something about "The Years with Ross" by James Thurber

James Thurber worked as a writer, editor, and cartoonist at high-brow American magazine The New Yorker. Harold Ross was the publication's founder and served as its managing editor from 1925 to 1951. In the role of managing editor, Ross let loose his perfectionist's drive, relentlessly scrutinizing each cartoon and bit of text (sometimes to the point of over-editing).

The Years with Ross was published in 1957. James Thurber wrote the book as an affectionate remembrance of the profane, temperamental, eccentric, anti-intellectual prude whose fickleness and editing genius wrought frustration on the staff and contributors. Despite the hair-pulling Ross caused, he had many devotees. Thurber, who was in his 60s when he wrote this, was chief among them.

James Thurber was an accomplished writer and cartoonist. This portrait of Ross is charming, and the prose chuckles and rolls off the page. I highly recommend The Years with Ross (especially if you know a good editor).

about Michael Phelps

The image of the most decorated Olympian of all time has shifted.

Michael Phelps arrived on the world stage after winning six gold medals at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece. The spotlight on him intensified as he won a record eight gold medals in Beijing in 2008.

The image of Phelps formed at these games was filtered through the all-American-making lens of Olympic US media coverage. But the caricature folded into the coverage inadvertently mirrored the contentious view of America--that of a voracious consumer (commentators marveled at Phelps' caloric intake--they almost celebrated it) and a spectacle of industrial scale and dumb dominance, owing much of its success (measured in number of medals accrued) more to physicality than character.

But this time around, in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Phelps has helped to build a new identity. Now he is someone who appears to be dominant when challenged, and in the absence of challengers, is continually engaged in a struggle within.


Notes:

• Obviously people in the public spotlight will get covered and depicted in a variety of ways in different venues. But I have been finding rhetoric in media coverage and the formation of conventional views extremely interesting lately.
• The "contentious" perception of America described above is sometimes voiced by people in politically left-leaning circles. The attributes listed are only interpretive.
• "I'm about to make history ..."

 

about the impossibility of drawing different conclusions

A conclusion many pundits draw and share is that the plurality of votes for Donald Trump--and the groundswell of support for Bernie Sanders--is a reaction from people who are sick of politics as usual. In other words, most people probably do not actually understand and support the views, ideology, and policy positions of these candidates; people just opt for these guys because they do not like anything else.