1914. 1941. 1989. 2023?
PLUS: A review of "May December" starring Natalie Portman, a look back at the NBA In-Season Tournament, AND the greatest rock and roll Christmas record of all-time turns 60
[T]here comes a time, maybe every six to eight generations, where the world changes in a very short time… And I think what happens in the next two, three years are going to determine what the world looks like for the next five or six decades.—President Joe Biden, November 2, 2023
Certain years loom large as turning points in history. 1517. 1789. 1861. Over the past century or so, we might single out 1914, 1929, 1941, and 1989. These are momentous years because the world that existed before these dates was dramatically different from the world that came into being after these dates.
Of course, it isn’t as though historical eras turn on a dime. Change typically percolates and unfolds over long periods of time. Pivotal moments are often preceded by a series of smaller events that gradually push history to its breaking point. Even when change happens rapidly, it still usually takes a few years for such life-altering events to play themselves out.
Still, it often feels like history builds to a moment from which there is no looking back, when the old balance of power breaks down and a new world order emerges and everyone must accommodate themselves to the suddenly different geo/sociopolitical reality of things. I wonder if 2023 marks the beginning of one of those turning points.
The specific event I have in mind is Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths, in some instances preceded by rape and torture, of over 1,250 people in Israel, the kidnappings of 240 more, and the displacement of 500,000 Israelis. Hamas’s attack was followed by Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Gaza, which has left an estimated 18,000+ Palestinians dead, another 50,000+ wounded, and displaced over 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, resulting in a major humanitarian crisis. The victims on both sides are for the most part civilians, including children.
So far, the war has mostly been confined to the area immediately in and around Gaza. Hezbollah, an Iranian-sponsored militant organization based in Lebanon, has fired rockets at Israel and engaged in skirmishes with Israeli forces but has not launched a major assault on Israel. Fighting has broken out on the West Bank between Palestinian residents and Israeli settlers and security forces, leading to the displacement of about 1,000 Palestinians, but the clashes have not escalated to a state of all-out war. The concern, however, is that with no end in sight for Israel’s military operation and the prospects for a long-term occupation of Gaza increasing by the day, a wider war will eventually break out, draw in other combatants, and reconfigure both the region and the world.
People are accustomed to thinking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a regional issue, a spat between neighbors. Conditions seem ripe, however, for this to turn into a major global flashpoint. Israel’s main allies are the United States and Europe. Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, and the United States is Israel’s largest supplier of military equipment. The United States’ support for Israel is often predicated on their shared democratic values. For these reasons, Israel and the United States are linked in the minds of many around the world; along with Europe and the major free market democracies of the western Pacific rim, they constitute the West.
Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians has always drawn the enmity of Arabs and Muslims throughout the Middle East. However justified some of Israel’s actions are as a matter of self-defense, the international community has frequently criticized Israel for their treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. American and NATO intervention in the Middle East since 9/11 has also damaged the West’s reputation in the region. American-Iranian relations have been fraught for nearly forty-five years. While many Arab governments maintain fair relations with the United States and have sought to normalize relations with Israel, the people those autocratic governments rule are far less sympathetic to Israel and the West. Arab governments often pay lip service to the Palestinian cause but they almost never stick their necks out for them.
Hamas’s attack on Israel and Israel’s invasion of Gaza have lit the fuse on this powder keg. As horrific as Hamas’s attack on Israel was, the amount of human suffering inflicted on Gaza by Israel is itself shocking as well. Israel’s aims are to destroy Hamas (which many analysts believe is impossible) and so devastate Gaza that its Palestinian residents conclude it would be too costly to ever again attack Israel or support a government that favors doing so. But Israel’s end game is unclear: Not only is there no indication of when Israel may cease military operations in Gaza, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has started hinting Israel will likely remain in Gaza for the long term. An occupation would run counter to the two-state solution favored by the international community. There is also concern Israel would essentially treat Gaza as a giant refugee camp and make it impossible for Palestinians to rebuild their lives.
What follows from here is purely speculative. I don’t think it’s far-fetched, though.
Imagine a prolonged crisis in Gaza: The imposition of an Israeli security state meant to suppress militant Palestinian activity; the creation of a local Palestinian political authority propped up by Israel that Gaza’s residents reject; the collapse of the Palestinian economy so that the population is reliant on United Nations relief efforts for food, water, housing, and medical supplies; and the emergence of a Palestinian resistance fueled by young, hopeless men who adopt the tactics of guerillas and terrorists to attack the Israeli army. Perhaps a refugee crisis ensues that finds hundreds of thousands of desperate Palestinians flooding into Egypt, a turn of events the Egyptian government has said would result in a “rupture” in relations with Israel.
