Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. More

Born in 1975, the product of two beautiful parents. Raised in West Baltimore -- not quite The Wire, but sometimes ill all the same. Studied at the Mecca for some years in the mid-'90s. Emerged with a purpose, if not a degree. Slowly migrated up the East Coast with a baby and my beloved, until I reached the shores of Harlem. Wrote some stuff along the way.

The Party of John Calhoun

Politics Jan 23 2013, 5:04 PM ET

In Virginia, the legislature is moving to apportion its electoral votes by congressional district, instead of by direct popular vote:

Sen. Charles W. "Bill" Carrico, R-Grayson, said the change is necessary because Virginia's populous, urbanized areas such as the Washington, D.C., suburbs and Hampton Roads can outvote rural regions such as his, rendering their will irrelevant.

Last fall, President Barack Obama carried Virginia for the second election in a row, making him the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win Virginia in back-to-back presidential elections.

For his victories, he received all 13 of the state's electoral votes. Under Carrico's revision, Obama would have received only four Virginia electoral votes last year while Republican Mitt Romney would have received nine. Romney carried conservative rural areas while Obama dominated Virginia's cities and fast-growing suburbs.

One reason the rural areas were "outvoted" is because there were fewer votes in rural areas, and more in urban ones. If the GOP can't convince enough people to win, it will rig the rules so that certain people matter less than others.

Jamelle Bouie calls this exactly what it is:

In addition to disenfranchising voters in dense areas, this would end the principle of "one person, one vote." If Ohio operated under this scheme, for example, Obama would have received just 22 percent of the electoral votes, despite winning 52 percent of the popular vote in the state...

It's also worth noting, again, that this constitutes a massive disenfranchisement of African American and other nonwhite voters, who tend to cluster near urban areas. When you couple this with the move on Monday to redraw the state's electoral maps -- eliminating one state senate district and packing black voters into another, diluting their strength -- it's as if Virginia Republicans are responding to Obama's repeat victory in the state by building an electoral facsimile of Jim Crow.

I'd like to double down on that point. Efforts to disenfranchise black people, have always been most successful when they worked indirectly. After the initial post-war Black Codes were repealed, white supremacists turned to less obvious modes of discrimination -- poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and literacy tests.

These were cloaked under a colorblind argument -- "We don't discriminate against black people, we discriminate against people who can't read the Constitution." By "read the Constitution," they meant "recite the Bill of Rights by heart." And they'd ask you to do this after reducing your school funding to a pittance. I say this to point that this is not a "new" racism. This is how it scheme went before the civil-rights movement, and this is how the scheme works today.

To see the only other major political party in the country effectively giving up on convincing voters, and instead embarking on a strategy of disenfranchisement is bad sign for American democracy. There is nothing gleeful in this.

The Grammar of Parallel Worlds

Global Jan 23 2013, 4:27 PM ET

Earlier today, attempted to explain what tense and mood "look" like to me while studying French. But I think a couple of commenters have done a much better job at bringing the abstract to life.

Here's a formulation that allows us to consider the conditional as a kind of parellel universe:

Here is an especially mind-blowing way to think about it: Tenses provide ways of talking about temporally distant locales in this spatiotemporal volume -- points in the past, present, or future. But subjunctive constructions provide ways of talking about potentially counterfactual realities -- about points in a space that includes spatiotemporal volumes that are utterly disconnected from this one. Call these "alternative realities" or "possible situations."

Pretty cool. The indicative mood is Earth-616. The conditional gives us the Age of Apocalypse. The subjunctive is House of M.

Here is another that pictures mood almost as a spectrum. (Perhaps that's why they call it "mood.")

If this is your visualization of French tenses, a way to helpfully extend that to include the conditional might be to think of these other things not as intersecting lines but as complementing or parallel lines. Imagine you've got a line drawn on a page. Now imagine you realize that that line is actually more like a plank or a rectangle--it's got width to it. You still move between past, present, and future linearly, like you did before. But now you've got the ability to move sideways within this broader line to express different attitudes about past, present, and future.

So "Je voudrais un café" sits right in the same general area that "J'ai besoin d'un café" does--it's next to the present tense on your mental timeline. But rather than being a dot on that line, it's more like a region of coverage. It extends a little bit into the future. And it also gets in a little bit of your attitude about the wanting--it's conditional. It's couched. It's not a direct line from wanting to having. It allows for other circumstances, the whims of other people.

