deal with Seattle before agreeing to a compromise that converted some incentives into guarantees. Conversations between the two sides had been ongoing since then, but nothing was imminent.

Hendrickson left Lynch’s house around midnight and headed to a victory party hosted by Seahawks general manager John Schneider, the man he’d been sparring with over Lynch’s deal. All seemed forgotten when the agent arrived at the GM’s house. The pair hung out, shared drinks and enjoyed the night, but before leaving, Hendrickson broached the topic of a contract extension for Lynch … preferably before Super Bowl 49.

The good vibes vanished. Schneider was incredulous.

“He looked like he was going to kill me,” Hendrickson said.

They went back and forth, hurling profanities into the night until they were the last ones left. No deal was reached. By then, Hendrickson was having some trouble getting a ride. He needed a place to crash for the night. So he slept on Schneider’s couch.

When Hendrickson woke up, there was his unexpected host. Hours after a heated debate that at times sounded as if they might come to blows, the pair hugged it out, apologized and agreed to hammer out an extension. Eventually.

The good vibes were back.

“You need a ride home?” Schneider asked.

Schneider is a small-town Midwesterner whose entry into the NFL began with cold calling the GM of his hometown Green Bay Packers after some “courage beers” and advice from friends in 1992. More than three decades later, he’s the top architect in America’s most popular sport.

Some of Schneider’s friends refer to him as “relationship-based.” Dave Wyman, the co-host of Schneider’s local radio show, describes him as “openly curious” and cites that as the reason he will never turn down an invite to grab a beer.

“I don’t even care if we talk about football,” said Wyman, a former linebacker who played six of his nine NFL seasons with the Seahawks. “It’s really interesting to see how his mind works, but more than anything he’s just like your best buddy.”

Schneider’s adversaries don’t turn him down, either. Some of the most contentious negotiations in his 17 years running the Seahawks came via Mark Rodgers, the former agent for quarterback Russell Wilson. One day, during the middle of Wilson’s 10-year run with the franchise, Schneider invited Rodgers to Dino’s Pub, the dive bar near team headquarters. That rainy afternoon was unlike any of their many spirited debates over guaranteed money, no-tag clauses, franchise tags or trade destinations.

“We didn’t talk about football a lick,” Rodgers recalled. “We just talked about life. He wanted to know a little bit more about me, and I enjoyed getting to know a bit more of him.”

With the Seahawks’ win over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl 60, Schneider, 55, became the first NFL GM to secure multiple championships with the same franchise despite zero carryover between the rosters or coaching staffs. Since Schneider was hired in January 2010, Seattle has the league’s fifth-highest win percentage, three conference titles and two Super Bowl wins. In that time, he has become someone other Super Bowl-winning GMs admire, players appreciate, agents respect — and the guy everyone in the league wants to grab a beer with.

Knowing Schneider, they probably have.

“He manages to be one of the smartest minds in the league, but he’s also the guy that’s most likely to convince you that one more round is a great idea,” said Tampa Buccaneers GM Jason Licht.

Schneider’s longevity stems from an impeccable scouting eye and the premium he puts on the people part of the business. Some of the key moves that led to Seattle lifting the Lombardi Trophy — including the hiring of head coach Mike Macdonald — were products of Schneider’s strong relationships with his peers. In a hypercompetitive NFL landscape, his relationship-based approach to the job is a unique and underrated part of his success and one of the defining elements of the team’s culture.

“We’re all under intense pressure, stress to perform every single day, and to be able to have someone like John that you can lean on — that you trust like that, you can talk to, can help you work through things — it just goes a long way,” said former Tennessee Titans president of football operations Chad Brinker. “It’s rare. It’s not like that all around the league. John is different. He is. And that’s why he’s been in that chair 17 years.” [...]

He is the last man standing from what was once the league’s best Big Three, with Schneider at GM, Pete Carroll at head coach and Russell Wilson at quarterback. Schneider’s success independent of Carroll and Wilson has buoyed his case to join mentor Ron Wolf in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

“He’s a gold-jacket GM,” Brinker said. “That’s the way we view him.”

by Michael-Shawn Dugar, The Athletic | Read more:
Images: Steph Chambers; Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Let Us Pray

May his days be few;
may another take his place of leadership.

