The answer to your question depends on how much can be achieved by this movement. While he was working . As I read your article, I got a sickening feeling that we have been here before. When she denied it, he theatrically produced a printed-out screenshot of a WhatsApp message that Ms. Mohit had sent to some 80 of the unionizing employees. At the depth of his crisis in trying to leave the Party . Some, led by Tad Friend and Jia Tolentino, used the threat of a union and the suggestion that Cond Nast had illegally classified many of them as contractors, which the company disputes to set up a process by which some writers could become employees with health benefits. To me, he embodies it. An editor there, Daniel Menaker, wrote years later that he was embarrassed about the ineffectuality and yes, ordinariness of the Guild people wed come in contact with, but also that Mr. Shawns conduct had been revealing a classic case of liberals turning to the right when the capitalist chips were down just as I had been told, from my childhood on, liberals usually do.. The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America focuses on the ways that America changed in the years between 1978 and 2012. The union includes 120 people and there are about the same number of staff and contributing writers. But it seems to me to come out of a pre-modern sensibility that goes back to the New Deal. There is no country in the region that wants to absorb Iraqis in a long-term resettlement. Without some emotional impetus, its impossible for me to spend months (in this case, three), travel thousands of miles, and take risks in reporting a story. You say at the end of the book that you dont particularly want to live in any of the four Americas you define. Hillary Clinton stepping down as Secretary of State. A labor movement revival began when Gawker employees joined the W.G.A. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. I think its illiberalism is mostly in our culture: in media, in universities and schools, in philanthropies, arts organizations. (The contents of the writers group messages were shared with me on the condition I only quote people by name with their permission. I had this idea about the way international organizations go into Bosnia or Northern Ireland or Israel and just get the warring sides to build a school together, or put on a play together. But I have also come to believe that Iraq represents a larger failure than just that of individuals in the Bush Administration or the Administration as a whole. And instead they got the back of the hand of Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party, just as Biden is getting it now. 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. 1. . The midterm elections are the last obstacle to Trumps consolidation of powerand the greatest obstacle to voting is the feeling that it doesnt matter. He doesnt fit. It has an aggressive quality. This is a really important impulse and corrective that were going through right now. Interesting facts in his article: When a buyer searches for a book on Amazon.com, the results are partly determined by the fees paid by publishers; publishers pay Amazon a percentage of the profits they make through the online store each year; those percentages have gone up; although publishers may be squeezed by Amazon, they remain dependent on the company for as much as 30% of their sales, a number thats still growing. His book records the Administrations struggle to shape its own narrative. He was previously married to Michele Millon. It doesnt help in policy because you wont know what works and what doesnt, and it doesnt help politically because I think most people still have the idea that individual effort makes a difference and that it should be rewarded. Neither idealism nor toughness has withstood the ordeal in Mesopotamia. A United Parcel Service driver delivers packages from Amazon.com in Palo Alto. Then Ben Taub, an investigative reporter, asked Ms. Mohit why she had told their unionizing colleagues that the NewsGuild was also organizing the writers. How did Betrayed come together? Journalist George Packer's article in the March 26 issue of The New Yorker magazine is called "Betrayed: The Iraqis Who Trusted America the Most.". First of all, I agree about Obama. Neither of these issues is new. Trump barely won, and I think Obama would have been elected to a third term. In addition, he has written two novels, The Half Man and Central Square., 2023 Cond Nast. The Democrats did all they could in the early Obama years to find some common ground, even with large majorities in Congress. The New Yorker. Well, I agree. But the desire to be equal, I think, is still there as a driving passion. After a month in office, he has already proved himself unable to discharge his duties. To me, thats like saying Do we stop looking at the data on poverty because there are disparate outcomes among different groups? No. Have any of its members set up refugee camps, as Egypt, the most populous Arab state, did after the wars between Israel and Arab nations over Palestine? 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. "People were more . Im identifying, to some degree, with my parents, who were in their forties and on a college campus during the student revolution, and it was not an easy time. Many, including Ms. Nussbaum, have spoken out in favor of the unions current posture. Theres been nothing like it since the 1930s. I feel the same about our country. Even more, segregation ended because of the civil-rights movement. What happened next was not exactly a scene out of Norma Rae. Emily Nussbaum, a television critic, said she would expect to be fired if she wasnt doing a good job, according to two people there. 2,141 likes. He is the author of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, a New York Times bestseller, which won the 2013 National Book Award for non-fiction. Mr. Remnick has told some writers that he is simply eager for the conflict to be resolved. Aaron Rodgers is a year-to-year . I found my subjects through word of mouth and previous experience. There was a rebellion from below within Free America. New Yorker staff writer George Packer is the winner of the 2013 National Book Award in Nonfiction for "The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America." He reported extensively on the Iraq war, both for the New Yorker and in his 2005 book . Gili Ostfield, a production employee and union member, pointedly told HuffPost last week that if The New Yorker tries to print a diminished magazine without striking employees, it will be a stain on David Remnicks reputation.. Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Award, George Packer is a venerated staff writer for The New Yorker-with four tours on . He doesn't theorize about it. The Talk of the Town. Many of the writers, it seemed, valued their independent contractor status. Comment. Were arrogant. Ad Choices. On one recent Zoom call with union leaders, Mr. Wright, a former Teamster and longtime W.G.A. He is the author of several books, including The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, and The Assassins Gate: America in Iraq, which was named one of the ten best books of 2005 by the New York Times and won the New York Public Librarys Helen Bernstein Book Award and an Overseas Press Club book award. George Packer. Or maybe a little less, because the motives of Trump voters are very hard to break down. And unlike organizers in the 1930s, the NewsGuild has social media. Does Packer think thats viable? Remember the slogan when Obama first ran? He proposes a different vision, which he thinks offers brighter possibilities, centered around the concept of equality and non-demagogic appeals to patriotism. They might even be repelled by it. What are celebrities, after all? The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century. I think you can include Elizabeth Warren in that, as well. 