Or take a sentence like "Il serait ici s'il n'était pas malade" (he would be here if he weren't sick). Serait is a future conditional, formed by adding the conditional ending onto the regular future tense of etre. So on your mental timeline, it sits next to the future tense. But it expresses something more than a simple statement of future. It's a would-be, could-be future. It's a broad future with coverage that almost reaches back and touches the present because in an alternate universe, where he isn't sick, it IS the present.

And here is one other that is a correction of my French, but exhibits something I want to highlight:

You're improving but I think the next step you will have to reach when you translate is to re-think your sentence in french instead of using your english sentence and trying to stick close to it. "On Saturday" is a formula that has no real equivalence in french so french people would write/say something like "Samedi, je suis allé au marché". In the same vein but reversed, french people would be more likely to say "j'ai entendu dire" instead of "j'ai entendu". I'm not sure if "j'ai entendu" is wrong per say but it doesn't sound like "conversational" french I'm used to hear in Montreal. Do french people from other countries use that formula?

I pull this out because it shows how vocabulary really isn't enough. Sometimes I'll write, or say, something in French and I can "feel" that it's off, even though the relevant words are all there. The difference between me and someone who knows the language is that they can "feel" that it's wrong, and also "feel" what's right. My wrong, in these cases, usually comes from proceeding from English directly into French. It often involves the improper use of prepositions--translating "de" strictly as "of" will trip you up. It's a little more than that.

To be clear by "feel" we aren't talking about anything mystical. We're talking about muscle memory. My dream is to do a Bo Jackson and develop that kind of muscle memory in three or four other languages.

Junior Seau's Family Is Suing the NFL

Entertainment Jan 23 2013, 12:49 PM ET

The AP reports:

Seau was one of the best linebackers during his 20 seasons in the NFL. He retired in 2009. "We were saddened to learn that Junior, a loving father and teammate, suffered from CTE," the family said in a statement released to the AP.

"While Junior always expected to have aches and pains from his playing days, none of us ever fathomed that he would suffer a debilitating brain disease that would cause him to leave us too soon.

"We know this lawsuit will not bring back Junior. But it will send a message that the NFL needs to care for its former players, acknowledge its decades of deception on the issue of head injuries and player safety, and make the game safer for future generations."

I don't know what the legal barriers are for a case like this, or what it takes to bring a successful suit. But I don't think a successful defense by the NFL is the end of this story. The spectacle of the widow and fatherless son of one of greatest players of this generation--one who retired only four years ago--suing the NFL is a bad look defined. Again, parents see this and erosion begins.

Junior Seau isn't John Mackey--a great player who only a few big-time fans remember. He was recently billed (by the NFL, no less) as one of the toughest men to ever play the game. Now he is dead. And football killed him.

French Across Time and Dimension

Global Jan 23 2013, 11:14 AM ET

Last week, I moved on in my study of French to a couple of new tenses. I understand le present, le passé composé, l'imparfait, le plus-que-parfait, le passé recent et le futur proché. By "understand" I mean I get the rules, have many of the participles memorized and can--with some difficulty--employ them. The distance between "understanding" and "mastery" is significant--as you shall soon see in this post.*

All of these tenses are degrees of present, past and future.

Some refer to a past event that happened at a specific time--"On Saturday, I went to the market." (En samedi, je suis allé au super-marché)

Others refer to a past event that happened with some consistency or did not happen at any specific point--"When I was a child I liked to play football." (Quand j'etais jeune, j'amias jouer au football.)

Still others refer to something I can show, but (Horde help me) don't know how to explain--"I have heard that French people talk to Americans in English." (J'avais entendu que les gens de France parlent en anglais avec les Americains.)

But toward the end of our lesson, we touched on "The Conditional," which I guess isn't quite a tense, but is more of an aspect. (Again, Horde help me out please.) The conditional expresses a kind of wish, or a desire. "I would like to go to Paris one day." ("Je voudrais aller à Paris.)

It isn't a definite like "I am going to go to Paris one day." ("Un jour, je vais aller à Paris.")

It also connotes politeness as in "I would like a cup of coffee." ("Je voudrais un cafe.")

In my mind I see tenses as lines in space--the past tenses are down the line, the future tenses are up the line. But then there are these other intersecting lines which offer more information about how you are thinking about the statement. Are you trying to be polite? Or are you trying to give an order? Are you expressing a wish? Or are you expressing a plan?

