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<meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" name="viewport"/>
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<title>13 December, 2022</title>
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<title>Daily-Dose</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><style>*{overflow-x:hidden;}</style><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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<body>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Economics at the Heart of the Times Union Standoff</strong> - Thursday’s walkout was part of a bitter contract dispute over wages—but the impasse poses a larger question about how the growing company should invest in its future. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/the-economics-at-the-heart-of-the-times-union-standoff">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Should Local Police Departments Deploy Lethal Robots?</strong> - A vote from the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco reopened the debate over deploying surplus military matériel. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/should-local-police-departments-deploy-lethal-robots">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What Happens When Jobs Are Guaranteed?</strong> - In a small Austrian village, an experimental program finds—or creates—work for the unemployed. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/what-happens-when-jobs-are-guaranteed">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Fusion Breakthrough Suggests That Maybe Someday We’ll Have a Second Sun</strong> - In the meantime, we need to use the sun we’ve already got. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-fusion-breakthrough-suggests-that-maybe-someday-well-have-a-second-sun">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Brittney Griner’s Swap for the “Merchant of Death” Is Just the Latest Deal</strong> - The average number of Americans detained abroad has risen by nearly six hundred per cent during the past decade. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/brittney-griners-swap-for-the-merchant-of-death-is-just-the-latest-deal">link</a></p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
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<li><strong>Why we’re relitigating the Casey Anthony case now — and why we shouldn’t</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gIjLbdD_9AdbclR3Pu4_UcDY27U=/0x0:1944x1458/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71743878/119290531.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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Casey Anthony leaving jail after being acquitted of murdering her daughter Caylee Anthony on July 17, 2011, in Orlando, Florida. | Red Huber/Getty Images
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Peacock’s new Casey Anthony special dares to ask why we need to rehash every true crime case.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EfSQ0W">
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There’s one group you won’t find joining in the newfound social media push to redeem alleged child-killer Casey Anthony after a recent new series profiling her: The true crime fan community.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5N9Pk4">
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That’s because despite being found not guilty in 2011 of allegedly murdering her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, conventional wisdom holds that Casey Anthony almost certainly was involved in Caylee’s disappearance and death. While the case against her unfolded as an avaricious media circus that portrayed Casey as a callous Orlando party girl, the actual evidence against her makes a strong argument that, in Casey Anthony’s case, the media got it right.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WQffXB">
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Casey Anthony <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/casey-anthony-trial-fun-party-girl_n_867189">did party</a> while Caylee was missing. For 31 days in 2008, she behaved like any other 22-year-old without a care in the world — without telling a single human being that her daughter had vanished. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8o9M1V">
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Casey Anthony’s guilt is essentially settled fact among true crime fans. Her acquittal — and the truly wild case that led up to it, from petty theft and “hot bod” contests to “Zanny the Nanny” — has become firmly fixed in pop culture as an egregious example of the justice system failing.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lcqxYD">
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At least, it was until Casey’s new attempt to wrest control of the narrative. In <em>Casey Anthony: Where the Truth Lies</em>, a three-part limited series (we’re loath to call it a documentary) released to Peacock on November 29, Casey blames her daughter’s murder on her own father, and attempts to blame her own behavior on a lifetime of trauma and abuse.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3uqWOx">
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<a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-2011-05-26-os-casey-anthony-trial-day-3-20110526-story.html">As she did</a> at her trial, she accuses her father and brother, George and Lee Anthony, of sexually abusing her, and argues that her related trauma explains her long pattern of lies in connection to her daughter’s disappearance. George Anthony denied those allegations on the witness stand and has <a href="https://people.com/crime/casey-anthonys-father-outraged-appalled-allegations-molestation-denies-all/">continued to do so</a>; no actual evidence of abuse or record of any related report to authorities has been found.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bxs0YY">
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Beyond the familial accusations, however, Casey’s behavior, then and now, makes a compelling argument that not every public scandal needs to be relitigated, nor does every headline-grabbing criminal case need to be perpetually thrust again and again into the public eye. Unfortunately, the death of Caylee Anthony is just one of several high-profile true crime cases that have recently been dragged once again into the spotlight, despite being previously considered resolved.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ALzDp4">
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And while some of those cases scream injustice and <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23361826/adnan-syed-free-maryland-baltimore-criminal-justice">beg for renewed attention</a>, others — like this one — seem to be less about truth-seeking and more about finding new ways to profit and exploit the popularity of older true crime cases.
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</p>
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<h3 id="6BaMtA">
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Casey Anthony’s behavior was infamously bizarre
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</h3>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UHrBNI">
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Casey Anthony is a proven liar. Her narrative of her own story is untrustworthy. She was found guilty at trial of providing false information to law enforcement.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1CKvy6">
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Casey had a long pattern of lying, beginning with years of constructing elaborate lies about her progress through high school, and later about her nonexistent job and even her pregnancy with Caylee — a backstory she shares with multiple <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/West/07/21/missing.jogger/">convicted</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/nyregion/25list1.html">killers</a> who all <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Pan">eventually</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Peter_Porco">murdered</a> <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/chandler-halderson-bart-and-krista-halderson-murder-investigation-photos/">members</a> of <a href="https://murderpedia.org/male.G/g/gonzales-sef.htm">their</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Blackwell">family</a>. Rather unusually, however, Casey’s parents, according to her brother Lee’s <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/casey_anthony_trial/casey-anthony-trial-lee-anthony-cindy-anthony-baffle/story?id=13922158">testimony</a> at her trial, had a history of enabling and playing along with their daughter’s lies rather than holding her to account for them.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BQ5Ilx">
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By 2008, per contemporaneous <a href="https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/2008/12/12/evidence-links-child-remains-to-caylee-anthonys-home/16002913007/">media reports</a> as well as <a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/fl-district-court-of-appeal/1621490.html">court documents</a>, 22-year-old Casey was still living on and off with her parents, George and Cindy, in Orlando, while habitually engaging in petty theft from her family and friends. She sought to convince everyone that she had spent the past several years working as an event coordinator for Universal Studios.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gteALT">
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In the days after June 16, 2008, 2-year-old Caylee went missing. For the next 31 days, Casey, who was staying with her boyfriend at the time, told no one about her daughter’s disappearance. Instead, she gave conflicting statements about where she was — sometimes saying she was staying with a friend, other times claiming she was staying with a nanny — and took no action to locate her. In early July, she <a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-2008-08-26-casey26-story.html">got a back tattoo</a> reading “bella vita,” or “beautiful life.” Multiple friends would <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/casey-anthonys-alleged-abuse_n_867846">later testify</a> at trial that, during that month, Casey seemed “upbeat,” “normal,” and “happy.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="g5uhex">
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“Oh, my god, I am such a good liar,” one witness <a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-2011-05-26-os-casey-anthony-trial-day-3-20110526-story.html">recalled</a> Casey laughing.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tAE6mt">
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During this month, Casey had been refusing to communicate with her parents, and most concerningly refusing to give them a straight answer about where Caylee was. On July 15, 2008, she finally returned home — and on that day, her parents placed a series of 911 calls. The first was an attempt to report the family car Casey had taken and abandoned as missing, hopeful leverage to get her to tell them where Caylee was; the last came after they’d gotten their answer: Casey told her parents that Caylee’s nanny had stolen the little girl and that Casey had been trying unsuccessfully to locate her daughter, on her own, for the past month. Hearing this, a frantic and audibly panicked Cindy Anthony placed the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVPY3h4Pmv4&ab_channel=KayleeSchwab">now infamous call</a> to the police.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4fz6Hm">
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This call jump-started the investigation into one of the most infamous modern true crime cases — infamous both because of Casey Anthony’s bizarre behavior and because no one knows, still, what happened to Caylee Anthony.
