Should Parents Pay for the Crimes of Their Children?

The conviction of Jennifer Crumbley. Plus: Shane Gillis gets uncanceled, more DEI overreach in academia, and new Free Press merch. Jennifer Crumbley, who was found guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter on Tuesday, did not kill anyone, not even “involuntarily.” Rather, it was her son Ethan who, in November 2021, sneaked a gun into his Michigan high school and killed four of his classmates. In December, he received a life sentence with no chance of parole. Does his mother share some of the blame for his killing spree? Of course she does, writes Joe Nocera in today’s Free Press. On the morning of the shooting, school officials wanted Jennifer to take Ethan out of class after they saw a drawing he’d done of a gun and a bleeding human body. “The thoughts won’t stop,” he’d written. “Help me.” Jennifer promised she would take him to a therapist, but in the meantime, she left him at school. Neither she nor the school officials realized he had a gun in his backpack. Hours later, he went on his rampage. Never before has an involuntary manslaughter charge been used to put away a parent whose negligence led to a mass shooting. “But so what?” Joe writes. “It is possible—in fact, I think it’s likely—that Jennifer Crumbley’s conviction could serve, at long last, as a deterrent to the scourge of school shootings.” Read his full argument below: He Murdered His Classmates. Should His Mother Go to Jail? JOE NOCERA · 2:20 AM He Murdered His Classmates. Should His Mother Go to Jail? Read full story And for a different view, read Billy Binion’s piece in Reason, “Mom’s Manslaughter Conviction for Her Son’s School Shooting Sets a Dangerous Precedent.” The DEI rollback hasn’t made it to Nebraska Readers may remember John Sailer’s recent Free Press story “The DEI Rollback,” where he detailed how the tide is turning against the diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracy, especially in higher education. But that’s not true for one major state school where DEI dogma is alive and well, John reports for us today: The University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s College of Engineering might sound like one of the last places in higher education where you’d expect to find evidence of DEI orthodoxy influencing big decisions. Nebraska is a red state and UNL is a public school. Plus, you’d expect hiring at an engineering school to be based on, well, scientific criteria. But through a public records request, I reviewed every diversity recruitment report created by the school over the last four years. And I’ve discovered that even here, DEI has been central to hiring decisions. For example, in 2020, when the school set out to hire a professor of National Defense/Computer Network Security, the search committee made its priority clear: each candidate’s “diversity” score—assessing how well applicants understand things like “many intersectional aspects of diversity”—was given equal weight to factors like research and teaching experience. Another search in 2021, for a professor of Big Data/Cybersecurity, stated: “the weight of the ‘diversity’ scores were equal to the other scored areas that contributed to the candidate’s overall score.” And applicants have been ruled out for failing to clear DEI hurdles. According to one report, from 2021, “a small number of candidates” in a search for a professor of thermal sciences “were eliminated based on absence or weak diversity statement.” In another case that year, three applicants for a role in environmental engineering “did not include diversity statements and were disqualified from the search.” Per the college’s diversity and inclusion plan, which is still in place, the reports carry high stakes: a search that fails to show “a serious consideration” of DEI-related issues risks being canceled, resulting in no hire at all. Diversity statement evaluations have long been criticized for their potential to enforce an orthodoxy on issues of race and gender, weeding out faculty with heterodox views. They raise serious questions of academic freedom—as well as First Amendment compliance. The college’s DEI statement evaluation rubric—also acquired through a records request—confirms these fears. The rubric dictates a high score for engineers who identify and discuss “intersectional aspects of diversity”—while punishing those who fail to “distinguish inclusion from diversity.” In other words, even in Nebraska, chemical engineers and materials scientists must be fluent in the idiom of race consciousness. The absurdity is transparent, which is why state university systems from North Carolina to Missouri to Wisconsin have abolished diversity statements. Even faculty at progressive universities have begun to push back. In Nebraska, the policy is alive and well—but that’s something the state’s lawmakers could easily fix. From DEI in engineering to anti-racism in medical schools. . . Jeffrey Flier was dean of Harvard Medical School. Writing in The Free Press today, he sounds the alarm on the rush to embrace ideas about combating racism in medical education that will do more harm than good. And he worries that doctors are told race matters more than excellent care. Read his alarming account in full: Medical Schools Should ‘Combat Racism.’ But Not Like This. JEFFREY FLIER · 1:11 AM Medical Schools Should ‘Combat Racism.’ But Not Like This. Read full story The joke’s on SNL: It’s good to be Shane Gillis. This weekend, five years after the comedian was axed by Saturday Night Live before making his debut as a featured cast member, he will return as a host. Back in 2019, Gillis was accused of using an anti-Asian slur on a podcast that an SNL spokesman called “offensive, hurtful, and unacceptable.” In the years since his big break went badly wrong, Gillis hasn’t kvetched once about his cancellation. Instead, he’s made lots and lots of people laugh with his YouTube sketches, stand-up shows and, most recently, his Netflix special. A big part of Gillis’s appeal is his commitment to making fun of everyone, from Fox News–watching moms to MSNBC–watching dads. And as a white, working-class guy from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, he can tell a joke about Donald Trump that actually lands. Boring people (remember when Vanity Fair was readable?) will tell you that Gillis’s return is a sign that SNL is “cater[ing] to the right” and “giving problematic people a platform.” Others wonder if Gillis’s return is a sign that cancel culture is over. So which is it? For an honest take, we asked fellow funnyman Andrew Schulz, who self-released a comedy special when an unnamed streamer asked him to water down his set: Some people will use this to claim “Cancel culture doesn’t exist.” That’s not fair to Shane. It was used to strip him of his original role on SNL. He then was so undeniable and determined that he overcame his cancellation. What a story. Banished from the city only to return as king! I love Shane. He’s brilliant and absolutely deserving of his success and the opportunity. More merch! Again, you asked, and again, we delivered! Free Press merchandise is officially back in stock and up for sale on our website. We’ve added new items and subtracted the delivery issues (our apologies. . . it won’t happen again!). We have new t-shirts (the people wanted t-shirts!), even better totes, and our classic hats and mugs available for purchase. Go to TheFP.com/shop to support our mission, show off your love for The Free Press, and buy your swag to wear with pride. And be sure to tag photos of you and our merch on Instagram @thefreepress or on X @TheFP. Happy shopping! Oliver Wiseman is a writer and editor for The Free Press. Follow him on X @ollywiseman. The Free Press. © 2024 Bari Weiss 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

Ladies’ Night at the Grammys

Plus: In praise of Joni Mitchell, why authenticity is in, justice for Lana Del Rey, and more. It’s ladies’ night at the Grammys this year, with female solo acts like Billie Eilish, SZA, and Olivia Rodrigo duking it out in the heavyweight categories. And, of course, Taylor Swift. Will the Swift juggernaut keep on rolling? Surely! Then there’s Barbie. The feminist doll–industrial complex is hoping it can squeeze a little more juice out of the movie that captured the zeitgeist last summer and refuses to let go. Songs from the soundtrack have eleven nominations in total, including two nominations in the Song of the Year category, “Dance the Night” by Dua Lipa and “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish. What else is happening at the Grammys tomorrow? An eighty-year-old Joni Mitchell will perform at the show for the first time. (More on her in a second.) Also performing, for the first time in years: Tracy Chapman. You may remember last year’s very silly kerfuffle over her hit “Fast Car,” when the (straight, white—Southern!—male) star Luke Combs topped the country chart with a cover version of the song. This made Chapman the first black woman to have a solo songwriting credit on a number one country hit. Good news! Progress! No, no. According to a Washington Post piece, the response to the song was “complicated” and “clouded by the fact that, as a Black queer woman, Chapman, 59, would have almost zero chance of that achievement herself in country music.” Evan Gardner explained why attempts to pit Combs and Chapman against each other were doomed from the start in a great piece on country music for us last year: Even as his accent tells you that his is a different story than Chapman’s, the words remind you that it’s the same. The car he and Chapman sing of is equal parts sweet chariot and Ford F-150. They are both racing to the same place, and that place is freedom and self-realization, both beautiful and uncontainable. That shared journey will be clear tomorrow night when, according to Variety, Combs and Chapman will sing “Fast Car” onstage together. We’re looking forward to that—and more. Today, Free Pressers look ahead to music’s biggest night of the year. We have Evan on the best new artists, Julia Steinberg on Lana Del Rey, and Peter Savodnik with some recommendations for those who prefer their music centuries old. But first, here’s Eli Lake on why Joni Mitchell’s too good for the Grammys. . . The Grammys Don’t Deserve Joni Mitchell ELI LAKE · FEB 2 The Grammys Don’t Deserve Joni Mitchell Read full story Authenticity is in Evan Gardner on the realness of the nominees for Best New Artist. Merriam-Webster picked authentic as their word of the year for 2023. And our hunger for authentic musical artists has never been greater. Just look at the surprise success of complete outsider Oliver Anthony, whose country song “Rich Men North of Richmond” shot to the top of the charts out from of nowhere. Or look at the nominees for Best New Artist at the Grammys tomorrow night. Where this category once rewarded whichever up-and-coming star had nailed the formula for a pop hit with the broadest possible appeal, this year, whoever wins, the title will go to someone with their own authentic music. The new artist nominees make music that is a collage of their own unique lives and sounds. Meet the front-runners: Jelly Roll For Jelly Roll (born Jason DeFord), a 39-year-old former drug dealer from Antioch, Tennessee (just outside of Nashville), who was in and out of detention centers for ten years and did his first stint at 14, music is primarily an emotional exercise: he channels a life of