FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU C3
The one thing she could be doing
to be taken seriously is the one
thing she’s not doing.
Instead, while the president
unleashes strange rants about
“America’s Spying Apparatus,”
and how Hurricane Dorian really
was going to hit Alabama, Ivanka
posts photos of herself hugging
women in the strawberry field.
Instead, while migrant
children are being traumatized at
the U.S. border, the first daughter
visited a camp for migrants on
the border... of Colombia and
Venezuela.
She is the single person on the
planet whose public approval or
disapproval of her father could
possibly matter — to him or to his
supporters.
If she wanted to be thought of
as a serious person, as a hero
rather than a passive villain or
cipher, she could have impact
where she actually could have
unique, meaningful impact.
Instead, we’re left scrolling
through pictures on her
Instagram feed. And analyzing
her flying dress sleeves. Which is
the only visual preposterous
enough to evoke the absurdity of
it all.
[email protected]Monica Hesse is a columnist writing
about gender and its impact on
society. For more visit wapo.st/hesse.their finger on it: She behaves as
if we are in normal times. She
behaves as if she is working in a
normal administration. And she
behaves as if her role is benign
diplomacy, rather than what her
role should be — acknowledging
and fighting against the
madness.
The work she wants to do
internationally on behalf of
women is laudable, but there are
dozens of scholars and
economists who could do it as
well or better; nobody needs
Ivanka’s specific brain on these
matters.
What she could do — what
only she could do — is act as a
public check on the president of
the United States. She could offer
an informed, clear-eyed
perspective on her father’s
behaviors and fitness for office.
She could publicly express with a
daughter’s love and concern that,
yes, it is really worrisome that the
president keeps falsely insisting
that Alabama is going to be hit by
Hurricane Dorian. She could say,
“Here’s what he’s doing that
scares me.” She could say, “Look,
here’s everything I know. I love
my dad, but here’s everything I
know.”
Would she be fired? Probably.
Disinherited? Maybe.
But that’s where her value is.
That’s her diplomatic mission.video was released by the French
government. In it, French
President Emmanuel Macron
chatted with Canadian Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau; Theresa
May, then British prime minister;
and International Monetary
Fund Managing Director
Christine Lagarde. And Ivanka —
Ivanka was there, too, horning in
on the conversation. She could be
heard, in the 20-second clip,
clumsily interjecting something
about “male-dominated”
industries.
In response, Macron looked
away. May ignored the comment.
Lagarde pursed her lips, and
delivered what could only be
described as baffled side-eye.
What had prompted her to
think she needed to speak in that
moment? What was she doing
there at all?
Moments like this are useful,
because they bring us back to
reality. The reality of Ivanka is
that she goes on these trips, and
she meets these leaders, and she
is smart and gracious, but she is
not Theresa May. She is not
Angela Merkel or Christine
Lagarde; she is Ivanka Trump.
It’s always hard for me to
figure out how, or whether, to
criticize Ivanka Trump. She
prompts withering hatred from
her detractors, but focusing the
hatred on specific charges is
harder than one might think. At a
surface level, she says the right
things, she tweets the right
things. Her causes are backed by
good impulses — who doesn’t
want economic opportunities for
women in developing countries?
They are also, of course,
backed by rampant nepotism:
last month, the White House
looked at canceling billions of
dollars in foreign aid, but officials
said Ivanka’s initiatives would
not be affected.
Still, it’s easy to see how in
normal times, the public might
let that slide. In normal times,
under a normal president, we
might let his daughter have her
projects and initiatives.
That, I’d argue, is everyone’s
essential problem with Ivanka,
even if they haven’t quite putpresident, and then she prepared
to head to Argentina and
Paraguay for more of the same.
Ivanka abroad seems to be
Ivanka’s platonic ideal of herself:
doing things that are considered
patriotic but not overly political,
important but not controversial,
and personally on-brand. If you
believe the rumors that Ivanka
will run for office one day, you see
her social media presence as
fodder for a future campaign ad.
