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How Conservatives Awoke to the Dangers of Sean Hannity

Conor Friedersdorf

The Fox News host is under attack as never before because many Americans are now forced to take what he says seriously for the first time.

As Sean Hannity hyped a conspiracy theory about the murder of a Democratic National Committee staffer last week, touting it with the zeal of a true believer without citing evidence that justified that belief, the combative Fox News host declared himself under fire and in need of backup. Lashing out at what he called “Twitter snowflakes” and “the liberal effort to silence me,” he took particular umbrage at a campaign by the progressive group Media Matters for America to pressure his advertisers, an effort he called liberal fascism. “They hope to get me fired,” he wrote. “Rush, O'Reilly, Beck, Imus, & now me.”

He may succeed in rallying his fans. But Hannity’s angry claims elide the fact that the progressives at Media Matters have sought the scalps of conservatives like him for more than a decade. The Media Matters website has 3,488 items tagged “Hannity” dating back to 2006. Its latest push isn’t the reason his position is as precarious as it has ever been (nor did Media Matters stop Bill O’Reilly, who was sunk by multiple “falafel talk” allegations, or Rush Limbaugh, who is still on the air).

Trump's Trip Was a Catastrophe for U.S.-Europe Relations

David Frum

Angela Merkel has served formal notice that she will lead the German wandering away from the American alliance.

Seven years after the end of the Second World War, on the 10th of March 1952, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the newly established Federal Republic of Germany received an astounding note from the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union offered to withdraw the troops that then occupied eastern Germany and to end its rule over the occupied zone. Germany would be reunited under a constitution that allowed the country freedom to choose its own social system. Germany would even be allowed to rebuild its military, and all Germans except those convicted of war crimes would regain their political rights. In return, the Allied troops in western Germany would also be withdrawn—and reunited Germany would be forbidden to join the new NATO alliance.

General Manuel Noriega speaks to Panamanian reporters in May 1989. — AP

The Death of Manuel Noriega—and U.S intervention in Latin America

David A. Graham

American involvement in Panama suggests humbling lessons about the ability to change the course of history.

Old soldiers do die, it turns out, but there’s something incongruous about watching ruthless, formerly swashbuckling military dictators end their lives quietly as frail old men in hospital beds.

It happened to Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean strongman, who returned home and died under house arrest in 2006, at 91. Fidel Castro slowly faded from view, becoming even less coherent, before dying at home in November, as his brother slowly rolled back their revolution. And now Manuel Noriega, the former Panamanian leader, has died at 83 following complications from surgery to remove a brain tumor. He had been imprisoned in his home country.

Why It Was Easier to Be Skinny in the 1980s

Olga Khazan

A new study finds that people today who eat and exercise the same amount as people 20 years ago are still fatter.

There’s a meme aimed at Millennial catharsis called “Old Economy Steve.” It’s a series of pictures of a late-70s teenager, who presumably is now a middle-aged man, that mocks some of the messages Millennials say they hear from older generations—and shows why they’re deeply janky. Old Economy Steve graduates and gets a job right away. Old Economy Steve “worked his way through college” because tuition was $400. And so forth.

We can now add another one to that list: Old Economy Steve ate at McDonald’s almost every day, and he still somehow had a 32-inch waist.

A study published recently in the journal Obesity Research & Clinical Practice found that it’s harder for adults today to maintain the same weight as those 20 to 30 years ago did, even at the same levels of food intake and exercise.

All photos courtesy of Alex Tizon and his family

My Family’s Slave

Alex Tizon

She lived with us for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings without pay. I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was.

The ashes filled a black plastic box about the size of a toaster. It weighed three and a half pounds. I put it in a canvas tote bag and packed it in my suitcase this past July for the transpacific flight to Manila. From there I would travel by car to a rural village. When I arrived, I would hand over all that was left of the woman who had spent 56 years as a slave in my family’s household.

Nati Harnik / AP / 21kompot /Katie Martin / The Atlantic

The Disappearance of Virtue From American Politics

Emma Green

In his new book, Ben Sasse has identified the right project for America: rehabilitating a shared moral language.

In just two short years, Senator Ben Sasse has gone from Capitol Hill newbie to digital president puncher, tweeting about Donald Trump’s affairs and the Midwestern dumpster fires he found more appealing than 2016’s Oval Office contenders.

