If you missed the previous newsletter, you can read it here. The party that capitulated to Trump has the most to answer for
I’ve come to think of Abdul El-Sayed as the gotcha piñata. The Democratic nominee in the crucial U.S. Senate race in Michigan is stuffed full of past comments that placed him to the left of most American voters — a difference that he’s now minimizing. And Republicans are whack-whack-whacking at him, hoping for those goodies to tumble out. The preternaturally smug Fox News host Jesse Watters administered some of the whacks last week, when El-Sayed sat for an interview that had all the cordiality of a cage fight. Watters resurfaced El-Sayed’s expressions of support for the Green New Deal and defunding the police, as well as his suggestion that the country ditch the Second Amendment. When El-Sayed repeatedly countered that he wanted to discuss Americans’ economic anxieties, Watters spun those responses as deflections and deceptions. These slippery lefties! They show different faces on different days. Well, let’s examine the different faces of Mike Rogers, a former House member and El-Sayed’s Republican opponent in the Michigan contest. The face that Rogers flashed in January 2021, when President Trump was scheming to overturn Joe Biden’s victory, signaled disgust with Trump. Rogers denounced his behavior as “more gangster than presidential” and decreed: “This trend of refusing to accept free and fair elections, without any proof of fraud, must end for the sake of our democratic republic.” In response to news reports that Trump was privately accepting some blame for a MAGA mob’s storming of the U.S. Capitol, Rogers said: “You’re damn right you had responsibility for this.” How firm. How furious. How fleeting. When Rogers went on to make his first, unsuccessful Senate bid in 2024, he pretty much groveled for Trump’s endorsement, then proudly touted it. Not a word about Trump as thug, Trump as fabulist, Trump as ringleader with blood on his hands. For his current race, Rogers has again cozied up to Trump; while most Republicans tried to ignore the president’s bizarre and largely baseless primetime speech last month about American election irregularities, Rogers made a point of praising it. I wish Democrats would whack at that even harder than they already have. There has been extensive discussion lately about the extremes to which many Democrats took wokeness, about their repositioning now, about how honest versus expedient that transformation is. Such scrutiny is more than fair — it’s necessary. When politicians change their tunes, whether by downplaying former preoccupations or refashioning their views, they owe voters an explanation. But there’s also a lopsidedness to all the attention to Democrats’ inconstancy. Republicans have more to answer for in that regard. Many of them, like Rogers, condemned the bloody events of Jan. 6, 2021, back when they thought that the violence spelled the end of Trump’s political viability. But now, at his insistence, they poo-poo that perfidy or wholly rewrite its history. They’ve worked their way around to forgiving an assault on the peaceful transfer of power and blessing a failed coup attempt. Democratic contortions on policing and pronouns pale in comparison. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did such twisting in an interview with ABC News this month, laughing merrily as she told Jonathan Karl: “Woke 1 was crazy.” Indeed it was, and as my Times Opinion colleague Carlos Lozada wrote last week, “Ocasio-Cortez, who called for abolishing prisons and adopted terms such as ‘menstruating person,’ was a resident in good standing of the asylum.” She hasn’t adequately explained her pivot to sanity. But neither Ocasio-Cortez nor El-Sayed can hold a candle to Vice President JD Vance when it comes to political reinvention. There’s nothing in either of their backgrounds that clashes with their current incarnations the way Vance’s disparagements of Trump in 2016 contradict his doting now. “What an idiot.” “I find him reprehensible.” “America’s Hitler.” “Cultural heroin.” Vance said, wrote or posted all of that and more. The party that has proved most fickle and cynical over the past decade is the Republican one, which jettisoned principles it once claimed to hold so very dear — on free markets, free trade, institutional integrity, individual character — because they didn’t suit Trump. Better to bury your conscience or reveal that you never had one than to incur his wrath. So if midterm contests are to be fought over whether Republicans or Democrats are more generally trustworthy and likelier to be true to what they’re saying these days, it seems to me that Democrats have the upper hand. Or should. El-Sayed has certainly made remarks and taken positions that I find rash. Republicans have a right — even a duty — to flag any and all of them. And he’s sidestepping or soft-pedaling aspects of his record. Hence the delight Republicans take in their game of gotcha. But are there any gotchas more damning than all the evidence that Republicans saw Trump clearly — and gasped at the sight — before laundering his lies, parroting his fictions and pretending all is well with his bulldozing of not only Washington but also the foundations of our democracy? Their moral collapse may be old news. But in the nine weeks between now and Election Day, Democrats would be wise to treat it as fresh fodder. Forward this newsletter to friends … … and they can sign up for themselves here. It’s published every Monday. For the Love of Sentences
