New York Magazine 4/2-4/15/18

1 “Hope Hicks wasn’t a victim; on this both her allies and critics agreed,” Olivia Nuzzi wrote in her profile of the departing White House communications director (“What Hope Hicks Knows,” March 19–April 1). The National Enquirer– meets–Us Weekly cover generated almost as much discussion as the story itself, with Ad Age weighing in: “New York Magazine gives the Trump White House the supermarket tabloid cover treatment it deserves.” (We also heard from a number of readers who thought the wrong magazine had arrived in their mailboxes.) And the story’s release was much anticipated in Beltway circles. Republican strategist Steve Schmidt tweeted, “Olivia Nuzzi is unbelievably talented … Pour a glass of wine and settle in and enjoy.” Many of the reporters and pundits who’ve been following the administration closely…

A FEW DAYS after the crash, I went down to the Park Slope corner where it had happened. There was—is—one of those makeshift altars, the kind that appear after every horrific event, in front of a bank. Bouquets, notes, teddy bears. On the corner, buried in flowers, there was a folding stroller. It had been painted matte white, like the ghost bikes that mark sites where cyclists have been killed. I heard nothing on 9th Street but quiet talk of the crash. As I got to the intersection, there were five or six people standing around the shrine, discussing what had happened on March 5, what hadn’t happened, what might be done. A lot of the signs made reference to Abigail and Joshua, the two children, ages 4 and 1,…

We were looking at the future. ➼ “Fiction and fact are indeed becoming hard to disentangle. I hope that, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley and I have added, constructively and responsibly, to the confusion. For what we have tried to do is to create a realistic myth, appropriate to our time; and we may well have to wait until the year 2001 itself to see how successful we have been.” —Arthur C. Clarke, “Destination: 2001—Kubrick at the Controls” Some of us saw a divided city. ➼ “They drank with their hats on and folded Wall Street Journals under their elbows. They stood with faces that showed nothing and they stared at the bottles behind the bar. There were almost no sounds. A man choked on cigarette smoke. Ice clicked…

IN JANUARY, Joel Embiid, the Philadelphia 76ers’ seven-foot-tall, 23-year-old Twitter-fanatic man-child, pulled off one of those dunks that we would have called “posterizing” in 1997 but now, in a world without posters and wallpapered instead with video games, inevitably leads to one of those memes where Mortal Kombat music plays and the words FINISH HIM flash across the screen. Embiid, a massive man with supernatural athleticism, drove down the lane and, upon seeing defending MVP Russell Westbrook—a gleefully selfish sports villain and noted sartorial virtuoso—slipping underneath to draw a charge, exploded with such fury and violence that Westbrook essentially evaporated into a plume of smoke. Embiid stared at Westbrook jogging back on defense as the Oklahoma crowd stood, mouths agape, as if they’d just lost on a last-second buzzer-beater. (It…

“My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy,greedy,” DECLARED DONALD TRUMP DURING THE 2016 campaign. “I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States.” To the extent that Trump’s candidacy offered any positive appeal, as opposed to simple loathing for his opponent, this was it. He was a brilliant businessman, or at least starred in a television show as one, and he would set aside his lifelong pursuit of wealth to selflessly serve the greater good. This was the promise that pried just enough Obama voters away from Hillary Clinton in just enough upper-Midwest states to clinch the Electoral College. ¶ Since Trump took office, his pledge to ignore his own interests has been almost forgotten, lost in…

ON THE DAY he took the oath of office, Donald Trump delivered two messages about what to expect from his administration. First came the lofty promise of his inaugural address. “The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” he vowed. “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished—but the people did not share in its wealth.” The second message, which Trump delivered without speaking a word, was aimed at a much smaller, but very rich, audience. As the new president’s motorcade left the Capitol, rolling past knots of supporters and protesters, it suddenly stopped three blocks short of the White House. Trump, the First Lady, and the rest…