Alan Feuer

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“[It Seems] To Have Been A Shrewd Dog Whistle To A Small But Highly Motivated Part Of His Base”

December 4, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

trumpkiss1

While Nero twitters, Rome burns.

There are varyng levels of exasperation about what became possible with the election of Donald Trump, an orange supremacist who waves his penis around like a masturbating Mussolini and exchanges compliments with the murderous kleptocrat Vladimir Putin, making it feel like America has retroactively lost WWII as well as the Cold War. 

Even if we avoid a descent into autocracy and the future doesn’t play out like an infomercial for internment camps (both possibilities), we’re still headed for trouble. Three quick excerpts about the personality, economics and politics of the wholly unqualified hatemonger 62+ million Americans deemed worthy of their vote.

From Garrison Keillor:

He will never be my president because he doesn’t read books, can’t write more than a sentence or two at a time, has no strong loyalties beyond himself, is more insular than any New Yorker I ever knew, and because I don’t see anything admirable or honorable about him. This sets him apart from other politicians. The disaffected white blue-collar workers elected a Fifth Avenue tycoon to rescue them from the elitists — fine, I get that — but they could’ve chosen a better tycoon. One who served in the military or attends church or reads history, loves opera, sails a boat — something — anything — raises llamas, plays the oboe, runs a 5K race now and then, has close friends from childhood. I look at him and there’s nothing there.•

From Lawrence Summers on the Carrier deal:

It seems to me what we have just witnessed is an act of ad hoc deal capitalism and, worse yet, its celebration as a model. As with the air traffic controllers, only a negligible sliver of the economy is involved, but there is huge symbolic value. A principle is being established: It is good for the president to try to figure out what people want and lean on companies to give it to them. Predictability and procedure are less important than getting the right result at the right time. Like Hong Kong, as mainland China increasingly imposes its will, we may have taken a first step toward a kind of reverse transition from rule of law capitalism to ad hoc deal-based capitalism.

The commentary on the president-elect’s actions has emphasized its novelty, has emphasized the difficulties of scaling, and in the case of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), has argued that the actions taken were insufficiently forceful because some workers will still be relocated to Mexico. All of this misses the point. Presidents have enormous latent power, and it is the custom of restraint in its use that is one of the important differences between us and banana republics. If its ad hoc use is licensed, the possibilities are endless.•

From Alan Feuer and Andrew Higgins of the NYT:

As the founder of the Traditionalist Worker Party, an American group that aims to preserve the privileged place of whiteness in Western civilization and fight “anti-Christian degeneracy,” Matthew Heimbachknows whom he envisions as the ideal ruler: the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.

“Russia is our biggest inspiration,” Mr. Heimbach said. “I see President Putin as the leader of the free world.”

Throughout the presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump mystified many on the left and in the foreign policy establishment with his praise for Mr. Putin and his criticism of the Obama administration’s efforts to isolate and punish Russia for its actions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. But what seemed inexplicable when Mr. Trump first expressed his admiration for the Russian leader seems, in retrospect, to have been a shrewd dog whistle to a small but highly motivated part of his base.

For Mr. Heimbach is far from alone in his esteem for Mr. Putin. Throughout the collection of white ethnocentrists, nationalists, populists and neo-Nazis that has taken root on both sides of the Atlantic, Mr. Putin is widely revered as a kind of white knight: a symbol of strength, racial purity and traditional Christian values in a world under threat from Islam, immigrants and rootless cosmopolitan elites.•

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“He Sounded More Like A Marxist Theoretician Than Someone Who Made His Fortune Selling Cartier Diamonds And Montblanc Pens”

July 5, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

I took a NYC bus recently, an odd circumstance for a dedicated subway rider like myself, and it was a depressing experience in a way I didn’t anticipate. The stop at which I boarded was the culmination of an undercover sting operation, and those who hadn’t paid full fare along the line (just put small change in the box) or hopped on via the back door were loudly pointed out by plainclothes cops and herded off like murderers. There they were lined up and written tickets. A cursory glance at these “hardened criminals” showed them to be just sort of down-on-their luck working class people, who weren’t much different than anyone else on the bus, save a Metrocard or enough coins. I didn’t mind if my fare was subsidizing them, and it was tough seeing these struggling folks treated like perps just because they didn’t have enough money. It felt like they were mostly guilty of daring to be poor in New York City, of being on the losing end of a class war.