Yet, on his breaks from Twitter, Sasse managed to craft a serious new book, The Vanishing American Adult. It advances a thesis that’s at once out of place at this political moment and almost too on-the-nose for the Trump years: He believes Americans have lost their sense of personal integrity and discipline. For the country to deal with the troubles ahead—including automation, political disengagement, and the rise of nativist, huckster politicians, he says—people must recover their sense of virtue. The republic depends on it.

How Trump Is Torturing Capitol Hill

Molly Ball

As Republicans in Congress try to fend off the flurry of scandals, they are haunted by a question: Is this as good as it’s going to get?

The speaker of the House strode to his lectern on a recent Thursday to confront another totally normal day on Capitol Hill: health care, tax reform, a president under investigation, rumblings of impeachment.

“Morning, everybody!” Paul Ryan chirped. “Busy week!”

It was indeed: Less than a day had passed since the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Russia’s involvement in the presidential campaign; just a few hours since President Trump angrily tweeted that the investigation was “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!”; and only minutes since the Russia-linked former national-security adviser, Michael Flynn, had begun defying congressional subpoenas. A few days prior, the president had been accused of revealing sensitive intelligence information to the Russian foreign minister.

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

Barbara Bradley Hagerty

The condition has long been considered untreatable. Experts can spot it in a child as young as 3 or 4. But a new clinical approach offers hope.

This is a good day, Samantha tells me: 10 on a scale of 10. We’re sitting in a conference room at the San Marcos Treatment Center, just south of Austin, Texas, a space that has witnessed countless difficult conversations between troubled children, their worried parents, and clinical therapists. But today promises unalloyed joy. Samantha’s mother is visiting from Idaho, as she does every six weeks, which means lunch off campus and an excursion to Target. The girl needs supplies: new jeans, yoga pants, nail polish.

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At 11, Samantha is just over 5 feet tall and has wavy black hair and a steady gaze. She flashes a smile when I ask about her favorite subject (history), and grimaces when I ask about her least favorite (math). She seems poised and cheerful, a normal preteen. But when we steer into uncomfortable territory—the events that led her to this juvenile-treatment facility nearly 2,000 miles from her family—Samantha hesitates and looks down at her hands. “I wanted the whole world to myself,” she says. “So I made a whole entire book about how to hurt people.”

House of Cards Season 5, Episode 1: The Live-Binge Review

Spencer Kornhaber

The White House launches its own terroristic campaign.

As in previous years, I’m binge-reviewing the latest season of Netflix’s House of Cards, the TV show that helped popularize the idea of “binge watching” when it premiered in 2013. Don’t read farther than you’ve watched.

Episode 1 (Chapter 53)

Season Five of House of Cards brings a new team of showrunners and a new real-life president for Frank Underwood to be compared to. It also, for a moment, seemed to bring a new gimmick of Claire addressing the camera just as her husband does. “I’ve been meaning to talk with you,” she says in the very first seconds of this premiere. “It’s terrifying, isn’t it?”

Yes, Claire, it is—terrifying and intriguing. Alas, she was just filming a paranoia-promoting campaign ad masquerading as a PSA. But the thought of her getting a chance to make meta-monologues raises the question of how the show could refresh its formula five years in—rather than merely continue to chart new depths of evil for the Underwoods, as this hour ended up doing.

Speaker of the House of Trump

McKay Coppins

With a new Trump biography and a six-part lecture series, Newt Gingrich is auditioning for his latest role—defining and interpreting Trumpism.

A few weeks after the 2016 election, Newt Gingrich appeared at the Heritage Foundation to deliver what had been billed as a speech on the “Principles of Trumpism.” Tellingly, he spent most of his time instead talking about the brilliance of Trump the Man—his epic debate performances, his social media cunning, his utter domination of every opponent that provokes him. “Donald Trump is the grizzly bear in The Revenant,” Gingrich gushed at one point. “If you get his attention, he will get awake … he will walk over, bite your face off, and sit on you.”

To the extent that he tried to articulate any “principles” then, they seemed largely to cohere around a collection of culture-war applause lines and campaign-trail talking points. Someone listening Gingrich’s speech in search of a definition could have been forgiven for assuming “Trumpism” aimed primarily to protect cashiers’ right to say “Merry Christmas,” and to shame NFL players who don’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. It was not, in other words a fully formed political ideology—at least not yet.