pain, drugs, and crime into his work. Hip-hop was the obvious way for Jelly Roll to tell his story. And that’s the kind of music he made until 2020, when he released “Save Me,” a stripped-down demo where he sings rather than raps. More recently, he tells his story with a different sound: country music. Jelly Roll isn’t just making money off his past; he’s trying to make change happen, too. Earlier this month, he testified before Congress about the fentanyl crisis, saying “I brought my community down. I hurt people. . . . I am here now standing as a man that wants to be a part of the solution.” Tomorrow he’ll complete his journey from prison cell to red carpet with his first-ever nomination—for a sound that is all his own. Noah Kahan Twenty-seven-year-old singer-songwriter Noah Kahan’s breakout single recounts “Stick Season” in his home state of Vermont. The song’s title is a reference to the time of year from October to early December that is post-foliage but pre-snowfall, and he tells his story over a warm, earthy track with hints of woodland banjo and a rustic rasp. It’s a deeply paranoid song about being stuck that doubles as a reluctant ode to his roots. Ice Spice Ice Spice (born Isis Gaston) is a 24-year-old former college volleyball player from Fordham, in the Bronx. She takes the sound of the streets (drill) and combines it with the pop songs of her adolescence. The result is an innovative genre critics have come to call “sexy drill.” Her songs burst with Bronx bombast that makes you move; they’re light, fun, and sticky—a piece of bubblegum you can’t help but munch. Proof that all you need for a good time is a bass and a boombox. Fred Again Fred Again (also known as Fred Gibson) is a 30-year-old London native whose dance music is an act of digital scrapbooking: his first three albums form a trilogy called Actual Life, an appropriately named collection of sounds drawn straight from his surroundings that sample everything from Instagram livestreams to videos in his camera roll to a conversation with a stadium worker following a show. Also in the running are Gracie Abrams, Coco Jones, Victoria Monét, and The War and Treaty. You might not have heard of any of these names, and that’s precisely the point: this year’s show is an excellent opportunity to shine a light on musical innovation, whether it’s tucked away on a city block or in a country cabin. Justice for Lana! It’s an outrage Lana Del Rey hasn’t won a Grammy. Let’s fix that tomorrow night, writes Julia Steinberg. On May 21, 2020, Lana Del Rey posted a message on Instagram titled “Question for the Culture.” In it, she asked: Now that Doja Cat, Ariana, Camila, Cardi B, Kehlani and Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé have had number ones with songs about being sexy, wearing no clothes, fucking, cheating etc—can I please go back to singing about being embodied, feeling beautiful by being in love even if the relationship is not perfect, or dancing for money—or whatever I want—without being crucified or saying I’m glamorizing abuse?????? May 21, 2020, was my eighteenth birthday. It was also the day I read Lana’s treatise. I remember watching as the woman who wrote the soundtrack to my teenage life was crucified for speaking out against pop culture orthodoxy. Critics accused her of putting women of color down and turning against feminism, which Lana says has no room “for women who look and act like me—the kind of woman who says no but men hear yes.” I was outraged that the critics were reaffirming her point entirely: that a woman must conform to cookie-cutter feminism in order to be accepted. There’s also a personal reason I was upset. A year earlier, during the start of my senior year of high school that was cut short due to Covid, Lana dropped her masterpiece: Norman Fucking Rockwell. I would tell you to listen to NFR for yourself. And if you haven’t, you should. But nothing beats being a teenager in L.A., driving around Topanga with your boyfriend, yearning for the adult complexity Lana told me about. I had never been in love, let alone had my first kiss. I never knew what it meant to desire true freedom or to truly hate someone. But Lana told me what all of it would feel like. A line from “Cinnamon Girl”—Like if you hold me without hurting me / You’ll be the first who ever did—rings in my ears every time I get close to feeling romantic affection. For years, Lana has given voice to a generation of young women caught between feminism and femininity. The greatest female artists of my generation agree. Many of my closest female friendships have come from bonding over Lana. And yet, Lana Del Rey has never won a Grammy. Lana should have won Album of the Year for Norman Fucking Rockwell in 2020. After the backlash to “Question for the Culture,” Lana channeled her rage into two more albums, Chemtrails Over the Country Club and Blue Banisters, both released in 2021. They’re good, but not masterpieces. And then, in 2023, came Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, Lana’s ninth studio album. This Sunday, it’s up for Album of the Year. She’s also nominated for Best Alternative Music Performance, Best Alternative Music Album, Song of the Year (for “A&W,” an abbreviation of American Whore), and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance (for “Candy Necklace” with Jon Batiste). “A&W” opens with the line I haven’t done a cartwheel since I was nine, a perfect example of the cryptic originality we lap up from Lana, whose private life is now as strange and fantastic as a teenage girl’s. She says her last relationship—allegedly, an engagement—ended because her house was too small. She’s addicted to vaping (when I saw her live in 2019, she paused her set to grab her vape), and she is friends with