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</p>
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<h3 id="NsDgCN">
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The case of Caylee Anthony began with elaborate, outrageous lies, and then kept going
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</h3>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Gcb8Uz">
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From the time of her mother’s 911 call until her trial three years later — when her story changed completely — Casey insisted to police and everyone else that Caylee had been abducted.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FA6HMM">
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Casey <a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/fl-district-court-of-appeal/1621490.html">claimed</a> she knew who had Caylee: A woman named “Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez” who’d been Caylee’s nanny for the last two years. She had met “Zanny the Nanny,” she told police, through a co-worker of hers at Universal Studios; Zanny had once been his child’s nanny as well. But Casey didn’t work at Universal. Not only that, the male colleague she named hadn’t worked for Universal in six years, had never heard of a nanny named Zanny, and didn’t even have kids.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MkZyDE">
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As for Zanny herself? She didn’t exist. When the police managed to track down a Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez on the other side of Orlando, she had no idea who the Anthonys were. But Casey was so committed to this lie that she confidently took investigators to Universal Studios headquarters, got staff to buzz her in, and led them around the office building while she looked for, apparently, a convincing open room that she could try to claim as her office. When she failed to find one, she abruptly gave up in mid-stride, turned around, and confessed to lying about working there. She continued to insist, however, that Zanny the Nanny was real.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pw8CtI">
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What we do know is that Caylee most likely died by homicide. In August 2008, an eagle-eyed meter reader named Roy Kronk spotted and reported what he believed could be human remains in a wooded area; Caylee was finally located and identified there in December 2008. While no cause of death could be determined due to the extent of decomposition, her lower jaw was found with <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/caylee-anthony-autopsy-reveals-grim-details-but-sheds-little-light-on-mystery/">duct tape</a> attached, which led the prosecution to argue at trial that she had likely died by suffocation, with duct tape as the murder weapon.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hNrSGG">
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Meanwhile, Casey, in jail awaiting trial initially on charges of child neglect, <a href="https://people.com/archive/cover-story-the-caylee-anthony-case-charged-with-murder-vol-70-no-17/">later upgraded</a> to first-degree murder, was <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2008/07/27/jail-calls-reveal-family-tension/">far more interested</a> in getting her boyfriend’s phone number on a family call than discussing what had happened with her daughter. When her best friend began crying over Caylee, Casey responded with a <a href="https://youtu.be/ZTErOwr53XQ?t=180">contemptuous</a>, “Oh, my god.” By contrast, the case was a huge emotional strain on Casey’s family; in January 2009, George Anthony <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/casey-anthonys-father-admits-suicide_n_886916">attempted suicide</a>, which would later be used against him by Casey’s defense at her trial.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0pW1Is">
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Even ignoring all of Casey’s confirmed suspicious behavior, the other circumstantial evidence against her was strong. Casey had claimed that her daughter was abducted far from the Anthony home, but Caylee’s body was found with a Winnie-the-Pooh blanket that matched the theme of her room, and she was wrapped in a canvas laundry bag identified as part of a set belonging to the Anthony household. The location of the remains was just a quarter-mile from the house.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JuFTil">
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The day the police were summoned to investigate Caylee’s disappearance, Cindy Anthony told the 911 operator that the trunk of Casey’s car smelled like it had held a dead body, and cadaver dogs brought to the scene immediately alerted upon the trunk. Forensic analysis found “<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/casey-anthony-trial-update-chloroform-search-on-family-computer-says-witness/">shockingly high</a>” levels of chloroform in the trunk; someone accessing the Anthony’s computer also did a Google search for “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/us/19casey.html">chloroform</a>” and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crime-anthony/casey-anthonys-computer-used-for-chloroform-search-idUSTRE75601E20110609">spent time browsing</a> the results. On the last day that Caylee was seen alive, June 16, 2008, someone in the Anthony home <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/25/casey-anthony-suffocation-google/1725253/">did a Google search</a> for “fool-proof suffication” [sic], then appeared to read an article that discussed murder by poison and suffocation by smothering.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Yg3bja">
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Casey Anthony’s trial took place in 2011, and it was a media juggernaut: A reported <a href="https://people.com/crime/casey-anthony-dating-man-years-after-after-murder-acquittal/">40 million viewers</a> worldwide tuned into at least some of the trial coverage as it unfolded, with <a href="https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/millions-turn-to-news-websites-for-casey-anthony-verdict/75845/">millions</a> viewing the verdict live. Millions also tuned in to Nancy Grace’s nightly repetition of <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2011/07/nancy_grace_explains_what_the.html">“Tot Mom!”</a> to scathingly refer to Casey’s case.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lN6z7R">
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At trial, Casey’s defense team dropped the “Zanny the Nanny” story and instead claimed that Caylee had accidentally drowned in the Anthonys’ pool and that George had helped his daughter cover up the death. Her defense attorney, Jose Baez, dropped the bombshell accusation that Casey had been abused by her father, implying that this explained her string of lies and her willingness to protect him.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qkLSg9">
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Again, there was no evidence for this accusation. But Baez also brought in skilled rebuttal arguments, like that of forensic expert <a href="https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/news/2011/06/18/expert-autopsy-on-caylee-anthony/49995392007/">Werner Spitz</a>, to undercut the prosecution’s case. Spitz, for example, argued that the autopsy was poorly conducted and that there was reasonable doubt about the manner of death. In the end, the jury agreed; despite <a href="https://people.com/crime/how-casey-anthony-was-acquitted-jurors-explain-verdict/">most of them</a> feeling as though Casey “did something wrong,” they voted to acquit — an outcome that shocked the world and reportedly shocked <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2320222/Casey-Anthony-judge-shocked-guilty-verdict-claims-sufficient-evidence-convict-murder.html">even the judge</a>. She was, however, found guilty of lying to police.
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Following the trial, Casey seemed to carry on living just as she always had; tabloids intermittently reported <a href="https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/crimefeed/murder/casey-anthony-spotted-partying-and-flirting-on-st-patricks-day">sightings</a> of her partying, while she grew estranged from her <a href="https://www.intouchweekly.com/posts/does-casey-anthony-speak-to-her-parents-theyre-estranged/">parents, especially her father,</a> and from her <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/now/casey-anthony-brother-lee-estranged-141708873.html">brother</a>. “I don’t give a shit about what anyone thinks about me,” she <a href="https://apnews.com/article/us-news-fl-state-wire-casey-anthony-c8b846016969406c8ff902187a133ddc">told the Associated Press</a> in a 2017 interview. “I never will. I’m okay with myself; I sleep pretty good at night.”
|
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</p>
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<h3 id="Wjj6JO">
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Casey Anthony is probably still lying — but does the true crime machine care?
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</h3>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kMlQZn">
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In 2022, however, Casey Anthony apparently does care what we think. The new series, which focuses on Casey and her defense, is all about trying to shift the narrative toward a Me Too story of lifelong sexual assault and abuse. Once again, her story has changed: She now blames her estranged father entirely, claiming not only that George Anthony abused her throughout her childhood, but that he also killed Caylee and then intimidated Casey into covering it up.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WLxrka">
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It’s a hard sell. Reports surfaced last year that Casey Anthony had created a TikTok account and had been posting videos claiming to miss Caylee. It didn’t last <a href="https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2021/10/21/casey-anthony-tiktok/">long</a>. A year later, however, some TikTok users have <a href="https://twitter.com/tinnkky/status/1600475409446944768">embraced</a> the idea of her innocence, including some viewers like <a href="https://parade.com/news/rosie-odonnell-defends-casey-anthony-peacock-documentary-tiktok-2022">Rosie O’Donnell</a>. While they’ve garnered plenty of attention, though, they are firmly in the minority. Reviews of the new series have dripped with disdain and revulsion for the entire project: Here’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/dec/03/casey-anthony-docuseries-peacock">the Guardian</a>:
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</p>
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<blockquote>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6nezhg">
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The show doesn’t just make the case for Anthony’s innocence all over again. Parts of it play like a dating show sizzle reel, complete with shots of Anthony garbed in athleisure wear snapping nature photos while out for long walks in the wild — as if we’re not all watching because her kid was found dead in a wood.
