Short-Fingered Vulgarians Spewing Insults. University Students Spitting on Visiting Speakers

SOCIAL STUDIES SHORT-FINGERED VULGARIANS SPEWING INSULTS. UNIVERSITY STUDENTS SPITTING ON VISITING SPEAKERS. TWITTER WARS. LESSONS IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE EROSION OF COMMON MANNERS IS TO BLAME FOR IT ALL? AND WILL WE EVER RECOVER? By Daniel Mendelsohn IN STEVEN FERDMAN/EVERETT COLLECTION. OPPOSITE: MARK PETERSON/REDUX

T&C CIVILITY AUGUST 2016 71 TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM SOCIAL STUDIES SOCIAL STUDIES

he realization that civilization was ending hit me at the depressing spectacle of the couple at the table next to you in among fellow citizens of any virtuous state. Because it’s based on unspoiled by the elaborate manners of courts and cities: “He may a Greek diner one weekday a few years ago when a “nice” restaurant, supposedly dining together but in fact wholly the assumption of a certain degree of common interests and goals, not have the forms of politesse, but he does have human caring.” I was having lunch with my then assistant. A bril- oblivious to each other as each exchanges e-mails with some- such affection, the philosopher went on to suggest, was more Consideration, caring, affection, humanity: It’s striking how emo- liant MFA student at Columbia, he was embar- one who is not sitting three feet away. As with Greg’s behavior important in democracies than in tyrannies. A few hundred years tional the vocabulary that has been associated with civility by our rassingly overqualified for the dreary filing and at lunch, thinking about his messages instead of listening to me, later, the Roman statesman Cicero wrote a treatise called De Re greatest thinkers is. If so, it’s because to treat people civilly is to printing I needed done, and I suppose it was out all these moments have one thing in common: a gross failure of Publica, “On the Republic,” in which he argued for the importance recognize first and foremost that they are just as much people as of some obscure sense of guilt that I took him to attentiveness to the person you are actually with in a public space, of humanitas, the communal fellow-feeling that should act as a you are, with egos and sensitivities as strong, or as fine, as your lunch every week, ostensibly to talk about the coming week’s tasks. to their sensitivities (they may, after all, not be interested in the natural brake on individual selfishness and the impulse to advance own. Civility is, in this reading, very close to empathy. TStill, I was paying him, which to my mind meant that he owed details of your failed sex life or business decisions), or, worse, to only our purely private interests. me some kind of deference—an expectation that, like so many their very presence—their existence. Cicero’s attempts to preserve the Roman republic and its civil he question that faces us today is what kind of empathy can expectations of civil behavior in recent years, was bound to be dis- At first glance this “crisis of attentiveness,” which makes for society in the face of a rising tide of demagogic autocracy ended we have when we are able more and more to surround our- appointed. For as I sat there rattling off a list of things I wanted what my mother would call uncivil behavior, looks like nothing up getting him assassinated by his political rival Marc Antony, Tselves—as we increasingly do—completely with “our” stuff. done the following week, I couldn’t help noticing that his eyes were more than a fuss about manners. When you hear the word civil- who gleefully displayed the orator’s severed head and hands in Think bouta your personal devices, those technologies of solip- doing that iPhone thing: flickering away from my face every 15 ity, after all, the first thing that pops into your head is unlikely the Forum. To some thinkers Cicero’s ghoulish end is nothing sism that have flourished in the past two decades. If you’re walking seconds or so to a spot beneath the tabletop and then slyly rising to be the fate of civilization. For most of us, what the word brings more than an extreme form of incivility—a total failure to be down Fifth Avenue staring at your iPhone, checking your stock again, his face assuming an expression of unnatural attentiveness, to mind is, to put it mildly, far less world-historical: good social able to tolerate other people’s opinions. (Donald Trump’s pledge quotes and chatting with your BFF and listening to your music as if to compensate for the fact that he graces, saying “please” and “may I,” in February to “open up libel laws” and hailing yourself a car, to what extent was not, in fact, paying attention, since writing thank-you notes within a as a means of retaliation against are you actually walking down Fifth he was obviously reading his messages week of the dinner party. Things, negative coverage suggests that Avenue? Are you noticing the cityscape or e-mails. This went on for a few min- IT’S EVIDENT IN in other words, that are pleasant politicians are as eager as ever to THE around you? Even more important, are utes until finally, as immense salads were rather than essential. In a wistful punish recalcitrant writers.) In an you noticing the people around you, placed in front of us, I erupted. EVERYTHING evocation of life as an unmarried influential article from the 1970s, ENLIGHTENMENT your fellow citizens? Think about the “Greg!” I hissed. “Stop doing that! FROM A woman, the memoirist Elizabeth the prominent political theorist WAS MADE platforms through which you interact I’m talking to you and you are looking Wurtzel described what she felt she Michael Walzer classified rioting with people all day, the media that we at your phone.” CONGRESSMAN was missing from the “brocade of and vigilante justice, too—the kind POSSIBLE BY call “social” but that, if anything, have Greg is Irish-American; the color civility”: a fine mesh of life’s accou- of behavior that has become shock- enhanced our ability to be asocial—to rose visibly to his cheeks. “I’m sorry, I’m SHOUTING trements that included “Tiffany sil- ingly de rigueur at candidate ral- CIVILITY: THE screen out every element of society (and sorry,” he mumbled. “I promise I won’t ver you never use.” lies and state political conventions culture and politics) that doesn’t suit do it again.” He looked at me search- DOWN THE But there’s more at stake here. recently—as forms of “incivility.” VIVID EXCHANGE us, thereby