New York Magazine 11/26-12/9/18

FIFTY YEARS AGO, WHEN THIS MAGAZINE BEGAN, the founders made a crucial decision: They would call the magazine New York, but they would not restrict it to the city as a matter of geography. They instead chose to define the magazine’s mission as concerning itself with pretty much anything New Yorkers might be interested in. That allowed it to cover power everywhere—Washington and Hollywood and, eventually, Silicon Valley; the rise of feminism (Ms. magazine sprang from its pages) and social movements of all kinds; grifters and scandals; fashion, design, and—gloriously, obsessively—food. It was a magazine about “the new,” and it was also never afraid of new things. So when the internet began to make its presence felt, and other magazines tiptoed warily around it, New York barged right in and…

1 In New York’s most recent issue, Kerry Howley examined how Larry Nassar was able to prey on young gymnasts for so many years without being caught (“Everyone Believed Larry Nassar,” November 12–25). The Washington Post’s Monica Hesse wrote, “What struck me during Larry Nassar’s trial was how gingerly and vaguely media discussed the actual abuse he levied on hundreds of gymnasts. This article doesn’t let the pain of girls’ bodies be vague, or gross, or unmentionable. It bears witness to it all.” Georgetown Law’s Lindsey Barrett saw parallels with her own experience as a young dancer: “As a former (frequently injured) ballet dancer, reading Howley’s article felt like a punch to the gut. Ballet is similar in a number of ways to gymnastics—it’s intensely physical from a young age,…

AMAZON IS COMING! Amazon is coming!—and New Yorkers are welcoming their robot overlords with clenched fists and a nasty snarl. City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, newly empowered Democratic members of the Legislature in Albany, the just-elected U.S. representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand are all competing to see who can heap more scorn on the deal. The reactions come in various shades of negativity: shock at the size of the gift that the city and the Empire State are bestowing on an imperial company; contempt for the company’s warehouse-labor policies; anger about its pitting cities against each other; rage that Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, who never agree on anything, got together to fill up the loot bag; fear that Queens real-estate prices will reach the…

MEEK MILL’S LIFE can be split almost down the middle, into BP and AP: before probation, after probation. Lately, moments from the first half don’t come to him so easily; he’s spent more of the past decade bound to the system than he’s spent out of it. Struggling to recall his last memory of freedom, he says, “Maybe not since I was 10 or 12, sitting at home playing a game all day.” But his snap response feels more truthful: “I’ve never felt free, coming from where I came from.” Once thought of mainly as a skilled battle rapper, Mill, 31, was raised in North Philadelphia (“Millidelphia” to his fans). Ever since he was sentenced to probation in 2008 for brandishing a gun at a cop during a drug raid—both…

MARK ZUCKERBERG ISN’T the first person in human history to draw inspiration from Augustus Caesar, the founder of the Roman Empire, but he’s one of a very few for whom the lessons of Augustus’s reign have a concrete urgency. Both men, after all, built international empires before the age of 33. “Basically, through a really harsh approach, he established 200 years of world peace,” Zuckerberg explained to a New Yorker reporter earlier this year. “What are the trade-offs in that?” Augustus, Zuckerberg explained, “had to do certain things” to ensure the stability of his empire. So too, apparently, does Facebook. A 6,000-word report published in the New York Times last week disclosed in humiliating detail the lengths to which Face-book has gone to protect its dominance and attack its critics.…

ART IS FOR ANYONE. It’s just not for everyone. I know this viscerally, as a would-be artist who burned out. I wrote about that last year, and ever since, I’ve been beset—every lecture I give, every gallery I pop my head into, somebody is asking me for advice. What they’re really asking is “How can I be an artist?” When, last month, Banksy jerry-rigged a frame to shred a painting just when it was auctioned, I could almost hear the whispers: “Is that art?” This fall, the biggest museum event in New York is the Whitney’s retrospective of Andy Warhol—the paradigmatic self-made, make-anything-art-and-yourself-famous artist. Today, we are all Andy’s children, especially in the age of Instagram, which has trained everyone to think visually and to look at our regular lives…