Schadenfreudia

I think each person who is in the limelight has an obligation to make things better for the last, the lost, the least, the left out, and the looked over.

(Obama's) aversion to the dirty tasks of politics culminated in the moment during the 2016 campaign when U.S. intelligence about Russian meddling on behalf of Trump reached the Oval Office. Obama’s instinct was to avoid politicizing it at all costs. Rhodes urged the President to be more vocal, just as he’d urged him to intervene in Egypt, Libya, and Syria, but Obama replied, “If I speak out more, he’ll just say it’s rigged.” Trump, if he lost, was going to say the election had been rigged regardless. His supporters were going to disbelieve anything Obama said. The rest of us deserved to hear it, anyway.

Gentry pauses and begins telling the story of Game 1 of the 2017 Western Conference finals, the Warriors hosting the Spurs -- the mighty, unshakable Spurs. San Antonio goes up by 25 points. And though Spurs star Kawhi Leonard is lost to an ankle injury in the third quarter, the Spurs are still the Spurs. If anyone can hold on, it's them. Yet as Gentry watches the lead slowly wither alongside 17-year-old son Jack from their home in New Orleans' Lower Garden District neighborhood, a familiar dread overtakes him. "I don't know if San Antonio's going to be able to stop it," he tells his son. "No, no," Jack replies. "All they gotta do is get a basket. A couple of baskets here and there and everything is back to normal." "No," Gentry says. "You don't understand." Sure enough, the Warriors, on the strength of an 18-0 second-half run, come back to win 113-111 -- and sweep the Spurs.

____’s embrace of belligerent nationalism and murderous anti-Semitism is not in itself historically significant; what mattered was his gift for injecting that rhetoric into mainstream discourse.... [A recent biography] gives a potent picture of ____'s skills as a speaker, organizer, and propagandist. Even those who found his words repulsive were mesmerized by him. He would begin quietly, almost haltingly, testing out his audience and creating suspense. He amused the crowd with sardonic asides and actorly impersonations. The musical structure was one of crescendo toward triumphant rage. [The biographer] writes, “It was this eccentric style, almost pitiable, unhinged, obviously not well trained, at the same time ecstatically over-the-top, that evidently conveyed to his audience the idea of uniqueness and authenticity.” Above all, ____ knew how to project himself through the mass media, honing his messages so that they would penetrate the white noise of politics.