In honor of Dolly Parton, who insisted on being an escape from politics, this section will be politics-free this week, and real estate that might have been devoted to a man who ceaselessly crows about his hallucinated brilliance will instead spotlight a woman who never had to tout her true genius. In The New Yorker, Kathryn Schulz remembered Parton this way: “She knew both who she was and who she needed to be, and she played it all to a T, part Betty Boop, part Annie Oakley, part Abraham Lincoln.” Her cosmetic extravagances weren’t efforts to mask imperfection or fool anyone; they were celebrations of fakery itself, expressions of the belief that glittering is golden. “In her prime, she could have made the head of Tiffany buy rhinestones.” (Thanks to Adam Cook of Sydney for nominating this.) In his newsletter, Tommy Tomlinson stressed her symbolism: “Those rhinestones were mirrors.” (Richard Dal Monte, Coquitlam, British Columbia) In The Times, Wesley Morris nailed Parton’s paradoxes: “Petite but bodacious, kind and then canny. A woman of the lord and the loins. Artificial yet mood-liftingly, gravity-defyingly herself. Those of us who lament the abuse of ‘authentic’ as a descriptor of both personalities and salads weep because Parton put that word out of business decades ago. All we should discover on its dictionary page is her photo.” (Bob Meadow, Los Angeles, CA) Also in The Times, Lindsay Zoladz contemplated Parton’s singing: “Her voice was angelic not because it possessed some kind of divine perfection or unattainable beauty, but because it seemed to be personally invested in the well-being of anyone and everyone who listened to it.” (Laurel McGuire, Morris, Ill.) And in The Washington Post, George F. Will noted that more than singing propelled Parton’s monumental career: “She was a savvy businesswoman even when getting started in Nashville’s music industry, which was not a lagoon of advanced thinking about the emancipation of women.” (Richard Rampell, Palm Beach, Fla.) Let’s bring in other entertainers and topics (but not politics!). In The Guardian, Ryan Gilbey traced the autobiographical loop-de-loop of “Bitter Christmas,” Pedro Almodóvar’s newest release: “Almodóvar, then, has directed a film about a director writing a film about a director writing a film. Keeping track of what is happening on screen becomes a case of mind over meta.” (Barbara Steinman, Montreal) In The New Yorker, Justin Chang reviewed the movie comedy “Coyote vs. Acme,” about a lawsuit filed by the Road Runner’s frustrated nemesis: “More than once, the script references Sisyphus, one of the few characters in fiction who can rival its protagonist for bad luck with boulders.” (Bob Caceres, Bridgewater, Mass., and Nick Gregory, Fremont, Calif.) In The Times, Alexandra Jacobs sized up “The Story of Your Life,” a nonfiction book in which Kathryn Jezer-Morton recounts the pivot from the early days of Friendster and Myspace to the hell of social media today: “All was sweet innocent fun for a while. Then the algorithm came along and ruined everything, like a drifter in a Cormac McCarthy novel.” (Chase Corum, Balboa, Calif.) In The Washington Post, M. Carrie Allan rejected the Bloody Mary. “I’ve never been a fan, even before social media turned the drink into a garnishmaxxing battle,” she wrote. “The Bloody Mary has always seemed like alcoholic soup to me. When I want a drink, I want a drink.” (Lynn Hughes, Quakertown, Pa.) And in The Globe and Mail of Toronto, Ian Brown discussed the phallic implications of aging. “Unplanned arousal used to plague me by the hour, on the hour,” he wrote. “At 70, it’s more like a special occasion. Oh, look who’s here! What a nice surprise. Why don’t you come in and have a drink? No? You have to go? So soon?” (Peter McLean, London, Ontario) To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence. Bonus Regan Picture
What you are seeing in the image above isn’t Regan in a moment of post-exertion exhaustion. It’s Regan in a moment of pre-exertion protest. It’s her response to my suggestion, and then encouragement, and then insistence, that we go for a walk. She was unmoved. She was unmoving. Her bladder wasn’t bursting and the indoor temperature beat the outdoor temperature and why did I have to be such a taskmaster? Such a nudge? I would like to tell you that I overcame her indolence and off we went. But she overcame my agitation and down I went, stretching out beside her. Truthfully? I was hoping it would turn out that way. What I’m Watching, Listening To, Writing and Doing
On a Personal Note
Should students who are fortunate enough to attend college use it to pick up skills and knowledge that apply specifically to given jobs? Or should they take a more general, learn-how-to-think approach and wander through history, literature and the like? In last week’s newsletter, I voted for the latter. I examined college along those pre-professional lines because its cost, coupled with today’s challenging economic realities, can make any other analysis seem frivolous. Given the financial sacrifices that students and their families make, given how brutally competitive the job market can be and given the income inequality between that market’s winners and losers, how can practical considerations and financial calculations not be front and center? But I failed to say that college is more than an on-ramp to a career, and there’s still room for — and value in — recognizing that. Higher education ideally prepares young adults to be prudent, ethical caretakers of the traditions they inherit and the society they inhabit. To be thoughtful stewards of their own lives. To participate conscientiously in democracy. To appreciate fully the world around them by being more alert to its wonders, more aware of its evolution, more conversant in its arts. The quality of their lives after college won’t be determined solely or principally by the deposits in their bank accounts. The deposits in their souls matter, too. Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Send me a note at bruni-newsletter@nytimes.com.
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