May his children be fatherless
and his wife a widow.
May his children be wandering beggars;

may they be driven from their ruined homes.
May a creditor seize all he has;
may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.
May no one extend kindness to him
or take pity on his fatherless children.
May his descendants be cut off,
their names blotted out from the next generation.
May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord;
may the sin of his mother never be blotted out.
May their sins always remain before the Lord,
that he may blot out their name from the earth.

For he never thought of doing a kindness,
but hounded to death the poor
and the needy and the brokenhearted.
He loved to pronounce a curse—
may it come back on him.
He found no pleasure in blessing—
may it be far from him.
He wore cursing as his garment;
it entered into his body like water,
into his bones like oil.
May it be like a cloak wrapped about him,
like a belt tied forever around him.
May this be the Lord’s payment to my accusers,
to those who speak evil of me.

~ Psalm 109:8-20

[ed. When sin is ignored for the sake of expediency you've betrayed your faith. Plain and simple. See also: Gone in 90 seconds (Guardian).]

What I Think Will Happen if I Go to a Bar and Order a Whiskey Neat

One whiskey, neat,” I tell the bartender, settling myself onto a wooden stool. I can immediately sense, from the way he’s fiddling with his long but tasteful beard, that he’s attracted to me and intimidated by me in equal measure. When he hands me my glass, our fingers brush. He doesn’t say it’s on the house, but we both know that it is.

“I never do this, but can I take your picture?” the bartender asks, sheepishly. I tell him it’s no problem—people ask me that all the time. He pulls out a 35-mm. camera and I pose with my drink. Later, when the photo is displayed in his first gallery show, he’ll title it “Angel in Black.”

The bar begins to fill with the happy-hour crowd. As each patron enters and notices the beverage I’m holding, they give me a reverent nod. One young woman, so daunted by the ease and maturity I’m radiating—and so humiliated by her own order—whispers “vodka cranberry” to the barman and then starts weeping.

Suddenly, the phone on the wall begins to ring.

“It’s for you,” the bartender says to me, without checking to see who it’s for. He can tell from my general vibe that I don’t have a cell phone.

“Thought I’d find you here,” a gruff voice intones, on the other end of the line. I hang up. I’ve already told Keanu a million times: if he wants me so badly, he’d better come find me. I don’t care what he’s filming. [...]

We’re interrupted by a man in a suit. “You,” he says, making a beeline for me. He tells me that he’s the C.E.O. of Arm & Hammer and asks if I want a job in corporate. I make him wait as I take a slow swig, then I tell him I don’t believe in big business. He completely understands and apologizes for asking. Before he leaves, he slides me five crisp hundred-dollar bills. I ball up the cash and slip it into the baby’s fist. Money means nothing to me.

An hour goes by, and I start growing tired of strangers approaching and asking, point-blank, “Where did I go wrong?” I’ve facilitated an amicable divorce, convinced a billionaire to donate all his wealth, and was just made a city-council member in a Utah mining town called Strawberry. It’s time to go home.

I ask the bartender for the bill. He asks me to marry him.

“I love you, but I can’t,” I purr, placing my empty glass on a cocktail napkin. I leave the bar. I never return.

The bartender will pretend he doesn’t care. But at every shift for the rest of his life, he’ll stare longingly at the front door, pour himself a whiskey, and think of me.

by Maeve Dunigan, New Yorker | Read more:
Image: Getty

[ed. Beautiful people. See also: "Funny how the trajectory of life can be altered by a few days... His girlfriend, who is still in her teens, is flipping through Vogue. For her, the sex must be like shagging Sandpaperman. What's in it for her? Apart from first-class air travel, five star accomodation, minglings with the rock aristocracy, movie directors, and charity tsars; exposure in every gossip magazine on Earth, and modeling contracts to match, obviously...."    ~  The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell

Annie Dillard, Meditative Author of ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,’ Dies at 81

Annie Dillard, who as a young American writer walked into the woods and came out with a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the wonders and horrors of creation, the modern classic “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” died Tuesday at her home in South Wellfleet, Massachusetts. She was 81.

Her death was confirmed by her literary executor, Maggie Nelson. No further details were given.

With the publication of “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” in 1974, Dillard, just 28, was recognized as a major new voice in American letters. It was only the beginning of her career: In the years to come, she would publish essays, meditations on religion, poems, a theory of literature, two novels, journalism, a bestselling autobiography and another bestseller, “The Writing Life,” about what it takes to put words into a world that has more than enough of them.