When Wall Street banks crashed the economy in 2008, those involved in the schemes weren’t pointed out and lined up. No tickets written. Perhaps that’s because they have enough money to avoid taking buses. Fact is, when you can hire lobbyists and buy politicians, you don’t have to really break the law to get what you want. You can have rules bent to your advantage so things that should be illegal are perfectly okay. That’s also class warfare, especially since such behavior had a direct impact on the fate of bus riders.

In a New York Times piece, Alan Feuer, who never disappoints, writes of a few super-rich people at least paying lip service to the problem of wealth inequality. His opening:

EARLIER this month, when the billionaire merchandising mogul Johann Rupert gave a speech at The Financial Times’ “luxury summit” in Monaco, he sounded more like a Marxist theoretician than someone who made his fortune selling Cartier diamonds and Montblanc pens. Appearing before a crowd of executives from Fendi and Ferrari, Mr. Rupert argued that it wasn’t right — or even good business — for “the 0.1 percent of the 0.1 percent” to raid the world’s spoils. “It’s unfair and it is not sustainable,” he said.

For several years now, populist politicians and liberal intellectuals have been inveighing against income inequality, an issue that is gaining traction among the broader body politic, as shown by a recent New York Times/CBS News poll that found that nearly 60 percent of American voters want their government to do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor. But in the last several months, this topic has been taken up by a different and unlikely group of advocates: a small but vocal band of billionaires.

In March, for instance, Paul Tudor Jones II, the private equity investor, gave a TED talk in which he proclaimed that the divide between the top 1 percent in the United States and the remainder of the country “cannot and will not persist.” Mr. Jones, who is thought to be worth nearly $5 billion, added that such divides have historically been resolved in one of three ways: taxes, wars or revolution.•

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“Mr. Cournoyer, A Martial-Arts Enthusiast With A Taste For Fast Cars, Oversaw An Unlikely Ensemble Of Underlings”

September 5, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The excellent opening of Alan Feuer’s New York Times article about the twisty, seven-year investigation that brought down the eye-popping operation of the largest pot dealer in the history of New York City, Jimmy Cournoyer, the Tony Montana of marijuana:

“One day in January 2007, the disgruntled ex-girlfriend of a Queens pot dealer walked unprompted into the district office of the Drug Enforcement Administration on Long Island. Sitting down with an agent, she bitterly gave vent: Her former boyfriend, the father of her child, was selling weed.

As a rule, the drug agency isn’t in the business of settling romantic scores, but the woman, who had shown up with her child in tow, was adamant that her onetime lover was a major player in the city’s wholesale marijuana trade. A group of federal agents started looking into the man.

What began that day with a woman scorned unfolded over the next seven years into an investigation that went beyond the wildest imaginings of the agents assigned to it, an elaborate case that led to the discovery, and subsequent arrest, of a surprising quarry: an international criminal who is now described as the biggest marijuana dealer in New York City history.

That man, a French Canadian playboy named Jimmy Cournoyer, spent almost a decade selling high-grade marijuana in the city, trafficking the drug through a sprawling operation that moved from fields and factories in western Canada, through staging plants in suburban Montreal, across the United States border at an Indian reservation and finally south to a network of distributors in New York. Along the way, Mr. Cournoyer, a martial-arts enthusiast with a taste for fast cars, oversaw an unlikely ensemble of underlings, a company of criminals that came to include Native American smugglers, Hells Angels, Mexican money launderers, a clothier turned cocaine dealer in Southern California and a preppy, Polo-wearing Staten Island gangster.”

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Great 2012 Nonfiction Pieces Online For Free

December 4, 2012 in Misc. | Permalink

A bunch of my favorite articles from 2012. (A couple of pieces from December 2011 are included since I do these lists before the absolute end of the year.) All ungated and free.

