New York Times Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

The 100 best books of the 21st century

The New Jim Crow

“These are the 100 best books of the 21st century, as voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, and critics.” So sayeth The New York Times. Alas, I’ve read but a few of them. Still, I will mention the ones for which I have… some relationship beyond seeing the author interviewed on CBS Saturday Morning, such as #76 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (2022).

#88 The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (2010)

Around 2012, Lydia Davis spoke at the Albany Public Library, and I picked up this book. A few years later, the Friends and Foundation named her a Literary Legend, and I got to speak with her a half dozen times. “If her work has become a byword for short (nay, microdose) fiction, this collection proves why it is also hard to shake; a conflagration of odd little umami bombs — sometimes several pages, sometimes no more than a sentence — whose casual, almost careless wordsmithery defies their deadpan resonance.”

#69 The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (2010)

Not only did I read it, I reviewed it. It’s an important book.

#48 Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2003)

I took the graphic novel to a work conference but left it in my hotel room. They shipped it back to me, but it cost me more than buying the book again. It’s here waiting to be read. However, I did watch the movie on a flight from Paris to New York City in May 2023 and liked it.

#36 Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)

In 2016, I wrote that I SHOULD read the book, and subsequently, I did but failed to review it. I found it moving.

A Family Tragicomic

#35 Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (2006)

I did not read the graphic novel, even though ADD said I should, and he’s usually correct. And I probably will. However, I did a touring company production of the musical in 2017 at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady, and I own the Original Cast Album. Here’s the performance from the Tony Awards in 2015

#26 Atonement by Ian McEwan (2002)

I saw the movie adaptation in 2008, which I did not love.

#20 Erasure by Percival Everett 2001

I saw the movie adaptation in January 2024, and I LOVED it! However, they changed the title to American Fiction.

#16 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2000)

Someone lent this to me years ago, and I got to about page 59 before stopping, and I no longer remember why. It’s still sitting on my shelf, next to Persepolis. Yes, 2000 is in the 20th century; I didn’t make the list.

#7 The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016)

It’s been on my Amazon list since 2021.

#2 The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (2010)

My wife has read and thoroughly enjoyed this 600-page book in the past few years. It’s about the Great Migration of Black Americans from the South to the North and West from 1915 to 1970.

What Causes Obesity

a complex, chronic condition

As someone who has struggled with my weight for a good chunk of my life, I was fascinated by this article in The New York Times in November 2022. Scientists Don’t Agree on What Causes Obesity, but They Know What Doesn’t. It should be sharable.

“That’s not to say the researchers disagreed on everything. The three-day meeting was infused with an implicit understanding of what obesity is not: a personal failing.” That messaging had been pervasive most of my life.

“No presenter argued that humans collectively lost willpower around the 1980s, when obesity rates took off, first in high-income countries‌, then in much of the rest of the world. Not a single scientist said our genes changed in that short time. Laziness, gluttony‌‌ , and sloth were not referred to as obesity’s helpers.”

The stereotypes have been… unhelpful in getting most people to shed pounds. Yet it seems as though “well-meaning” people would offer unsolicited “advice.”

Starving doesn’t work

This piece from Mount Sinai about diets for rapid weight loss is true in my experience: “People who lose weight very quickly are much more likely to regain the weight over time than people who lose weight slowly through less drastic diet changes and physical activity. The weight loss is a bigger stress for the body, and the hormonal response to the weight loss is much stronger.”

NYT: “In stark contrast to a prevailing societal view of obesity, which assumes people have full control over their body size, they didn’t blame individuals for their condition, the same way we don’t blame people suffering from the effects of undernutrition, like stunting and wasting.

“The researchers instead referred to obesity as a complex, chronic condition, and they were meeting to get to the bottom of why humans have, collectively, grown larger over the past half-century. To that end, they shared a range of mechanisms that might explain the global obesity surge.

“And their theories, however diverse, made one thing obvious: As long as we treat obesity as a personal responsibility issue, its prevalence is unlikely to decline.” In other words, fat shaming is counterproductive.

I’m happy that there has been a degree of acceptance in fashion, even in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue starting a few years back.

Newspaper endorsement

Media Literacy Week

When I read the Vanity Fair article, Is the Newspaper Endorsement Dying? and similar articles elsewhere, I was sad, but for a slightly different reason than one might think.

“Alden Global Capital—the second-largest newspaper publisher in the country—began adopting a new endorsement policy. ‘[The Boston] Herald stands for the people, not pols,’ read the headline of the Herald’s editorial, which went on to announce that the paper would stop endorsing candidates in presidential, gubernatorial, and Senate races…” Now, there may well be endorsements at the more local level.

“Earlier in the piece, the editorial staff offered some context for the decision. ‘As America’s political divide continues to deepen, the role of traditional news media as impartial providers of a common set of facts is more vital than ever,’ the editorial began, citing the ‘increasingly acrimonious’ nature of public discourse ‘with misinformation and disinformation on the rise.’