Reviewers of “Tinker Creek” were quick to understand it as a 20th-century analogue to Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden.” This was no coincidence: Dillard had chosen Thoreau as the subject of her master’s thesis at Hollins University, the women’s liberal arts college in Roanoke, Virginia.

Like Thoreau, she found an unremarkable body of water to be as good a place as any for deep thoughts — particularly about how to reconcile the idea of a benevolent God with nature’s cruelty.

Unlike Thoreau, Dillard didn’t build a cabin in the woods and live there through the seasons of a year. Though her writing could convey the sense of a solitary life in the wilderness, she was mostly a day-tripper. After her forays into the Roanoke Valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains — which was, after all, her neighborhood — she would return home to the suburban house she shared with Richard Dillard, a creative writing instructor she had married at the end of her sophomore year at Hollins.

That she was a photogenic young woman coming to grips with raw nature — a business that had been almost exclusively the province of men with beards — was undeniably part of the Dillard mystique. So was her insistence that, in spite of her patient, unflinching observations on flora and fauna, she wasn’t a nature writer, but rather a theologian looking high and low for God. [...]

“Tinker Creek” won the Pulitzer for general nonfiction in 1975, and Dillard was overwhelmed by requests for speeches, interviews and television appearances. Her looks were thought by many media outlets to be as newsworthy as her writing — so much so that she was ridiculed in some circles as “Cheesecake at Tinker Creek.”

Repelled by the consequences of her success, she moved to Washington state and began dividing her time between the city of Bellingham and the islands Waldron and Lummi. Her marriage to Richard Dillard had ended in amicable divorce, and in the Pacific Northwest, she found privacy enough to regain the concentration essential to her work.

“The Cascade Range, in these high latitudes, backs almost into the water,” she wrote. “There is only a narrow strip, an afterthought of foothills and farms sixty miles wide, between the snowy mountains and the sea.”

 

by Daniel Lewis, NY Times via Seattle Times |  Read more:

Image: Rollie McKenna
[ed. Just learned about Annie's death this morning. One of my all-time favorite books is The Living (a fictional depiction of the evolution of Whatcom county, the area around Bellingham, WA). See also: Annie Dillard brought poetry into prose, pioneering a mystical form of creative nonfiction (The Conversation):]

***

Not all writing is the same. Prose typically features continuous sentences arranged in paragraphs. Poetry tends to be differentiated from prose by a deliberate organization of language that’s not determined by the page itself.

Prose poetry, the lyric essay and other hybrid forms of literature play at the intersection of genre, which usually defines these separate categories of writing. Creative nonfiction likewise aims to accurately convey reality while emphasizing literary style. The literary features of creative nonfiction are often drawn from fiction, with devices such as dialogue, scene and flashback.

But one of the distinctions of Annie Dillard’s nonfiction is how much her prose owes to poetry.

Poetry can be defined in many ways, but it tends to be characterized by honed, heightened language. Poems are often noted for their memorable images, rich sounds and foregrounding of emotion. Dillard’s nonfiction is shot through with images that arrest readers with their beauty or confront readers with their terror – as in her Harper’s essay “The Death of a Moth,” where the insect is drawn to a candle flame, becomes stuck in the wax and is transformed into a burning wick. In Dillard’s words:

“She burned for two hours without changing, without swaying or kneeling – only glowing within, like a building fire glimpsed through silhouetted walls, like a hollow saint, like a flame-faced virgin gone to God, while I read by her light, kindled, while Rimbaud in Paris burnt out his brain in a thousand poems, while night pooled wetly at my feet.”

It’s no accident that Dillard describes herself as reading the work of French poet Arthur Rimbaud by the light of the moth. She previously wrote that she loved how language sounds in French symbolist poetry, and Rimbaud was known to combine prose with his poetry in a way Dillard herself does.

It Can't Be Real

This feels like an AI simulation. As if we’re all living in an edit created by the reprobates hiding among us, with their finite sense of civility and unlimited access to video-generating software.

Did that happen? Is this real?

That video that circulated across the algorithms of Texas Longhorns fans was clearly fake. The one with Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian backhand slapping sideline reporter Holly Rowe — deplorable “entertainment” that only those wallowing in the gutter of society would find amusing.

But was that really a scion of the Manning family and a room full of credentialed reporters laughing at that trash?