removing the necessity for ingly. “It’s just that someone may be try- It’s worth remembering that the What’s key in both the Greek civility in the first place. The polariza- ing to reach me.” PRESIDENT root of the word civility is the and Roman models is the idea that OF IDEAS IN AN tion of politics over the past two decades I slammed my hand on the table, a Latin civis, citizen. To be “civil” the public, communal aspect of stems directly from this increasingly bit more loudly than I’d intended; a few DURING A SPEECH is to act in a way appropriate to life in a democracy or a republic ATMOSPHERE hermetic view of the world. If you’re people looked around. “I am trying to TO SAMUEL L. your fellow citizens, and “civility” is the raison d’être of civility: An IN WHICH rarely exposed to other kinds of people reach you!” I was practically shouting. is the behavior that marks mutual overriding philia for our fellow cit- and alternative views, after all, they will “And I’m actually here—I am sitting JACKSON’S acknowledgement that we individu- izens, based on a sense of our com- DISAGREEMENT become first unimaginable and then three feet away from you.” als share common public, and politi- mon humanitas, is the grease that intolerable. And from the rhetoric of He looked up sheepishly, his cheeks TWITTER DISSING cal, space. Trained as we are today smooths the inevitable frictions DOESN’T CURDLE intolerance it’s only a short step to the as bright as the tomatoes he was picking to think of elaborate politesse as a among individuals. The notion that politics of intolerance. at, and muttered an apology. OF A.O. SCOTT. holdover from an undemocratic era civility is inextricable from human INTO DISRESPECT. Of course, we tell ourselves these lit- I was still irritated. (whatever else it may accomplish, society itself would be developed tle lapses in our attention toward those “I know you think it’s fine, and I the ability to distinguish between in the 18th century, during the we’re with and where we are are small; know that everyone does it. But it’s just not—” the fish fork and the strawberry fork does separate guests who Enlightenment, which was itself made possible by civility—that we tell ourselves that our interests and knowledge are much larger I groped for the right word. Wanting to end my little diatribe were to the manner born from those who weren’t), we find it odd is, the vivid exchange of ideas in an atmosphere in which produc- than our Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. But when you add all with a flourish, I found myself thinking of something that my to think of correct behavior, of manners and civility, as a deeply tive disagreement doesn’t curdle into disrespect. (A brief glance at this up, it’s increasingly clear that we spend much of our day not mother—whose career as a kindergarten teacher began in the political issue. But it is, and the erosion of basic civility—a pro- the comments section of almost any publication is likely to make paying attention to our friends or our surroundings or, indeed, to 1950s, when students appeared in class wearing bow ties and skirts cess that is fueled by the advent of the internet, with its no-holds- you wistful for those days.) the world as it really is, in all its ornery complexity. and said, in unison, “Good morning, Mrs. Mendelsohn!” and whose barred rhetoric, and personal devices that allow us to be in our Although it may bring to mind the novels of Edith Wharton, In 2001, when I got my first Motorola clamshell (“It’ll be great expectations hadn’t changed much since then—liked to use. own space pretty much all the time and is evident in everything the term polite society originally referred to the intellectual circles to have if I’m driving some night with the baby in the car seat “I know you say that everyone’s doing it now,” I said again. “But from a South Carolina representative’s shouting down the presi- in which the Scottish Enlightenment flourished in the 1700s, and I go off the road into a ditch!” I remember telling my parent- the fact is that it’s just not civil.” dent of the United States during a speech to Samuel L. Jackson’s salons in which thinkers and speakers could express themselves ing partner—not being able to imagine any other contingency in These days we all cherish and collect them—the casual, grind- Twitter dissing of New York Times critic A.O. Scott—is raising with freedom and yet with respect to others—an ideal equilib- which I’d want to use the thing), I would have laughed out loud if ing, daily failures of civility, which by now are so widespread that troubling questions about the direction our civilization (another rium between the needs of the individual and the requirements of you’d told me that a typical cityscape in the year 2016 would be a we don’t even register them anymore as rude. It’s just what we all civis-related word, by the way) is going. the community. A growing awareness of the social, intellectual, vision of dozens of highly educated, well-groomed, well-dressed do. The guy behind you in the cineplex ticket line loudly breaking and political uses of politeness (from the Latinpolitus , polished) adults stomping down the street staring (or shouting) into little up with his girlfriend by cell phone; the human resources woman n fact, the connection between good manners and good citizen- in turn led to the revolutionary notion that “manners” were, in machines the size of communicators in Star Trek. To describe it who, after a lengthy and audible recitation of her interlocutor’s ship has been a concern to political philosophers at least as far some sense, inherently human, whatever one’s social status. In his in this vaguely comical way is, of course, to be a little unfair; after career failures via FaceTime, fires the poor man next to me on Iback as the fourth century B.C., when Aristotle argued that a 1762 treatise Emile, or Education, a book burned by censors as soon all, no one doubts that the conversations, the stock quotes, the an Acela to DC (I need hardly add that it was in the Quiet Car); dignified and respectful affection,philia , should naturally prevail as it appeared, Jean-Jacques Rousseau imagined a “natural” child, e-mails are important. The problem is that [CONTINUED ON PAGE 105] T&C T&C AUGUST 2016 72 TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM AUGUST 2016 73 TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM LESSONS IN CIVILITY

