Weep Tears of Satisfaction: Read The New Yorker‘s Endorsement of Clinton
Do you want to know how to write an award-winning term-paper? Or how to convince someone as thoroughly as possible of anything—an argument so void of gaps, so researched in its arguments, so simple yet thoroughly eviscerating and unsparing in its language—that your opponent is left speechless because, in fact, there is nothing (and certainly nothing more reasoned nor correct) left to to say? Then, friends, read The New Yorker‘s endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president.
I bid you, do it now. Nothing else that you read in this negative, unending, sour, and scary campaign will give you more satisfaction, nor leave you with more actual hope for that gratifying moment when—if all continues on the path that it is headed on today—Hillary Clinton, the first woman in United States history, takes office in January.
In it, not only does The New Yorker leverage its authority—one of the most intellectually-respected, and well-written publications anywhere—to employ terms that, when applied to almost anyone but Donald Trump, would be hyperbole (including but not limited to “erratic, empty, cruel, intolerant, and corrupt,” and a person who employs “free-form opportunism, heroic self-regard, blithe contempt for expertise, and an airy sense of infallibility,” that, “has contributed to [his] profound estrangement from the truth.”), but it also lays out a point-by-point—in every single area of proposed policy—ringing endorsement of Clinton.
At the same time, it does not scare away from her past: Those who criticize her for scandal in Benghazi, State Department e-mails, a WikiLeaks dump of staff emails, and more. And yet, it concludes, despite these charges—all levied against her during 25-years of relentless misogyny—”no dark alter ego has emerged. Whatever Americans think about Hillary Clinton, we cannot say that we don’t know her. We do know her. And there is a great deal to admire.”
So thank you, so much, New Yorker, for doing justice to the form of the presidential endorsement, and for leaving no stone unturned in your treatment of it. Rarely do we have the pleasure of reading something so timely and effective and just fucking perfect. But even better, as you point out in your closing, the best stuff—President Hillary Clinton, the reality, in action—is yet to come.