legendary folk singer-songwriter Joan Baez. She erected only one billboard promoting her latest album, in Tulsa, the hometown of her ex-boyfriend, celebrity cop Sean Larkin. “It’s personal,” she explained in a comment on Instagram. Call Lana crazy. Many have. But I can confidently say that Lana, 38, is the voice of women her age and younger: generations who feel stuck, chastised for their sadness but even more for their rebellion. A Grammy would give legitimacy to her prophecy. And finally, if Joni Mitchell or Jelly Roll or Lana or Fred Again aren’t your cup of tea, here’s Peter Savodnik with some selections for weekend listening that have really stood the test of time. In general, I try to avoid listening to music composed by anyone still alive—just like I prefer books written by people long dead. When I’m in a superlative mood, I listen to the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Jazz at Oberlin. Or, even better, Vivaldi’s Mandolin Concertos. (Avi Avital playing the concerto in C major is tops.) But usually I’m not in a superlative mood, so I turn to Bach—often the organ sonatas. (Víkingur Ólafsson’s recording of the fourth sonata, on piano, is especially evocative.) Or Mozart. My father spent countless nights practicing the first movement of the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor on our Steinway grand. When I hear it, I always feel at home—wherever I’m supposed to be. But yes, I’m aware, there’s some awards ceremony happening this weekend, and I suppose, if pressed, I’d vote for the football lady’s “Anti-Hero” for, you know, whatever. The music is fine, but really, it’s the Dostoyevskyan lyrics. She’s laughing up at us from hell? Lovely! It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me. Exactly! (If only Ivan Karamazov were a pop star!) Anyway, note to would-be pop stars: find your favorite Russian novelist, and prepare for greatness. Oliver Wiseman is a writer and editor for The Free Press. Become a Free Press subscriber today: The Free Press. © 2024 Bari Weiss 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

Failing Upward at the State Department

Plus: Biden our time with Iran, the new proletariat, the great Kelce-Swift stupidification, and more. Today in “The Grown-Ups Are in Charge”: Remember the pullout from Afghanistan? That high point of U.S. diplomacy that left tens of thousands of U.S. allies stuck in a country now ruled by the Taliban? Remember the people chasing planes, clinging to the wheels, and dropping from the sky? Yeah, not our finest hour. Well, rather than being offered a premature retirement from government business, the person in charge of rescuing our Afghani friends (who remain abandoned) has been nominated as the next U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Today, Free Press reporter Eli Lake brings you the alarming story of Tracey Jacobson failing upward at the State Department. Tracey Jacobson Abandoned Our Afghan Allies. Now She’s Getting a Promotion. ELI LAKE · 4:02 AM Read full story → Biden our time: Five days have passed since an attack on Tower 22, a U.S. base in Jordan, killed three American troops and injured at least 40 others. On Sunday, the morning after the attack, Joe Biden said, “We shall respond” in a speech at a church in South Carolina. On Tuesday, the president said he had decided how to respond without offering any details. On Wednesday, the administration confirmed that an Iranian proxy was responsible for the attack. As of Wednesday night, though, there has been no response. And this week, Biden officials have reiterated their determination not to get drawn into a regional conflict. Meanwhile, what Biden officials see as a refusal to take the bait, others see as a surefire way to ensure that attacks on U.S. forces in the region continue. In other words, they see inadequate responses to Iranian aggression as one way we wind up in exactly the situation Biden says he is trying to avoid. As Reuel Gerecht, a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, put it to me when we spoke yesterday, “Only escalation can intimidate Iran.” But Gerecht doubts the administration will opt for the kind of action he believes is necessary to deter the Islamic republic. “I would be shocked if this administration, for example, attacked Revolutionary Guard Corps inside Iran. I think that’s just far too much for them. The administration’s gut is for the Americans to do less in the Middle East, not more. The Iranians and their allies have been forcing their hand, but I don’t think three dead Americans and however many wounded are going to fundamentally change their approach, which is to avoid direct conflict with Iran.” Lurking behind all these tactical considerations is what now looks like a catastrophic miscalculation by the administration. Coming into office, Biden and his team thought they could placate Iran and move on from the Middle East. How wrong they were. And how reluctant they are to admit that mistake. In The Wall Street Journal this week, Walter Russell Mead declared that “From Gaza to the Red Sea and from Jordan to Iraq, a stream of unprovoked attacks by Iran and its proxies are driving President Biden into the greatest crisis of his presidency.” With every attack on American troops, it becomes harder to disagree. Meanwhile, the U.S. is reportedly weighing recognition of a Palestinian state as a step toward a two-state solution. And in related news, three families of American October 7 victims are suing the governments of Iran and Syria as well as the crypto exchange Binance. In the lawsuit, filed in New York, the claimants accuse them of providing funds and support for Hamas’s attack. → Road Warriors: French farmers in tractors are laying “siege” to Paris. Deep