When you are learning a language all of this is slowed down for you. It's like The Matrix and you get to see the bullets coming at you. Accept that native speakers (and fluent speakers, I guess) actually can do The Matrix trick in real time. The bullets are slowing down for them. In a milliseconds they can decide what they want to say, when the thing happend, adjust for who they're talking to (Il ou Elle? Tu ou Vous?) and how they wanted to say it. Sometimes they can even invert forms. The "Vous" in French is supposed to be formal and polite. But if you've watched as many French thrillers as I have, you'll know that your hero is in trouble when the villain uses "Vous." It connotes a sinister irony--think Agent Smith sneering, "Mr. Anderson."

Seeing the thing laid out like this, you really start to marvel at the power of the brain.

*I have intentionally not used google translate or babelfish to correct or check any of my French in this post. I have written as it occurred to me, and I have done that because this blog (web-log.) In that spirit it is not the display of knowledge, it's about the acquisition of knowledge. In that spirit, I encourage the Francophones among us to correct my French.

The Impending Death Of Pro Football

Entertainment Jan 22 2013, 4:19 PM ET

This is major:

Brain scans performed on five former NFL players revealed images of the protein that causes football-related brain damage -- the first time researchers have identified signs of the crippling disease in living players.

Researchers who conducted the pilot study at UCLA described the findings as a significant step toward being able to diagnose the disease known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, in living patients.

"I've been saying that identifying CTE in a living person is the Holy Grail for this disease and for us to be able make advances in treatment," said Dr. Julian Bailes, a Chicago neurosurgeon and one of the study's co-authors. "It's not definitive and there's a lot we still need to discover to help these people, but it's very compelling. It's a new discovery."

I don't know if this will change anything, right now. But telling a player "You have CTE" is a lot different than "You stand some chance of developing it."

There's something more; presumably, if they really learn how to diagnose this, they will be able to say exactly how common it is for football players--and maybe athletes at large--to develop CTE. This is when you start thinking about football and an existential crisis. I don't know what the adults will do. But you tell a parent that their kid has a five percent chance of developing crippling brain damage through playing a sport, and you will see the end of Pop Warner and probably the end of high school football. Colleges would likely follow. (How common are college boxing teams these days?)

After that, I don't know how pro football can stand for long.

The Lost Battalion

Personal Jan 22 2013, 12:27 PM ET

It's yours...

The American Case Against a Black Middle Class

National Jan 22 2013, 10:19 AM ET

I went on a Twitter rant yesterday because I'd finished Isabel Wilkerson's phenomenal The Warmth Of Other Suns. The book is a narrative history of the Great Migration through the eyes of actual migrants. Several points stick out for me.

1) The Great Migration was not an influx of illiterate, bedraggled, lazy have-nots. Wilkerson marshalls a wealth of social science data showing that the migrants were generally better educated than their Northern brethren, more likely to stay married, and more likely to stay employed. In fact, in some cases, black migrants were better educated than their Northern white neighbors.

2) In this sense, the migrants to Northern cities resembled immigrant classes to whom black people in these same cities are often unfavorably compared to. There's a quote in Wilkerson's book which I can't find where a supervisor basically says that blacks are the favored workers because they will work hard at the worst jobs for relatively little money. You would have thought the guy was talking about Hispanic farm-hands today.

3) The black migrants were not immigrants. They were citizens of this country who did not enjoy its full protection. Unlike other immigrant classes, blacks were never able to cash in on their hard work and middle-class values. For all of their work-ethic, education-valuing, and long-term marriages, they received the worst wages in the worst jobs, were limited to the worst housing, and stuffed in the worst schools.

4) What becomes clear by the end of Wilkerson's book is that America's response to the Great Migration was to enact a one-sided social contract. America says to its citizens, "Play by the rules, and you will enjoy the right to compete." The black migrants did play by the rules, but they did not enjoy the right to compete. Black people have been repeatedly been victimized by the half-assed social contract. It goes back, at least, to Reconstruction.

5) The half-assed social contract continues to this very day with policies under the present administration, like the bail-out of banks that left the homeowners whom the banks conned underwater. The results of the housing crisis for black people have been devastating. The response is to hector these people about playing video games and watching too much television. Or to tell them they've have "an achievement gap." It is sickening, dishonest, and morally repugnant.