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</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s4a2OZ">
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Fortunately, anyone wanting to do a deep dive into the still-unsolved murder of Caylee Anthony can find plenty of other, more thorough documentaries out there. Oxygen’s <a href="https://www.oxygen.com/the-case-of-caylee-anthony"><em>The Case of: Caylee Anthony</em></a>, which features analysis from famed criminologist <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22758030/gabby-petito-domestic-intimate-partner-violence-prevention">Laura Richards</a> and retired FBI profiler Jim Clemente, is a quality pick. If a podcast is more your vibe, I would also recommend the coverage of <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22272863/redhanded-true-crime-podcast-interview-hosts-suruthi-bala-hannah-maguire">the ladies of <em>RedHanded</em></a>, who did a <a href="https://redhandedpodcast.com/episodes/3rdz8s3ajjyr3ns-xbn5s-xjz37">two-part</a> <a href="https://redhandedpodcast.com/episodes/3rdz8s3ajjyr3ns-xbn5s-xjz37-9h6p4">look</a> at the case.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q66kFg">
|
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But the issue isn’t that people don’t know anything about Casey Anthony; it’s more the cyclical nature of modern media production. We’re all too familiar with the way Hollywood prefers to invest in reviving old IP and classic franchises rather than banking on something new. Increasingly, it seems, that mentality has found its way into the ever-lucrative true crime genre. After all, you just can’t magically will a huge, eye-popping true crime story into existence, much less manipulate it into becoming a massive phenomenon, like that of <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/21494787/american-murder-netflix-review-chris-watts-shanann-watts-case">the Watts family</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/22684204/gabby-petito-missing-updates-internet-web-sleuthing">Gabby Petito</a>, or the macabre <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23287648/alex-murdaugh-murder-accused-wife-son-family">Murdaugh murders</a>. These cases certainly warrant the attention they receive, but they also compel us to return to them, again and again.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9pAHIa">
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Perhaps, in 2022, after hundreds of books, podcasts, movies, and documentaries about Jeffrey Dahmer, you might have expected Netflix’s new docudrama to be just one more version of a tired story. Instead, <em>Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story</em> was a hit for Netflix, swiftly becoming the second-biggest English-language release in Netflix history and rapidly clocking <a href="https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/dahmer-monster-netflix-viewed-billion-hours-1235450295/">over a billion</a> streaming views worldwide. Production studios know there’s a hunger for this kind of recycled true crime content. And when the original trial drew viewer ratings like Casey Anthony’s did, perhaps that’s all the motivation needed to revisit a case.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XH7UT0">
|
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|
But there’s a difference between Anthony’s case and most other recent popular true crime revivals. No one was trying to proclaim innocence for Dahmer or Ted Bundy in their recent revisitations, even if both series did <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23375811/netflix-jeffrey-dahmer-monster-victims-controversy-backlash">come under fire</a> for being <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/5/3/18212473/ted-bundy-movie-documentary-true-crime-podcasts">too centered around</a> the killer. Anthony’s acquittal complicates the facts, to be sure, but any series that allows her to tell her own version of events unchallenged is ethically irresponsible at a bare minimum. (The prosecution refused to participate in the series.) What’s more, there’s arguably zero utility served by rehashing Anthony’s case: She was acquitted. There’s no urgent need to get courts to reevaluate her plight. One could argue she deserves a new hearing in the court of public opinion, but if you believe Casey Anthony is innocent, you’ve already validated her.
|
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="d8ss0j">
|
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|
From one perspective, it’s easy to see why Anthony is attempting to reframe her narrative now, in the waning moments of Me Too. It is, perhaps, the most hospitable cultural climate for her to receive a hearing on her version of events — especially her claims of abuse. Over the last few years, reexamining the lives of women maligned by the media, from Marcia Clark to <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22350286/2000s-pop-culture-misogyny-britney-spears-janet-jackson-whitney-houston-monica-lewinsky">Britney Spears</a>, has become something of a cultural touchstone, often to positive effect. It’s a trend that has started to see diminishing returns, however — how much more did we learn, for instance, about Pamela Anderson from <a href="https://www.polygon.com/reviews/22915181/pam-and-tommy-review-hulu"><em>Pam & Tommy</em></a>? Placing Anthony in this same frame seems to assume some level of cultural misunderstanding at the time. But even new information about potential abuse doesn’t change the overwhelming likelihood that she played a primary role in what happened to Caylee.
|
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KKuNJq">
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Casey Anthony isn’t the only suspected killer to benefit from this treatment, however. Take convicted double-murderer Scott Peterson. Peterson, like Anthony, also wove <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/laci-peterson-murder-everything-you-need-to-know-199774/">an elaborate web of lies</a> around his pregnant wife Laci’s disappearance. Unlike Anthony, however, Scott Peterson was found guilty of killing his wife and their unborn son; while his conviction could be overturned on a technicality (<a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/02/24/why-scott-petersons-notorious-murder-conviction-rests-on-power-of-juror-no-7s-testimony-friday/">improper jury selection</a>), it won’t be because of an assertion of actual innocence by his defense team.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Icbcug">
|
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|
Yet the siren call to revisit even cases like Peterson’s, which seem open and shut, has proven hard to resist. A pair of <a href="https://www.desertsun.com/story/life/entertainment/movies/film-festival/2016/04/02/amdocs-film-strongly-asserts-scott-petersons-innocence/82538608/">2016</a> and <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/tv/article/TV-doc-makes-case-for-Scott-Peterson-s-innocence-11751867.php">2017</a> documentaries advocating for Peterson’s innocence led to a growing chorus of supporters. Famous podcasters like the <em>Crime Junkie</em> hosts and more recently justice advocate <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/12/31/7472965/jays-interview-adnan-serial">Rabia Chaudry</a> have asserted his innocence so strongly that they have <a href="https://crimepiperblog.wordpress.com/2022/10/12/scott-peterson-rabia-and-ellyn-solve-the-case-debunked/">infuriated</a> many <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueCrimePodcasts/comments/y91gk8/before_you_let_rabia_and_ellyn_convince_you_of/">members</a> of the <a href="https://art19.com/shows/real-crime-profile-wondery/episodes/dbdb1d03-ae47-4acb-84fa-269391e67e42">true crime community</a>. This division between true crime fan factions may also reflect something of the exponential growth of the true crime community, which had long been a grassroots movement until <a href="https://www.vox.com/serial-podcast"><em>Serial</em></a> exploded on the podcasting scene in 2014. Since then, true crime has ballooned into a modernized media juggernaut, replete with docuseries, podcasts, and even fan conventions. Many of those fans are often criticized for treating true crime as an entertainment playground, much to the alarm of other true crime fans.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rxUayV">
|
|||
|
|
The alarm is understandable, given how much we know about misinformation impacting popular opinion. It’s also certainly the case that web sleuths love a good mystery. Often the facts in criminal cases are just vague enough to allow true crime fans to behave the way we <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/1/6/21046788/release-the-jj-cut-what-is-the-jj-cut-real-explained">increasingly see</a> those in other fandoms behaving as they dig into the media they love: That is, they lose themselves in the details, spin elaborate theories of the situation, and emerge with complex narratives that fit what they want to believe while <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23150487/zhang-zhehan-deepfake-fandom-conspiracy-theory">rejecting a rational view</a> of all the facts. While this is exactly what we’d prefer our justice system to avoid, the public has no obligation to examine the totality of evidence in a case.
|
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</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3RYKEi">
|
|||
|
|
That’s why one-sided narratives like the new Casey Anthony series are so concerning: They risk distorting the truth and misguiding the public.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
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|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="F3fYIv">
|
|||
|
|
But with the arc of true crime bending toward recycling and rehashing settled cases — and with the public eagerly lapping it up — it seems unlikely there’s anything we can do to prevent serial manipulators like Casey Anthony from taking advantage of the public hunger for more information on old cases.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="k6VQWA">
|
|||
|
|
All we can do, it seems, is respond by repeating the facts — and trust that one day, if only in the court of public opinion, justice will prevail.
|
|||
|
|
</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>Vox’s 16 best books of 2022</strong> -
|
|||
|
|
<figure>
|
|||
|
|
<img alt="A collage of book covers, including “The Immortal King Rao and “Joan Is Okay.”" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9b9Vfi3UzfKi8Ph4Qwc-Jtbcd98=/167x0:2834x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71743799/blue.0.jpg"/>
|
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<figcaption>
|
|||
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|
Amanda Taub / Vox
|
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</figcaption>
|
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</figure>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
From kid art criminals to feminist histories, these are our favorite books from the past year.
|
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</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="77dV1q">
|
|||
|
|
The best books I read in 2022 were novels, memoirs, histories. They were funny, biting, and tragic; they dealt with grief, with hunger, with rage. Most importantly, they were all smart and they were all beautiful. Who has time for anything else?
|
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|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aCiFdQ">
|
|||
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|
I cannot say with any certainty that the 16 books I’ve listed below were the best books published this year because there are far too many books each year for one person to make such a judgment. But of all the books I’ve read, these were the ones that brought me — personally and as Vox’s book critic — the most joy and taught me the most. I hope that some of them do the same for you.
