Back in the spring, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and her team at Simon & Schuster chose July 9 to publish True Gretch, her new memoir– slash–inspirational guidebook. “I wanted to put it out early enough in this election cycle that it gave me something positive to talk about,” Whitmer, dressed in a cupcake-pink dress in the lobby of the midtown Hilton, told me brightly the day after its release.
“And give people a laugh, or some hope, in this hard and heavy election year.” It would be a distraction for politicos in advance of Donald Trump’s scary party convention in Milwaukee and far enough ahead of the Democrats’ own August convention that it would not seem as though she were trying to bigfoot her heat-seeking peers.
However, Whitmer told me she’d had her heart set on the second week of July for another, electorally unrelated reason. “We really pushed to make sure it came out this week because it was Shark Week,” she said. Whitmer has loved Shark Week since she heard comedian Na’im Lynn’s riff on how women no longer use demure euphemisms to refer to their periods but rather proclaim to would-be sexual partners, “It’s Shark Week, motherfucker!” She found the line so funny that—partially in response to a male debate coach who’d told her to smile more when speaking publicly—she started writing “SW, MF” in her notepad prior to speeches. During the 2020 Democratic convention, Whitmer was standing at the podium waiting to go live with her remote address to the nation, and she loosened up by joking, “It’s not just Shark Week, it’s Shark Week, motherfuckers,” mouthing the last word silently. Though she hadn’t been on-air, footage quickly leaked, obscuring any memory of her actual written remarks.
This book has definitely landed in the middle of Shark Week—the one happening on the Discovery Channel and the one happening in the Democratic Party.
Denne historien er fra July 15-28, 2024-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra July 15-28, 2024-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
Can the Media Survive?
BIG TECH, Feckless Owners, CORD-CUTTERS, RESTIVE STAFF, Smaller Audiences ... and the Return of PRINT?
Status Update
Hannah Gadsby's fascinatingly untidy tour through life after fame and death.
A Matter of Perspective
A Matter of Perspective Steve McQueen's worst film is still a solid WWII drama.
Creator, Destroyer
A retrospective reveals an architect's vision, optimism, and supreme arrogance.
In Praise of Bad Readers
In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.
The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