Now imagine the crisis spreads to the West Bank, where Palestinians sympathetic to the plight of Gaza and angry over the expansion of settlements initiate more direct confrontations with Israeli forces. Perhaps a militant resistance takes shape there, one that begins launching deadly organized attacks on Israeli settlements, and Israel concludes it must launch a full-scale invasion to protect their settlers and suppress the uprising. Israel begins expelling Palestinians and annexing large swaths of territory in the West Bank, creating another refugee crisis that threatens to rupture relations with neighboring Jordan and that effectively dooms the two-state solution.
How does Hezbollah, stationed in Lebanon and supplied by Iran, respond? With Israel fighting a war on two fronts and the existence of a Palestinian homeland at stake, does the more formidable Hezbollah open a third front in the north? Would Iran, which has experience fighting proxy wars in Iraq and Syria, see this as an opportunity to stir the pot or even become more directly involved in the conflict? In the midst of this three-front war, might Israel also find itself besieged by terrorist attacks on its own soil?
If the conflict escalated to this degree, Israel would need to become a security state devoted to the management of the war. Its military is designed to hit back hard against its enemies in such a scenario, but doing so would result in a tremendous number of Palestinian casualties, the occupation and strict administration of territory recognized internationally as the site of a Palestinian state, and refugee crises that would beleaguer—or even destabilize—their Arab neighbors (more on that in a moment.) A three-front war would also be incredibly taxing on the Israeli state itself, and if Iran got involved, Israel might find its resources stretched perilously thin. At that point, might Israel ask the United States to intervene, maybe to help man local defenses or coordinate logistics, or to help conduct operations against Iran? At what point would the United States and other NATO countries feel the need to intervene?
The Arab street would surely be outraged with Israel’s prosecution of the war and side with the Palestinians. Arab and Muslim governments would find themselves in a very tough spot. Hoping to maintain or normalize relations with Israel, many governments would lay low and try to wait out the conflict. (Some nations, like Saudi Arabia, may actually find advantage in siding with Israel over the Shiite regime in Iran.) That may be impossible, though. Neighboring nations inundated by refugees may not only be furious with Israel for foisting a humanitarian crisis onto their hands, but for pushing thousands of militant Palestinians into their nations. Those militants could join forces with other militant groups already based in the nation, threatening the stability of the regime, or use the country as a staging ground for attacks on Israel, which could bring the nation into the crosshairs of the Israeli military. More fundamentally, though, as the war dragged on and support for the Palestinian cause grew more passionate on the Arab street, Arab governments may feel compelled to take a harder line against Israel to avoid falling out of step with popular opinion in their countries.
It is possible, too, that an anti-Israeli/pro-Palestinian movement gains enough political momentum in an Arab nation (or nations) to challenge the authority of a governing regime considered too soft on Israel. That regime would likely respond by oppressing the movement. But as the Arab Spring demonstrated a little over a decade ago, it is also possible such a movement deposes a regime and reorients the state’s power against Israel. That would seriously magnify the danger Israel found itself in, which could then lead to an expansion of the conflict to other areas in the Middle East and potentially draw the United States and the West even deeper into the war (which in turn would put a strain on American efforts to buttress Ukraine and Taiwan.) At this point, direct American military involvement in the war remains unlikely, but it is not unfathomable. It is worth remembering, too, that the United States’ track record when it comes to military intervention in the Middle East is mixed.
By this point, October 7, 2023, would be a distant memory in the minds of many around the world. Arabs and Muslims would be focused on the plight of the Palestinian people and their struggle against a more powerful alliance of nations determined to occupy their lands. They would also likely see the conflict as a continuation of the wars the United States has been waging against Arabs and Muslims in the region for decades. World opinion could shift hard against the United States. Countries in the so-called “global south” in Africa, Asia, and the Americas—fed up by now with the hegemony the United States established around the world following the end of the Cold War—might cast the U.S. as a meddler in world affairs, a nation more interested in projecting its power on the world stage to secure its own interests and allies than in accepting the sovereignty of individual states. Even America’s alliances with Ukraine and Taiwan could be recast as encroachments on territory far beyond its sphere of influence. It would make a lot of sense for China to step into this void to support nations and people fed up with Israel, the United States, and the West. They could side with ordinary Arabs and Muslims who support Palestine and toil under corrupt regimes. They could buttress Iran as a regional power and counterweight to American influence in the region.
During the Cold War, the United States had a powerful argument it could rely upon to counter Soviet appeals to third world nations: Democracy. In the context of this new Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that argument would likely lack the appeal it once had. To begin with, Israel’s administration of Palestinian territory would certainly not be democratic. The world would see a lot of hypocrisy there, with democracy something western nations reserve for themselves but not for others.