Four of her recent Instagram
stories have been devoted to her
encounters abroad with heads of
state. On a trip to Africa earlier
this year, she documented herself
sitting with Ethiopian President
Sahle-Work Zewde. At the G-20
summit in Osaka, Japan, she
name-checked a whirlwind of
prime ministers. She went to
South Korea and met the
president; another photo in that
series saw her slipping off to meet
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-
Un.
President Trump’s deepest
desires are primal and obvious:
to be loved and worshiped. What
his daughter wants has always
been a little harder to pin down,
but when she’s traveling abroad
you see it plain: to be legitimate.
To earn respect in a cohort
composed not of the sycophants
her father favors but of
intellectual leaders. To fit in well
enough that foreign dignitaries
begin to think she really is one of
the foremost experts the United
States has to offer.
To be Ivanka abroad is to
escape from the utter weirdness
of this White House, with its rally
chants and doctored weather
charts, and instead give speeches
to erudite diplomatic allies who
are protocol-bound to nod and
smile. Back home, her father is
starting an online feud with an
actress from “Will and Grace,” but
Ivanka is in Colombia, praising
the economic empowerment of
female business owners, visiting
a strawberry farm.
Occasionally, there are cracks
in the facade.
In June, a deeply cringeworthyHESSE FROM C1your cheeseburgers — when 70
percent of the pollution, of the
carbon we’re throwing into the air,
comes from three industries.”
And what about fossil-fuels
companies and their sway? During
Joe Biden’s turn onstage, in prime
time, a Bernie bro popped the for-
mer vice president for planning to
attend a fundraiser hosted by An-
drew Goldman, the co-founder of a
natural-gas company (as reported
by the Intercept’s Akela Lacy).
“He’s not a fossil-fuel executive,
I’m told,” Biden replied. Within
minutes a metaphor would in-
flame Biden’s left eye, in the form
of an apparent subconjunctival
hemorrhage.
The seven-hour town hall on the
“climate crisis” lasted only two-
millionths of a second — if you plot
it on Carl Sagan’s cosmic calendar,
which plunks the 13.8 billion years
since the Big Bang into a single
calendar year — but it felt like a
butt-numbing eternity when mea-
sured by the attention span of
Homo sapiens. Between each can-
didate’s session, CNN updated its
viewers on Dorian, a whirl of black
and red on its radar. It was almost
a Category 3, meteorologist Jenni-
fer Gray said during multiple
breaks. Almost a Category 3. Al-
most a Category 3.
“Scientists says that humans
only have 11 more years to avoid
the catastrophic consequences of
this crisis,” said CNN’s Don Lemon
around 11:20 p.m.
The historian from the
22nd century will also hear plenty
of lofty rhetoric and ambitious pol-
icy: Harris arguing that food labels
should include a measure of envi-
ronmental impact; Klobuchar
equating confronting climate
change with landing on the moon
or passing civil rights legislation;
former Texas congressman Beto
O’Rourke saying he would ban off-
shore drilling but not implement a
carbon tax; Booker saying he
wants zero-emission electricity by
2030 and a carbon-neutral coun-
try by 2045.
“There’s not a damn thing we
can’t do,” Biden said.
“There will be a transition,” said
Sen. Bernie Sanders, acknowledg-
ing that personal sacrifice will be
required to meet the challenge.
“And there will be some pain
there.”
“This isn’t just saving the plan-
et,” said Buttigieg, at 37 the young-
est candidate to take the stage.
“This is saving the future for spe-
cific people who are alive right
now.”
The town hall was exhausting
but not exhaustive, and an admis-
sion that the topic deserves more
airtime but won’t get it during the
Democratic debates. (The general-
election debates in autumn of
2020 will feature even less climate
talk than the primaries: perhaps a
few minutes on the topic, with a
Republican saying there’s no prob-
lem and a Democrat saying there’s
a huge problem.) But there was
praise on Twitter for CNN and the
candidates.