“At this particular moment, the [Hartford] Courant added in their editorial, the ‘partisan selection” inherent to endorsing political candidates “is counterproductive to achieving the essential goal of facilitating healthy public debate and building trust in our journalistic enterprise.'”

Other newspapers are cutting back as well. It may be “prudent” not to offend their shrinking customer base. Indeed, “a committee of editors from Gannett newsrooms nationwide [recently]… recommended the company’s papers avoid making endorsements in [statewide] races… ‘Readers don’t want us to tell them what to think’ and ‘perceive us as having a biased agenda,’ the committee said… citing editorials and opinion columns as not only ‘among our least read content,’ but a ‘frequently cited reason for canceled subscriptions.'”

The Wire

A friend of mine pointed out that writer David Simon, way back in 2009, “expresses fears for newspapers’ future and accuses media owners of contempt,” some of them rightly so. Ultimately, he was making a case for online paid subscriptions, which has had mixed success.

More pervasive in the years since is the cult of personality that has become more important than real news. In The Hollywood Reporter, psychotherapist and media theorist MJ Corey views the cultural sway of the Kardashians. ‘There is a sadomasochistic element to the way they put themselves out there.’ The sociologists and philosophers who have foundationally influenced your thinking on media — Jean Baudrillard, Marshall McLuhan, and Daniel Boorstin — spoke a lot about the acceleration of media, spectacle, and the creation of the self.”

Another Hollywood Reporter story, this by Keli Goff, suggests Trevor Noah’s “decision to leave his Comedy Central show — and the continued decline of late night it signals — back to the politician who first eschewed legacy media,” Sarah Palin.

“Palin’s [Katie] Couric interview became fodder for memorable sketches on Saturday Night Live, but the fallout also led to the political divide that defines media consumption today. Palin wrote off the press as condescending, mean-spirited, untrustworthy, and out to get people like her (non-elites who would rather hunt than read.) People who saw themselves in her began to write the press off, and the rise of social media finally made it easier for them to do so.”

Pushing back

Some papers, including the Albany Times Union, want to push back. Editor Casey Seiler noted, “To be clear: The editorial page doesn’t direct news coverage, and it isn’t beholden to opine only on topics the Times Union’s reporters have covered.” Knowing Seiler somewhat, I’m willing to take him at his word.

But many folks do not. They perceive the mainstream media – or “lamestream media,” as Palin called them, as intrinsically unfair. There was a recent poll that was conducted by the New York Times indicating that the Republican generic House candidate had a 4-point edge over the Democrat. This was a straightforward story unless you read right-wing media, which I do. Newsmax indicates that EVEN The New York Times had to ADMIT that Democrats were losing. A very different spin.

Even a decade ago, people would share with me some info nuggets. I’d ask the source; they’d say Facebook or Twitter. “But what SOURCE, not the platform?” Even then, it was a struggle to get my point across. Now, what Kim Kardashian tweets about is treated the same as, and indeed is followed far more closely than, actual news on the legacy media. And THAT makes me sad.

Hope?

Still, I always try to find hopeful signs. The New York Times notes that this week, October 24 to 28, is Media Literacy Week. The article Teenagers and Misinformation: Some Starting Points for Teaching Media Literacy – the link SHOULD be available to you – has lots of useful information. “Five ideas to help students understand the problem, learn basic skills, share their experiences and have a say in how media literacy is taught.”

Number 3 is Learn from teen fact-checkers, specifically “the MediaWise Teen Fact-Checking Network, which publishes fact-checks for teenagers, by teenagers. According to the site, the network’s ‘fact-checks are unique in that they debunk misinformation and teach the audience media literacy skills so they can fact-check on their own.'”

Some of this, I would think, is common sense. Mike Caulfield, “a digital literacy expert… has refined the process fact-checkers use into four simple principles:

1. Stop.

2. Investigate the source.

3. Find better coverage.

4. Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context.

Otherwise known as SIFT.”

Even adults could make of the methodologies described in the article.

COVID deniers with COVID

Wear a mask in public. Social distancing. This is news?

I’ve been watching the evening news, masochist that I am. More than once in the last few weeks, I’ve seen someone break down crying about the loss of their beloved family member. I’m not made of stone, so I feel a little sad.

Then they weep, “I didn’t know that COVID was REAL!” I bite my lip. In a recent comment on my blog, the blogger fillyjonk wrote, “I find myself irrationally angry at so many of my fellow citizens. ” I tend to agree with her, except for the “irrationally” part. NOW, they believe?

Still, I was STUNNED to read an article in Vanity Fair this month. What Do You Do When Your COVID Patient Doesn’t Believe In COVID? The online version is quite explicit: “‘It’s the Trump Bubble.'” OMG. “The Right Has Created a Wave of COVID Patients Who Don’t Believe It’s Real.”

Even before getting to the story itself, this description. “A Texas nurse had a patient in a COVID ICU tell her the virus is ‘fake news.’ A California nurse was mocked for wearing a mask. As a new wave of COVID-19 sweeps the country, health care workers are grappling with the consequences of the president’s misinformation machine. ‘This is insane,’ says one. ‘I have never seen anything like it.'”