Secondly, Israel and the United States are both struggling to maintain their own democratic credentials. Israel under Netanyahu has been backsliding on democracy, and the opposition party in the United States is led by Donald Trump, an unpopular figure on the international stage who threatens to undermine democracy in America. Should Trump win the 2024 election, American democracy would lose its association with abstract democratic principles and redefine itself in terms of nationalistic self-interest. That would play directly into the hands of the United States’ international rivals. (Unmentioned thus far is how unconditional American support for Israel in the short-term could divide the American Left, damage its chances in the 2024 elections, and bring to power policymakers who would further empower Netanyahu and the Israeli far right.)
I have no idea what exactly would happen if the current war in Gaza turned into a wider regional conflict. It just seems to me that no matter its final scope or outcome, such a conflict could dramatically reconfigure global politics by giving rise to an Asia-centric international order directed by China with allies in Russia and the Middle East that would push the United States and the West to the periphery of the world stage. The United States would not cease to be a world power, but its reputation would be diminished. The era of liberalization and international cooperation that followed the end of the Cold War would be replaced by a new era of great powers competition founded on overt nationalism.
That’s an outcome the United States would like to avoid. Therefore, in the short term, it seems to me there are three goals the United States ought to be pursuing vis-à-vis the war in Gaza:
Getting Israel to move past Netanyahu. Israel appears uninterested in jettisoning Netanyahu while war still rages in Gaza, but that actually incentivizes the deeply unpopular Netanyahu to prolong the military operation. Furthermore, because Netanyahu’s hold on power depends on appeasing the Israeli far right, the longer Netanyahu stays in power, the more likely settler violence in the West Bank turns into a second front in the war and the less likely a two-state solution finally materializes. If Israel’s politicians have calculated they want Netanyahu to be the face of both the security failure on October 7 and the military operation in Gaza, fine, but the U.S. needs to be urging those politicians to pull the plug on Netanyahu soon.
Restarting the peace process. The past twenty-five years of antagonistic relations between Israel and Palestine have resulted in disaster for both sides. The only way Israeli democracy will survive is if it finds a way to coexist with a Palestinian state that can provide its people with human dignity and that isn’t openly hostile to Israel. Israel may not feel it has a viable partner in peace, but the failure to cultivate that partner means leaving a lit bomb at the heart of Israeli, Middle Eastern, and world politics. If anything positive has come out of this war, it is that it has confirmed for both sides the need to restart the peace process and implement a two-state solution.
Asserting itself a more honest broker in the peace process. Palestinians need to have greater faith in the United States as a mediator. American politicians should certainly condemn Palestinians who stand in the way of peace, but they also need to more forcefully call out Israelis who do the same. The United States needs to even be prepared to begin cutting off aid to Israel if it drags its feet.
This, of course, is all easier said than done. Neither side trusts the other, and groups opposed to a two-state solution in both camps could all too easily sabotage efforts to establish a lasting peace. But what worries me more than the challenge of creating peace is the possibility that a two-state solution and a lasting peace are now out of reach. Events may have progressed to a point where we have now effectively stepped into destiny. We may not be able to back away from what fate has in store for us.
When Gavrilo Princip assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, few likely anticipated that that incident would have been the flashpoint that led to the deaths of 15-22 million people. Given the right circumstances, events can spiral out of control, leading to outcomes most would not have anticipated. The current moment feels like it has that potential.
Further Reading:
“Biden Warns Israel It Is ‘Losing Support’ Over War” by Michael D. Shear of the New York Times (Biden was specifically referring to losing international support over what he termed “indiscriminate bombing”; the White House would later walk back Biden’s comments, but the episode highlights the growing rift between Biden and Netanyahu.)
“Israel Urging US Not to Talk Publicly About Two-State Solution” by Jacob Magid of the Times of Israel
Signals and Noise
“You know why I want to be a dictator?”—Don Trump posing a rhetorical question during the New York Young Republican Club gala. I cannot recall any other major party presidential candidate in American history who has openly aspired to serve as a dictator. (Trump answered his rhetorical question by stating he wanted to build a wall and “drill, drill, drill.” But as anyone with a basic working understanding of the Constitution could tell you, there is a democratic legislative process that exists to address such matters of policy. Such matters do not require a dictator.) (For more, see my article below from two weeks ago.)
“They’re poisoning the blood of the country… They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world not just in South America… but all over the world they’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia.”—Don Trump, channeling his inner Nazi while playing every race card in the deck. In that same speech, Trump favorably quoted Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban and called the 1/6 defendants “hostages.”
A.B. Stoddard of The Bulwark thinks “dictator” will become the focal point of the Trump brand and will ultimately sink him.
In the same speech, Trump said warnings about the threat he posed to democracy amounted to a “hoax.” (See Trump’s own words above to understand why they are not a hoax.) Peter Baker of the New York Times has a comprehensive look at Trump’s dictatorial tendencies and how Trump and his allies have leaned into the dictatorship charge.
Republican Ohio Senator J.D. Vance wants the Justice Department to investigate Washington Post editor Robert Kagan after Kagan published an essay warning of Trump’s dictatorial inclinations. Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post tears Vance apart and explains why we should take Vance’s threat seriously rather than simply a troll.