|
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</p>
|
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<h3 id="VUFMRR">
|
|||
|
|
Fiction
|
|||
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|
</h3>
|
|||
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<h4 id="U9gNt3">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/when-we-were-sisters-fatimah-asghar/18133183"><em>When We Were Sisters</em></a> by Fatimah Asghar
|
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</h4>
|
|||
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|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6piXNp">
|
|||
|
|
When Kausar and her two sisters go to live with their uncle after their father dies, he tells them he’ll take them to live in a zoo. He takes them instead to a filthy apartment whose hallways are lined with caged birds, where they’ll be responsible for cleaning up the bird droppings. They’re not to go out, he tells them, except to go to school, so his wife and children don’t know he’s their guardian.
|
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|
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</p>
|
|||
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|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Mh0G5c">
|
|||
|
|
Half-feral and starved for love, the three sisters raise each other as they grow from childhood to adolescence. Poet and screenwriter Fatimah Asghar makes her prose by turns tender, by turns ferocious as Kausar navigates her isolation, her mounting rage, and her shifting sense of her gender identity, all while struggling to maintain her childhood closeness with her sisters.
|
|||
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</p>
|
|||
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|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RamYRn">
|
|||
|
|
“Once upon a time, there were three sisters,” she tells us. “Or brothers maybe. Okay, okay: sister-brothers. Sister mothers.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<div class="c-float-left">
|
|||
|
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<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt="The cover of the novel “O Caledonia” features a woman’s face partially obscured by a black bird." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fLNezC6rS9LJuB_sMHBxDkIvcmc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24276348/O_CALEDONIA_cover_image.jpg"/> <cite>Scribner</cite>
|
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|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
<em>O Caledonia</em> by Elspeth Barker.
|
|||
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|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
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|
</div>
|
|||
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<h4 id="ryrVIr">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/o-caledonia-elspeth-barker/18246228"><em>O Caledonia</em></a> by Elspeth Barker
|
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</h4>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Mh8UUK">
|
|||
|
|
Rich with Gothic gloom and misanthropic wit, <em>O Caledonia</em> opens with the death of its heroine. Janet, 16 years old, is found dead in her family’s moldering Scottish pile of a house, wearing her mother’s best evening gown. Her parents hastily bury her: she was a blight on their lives, and they plan to forget her. We the readers, however, cannot.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="u10Hsp">
|
|||
|
|
The bulk of the novel is taken up not with Janet’s death but with her lonely, funny life. She’s a prickly and sensitive kid in a family that values pleasant obedience, and her isolated childhood in windswept Caledonia renders her too permanently odd to fit in at her jolly hockey sticks boarding school. “I <em>love</em> the subjunctive,” she remarks to her classmates. “It’s subtle, it makes the meaning different … I call my cats subjunctives.” Her social death is as inevitable as we already know her literal death to be. Like <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/10/20/16503280/i-capture-the-castle-dodie-smith"><em>I Capture the Castle</em></a> if it had been written by Shirley Jackson, <em>O Caledonia</em> is biting, comic, and endlessly charming.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
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|
<h4 id="hjeryf">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/either-or-elif-batuman/17400149"><em>Either/Or</em></a> by Elif Batuman
|
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</h4>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bFly2Q">
|
|||
|
|
<em>Either/Or</em> is Elif Batuman’s witty, provocative follow-up to her 2017 debut novel <em>The Idiot</em>. Like its predecessor, it concerns Selin, a dryly funny and perversely literal-minded Harvard student determined to be a writer. Now in her sophomore year, Selin turns to Kierkegaard’s <em>Either/Or</em> treatise as a guide for how to live her life. Kierkegaard argues that everyone must choose between living an ethical life of marriage and children or an aesthetic life of art and beauty, and Selin longs to be an aesthete.
|
|||
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="417bwk">
|
|||
|
|
She’s hampered, though, by the fact that Kierkegaard’s aesthetic life mostly involves being a man seducing and discarding young women. Having been seduced and discarded herself, Selin’s not entirely sure that she wants what Kierkegaard says she should. She only knows that the idea of a conventional life bores her to tears.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bKZmOK">
|
|||
|
|
<em>Either/Or</em> is a deeply interior novel, and the great pleasure of reading it comes from watching the ebb and crash of Selin’s precise, analytical thought process. Batuman is an expert at defamiliarizing ideas that have become so normal to us we can no longer see them clearly, like how travel guidebooks work or why you’re supposed to pretend to like your friends’ significant others. In her hands, the polite absurdities of everyday life become huge, perplexing, and very funny.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
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|
<h4 id="KaSjZ1">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/if-i-survive-you-jonathan-escoffery/18580873"><em>If I Survive You</em></a> by Jonathan Escoffery
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ucshaI">
|
|||
|
|
Part novel, part short story collection, Jonathan Escoffery’s debut book <em>If I Survive You</em> is an intelligent, prismatic account of a family of Jamaican immigrants. At its heart is the battle between father and son, and the battle of a family to survive America.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HNlI35">
|
|||
|
|
Nerdily sensitive young Trelawney is at the center of the first story, told in the second person. He can’t figure out what his group is: he’s unable to fit in with the Black kids or the Caribbean kids at his school, and the Jamaicans he visits consider him American. When his parents split up, he’s stuck with his mother, while his father, Topper, takes Trelawney’s older brother under his wing. Macho and unreflective Topper gets the second story, also told in second person but this time narrated in patois. His story of muscling his way off of Jamaica and into his own business in America makes it clear why he doesn’t much care for Trelawney’s affectations.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HjwATz">
|
|||
|
|
Trelawney and Topper’s conflict provides the thematic core of this collection. As Escoffery spirals out to consider the lives of their siblings, wives, and cousins, he returns again and again to this primal, fundamental story: a parent of an old world and a child of a new, and all the ways they fail to understand each other.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h4 id="MaD3jj">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/vladimir-julia-may-jonas/18018402"><em>Vladimir</em></a> by Julia May Jonas
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UW5ju0">
|
|||
|
|
Julia May Jonas’s debut novel <em>Vladimir</em> is wickedly smart and subversive, a sort of <em>Lolita</em> sent through the looking glass or a <em>Rebecca</em> in reverse. Our unnamed narrator is a middle-aged woman with deep powers of intelligence and self-deception. She tells us frequently that she thinks it’s normal that as she ages she has become more invisible to men, including to her own husband, but her anger and shame at this state of affairs lace her narration like a poison thread. As the novel opens, she is panting with lust over her much younger colleague, Vladimir, whom she has shackled to a chair.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qTcvpO">
|
|||
|
|
Throughout, <em>Vladimir</em> aches with hunger: for food, for sex, for attention, for respect, for vengeance. It has some of the best food writing I’ve come across this year, with the narrator going on a shopping spree for “dark black kale and designer anchovies and a nineteen-dollar brick of parmesan and olives and seeded crackers and an uncut boule of whole wheat sourdough and goat cheese and salami and raspberries and a flourless chocolate ganache torte.” She can’t get men to treat her as she would like to be treated, but by god, she can put her university professor credit card and good taste to good use.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<div class="c-float-left">
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt="The cover of the novel “Lessons” features a drawing of a British schoolboy playing a piano." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/scXud5z2PwYD9aMYc_q5cTcq0MU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24276349/9780593535202.jpg"/> <cite>Knopf</cite>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
<em>Lessons</em> by Ian McEwan.