France—la France profonde—is angry and wants the powers that be to know about it. By the time you read this, it’s possible the farmers have stormed the Élysée Palace. They might be tying President Emmanuel Macron to a forklift and throwing rotten apples at his dashing new prime minister at this point. Who knows? (Quick fashion detour. Out: protesting in keffiyehs. In: protesting in tricolor sashes. Something for the pro-Hamas crowd to consider.) I know, I know. The French are in revolt. What else is new? But it isn’t just the French. Farmers across Europe are firing up their tractors and clogging up the highways. In Belgium, Germany, Spain, and Italy, country folk are hitting the road over rising costs, cheap imports, and burdensome green regulations. The French farmers bring to mind the Canadian truckers who shut down Ottawa over Covid regulations in 2022, and the Dutch farmers who protested last summer. When it comes to class war, the picket line is out and the convoy is in, Michael Lind argues in an essay first published in the New Statesman that we’re reprinting in The Free Press today. As Michael explains, these working-class protesters on wheels were once well represented by their country’s center-left parties. Now, those parties are more closely aligned with educated professionals and “a supporting cast of disproportionately foreign-born service workers.” But while agricultural workers feel politically marginalized, they can still flex their economic and strategic muscle. They deliver goods, they grow food. . . and they block highways with tractors and trucks. Read Michael’s essay here: Road Warriors: The New Proletariat MICHAEL LIND · 3:37 AM Read full story → Big Tech apology tour: Mark Zuckerberg would presumably have chosen a pummeling in the dojo over the grilling he endured on Capitol Hill yesterday. The Meta chief, along with executives from X, Snap, Discord, and TikTok (wait, didn’t we ban those guys?), was called to testify in a Senate judiciary hearing on social media’s impact on children. In a tussle with Senator Josh Hawley, Zuckerberg was cornered into turning to the families of children who were victims of online abuse and exploitation and apologizing for what their kids had been through. I mean, I guess the dressing-down of a new master of the universe scratches an itch. But did the hearing do anything to help those who want safer social media for kids? Free Press contributor Abigail Shrier knows these issues better than most. She has a new book on the mental health of young Americans—Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up—out later this month. I asked Abigail for her thoughts on the hearing. Here’s what she told me: Gender dysphoria, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Tourette syndrome: the number of social contagions spread by social media could fill a diagnostic manual all its own. And yet, in the eight years since academic psychologists Jean Twenge and Jonathan Haidt first warned the world about the dangers of social media, the mental health expert complex has done nothing to curtail its use by teens and tweens. Tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg feel no pressure to take responsibility for the damage their products cause. And why would they? The American Psychological Association, quick to warn the public about the dangers of systemic racism, police tactics, and climate change, has utterly failed to take the dangers of social media to teens seriously. (See the APA’s belated, laughably weak, and equivocating health advisory.) The simplest solution, Abigail says, is for parents to throw out their kids’ phones. But experts won’t suggest that because it will put them out of a job: One of the best things mental health experts could have done to improve the mental health of teens would not grant them an ongoing role in kids’ lives. Any parent can take away a cell phone. But only mental health experts can dispense “wellness tips,” diagnoses, psych meds, and therapy. They march into schools and lecture teens about the responsible uses of social media, which is a little like school nurses advising kids about the prudent uses of Ecstasy. In other words, parents: you’re on your own. → Canada discovers euthanasia is not morally straightforward: The Canadian government had planned to expand its “medical assistance in dying” (MAID) program to allow people suffering from mental illness—rather than just physical illness—to choose to die. But those plans are now on pause. Why? It seems our northern neighbors are growing increasingly uncomfortable with the idea. Our very own Rupa Subramanya had a role in this. She reported on MAID back in 2022, and, as she explained to me yesterday, her story “shone a light on how permissive MAID is in Canada and gave it international attention. Nothing in Canada changes until it figures negatively in the international press, and I think that’s what made the difference.” The Conservatives, Canada’s main opposition party, are now calling for MAID’s extension to be scrapped altogether. Look out for much more debate on this issue—in Canada and across the West—in the near future. → Just be normal!: We live in stupid times. By now, that much should be uncontroversial. A lot of people are to blame for this. Among them: Trump and his crew. The MAGA crowd is known for trivializing the serious: calling a deadly plague the “Wuhan flu,” joking about the injuries John McCain suffered while a prisoner of war in Vietnam, etc. It’s sick, sick stuff. But a more annoying, if less reprehensible, tendency seems to be gaining steam on the right: treating the trivial as if it were deadly serious. Look no further than the strange fuss around Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, and the