Special prosecutor Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to decide if a former president (you can guess who) can be tried for alleged crimes committed while serving as president. The Supreme Court appears to want to resolve the matter quickly. (Consequently, the judge overseeing the case has delayed the early March start date of the trial.)
The Supreme Court will review the scope of the Enron-era obstruction law Trump and many insurrectionists have been accused of breaking. The decision could have an effect on Jack Smith’s case against Trump.
By Steven Shepard of Politico: “Why a Trump Conviction Might Not Save Biden’s Re-Election” (“The evidence so far suggests the race might shift only slightly, by a few points [if Trump is found guilty]. That could be important in another close election, but it’s not the kind of Trump collapse that Democrats may hope for — or Biden may need if his numbers don’t improve.”)
By Jonathan Chait of New York: “We Were Told Biden Is Secretly Running the DOJ. Why Is His Son Being Charged?” (“To the anti-anti-Trump right, it is absolutely necessary to believe Biden is corrupting the Justice Department. Conservatives who can’t defend certain Trump actions rely on the belief that Biden is just as bad. A huge portion of anti-anti-Trump commentary is simply reverse engineering all the bad things Trump did as accusations against his Democratic rivals. If they have no evidence for this view, they’ll just say it anyway.”)
A jury ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay $148 million in compensatory damages to two election workers he had defamed following the 2020 election.
Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler tallied 24 false claims by Don Trump in a five minute clip (about one every 12 seconds) of Trump speaking to Sean Hannity in Iowa.
On the day Don Trump said Joe Biden was leading the U.S. to a 1929-style depression, the stock market hit a record high. (The cause for optimism on Wall Street: The Fed didn’t raise interest rates and indicated they’re likely to cut rates by a point over the next year.)
“The NDAA just passed, it just passed. This is Mike Johnson, and don’t tell me you’re a Christian. I don’t want to hear you’re a Christian, don’t wear your faith, don’t give me the Bible, I don’t hear more Bible verse. When you’ve allowed the transgender, you’ve allowed all that garbage, all that demonic trash throughout the defense budget….You’re just as bad as the bad guys because you should know better. So I don’t need to hear any more biblical view, okay?”—Steve Bannon, going after Republican Speaker Mike Johnson after passage of the $800 billion-plus National Defense Authorization Act, which funds the US military.
“I look at our party today and it doesn’t look like it did five years ago. When I look to the future, I think it’s much brighter.”—Kevin McCarthy, seen below, bidding farewell to the House.
The lawyer of a man who pled guilty for his participation in the Capitol riot blamed “Foxmania” (watching and believing too much FOX News) for his behavior.
Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale told a Trump adviser in a text message after 1/6, “This week I feel guilty for helping [Trump] win.” David Corn and Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones report that since the start of this year, Parscale’s company has been helping raise money for the Trump campaign.
“There’s a lot that has to be done to begin to rebuild the Republican Party, potentially to build a new conservative party. But in my view, that has to wait until after the 2024 election because our focus has got to be on defeating Donald Trump.”—Liz Cheney to ABC News (BTW: Sam Tanenhaus has written an interesting review of Cheney’s new book that questions Cheney’s defense of “democracy” and her place in the wider world of American politics.)
Republican Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin told CNBC he will endorse Don Trump if Trump wins the Republican nomination, essentially confirming Youngkin prefers a dictator to Biden’s policies.
“In my view, bad policy we can overcome as a country; we have in the past. Bad character is something which is very difficult to overcome.”—Mitt Romney on Meet the Press
Charlie Cook wonders in National Journal if Biden might be reconsidering his 2024 run for the White House.
Steve Peoples and Thomas Beaumont of AP report the DeSantis campaign is in direct communications with Super PACS supporting his campaign. That would be a clear violation of what remains of the United States’ campaign finance laws.
It doesn’t appear Congress will pass a bill to provide aid to Israel and Ukraine before the year ends, as Republicans are insisting the bill include measures addressing border security.
The defense authorization bill Congress just passed includes a provision preventing a president from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO.
New York’s Supreme Court has ordered the legislature to redraw its congressional maps, which could net Democrats 2-6 more seats in the House in 2024.
Brian Slodysko of AP reports Rep. James Comer, who is leading the House impeachment inquiry and has accused Hunter Biden of operating a shell company, apparently has a shell company of his own.
Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO): What is the specific constitutional crime that you are investigating [in the impeachment inquiry]?
Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA): High crimes, misdemeanors, and bribery.
Neguse: What high crime and misdemeanor are you investigating?
Reschenthaler: Look, once I get time, I will explain what we’re looking at.