I am literally holding my hands to my head, fearing that it will somehow explode. COVID deniers with COVID.

Nothing is real

“Gigi Perez, a California–based nurse… told me, ‘The COVID-19 unit I work in has already lost seven nurses in the last three months due to the burnout from managing these types of patients.’ In the last two weeks, Perez said, nine of her fellow health care workers have contracted COVID-19. Workers are ‘beginning to resent the public for not doing their part to help control the pandemic,’ she said.”

And this. “An infectious disease doctor who asked to remain anonymous told me he had never before experienced politics overshadowing science in the medical field. ‘Before [Donald] Trump I never spoke politics in the clinic room,’ he said. ‘There is no doubt that COVID splits into fact-free and factful worlds. This is why we have a raging epidemic.”

In WaPo, read about a Missouri county health director. Concerning contact tracing, she says, “Probably half of the people we call are skeptical or combative. They refuse to talk. They deny their own positive test results. They hang up. They say they’re going to hire a lawyer. They give you fake people they’ve spent time with and fake numbers.”

While downplaying the pandemic from the beginning, the despicable regime behavior started in earnest on April 3. That’s when IMPOTUS said his experts were “now recommending Americans wear ‘non-medical cloth’ face coverings.” He said “the recommendations… were voluntary and that he would not partake. ‘I don’t think I’m going to be doing it.”

And the die was cast. Now, hospitals in half the states are facing a massive staffing shortage as Covid-19 surges.

White flag

Here’s a story in the Boston Globe. With COVID-19 victory in sight, America surrenders. “What’s happened to us? A lifetime ago, Americans endured years of Great Depression suffering, then went off to fight World War II or, on the home front, tightened their belts, stretched their rationed food, and planted Victory Gardens.”

But that’s not us. “Yes, this isolated, socially distanced existence is tiresome, particularly in cold weather. But we have salvation, in the form of vaccinations, within sight… Then life will begin to return to normal.”

This past summer, the writer “had a chance to catch up with an old pal from high school who, long a Republican, has become a Fox News conservative. The good news, said my friend, who has a graduate degree, was that if the Democrats won, the big to-do about COVID-19 would end on Nov. 3. Why, I asked? Because, he said, it was all a big hoax to get Joe Biden elected. We joke a lot, so I assumed he was kidding. No.”

So it makes “sense” that when the CDC urges against Thanksgiving travel, it will be largely ignored. In the New York Times, a writer traced his COVID-19 bubble and it’s “enormous.” He was thinking a dozen or two, but it was over 100 people.

And much of the blame for the current explosion of cases must fall on a regime that has announced in October, “We are not going to control the pandemic.” That’s the truth. About four dozen of them have had the virus.

I am SO angry with the regime’s handling of the crisis. Americans are dying unnecessarily. And the buck stops there.

1619 to eight encouraging minutes

I need SOMETHING to hold onto

It’s very easy for me to become discouraged about issues of race and ethnicity in America. Every once in a while, I say, “Ooo, I like that!”

HISTORY

Both the New York Times and National Geographic have extensive pieces on the year 1619, 400 years ago, when “enslaved Africans first arrived in Virginia.”

A New York Times magazine article suggests America Wasn’t a Democracy Until Black Americans Made It One, by working towards its 1776 ideals. It’s a slow process: Here’s, for instance, the shameful story of how one million black families have been ripped from their farms.

Meanwhile, their U.S. roots date back centuries, but some Latinos still wonder if it’s enough.

Check out the funny-if-it-weren’t-so-pathetic When The U.S. Government Tried To Replace Migrant Farmworkers With High Schoolers.

NOW

It’s to a point where most Latinos now say it’s gotten worse for them in the U.S.

This Week Tonight with John Oliver unpacks Bias In Medicine, based on both gender and race.

Voter suppression is as alive now as it was in the 1960s and earlier.

The conservative Foreign Policy suggests that white supremacists want a dirty bomb, and the regime “is letting them get dangerously close to acquiring one.” It’s no surprise that the Department of Justice HID a 2018 report on white supremacy and domestic terrorism.

When you talk about these things, those who disagree accuse you of just being PC. It has become “a rhetorical reflex.”

AND YET

I watch the Vlogbrothers’ four-minute videos a lot, and it’s not just because their surnames are Green. The authors have an outsized influence on their online community of Nerdfighters.

I was surprised and pleased when John talked about How I (barely) Passed 11th Grade English, which includes a paean to Toni Morrison. Then Hank responded in …Not My Proudest Moment, which was eerily similar in some respects. In both cases, they acknowledged their privilege and part of that was a result of their skin color.

Undoubtedly I’ve said before that I LOVE it when white people talk about white privilege. When black and brown people talk about it, too often it falls onto deaf ears.

I KNOW it’s a small thing, in the grand scheme of four centuries of racialism in what we now call the United States. Still, I need SOMETHING to hold onto, some sliver that it’s getting better, not worse.