When youre been an industry for a long time, you cant imagine things differently. George Packer, a staff writer from 2003 to 2018, has covered the Iraq War for The New Yorker and has also written about the atrocities committed in Sierra Leone, civil unrest in the Ivory Coast . That and time and a change in Washington will eventually, I hope, restore Americas good name. 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. Its a pretty radical solution, if you think about what it would do to their sales he said. She told them, two people in the room said, that the guild could protect them from being fired and could even defend them against misguided editorial choices, if, for example, an editor she cited Arianna Huffington suddenly wanted everyone to write about sleep. Packer has made four tours on assignment in Iraq for The New I dont blame our fallen reputation entirely on President Bush and his advisers, though. Thats where its strongest, and at this point its dominant. Join our community book club. Obama did what you are talking about, in terms of making compromises in the way he talked about certain issues. Really, nihilism is the only word for it. Projects on that scalewhich is where national service comes in againseem like a better way than just attempting to give a big speech in the Obama mode, saying, There is no Red America, there is no Blue America, because that doesnt work. By George Packer. These are all obviously pie in the sky, because people are trying to do this and right now, with Congress, it isnt happening. Weve all lived with the red-blue division for about twenty years. George Packer at the 2013 Texas Book Festival, Last edited on 16 February 2023, at 15:10, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, "Geoffrey Canada on Giving Voice to the Have-nots", "Our Man by George Packer review Richard Holbrooke and American power", "2013 National Book Awards Go to McBride, Packer, Szybist, Kadohata", "James McBride, George Packer win National Book Awards", "Announcing the National Book Critics Awards Finalists for Publishing Year 2013", "2017 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grantee: George Packer", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Packer&oldid=1139717922, 2017 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant to complete, This page was last edited on 16 February 2023, at 15:10. "People were more . I think there was some evidence of that in the results of the 2020 election, and I think its going to continue to happen. What am I writing about here?, What he came up with, he explained, is Amazons relation to the world of culture -- especially books.. June 29, 2021. 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. She joined the L.A. Times in 2010 as staff writer in Books and left in 2018. All rights reserved. Virtually all of The New Yorker writers I spoke to said they supported the unions core economic goals, and believed the junior staff members deserve pay increases. why is my cookies pen blinking purple is there mobile coverage across the nullarbor hillside funeral home obits But this is the direction we have to go in. He doesnt fit. "Certain folks, frankly, don't support us in leadership roles." ++++ She does know that Chicago isn't even a majority-white city, right? 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. All the pieces are in place for the abuse of power, and it could happen quickly. The chances of a poor American kid getting into one of the top Ivy League schools today are the same as they were in 1954. And thats probably an inevitable outcome. The Depression that ended Fitzgeralds Jazz Age yielded to a new order that might be called the Roosevelt Republic. The union includes 120 people and there are about the same number of staff and contributing writers. Did you get any sense, from the Iraqis you interviewed, of their opinion of an American exit strategy? While he was working on the article, Brad Stones book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon was published -- a book Packer said he found to be excellent. 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. Compared to Iraq or the recession in rural North Carolina, I thought it would be relatively straightforward, Packer said. But Democrats are just as scared. Absolutely. Can you do things in your rhetoric or in your politics to make your party less toxic for the six percentage points of people between forty-seven per cent and fifty-three per cent? Were nave. 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. @TangoMan I imagine that's what the Department of Water Resources dam management was worried about during the rains from 2/2 to 2/6 as they maintained the water level at 850 feet rather than flush a lot of valuable water down the river to get ready for the second half of the long set of storms from 2/7 to 2/10. The Gazelle Project targeted small independent publishers to extract better terms for Amazon -- as a cheetah would target a gazelle. F. Scott Fitzgeralds Great Gatsby is full of magazine spreads of tennis players and socialites, popular song lyrics, movie stars, paparazzi, gangsters and sports scandals machine-made by technology, advertising and public relations. 3. Many, including Ms. Nussbaum, have spoken out in favor of the unions current posture. The Gazelle Project -- that was me, Melville Houses Dennis Johnson told Packer. But the desire to be equal, I think, is still there as a driving passion. In his article, Packer outlines what he calls "four rival narratives four accounts of America's moral identity.". What I hear when I travel these days is hostility not just toward the U.S. government but toward the country and its people. It doesnt help. 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. The 96-year-old magazine, known for its revered writers and sophisticated audience, is being consumed by a labor dispute. And now its the subject of lawsuits. I have a list of qualities that I think apply to most of us, that foreigners immediately pick up as American traits. [2] Packer's sister, Ann Packer, also is a writer. Why did ISIS allow its negotiations with Jordan to collapse? 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. Thats what George Packer asks in this weeks New Yorker, in a long article that looks at the online retailer as disruptor. Patriotism, to me, is closer to what Im trying to describe because its like loyalty. George Packer. Trumps performative macho is scaring voters in both parties away from women candidates. Unionized employees from Cond Nast marched from New York University to the home of Anna Wintour, Cond Nasts global chief content officer, last Tuesday. Gutekunst feels his kicking leg will be plenty strong a year removed from the knee scope he had last spring, and with the minor back injury behind him as well. And it says, Were all individuals. We all have a chance to make it. And we can get into the reasons why, but I think its both increasingly illiberal philosophicallywhich scares me, since we have so much illiberalism in our society right nowand its politically perverse and fails to understand American voters in some basic ways that it needs to if it wants to make real change. purchase. Smart America is where I mostly live, but its no longer a meritocracy, if it ever was. Is it a failure of leadership? Comment. George Packer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is the author, most recently, of "The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America.". 89 (1): 31-32. 