6) America does not really want a black middle class. Some of the most bracing portions of Wilkerson's book involve the vicious attacks on black ambition. When a black family in Chicago saves up enough to move out of the crowded slums into Cicero, the neighborhood riots. The father had saved for years for a piano for his kids. The people of Cicero tossed the piano out the window, looted his home, torched his apartment and then torched his building. In the South, when black people attempted to leave to earn better wages, they were often forcibly detained, and thus kept in slavery as late as the 1950s.

On a policy level, there is a persistent strain wherein efforts to aid The People are engineered in such a way wherein they help black people a lot less. It is utterly painful to read about the New Deal being left in the hands of Southern governments which were hostile to black people, and then to today see a significant chunk of health care, again, left in the hands of Southern governments which are hostile to black people. At this point, such efforts no longer require open bigotry. They are simply built into the system.

7) "That the Negro American has survived at all, is extraordinary." That is from the Moynihan report, which neo-liberals are fond of touting, while ignoring the report's lengthy policy recommendations.

8) Get the book. Read it now. Today is too late.

Obama's Second Inaugural

Politics Jan 21 2013, 1:50 PM ET

You should read my colleague Jim Fallows's initial thoughts on Obama's speech over here. For my part, I thought the speech was today sort of great. I thought it was direct, pointed, and clear about which American political tradition Obama actually hails from:

Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.

Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce, schools and colleges to train our workers.

Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.

Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life's worst hazards and misfortune.

There's more throughout the speech -- I especially appreciated the riff on Seneca Falls, and I don't know that we've had a more full-throated defense of gay rights in an inaugural then the one the president offered.

I was tweeting some with Chris Hayes after the speech about the importance of rhetoric. Without relinquishing the importance of putting pressure on the president (drones!) I think that it's important to acknowledge the significance of speeches like this.

There was a time when merely stating the ideas Obama put forth would have gotten you killed. And we still live in a time where people gladly tell you that the Civil War was not whether we'd be "half-slave and half-free" but about whether we'd be "half-agrarian or half-industrial." Or some such. I don't think most Americans really understand the significance of say Seneca Falls or Stonewall. And I don't know that any president has actually lauded either of these publicly.

As surely as it has always mattered to homophobes, white supremacists, and chauvinists what was and wasn't said in the public, it should matter to those of who seek to repel them. What ideas do and don't get exposed in the public square has to matter to any activist, because movements begin by exposing people to ideas. "I Have a Dream" is not simply important because of whatever civil-rights legislation followed, but because it put on the big American public stage a notion that was long held as anathema -- integration. The idea extends beyond legislation.

Obama's speech is different. To some extent it exposes people to new ideas. But to a greater extent, perhaps, it shows how movements which only a few years ago were thought to be on the run have, in at least one major party, carried the day. This is not a small thing.

The NFL's House of Pain

Entertainment Jan 21 2013, 1:00 PM ET

I think everyone should read Tom Junod's piece on how pro football players relate to injury. I don't know that it's very surprising, but it is illuminating. I think this section says a lot:

"I'm going to tell you something," says PJ. "Anybody who tells you that they feel bad causing an injury is probably lying. How can you feel bad? You're going up against a guy who is just as big and strong as you are. Your coach tells you to go kick his fucking ass. Your teammates tell you to go kick his fucking ass. Your father and your brother tell you to go kick his fucking ass. The media tells you to go kick his fucking ass. Before the game, your wife tells you to go kick his fucking ass. So you go and you kick his fucking ass. And if he gets hurt, how can you go back and say, 'I didn't mean for you to get hurt like that.' You're taught to hurt people. How can you say you didn't mean to?"

Ed Reed says he didn't mean to. "This year, I took out an offensive lineman against Philly. It was bad technique on my part, and I took out the center's knee. Our coach talks to [Philadelphia coach] Andy Reid all the time, so I told Coach to send my respects for the center and let him know I didn't mean to hurt him, man. It was just the second game of the year, so he lost his whole season. That one preyed on me, man. I didn't know him personally, but I wanted to let him know that I had the utmost respect for him."

At first I had a hard time reconciling these two thoughts, but as I turned them over, it made a lot of sense. What Ed Reed feels bad about is the fact that he has endangered someone's livelihood. Had Jason Kelce (the injured center) played the very next week, I doubt Reed would have felt bad.

