In many ways, this reminds me of the nineteen-sixties, and millennials and boomers have a lot more in common than either side has acknowledged. David Remnick at the American Society of Magazine Editors Ellie Awards ceremony in Brooklyn in 2019. he had erred and limited the action to one store, severance agreements that require confidentiality and nondisparagement, interferes with employees right to organize. 2,141 likes. Its a phrase Palin used during the 2008 campaign. The Devastating New History of the January 6th Insurrection. A new generation discovers that its hard to balance work with a well-lived life. . George Packer. Then Ben Taub, an investigative reporter, asked Ms. Mohit why she had told their unionizing colleagues that the NewsGuild was also organizing the writers. NEW YORK -- Thomas Pynchon, Jhumpa Lahiri and George Saunders were among the finalists Wednesday for the National Book Awards. Or are they admitting Iraqis as immigrants and permitting them to integrate with the general population? Republicans arent united with one another, never mind with Joe Biden. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Neither of these issues is new. And in a way you can see they have followed each other in power from one decade to the next. His decency, his dignity, his ability to explain what democracy isIm not sure well ever see that again. Theres an overlap. So, for example, in the COVID-relief bill, theres several billion dollars for disadvantaged farmers. The moment, of course, seems all the stranger, in that much of the conflict is playing out virtually, while everyone is working remotely. A new mood of activism has swept through the home of the mascot Eustace Tilley. When he came back from book leave in mid-2013, Packer's New Yorker editors suggested the idea to him. Thats where its strongest, and at this point its dominant. By the whim of the editor, she replied. Smart America is where I mostly live, but its no longer a meritocracy, if it ever was. ), None of us want to do anything that could jeopardize the magazine we love. George Packer, Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow and ASU Future of War Fellow, wrote a book, Our Man, about Richard Holbrooke and American foreign policy.Packer has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 2003. Can he save his country from collapse? In a new interview, staff writer for The Atlantic George Packer responds to critics of his controversial essay about education in Brooklyn. I dont want to become two countries. But this is the direction we have to go in. And so, if Smart America is a new aristocracy in which families essentially pass on membership to their children, then its in the end going to be a destructive force, even if a lot of good things have come from it. They might even be repelled by it. [6], Packer was a Holtzbrinck Fellow Class of Fall 2009 at the American Academy in Berlin.[7]. That dynamic's been entrenched for six, seven years now. The Gazelle Project targeted small independent publishers to extract better terms for Amazon -- as a cheetah would target a gazelle. The Depression that ended Fitzgeralds Jazz Age yielded to a new order that might be called the Roosevelt Republic. When he came back from book leave in mid-2013, Packers New Yorker editors suggested the idea to him. Packer argues that seismic economic shifts during a single generation have created a country of winners and losers, leaving the social contract in pieces and setting citizens adrift to find new paths forward. 2023 Cond Nast. But youre right: in politics, its barely got a toehold. Virtually all of The New Yorker writers I spoke to said they supported the unions core economic goals, and believed the junior staff members deserve pay increases. They also have deep confidence in his ability to make their work better. I think you lose a lot of people who simply dont see themselves that way. I recently spoke by phone with Packer, who is a staff writer at The Atlantic and was previously a staff writer at The New Yorker. If your goal is to slow climate change, or reverse inequality, or stop racism, or rebuild democracy, you will need the national solidarity that comes from patriotism. How do you do this without engaging in a nationalism that people dont like, which is I think the reason that liberal, progressive politicians have always had trouble doing it? His 2021 book Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal describes the fragmentation of American society in recent decades into four mutually antagonistic "four Americas": "Free America" (economically liberal), "Smart America" (educated, affluent and socially liberal), "Real America" (white rural precariat) and "Just America" (urban, progressive and economically disadvantaged). The easiest-to-understand element of the dispute involves the wages of the production employees, the group that includes everyone from fact checkers to social media editors. George Packer on "Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left and Reshaped the American Century," by Daniel Oppenheimer. Trump barely won, and I think Obama would have been elected to a third term. I ended up travelling through Europe and the Middle East for about a month, with two weeks in Baghdad. According to Packer, in the place of the old stories, "four rival narratives have emerged, four accounts of America's moral identity" two on the right, and two on the left. 2023 Cond Nast. The New Yorker is now working out the final details of a contract, and people on both sides appeared optimistic they would reach an agreement this week. Why did ISIS . November 2, 2022. Writers for The New Yorker have been known to refer to the editor, David Remnick, as Dad, so there was something a little illicit about their decision to gather without him back in 2018 at a Windsor Terrace apartment. I have no hope that Congress or any of the Presidential candidates (and that emphatically includes the Democrats) will bring about a fundamental change in the way the United States defines its global strategy, or the way it projects its interests. Add that to the extreme difficulty of Iraqis emigrating to the West (Sweden is the exception), and they are basically unwelcome all over the world. Packer was a columnist for Mother Jones and was a staff writer for The New Yorker from 2003 to 2018. I think nationalism is destructive. What am I writing about here?, What he came up with, he explained, is Amazons relation to the world of culture -- especially books.. I dont know enough to agree or disagree., But in terms of telling the story, it was helpful. