It is a truth only fitfully acknowledged that whom the gods wish to destroy, they first give an opinion column. "A live coffin," a former newspaper colleague of mine once called hers. (She quit.) Such a space seems an impossible remit, created to coax out vague, vatic pronouncements as the writer, mind wrung dry of ideas, sets about a weary pantomime of thinking and feeling, outrage and offense.
Few writers have seemed as aware of the hazards of professional opinionmongering as Ta-Nehisi Coates. "Columns are where great journalists go to die," he once wrote. "Unmoored from the rigors of actually making calls and expending shoe leather, the reporterturned-columnist often begins churning out musings originated over morning coffee and best left there." And yet few writers have been pressed so needily into service as pundit, as prophet. Coates was a staff writer for The Atlantic and the author of a memoir of his childhood, "The Beautiful Struggle" (2008), when he exploded into the public consciousness with "The Case for Reparations," a 2014 article for that magazine, which documented the long history and devastating reach of racist housing policies, and argued for restitution to the descendants of enslaved Black Americans.
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Denne historien er fra October 21, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