[CONTINUED FROM PAGE 73] they’re important only to each of those individuals, not to the people around them. What sense of a “community” based on mutual philia can there really be on that stretch of Fifth Avenue? Whose needs, sensitivities, and concerns can you empathize with when you’re able to float through public spaces all day long in a bubble of what are only your private concerns—to say nothing of when you vote? This brings me to another point of classical etymology. The Athenians of the great democratic era of Pericles’s time were intensely, perhaps even excessively, community-minded: every citizen was expected to participate in direct democracy, some offices were assigned by lot, and everything from athletic contests to the performances of tragedies was a public, state-sponsored event at which the unfor- giving Mediterranean sunlight showed you just who was there and how they were doing. As a result, the Greeks had a special horror of people who imported their private concerns into the public arena—the agora, where civic life unfolded. In fact, they had a word for that kind of person. Idiotês is derived from the adjec- tive idios, which means private. Originally its meaning was innocuous: a private person. But precisely because life in a city like Athens or New York takes place in shared spaces as well as in private ones, the word came to mean someone who was irritat- ingly, stubbornly, contrarily “private” even when he shouldn’t be. Over many centuries the last syllable of the word was eroded away by a million lips in 10,000 cities, from Athens to Con- stantinople to Antioch to Rome, leaving us with what is, when you think about it, as good a term as any to describe a figure who clomps obliviously down a city street while seemingly talking to himself, or sucker-punches someone for having dif- ferent views, or practices any number of other behaviors that we would once have laughed at but now have become appall- ingly common: idiot. « T&C AUGUST 2016 105 TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM SOCIAL STUDIES

$10 MILLION Dana Giacchetto, money manager to Hollywood stars, looted the accounts of clients like Ben Affleck and Leo DiCaprio before his 2000 arrest.

HOW MUCH SHOULD THE SAME FRIENDSALMA MATER, UPBRINGING, $20 OR COUNTRY CLUB COUNT IN BILLION WORLD OF FINANCE The approximate THE ? amount Bernard Madoff stole from clients. His IT’S A QUESTION THAT is thought to have been the largest fraud in THE WEALTHY—AND THE American history. NOVELISTS OBSESSED WITH CHRONICLING THEM—HAVE BEEN ASKING FOR CENTURIES.

