I can’t say what Vice President Kamala Harris’s favorite word is — the one time I met with her, I didn’t ask — but I’d put a big stack of chips on “context.” She said it not once, not twice, but three times in her signature May 2023 “coconut tree” riff, and I’ve heard it tumble from her lips on other occasions as well. It’s like some oratorical caftan, warming and comforting her.
That turns out to be apt. Her bid for the presidency is all about context.
Any realistic response to it hinges not on the policy details that she has or hasn’t provided, not on the fine points of her record over time, not on her interview with Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC on Wednesday, not on her previous sit-down with CNN’s Dana Bash. It hinges on context. She cannot be sized up outside of or apart from the alternative, a man of such reprehensible character, limitless rage, disregard for truth, contempt for democracy, monumental selfishness and incoherent thinking that even discussing Harris’s virtues and vices feels ever so slightly beside the point. She’s not Donald Trump.
How might Harris govern? The question needs to be asked — every candidate for president owes voters a reasonably clear map of where she’s headed — but it can also smack of superfluousness in the context of how Trump did govern from 2017 to 2021: by dividing the country at every opportunity, burning through aides, torching norms, blowing kisses at dictators, blowing up at the slightest irritation, promoting “alternative” facts and — the rotten cherry on the rancid sundae — trying to overturn an election.
What are her quirks and blind spots? Microscopic in the context of his pathologies. I know it’s painful, but have you listened to him (or, even worse, skimmed his social media posts) over recent months? Hannibal Lecter, Pomeranian au poivre, pouting about how much prettier than Harris he is, perseverating on the size of her crowds, obsessing over her race, fixating on her sexual history — he’s going downhill fast, and he started out below sea level. If he descends any more, MAGA will meet magma.
Is Harris offering a significant improvement on Bidenomics? Um, Trump is pledging tariffs and trade wars on a spectacularly reckless scale, along with random goodies that have the air of improvisations — of on-the-spot promises to on-the-fence voters, woo-woo meant to woo certain demographic groups.
A cap on credit-card interest! Tax-free overtime pay! Maybe his strategy is to put enough money in Americans’ pockets that everyone can buy two copies of the Trump-branded Bible ($59.99) and three of “Save America,” his alternative history of the Trump administration ($91.47 — and that’s on Amazon), with enough left over for a $499 special-edition pair of gold Never Surrender sneakers. The proper cable-television point of reference for Trump isn’t Fox News. It’s QVC. He’s not planning a presidency. He’s hawking merch.
In that context, the hazy joyfulness of the Harris tour is pure gravitas.
At the conclusion of her debate against Trump, I got emails and texts from various acquaintances who were disappointed that she hadn’t said X, dissatisfied with her answer to Y, discouraged by her evasiveness on Z. Some were simply wishing that she’d had an even stronger performance and thus lengthened the odds of a Trump victory on Nov. 5. But others were really quibbling.
In response to which I asked if they’d bothered to size up his performance. Such context is everything. I also urged them not to let the perfect be the enemy of the Kamala. That way lies a national nightmare.
For the Love of Sentences
In The Washington Post, Jerry Brewer riffed on the superheroic baseball game — three home runs, two doubles, hits in all of his six at-bats, 10 runs batted in, two stolen bases — that Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers recently played: “On the way back to the hotel, Ohtani probably found a basketball court and won a dunk contest. He probably strolled onto a football field and ran the 40-yard dash in 4.3 seconds. And then he probably went to a hospital and helped doctors solve Tua Tagovailoa’s concussion issues.” (Thanks to Angela Tangredi of Manhattan and Joe Bellavance of Indianapolis for nominating this.)
In contrast, an article in The Times by Sam Anderson focused on a group of baseball players who have underperformed, to say the least: “Over the course of the 2024 season, the White Sox have explored the full spectrum of losing the way a great actor uses every corner of the stage, the way a jazz saxophonist probes every note in a scale. They have lost nobly, tragically, cleverly, inspiringly and deflatingly. They have lost late at night and early in the afternoon, in soggy rain and on crisp sunny days.” Sam sympathized with how frequently the team’s members had to answer questions about losing, losing, losing: “At a certain point, language fails. Mention the L-word, and players would disappear behind a squid-ink cloud of clichés. One day at a time. Game by game. Focus on the present. You can’t get too high or too low.” (Jeff Nathan, Highland Park, Ill., and Greg Opfel, Tigard, Ore., among many others)
In The Philadelphia Inquirer, Mike Sielski puzzled over the needless challenges that the man steering the Philadelphia Eagles constructs: “There are NFL coaches who make things hard for themselves, and then there is Nick Sirianni, who might as well assign himself to read James Joyce in Braille.” (Louise Klein, Landenberg, Pa.)
On the NPR website, Greg Rosalsky explored why many music festivals have been canceled this year: “Porta potties, security, equipment, energy, food, concessions, merch, insurance, artist pay — expenses for producing these festivals have climbed faster than a drug-addled singer up the scaffolding of a soundstage.” (John Bell, Binghamton, N.Y.)