Yes, unfortunately. That was real.

Also, though the savagery depicted in the video was created by artificial intelligence, did the current face of a billion-dollar football enterprise actually disrespect an ESPN/ABC Hall of Fame broadcaster who won the Curt Gowdy Award in 2023, as though she were a YouTuber holding one of those budget wireless mics?

Unbelievable, but facts. That, also, was real.

“I saw the AI Edit of (Sark) slapping Holly Rowe.”

I asked Arch Manning if he’d seen any edits on TikTok or Twitter after the game, and his answer is gold. pic.twitter.com/70FnNCVEHb

— Evan Vieth (@EvanVieth) September 14, 2026

There was a time when meatheads would giggle at off-color jokes only while in the locker room, or at least in the sanctity of the group chat, because at least good sense would prevail and remind them that some punch lines aren’t suitable for public consumption. It wasn’t that long ago, either, when head coaches jacked up on adrenaline would fulfill their social contract by spitting out a couple of nothings to a sideline reporter — or, at least, express regret when they didn’t.

That kind of human decorum, however, is fading faster than someone can hit “send” on the latest AI-generated nonsense. And plummeting deeper than even Arch Manning’s likability.

I can’t tell which is worse: the phony clip depicting violence against a woman, or the real-life behavior displayed by Sarkisian, then Manning and a room of media members? Before they could edit themselves and add a glossy filter to their apologies, they showed the sordid bits of their individual characters for all to see.

What a weird couple of days in Texas. It’s almost as if the state’s content creator said “Screw it” and mixed a superedit of slop.

It started immediately after the No. 4 Longhorns’ 24-23 comeback victory over then-No. 1 Ohio State, their first home win over a top-ranked team in 76 years. Stunning! So stunned was Sarkisian that the 52-year-old coach completely forgot how to form big-boy words with his mouth. Instead of respecting the postgame interview process, Sarkisian blew off Rowe’s attempt to toss him congratulatory softballs.

Rowe was trying to do her job. Sarkisian, using the excuse of technical difficulties despite ABC’s production appearing ready for his on-field interview, did not do his.

pic.twitter.com/6ZVqJmIP2v
— Holly Rowe (@sportsiren) September 15, 2026

Yes, Sarkisian is contractually obligated to perform this duty — TV deals help fund his $11 million salary — as required by his conference’s multibillion-dollar media agreements with the networks that broadcast its games.

And no, just no: Screaming “Texas fight!” into the camera, and then leaving the reporter in the dust, does not satisfy this responsibility. Nor does it make for good television. More than anything else, it’s just not a good look.

Holly Rowe is not happy with Texas HC Steve Sarkisian

pic.twitter.com/L6etAq1k4Q
— Pick 6 Pack (@Pick6PackFB) September 13, 2026

Sarkisian makes too much money, has been around big-time college football too long to get annoyed when the TV reporter doesn’t hurry up and ask him the two questions. On the greatest night of his greatest coaching feat, Sarkisian acted without grace or a shred of tact. College coaches aren’t diplomats, but they can choose not to act like jerks. [...]

Bo French, a Republican running for Texas Railroad Commissioner, couldn’t get past all those pesky brown-skinned men invading the stands. Not just college kids, but Others cheering for Texas’ football team and snatching up Texas’ degrees. The sight of so few blond and blue-eyed coeds made the politician forget all about the Longhorns’ big night, and it instead made him thumb out his outrage and xenophobia on X.

“I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined,” a post from French’s account read.

Thank goodness plenty of non-cretins exist across Texas, including some within his own political party, and those folks spoke out against the post.

Then, after all of this, after the head coach was rude and the GOP candidate couldn’t mask his racism, the college quarterback found some low-vibration content to be, heh heh, so hilarious. As did some of the reporters on hand, who presumably confused a press room for an out-of-control frat house.

During a Monday media availability, a reporter asked Manning if he had seen any of the TikTok edits done off the game. Arch, the 22-year-old Manning whom the public truly knows little about other than that he plays quarterback like his famous uncles, offered that he saw “an AI edit of Sark’s interview.”

Immediately, a loud laughter from reporters.

“Y’all seen that one?” Manning asked.

More laughter.

“That’s a good one!” Manning said, smiling and then pointing at someone off camera in solidarity with the joke.

Again, laughter.

“Of him slapping Holly Rowe,” Manning confirmed.