By Daniel Mendelsohn

bout five years ago in Paris, as I sat in the office of a large French bank and prepared to talk to WITH a conseiller about opening a checking account, I thought for a moment that I had strayed into $38 the 19th century. It wasn’t the decor; although MILLION the branch was located on a grand boulevard, it Groton, Princeton, had been redone—recently, by the looks of it— and Harvard adorn in one of those chipper color schemes favored by sober institutions the résumé of Andrew that are eager to appear “friendly”: banks, dentist’s offices, pedi- Caspersen, who A pleaded guilty this atric waiting rooms. Rather, it was an item on one of the forms I year to bilking friends was asked to fill out that made me feel as if I’d been parachuted and family. into a novel by Balzac. To open an account, I read, I would have to provide a “personal reference from my banker.” The serious young woman who was to be my counselor, who had been help- fully translating the various forms and documents for me, looked up, startled, when I burst out laughing. “My banker”? I’m a middle-class person, and in the 20 years that I’d had an account at a local branch of a giant U.S. bank, I T&C T&C MONEYSEPTEMBER 2016 182 TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM SEPTEMBER 2016 183 TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM SOCIAL STUDIES SOCIAL STUDIES think I’d spoken with an actual “banker” twice: once when I The common element of these traditions and transactions was, in Balzac’s Comédie Humaine novels, begun in 1830. (One character, Madoff himself, whom potential investors were so desperate to opened my accounts and once when I rented a safe deposit box. of course, trust—one of the human elements that have been dis- who realizes a huge windfall based on early news of the outcome meet that they joined country clubs where it was rumored he was For two decades the tellers I saw every week had been as blithely appearing from most of our daily transactions. Today, when the of the Battle of Waterloo, was modeled on one of the Rothschilds.) a member. indifferent to me as executioners to their victims, fanning out word trust comes up in everyday conversation, it’s likely to be your William Makepeace Thackeray, best known as the author ofVa n - What makes these scams possible is, in the end, our yearning 20s like magicians with a deck of cards when I cashed a check, computer asking if you want to access a certain website. Can you ity Fair (1848), had an ax to grind with dishonest moneymen: He for “affinity.” What all these real and fictional swindlers have in smoothly scooping up piles of deposit slips and checks like win- blame me for feeling a little wistful about the idea of having a liv- lost most of a fortune he had inherited as a child as the result of common is the ability to exploit our greed by exploiting some- ners in a game of poker. That, of course, was before online banking ing, warm-blooded banker to talk to? the failure of an Indian bank, and from his earliest novels on he thing that may run even deeper: our desire to connect to other and banking apps. Since then my anonymity has been perfected. gleefully skewered fraudulent financiers. Vanity Fair’s low-born people. Sometimes the affinity is assumed. (They went, or claimed For all they know, I don’t even exist. ur conflictedness about how to find the right balance social climber heroine, Becky Sharp, specializes in affinity fraud, they went, to the same college or know the same people, and so we Which is just how millions of customers like it. For most peo- between the digital and the human—between the cool, swindling everyone from a trust- assume they’re like us. Patricia ple money, like sex, is deeply private, and possibly a little bit dirty. Oanonymous efficiency of online transactions, on the one ing landlord to her best friend’s THE MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION Highsmith’s Mr. Ripley worked (Dirtier maybe. Nowadays we’re happy to talk endlessly, publicly, hand, and the primal pleasure of gushing to the mortgage broker brother, through whom she per- Is it easier to get taken by a friend or a stranger? The history of that way.) Often the con men about sex and our bodies but never about our net worth. A writer about how you’re going to renovate the house you’re buying, on the petrates an insurance scam. Alex- the swindle leaves us empty-handed. are expert storytellers, weaving friend of mine who grew up rich once observed that most of the other—makes us particularly sensitive to flaws on either side. But andre Dumas’s Black Tulip (1850) an illusion of affinity and trust well-heeled women she knew would rather talk about having sex as scary as news of a failure in your bank’s online security system takes as its subject the infamous $225 out of half-truths and outright with their fathers than discuss how much their fathers earned.) can be, there’s something even more terrifying about human fail- speculation in tulips in late 17th- MILLION lies. At the time of the initial Like that other unmentionable, death, money has, over the past ures; unlike network breaches, these strike at our primal need to century Holland; in Emile Zola’s (IN 2016 DOLLARS) charges against the unprepos- generation, been increasingly trust. This surely accounts for the Money (part of a 20-volume 1920, Charles Ponzi The sessing Giacchetto—who, even sanitized and technologized, powerful fascination exerted on series devoted to ridiculing the eponymous scam- with his basset hound face and abstracted from the complex and us today by stories about fraud— greed rampant in France’s Sec- mer (right) cost his round spectacles, had convinced THE ABUSE OF SUCH investors—some of often messy realities of interper- which is to say, the abuse of trust. ond Empire), the mastermind of them friends—a then- his clients that he was one of sonal relationships. Today we TRUST IS KNOWN AS When Andrew Caspersen, the a vast investment fraud buys up whopping $20 million them—Creative Artists Agency die not at home but in hospitals, Groton- and Princeton-educated newspapers to control the buzz through his fraudulent Securi- agent Bob Bookman pointed connected to machines; we bank “AFFINITY FRAUD,” scion of a wealthy Wall Street surrounding the bank shares he ties Exchange Company. He $8.3 MILLION out the particular susceptibil- not in person but in the ether, family, was arrested earlier wants to promote. (His prudent promised outrageous profits by 2011, Knoedler Gallery Domenico ity of movie stars to this kind connected to our smartphones. AND WHETHER IT IS this year on charges that he’d sister is pressured into investing buying discounted international De Sole paid the above amount of creative schemer. “This is a And yet you have to wonder been engaging in a $95 million in the scheme, against her better reply coupons and redeem- for his Rothko, which was business where people make AMONG MAIN LINE ing them for U.S. postage. The actually produced by Queens whether, beneath the strenuous fraud, the element of the story judgment.) scheme lasted more than a year. resident Pei-Shen Qian. Qian’s a lot of money not because of preference for digital cleanliness, WASPS OR MEMBERS that commentators obsessively And in the most famous, and knack for mimicry, applied to at business