In The Times, the caption below a photo accompanying Erik Piepenburg’s article on the founders of Nasty Pig apparel noted that their garments “help customers liven up the salad of life with a little raunch dressing.” (Zac Wood, Springfield, Va., and Jeffrey Clarkson, Rancho Mirage, Calif., among others)
In The Globe and Mail of Toronto, Tony Keller questioned Canada’s recent approach to immigration: “It’s like a Taylor Swift concert where the organizers got everything backward. First, they let hundreds of thousands of people into the stadium. Then, they remembered they had only a fraction of that number of seats available for tonight’s show. And now they hope those without a ticket will quietly leave. Good luck with that.” (Peter Schmolka, Ottawa, Ontario)
In The Los Angeles Times, Jonah Goldberg took issue with complaints by Trump and his minions about the potentially violent fallout from furious political talk: “If hypocrisy was helium, many people would have funny voices, and some would just float away.” (Steve Straight, South Windsor, Conn.)
In The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel wrote: “As we lurch closer to Election Day, it’s easy to feel as if we’ve all entered the Great Clenching — a national moment of assuming the crash-landing position and bracing for impact.” (Gwen Toole, Pensacola Fla.)
And in his Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion newsletter, Jeff Tiedrich reveled in the G.O.P.’s reckless decision to choose an inadequately vetted right-wing extremist as its nominee for North Carolina governor: “Sorry, Republicans, it looks like you’re going to be forced to carry Mark Robinson to term — even if doing so endangers the life of your party.” (Linda Edmundson, Cranston, R.I.)
To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.
What I’m Writing, Reading and Watching
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If you feel overwhelmed by news, ads and furious cross talk about the 2024 election and you don’t live in one of the seven principal battleground states, you have no idea. I’m in North Carolina, which, over the past week, has probably edged out even Pennsylvania and Arizona in the attention sweepstakes. I explain why — and how North Carolina is a mirror of national dynamics — in this in-depth deconstruction of the governor’s race, which also introduces you to the Democrat standing between Robinson and the governor’s mansion, North Carolina’s attorney general, Josh Stein.
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My Times Opinion colleague David French nailed both the inevitability and the cautionary tale of Robinson in this recent column.
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My Times Opinion colleague Mara Gay sized up Harris’s chances to win North Carolina’s 16 Electoral College votes, stressing the importance of reaching out to the state’s rural voters.
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And one of the most insightful analysts of North Carolina politics, Chris Cooper, a professor at Western Carolina University, has a new book on our battleground state that brings the uninitiated up to speed. “Anatomy of a Purple State: A North Carolina Politics Primer” will be published next month.
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When my brain is too fried for reading or even for some pulpy streaming nonsense that nonetheless requires me to follow a whole new plot, I retreat to old, half-remembered episodes of “Law & Order,” a show constructed with such dependable rhythms, such familiar beats and such artfully scattered one-liners that it’s a kind of emotional homecoming. I prioritize the years of the show when S. Epatha Merkerson played Lt. Anita Van Buren. The role is a bit of an archetype — the stern but protective matriarch, her no-nonsense demeanor covering a sauciness that routinely bubbles up — but Merkerson’s wit and intelligence made the character one of a kind. And while some of the other actors who cycled on and off the show did some serious showboating, she never did. Never had to. She just naturally drew your eyes and stirred your heart and was indelible even in the many episodes that accorded her only a few fleeting scenes.
On a Personal Note
Since I joined the faculty at Duke University more than three years ago, I’ve talked with my students about an infinity of topics, from guilty food pleasures to really guilty Netflix binges, from Silvio Berlusconi to Sylvia Plath, from how not to get stuck in a narrow ideological enclave to how not to dangle a participle.
But no subject comes up as often — or yields conversations as heartfelt and complicated — as the pressure they feel to use college as a dependable on-ramp to a reliably lucrative profession and not as an adventure charted in accordance with what genuinely inspires them.
Obviously, that tension is nothing new. Duty versus desire: It’s the engine of literature. It’s the puzzle of life. Few among us have the privilege of prioritizing our yearnings over our responsibilities, and too much emphasis on the former can be ruinous.
But as a guest essay in Times Opinion this week by Isabella Glassman, a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, made clear, we’ve created a contemporary college culture — from the admissions process through the selection of a major and the stacking of extracurricular activities — that’s no less dangerous. It downgrades self-discovery. It discourages intellectual curiosity. It gives short shrift to genuine engagement.
How? By making college so crazily expensive that the goal of “return on investment,” as measured by a graduate’s salary two or five or 10 years later, takes on exaggerated importance. By creating an economy in which there’s such overpayment in some fields (consulting, finance) and underpayment in others (K-12 education) that students are steered disproportionately in one direction. By so excessively venerating certain labels and credentials — be it the “Yeti” on a thermos, the “Hermès” on a scarf or the “Wharton” on a business degree — that the metrics of success are wildly out of whack.
I already have former students circling back to tell me that they don’t like their consulting jobs, were propelled into them by groupthink and other people’s expectations, and need to pause and figure out who they really are. Isn’t that what college was for?
It’s strange. In some conspicuous ways (trigger warnings, safe spaces, grade inflation), we grown-ups coddle the current generation of college students, as many astute scholars and cultural observers have wisely noted. But we curse them with the limited menu of professional options — and the corresponding values — we promote. With our fixation on scores and rankings. With our obsession with what’s instantly redeemable and obviously practical.
There must be other messages in the mix. Like this: Using college to understand yourself and your world in a more complete and nuanced fashion is the most practical course of all, applicable not only to the career — or careers — you wind up pursuing but also to the families you create and the communities you inhabit.
And this: There are plenty of miserable people in corner offices and first class.
And this: There is no competitive advantage in life — none — as powerful as a real passion for what you do. If you have that, you’re not counting the hours in the workday. And you’re not resenting them.
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