[2] Packer's sister, Ann Packer, also is a writer. Patriotism, to me, is closer to what Im trying to describe because its like loyalty. Is it tough enough to withstand this ordeal in Mesopotamia? This is an excellent question, and a huge one. The magazine was once a charity case among flush glossies, but its subscription business, which boomed in the Trump years, has given its editor unique leverage: The New Yorker avoided companywide layoffs last year, and has also been left out of the rest of Cond Nasts painful drive toward centralization. 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. We found out last year we had something really big to do. [1] His parents taught at Stanford University: his mother, Nancy Packer (ne Huddleston), was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in the Creative Writing Program and later professor of English, and his father, Herbert L. Packer, was a distinguished professor of law, and the author of numerous books and articles. (The NewsGuilds president, Susan DeCarava, said in response to questions about the exchange that it does not comment on confidential organizing conversations.), The meetings host, Adam Davidson, had already been among the writers talking to Mr. Remnick about setting up a health care plan for writers. Politicians are always letting the public off the hookit might be the most unforgivably dishonest thing they do. Why ISIS Murdered Kenji Goto. The book is kind of a quarrel with myself because, on the one hand, I am in a state of utter disgust and rage at the Republican Party, and its lies, its conspiracies, its racism, its cynicism. Hillary Clinton stepping down as Secretary of State. A new generation discovers that its hard to balance work with a well-lived life. A labor movement revival began when Gawker employees joined the W.G.A. February 3, 2015. And they all come, in some ways, from that original passion for equality. Does Packer think thats viable? "Long engagements". It wasnt. Carolyn Kellogg is a prize-winning writer who served as Books editor of the Los Angeles Times for three years. 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. Across the board, American institutions have failed. The editor, William Shawn, responded with pained, elegant letters, warning that collective bargaining would undermine the friendly, gentle, free, informal, democratic atmosphere that made The New Yorker special. 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. But, in comparison with Iraq, America acquitted itself with a measure of honor by evacuating and resettling its Vietnamese friends in the United Statesa hundred and forty thousand of them by the end of 1975. But there are other issues where I dont think this helps at all, either in politics or policy. Theres an overlap. We had a President who sowed division, and the result is that hundreds of thousands are dead. 2,141 likes. But I felt that in the last few years, politically and culturally, things have happened that showed that there are divisions within, as well as between, those two big blocks of Americans. ), None of us want to do anything that could jeopardize the magazine we love. Packer has made four tours on assignment in Iraq for The New In one recent Zoom call, writers even complained to Mr. Remnick of their fears of being bullied on Twitter if they diverge from union talking points. But that is precisely the problem: Packer - I believe, and please correct me if I am wrong - has no training in North Africa's history and politics and I don't think he has spent much time there except for these quick hit trips for the long New Yorker piece (again, please correct me if I am wrong). One thing thats been said is that people on the left claim to speak for women, or people of color, and then, when it comes to the ballot box, Joe Biden overwhelmingly beats all the other Democrats with Black voters. But they were also suspicious of the NewsGuild, and began a parallel set of meetings with its rival, the Writers Guild of America, East. Packer was a columnist for Mother Jones and was a staff writer for The New Yorker from 2003 to 2018. They might even be repelled by it. Most Iraqi refugees I spoke with have found the reception from their Arab neighbors rather chilly. An organizer for the NewsGuild who was present, Nastaran Mohit, told the writers she had avoided involving them in the original organizing drive because she knew how close many of them were to management, and she was worried theyd snitch. They arent particularly concerned with the terms of the debate in Washingtontime lines, benchmarks, departure dates, troop numbers. A new mood of activism has swept through the home of the mascot Eustace Tilley. "They originally thought of it as a [Jeff] Bezos piece," he said. Along with Canada, the panelists included Abhijit Banerjee, Katherine Boo, and Jose Antonio Vargas.[8]. 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.. And this is also the Democratic Party going along with the Reagan consensus. Why did you decide to structure this book around four Americas? The village of waiting. You have to be very high up to know about it, he said. 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. The New Yorkers union, for instance, tweeted and then deleted its solidarity with Palestinians from the river to the sea, a phrase that some interpret as threatening violence. 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. Staff Writer, The New Yorker; Author, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America Doug Sovern, KCBS Radio Political Reporter - Moderator. 