skills but because of we don’t still feel an atavistic returned to was that Caspersen prescient, of all financial scam least 20 other works, led to the creative skills,” Bookman told twinge for human connection. OF TEMPLE EMANU-EL, had duped his mother, brothers, novels, Anthony Trollope’s aptly $3.6 MILLION 165-year-old gallery’s closing. a journalist. Creative, indeed. Indeed, after my shocked guffaw, and a Princeton classmate into titled The Way We Live Now 1938, Richard Whitney A member Small wonder such characters something else, something like investing in his scheme. Nearly a (1875), a fabulously wealthy of the storied family and presi- have also long been catnip to THE PRINCIPLE dent of the New York Stock nostalgia, flooded me in response decade ago, as the Bernie Madoff European banker of unknown $593 MILLION great authors; making people Exchange, he stole $214,000 2001, Reed Slatkin The Earthlink to the solemn Parisienne’s REMAINS THE SAME. scandal unfolded, it became clear origins called Augustus Mel from his firm and others, co-founder and erstwhile Sci- believe in your stories is, after request for a reference from that the financier was able to motte moves to London, where including the New York Yacht entology minister raised this all, precisely what novelists— my banker. Like “letter of credit” and “gentlemen’s agreement,” keep his Ponzi scheme running because he cannily preyed on fel- he sets in motion a complicated Club and his father-in-law. You amount from 800 investors, and actors—do. the words were something out of an old novel, a whisper from low Jews, many of whom assumed, to their great loss, that because scheme involving a railway in can thank him for the stock including Hollywood actors and How we react to these sto- the past evoking an era in which business was transacted on the he was “one of them” he could be trusted. the Americas. Despite the never market crash of 1929. producers, several of them Scien- ries of fraud, whether in the basis of a handshake and credit was extended because you knew Indeed, at the time of the Madoff scandal, aNewsweek writer quite clear nature of the invest- tologists. He would later argue news or between the covers of that the religion made him do it. someone—or at least had attended the same school or belonged found it “incredible that he could have sucked in so many rich, ment and their distaste for his $45 MILLION a novel, says much about who to the same club. It can be easy to forget, in this day of robotic sophisticated people. No verification of the accounting was ever manners (and birth), the English 2011, Wolfgang Beltracchi This we are. In the end, whether you phone operators, secret log-in handles, and ever-metastasizing made, and no one questioned the investment strategy and resources succumb to the allure of a char- was the price for 14 paintings $300 MILLION prefer the impersonality of digi- password requirements, that for millennia the human connection, of the Madoff firm.” But this is to underestimate the power of those acter they assume has the know- the German artist copied and 2006, Lou Pearlman The music tal platforms to the gratifying, often based on ancient and elaborate systems of aristocratic, mili- atavistic, clannish instincts that make us want to think we can trust how of the Rothschilds, and they sold over four decades. A chemi- mogul and manager of the if occasionally more perilous, tary, or scholarly acquaintance and reciprocity, was the only one family and friends—fellow tribesmen, in other words. The abuse clamor to put their money into cal analysis exposed the wrong Backstreet Boys and NSync stole opportunity to put your trust paint, sending him to prison. He nine figures via fake compa- that mattered. In an age before ID cards and background checks, of such trust is known as “affinity fraud,” and whether the affinity the plan, which, like all Ponzi in another Homo sapiens depends got out after three years and nies. Frequent targets were his the presumption that people of the same caste or profession were is among Main Line WASPs or members of Temple Emanu-El, the schemes, eventually collapses, now supposedly makes millions artists—he gave himself a sal- on your view of human nature. “safe” made travel and commerce possible. According to the pro- principle remains the same: In the presence of a powerful personal- leading to Melmotte’s suicide. from original works. ary as the sixth Backstreet Boy. The trusting and the clubbable tocols evident in Homer’s Odyssey, a stranger who appears out of ity who seems to be one of us, we see what we want to see, believe Those investors’ contem- will always be more comfort- nowhere on your doorstep had to be welcomed, fed, bathed, and what we want to believe, trust whom we assume we can trust. porary real-life counterparts are many. In the 1980s there was able placing their faith—and money—in the hands of people they offered a bed for the night before you could even dream of asking the Czech-born British financier Robert Maxwell, whose Ponzi know (or feel they should know), even though they’re well aware him who he was. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, net- o one knows this better than novelists. Financial fraud has scheme had him raiding pension funds and who, like Melmotte, that human connections can short-circuit. Mutatis mutandis, the works of personal connections (and connections of connections) long been a seemingly inexhaustible subject in European ended up killing himself. In the 1990s there was Dana Giacchetto, choice is one that people have been making, with ever-varying among scholars ensured that academics—and ideas—could travel Nfiction. This was particularly true in the 19th century, the the “stockbroker to the stars,” who in 2000 was convicted of results, from the days of Homer, whose heroes blithely bathed safely from country to country across Europe. To this day, all you period that witnessed the rise of the middle class—the first time bilking a number of the Hollywood A-listers with whom he had in the tubs of total strangers, confident that they’d enjoy a good need to get access to the Vatican Library, founded in 1475 by a large numbers of “ordinary” people had the kind of liquidity that palled around, such as Cameron Diaz, Ben Affleck, and Leonardo night’s sleep, to 1875, when Zola penned his savage indictment of broad-minded pope, is a letter of recommendation from a scholar made them alluring targets for dishonest financiers. Fraud, bank- DiCaprio, out of millions. (He was found dead after a night out deceitful bankers, to the present, with its Caspersens and Max- known to the administration. ruptcy, and market manipulation are, for instance, recurring themes OPPOSITE: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES. PREVIOUS SPREAD: BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS (GIACCHETTO); JIN LEE/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES (MADOFF ); LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS/NEWSCOM (CASPERSEN) partying this past June, at the age of 53.) And then there was wells and Madoffs. As myconseiller might say, plus ça change… « T&C T&C SEPTEMBER 2016 184 TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM SEPTEMBER 2016 185 TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM SOCIAL STUDIES