Remember J.R. Majewski, the failed Republican Ohio House candidate who claimed during his 2022 race (and continues to claim) he served in Afghanistan when there is no record he did so, leading Republicans to pull back their support from him? He’s running again, this time with the endorsements of many prominent Ohio Republicans.
Rick Wilson comments on what the episode involving the embattled Florida GOP chairman who is accused of sexually assaulting a woman he and his wife (also a prominent Republican) were in a three-way sexual relationship with means for a Republican Party that can’t find a way to get rid of the couple.
Caitlin Dickerson of The Atlantic, who has reported in-depth on the Trump-era policy of family separation, writes about the legacy of that policy in the wake of a court settlement between the government and thousands of migrant families that allows those families to return and seek asylum in the U.S. and prohibits the government from separating families in almost all situations for the next eight years. To date, there are still 68 children who have not been reunited with their parents.
The woman who sought an abortion in Texas after learning her fetus was not viable and endangered her ability to give birth to another child in the future had to travel out of state to get an abortion after the Texas Supreme Court ruled she had to carry to pregnancy to term. Andrea Grimes of MSNBC writes about the cruelty of the Texas law and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Ian Milhiser of Vox looks at the Kafkaesque logic that guided the Texas Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court will hear a case that will determine whether women will continue to have access to the abortion drug mifepristone.
The 19th reviews what states will likely feature pro-choice referendums on their ballots during the 2024 election.
Michael Tomasky of The New Republic calls on universities to crack down on anti-Semitism. (Also from the article: While the spotlight on anti-Semitism is currently on liberal activists, Tomasky reminds readers anti-Semitism has a much larger and more receptive constituency on the Right.)
Ken Dilanian of NBC News writes that 80% of Americans believe crime has risen over the past year when the crime rate is actually falling rapidly, with the murder rate recording one of the most rapid yearly declines ever and property crime falling to its lowest level since 1961. Some cities that have long been identified as having high murder rates like Baltimore and St. Louis will post their lowest rates in nearly a decade, while Detroit is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1966.
By Jeanna Smialek of the New York Times: “Is Jerome Powell’s Fed Pulling Off a Soft Landing?”
Nate Cohn of the New York Times observes economic sentiment is worse than it was in the 1970s and about the same as it was in the early years of the Great Recession, which he points out makes no sense given the reality of the current economy and how favorably it compares to those two other eras.
Emily Peck of Axios has a reality check for those insisting the American economy is better than it seems: Eighty-three percent of all the job growth in the November jobs report (+199,000 jobs) has come from just three sectors: Health care, government employment, and leisure and hospitality. Excluding the return of striking autoworkers, the rest of the economy only added 5,000 jobs.
Approximately 200 nations have agreed to a statement calling for a transition away from fossil fuels by 2050. Of course, that all depends on if nations actually agree to follow through on the pact.
Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the United States’ plan for a postwar Gaza overseen by the Palestinian Authority, highlighting the increasingly public rift between Netanyahu and the White House.
The United States blocked a shipment of rifles to Israel that they worried would end up in the hands of extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank who are targeting Palestinian residents.
Videos have started to emerge of Israeli soldiers chanting racist slogans, rummaging through the homes of Palestinians, and destroying food and water supplies in Gaza. (Photos of stripped and humiliated Palestinians as well.) This is obviously not on par with the violent attacks carried out by Hamas during their attacks in Israel, but it certainly does not burnish the reputation of Israel’s military at a time when their tactics are coming under increased scrutiny.
Three Israeli hostages waving white flags were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza. The IDF admitted their soldiers’ actions violated their rules of engagement.
Israel has started pumping seawater into Hamas’s underground tunnels in Gaza.
Mark Mazzetti and Ronen Bergman of the New York Times look at how the Netanyahu government propped up Hamas prior to their October attack on Israel.
The mood in Ukraine has noticeably shifted, with Russia expressing much more confidence about its prospects and analysts questioning Ukraine’s ability to hold on given its failed counteroffensive, Russia’s formidable defenses, and wavering Western support, particularly in the U.S.
Carlotta Gall, Oleksandr Chubko and Olha Konovalova of the New York Times report Ukrainian soldiers participating in the beachhead mission on the left bank of the Dnipro River describe it as a suicide mission.
A declassified American intelligence assessment found Russia has lost 315,000 members of its 360,000 strong army since the start of its war in Ukraine. It has also lost 2,200 of the 3,500 tanks it began the war with. The report was declassified to coincide with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit this week to Washington.
Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has disappeared within the Russian prison system.
Derek Thompson of The Atlantic posits the way Americans commonly discuss anxiety on the Internet by turning a mental health diagnosis into a matter of identity is actually worsening people’s anxiety.
Vincent’s Picks: May December
Film critic Roger Ebert once described the movies as an “empathy machine,” a way for people to encounter those they wouldn’t ordinarily come across and gain a greater appreciation for those people’s points of view. May December, a new film by Todd Haynes now streaming on Netflix, tests that proposition.