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. All of these are public stories that are familiar to those who follow Amazons moves in the publishing world; what Packer does it put them all in one place and make them comprehensible to a general audience. I think you can include Elizabeth Warren in that, as well. All rights reserved. patriotic feeling has to be tapped if you want to achieve anything big. It never rains on a Twitter picket line. In 2019, Packer released a book titled Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century. But other tensions revolve around the sense that the junior jobs only rarely offer promotions into the ranks of writers, and no clear career path. "Certain folks, frankly, don't support us in leadership roles." ++++ She does know that Chicago isn't even a majority-white city, right? A rumor began to circulate, spurned by an article in The Sun, attributing the cause of the wreck to Judge carrying the ashes of Sattay on the Umbria. The union includes 120 people and there are about the same number of staff and contributing writers. Maybe we needed someone who could think outside the really toxic divisions that we live with. Some salaries at The New Yorker start at $42,000 a year and remain under $60,000 after 20 years on the job. Compare that to the several hundred Iraqisalmost all of them refugees from the Saddam erawho have been allowed to immigrate to the United States over the past few years. This post has been corrected. BLOG; AUTHOR ARCHIVE; VIDEOS; PODCASTS; PHOTOS; PRESS; Why Print Journalism Survives: George Packer on "The Unwinding," Charlie Hebdo, and More. Some of the material in this article is also drawn from reporting on this topic by my colleagues Noam Scheiber and Marc Tracy. 1960) is a US journalist, novelist, and playwright. How did Betrayed come together? And that has left the most prominent writers mainly watching from the sidelines in recent weeks as a bitter labor dispute has consumed their beloved magazine. They have all kinds of identities. So, for example, in the COVID-relief bill, theres several billion dollars for disadvantaged farmers. I think its illiberalism is mostly in our culture: in media, in universities and schools, in philanthropies, arts organizations. That doesnt mean it ignores racism, discrimination, disfranchisement, and the history of all of these. He now writes for The Atlantic. . The nineteen-sixties are on my mind a lot. The moment, of course, seems all the stranger, in that much of the conflict is playing out virtually, while everyone is working remotely. 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. Comment. 40 Lightfoot must have known what was coming on Tuesday because she laid down the race/woman card over the weekend. According to New Yorker writer George Packer, there used to be a kind of deal among Americans a deal in which everyone had a place. In a new book, the journalist George Packer argues that the country is divided into four warring factions. Simon & Schuster, 576 pp., $20.00. For example, do we get rid of standardized testing because there are disparate outcomes between groups? The Republicans exploited it. IN "The Assassins' Gate," his chronicle of the Iraq war, George Packer tells the tale of Drew Erdmann, a young American . Or, to be more . Packer is married to writer and editor Laura Secor. I just couldnt quite face that thought. Ryan Costello, a centrist wonk, ran for Congress to solve problemsbut his colleagues fell in line with Trumps parade of resentment. In 2019, she was a judge of the National Book Award in Nonfiction. It might require a book to answer. Aaron Rodgers is a year-to-year . the By the whim of the editor, she replied. Betrayed started with a simple feelingdismay and anger at the news that Iraqis I knew were being abandoned to their fate. 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. [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. The midterm elections are the last obstacle to Trumps consolidation of powerand the greatest obstacle to voting is the feeling that it doesnt matter. And unlike organizers in the 1930s, the NewsGuild has social media. At the same time, you may not sell those policies through the frame of specific identities. 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. Say what you want, but Biden is . But somehow, maybe because of where he comes from or what kind of career hes had, he doesnt feel like a very modern figure. Paperback, 434 pages. Then Ben Taub, an investigative reporter, asked Ms. Mohit why she had told their unionizing colleagues that the NewsGuild was also organizing the writers. George W. Bush has not said anything about Iraqi refugees, probably because they represent a political embarrassment, and the rest of the government has been extremely sluggish in addressing what is now a crisis. You say at the end of the book that you dont particularly want to live in any of the four Americas you define. But many writers also see what The New Yorker offers as a good deal: a prestigious place to publish that allows them to retain the rights to their work. And underlying much of the 2021 labor tensions are political tensions. Id call that Real America. It doesnt help. George Packer (born ca. 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. America in Iraq. Its Americans who believe that talent and effort should be rewarded but who also think were part of a society and that society has to make sure that everyone has roughly an equal chance. Can he save his country from collapse? 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