BY DAN ZAK
chart of vocabulary, developed since his polling
in 2009 showed bipartisan support for climate
legislation. He went on: “I’ve changed. And I
will help you with messaging, if you wish to
have it.”
Don’t talk about threats, he told the sena-
tors. Talk about consequences.
Don’t talk about new jobs created by green
energy. Talk about new careers.
And sustainability?
“Stop,” Luntz said. “Sustainability is about
the status quo.”
Even the committee’s name had a trouble-
some word in it: “crisis.” It’s flabby from over-
use, Luntz thought. If everything is a crisis,
then nothing is.
From a word standpoint, that’s true. And
sometimes it feels true in the real world. The
phone in your hand has become a police scan-
ner of unfolding crises. The Kashmir crisis, the
SEE CLIMATE ON C2Words fail
How do we talk about what’s happening to our planet?
BARRY FALLS FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTKLMNO
Style
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2019. SECTION C EZ REBY MARK ATHITAKIS
“Only connect,” the British
novelist E.M. Forster prescribed
in 1910. At the time, he wrote
those words partly as a straight-
forward call for more intimate
human understanding. But more
than a century later, being online
can leave us
feeling all too
well connect-
ed: Outrage
chases every
Twitter mis-
step, and a
casual search
for a recipe
means you’ll be
seeing ads for
cookware on
your social me-
dia feeds for a
week. Mean-
while, genuine
human contact
can increasingly feel elusive.
Only connect? If only we could. If
only connection didn’t some-
times feel so creepy.
Such concerns are the storm
clouds that hover over Caleb
Crain’s contemplative, forebod-
ing second novel, “Overthrow.”
That’s a brash title considering
the bookish temperament of the
story, which follows a group of
bright young political idealists in
a story peppered with references
to 17th-century British literature.
But considering the novel covers
life online in the years just before
Edward Snowden, Cambridge
Analytica and “Russian interfer-
ence” exploded our pretenses
about privacy, the title evokes the
very real sense of an old order
coming undone.
Before it’s any of that, though,
“Overthrow” is a love story. Mat-
thew, a graduate student trudg-
ing his way through his disserta-
tion on early modern English
poetry, has a chance meeting
with Leif, the passive leader of a
small group of Occupy-adjacent
participants with an interest in
intuition and mind-reading and
such. There’s a casual, dorm-
lounge-ish feel to this pursuit at
SEE BOOK WORLD ON C3BOOK WORLDCapturing
love, dread
amid the
disconnect
OVERTHROW
By Caleb Crain
Viking. 416 pp.
$27BY ROBIN GIVHAN
Designer Isabel Toledo created
the lemongrass dress and coat
that Michelle Obama wore to her
husband’s first inauguration in- The dress was unabashedly
bold and feminine. It skimmed
the first lady’s figure, and the coat
practically twinkled in the sun-
light. The ensemble announced
Obama’s presence on the world
stage. At the time, Toledo said the
dress had been crafted in the
spirit of optimism. And with that
simple intention, it communicat-
ed the story the Obama adminis-
tration hoped to tell.
Toledo, a Cuban-born, New
York-based designer, died earlier
this week in New York from
breast cancer at age 59.
She was an accomplished de-
signer long before she was called
into service by Obama. In addi-
tion to her signature collection,
Toledo also served as creative
director of Anne Klein and de-
signed a collection for Lane Bry-
ant. Her work, along with that of
her husband, Ruben, who is an
artist, has been celebrated by a
host of museums, including the
Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian De-
sign Museum in New York and
the Detroit Institute of Arts. They
were regularly asked to speak
about their unique creative part-
nership, one in which they each
SEE APPRECIATION ON C8APPRECIATIONIsabel Toledo’s history was woven into America’s
Andrew
Luck’s truth
holds lesson
for all men
Someone else will
have to explain
what Andrew
Luck’s retirement
means for the
world of football
— my knowledge
of the sport is
somewhere
between cursory
and Wikipedia’d — but on the
cultural level, I know this
statement is quietly
revolutionary:
“I’m in pain,” he said. “I’m still
in pain.”
Luck, the 29-year-old
Indianapolis Colts quarterback,
gave a news conference over the
weekend to announce that he will
not be returning for the
upcoming season. His seven-year
career had been marked by
repeated cycles of injury and
rehab that left him “exhausted
and quite tired.” He didn’t want to
tough it out anymore, he said. His
physical and mental health were
worth more to him than his
contract.
It should be noted that many
commenters and teammates were
supportive of the news, which
Luck delivered through tears. It
should be noted that those who
weren’t supportive apparently
viewed the retirement as a
capitulation to weakness, an
assault on masculinity.
“A lot of guys have gone thru
multiple years of rehab after bad
luck w injuries,” wrote retired
quarterback Steve Beuerlein. “I
had 19 surgeries as a player. 8 over
2 years. It sucks! But he owes it to
his team.”
Sports analyst Doug Gottlieb
declared, “Retiring cause
rehabbing is ‘too hard’ is the most
millennial thing ever.... What
does it say about [Washington
Redskins player] Alex Smith
trying to come back from a leg
injury where he nearly lost a limb.
Different mentality.”
Gottlieb is right: It is a
different mentality. Luck’s
mentality is that his intrinsic
value doesn’t depend on offering
himself up for beatings in a
notoriously dangerous sport.
That his dedication to his team
SEE HESSE ON C4
Monica
Hesse
LYNNE SLADKY/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The only trends that designer Isabel Toledo’s bold, feminine
clothing followed were her personal and creative growth.I
n the middle of a winter’s night in 2017,
Frank Luntz’s cellphone alerted him to a
nearby wildfire. The longtime analyst of
public opinion opened his bedroom cur-
tains and saw, less than a mile away,
flames chewing the dark sky over Los Angeles.
Luntz — who specializes in how the public
reacts to words — saw scary evidence of a threat
that he once tried to neutralize with language.
In 2001, he’d written a memo of environmental
talking points for Republican politicians and
instructed them to scrub their vocabulary of
“global warming,” because it had “catastrophic
connotations,” and rely on another term: “cli-
mate change,” which suggested “a more con-
trollable and less emotional challenge.”
Last month, with a revised script, Luntz
appeared before the Senate Democrats’ Special
Committee on the Climate Crisis.
“I’m here before you to say that I was wrong
in 2001,” Luntz said. Nearby was a colorful