“Overall, I think the #Climate-
TownHall was a great success!”
tweeted climate researcher Leah
Stokes.
“Groundbreaking night,” tweet-
ed Katharine Wilkinson, vice pres-
ident of communication and en-
gagement at Project Drawdown.
“Candidates are quite climate lit-
erate!”
“The Democratic climate
change discussion represents a sea
change,” tweeted climate and wa-
ter scientist Peter Gleick. “We’ve
moved from ‘is it real’ to ‘what do
we do about it.’ ”
And if the historian from the
22nd century keeps watching past
the end of the town hall, she will
see Anderson Cooper start his pro-
gram at midnight by announcing
that Hurricane Dorian had finally
strengthened to a Category 3.
[email protected]activists from the Sunrise Move-
ment, whose pressure on the me-
dia and politicians precipitated
this town hall. But it was a retired
teacher who asked the first deadly
serious question: Is it fair to expect
our children to reproduce, given
the climate chaos that awaits
them?
Julián Castro, the first candi-
date up, emitted a sigh. “Right
now, if we don’t act, we’re passing
off to our grandchildren” a prob-
lem that we can solve now, said the
former secretary of housing and
urban development, who pro-
posed “new civil rights legislation”
to rectify environmental racism.
Next, Yang bemoaned “the al-
mighty dollar” that clouds our rec-
titude and recommended that we
reconfigure GDP so that it mea-
sures health and sustainability,
not just economic output and
growth.
“Will we have to drive electric
cars?” Blitzer asked him, as if there
could be no worse thing.
“There will still be some legacy
gas guzzlers on the road for quite
some time,” Yang assured him.
CNN anchors fixated on carbon-
heavy American lifestyles, because
we are nothing more than gaping
mouths and spread-eagled wal-
lets.
“We all love our cars and trucks,”
Anderson Cooper said at one
point.
“We all like our Amazon Prime,”
Erin Burnett said at another.
(Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The
Washington Post.)
“They’re saying you want me to
eat less beef ?” Chris Cuomo said,
pretending to be a theoretical vot-
er from middle America.
“First of all, I’m from Indiana,”
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg
replied. “And second of all, I like
cheeseburgers.”
“I am hopeful that we’re going
to be able to do this in a way where
we can continue to have hamburg-
ers and cheese,” said Sen. Amy
Klobuchar (Minn.).
“I love a cheeseburger from
time to time,” confirmed Sen. Ka-
mala D. Harris (Calif.). (Her ap-
pearance was followed by a com-
mercial featuring Golden Corral’s
“endless sirloin” option.)
“It just hit me: The burger ob-
session comes from Fox News cov-
erage of the Green New Deal,”
wrote climate reporter Rebecca
Leber of Mother Jones, on Twitter,
“aka ‘they’re coming after your
favorite things.’ ”
Meanwhile, over on Fox News,
the planet was spinning on a dif-
ferent axis. Tucker Carlson was
ribbing Walmart for ending the
sale of handgun ammunition,
Sean Hannity was reminding
viewers that the Hillary Clinton
campaign hired Fusion GPS to dig
up Russian dirt on Donald Trump,
and Laura Ingraham was exposing
the Democrats’ plan to “radically
transform America” by taking
away everyone’s guns. If a 22nd-
century historian watches this ar-
chive instead, she might wonder if
humans knew about climate
change at all.
Back on CNN:
“Do you ban plastic straws?”
Erin Burnett asked Harris.
“I’m going to be honest,” Harris
said. “It is difficult to drink out of a
paper straw.”
“Do you think that the govern-
ment should be in the business of
telling you what kind of lightbulb
you could have?” Cuomo asked
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.).