Still, laughter in the room.

“Yeah, it’s hilarious,” Manning concluded, and somewhere his family’s public relations firm probably asked for a raise.

When a colleague sent me that clip Monday night, my reaction was disbelief: “Are we sure that arch video isn’t AI?”

I asked genuinely because never would I have thought that a Manning, no matter his age, would so clumsily stumble into such an unnecessary mistake. Rarely an hour goes by without Peyton and Eli filling our screens. Even Cooper, Arch’s father and the lesser-known Manning brother, presents well in commercials and interviews. The Mannings understand media. They are a media company in and of themselves. So, five-star Arch must have had a measure of training before entering the mainstream. He can read the line of scrimmage, but clearly the kid can’t read a room. Or maybe he was lured into his thoughtless comments because of the jocularity inside that room full of reporters.

Most likely, they were grown people with jobs who represent various media companies. So-called professionals. Disregard for one second the lack of judgment by those reporters, however, and consider: In what reality does an adult cackle over the depiction of a man assaulting a woman? 

By Tuesday, the desensitized reactions to a fake video led to some regrets in the real world. The reporter who asked the question and posted the video of Manning with the caption: “… his answer is gold,” issued an apology. He said he acted too hastily in trying to get the video up and made a mistake in judgment. Also, Manning posted his remorse with humility. He apologized to Rowe for what “she has personally had to deal with because of my comments.”

Manning’s apology post was indeed real. So was the very real disrespect Rowe faced from the moment she placed a microphone near Sarkisian, as was the actual post from a politician mistakenly trying to score points with the wrong people. All of it was real, which means AI isn’t ruining our world. Real people are doing just fine in that role.

by Candace Buckner, The Athletic | Read more:
Image: X/Twitter
[ed. The widespread crudeness we see these days can be attributed to one source, and it isn't AI. Let's Go Brandon! People who'd normally keep such low feelings to themselves, or share only with like-minded friends, now feel empowered to let their inner freak flags fly. From the comments:]

Stop making 22 year old men apologize to 60 year old women for goofing around

Hahahaha they made him talk to you? I feel so bad for this guy.

Are you gonna apologize now for storming off the field like a little baby when you didn't get your interview?

This is so sad. It was a cartoonish joke that was funny. The kid finally shows a little personality and you women attack him. Our society sucks.

[ed. "Our society sucks". Yes it does. In some places and with some people.]

Lost Child

He said, Come with me! Take Daddy’s hand.

How all the stories begin. A large hand lowered, your small hand lifted.

She isn’t sure, she admits, exactly what happened.

Or when. She knows that she was little.

Maybe four years old. Maybe three.

Just guessing. Mists of time, thinly whitewashed wall of memory . . .

No. Katherine does remember something about when. For today—Thursday, March 12, 2026—is an anniversary of that day.

It was, Take Daddy’s hand but hurry. Something was going to happen—unless it had already happened.

For, with Kit’s father, something was always either going to happen or had already happened, and it was either too late to stop it from happening or too early to even imagine it happening, but, in any case, Hurry, sweetie! God damn.

Not used to dressing herself. The new rosy-pink raincoat, crookedly buttoned, but maybe Daddy wouldn’t notice.

Hours later, at the hospital, parking at the rear—a high-rise garage, which Kit’s father hated because it slowed him down, Fucking God damn.

Kit cringed a little when Daddy spoke in a harsh voice, but she understood: Daddy was not talking to her.

When they were alone together—which was often now—Daddy joked that the two of them were practically living in this shithole car. Daddy was rarely silent; he was too nervous, edgy, to be silent. He seemed to be addressing Kit, but Kit knew that he would be annoyed if she interrupted him to reply.

Crucial to Kit not to annoy her father. If she was sweetly quiet, obedient, Daddy smiled at her with the radiance of Daddy love, and Kit basked in his love like a cat stretched out in the sun.

Kit’s fear was that Daddy’s smile would disappear. Like a light switched off.

You would have to have known him to understand, Katherine says.

Cursing as he made his way up through the parking garage, turning the wheel sharply, row after row of vehicles, nowhere to park, though the sign at the entrance had said “Open.”