When I watched football, I loved watching Ed Reed. Great safeties (like, say, Rod Woodson) are some of the most beautiful athletes in sports. They often combine the ability to inflict great violence with the ability to turn a sturdy defensive stand, effectively, into kick return. The latter is a beautiful thing to see. Reed has these long legs and takes these great strides. It's awe-inspiring watching him play. When I watch Ed Reed, I feel like I am watching a master artist at work. But the craft is wholly premised on great--life-altering--violence. What tangled Junior Seau's brain and ultimately ended his life, is what Ed Reed--and all players--actually do. There's just no way to escape that.

My President Is Whack

Entertainment Jan 21 2013, 11:37 AM ET

Via Vulture, here's video of rapper Lupe Fiasco--who like the president is from Chicago--being run off stage for an anti-Obama song that went on for 30 minutes.

Separate and Unequal in the U.S. Military

National Jan 20 2013, 2:52 PM ET

The New York Times has a deeply revealing story up on same-sex married couples and the difficulties they're encountering:

Gay marriage is now legal in nine states and in Washington, D.C. But because same-sex marriages are not recognized under federal law, the spouses of gay service members are barred from receiving medical and dental insurance and surviving spouse benefits and are not allowed to receive treatment in military medical facilities. Spouses are also barred from receiving military identification cards, which provide access to many community activities and services on base, including movie theaters, day care centers, gyms and commissaries.

Gay service members who are married are not permitted to receive discounted housing that is routinely provided to heterosexual married couples...

Sgt. Karen Alexander, a chemical and biological specialist at Fort Bragg, said that she and her wife, Allison Hanson, were receiving about $1,300 a month less than they would be if they were a heterosexual married couple. Ms. Hanson said she had to drop out of college last year to find a job to help pay their bills.

Bobby McDaniel, the husband of a lieutenant colonel stationed in Central America, had to cover his own airfare when his spouse was stationed there. The military also declined to support his request for a diplomatic visa, a privilege typically granted to heterosexual spouses, so he has to leave the country where they live every three months to apply for another visitor's visa. It is a financial hardship.

But he said the psychic toll was greater. "It just kind of eats away at you," Mr. McDaniel said. "It makes you feel like you're not a complete person."

I want to drill down on that last point. Reading this in concert with Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns (which you should read) is disconcerting. During segregation, what you effectively had was every avenue of society angled toward telling black people, "You're not a complete person." That message is surely, on some level, received -- and it most certainly was received by black children.

I don't know how you measure the effects of such messaging on a populace. But I have to believe that it has a corrosive effect on the bonds between the recipient and their country. I can't think of any worse place to broadcast such a message than in our defense forces. Telling people to put their lives on the line for a country that regards them as a kind of pariah is just a bad idea.

Chris Christie on the NRA

Politics Jan 18 2013, 10:25 AM ET

Here are some words from Chris Christie that will probably hearten conservative moderates. I don't think this means much for 2016, however. The core of the Republican Party is Southern white populism. There's no real way around that. Leadership might talk of moderation, but they didn't build a party for moderation. The occasional act of heterodoxy can't change that.

Lena Dunham and Democratic Nudity

Entertainment Jan 16 2013, 2:10 PM ET

I finished watching and live tweeting Girls last night. I thought the first season was very good. I didn't much like the dark turn in the last two episodes--we somehow got more of Adam, and not enough of Adam--but overall I really enjoyed the show and look forward to watching Season Two a year from now.

It's worth comparing the first season of Girls with the first seasons of other HBO comedies like Entourage and Sex and the City. I would go so far as to say Girls was better than both of those first seasons, better than anything I ever saw on Entourage in any season, and perhaps better than anything I saw on SATC at any point too. Girls has no real need to sugar-coat Hannah's self-esteem issues or make us think that she actually, deep down, loves Adam. Hannah is a predator--as we all are predators--and she isn't asking us to admire her. I always felt SATC (and certainly Entourage, which was a much worse show) was trying to convince me of their awesomeness or the awesomeness of New York or L.A. Girls just wanted to tell me a story. I love the modesty of the task.

I didn't really understand how often Lena Dunham was nude on screen, or how often she did sex-scenes. If you take that in with the sex scene between her parents, what you have is one of the most democratic--and everyhuman--depictions of sex to ever exist in pop culture. The more I thought about this, the more important it became to me.

We should not deceive ourselves: We enjoy sex scenes because we enjoy seeing people whom some critical mass would like to fuck, fucking each other. And this is not an egalitarian phenomenon--Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry are much more common than the opposite. (Talking gender here, not race, which is another convo.) Occasionally a sex scene advances narrative, but mostly it's there for us--and mainly us dudes.