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In "Our Man," Packer, who recently joined the Atlantic after years writing for the New Yorker, conducted more than 200 interviews and had exclusive access to Holbrooke's diaries and private . But I think Just America has gone in the direction of a dead end that has some of the illiberal qualities of Real America, and that comes up with a politics and policies that arent working and which are going to doom it. New Yorker writer George Packer's 2013 book, "The Unwinding," tells the story of the modern United States through the eyes of a few Americans including Jeff Connaughton, who worked as a . Is it a failure of leadership? What accounts for the level of incompetence in the American administration of postwar Iraq? Instead, youll be speaking to them ideologically, and they might tune you out. His reference points all seem to go back to Roosevelt and Truman and trade unions. Her passions are breaking up monopolies, regulating corporationsclass struggle, really. So, for example, in the COVID-relief bill, theres several billion dollars for disadvantaged farmers. People in Japan are calling Goto's murder their 9/11. I respond with shame and defiancemostly shame. And if you bloc them that way, if you create monoliths, you will end up not speaking to their actual, as people say, lived experience. One lingering quibble is that your sense of liberal righteousness strikes me as the milk-and-water variety that Theodore Roosevelt warned against. I agree. Its also a gateway into the real money books, movies, speaking gigs or other opportunities in the broadening economic landscape for brand-name writers. Or are you making a larger point that, for liberals to achieve something beyond just winning elections, they have to inculcate a sense of patriotism and national spirit? The employees ultimately backed down, rejecting the notion of unionism for what seemed in part to be cultural reasons. Or is there something about Americans that limits our capabilities in this type of project? Maybe publishers need to think disruptively and not be victims., Maybe, he added, they should think a little more like predators., [For the Record, 1:15 p.m. PST Feb. 10: An earlier version of this post misquoted author George Packer as saying, Maybe publishers need to think destructively and not be victims. He used the word disruptively, not destructively.], Join Carolyn Kellogg on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. But its in the bill, its in the law, because fairness demanded it. But no writers turned up at a protest outside Cond Nast headquarters on May Day, and none appeared to be present at a march outside the home of Cond Nasts global chief content officer, Anna Wintour, on June 8. And one thing thats interesting about both Real America and Just America is the rate of change, how fast theyve come on and how quickly theyve seized a lot of cultural groundat least, a lot of the discourse, if not the institutions of power. Staff Writer, The New Yorker; Author, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America Doug Sovern, KCBS Radio Political Reporter - Moderator. Compared to Iraq or the recession in rural North Carolina, I thought it would be relatively straightforward, Packer said. It wasnt highlighted in the bill. Some of the large pieces, which are chopped up and welded onto the rest in roughly 20-page blocks, began as articles in The New Yorker, where Mr. Packer is a staff writer. 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. In his article, Packer outlines what he calls "four rival narratives four accounts of America's moral identity.". Why did ISIS allow its negotiations with Jordan to collapse? Free America in the eighties, Smart America with Clinton in the nineties. And Obama was also trying to put forward an idea of America that is patriotic, that is aware of its flaws, and that says the arc of history bends toward justice, and so on. I wonder how much its in the control of, say, one side of the political spectrum to bring the other side back. And if we have a politics that focusses on that, and tries to bring us closer to that, I think thats a healthier narrative than any of the four Ive described. 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They're scared of doing something that might look a little unsafe. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Its a phrase Palin used during the 2008 campaign. It never rains on a Twitter picket line. How do you decide which details to include? How do you understand that? He really doesnt. Where does Bernie Sanders fit in? Away from the fun-house mirrors and the bullhorns of cable news and social media, peoples views are more nuanced and less easy to caricature. That dynamic's been entrenched for six, seven years now. Obama was more candid. Its the first time since Free America emerged, in the nineteen-eighties, that weve had a serious new political project as ambitious as thatof simply improving peoples lives in jobs, in working conditions, giving labor more power, breaking up monopolies, providing health care. 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. And thats probably an inevitable outcome. Betrayed started with a simple feelingdismay and anger at the news that Iraqis I knew were being abandoned to their fate. . Its like loyalty to whats yours. "[4], Packer graduated from Yale College in 1982, where he resided at Calhoun College (now called Grace Hopper College). ranges across the country to chronicle the time when "the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip first gave way." "I am the empire at the end of the decadence." Thus said the French poet Mallarm. The conflict has seized the attention of the industry not just because of the employees glee at holding the brand hostage in public, but also because it highlights big questions facing contemporary media. The writers discussed whether they should follow their colleagues into the NewsGuild, and whether the magazine treated writers fairly. George Packer (born ca. Free Americans' individualistic, leave-me-alone conception of . That dynamic poses a threat to both traditional, top-down media institutions and organized labor. That doesnt mean it ignores racism, discrimination, disfranchisement, and the history of all of these. G eorge Packer's incisive, deftly argued book about the moral and political quandary of the United States begins and ends with his declaration: "I am an American." The statement is self . Amazon is good for online shoppers, but is it good for books? Absolutely. The New Yorker George Packer is an author and staff writer for The New Yorker . By George Packer. Were informal with waiters. And those are mostly Black farmers who have been dispossessed through decades by the Department of Agriculture and by state and local governments. 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