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. It took Amazon a little while to decide they werent going to cooperate with me, he said. The 96-year-old magazine, known for its revered writers and sophisticated audience, is being consumed by a labor dispute. And that was the animating idea of the left in the first maybe two-thirds of the century. Under The New Yorkers structure, even some of the best-known writers are considered contractors, and their bosses had given them the impression that health insurance was not a possibility. He summarized what he saw as the consensus view in another WhatsApp message to colleagues. In this episode, Andrew is joined by George Packer, the author of Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal, to explore the four narratives that now dominate American life: Free America, Smart America, Real America, and Just America. What I hear when I travel these days is hostility not just toward the U.S. government but toward the country and its people. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. [3] In a 2022 talk for House of SpeakEasy's Seriously Entertaining program, Packer shared that his father took his own life when he (Packer) was twelve years old, calling it "the big event of my childhood. "People were more . In his new book, " Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal ," George Packer writes that the United States is in a state of disrepair, brought about primarily by the fact . I very much enjoyed this piece, because it seems to fit with the thoughts you expressed in your book The Assassins Gate, which I read with great interest. "Certain folks, frankly, don't support us in leadership roles." ++++ She does know that Chicago isn't even a majority-white city, right? On Saturday afternoon the primary participants of The New Yorker's delightful and addictive "Campaign Trail" podcast collected for a live version of same, sort of like when Monty Python did The Secret Policeman's Other Ball. Politicians are always letting the public off the hookit might be the most unforgivably dishonest thing they do. Almost any Republican now can be slotted into the Reagan mold or the Trump mold, or theyre pretending to be one but theyre clearly the other. We are having history wars at the momentin state legislatures, in school districtsand we are bringing up parts of our history that have been suppressed and that have to be brought to the surface. Right. It means were better. His new book, The Unwinding , depicts an America weakened by . This is a really important impulse and corrective that were going through right now. In Iraq, weve failed as a country. I have a list of qualities that I think apply to most of us, that foreigners immediately pick up as American traits. Packer was born in California around 1960. The Gazelle Project -- that was me, Melville Houses Dennis Johnson told Packer. I very much enjoyed this piece, because it seems to fit . Persuasion doesnt work. It might require a book to answer. The past four years have severely tested those ideals, and under the leadership of Jeffrey Goldberg, who became editor in chief the month before . Packer doesn't preach about this. But your point is valid, and I think that partly explains the Packers' willingness to continue pushing cap charges into the future with these restructures. That dynamic poses a threat to both traditional, top-down media institutions and organized labor. Aaron Rodgers is a year-to-year . But it made focusing on the companys chief executive redundant. But the other chunk of the story is how much Gutekunst wants to see more of Love in the regular season. She changed a bit during the campaign, but I think of her as something of a throwback. Thats what George Packer asks in this weeks New Yorker, in a long article that looks at the online retailer as disruptor. In 2019, she was a judge of the National Book Award in Nonfiction. His book records the Administrations struggle to shape its own narrative. 40 Lightfoot must have known what was coming on Tuesday because she laid down the race/woman card over the weekend. Joe Biden was elected last year with more votes than any candidate ever, and it doesnt seem to me that he fits into any of these Americas exactly. Why did you decide to structure this book around four Americas? Sarah Palin was the early warning sign that Free America was breaking up. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. The editor, who is 62, has also said he doesnt plan to follow the example of William Shawn, who ran the magazine until he was nearly 80 and the institution had become a kind of museum of itself. Staff Writer, The New Yorker; Author, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America Doug Sovern, KCBS Radio Political Reporter - Moderator. I dont think you can persuade people. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. It doesnt happen in jobs. I dont know where else it could happen. the democrats lost the white working class. But Democrats are just as scared. Bluntly, re: NewsGuild, what it comes down to for me is that I would never hire an agent who had lied to or about me, Mr. Taub wrote to a WhatsApp group for staff writers after the incident. 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