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<h4 id="DHOnBr">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/lessons-ian-mcewan/18304510"><em>Lessons</em></a> by Ian McEwan
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1wEWDO">
|
|||
|
|
Being an Ian McEwan fan can be frustrating. Over the past few decades, McEwan has turned out some extraordinarily fine novels (<em>Atonement</em>, <em>Amsterdam</em>), some perfectly decent ones (<em>Saturday</em>), and some unforgivably dull ones (<em>Machines Like Me</em>). Luckily, <em>Lessons</em> is very good Ian McEwan, in part because it subverts so many Ian McEwan tropes.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HTpoSO">
|
|||
|
|
At the center of <em>Lessons</em> is Roland, an aimless drifter of a character. When he is a young teen, his sadistic piano teacher initiates a sexual relationship with him. “You’ll spend the rest of your life looking for what you’ve had here,” she warns him. He does, but he can’t quite understand in what capacity he’s doing so.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AuS9Qm">
|
|||
|
|
In another McEwan novel, this affair would be the great calamity of Roland’s life, the moment that molds him indelibly, as Briony sees her life is reshaped by a single night in <em>Atonement</em>. In <em>Lessons</em>, Roland continues on with his life after he escapes his teacher’s clutches. He marries and then is abandoned by his wife to raise their infant alone. He finds love again. He lives through Thatcherism, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Iraq War, the pandemic. Rarely does he act of his own accord rather than reacting against the world.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Au9MAz">
|
|||
|
|
Is that, Roland wonders, because of his piano teacher? Or because his wife left him? Did a crisis change his life forever? Or does life simply keep going on and on and on, no matter what happens? In McEwan’s capable hands, these questions become the core of this sprawling, ruminative novel.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h4 id="31UCFn">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-whalebone-theatre-joanna-quinn/17772541"><em>The Whalebone Theatre</em></a> by Joanna Quinn
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FtoUnO">
|
|||
|
|
I would have liked to read <em>The Whalebone Theatre</em> for the first time at 15 or so. It’s the kind of book that would be good to grow up on, that would reward endless obsessive teenage rereads, that would develop and stretch with you as you get better and better at reading. Still, I’m glad enough to have made its acquaintance as an adult.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="b1qdRE">
|
|||
|
|
The whalebone theater is literal: Christabel, 12 years old, orphaned and benignly neglected on her family’s Jazz Age country estate, finds a dead whale washed up on the seashore. It is, she pronounces, upon climbing to the top of its head, “a mighty leviathan. I have claimed it!”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NXODu4">
|
|||
|
|
Later, under the oversight of a visiting Bohemian artist, Christabel has the whale’s skeleton cleaned and transformed into a theater. Over a period of years, she and her half-sister and her half-sister’s half-brother who is also Christabel’s cousin (these landed gentry genealogies get complicated) put on increasingly ambitious productions of Shakespeare within their whale theater. That is, until they reach adulthood, when they’re swept up into the ever-escalating horrors of World War II.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IusLR9">
|
|||
|
|
In its first half, <em>The Whalebone Theatre</em> is all atmosphere, cream teas on the lawn with guest poets and children reciting Ariel’s monologues under cetacean skeletons strewn with fairy lights. In its second half, it reaches for increasingly heightened stakes; this makes the story uneven and at times clumsy, but the climax is deeply moving. Throughout, the beating heart of the novel is vivid, irrepressible Christabel, who longs more than anything to control the world and almost manages to do it when she’s directing a play.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<div class="c-float-left">
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt="The cover of the book “The Furrows: An Elegy” features a drawing of a Black boy up to his shoulders in a vast ocean." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/EgaPG_4MXZadkIgkc9awIA6SSJw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24276350/Furrows_050622.jpg"/> <cite>Hogarth Press</cite>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
<em>The Furrows</em> by Namwali Serpell.
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<h4 id="FcS6KD">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-furrows-namwali-serpell/17806463"><em>The Furrows</em></a> by Namwali Serpell
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8fLqvA">
|
|||
|
|
Namwali Serpell’s haunting, elegiac sophomore novel <em>The Furrows</em> has a refrain: “I don’t want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you how it felt.” The “it” is grief, calamity, disaster, life-destroying trauma.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pr5LmN">
|
|||
|
|
When Cee was 12 years old, her 7-year-old brother Wayne died in her arms. Over and over again, she tells us how it happened: They were swimming and he drowned. They were at a fair and his body was thrown from a carousel. They were crossing the street and he was hit by a car. Time is a record and sometimes the needle skips, Cee explains.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2V9jkv">
|
|||
|
|
As an adult, Cee has become C, and she is haunted by Wayne. At coffee shops, movie theaters, airports, he will appear, a grown man, happy and healthy, someone to whom C is immediately and viscerally attracted. Then the needle skips, and we see the encounter somewhere else.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EJM81a">
|
|||
|
|
That taboo longing informs the second half of this novel, when one of Wayne’s doppelgangers takes over the narration from C to tell us his side of the story. This part of the novel is less viscerally compelling than the first half, but Serpell remains committed to her dreamy, haunted atmosphere, in a narrative that evokes the way grief twists time into a knot and raises more questions than it ever plans to answer.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h4 id="hQFOxJ">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-immortal-king-rao-vauhini-vara/18515410"><em>The Immortal King Rao</em></a> by Vauhini Vara
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0nb8b5">
|
|||
|
|
King Rao became immortal by stealing his daughter Athena’s life. He has downloaded his memory into her mind, turning her into an unwitting human Zip drive of sorts. She is his legacy, and her own ideas about what her life might look like are, for King, beside the point.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eGNkOY">
|
|||
|
|
It’s Athena who narrates King’s story. She takes us from his humble origins as a Dalit coconut farmer in India, to his youth as a young immigrant tech worker in 1970s America, through to his meteoric rise as a tech founder bigger than Steve Jobs and Bill Gates combined. In the present day of the novel, Athena has to live in the world King made: one where climate change is irreversibly destroying human life; the nation-state is gone; and the world is governed by King’s company, once called Coconut, now so omnipresent as to be known only as the Company. Having run afoul of the Company’s terms of service, Athena is narrating to us from prison. The novel is her confession.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ROmws3">
|
|||
|
|
<em>The Immortal King Rao</em> is a dense, ambitious novel that dips in and out of its various timelines with aplomb. At its center is nothing less than the basic question of economics, governments, and families: how to balance the needs of the many against the rights of the one. The answers Vara proffers are anything but easy.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h4 id="LVZsLw">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/joan-is-okay-weike-wang/15227607"><em>Joan Is Okay</em></a> by Weike Wang
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f1YjCm">
|
|||
|
|
Everyone seems to have an opinion on Joan, the Chinese American attending physician at the center of Weike Wang’s witty and understated <em>Joan Is Okay</em>. Moreover, all of them are pretty sure she’s not actually okay.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cTBpaC">
|
|||
|
|
Joan’s brother thinks she should leave her job at a city hospital and start a private practice in the suburbs. Her sister-in-law thinks she should get married and have kids. Her overbearing white neighbor thinks she should engage more with popular culture and make more friends. Only her boss is delighted with her: Joan is, he remarks happily, “a gunner and a new breed of doctor, brilliant and potent, but with no interests outside work and sleep.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NJ4odf">
|
|||
|
|
Work and sleep are in fact Joan’s primary interests, a state of affairs with which she sees nothing wrong. When her father dies in Shanghai, she flies out for the funeral on Friday and is back to work on Monday.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dFtCRc">
|
|||
|
|
Joan is not, of course, okay, but not in the ways the people around her think. When she finally flies off the handle, the results are spectacular.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h4 id="NTH9vK">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/now-is-not-the-time-to-panic-kevin-wilson/18542533"><em>Now Is Not the Time to Panic</em></a> by Kevin Wilson
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SXTsib">
|
|||
|
|
“The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers,” 15-year-old Frankie scribbles on a poster in the empty, smartphone-less summer of 1996. “We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9ZutzK">
|
|||
|
|
Frankie doesn’t exactly mean anything by the phrase, but she likes the way it sounds. She’s just become friends with new kid in town Zeke, a budding illustrator. Since Frankie is a writer-in-training, Zeke suggests that they “make art,” to Frankie’s amazement, “like art was cookies or microwave popcorn.” She comes up with the sentence, and Zeke makes a surreal illustration. Then they begin to paper the town with copies of the poster they’ve made.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SdCpkt">
|
|||
|
|
Frankie doesn’t mean for the poster to be sinister; she just wants her work to be everywhere. But as this warmhearted and melancholy novel goes on, the town begins to react with surprising terror to the art that they don’t understand, in ways that will poison the artistic partnership between Frankie and Zeke forever. <em>Now Is Not the Time to Panic</em> is a terrific novel about art, adolescence, and the ways only your best friend can hurt you.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h3 id="LEVwaN">
|
|||
|
|
Nonfiction
|
|||
|
|
</h3>
|
|||
|
|
<div class="c-float-left">
|
|||
|
|
<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt="The cover of the book “Ducks: Two years in the oil sands” features a drawing of a person standing on the stairs of a huge truck, looking out at sand and a cliff." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/boA9zkCNdUwUnGFK9y_lInAQHtk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24276351/DUCKcasewrapFORONLINE.jpeg"/> <cite>Drawn & Quarterly</cite>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
<em>Ducks</em> by Kate Beaton.