True that Daddy was in a hurry, but true, also, that, when Daddy at last found a parking space, on the top level of the garage, he did not drive into it head first but took time to maneuver the vehicle around so that he could back it in. Daddy felt compelled always to back into a parking space; here, an alarmingly narrow gap between two large vehicles which required many excruciating minutes, Daddy grimacing as he peered into the car’s side mirrors, easing back a few inches, then forward again. His breathing came fast. His forehead glistened with moisture.

Rainwater in puddles on the garage floor. Slow-drifting fog, mist.

The smell of her father’s breath, like fumes.

In the back seat of the car, a potted plant, its blooms wrapped in crinkly cellophane, amid random newspapers, napkins, coffee cups. Also, a small suitcase so stuffed that one of the compartments was only partly zipped.

C’mon, silly. Nothing to be afraid of.

Kit smiled uncertainly. For Daddy was smiling. Nothing to be afraid of? It had not occurred to Kit that there might be something to be afraid of.

by Joyce Carol Oates, New Yorker |  Read more:

Image: Holly Andres

Outsourcing Mom

Worried About Your College Kid? Now You Can Hire a Local Mom. At some universities, parents can pay to make sure their children are cared for, the way they were back home.

Concierge companies offering student support have existed for decades. But in recent years, a new crop of upstarts — such as Horwitz’s company, MindyKnows; the Bama Mama in Alabama; the GA Mom in Georgia; and Campus Mom in Texas — have met additional demand from a new generation of worried parents.

Historically, college has been a time for young adults to gain a sense of independence. They run their own errands, do their own laundry, organize their own lives. That’s changing, according to Monteigne Long, a co-founder of Campus Mom, who said the parents of this generation of college students are much more involved in their children’s day-to-day lives.

“When I came to college in 1998, my parents dropped me off on a Saturday and were gone,” Long said. “Parents are staying much more tuned in and connected with their students’ college experience than they have in the past. When they can’t be here, they want someone who can be that stand-in for them.”

The arrangements, though, have drawn occasional criticism online and from experts who worry young adults won’t learn enough essential life skills with so much additional support.

“Sometimes people think that we’re coddling students,” Horwitz said, “and I just don’t think that anything could be further from the truth. They’re 18, 19 years old, and they’re just off independently for the first time. We’re just a support system.”

The specific services vary here and there, but share commonalities. Campus Mom offers “holistic wellness check-ins,” laundry services and sorority recruitment support packages, sent to the sisters to up a child’s odds of acceptance. Carrie Eckhardt, the Bama Mama, will clean students’ dorm rooms and check in if parents haven’t heard from their child in a few days (“just pop in and say hi, and take a picture and send it to their mom”).

This month, one parent told Eckhardt it seemed like her daughter was going out to a bar every night. But she had opted to stay in, and the mother wanted to celebrate the decision with a “stay-in basket” that included her favorite ice cream, cookie and socks.

Horwitz, for her part, brings students balloons on their birthdays and chicken soup when they’re sick, sits with them in the emergency room and picks up their prescriptions if they’re busy. She bakes homemade challah, coordinates with the bedbug exterminator, texts photos and updates to faraway parents and doles out recommendations on the best local doctors and landlords.

by Kristi Albert, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Kate Munsch for The New York Times
[ed. Why not cut to the chase. Just hire somebody to take all their classes and summarize everything with AI. Of course, cheating on tests would be an optional additional expense.]

Did 9/11 Really Change Everything?

One of the best firsthand accounts of the Sept. 11 attacks I’ve read is a short essay titled “Diary of Disaster” by Nicholas Spangler, at the time a 25-year-old journalism-school student and today a reporter for Newsday on Long Island. Spangler happened to be downtown that morning, close enough to the World Trade Center to arrive on the scene between the first and second planes. Like many early recollections of the first hours at ground zero, written before memories had been corrected to fit the dimensions of history, his is as strange as it is horrifying.

He hears the bodies of the north tower’s jumpers hitting the pavement, and also the easy-listening music still drifting out of the building’s outdoor speakers. Under a tree newly stripped of its leaves lies a severed leg wrapped in burlap. Barely an hour after the second tower’s collapse, onlookers enlist Spangler to take a souvenir photo of them posing in front of the wreckage with a disposable camera. It’s the end of the world, or at least of a world, and people have not yet figured out how they are supposed to act.

Days later, trying to make sense of what he has seen, Spangler writes: “I believe that our present way of life ended in those minutes or hours. The American ethos — the way we see the world and our place in it — fractured and will perhaps have to be discarded.”