Inspired by Mary Kay Letourneau’s 1990s tabloid scandal, May December follows actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) as she arrives in Savannah, Georgia, to meet and research Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore). Elizabeth is set to star in a movie about Gracie, who, twenty-three years ago, when she was 36-years-old, was caught having sex with 13-year-old Joe Yoo. Gracie would give birth to Joe’s daughter in prison and then marry Joe (played as an adult by Charles Melton) upon her release. The couple would remain married and have twins, who are about to graduate from high school when Elizabeth shows up to learn more about the woman she is slated to play on the big screen.
Gracie and Joe live an incredibly normal middle class life in Savannah, where their affair was consummated and exposed. Their well-adjusted teenaged children apparently have a large circle of friends who enjoy hanging out at their home. The couple eat out and conduct business in town without any of the locals batting an eye. Despite the occasional reminders (Elizabeth finds someone has left a box of shit on the Atherton-Yoo’s doorstep when she visits them for the first time; Joe immediately produces a bottle of hand sanitizer when they discover what it is) nearly everyone—even Gracie’s ex-husband—seems to have reconciled themselves to the existence of Gracie and Joe’s relationship.
Elizabeth’s arrival, however, is a destabilizing event. How could it not be? As Elizabeth tells a high school theater class, she’s interested in characters who are “difficult on the surface to understand. I want to take the person, and figure out why they are like this.” It goes without saying Elizabeth isn’t interested in Gracie’s pineapple upside-down cakes. She’s there to figure out why a 36-year-old woman would seduce a seventh grader. How does that turn into a twenty year relationship? How does something so wrong turn into something so mundane? Is this really love? Is there any sense of contrition? What thoughts and feelings have to be repressed to get to where Gracie, Joe, and their family are now?
It’s not exactly clear why Gracie allows Elizabeth to hang out with her. Maybe Gracie hopes Elizabeth might discover during her visit that Gracie isn’t the deviant most outsiders assume she is. But Elizabeth wants to probe deeper, telling Gracie that she is trying to connect present to past to find “things that exist inside people that don't necessarily come to head until later.” The film hints at what some of those things may be. When Gracie’s daughter Mary models a dress she’s thinking about wearing to graduation, Gracie tells her she is proud of Mary for being unafraid to bear her arms. The next dress Mary tries on has sleeves. When Elizabeth visits the pet shop where Gracie and Joe began their tryst, we see it is next door to a gun/pawn shop. Haynes is hinting there are familial and social factors that had a hand in warping Gracie and Joe’s behavior. But why did Gracie go as far as she did?
But don’t think Elizabeth is a passive observer in this drama. She didn’t travel to Savannah to merely shadow Gracie and her family. She’s also there to learn how to become Gracie. Elizabeth’s methods don’t simply involve probing Gracie’s psyche, mimicking her mannerisms, or visiting scenes from the scandal. Her research becomes more provocative than that. Soon enough, we begin to wonder if Elizabeth isn’t really there to learn about Gracie so much as channel her and test her depiction of Gracie on those around her. Maybe there’s even more to Elizabeth’s interest in Gracie than that; that scene set during the high school theater class so casually goes off the rails we can hardly believe it happened when it concludes and in retrospect may lead us to reconsider Elizabeth’s intentions as an actor and a researcher. We are left to wonder which of the two women is more manipulative.
Pitched somewhere between southern gothic and tabloid tv movie-of-the-week, May December flirts with luridness and camp but never goes over the edge. Haynes knows how to use the trappings of normalcy for unsettling effect. The film’s melodramatic score works overtime to ratchet up the suspense and tension, but more than anything else, it’s Melton’s performance as Joe that keeps the film grounded. As Elizabeth and Gracie parry with one another (by the way, their final scene together is a gut punch) it’s Joe who ends up caught in the middle, compelled to suddenly reckon with a bunch of issues he’s avoided for the entirety of his adult life.
Like many of Haynes’ other films, May December deals with how people attempt to hide and craft their identities. In movies like Far From Heaven and Carol, we see characters strain against the social norms of the 1950s as they struggle with their true feelings for others. The audience empathizes with those characters because their heartbreak is so private and painful.
May December dares the viewer to empathize with Gracie. Furthermore, given Elizabeth’s role as a moviemaker, it questions cinema’s role as an empathy machine. It’s one thing to ask film to help us better understand others. But empathy? It may be the more we learn about some people, the less deserving they are of that. Or maybe May December prompts us to reconsider who is most deserving of our empathy and whose stories we really ought to be telling. America loves a scandal. But what about the scandalized?