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<h4 id="Nso6ea">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/ducks-two-years-in-the-oil-sands-kate-beaton/17885816"><em>Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands</em></a> by Kate Beaton
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KiyEkl">
|
|||
|
|
Kate Beaton built her name on drawing quirky little tongue-in-cheek historical cartoons, but her graphic memoir <em>Ducks</em> is something else again: dark, thoughtful, and at times searingly angry.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iFtJHB">
|
|||
|
|
Beaton spent two years directly after graduating from college working off her student debt in the oil sands of Alberta, where jobs at camp mines were plentiful. The work is boring and sometimes dangerous, and the life is viciously isolating. Beaton is one of a handful of women in a camp full of bored, lonely men, and their harassment of her ranges from mildly annoying to unbearable.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9215J4">
|
|||
|
|
Beaton is a careful observer of her own life. <em>Ducks</em> becomes most impressive for how carefully she contextualizes it: the economic stressors that send her along with her co-workers to the oil sands; the mines’ effect on the natural world and on the Indigenous people who used to live there. When her precisely gridded drawings zoom out to show us the scar of the mines on the vast sweeping landscape, it’s electrifying.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h4 id="fADTjA">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-method-how-the-twentieth-century-learned-to-act-isaac-butler/16786503"><em>The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act</em></a> by Isaac Butler
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ClViC2">
|
|||
|
|
One of the greatest gifts <em>The Method</em> has to offer you is the opportunity to say, with enormous smugness and pleasure, “Actually, that’s not <em>real</em> Method acting” every time you see a new article about Jared Leto sending his co-stars live rats or what have you. But if it’s not about rats, what is real Method acting? That’s a harder question to answer.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="shaHzw">
|
|||
|
|
The Method, loosely speaking, is a school of acting premised on the belief that a performer should work from within to create an authentic emotional reaction, rather than relying on showy external techniques. With rigor and precision, Isaac Butler tracks the concept across the 20th century like it’s a criminal constantly changing aliases, from Stanislavski to Strasberg to Adler to Meisner to Brando to Pacino to whatever Jared Leto thinks he’s doing.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kXasDe">
|
|||
|
|
The other great gift of <em>The Method</em> is that it is chock full of stories. Butler has a fantastic eye for anecdote, from Stella Adler leading the Group Theatre in a revolt against the tyrannical Strasberg by bursting into socialist songs of solidarity, to Marlon Brando laying an egg during an acting class. (The prompt was to play a chicken during nuclear war.) Richly researched and rigorously argued, <em>The Method</em> is a guide to an American school of acting we understand very little for how much we talk about it.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h4 id="LSxBa1">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/shy-the-alarmingly-outspoken-memoirs-of-mary-rodgers-jesse-green/18721732"><em>Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers</em></a> by Mary Rodgers and Jesse Green
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FwagY5">
|
|||
|
|
Trust me when I tell you that I do not say this lightly: <em>Shy</em> is an <em>exceptionally</em> juicy showbiz memoir.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="z9T2nn">
|
|||
|
|
Mary Rodgers was the composer of the much-performed-in-high-schools Broadway musical <em>Once Upon a Mattress</em> and the author of the much-adapted-into-movies YA novel <em>Freaky Friday</em>. She was also the daughter of Richard Rodgers (as in “and Hammerstein,” the composer of some of Broadway’s most beloved Golden Age musicals) and the best friend of Stephen Sondheim (the composer of some of Broadway’s most beloved non-Golden Age musicals). Her son, Adam Guettel, wrote the music for the widely praised <em>A Light in the Piazza</em>. Rodgers was a fixture in the entertainment world for her entire lifetime and met absolutely everyone who was anyone. She does not hold back on her verdicts.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MM4G94">
|
|||
|
|
Rodgers’s plentiful opinions are thoroughly annotated by the chief New York Times theater critic Jesse Green, who compiled the volume out of three years’ worth of interviews with Rodgers. (She died in 2014.) According to Green, when he showed Rodgers a draft of the first chapter, she told him to make it meaner.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FN26W8">
|
|||
|
|
I will leave you with Rodgers’s thoughts on psychiatric drugs in midcentury Manhattan:
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<blockquote>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RzVVts">
|
|||
|
|
Marshall [Mary Rodgers’s then-lyricist] was pretty much commuting to Dr. Feelgood’s every morning and shooting up every night. I mean the genuine, original Dr. Feelgood, whose crazy office was down the block from me on East Seventy-Second Street. His shots, which even Jack Kennedy bent over for, were supposedly “miracle tissue regenerators,” and why not? They were a concoction of amphetamines, vitamins, painkillers, and human placenta. As far as I know they only killed one person: the Kennedy photographer Mark Shaw, whose ex, Pat Suzuki, starred in <em>Flower Drum Song</em>. Another addict was Alan Jay Lerner, who infuriated Daddy when they tried to work together, soon after Ockie’s death, on <em>I Picked a Daisy</em>. When it turned out that Alan was too crazy to work — on the rare occasions he showed up, he had ten Band-Aids on ten fingers because he chewed his cuticles to the point of infection — Daddy dropped the project like the bomb that it was.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
</blockquote>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FLZMlO">
|
|||
|
|
The whole book is like that. Perfection. Zero notes. Enjoy.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h4 id="UItZC8">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/hotbed-bohemian-greenwich-village-and-the-secret-club-that-sparked-modern-feminism-joanna-scutts/17442632"><em>Hotbed: Bohemian Greenwich Village and the Secret Club That Sparked Modern Feminism</em></a> by Joanna Scutts
|
|||
|
|
</h4>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gWtodL">
|
|||
|
|
<em>Hotbed</em> tells the story of Heterodoxy, a women-only social club that emerged in New York’s Greenwich Village in the 1910s and would help to shape America’s rising feminist movement. <em>Hotbed</em> is marked by lacunae: the written materials we know used to exist but don’t seem to anymore, the pieces of information no one ever bothered to write down. We don’t know where Heterodoxy first met, or when, or who was there, or what they talked about.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yuBhNm">
|
|||
|
|
What we do know is plenty fascinating. Heterodoxy’s members included some of the most prominent feminists of their day: author (and notorious divorcée) Charlotte Perkins Gilman; Marie Hoffendahl Jenney Howe, a Unitarian minister who argued that Jesus was not a man but a nonbinary concept; Inez Millholland, the media-savvy suffragist who led marches on a white horse; Crystal Eastman, who co-founded the ACLU.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yxY3jO">
|
|||
|
|
They were living in a moment where it seemed possible to imagine being a woman in a new sort of way, not bound down by marriage and motherhood, but getting an education, entering a profession, and advocating for political rights. It was a heady, feverish, fascinating moment in time, and so these fascinating women liked to get together twice a month and talk about it all: their new ideas, their new lives, their heartaches, and their triumphs. Piecing together what’s left of their conversations, historian Joanna Scutts recreates a seminal moment in American feminism.
|
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</p>
|
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<div class="c-float-left">
|
|||
|
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<figure class="e-image">
|
|||
|
|
<img alt="The cover of “A Portable Magic: A history of books and their readers.”" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HAT2Y3yPLcTOrCjX3FBaejkQnKI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24276362/Smith.Portable.jacket.jpg"/> <cite>Knopf</cite>
|
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<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
<em>Portable Magic</em> by Emma Smith.
|
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</figcaption>
|
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</figure>
|
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</div>
|
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<h4 id="T77Ifs">
|
|||
|
|
<a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/portable-magic-a-history-of-books-and-their-readers-emma-smith/18257698"><em>Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers</em></a> by Emma Smith
|
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</h4>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2Di7CO">
|
|||
|
|
Oxfordian Shakespeare professor Emma Smith pays so much careful attention to what we can tell by judging a book’s cover in her fascinating new <em>Portable Magic</em> that I don’t think she would mind my telling you that this book’s cover design screams “gift book.” It’s got a handsome green paper-over-boards binding reminiscent of leather and no dust jacket, so that it looks vaguely 19th century. Pretty gilt scrollwork surrounds the “well, you read a lot, don’t you?” title. All told, it looks like the sort of book someone unwraps on Christmas morning and never actually reads. That’s a shame because this book is much more interesting than its cover design suggests.