“Oh, come on, give me a break,”
Warren said, attempting to stomp
out the whole government-in-my-
pantry discussion sometime dur-
ing Hour 5. The fossil-fuel indus-
try, she said, is counting on people
to fight over the small stuff. “They
want to be able to stir up a lot of
controversy around lightbulbs,
around your straws, and around
CLIMATE FROM C1
BY CHRIS RICHARDSWill the death of the universe
be as loud as its birth?
That’s a wad of philosophical
Juicy Fruit you could’ve chewed at
Wednesday night’s Blacks’ Myths
concert from start to finish.
Whenever the bass-and-drums
duo conjured its noisiest turbu-
lence, the vibrations felt cataclys-
mic. But nothing was being de-
stroyed up onstage. In fact, music
was being made. Didn’t this funny
thing we call existence supposedly
start with some kind of big bang?
The ambiguity between begin-
nings and endings appears to be a
theme for Blacks’ Myths, all the
way down to the pun in its name
(say it out loud). It’s a name which
suggests new ideas being forged
and old ideas being dispelled. The
D.C.-based duo formed last year.
Bassist Luke Stewart is one of the
most prolific improvisers in the
city, playing in a multitude of
groups, including the notable Af-
rofuturist free jazz troupe Irre-
versible Entanglements. Drum-
mer Warren G. “Trae” Crudup III
anchors various jazz outfits, too,
but he got his start playing in his
church, then in his high school
marching band, then in a local
go-go group — a trajectory that
gives even his loosest drumming a
ritualistic rigor.
And on Wednesday night at
Comet Ping Pong, Stewart and
Crudup were joined by Dr. Thom-
as “Bushmeat” Stanley, another
scene-heavy who delivered two
separate soliloquys about Ameri-
can collapse over the band’s gen-
erative rumble. His first mono-
logue denounced an “empire in
decline” while his second ad-dressed how “we begin the won-
derful task of building a new
world.” Despair and doomsaying
are in high supply these days, but
Stanley’s words provided some es-
sential subtext: Our pessimism
requires optimism if it’s going to
mean anything.
Perhaps with that in mind,
Stewart spent the night teasing
out his own paradoxes. Seated
next to his amplifier, he sum-
moned serrated drones of feed-
back from his electric bass in ways
that ran tranquil and tense. But all
of these swells and buzzes ulti-
mately foreshadowed fully
formed melodic lines, and when-
ever Stewart got around to estab-
lishing a groove, it always felt
sturdy enough to welcome you in,
yet simple enough to let you forget
about it.
Crudup’s drumming was farmore lucid, continuously refusing
to forfeit its sense of order, even
during extended bursts of unme-
tered rhythm. The best of it hap-
pened around half-past midnight,
with Crudup working away at his
snare and floor tom, tapping out
knotty, explosive phrases. Imag-
ine a cosmic bag of microwave
popcorn that everyone in the
room could nod their heads to.
The music kept big-banging its
way into existence.
And after an hour of clamorous
world-building, Blacks’ Myths fi-
nally simmered into its landing
position. Stewart gently plucked
the evening’s final note, and in-
stead of letting it decay toward
silence, he muted it with the flat of
his hand. It was a tiny gesture, but
a decisive one. Where an experi-
ence ends, a memory begins.
[email protected]MUSIC REVIEW
What in creation is that sound? Blacks’ Myths’ hammer-and-tongs approach.
KYLE GUSTAFSON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
“We begin the wonderful task of building a new world,” says
Thomas Stanley, pictured with Blacks’ Myths bassist Luke Stewart.CNN’s town hall, viewed
with 20/20 hindsight
MONICA HESSEIvanka Trump, flying in the face of normalcy
KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS
White House adviser Ivanka Trump’s dress sleeves during her trip to Bogota, Colombia, were what caught attention. When the president’s
daughter travels abroad, her deepest desire, writes Post columnist Monica Hesse, is to be seen as legitimate.DONATE YOUR CAR
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