Kansas City Chiefs. A brief recap for the blissfully unaware: pop star Taylor Swift and tight end Travis Kelce recently started dating. Then his team, the Chiefs, turned things around after a slow start to the season and are heading to the Super Bowl on February 11. This is great news for everyone: the football player, his proud girlfriend, and the NFL, which gets to cash in on a Super Bowl of cultural significance (surely many more young teens will tune in to cheer on “Taylor’s boyfriend”). But over on Fox News, pundits are starting to claim that Swift is a deep state psyop, and the NFL is rigging games to ensure a fairytale ending that would help the league get rich(er) and the president get reelected. (Because Swift backed Biden four years ago, the Biden campaign reportedly—and unsurprisingly—wants her to help his reelection bid.) Here’s GOP presidential also-ran Vivek Ramaswamy laying out the whole sinister plot on X: “I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.” Or maybe a very good tight end on a very good team is dating a very popular pop star. He will win the trophy. He will kiss the girl. This is America, baby! This is just what we ordered! L’affaire Kelce might be incredibly dumb, but it has at least inspired some smart writing. Here’s Ross Douthat, the only social conservative allowed in The New York Times’s offices these days, taking the meme-lords to task for their “self-defeating weirdness.” And here’s Mary Harrington, over at UnHerd, explaining Swift-mania as an “internet-enabled swarm” that “the Right neither understands well, nor has much prospect of turning to their advantage.” Readers, you’re not buying into the Swift-Kelce conspiratorial nonsense, are you? . . . Are you? Oliver Wiseman is a writer and editor at The Free Press. The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through Bookshop.org links in this article. The Free Press. © 2024 Bari Weiss 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

Failing Upward at the State Department

Plus: Biden our time with Iran, the new proletariat, the great Kelce-Swift stupidification, and more. → Today in “The Grown-Ups Are in Charge”: Remember the pullout from Afghanistan? That high point of U.S. diplomacy that left tens of thousands of U.S. allies stuck in a country now ruled by the Taliban? Remember the people chasing planes, clinging to the wheels, and dropping from the sky? Yeah, not our finest hour. Well, rather than being offered a premature retirement from government business, the person in charge of rescuing our Afghani friends (who remain abandoned) has been nominated as the next U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Today, Free Press reporter Eli Lake brings you the alarming story of Tracey Jacobson failing upward at the State Department. Tracey Jacobson Abandoned Our Afghan Allies. Now She’s Getting a Promotion. Tracey Jacobson Abandoned Our Afghan Allies. Now She’s Getting a Promotion. ELI LAKE · 4:02 AM Read full story → Biden our time: Five days have passed since an attack on Tower 22, a U.S. base in Jordan, killed three American troops and injured at least 40 others. On Sunday, the morning after the attack, Joe Biden said, “We shall respond” in a speech at a church in South Carolina. On Tuesday, the president said he had decided how to respond without offering any details. On Wednesday, the administration confirmed that an Iranian proxy was responsible for the attack. As of Wednesday night, though, there has been no response. And this week, Biden officials have reiterated their determination not to get drawn into a regional conflict. Meanwhile, what Biden officials see as a refusal to take the bait, others see as a surefire way to ensure that attacks on U.S. forces in the region continue. In other words, they see inadequate responses to Iranian aggression as one way we wind up in exactly the situation Biden says he is trying to avoid. As Reuel Gerecht, a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, put it to me when we spoke yesterday, “Only escalation can intimidate Iran.” But Gerecht doubts the administration will opt for the kind of action he believes is necessary to deter the Islamic republic. “I would be shocked if this administration, for example, attacked Revolutionary Guard Corps inside Iran. I think that’s just far too much for them. The administration’s gut is for the Americans to do less in the Middle East, not more. The Iranians and their allies have been forcing their hand, but I don’t think three dead Americans and however many wounded are going to fundamentally change their approach, which is to avoid direct conflict with Iran.” Lurking behind all these tactical considerations is what now looks like a catastrophic miscalculation by the administration. Coming into office, Biden and his team thought they could placate Iran and move on from the Middle East. How wrong they were. And how reluctant they are to admit that mistake. In The Wall Street Journal this week, Walter Russell Mead declared that “From Gaza to the Red Sea and from Jordan to Iraq, a stream of unprovoked attacks by Iran and its proxies are driving President Biden into the greatest crisis of his presidency.” With every attack on American troops, it becomes harder to disagree. Meanwhile, the U.S. is reportedly weighing recognition of a Palestinian state as a step toward a two-state solution. And in related news, three families of American October 7 victims are suing the governments of Iran and Syria as well as the crypto exchange Binance. In the lawsuit, filed in New York, the claimants accuse them of providing funds and support for Hamas’s attack. → Road Warriors: French farmers in tractors are laying “siege” to Paris. Deep France—la France profonde—is angry and wants