DANA THOMAS

You know, we understand Hillary. After all, CONFUSION however, in the United Kingdom.) Europe- THE T&C in any given lecture at ans are baffled that any voter with basic Harvard you can point ABROAD civic knowledge could support a presiden- to the classmate who’s tial candidate who has never once held the already running for most basic governing position. Someone office—and I’m not talk- uring an elegant luncheon hosted who has been a respected senator and a sec- ing student council. (Plus, by interior designer Linda Pinto and retary of state—yes, of course. A swagger- ELECTION Hillary went to Yale for DFrench couturier Hubert de Given- ing tycoon? Impossible. law school, so we get that chy in Paris in late September, the couturier They also don’t understand American she needs to compen- Philippe Venet, Givenchy’s longtime part- voters’ reluctance—unspoken if obvious sate.) It’s like this: Hillary ner, asked me, “What is happening with this from the European view—to elect a woman reminds us of that kid election in the United States? Do Ameri- to run the country. The Brits made Marga- who wears a suit to every cans not understand how Hillary Clinton is ret Thatcher their prime minister almost TIME meal at the campus caf- so respected overseas?” He shook his head 40 years ago. German chancellor Angela eteria, but at least she’s in despair. “Europeans do not understand Merkel is the levelheaded force holding the not the one e-mailing what is going on.” European Union together. Philippine voters anonymous bomb threats Having first lived in Paris in the early elected self-proclaimed housewife Corazon to the campus police 1980s, and having made it my home since Aquino president 30 years ago, and to honor because she didn’t study 1992, I can confirm this statement. For her the U.S. Congress invited her to address CAPSULE for her finals. (Or maybe months I have been asked, “As an American, a joint session. Why, Europeans have repeat- she is. Who knows: She can you explain how this Monsieur Trump, edly asked me, is the seemingly progressive WHETHER IN A scrubbed the servers.) a businessman with no political experience, United States reluctant to do the same? For Trump, meanwhile, can be president?” For Europeans politics this I have had no answer. oh boy. Listen, a lot of is a profession: You go to school to study Europeans, however, do understand the NEWSROOM OR ON people here know the it, you run for office or land a government political divisiveness and the anti-gay and lifelong craving for vali- job, and you keep serving in the govern- anti-immigrant sentiments that have seized CAMPUS, STATESIDE OR dation that comes with a ment your entire career. This notion, born the United States, because, though they million-dollar loan from from our Founding Fathers, that holding don’t like to admit it, it’s happening here, IN A FOREIGN LAND, AT Daddy. Just don’t take it elected office is “public service”—some- too—particularly in France, with the viru- NATHANIEL HORWITZ out on the whole world. thing one does for a period of time before lent anti-gay protests two years ago, and the We all want our name on returning to the private sector—does not Syrian refugee crisis and the terrorism now, A MODERN-DAY DINNER a skyscraper as well, but exist on the continent. (It does, somewhat, and the continued rise of the radical right you don’t see us shouting at the Chinese. National Front party. One morning TABLE OR THROUGH THE HARVARD That’s partly because we need help on our during the end stages of the election problem sets, but mostly because we’re I read in the paper that the French VOTE not racist. If anyone in college talked like and British have started building a THE LENS OF ANCIENT Trump in public, they’d be kicked out of wall to keep refugees from crossing his election was as strange, and about school. That’s not political correctness, it’s the English Channel. This made me HISTORY, ONE THING IS as appetizing, as the ambiguous mold common sense. realize that while Europeans don’t that has been colonizing my room- To be fair, Trump probably couldn’t get necessarily get Donald Trump the CLEAR: WE JUST Tmate’s leftover Chipotle since Trump won into college these days anyway. With the man, they understand much of his the primary. You’ve got to remember: For admissions rate rivaling the unemployment message. “I can’t believe Trump has some of us on campus this was our first rate—thanks, Obama!—even economics gotten this far,” the British assistant ENDURED WHAT MAY BE time getting to vote in a presidential elec- majors know what the nuclear triad is. And to my hairdresser said recently. “But tion. For the rest of us this was our first I’m sure we’ve all forgotten about Gary I think it’s a sign that things are THE MOST BIZARRE time forgetting to vote in a presidential Johnson, but Trump is just glad he wasn’t changing. Like Brexit. People are election. Either way it’s too bad, because the one asked what he’d do about Aleppo. willing to believe lies.” CHAPTER IN AMERICAN in high school we got to watch our coun- Given his dual interests in real estate devel- Again, I didn’t know what to say. try reelect the guy who killed bin Laden. opment and nuclear weapons, probably Instead, when I got home, I found In college we got to vote for the one who turn it into a parking lot. On the bright my absentee ballot. I sat down, HISTORY. HERE, SIX wouldn’t kill us—or, worse, our job pros- side, if we get into a nuclear war and an colored in the circles, sealed it, and pects. It kind of felt like taking that Wall ICBM lands on Boston, at least it’ll take out posted it. That, I suppose, was the NOTABLES CRYSTALLIZE Street internship your mom likes, instead of MIT first. only response. dropping out to write a dystopian screen- Nathaniel Horwitz is a member of the Har- Dana Thomas is an author and an

THE EXPERIENCE. play just to see what happens. JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES KAKTUSFACTORY/STOCKFOOD vard class of 2018. American in Paris. T&C T&C DECEMBER 2016/JANUARY 2017 184 TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM DECEMBER 2016/JANUARY 2017 185 TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM SOCIAL STUDIES