What Girls says is "Fuck the gaze." Lena Dunham ain't really performing for you. She's saying people like me--which is most of you--like to fuck. And in a real narrative of real life, the people who do most of the fucking don't actually look like Victoria Secret models. Your expectations for what fucking should look like are irrelevant. Here is how it looks like to the narrator. I kind of love that. In this (perhaps limited) sense, I can understand the "For Us, By Us" acclaim. The show's disregard for male notions of sex is pretty profound. And it achieves this while still giving us a fairly interesting cast of male characters.

The show ain't perfect. I found the occasional elements of black culture more jarring and unfortunate ("Hey, we're white. Look how lame we are. And look how lame we are when we act black.") than any lack thereof. But in general I came away genuinely impressed with the artistry.

Fear of Flying

National Jan 16 2013, 10:41 AM ET

During my spring break, I'm going to Switzerland for a week. I'll be staying with a host family and doing a fairly intense week of French stufy. I'm hoping to build in a couple of days to get into France also and see some things. This summer I hope to go back and take my son (who just started back studying French) for a few weeks and some of the same.

But something occurred to me the other day when I put down my deposit -- I am afraid. Like really afraid. I've never been in a country where English wasn't the dominant language. I've never been anywhere -- save a few neighborhoods in New York -- where English wasn't all around me. I've been studying French for about a year and a half now, and the experience has been so much more than conjugations and vocabulary. All around me I now hear people speaking the language which I recognize, but do not understand. I was sitting in a cafe in Cambridge last semester and the couple next to me were arguing in French. It was terrifying.

Studying a second language is like very slowly absorbing the notion that intelligent life exists on other worlds. And that scares me because I don't know who these people are. I don't know if they're going to laugh at me. I don't know if I'm going to offend them. I don't know if the Swiss like black people. (I have homeboy who went to Barçelona and his tales still scare me.) I don't really know anything beyond, "Je suis Américain."

I think about this and begin to understand the ethic of staying in the hood -- wherever your hood may be. I understand people who want English to be our official language. They are afraid. They don't know what might happen. And neither do I. Please don't try to reassure me. I suspect that being afraid is part of it. And I know that the fear isn't very rational. Let me be scared. It's not like I can turn back. I'm out on the ledge now. Time to jump.

The Small, Petty, Fraudulent Vendettas of Lance Armstrong

Entertainment Jan 15 2013, 4:00 PM ET

Dan Wetzel has a (partial) list of people Lance Armstrong tried to ruin after they accused him of doping. For those living under a rock, Armstrong has now confessed that the accusations were true. Here are two examples:

Let's talk Betsy Andreu, the wife of one your former teammates, Frankie. Both Andreus testified under oath that they were in a hospital room in 1996 when you admitted to a doctor to using EPO, HGH and steroids. You responded by calling them "vindictive, bitter, vengeful and jealous." And that's the stuff we can say on TV.

Would you now label them as "honest?"

And what would you say directly to Betsy, who dealt with a voicemail from one of your henchmen that included, she's testified, this:

"I hope somebody breaks a baseball bat over your head. I also hope that one day you have adversity in your life and you have some type of tragedy that will ... definitely make an impact on you.."

What do you say to Emma O'Reilly, who was a young Dublin native when she was first hired by the U.S. Postal team to give massages to the riders after races?

In the early 2000s, she told stories of rampant doping and how she was used to transport the drugs across international borders. In the USADA report, she testified that you tried to "make my life hell."

Her story was true, Lance, wasn't it? And you knew it was true. Yet despite knowing it was true, you, a famous multimillionaire superstar, used high-priced lawyers to sue this simple woman for more money than she was worth in England, where slander laws favor the famous. She had no chance to fight it.

She testified that you tried to ruin her by spreading word that she was a prostitute with a heavy drinking problem.

"The traumatizing part," she once told the New York Times, "was dealing with telling the truth."

I'm not sure what I think about drugging when everyone else around you is drugging. I don't think lying is a very good idea. I think trying to destroy people for telling the truth is a good deal worse. It's that all-out war that really sets Armstrong apart. This isn't just a "doping scandal." It's something much creepier.

H/T Mike & Mike.