When he revisits that passage three months later, however, it feels wrong to him. “Our way of life did not end so much as it was interrupted,” he writes, “and if there is such a thing as an American ethos, it has not been significantly altered. There are those relative few whose lives bear the permanent bloody brand of that day but most of us continue to be shaped by much more banal events.”

Did 9/11 change everything? For years, people who agreed on nothing else about the attacks’ aftermath would have agreed that the answer was yes. Arguing otherwise would have been an affront to the victims, to the war on terror’s civilian and military casualties and to the common sense of anyone who has had to take off their shoes at airport security. But question and answer alike have always been colored by the assumption that 9/11 was supposed to change everything: that in being attacked as it was, the United States was being presented with a test that it could pass or fail.

A quarter-century on, it is possible to consider the question with at least some critical distance. Far too much of our current reality stems directly from 9/11 for anyone to argue credibly that it was not a hinge point in our recent history: the ubiquity of surveillance technology, the vague open-endedness that all American military operations now acquire, the general up-armoring of everyday life. At the same time, considering the most dystopian facets of this reality, 9/11’s influence is not as singular as it might have once seemed. It is a middle chapter in the story of American fracture rather than the pyrotechnic beginning. [...]

Of course, in the end, the United States got neither self-awareness nor self-actualization. What it got, a decade and a half later, was Donald Trump, whose election in 2016 has often been cast as a culmination of what the journalist Spencer Ackerman, in his 2021 book “Reign of Terror,” describes as the “decadent phase of the war on terror.”

Trump’s path from reality-TV celebrity to the presidency ran through the Islamophobic fever swamps of the post-9/11 right — the ground zero mosque panic, Obama birth-certificate conspiracism — but also through an increasingly bipartisan discontent with the war on terror that had, by 2016, curdled into cynicism. Trump was the first Republican presidential nominee to break the formidable taboo against affirming what most Americans by then believed, that the country’s post-9/11 military adventurism had been a mistake. He also did little to seriously curtail it in his first presidency and has enthusiastically expanded it in his second.

It has long been tempting to view Trump’s presidencies as the logical conclusion of the folly of the post-9/11 era, and as support for the liberal contention that the right’s calls for patriotism in that era were always really about seizing domestic power. But Trump has also enabled a re-examination of history, and even recent history, that complicates the tale of 9/11’s primacy. [...]

Trump’s 2016 election “represented the crystallization of elements that were still inchoate” in the early 1990s, John Ganz writes in “When the Clock Broke,” his recent history of the period’s underappreciated malaise. In retrospect, 9/11 was paradoxically both a respite from and accelerant of polarizations and pathologies that were already well underway by then. It allowed Americans to ignore them for a moment, until they came roaring back with redoubled force. [...] [ed. So, explain Obama.]

If you do not remember the Berlin Wall but had an adolescence shaped by social media and cellphones, the brightest dividing lines in recent history are technological — and, with the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence, are becoming more so. This is clear in the borrowed nostalgias of Gen Z, the bits of the past that 20-somethings have recently pressed into service as emblems of a lost golden era: “Friends,” John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, ’90s high-school-class home videos, music videos and concert footage from bands like Alien Ant Farm and Puddle of Mudd.

These artifacts span the pre- and post-9/11 years, and the lost innocence they represent has nothing to do with the attacks. Their interest comes from their evocation of a period when people hung out with friends in person and sweated alongside strangers at clubs and music festivals; teenagers goofed un-self-consciously for cameras rather than posing for them like jaded celebrities; and popular culture could be loud and dumb and not picked apart in the digital panopticon for its social politics. The shape that looms ominously over them isn’t the Twin Towers. It’s the iPhone. [ed. lol...ok.]

by Charles Homans, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Chantal Jahchan
[ed. Nice words, but no. C'mon. 9-11 was our last opportunity to cohere as a country, and we whiffed it. Instead we got a war on terror, as stupid and amorphous as any initiative based on a feeling (War on Anxiety?). A Patriot Act that gave subsequent crimes a never-ending veneer of political cover. 'Homeland' security, a Nazi term repurposed for new times. Two stupid reactionary wars (neither won) that among other things validated torture as official US state policy. Guantanamo Bay. A newly militarized culture. An expanded surveillance state. And fear... fear everywhere of some 'other' where strength and self-assurance used to be.]