MATT VISER THE FRONT LINES

t was a nippy night in Marshalltown, of a Fox News debate, called rival Ted Cruz forming. The 2016 presidential election Iowa, and the political press corps was “a wreck,” and declared, “My temperament would not be about policy versus policy. Igathered in a high school weight room. is great!” It would be head versus gut. It would be The exercise bikes and dumbbells taunted It’s what happened next that proved shaped by a primal scream. those of us who were alternating between he was here for the long haul: He left the And the question became not only campaign snacks and homegrown Iowa weight room and went downstairs to a rau- whether Clinton could overcome the forces steaks, those of us who had packed running cous crowd that cheered the candidate and against her but whether she could with- shoes that never left the suitcase, those of us jeered those of us in the press pen. After- stand them in a way the entire Republican whose only muscles getting workouts were ward, a live band played outside. Mean- establishment could not. in fingers on a keyboard. while, Hillary Clinton had her own event For those of us covering the election, it It was on that night in Marshalltown in Marshalltown, just a few miles away and was often fascinating. In a political game that it became clear, at least to me, that not long after Trump left, taking his giant where the rules are usually set and the talk- KATIE GLUECK Donald Trump was more than a carnival crowd with him. While he filled a high ing points predictable, this election was barker entertaining all of us before the elec- school gymnasium, she only half-filled a full of surprises. But it was also depress- tion got serious. middle school basketball court. ing, a race that wasn’t aspirational but one SOCIAL MEDIA That’s not to say he wasn’t entertaining This was well before the two officially between two of the least-liked candidates in that night during a 30-minute press con- began running against each other, but history covered by a media that, justifiably MAYHEM ference in which he threatened to pull out already the contours of the race were or not, wasn’t viewed much more favorably. Some voters were angry enough to yell n the 2016 presidential contest, candi- a lesser extent, Bernie Sanders, felt pressure it into something bigger. “This is unreal,” and scream at us, fill our Twitter feeds and dates drove the news cycle for days with to condemn the attacks—another example I posted from a Texas delegation break- inboxes with hatred and vitriol. But most Ia single tweet. Donald Trump, whose of how Twitter was inextricably linked to fast on the morning after Cruz, at the voters were just dismayed and distraught at constant, often unfiltered stream of mus- the campaign, and to the coverage of it.) Republican convention, refused to endorse the choices before them and the state of the ings delighted supporters and vexed other And yet. It turned out Twitter could be a Trump. “Texas delegates crying, literally country’s politics. members of his party, was at the forefront surprisingly supportive platform for those of pointing fingers at each other, calling each One thing we were less able to see up of this phenomenon, but his opponents us on the cutthroat campaign trail. When I other cowards.” My phone immediately close was the candidates themselves. This also prioritized social media as a key piece was on the Ted Cruz beat, before moving on began vibrating with retweets, a sign that was also depressing. Reporters were rarely of their messaging strategies. “Delete your to the general election, reporters from rival there was interest in the story and that I able to fly on the candidates’ airplanes, account,” Hillary Clinton tweeted at Trump publications would tweet out one another’s should file—fast. (Minutes later my piece, which snuffed out some of the access we last June. Needless to say, he didn’t. stories, giving credit to competitors. Twit- “Cruz: I won’t be a ‘servile puppy dog’ for used to have. Even the pope still lets report- Certainly there were dark sides to the ter offered a platform for camaraderie and Trump,” appeared on Politico with details ers aboard his plane. platform’s central role in the race. Not only instant communication, too; even journalists of the morning’s drama.) Many people called this the most impor- did the Twitter-fueled tempo further reduce who barely knew each other would exchange Still, I tried not to let the conventional tant election in their lifetimes, but from up the time available for thoughtful report- direct messages in airports, sending alerts wisdom of the Twitterverse influence my close it was often difficult to find the deeper ing, the medium also elevated bigoted sup- when airlines were calling our names, warn- coverage too heavily. But who could help, in meaning. Still, it provided enough intrigue porters of several of the candidates, giving ing that our flight to New Hampshire was this new era, not putting stock in it? And so to inspire dissertations for decades. In the voice to their hateful messages. I have many about to take off without us. I quietly celebrated the milestone I reached meantime, I’ll be in the weight room. friends and colleagues who faced racist, anti- And if I tweeted something obser- during the election’s final weeks: 10,000 Matt Viser is a T&C contributing editor and Semitic, and sexist online assaults, and even vational or off the cuff and it blew up, I Twitter followers, and counting. national political reporter for the Boston

threats, from Twitter trolls. (Trump and, to could take that as encouragement to turn Katie Glueck is a Politico campaign reporter. IMAGES FROM TOP: DAMON WINTER/NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX; JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY Globe. T&C T&C DECEMBER 2016/JANUARY 2017 186 TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM DECEMBER 2016/JANUARY 2017 187 TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM SOCIAL STUDIES