A Word on Our Bad Reputation

National Jan 15 2013, 12:20 PM ET

Yesterday The Atlantic ran an advertorial on Scientology. It caused a small scrum (as it should have) on Twitter. Last night the advertorial was taken down. Here is the company's statement on the matter:

We screwed up. It shouldn't have taken a wave of constructive criticism -- but it has -- to alert us that we've made a mistake, possibly several mistakes. We now realize that as we explored new forms of digital advertising, we failed to update the policies that must govern the decisions we make along the way. It's safe to say that we are thinking a lot more about these policies after running this ad than we did beforehand. In the meantime, we have decided to withdraw the ad until we figure all of this out. We remain committed to and enthusiastic about innovation in digital advertising, but acknowledge--sheepishly--that we got ahead of ourselves. We are sorry, and we're working very hard to put things right.

I think what made this episode particularly ill-considered was the fact that Lawrence Wright's reporting (some of it done for the New Yorker) on Scientology was about to be released in book form. With that said, I fully agree with this statement. I think the fact this troubled so many people is actually evidence of The Atlantic's brand strength. And I think the swift and candid response is evidence of how much we treasure the name.

People screw up. I think that's fairly natural. But I also think it's important to respond honestly and directly when you are confronted with your screw-up.

On the Radicalism of Leaving

National Jan 15 2013, 11:20 AM ET

Early in her epic tale of the great migration, The Warmth Of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson quotes the social scientist John Dollard:

Oftentimes to just go away is one of the most aggressive things that another person can do, and if the means of expressing discontent are limited, as in this case, it is one of the few ways in which pressure can put.

I'm relatively early in Wilkerson's book. Already it strikes me as a marvelously written, deeply engrossing, thick depiction of pre-Civil Rights, post-Civil War black America. It's the kind of book which those of us who are always saying "Why isn't their movie about..." should immediately purchase. Several times over. Give a copy to your uncle, your kid, your mother.

At any rate, what impresses me about this quote is Wilkerson's attempt to argue that the Great Migration was not just thing that happens, but was a kind of resistance -- a "folk movement," she calls it -- with no need for figureheads and leaders. Booker T. Washington opposed it. As did Frederick Douglass, who died a few decades before the deluge but was familiar with talk of abandoning the South.

I don't know how well Wilkerson ultimately argues this point. But I look forward to finding out. As it stands, I'm tearing my way through the book. This is what I mean about a book where the work is done in the thinking, not the reading.

*Painting by Jacob Lawrence from his series on Harriet Tubman

Kendrick Lamar's Forever War

Entertainment Jan 15 2013, 9:50 AM ET

Last week Alyssa made a point I've been thinking a lot about, in relation to some of the art that really has affected me over the past few months:

If there's one thing that marks our current era of popular culture, it's an obsession with cool of the kind exemplified by Quentin Tarantino's movies, or with transgressive badassery, of the sort that's characterized so many anti-hero dramas. And the way most people achieve that cool or badassness? The deployment of violence.

For me this goes back to Wolverine (who I loved as a kid) and mohawked Storm knocking Scrambler's teeth out during the Mutant Massacre, or Colossus snapping Riptide's neck. For those of who came up in the relentless violence of the Crack Age, there was the sense that all the nonviolent pieties of Martin Luther King, Jr. were totally irrelevant. (Bizzy Bone had it about right "Beg your pardon to Martin / But we ain't marching we shooting.") The point was that we lived in a time of great violence and what was needed was more violence wielded by a noble hand. What I didn't realize then was this idea--a Champion of Noble Violence--is probably as old as humanity.

Hip-hop, if not always premised on nobility, is certainly premised on transgressive violence. I loved the music, but (with some exceptions) that basic premise is why the music always felt a little off to me. I mean this about even my own favorites. I eventually wrote this need to always be badass Superman as simply what the music was, as something that could never really be any other way. As I got older the Champion pose became harder for me to take--not just in my music, but in movies, in comic books, and maybe (not sure) even in video games. Consequently, I moved away from a lot of things I loved as a kid.

A few weeks back, I went on at some length about Joe Haldeman's Forever War, and I think it was largely because I was happy to read a fantastic adventure story where the protagonist survives not because of great brawn, superpower, or even superior intellect. Mandella is smart, but far and away his greatest attribute is his sheer, dumb-ass luck. In that way, There was something refreshing about a hero greatest power amounts to not getting shot in the head. As virtually all of Mandella's comrades are killed off he seems to saying "I am glad it was not me." But behind that is something else--"that very easily could have been me."