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="46PA2X">
|
|||
|
|
<em>Portable Magic</em> is a history of books as physical objects, from the days of the scroll to the days of the Kindle. In precise analytical prose, Smith tracks the way we use book displays to tell the world about ourselves (remember the <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/8/21/21374157/democratic-national-convention-credibility-bookcase-stacey-abrams-beto-orourke-cory-booker">credibility bookshelf</a>?), how the Allies turned Nazi book burnings into a powerful propaganda tool, and the gruesome history of books bound in human skin. She even has a chapter on the history of the middlebrow gift book and how 19th-century abolitionists put them to use for their cause. Perhaps most impressive is how careful Smith is to avoid <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/1/21/21075327/book-murder-ripping-books-in-half-color-coding-shelves-spine-in-marie-kondo">the sentimental romanticization of the book as object</a> that book people can be so prone to, while still making a clear argument for the power of the book as a piece of technology.
|
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|
</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="e6h61W">
|
|||
|
|
<em>Portable Magic</em> actually would be a pretty good gift for someone who likes books. But that’s not just because it is about books — it’s because it has something interesting to say about them.
|
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|
|
</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>Americans are draining the money they saved during the pandemic</strong> -
|
|||
|
|
<figure>
|
|||
|
|
<img alt="An image of a cute round piggy bank with a blue mask over its little mouth and snout." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Jw3g7xRXF0zxf47_fDSCxjb-Tck=/170x0:2881x2033/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71743721/Untitled_2.0.jpg"/>
|
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|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
Bita Honarvar/Vox; Getty Images
|
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|
|
</figcaption>
|
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|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
Pandemic savings have helped keep people spending even as inflation has spiked. But their stockpiles are increasingly dwindling.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Xdx9QV">
|
|||
|
|
Keith Miller, a technician at an air compressor plant in Connersville, Indiana, was able to build his savings for the first time during the pandemic — he had about $16,000 stored away at one point last year.
|
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|
|
</p>
|
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|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LNZcp0">
|
|||
|
|
Miller, 48, said he was working extra hours since orders at the plant had increased early in the pandemic. Stimulus checks and extra child tax credit payments from the federal government also helped Miller cover necessary expenses for himself and his 8-year-old son, allowing him to save.
|
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|
|
</p>
|
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|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tLRi2V">
|
|||
|
|
But the plant cut back his hours more than a year ago, and the federal government stopped <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/8/30/23317834/child-tax-credit-ctc-ira">sending out expanded child tax credit payments</a> at the end of last year. At the same time, many necessities have become more expensive, including Miller’s monthly rent and milk at the grocery store. Miller said he went from having extra money in his account to being worried about making ends meet, and he’s now about $700 behind on paying his electricity bills.
|
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|
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</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="n1Hkpf">
|
|||
|
|
“I honestly don’t have any savings. It’s gone,” Miller said. “If things keep getting worse, I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wO7iM7">
|
|||
|
|
Miller isn’t alone. Many Americans piled up their savings during the pandemic<strong> </strong>after lawmakers passed rounds of stimulus measures to prop up the economy, and as households spent less on travel and other in-person events.<strong> </strong>But with many stimulus programs over, excess savings are quickly dwindling as <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/11/10/23450034/fed-inflation-consumer-price-index">inflation has spiked</a> and stretched people’s budgets. And even though a strong labor market has led to fast wage growth, inflation has outpaced those gains.
|
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|
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</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4fqvGr">
|
|||
|
|
Beyond making life more difficult for people struggling to afford basic essentials like food and housing, the drop in savings is worrying because it comes at a precarious time. Economists are growing increasingly concerned about a potential recession next year as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to bring inflation under control. Consumer spending is key to ensuring economic growth, making up about <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/10/27/23426848/gdp-report-economy-third-quarter">two-thirds of GDP</a>. But with pandemic savings dwindling, many Americans might not be able to or choose not to spend as much as they have been during the recovery, which could further slow the economy.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h3 id="dBXpag">
|
|||
|
|
Pandemic savings are draining away in many households
|
|||
|
|
</h3>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AN7SZT">
|
|||
|
|
Estimates of excess savings vary, but according to data from Bank of America, Americans still have about $1.2 trillion in extra savings, which is down substantially from a peak of more than $2 trillion last year. The <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT">personal saving rate also dropped to 2.3 percent in October</a>, down from this year’s peak of 4.7 percent in January and 7.3 percent a year before.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LNNNAI">
|
|||
|
|
Consumers built up their savings throughout the first two years of the pandemic, ending 2021 with a “huge amount of savings,” said Diane Swonk, the chief economist at KPMG. Those extra savings helped keep consumers spending and led to a more resilient recovery, even as inflation has eaten into many people’s budgets.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TCduuh">
|
|||
|
|
Earlier in the pandemic, lawmakers passed several relief packages to stimulate the economy, which included direct checks for individuals, expansions to unemployment insurance, and hundreds of billions in aid to state and local governments. Congress also passed expansions to the child tax credit, which gave families up to $3,600 per child and <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23056876/expanded-child-tax-credit-poverty-american-families-impact">helped lift millions of children out of poverty</a>.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ovEv9q">
|
|||
|
|
Chris Wheat, the president of the JPMorgan Chase Institute, said household checking account balances were significantly higher directly after families received federal stimulus payments, with balances among lower-income families up more than 100 percent around the middle of last year compared to 2019.<strong> </strong>
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YzJEnQ">
|
|||
|
|
Checking account balances have since come down, especially those belonging to lower-income and Black and Hispanic families. The <a href="https://www.jpmorganchase.com/institute/research/household-income-spending/household-pulse-cash-balances-through-june-2022">most recent data through June</a> showed that checking account balances among lower-income families were still higher than they were before the pandemic, but up about 50 to 60 percent from 2019 in comparison, Wheat said.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dMwhMn">
|
|||
|
|
Consumers started to drain their excess savings this year as prices shot up substantially for things like groceries, gas, and rent, Swonk said. And although total excess savings haven’t entirely depleted, that extra cushion is gone for many families. The lowest quintile of households depleted their excess savings halfway through the year, Swonk said. An October research report from the Fed found that households in the top half of the distribution <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/excess-savings-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-20221021.html">held a large majority of excess savings</a>, which totaled about $1.35 trillion in the middle of this year. Lower-income households typically spend a larger share of their budgets on necessities like food and housing, meaning that inflation has cut into their savings more.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9cAI36">
|
|||
|
|
“What little we have left by the end of the year will be in the top-income households, which have less of a propensity to spend out of savings because they have income,” Swonk said. “The cushion on savings has dwindled quite dramatically for those who need it most.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3vARN1">
|
|||
|
|
Some economists say excess savings may not help boost spending much next year as the Fed continues to raise interest rates, which will likely slow the economy further.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="F1KX7H">
|
|||
|
|
The Fed is intentionally trying to cool consumer demand by making borrowing money more expensive, which should eventually lead to slower price growth as people spend less. But by doing so, the Fed risks going too far — if businesses respond by hiring fewer workers or even laying them off, that could lead to a spike in unemployment.<strong> </strong>That could also result in lower incomes and fewer savings.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h3 id="JWytUQ">
|
|||
|
|
Excess savings might not provide much of a cushion next year
|
|||
|
|
</h3>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tflO21">
|
|||
|
|
Michael Gapen, the head of US economics at Bank of America, said extra savings — along with higher wages from a strong labor market — have helped keep consumers spending and the economy expanding. But<strong> </strong>excess savings are falling by about $100 billion each month, and upper-income households now hold about 60 percent of those savings, according to Bank of America estimates.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="49qBTd">
|
|||
|
|
That might not provide much of a cushion for the economy next year, since excess savings can quickly turn into “precautionary saving,” Gapen said, meaning that consumers who have extra savings could still pull back spending because they’re more nervous about their job security or the general state of the economy. That could also push the saving rate up.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aukPYT">
|
|||
|
|
“That’s kind of when the game is up for the recovery,” Gapen said. He added that it was “more likely than not” that the country would tip into a recession next year as the Fed raises interest rates, although he said it was unclear how drastic or long a recession might be.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aj9u6W">
|
|||
|
|
There are still some reasons to believe that the current level of excess savings could continue to prop up the economy. The upper 20 percent of households typically account for about 80 percent of spending in leisure and hospitality, a sector that was severely constrained during the pandemic, Gapen said.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="plNU1H">
|
|||
|
|
“You could argue the money’s exactly on the balance sheets of the households that are most likely to engage in that spending,” Gapen said. “It means the recovery could go on longer.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dPvn3d">
|
|||
|
|
But there’s no guarantee that high earners will continue to spend that money, said<strong> </strong>Greg McBride, the chief financial analyst at Bankrate. Higher-income households that are sitting on more savings are still spending in a “very robust way,” but that could change as the economy continues to slow, McBride said.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="guvzw2">
|
|||
|
|
“We’ve certainly seen a sharp decline in financial markets this year. If you started to see a meaningful retreat in home prices, that could certainly do it, or a substantive rise in unemployment,” McBride said. “Any of that could prompt even higher-income households to clutch the pocketbooks tighter and cut back on spending.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7QbaZI">
|
|||
|
|
Lower and middle-income households that have been burning through extra savings at a faster rate also won’t have much to fall back on as the economy weakens, which could further hurt spending, McBride said.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wcqcce">
|
|||
|
|
Whether a recession comes or not, there is a growing unease among many Americans, even as some have more money than they did pre-pandemic. McBride noted that a Bankrate poll released in June found that 58 percent of Americans were <a href="https://www.bankrate.com/f/102997/d645adeb42/20220623-june-fsp.pdf">uncomfortable with the amount of emergency savings they had</a>, up from 48 percent last year and 44 percent in 2020.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="peMGGC">
|
|||
|
|
Some Americans have started cutting back spending now to stock up their savings ahead of a potential economic downturn.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qHF92B">
|
|||
|
|
Cassie Williams, 38, a licensing specialist at an advertising firm in Farmington, Michigan, said she makes nearly $20,000 more annually now compared to the job she had before the pandemic started. Because of her new job, it has become easier to set aside money — Williams said her family has more than $1,000 in their savings account.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6hgob2">
|
|||
|
|
But Williams said they’re no longer receiving expanded child tax credit payments, and everything seems to have become more expensive. Williams, who has a 6- and a 2-year-old child, said she is “making sure we’re not living above our means,” and their family has cut back spending on things like dining out in order to save more.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vs9Hll">
|
|||
|
|
“Just because your job situation is stable today doesn’t mean that some external factor can’t come in and completely mess it up tomorrow,” Williams said. “We are prioritizing saving because we know that stuff happens.”