Garbage Time: The NBA In-Season Tournament in Review
(Garbage Time theme song here)
Maybe you noticed, maybe you didn’t, but the Los Angeles Lakers won the first ever NBA In-Season Tournament (held in Las Vegas) last weekend. LeBron James, who will now likely have this tournament named after him one day, won MVP in a city where he will also likely one day own an NBA franchise. The outcome was so perfect for both the Association and James that even the most sober-minded among us may be reconsidering those unfounded rumors about rigged outcomes that have long dogged the league.
The NBA In-Season Tournament (wait, does that abbreviate to N.I.T.? The sooner they can start calling it the James Cup, the better) has been a modest success. It seems to have stirred a little more interest in the league at a time when all the attention in the sports world is on football. The Indiana Pacers’ run to the championship game served as a coming-out moment for guard Tyrese Haliburton, who is now a bona fide star. The tournament also increased the quality of regular season play, and some games—like a decisive Golden State-Sacramento tilt a couple weeks ago—had a playoff atmosphere. (That game, which Golden State lost, seemed to signal the end of that dynasty.) The special courts gave tournament games a distinctive look even if some of those courts (like the one below from Chicago) were not exactly easy on the eyes:
While the in-season tournament remains a good idea, the NBA should make two changes to its format. First, the NBA needs to set aside a stretch of its schedule exclusively for the tournament. It’s wise to use regularly-scheduled regular season games as the basis for the tournament (with the exception of the championship game between the Pacers and the Lakers, the tournament did not add a single game to any team’s regular 82-game schedule) but slotting in non-tournament games between tournament games undercut the hype surrounding the competition. That made it hard to know exactly when higher-stakes tournament games were being played. It was possible to tune into an NBA telecast over the past few weeks hoping to see a tournament game but only find those games in the highlights shown during the halftime show of the non-tournament game you were watching. Maybe it’s too hard for the NBA to schedule a stretch of tournament games around the NFL and late-season college football at Thanksgiving time and satisfy stakeholders at ESPN and TNT, but they need to find a way to put the focus of the basketball world on those games to give the tournament an event feel.
Secondly, the NBA needs to make sure each group for group play has an even number of teams. The league divided its thirty teams into six groups of five teams, with the winner of each group (plus two wildcard teams) advancing to an eight-team knockout round. However, that odd-numbered grouping meant some teams in contention for group titles did not play on the final night of group play. (In fact, given the less-than-optimal scheduling, some teams completed group play before other teams in their group had played more than two games.) Instead, divide the teams into five groups of six teams and put every team into action on days devoted to the tournament. That could really build interest in the tournament during group play as teams begin facing must-win situations down the stretch.
It will take a few years for more passionate interest in the In-Season Tournament N.I.T. James Cup let’s just stick with In-Season Tournament to build. It’s up to the NBA, though, to create the conditions needed for the tournament to really take hold. Right now, it feels like the tournament could easily become what interleague play in Major League Baseball turned into. When it debuted, interleague play was a noteworthy event: Mets vs. Yankees in meaningful regular season games, the Cubs playing at Fenway Park, etc. But, perhaps not surprisingly, the novelty soon wore off, and those games faded into the regular season schedule. The NBA is better situated than MLB was with interleague games to turn the In-Season Tournament into an in-season event, but the league will need to tweak the tournament’s format to really make it pop.
Top 5 Records Music Review: The Greatest Rock and Roll Christmas Record of All-Time Turns 60
You are certainly familiar with Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas is You”. The ubiquitous and beloved Christmas pop song was not received as an instant classic upon its release in 1994. It wasn’t until around 2015 when audiences, increasingly enamored with streaming services, began latching onto it as a holiday favorite. Carey’s song finally hit number one on the Billboard charts in 2019, a full twenty-five years after its release, and has landed at that spot every year since (although the song is still waiting to get there this year, as it’s currently parked at #2 behind Brenda Lee’s 1958 bopper “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”.)
“All I Want For Christmas is You” did not come to us out of the blue, however. It is actually part of a lineage of rock and roll Christmas songs descended from what is widely considered to be the greatest rock and roll Christmas album of all-time, A Christmas Gift For You from Phil Spector, which was originally released sixty years ago this year.
Before writing anything more about this album, though, the elephant in the room must be addressed: Yes, Phil Spector was a terrible human being. It’s not something to even joke about. Reading his biography can really sap you of your Christmas cheer.
As a record producer, however, Spector was a true innovator, the first auteur of the recording studio. As an artist, he is mainly remembered for creating the “Wall of Sound” in the early, pre-Beatles 1960s. The Wall of Sound is a production technique that uses layers of instrumentation to create dense, orchestral pop arrangements. Spector’s records sound as though they were recorded in tunnels or echo chambers. His songs feature a big rumbling sound that comes barreling out of the speakers, a particularly powerful effect in the pre-stereo days of mono. The result is operatic, turning simple songs about teenaged love into three-minute symphonies. Spector’s most well-known Wall of Sound songs include “Da Doo Ron Ron” by the Crystals (1963), “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” by the Righteous Brothers (1964), and the epic “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes (1963).