That same kind of everyman vibe runs through Kendrick Lamar's Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City. "The Art of Peer Pressure" has a series of great lines ("I hope the universe love you today.") but my favorite is one of the simplest, "Look at me," raps Lamar before pausing and continuing. "I got the blunt in my mouth."

It's such a simple line but there's something about his phrasing that abandons the superhero pose, that takes off the mask and reveals that dumb, ordinary black boy that so many of us have been. Good Kid is the first album I've heard that drops the Batman pose, and yet remains trapped in Gotham. Much like how Mandella is not some ace star-fighter pilot, Lamar is not Compton's Most Wanted, he is "Compton's Human Sacrifice." And he carries that vulnerability throughout the album. The fact is that most black boy's in Lamar's world are more human sacrifices than badasses. And even if some are truly the latter, all contain a portion of the former.

Perhaps this aesthetic is a bit conservative, but this is the art I love. I understand that there are drug-lords who double as soccer moms. I get that there are serial killers who kill serial killers, and worlds premised on big men with big swords and other worlds where being good at your job but horrible to your wife makes you noble. But then there are the normal people. And they have stories too.

More Guns, Less Crime: The Switzerland Example

National Jan 14 2013, 3:16 PM ET

In this rant last week, Alex Jones cited Switzerland as one of the last remaining redoubts of gun culture. This post by Ezra Klein, in which he talks to Janet Rosenbaum about her research, does a good job examining that claim, but the Wikipedia article is also pretty informative:

The Swiss army has long been a militia trained and structured to rapidly respond against foreign aggression. Swiss males grow up expecting to undergo basic military training, usually at age 20 in the Rekrutenschule (German for "recruit school"), the initial boot camp, after which Swiss men remain part of the "militia" in reserve capacity until age 30 (age 34 for officers).

Each such individual is required to keep his army-issued personal weapon (the 5.56x45mm Sig 550 rifle for enlisted personnel and/or the 9mm SIG-Sauer P220 semi-automatic pistol for officers, military police, medical and postal personnel) at home. Up until October 2007, a specified personal retention quantity of government-issued personal ammunition (50 rounds 5.56 mm / 48 rounds 9mm) was issued as well, which was sealed and inspected regularly to ensure that no unauthorized use had taken place.

The ammunition was intended for use while traveling to the army barracks in case of invasion. In October 2007, the Swiss Federal Council decided that the distribution of ammunition to soldiers shall stop and that all previously issued ammo shall be returned. By March 2011, more than 99% of the ammo has been received. Only special rapid deployment units and the military police still have ammunition stored at home today.

When their period of service has ended, militiamen have the choice of keeping their personal weapon and other selected items of their equipment.[citation needed] In this case of retention, the rifle is sent to the weapons factory where the fully automatic function is removed; the rifle is then returned to the discharged owner.[citation needed] The rifle is then a semi-automatic or self-loading rifle.

There's a lot more in the article, but what became clear to me is that Switzerland does have a gun culture -- one that is heavily regulated by the government, right down to counting your bullets. Leaving aside that Switzerland has a fraction of America's population, leaving aside that gun ownership in Switzerland is still much lower than here in America (29 percent of households to 43 percent, respectively), this Swiss model strikes me as the kind of governmental intrusion that someone like Alex Jones is in no hurry to invite.

In our gun culture, as in so much else, we are unique. There's just no comparison.

Tips for Autodidacts and Gamers With Jobs

Entertainment Jan 14 2013, 2:18 PM ET

I don't know if there's anyone else out there whose on the same path as me in terms of learning a language. But if you are on that path, and if you enjoy video games, I'd encourage you to try playing them in a different language. Against my better judgement, I use Steam to purchase most of my games these days. One feature I love is how you can change languages for Steam, and thus all the games that support your language.

Alors maintenant je joue mes jeux videos en français, toujours.

Last night I booted up Mass Effect, and I only have sliver of an idea of what's going on. Enough to know that Nihlus is awesome--"Je travaille seul." I feel like if I can't get to France just yet, I'll lifehack my way as far into the Atlantic as possible. The effect of changing languages differs with each genre and each game. The language barrier doesn't mean much in strategy. But it means a lot in RPGs.

For me, the feeling of being lost is one of the best things about learning a new language. As someone told me on twitter this weekend--you are left with toddler ears. And that's just it. This is really the only time you get to be a kid again.