the powers that be to know about it. By the time you read this, it’s possible the farmers have stormed the Élysée Palace. They might be tying President Emmanuel Macron to a forklift and throwing rotten apples at his dashing new prime minister at this point. Who knows? (Quick fashion detour. Out: protesting in keffiyehs. In: protesting in tricolor sashes. Something for the pro-Hamas crowd to consider.) I know, I know. The French are in revolt. What else is new? But it isn’t just the French. Farmers across Europe are firing up their tractors and clogging up the highways. In Belgium, Germany, Spain, and Italy, country folk are hitting the road over rising costs, cheap imports, and burdensome green regulations. The French farmers bring to mind the Canadian truckers who shut down Ottawa over Covid regulations in 2022, and the Dutch farmers who protested last summer. When it comes to class war, the picket line is out and the convoy is in, Michael Lind argues in an essay first published in the New Statesman that we’re reprinting in The Free Press today. As Michael explains, these working-class protesters on wheels were once well represented by their country’s center-left parties. Now, those parties are more closely aligned with educated professionals and “a supporting cast of disproportionately foreign-born service workers.” But while agricultural workers feel politically marginalized, they can still flex their economic and strategic muscle. They deliver goods, they grow food. . . and they block highways with tractors and trucks. Read Michael’s essay here: Road Warriors: The New Proletariat Road Warriors: The New Proletariat MICHAEL LIND · 3:37 AM Read full story → Big Tech apology tour: Mark Zuckerberg would presumably have chosen a pummeling in the dojo over the grilling he endured on Capitol Hill yesterday. The Meta chief, along with executives from X, Snap, Discord, and TikTok (wait, didn’t we ban those guys?), was called to testify in a Senate judiciary hearing on social media’s impact on children. In a tussle with Senator Josh Hawley, Zuckerberg was cornered into turning to the families of children who were victims of online abuse and exploitation and apologizing for what their kids had been through. I mean, I guess the dressing-down of a new master of the universe scratches an itch. But did the hearing do anything to help those who want safer social media for kids? Free Press contributor Abigail Shrier knows these issues better than most. She has a new book on the mental health of young Americans—Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up—out later this month. I asked Abigail for her thoughts on the hearing. Here’s what she told me: Gender dysphoria, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Tourette syndrome: the number of social contagions spread by social media could fill a diagnostic manual all its own. And yet, in the eight years since academic psychologists Jean Twenge and Jonathan Haidt first warned the world about the dangers of social media, the mental health expert complex has done nothing to curtail its use by teens and tweens. Tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg feel no pressure to take responsibility for the damage their products cause. And why would they? The American Psychological Association, quick to warn the public about the dangers of systemic racism, police tactics, and climate change, has utterly failed to take the dangers of social media to teens seriously. (See the APA’s belated, laughably weak, and equivocating health advisory.) The simplest solution, Abigail says, is for parents to throw out their kids’ phones. But experts won’t suggest that because it will put them out of a job: One of the best things mental health experts could have done to improve the mental health of teens would not grant them an ongoing role in kids’ lives. Any parent can take away a cell phone. But only mental health experts can dispense “wellness tips,” diagnoses, psych meds, and therapy. They march into schools and lecture teens about the responsible uses of social media, which is a little like school nurses advising kids about the prudent uses of Ecstasy. In other words, parents: you’re on your own. → Canada discovers euthanasia is not morally straightforward: The Canadian government had planned to expand its “medical assistance in dying” (MAID) program to allow people suffering from mental illness—rather than just physical illness—to choose to die. But those plans are now on pause. Why? It seems our northern neighbors are growing increasingly uncomfortable with the idea. Our very own Rupa Subramanya had a role in this. She reported on MAID back in 2022, and, as she explained to me yesterday, her story “shone a light on how permissive MAID is in Canada and gave it international attention. Nothing in Canada changes until it figures negatively in the international press, and I think that’s what made the difference.” The Conservatives, Canada’s main opposition party, are now calling for MAID’s extension to be scrapped altogether. Look out for much more debate on this issue—in Canada and across the West—in the near future. → Just be normal!: We live in stupid times. By now, that much should be uncontroversial. A lot of people are to blame for this. Among them: Trump and his crew. The MAGA crowd is known for trivializing the serious: calling a deadly plague the “Wuhan flu,” joking about the injuries John McCain suffered while a prisoner of war in Vietnam, etc. It’s sick, sick stuff. But a more annoying, if less reprehensible, tendency seems to be gaining steam on the right: treating the trivial as if it were deadly serious. Look no further than the strange fuss around Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, and the Kansas