Spector also produced “River Deep — Mountain High” by Ike and Tina Turner, Let It Be by the Beatles, All Things Must Pass by George Harrison, and Imagine by John Lennon.
A Christmas Gift For You from Phil Spector, which features Christmas songs by Darlene Love, the Ronettes (“Frosty the Snowman”, “Sleigh Ride”, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”), Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans, and the Crystals (“Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”) did not sell well initially, as it happened to be released the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. When it was re-released on Apple Records about a decade later, however, it was rediscovered by audiences, and many of its songs found their way onto Christmas playlists.
More importantly, though, the album’s Wall of Sound production style became the sound of rock and roll Christmas, rivaled only by the foundational 50’s-era sounds heard on Brenda Lee’s aforementioned rockabilly-inflected “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and Chuck Berry’s 1958 Chicago R&B number “Run Rudolph Run”. (That, by the way, is a fun video.) With its layers of drums, guitars, horns, and vocals augmented by layers of strings and bells, all swelling like a stampede of reindeer, a Wall of Sound Christmas song sounds like it’s about to blow the lid off a Christmas Eve service. (Hark, the herald angels sing rock!) You can hear the cathedral-sized sound powering songs like “Step Into Christmas” by Elton John (1973) and “Christmas All Over Again” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (1992). Every live version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band is an attempt to conjure up the Spectorian wallop of the original, apt for an artist whose breakthrough record Born to Run (1975) was described by Greil Marcus in a Rolling Stone review at the time of its debut as the sound of “a ‘57 Chevy running on melted down Crystals records.” Just listen to Max Weinberg recreate the big boom of those drum beats from “Be My Baby” in the clip below.
And not only does the Wall of Sound fuel Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas is You” (the video below of Carey performing the song is an homage to the Ronettes; just compare it to the video of “Be My Baby” earlier in this piece…)
…but it also fuels descendants of “All I Want For Christmas is You” like “Underneath the Tree” by Kelly Clarkson (2013).
Appreciate for a second what Clarkson gets so right about that performance: The lead singer in a Wall of Sound song should sound like they are about to get blown away by the arrangement, but they stand their ground. They sing from the eye of the maelstrom, corral its power, and match it. Not every singer can do that.
One song from A Christmas Gift For You… has risen above the others to become a Christmas standard: “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” by Darlene Love (written by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, and Phil Spector, each of whom were Jewish.) Love had recorded “He’s a Rebel” and “He’s Sure the Boy I Love” with Spector, who then credited those songs to the Crystals. She did get solo credit for “A Fine, Fine Boy” though.
Love never hit it big as a solo artist in the 60s. Instead, she work as a backup singer throughout the 60s and 70s, which led her to being featured in the 2013 Oscar-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom. Love was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011.
According to Love, Spector asked her to step in to the studio to record “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” after the Ronettes’ lead singer Ronnie Bennett struggled with the song. Love was able to bring the necessary heft to the record, which wasn’t an easy task since the song practically begins at its peak and stays there throughout. Whoever sings it needs to be belting it from the start. (Fun fact: You can hear Cher providing backup vocals on the song, and that’s probably Sonny Bono either shaking the shakers or jingling the bells.) The track didn’t chart when it was released in 1963, but it’s now often cited as the greatest rock and roll Christmas song of all-time.
U2 recorded a version of “Christmas (Please Come Home)” in 1987 that was included on the popular 80s compilation A Very Special Christmas. More than anything else, though, it was Love’s annual performance of the song (beginning in 1986) on David Letterman’s late night show with Paul Shaffer and the show’s house band that cemented its status as a national treasure. Letterman’s show was famously irreverent, but Love’s performance was treated as a cherished tradition, serving as proof the rock and roll ruffians and weirdos did indeed have tuggable heartstrings. The performance was certainly show biz—a grand entry by the saxophone player for his solo, confetti snow for its conclusion—but it was sincere and glorious.
Since Letterman retired in 2015, Love has continued this the tradition over on The View, which…OK.
It’s hard to celebrate A Christmas Gift For You from Phil Spector given its association with its namesake, but when thinking about that album we shouldn’t forget it took numerous performers to create that Wall of Sound, including the many Black singers who provided the main vocals as well as the Los Angeles-based session musicians collectively known as the Wrecking Crew who supplied the instrumentals. Despite playing on many of their era’s greatest hits, most of these musicians toiled outside the limelight or were shunted aside by the record industry. Only recently have they started to receive the recognition they deserved in their time. Phil Spector’s legacy as a record producer has been tarnished by his record as a human being, but we should still listen to the music he produced to honor the talented and diverse group of artists who collaborated in the creation of these songs.
Thank you for reading Reason to Believe. I hope you have a merry Christmas. We’ll see you again in the new year.