Mega-events are the new monoculture
Plus N.B.A. analytics, the Paramount deal, and the dream of stronger political parties
Not to just make this Matt’s Grievance Corner, but recently Natalie Winters published a Twitter thread starting with the line “REVEALED: Here Are the Mainstream Journalists on China’s Payroll” that goes on to name me as one of the journalists in question.
The actual allegation here turns out to be that I took a trip to China in 2009 that was paid for by an entity with links to the Chinese government. This is not what being “on China’s payroll” means. It’s also not a new revelation — the exact same documents were written up five years ago. But also I wrote about this trip at the time! It was not a secret and has never been a secret and has never involved any kind of ongoing relationship. More to the point, the reason you can know this trip is not the secret corrupt reason for my pro-P.R.C. views is that I don’t have pro-P.R.C. views. Winters’s thread includes examples of the allegedly soft on China things that people who went on these tours said, and her one for me is that I made fun of how clumsy the propaganda we were subjected to was.
I wrote a whole book about my dream of re-aligning American politics from top to bottom around geopolitical competition with China. I’ve complained that despite his rhetoric, Trump has failed to engage seriously in competition and instead has gone soft on export controls. My opinions about this are not some big secret.
Esang Wu: Your comment about Tisch and Mamdani’s good working relationship made me curious how long do you think it lasts and why do you think it has sustained so far? I have my own guess having listened to Rahm Emanuel describe having breakfast with Mamdani after the primary. Apparently Rahm tried confronting him at the end of the meeting over not accepting Israel as a Jewish state and all but he said Mamdani was receptive, doesn’t really argue like that or didn’t want to argue about it and made him feel heard even though it was clear he hadn’t changed his mind. My takeaway seems to be that Mamdani is very disarming interpersonally, avoids bringing up conflict topics, isn’t argumentative and is looking to find common ground. But you said somewhere you went to school with Tisch, so what’s your read of their dynamic?
Jessica Tisch and I were in the same class in high school and then went to college together, so while I can’t claim we were close friends or anything, I did know her because we were in the same advanced-track science classes and such. But that was a long time ago. And I have to say that at the time nobody was writing her in as “Most Likely to Become N.Y.P.D. Commissioner.”
Her life and career ended up on an unexpected trajectory that I actually think is notable and praiseworthy. She’s from a very rich family and while there are a lot of kids who grow up in those circumstances and want to commit themselves to something high-minded, very few of them express that by rolling up their sleeves to actually do public sector work, as Tisch has.
That’s just all to say that it was a long time ago and I can’t claim any special insights into her current thinking. But I do think there are a few things in their working relationship worth noting.
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