David Williamson reveals his own Writers’ Week ‘cancellation’ moment
In 1985, the playwright narrowly avoided cancellation of one of his plays, after government threats to pull funding. Censoring writers is “always dangerous territory”, he says.
Greenland fact of the day: “Nuuk, Greenland (pop. 19.6k) has 16 buses in its transit system and has higher ridership than Wichita, Kansas’s bus system (pop. 472k).”
The New York Times Editorial Board (Gift Article): The Trump Administration Is Lying to Our Faces. Congress Must Act. “The administration is urging Americans to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. Ms. Noem and Mr. Bovino are lying in defiance of obvious truths. They are lying in the manner of authoritarian regimes that require people to accept lies as a demonstration of power.” But in today’s media landscape, it doesn’t cut it to eventually get to the truth after giving credulous consideration (and headline space) to the lies. When people lie every time, like every single time, maybe it doesn’t make sense to give them the benefit of the doubt in the first rough draft of history. At this point, it’s not enough to call out the lies we can plainly see with our own eyes. We have to assume the lie as a starting point. As Vinson Cunningham asks in The New Yorker: “Their untroubled and automatic dishonesty, amid so much shared evidence, gives rise to a horrible question: If this is what they do when we can see, what’s going on in the places—planes and cars, detention centers—where we can’t?” We need to find out. We owe it to Alex Pretti’s parents, and we owe it to America…”
- The New York Times Magazine Gift Article – Watching America Unravel in Minneapolis: “Donald Trump’s most profound break with American democracy, evident in his words and actions alike, is his view that the state’s relationship with its citizens is defined not by ideals or rules but rather by expressions of power, at the personal direction of the president. That has been clear enough for years, but I had not truly seen what it looked like in person until I arrived in Minneapolis, my hometown, to witness what Trump’s Department of Homeland Security called Operation Metro Surge…”
- TIME: In Wake of Alex Pretti Shooting, Trump Is Betraying His Base on Gun Rights. They’re Not Happy. [Stephen Miller called Pretti “an assassin [who] tried to murder federal agents”]
- The Atlantic Gift Article – Believe Your Eyes. “People are risking their lives to document agents in Minneapolis…But Pretti’s last seconds were captured from multiple angles, in sickening footage widely distributed on social media and by news organizations. It is able to be seen and dissected online precisely because of the observers who were there to document it, who watched as federal agents piled atop Pretti and who did not drop their phones when the gunshots rang out…”
- The New Yorker – The Battle for Minneapolis [no paywall] “As Donald Trump brings his retribution to a liberal city, citizens, protesters, and civic leaders try to protect one another.”