1. . Not since the Berlin Wall fell has the world been cleaved so deeply by the kind of conflict that John F. Kennedy called a long, twilight struggle.. It would be giving young people a chance, whether through military or civilian ways, to serve the country and one another, and to get to know one another across all the lines that divide us. And yet I wrote the book with both despair and a need for some hope. Smart America is the meritocracy. 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. The author of The Assassin's Gate (2005), The Unwinding (2013), and a recently published biography of Richard Holbrooke, Our Man, Packer has written for bastions of liberal thought from the New York Times Magazine to The New Yorker in a distinguished, decades-long career. NEW YORK -- Thomas Pynchon, Jhumpa Lahiri and George Saunders were among the finalists Wednesday for the National Book Awards. He has tried to be reassuring, even as the prospect of putting out the print magazine without editorial staff members looms. And, if they dont hear it from the side that wants equality and inclusiveness, then theyre going to hear it from the side that wants hierarchy and exclusion. We are divided that way. And both are in an almost permanent state of conflict, in which the country really isnt progressing. George Packer is a staff writer for The New Yorker and (most recently) the author of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America. Publish date: January 15, 2008; Language: English; ISBN: 9781436147613; 4.06 (2619 ratings) Regular Price: 29.99 USD. In 2019, Packer released a book titled Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century. Still, the Bush Administration has, almost deliberately at times, brought anti-Americanism to unprecedented levels, acting under the illusion that, if America does something, it is right and will be seen as right. Mr. Remnick reports directly to Cond Nasts chief executive. Iraqs population is largely Arab, with the major exception being the Kurds. 2023 Cond Nast. They dominate the landscape, like giant monuments to aspiration, fulfillment and overreach. He is also the author of the books The Assassins Gate and The Unwinding. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why Barack Obama failed to change the direction of the country, whether a more progressive form of patriotism is possible, and whether the cultural controversies roiling American institutions are an inevitable result of inequality. Aaron Rodgers is a year-to-year . 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. (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. I just think its a nightmare scenario, and so Im maybe a little bit quixotically doing what I can to put a thread in us. Its as if he didnt experience the late sixties and the seventies in the way, say, Bill Clinton did. New Yorker writer Packer (Interesting Times: Writing from a Turbulent Decade, 2009, etc.) Generationally, hes closest to Clinton. 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. You described Just Americas feelings, or their actions, as a slap in the face of previous generations. That dynamic's been entrenched for six, seven years now. Im really quite divided about this, Isaac. 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. Why did you decide to structure this book around four Americas? And Just America: its a necessary slap in the face to my generation and to the complacency of most Americans, who dont want to know the history of race in this country. A deal was finalized late last month. And its true. It wasnt highlighted in the bill. And Mankoff responded accordingly: "What I absolutely take satisfaction in is that, as I leave as cartoon editor, I leave The New Yorker and my successor with a bumper crop of new and talented cartoonists who came in under my tenure," Mankoff told the Washington Post's Michael Cavna. The book achieves this mainly by tracing the lives of various individuals from different backgrounds through the years. 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+. This post has been corrected. He proposes a different vision, which he thinks offers brighter possibilities, centered around the concept of equality and non-demagogic appeals to patriotism. Some salaries at The New Yorker start at $42,000 a year and remain under $60,000 after 20 years on the job. Another way to describe those feelings is the inevitable result of the inequalities that your book sketches. 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. Try for $0.00. 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. But it seems to me to come out of a pre-modern sensibility that goes back to the New Deal. It has set off reflections on their status and revealed the rare bond and unusual deference many of them feel toward Mr. Remnick. George Packer, writer at the New Yorker and author of the new book "The Unwinding: An Inner History Of The New America." He also recently wrote the New York Times op-ed " Celebrating Inequality . You say at the end of the book that you dont particularly want to live in any of the four Americas you define. And youre right that eight years of Obama in some ways gave us Trump. the Working as the kind of writer that Brooks has sometimes been, but going far beyond that, he takes you into the lives of real Americans, at least one or two of whom will resemble any likely reader of the book, as they discover, sickeningly, that they're ensnared and blocked by forces beyond their . Mr. Remnick has told some writers that he is simply eager for the conflict to be resolved. But its in the bill, its in the law, because fairness demanded it. The utilitarian reason is a good one. In Iraq, weve failed as a country. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. By Alexander Russo It's no simple task when journalists decide to write about their families' school choices and their children's classroom experiences. Its also a gateway into the real money books, movies, speaking gigs or other opportunities in the broadening economic landscape for brand-name writers. Do you think youre more likely to say, when looking back on Just America in this period, Wow, that was a crazy time that many of our institutions on the left went through, and they did a lot of harm, or You know what? I dont know enough to agree or disagree., But in terms of telling the story, it was helpful. [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. Does Packer think thats viable? Mr. Remnick declined to be interviewed, but said in an email that his two goals were that we achieve our highest editorial ambitions and that we work together with fairness, adding, Ill be glad to see us sign a foundational contract that memorializes our commitment to both., Many of the writers I spoke to said they saw Mr. Remnick as caught between an uncompromising union and an ailing parent company. Maybe we needed someone who could think outside the really toxic divisions that we live with. 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. Packer, George (2001). We are not just different but better, and in some ways we must crush you. 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. His uncle, George Huddleston, Jr., succeeded to his father's seat in the House of Representatives from 1954 to 1964. Packer describes the decline of America from a very specific . 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.. 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. She changed a bit during the campaign, but I think of her as something of a throwback. 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