|
|||
|
|
</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Bangladesh vs India first Test | Rahul's acumen will be tested as India to push for WTC final qualification</strong> - The journey starts at the Zahoor Ahmed Stadium, which has traditionally favoured the batters but also offers some turn towards the business end of the match.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>FIFA World Cup | Messi ‘fool’ taunt spawns mugs, T-shirts in Argentina</strong> - In Argentina, Lionel Messi’s outburst after the World Cup win over the Netherlands has drawn comparisons with Diego Maradona, a troubled genius known for fiery moments both on and off the field.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Formula One | Ferrari appoint Vasseur as team boss</strong> - Frederic Vasseur's departure from Swiss-based Sauber, which runs the Alfa Romeo team, had been announced earlier</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Messi’s Argentina in World Cup semifinal showdown with Modric’s Croatia</strong> - Lionel Messi, now 35, will attempt to guide Argentina into the FIFA World Cup final for the second time in eight years, while Luka Modric’s Croatia have again defied the odds to stand on the brink of a second successive final</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Warner firmly in our thoughts for India tour, says coach McDonald</strong> - Warner averaged just 25.5 in the just-concluded two-Test series against the West Indies</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>First-year MBBS students of Apollo Medical College take the Cadaveric Oath in Chittoor of Andhra Pradesh</strong> - A Cadaveric Oath is a pledge that a medical student takes before touching the cadaver in the dissection hall</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Owaisi questions PM on Dec 9 clashes with China, gives notice for adjournment motion for discussion in Parliament</strong> -</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Milk reaching Kerala through all check-posts should be tested: Milma Chairman</strong> - K.S. Mani raised concerns about the quality of thousands of litres of milk reaching Kerala from Tamil Nadu every day</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Kerala Assembly passes bills to remove Governor as Chancellor of universities</strong> - United Democratic Front (UDF) staged a walkout in protest against the refusal to accept all of its proposed amendments to the Bill</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>LHB coaches for more trains from Mysuru</strong> - Trains from Mysuru to Tuticorin and Mayiladuturai will get LHB coaches</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>EU corruption scandal: MEP denies Qatar bribery after over €1m seized</strong> - Eva Kaili, one of four suspects, is stripped of her role as vice president of the European Parliament.</p></li>
|
|||
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Russia’s Putin scraps trademark year-end news conference</strong> - No reason is given, but there is growing unease among Russians over the invasion of Ukraine.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine’s missile graveyard ‘is evidence against Russia’</strong> - Prosecutors want the collection of more than 1,000 munitions to be used in any future court action.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>World Cup 2022: Argentina v Croatia - Lionel Messi and Luka Modric battle for last final</strong> - Argentina’s Lionel Messi and Luka Modric of Croatia have a lot in common - but only one will get a final chance to win a World Cup.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Odesa port reopens after energy network hit</strong> - The Black Sea port of Odesa has resumed operations after Russian strikes against the city on Saturday.</p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Mercedes built a concept car for Avatar, and we drove it</strong> - The collaboration may seem odd, but it made sense after we drove it. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1903641">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>“Fake” Roman coins authenticated, bearing likeness of lost Roman emperor</strong> - Analysis re-ignites debate over existence of 3rd century CE emperor named Sponsian. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1903012">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effective, fast, and unrecoverable: Wiper malware is popping up everywhere</strong> - Wiper malware from no fewer than 9 families has appeared this year. Now there are 2 more. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1903915">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Officials, experts call for masking as illnesses slam US ahead of holidays</strong> - Nearly 10% of US counties have “high” transmission levels and should be masking. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1903918">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Chrome’s “Manifest V3” plan to limit ad-blocking extensions is delayed</strong> - Manifest V3 transition is delayed again to the relief of Chrome users everywhere. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1903852">link</a></p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A burglar breaks into a house. He begins to search the home for valuables when hears a quiet voice say</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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<div class="md">
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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“Jesus is watching you” he dismisses it as paranoia and carries on with his crime. He hears the voice again “Jesus is watching you”. He’s knows this time it’s not in his head so he looks around the room and sees a parrot in the corner. He walks over to the parrot and it repeats one more time “Jesus is watching you”. The burglar says to the parrot. “Is your name Jesus?” “No it’s Moses” the parrot replied. The burglar laughs and says “Who names a parrot Moses?” and the parrot says “The same person who named the Rottweiler Jesus”
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</p>
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</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/OwenJthomas89"> /u/OwenJthomas89 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zkbzj6/a_burglar_breaks_into_a_house_he_begins_to_search/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zkbzj6/a_burglar_breaks_into_a_house_he_begins_to_search/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>An original joke from my 6 year old son</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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<div class="md">
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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What do you call it when you mix a duck and a calculator?
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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A quackulator!
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</p>
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</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/joelcrb"> /u/joelcrb </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zklm2m/an_original_joke_from_my_6_year_old_son/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zklm2m/an_original_joke_from_my_6_year_old_son/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>5 years ago, I asked the love of my life out on a date. Today, I asked her to marry me.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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<div class="md">
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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She said no both times.
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</p>
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</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/iamfunnys0metimes"> /u/iamfunnys0metimes </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zkf8gi/5_years_ago_i_asked_the_love_of_my_life_out_on_a/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zkf8gi/5_years_ago_i_asked_the_love_of_my_life_out_on_a/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>My young son saw me taking Viagra and asked what it was…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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<div class="md">
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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So I replied, “It’s just a vitamin I have to take every once in a while.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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My wife said, “You really shouldn’t lie to the boy…”
|
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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I said, “you’re right honey.” So I knelt next to my son and said “This is the pill Daddy needs because Mommy is getting old.”
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</p>
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</div>
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<!-- SC_ON -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/revtim"> /u/revtim </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zk0fr5/my_young_son_saw_me_taking_viagra_and_asked_what/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zk0fr5/my_young_son_saw_me_taking_viagra_and_asked_what/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>I saw two guys having a fight on the train. So, being a bouncer, I dealt with the situation accordingly.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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<div class="md">
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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I just stood there looking like a cunt.
|
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</p>
|
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</div>
|
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<!-- SC_ON -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/incredibleinkpen"> /u/incredibleinkpen </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zjtcsv/i_saw_two_guys_having_a_fight_on_the_train_so/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/zjtcsv/i_saw_two_guys_having_a_fight_on_the_train_so/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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</ul>
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