City Chiefs. A brief recap for the blissfully unaware: pop star Taylor Swift and tight end Travis Kelce recently started dating. Then his team, the Chiefs, turned things around after a slow start to the season and are heading to the Super Bowl on February 11. This is great news for everyone: the football player, his proud girlfriend, and the NFL, which gets to cash in on a Super Bowl of cultural significance (surely many more young teens will tune in to cheer on “Taylor’s boyfriend”). But over on Fox News, pundits are starting to claim that Swift is a deep state psyop, and the NFL is rigging games to ensure a fairytale ending that would help the league get rich(er) and the president get reelected. (Because Swift backed Biden four years ago, the Biden campaign reportedly—and unsurprisingly—wants her to help his reelection bid.) Here’s GOP presidential also-ran Vivek Ramaswamy laying out the whole sinister plot on X: “I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.” Or maybe a very good tight end on a very good team is dating a very popular pop star. He will win the trophy. He will kiss the girl. This is America, baby! This is just what we ordered! L’affaire Kelce might be incredibly dumb, but it has at least inspired some smart writing. Here’s Ross Douthat, the only social conservative allowed in The New York Times’s offices these days, taking the meme-lords to task for their “self-defeating weirdness.” And here’s Mary Harrington, over at UnHerd, explaining Swift-mania as an “internet-enabled swarm” that “the Right neither understands well, nor has much prospect of turning to their advantage.” Readers, you’re not buying into the Swift-Kelce conspiratorial nonsense, are you? . . . Are you? Oliver Wiseman is a writer and editor at The Free Press. Become a Free Press subscriber today: The Free Press. © 2024 Bari Weiss 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

TGIF: TimHouthi Chalamet Trump sweeps Iowa. Americans riot over a cup. Milei is the talk of Davos.

Plus: A lost city, flying cars, and much more. OLIVER WISEMAN AND SUZY WEISS JAN 19 ∙ Welcome back. I’m doing the very last edit of my book this week—which you can preorder here!—so in my stead, I’ve stacked Suzy Weiss on top of Oliver Wiseman in a trench coat to talk like me (they do an eerily good impression) and bring you all the news you might have missed. Either be kind or be withering and cleverly cruel in the comments. And I’ll see you next week! → Trump wins Iowa: Donald Trump ran away with it in Iowa on Monday—exactly as the polls predicted he would. Face it, folks, it’s over! DeSantis flopped. Nikki Haley has a shot in New Hampshire next week, but is miles behind the former president everywhere else. And it looks like the old GOP establishment’s effort to stop Trump will fail for a second time. As for the other candidates, Vivek dropped out and swiftly endorsed Trump. Shocker! The probable Republican nominee and prediction-market favorite to be the next president hot-footed it from Iowa to New York to testify in a civil suit in which a jury has already judged that he committed sexual assault. Trump waved to the cameras outside court, which captured some weird red marks on his hand—leading Democratic pollster James Carville to armchair-diagnose him with syphilis. It’s going to be a long year. → He who must not be aired: After almost a decade of soul-searching about the issue, the media has finally settled on a way to cover Donald Trump: don’t. Or at least, don’t broadcast him. And loudly explain that you have zero curiosity about him or his appeal, chalking it up to these people just love fascism. Both CNN and MSNBC opted not to air Trump’s victory speech in Iowa Monday night. MSNBC’s blazer queen Rachel Maddow told viewers the move was made “not out of spite, it is not a decision that we relish”—who are you kidding, Rachel?—and explained that “there is a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue things. That is a fundamental truth of our business.” Very true, Rachel! Just not in the way you think. The cable news business really is in bad shape: ratings have collapsed and the median viewer is so old they could run for president. Maddow, you’ll recall, spent the Trump years acting like the hero of a Cold War thriller: nightly, we were told that the whole house of cards was about to come tumbling down. She and her team were only days away from exposing the whole Russiagate conspiracy. And then it all turned out to be a nothingburger and Maddow moved on like nothing ever happened. One fantasy MSNBC and others are especially wedded to is the idea that they still matter. The decision not to air Trump’s speeches is ultimately a marketing move: it’s designed to convince you that the show you are watching is more important. And, of course, all of this suits Trump. He can cast himself as a bad boy antihero being targeted by some of the most loathed institutions in America. Sure enough, Trump responded by saying he thought CNN and MSNBC should have their broadcasting licenses revoked. It’s win-win for both sides—and a big L for the rest of us. → Breaking: The Houthis are terrorists: You know the Houthis? Yes, the guys attacking defenseless civilian shipping crews in the Red Sea? Well, it turns out they are terrorists. The Biden administration announced that the group would be reclassified as such this week. Look, neither of us have security clearance or PhDs in the history of Islamist violence but this gang has been giving off major terrorist vibes for quite some time now. The whole murdering civilians and firing AK-47s into the air whenever you’re celebrating thing? Big red flags in our book. Speaking of red flags... © 2024 Bari Weiss 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104