The Bluestocking, vol 83: Obama's guru, the free speech circus and insomnia madness
Happy Fri - - - Saturday!
Let's call this a very early newsletter, rather than a very late one. Last Thursday I went on Question Time, and please don't tell anyone this, but once I got over my initial nerves, I began to enjoy it. You just ... say things - and then people clap you. It's very bad for the soul. I can definitely see how Nigel Farage happened.
Anyway, that knocked me out of action again, and then this has been my first week as a part-timer - so please enjoy the bumper linkfest today.
Helen
The aspiring novelist who became Obama's foreign policy guru
You have to have skin in the game — to be in the news business, or depend in a life-or-death way on its products — to understand the radical and qualitative ways in which words that appear in familiar typefaces have changed. Rhodes singled out a key example to me one day, laced with the brutal contempt that is a hallmark of his private utterances. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
In this environment, Rhodes has become adept at ventriloquizing many people at once. Ned Price, Rhodes’s assistant, gave me a primer on how it’s done. The easiest way for the White House to shape the news, he explained, is from the briefing podiums, each of which has its own dedicated press corps. “But then there are sort of these force multipliers,” he said, adding, “We have our compadres, I will reach out to a couple people, and you know I wouldn’t want to name them — ”
“I can name them,” I said, ticking off a few names of prominent Washington reporters and columnists who often tweet in sync with White House messaging.
Price laughed. “I’ll say, ‘Hey, look, some people are spinning this narrative that this is a sign of American weakness,’ ” he continued, “but — ”
“In fact it’s a sign of strength!” I said, chuckling.
“And I’ll give them some color,” Price continued, “and the next thing I know, lots of these guys are in the dot-com publishing space, and have huge Twitter followings, and they’ll be putting this message out on their own.”
I interviewed Ben Rhodes for the New Statesman podcast this week, and as part of my prep I read this 2016 profile of him. It's prescient about the strange new relationship between wonks, journalists and social media.
The Free Speech Circus
Carol Christ told me, “The metaphor I’ve been thinking about a lot is that of an object and its shadow. At first, I was imagining a conventional lecture: the lecture is the object; the digital recording is its shadow.” We were sitting in her office, which she hadn’t had time to finish unpacking. Several copies of the Norton Critical Edition of “The Mill on the Floss,” which she had edited, remained in a cardboard box on the floor.
“By contrast,” she continued, “when I consider Milo’s—I’ll use the word ‘event,’ although I’m not sure that that’s exactly the right word—it’s becoming clearer that he’s actually trying to plant a narrative, a trail of impressions and images, that lives primarily in the digital world, and that we, this physical campus, are merely the shadow.”
This New Yorker story tries to explain how "free speech conservatives" create a narrative of their own oppression by "snowflake" campuses. Milo Yiannopolous costs Berkeley millions at the same time as he plays them like a fiddle: they must either accede to his unreasonable demands and deal with the logistical nightmare of his badly organised event, or be accused of censorship.
The Catastrophic Madness of Lifelong Insomnia
Let me tell you what 11 days without sleep feels like.
Hallucinations kick in quite early — around the third or fourth day awake — but subtly at first. First, you get pops and crackles at the edge of hearing, like the sound of a semi-distant bonfire. A few days later, they start to creep in visually: at first a blurring of the eyes that you write off as just blear, but then stronger, like creeping fog or smoke at the edges of sight. Motes dance in your eyes as if the blood is rushing from your head. Colors start to look faded, washed out.
I've known/worked with Nicky for YEARS now, and I had no idea his insomnia was this bad, or that it has affected his life so profoundly. Gorgeous writing about an experience that I am very relieved not to share.
Guest gif: me idly browsing iPlayer then discovering Versailles Season 3.
If you've ever thought, "Yes, The Crown is OK, but I wish it had more gayness and great wigs", this is the television programme for you.
Quick Links:
It's nothing like a broken leg. A sobering piece by Hannah Jane Parkinson on mental illness.
"Men are working on the assumption they must either look like Burt Reynolds and bum a woman across a landing or else psychologically manipulate women into doing things they wouldn’t normally do, because sex is about, somehow, winning, rather than a collaboration between two people who delight in each other." A reminder of why Caitlin Moran sells so many books: funny, honest writing about the misunderstandings between men and women (and how men don't have the support structure that many women do in popular culture, which is what makes them vulnerable to the Jordan Petersons of the world.).
Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, wrote a tribute to the late Guardian editor Peter Preston which is really about what has made him such a fearsome editor.
I'm strangely enjoying the World Cup, but this piece is a reminder that there is still a huge amount of hostility to women trying to report on it. Female commentators are NAILS.
Despite being a critic, I enjoyed this advice from Peggy Ramsay to David Hare on why he should ignore the critics. "All that matters is your work. No, absolutely not all. Because you mustn't treat yourself as a person so harshly."
Jurassic Park but EVERYONE is wearing high heels (even the dinosaurs).
See you next time!