  • “Pedestrian Mania” (Brian Phillips, Grantland): Beautiful piece about world-famous 1870s long-distance walking champion Edward Payson Weston, subject of the book, A Man in a Hurry.
  • “Brains Plus Brawn” (Daniel Lieberman, Edge) Incredibly fun article about endurance, which points out, among many other things, that as quick as Usain Bolt may seem, your average sheep or goat can run twice as fast.
  • “A New Birth of Reason” (Susan Jacoby, The American Scholar): Great essay about Robert Ingersoll, the largely forgotten secularist who was a major force in 19th-century America, taken from the writer’s forthcoming book, The Great Agnostic.
  • “One’s a Crowd” (Eric Kleinberg, The New York Times): Great Op-Ed piece about the increasing number of people living alone.
  • “How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work” (Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, The New York Times): A deep and penetrating explanation of the complicated forces at play in job outsourcing.
  • “The Power of Habit“ (Charles Duhigg, Slate): An excerpt from the author’s bestseller of the same name which explains how Pepsodent became omnipresent.
  • “We’re Underestimating the Risk of Extinction” (Ross Andersen, The Atlantic): I didn’t necessarily agree with the premise (or conclusions) of this interview with philosopher Nick Bostrom, but I enjoyed its intelligence immensely.
  • “Hustling the Cloud” (Steven Boone, Capital New York): Wonderful piece about a bleary-eyed, middle-of-the-night search for free Wi-Fi–and anything else that would seem to make sense–in a time of dire economic straits.
  • “Craig Venter’s Bugs Might Save the World” (Wil S. Hylton, The New York Times Magazine): Fascinating examination of the titular biologist, who wants to make breathing bots that will cure the world’s ills.
  • “The Machine and the Ghost” (Christine Rosen, The New Republic): The author riffs on how the rise of smart, quantified gizmos and cities necessitates a new “morality of things.”

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15 Great 2012 Nonfiction Pieces Online For Free

June 19, 2012 in Misc. | Permalink

A bunch of my favorite articles from the first half of 2012. All available for free.

  • “How to Survive the End of the Universe,” (Andrew Grant, Discover): Fascinating account of how humans can escape oblivion as our solar system changes over the next few billion years.
  • “Was Frankenstein Really About Childbirth?“ (Ruth Franklin, The New Republic): Provocative piece that makes a strong case that the dread of childbirth was a major impetus for Mary Shelley’s classic.
  • “One’s a Crowd” (Eric Kleinberg, The New York Times): Great Op-Ed piece about the increasing number of people living alone.
  • “How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work” (Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, The New York Times): A deep and penetrating explanation of the complicated forces at play in job outsourcing.
  • “The Power of Habit“ (Charles Duhigg, Slate): An excerpt from the author’s bestseller of the same name which explains how Pepsodent became omnipresent.
  • “We’re Underestimating the Risk of Extinction” (Ross Andersen, The Atlantic): I didn’t necessarily agree with the premise (or conclusions) of this interview with philosopher Nick Bostrom, but I enjoyed its intelligence immensely.
  • “Hustling the Cloud” (Steven Boone, Capital New York): Wonderful piece about a bleary-eyed, middle-of-the-night search for free Wi-Fi–and anything else that would seem to make sense–in a time of dire economic straits.
  • “Craig Venter’s Bugs Might Save the World” (Wil S. Hylton, The New York Times Magazine): Fascinating examination of the titular biologist, who wants to make breathing bots that will cure the world’s ills.

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“I Am Wondering If You Would Be Interested In Learning The Truth”

April 24, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

One of my favorite non-fiction pieces so far this year is “The Secret Life of a Society Maven,” an article in the New York Times by Alan Feuer. Last year, Feuer tracked down his doppelganger, a seeming cash-poor society swell of Austrian descent named Alan Z. Feuer, and wrote an article about this eccentric old word figure. But when the elder Feur died recently, his journalistic namesake learned a more complete backstory, a Gatsby-esque tale of deception and reinvention. An excerpt:

“One day, 20 messages appeared in my inbox: notes from Alan’s friends, who had seen my piece last spring and were writing to inform me of ‘his passing.’ There were links to Alan’s Facebook page and to a guest book on Legacy.com. There I found my counterpart passionately praised, in dozens — hundreds — of posts as ‘the last true society gentleman,’ ‘the Grand Patriarch of New York City balls,’ ‘the Oscar Wilde of our time.’

‘Alan,’ someone wrote, ‘your Waltz will be danced forever in the lives of all those you have touched with the love of White Gloves and White Ties. Rest in peace, dear friend, and save a dance.’

At last, there was only one unopened message in my queue. Saddened, I clicked it. This is what it said:

Dear Mr. Feuer,

Ever since reading your article about the other Alan Feuer, I have thought about writing to you. I had no desire to disrupt his life while he was alive, but since he has passed away, I am wondering if you would be interested in learning the truth about his background.

The writer, I was shocked to find, was the other Alan’s stepniece; she told me she had known him since she was 5. Her letter laid out the family’s relationships — I knew that Alan was estranged — and then concluded on a melancholy note.

While the adult life he described to you was certainly true, his background was far from the one he claimed. If you would be interested in further information about this sad and, I think, somewhat troubled man, please feel free to contact me.

Needless to say, I did.”

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