MARY MATALIN Here’s how we defended our choices: One of us argued loyalty, one was into glass- DINNER TABLE ceiling busting, one was standing athwart history yelling STOP, and one was just try- RESIGNATION ing to eat in peace and figured a family tie vote was the only way to accomplish that. he two most frequently asked ques- someone else. No one had much good to say Frequently and loudly debated: the Wall, tions my husband and I get are, “Are of their respective choices, except things of the Hair, the Pantsuit, lies, trust, hypocrisy, Tyour daughters Republicans or Dem- the talking point variety, which is not per- health, and more lies. Rarely articulated: ocrats?” and “What is your dinner conver- mitted at our table. desperation over our unsustainable debt sation like?” Despite our misgivings, not voting is and degrading democracy. One of our kids is a bleeding heart liberal never an option, so two of us are pulling Our appetites for more intellectually and the other a commonsense conservative. the lever for Trump, two for Hillary. Three empty calories were always sated by the Go figure. Neither of them would describe of us are repulsed by our choices and one of time we got to dessert. We left the table as liberalism or conservatism as we would, and us doesn’t care. we always came to it: full of respect for and I would describe their developing world- Whatever our respective attitudes and resignation over one another’s resolve. views more as their hard-wired dispositions opinions, we are all blessed/cursed with the And everyone ordered to-go after- than as what you would think of as politi- same finely developed skill: We can spin dinner drinks and felt blessed to be in New cal inclinations. Since we are all foodies anything, which as you well know means Orleans, where democratic debates and and relish our many New Orleans culinary the art of saying stupid things that sound drive-thru daiquiri stands are just another miracles, we try to avoid mealtime political smart. Unfortunately, we are also all loud, day in paradise. discussions, but this election seemed to pro- which is a (lazy) form of spinning. Mary Matalin is a Republican political voke strong opinions and emotions no mat- Given the paucity of policy to defend, consultant and frequent dinner companion ter how delectably distracting the epicurean our boisterous spinning produced more of Democratic political consultant James delights before us were. heat than light. Carville (her husband). A number of the GOP candidates visited our home during the primaries, and, of DANIEL MENDELSOHN course, the girls practically grew up with the Bushes and dominated by a relatively small number “the man who, with his attacks, corrupted Clintons. They’re now voting ARISTOTLE, of wealthy and well-connected families the Athenians more than any other”), the age, and while their upbring- (sound familiar?), Cleon suddenly appeared literary elite was repulsed by Cleon and ing may have left them with a THE on the political scene more or less out of his low tactics. Not that their protests did somewhat skewed perspective, nowhere; having inherited a fortune from much good. Soon after Pericles’s death, dur- their reactions to this strange, TALKING HEAD his father, a leather merchant, he was the ing the first years of the war, Cleon became strange election are not dis- first person with a background in com- the leader of Athens, and his rabid policies similar to those of the average merce to challenge the political establish- became those of the state. One early act amazed 2016 American voter. ment (sound familiar?). His contempt for was to call for the extermination of the And you would think that after diplomatic decorum (when the Pelopon- entire adult male population of a rebellious 40 years in the business James ulgar and audacious…buffoonish nesian War broke out between Athens allied state, along with the enslavement of and I would have some degree and reckless…he stripped politi- and Sparta, in 431, he was a fierce hawk, all the women and children. Luckily, cooler of detachment. “Vcal oratory of its decorum, setting openly contemptuous of his opponents’ heads ultimately prevailed. Which leads to the answer the fashion of yelling when addressing the more restrained approach to international All of which is to say that to an ancient to the second question. Which people, and imbuing politics with a trivial- relations. Sound familiar?), along with his Greek the 2016 presidential election might I am guessing mirrors most ity and contempt for propriety that soon flamboyant speaking style and canny way well inspire a frisson of anxiety. But at American dinner tables these after ouldw ruin the entire state.” of courting the working classes (I won’t least one modern candidate should be wor- days. Politics in 2016 is an Sound familiar? Look again. Although it even ask this time), made Cleon a force to ried too. For not only did Cleon’s allergy appetite suppressant. On the seems like something torn from yesterday’s reckon with. to diplomacy and compromise cost Athens upside, our girls are fortu- op-ed columns, the text above happens to Do I have to add that the intellectual the opportunity for a negotiated peace nately now old enough to be 2,000 years old. It’s a passage from the classes abhorred him? From the comic play- early in the war (which ended with the enjoy adult beverages. biographer Plutarch lambasting one of the wright Aristophanes (who said of Cleon, great city’s total humiliation and defeat), he As a family unit, ours was most notorious politicians of democratic “You’re like eel fishers: In still waters they lost his life in the conflict. Caught up by his the RealClearPolitics of dinner Athens’s golden age, a brilliant demagogue don’t catch anything, but when the slime is own war fever, he decided to try his hand tables. We were in a four-way called Cleon, whose career evokes an eerie stirred up the fishing’s good”) to the histo- at being a general, with disastrous results. dead heat. And at least two of déjà vu just now. rian Thucydides (who called him “the most Caveat orator! us didn’t even have candidates. At the height of Athens’s power, in the violent man in Athens”) to the philosopher Daniel Mendelsohn is an author and a

Most support was against PHAS/UIG/GETTY IMAGES. OPPOSITE: PICTORIAL PRESS LTD./ALAMY 430s BC, when national politics was still Aristotle (who decades later crowned him classics scholar. T&C T&C DECEMBER 2016/JANUARY 2017 188 TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM DECEMBER 2016/JANUARY 2017 189 TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM