Does Xi Jinping’s Seizure of History Threaten His Future? - The struggles of the first century of Communist Party rule are being buried by the need to cohere around what Xi calls “the great rejuvenation” of China. - link
Inside the Democrats’ Battle to Build Back Better - House progressives delayed the infrastructure bill to protect Biden’s multitrillion-dollar agenda. Did it work? - link
The Trial of Kyle Rittenhouse Begins with Gruesome Videos and a Plea for Fact-Finding - The rifle-wielding teen-ager killed two men and grievously wounded a third during racial-justice protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin. - link
The January 6th Investigation Gets Closer to Donald Trump - Judges, national-security officials, and Liz Cheney say that the effort must proceed. - link
How Trump Transformed the Supreme Court - The legal journalist Linda Greenhouse expects the new conservative majority to change American law on abortion, religion, and affirmative action. - link
From Vox
Why movies tilt the camera like this -
The expressionist origins of the “Dutch angle.”
The Dutch angle (aka Dutch tilt, canted angle, or oblique angle) is a filmmaking technique that involves setting the camera at an angle and tilting the entire scene. You see it everywhere, from blockbuster movies to soap commercials. It’s used to emphasize when something is a little off, or just to make a shot look more interesting.
The thing is… it’s not actually Dutch. And it didn’t start with filmmakers. It was pioneered by German directors during World War I, when outside films were blocked from being shown in Germany. While Hollywood was serving up largely glamorous, rollicking films, the German film industry joined the expressionist movement in art and literature, which was focused on processing the chaos of world war. Its themes touched on betrayal, suicide, psychosis, and terror. And expressionist films conveyed that darkness not just through their plotlines, but through their set designs, costumes — and unusual camera shots.
Soul food and the stories it tells about America -
Four-year-old Hugh Howard digs into some Thanksgiving soul food with his dad, Aber Howard, at the fifth annual Soul Food Dinner at Elliot Park in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1999. | Joey McLeister/Star Tribune via Getty Images
Poet and author Caroline Randall Williams joined Vox Conversations ahead of Thanksgivingto discuss what we’re getting right — and wrong — about Black culinary traditions.
What can we learn about our history, and ourselves, just by taking a bite?
You often hear me say on the Vox Conversations podcast or read in my writing how I believe identity is in everything. Nowhere is this more evident than with food. We associate our favorite cuisines with the people who originally cooked them. Ethnicities and nationalities are a part of our daily vocabularies because of what we eat.
Because food and identity are intertwined — in this nation and every other nation — things inevitably get complicated. It’s about to be Thanksgiving, one of the most widely celebrated American holidays, and one whose commonly told origin story is a Eurocentric fairy tale. It’s uncomfortable to think about war and genocide as you bite into your grandmother’s sweet potato pie, or as you savor that salty, smoky skin falling off your turkey drumstick. Just as the legacy of enslavement lives on in our bodies, our laws, and our cultural practices, it also goes directly into our bellies. Many of the items we see on our Thanksgiving tables, much of which I recognize as “soul food,” can teach us a lot about America — and about ourselves as Americans.
Thinking about all this encouraged me to reach out to poet, scholar, and author Caroline Randall Williams. Six years ago, Caroline authored a cookbook, Soul Food Love, with her mother Alice Randall, herself a celebrated author and the first black woman to co-author a No. 1 country hit. You might have also read Caroline’s op-ed for the New York Times in the summer of 2020. In it, she addressed the continued existence of monuments honoring Confederate soldiers with the viral opening line, “I have rape-colored skin.”
In this episode, we discuss not only some of the very good recipes in that book, but also how Southern “comfort food” has become everyday cuisine — sometimes to our detriment. How do we interpret African American culinary traditions in modern times, and what are we getting wrong?
Below is an edited excerpt from our conversation. Of course, you’ll find much more in the full podcast, so subscribe to Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Jamil Smith
How did you first come to identify or connect with food so intimately?
Caroline Williams
I’m torn about how to answer this question because I can’t figure out if I’m supposed to honor the ancestors or my living mother in the answer of it.
Jamil Smith
Honor the truth, that’s all.
Caroline Williams
I can say in broad strokes, I came to my relationship with food through the women in my family. The two things that came to mind were my Grandmother Joan’s kitchen, but then also the pictures of my mom feeding me as a baby, and the earliest memories of her doing all kinds of elaborate concoctions to try and make me happy when I was her baby girl.
So food as a way to communicate love has always been sort of central to that, I guess. And it’s always been part of our family stories. My first complete sentence was, “Mommy, artichoke please?” Which, I don’t know. That says so many things about me. My first sentence was about food, and it was about weird food, and it was polite, but it was also demanding.
Jamil Smith
I’d say that fits. You’ve requested an artichoke exactly one more time than I ever have.
How do you talk about food with your mother?
Caroline Williams
Well, that question is so layered these days, because we did write a whole book together. Co-writing a book is complicated under every circumstance, and writing one with your mother adds an extra layer of complication for sure, but also a layer of insight and love. So when Mom and I talk about food together, we’re really talking about family history. We’re talking about hard truths. We’re talking about shared memories. We’re talking about learning each other and our ancestors through the food, through the recipes, right?
And I think we’re talking about how we collaborate. Like, Mom and I, we don’t cook together that often. We cook for each other often, but not together often ’cause we cook so differently. Like, I’m a “clean up by myself while I cook” kinda girl, and Mom’s a mad scientist genius who gets all of the stuff done and then we sort of survey the landscape of the kitchen afterward. And then take a deep breath and clean. You know, you learn so much about each other.
So how do we talk about food? What the answer is is that food is in everything for us. It’s in our history. It’s in how we sit. It’s in how we gather. It’s in how we write, what we wanna write, our political concerns, our creative obsessions. Food tells stories, and food is about survival and Black joy, for me. And so is everything else I do.
Michael Tullberg/Getty Images
Author Caroline Randall Williams attends the 47th NAACP Image Awards ceremony at the Pasadena Conference Center in California in 2016.
Jamil Smith
It seems also to be a method of communication. And in being writers, we are used to communicating in certain ways.
I think certainly, our ancestors and our elders communicated to us through food. I remember, you know, thinking about Thanksgiving, and thinking about my grandmother’s macaroni and cheese with the skin on top, so to speak.
And honestly, because I grew up pescatarian, her making that special effort to make a little side dish for me and my mother while cooking for everybody else. And that, to me, communicated care and love. That, to me, also is the soul food that I remember, the food that literally fueled my soul.
What is soul food to you? And how do we come to call it that?
Caroline Williams
So this is an evolving question for me. I think that traditionally what I have said is, to me, soul food is food that’s prepared with love, to show that love to the people that you welcome to your table. In broad strokes, that’s what soul food is to me, is food that serves the body and soul of the people you love.
And I think that I use that definition because of the charge and challenge of the cookbook that Mom and I wrote together was really to try and reclaim narratives of health and body preservation through food in the Black story. And so I wanted to get away from this notion that all of our food is unhealthy, or the scope of our food is limited to the celebration food that we have traditionally, in the bigger picture, called soul food.
And I preface that question with — I have traditionally said, because I think that as I get older and as I evolve, I fall in love like with being Black again every day. Like I’m in love with it. I’m in love with our stories. I’m in love with the gift of this, being colored in America, together with the challenge of it. I do think that there is value in making the traditional lists of what soul food is too: the collard greens, the candied yams, the fried chicken, the cornbread, the monkey bread. The Hoppin’ John, the hush puppies, the fish.
Jamil Smith
(laughs) Right.
Caroline Williams
You know, the spaghetti. (laughs)
Jamil Smith
Mm-hmm.
Caroline Williams
All that stuff, the macaroni and cheese, the list of true comfort things that got put out on your Nana’s table. That stuff, as some iteration of soul food, is valuable to name because it conjures so many shared memories for all of us, and that creates community.
But there’s a challenge there. You wanna name the things that are obviously familiar to the group, but also I do feel a responsibility and a desire to expand the definition. Because when I bake a fish, that’s soul food to me. Because I know that that was what my grandfather did. He’d catch red snapper in Alabama, and he’d bake them in tin foil, and that was his favorite thing, and that to me is soul food then. Right? It’s clean, simple food that is soul food, because it tells a Black American story that makes me feel loved and connected to my ancestors.
Jamil Smith
I see comfort food and soul food, I think, being equated quite a bit. And soul food being, like you said, presented in the mind as a certain set of images. You know, the fried chicken, and a lot of things, frankly, that are not healthy for us.
I don’t know if equating the two is always appropriate. Do you see a distinction at all? And if so, why do you think that might be significant?
Caroline Williams
Well, I think that what is comforting and what serves the purpose that soul food serves are not always the same thing. Right? Like I get comforted by a warm bowl of mashed potatoes, or a bunch of macaroni and cheese or greens or whatever, on a plate that I can just endlessly dive into. But then that’s also some version of soul food.
But then again, this question of the purpose past the aesthetic. That’s something that I think about with the blues a lot too. Like the sound of the blues versus the feeling of it. That’s sort of how I feel about soul food.
It’s like, the blues had one sound. Old-time music had its own sound, and then it sort of evolved into the early primitive blues, country blues. Then you get the blues with the electric guitars and all of the different sounds that emerged in the ’50s and ’60s with the blues. John Lee Hooker sounds a lot different than Lead Belly, right? It’s still all the blues, but there’s this evolution.
And to me, the blues is the sound of Black American suffering made into popular art to soothe the people who were suffering in the South. Right? And that sound can change, but the spirit behind the sound … to me, that’s the spirit of the blues.
So the spirit of soul food is the flavors of what helps Black people survive. And you survive by being comforted, but you also survive by being well. So that’s the question, can this baked fish and these peppery vegan greens, can that be soul food? Because it keeps me well and also engages with my food history? I hope so. I mean for it to be.
I think that there’s a question of taking comfort and healthy comfort versus self-soothing and self-medicating, and all of those parts too. I can’t give you simple answers to these questions.
Jamil Smith
I don’t want simple answers.
To hear the rest of the conversation, click here. You can subscribe to Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts — and leave us a five-star rating, if you’d be so kind.
Also, we want to hear from you! Please email your thoughts and ideas to voxconversations@vox.com, and tell us who and what you’d like to hear on the program.
Kyle Rittenhouse’s tears -
Kyle Rittenhouse becomes emotional as he testifies during his trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Wisconsin on November 10. | Mark Hertzberg/Getty Images
The 18-year-old who shot three men at a protest took the stand and resorted to a tried-and-true strategy for white men in trouble.
What Kyle Rittenhouse displayed in a Kenosha, Wisconsin, courtroom this week as he testified in his homicide trial was what folks like to call an “ugly cry.”
Charged in the killings of two men and injury of another amid days of racial justice protests last summer, the defendant started to falter on the stand as he described that fateful night last August,when the then-17-year-old was armed with a rifle, patrolling the streets of a town that was not his own. Rittenhouse’s eyes shut almost completely, save for an occasional glance to his left in the direction of the jury. Then came the sobbing, which kept the rest of his response to his attorney’s questioning about that evening from escaping his quivering lips.
Rittenhouse’s blubbering was the headline of the day after the defendant offered his much-awaited testimony in the case Wednesday, recalling the night he shot Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber to death and “vaporized” much of the bicep of medic Gaige Grosskreutz, according to Grosskreutz’s testimony. Rittenhouse wasn’t weeping with regret; he was claiming self-defense, and recounting how he felt his life was in danger.
The trial and pretrial proceedings had already sparked a national outcry after Judge Bruce Schroeder decided last month that prosecutors may not refer to Rosenbaum, Huber, and Grosskreutz as “victims,” and that defense attorneys could call them “looters” or “arsonists.” Now with his tears, Rittenhouse has cast himself as the lone victim in his own homicide trial.
When he wasn’t crying, Rittenhouse explained why he had traveled the roughly 20 miles from Illinois. Earlier that day, he allegedly offered “condolences” to a business owner for cars that were set afire the previous night, and he said that he and a friend agreed to help provide armed protection for the business that night. The defendant also testified that he gave a bulletproof vest in his possession — issued by the Grayslake, Illinois, police department’s Explorer program for young people interested in law enforcement careers — to a friend, saying he felt he wouldn’t need it because, he recalled in the courtroom,“I’m going to be helping people.”
The Illinois teenager faces two counts of first-degree homicide and one of attempted homicide, along with three other charges in the shooting on August 25, 2020, just a couple of nights after a Kenosha police officer shot Black motorist Jacob Blake seven times in the back in front of three of his children. The killings of the demonstrators caused a national shock wave last summer, highlighting the powder keg of emotion surrounding arrests, clashes, and tense exchanges as tens of millions of Americans took to the streets to protest racial injustice.
The debate this week has centered on whether the defendant’s spectacle was authentic. Whether or not the crying was real, it was a performance, and it had an audience. Like many white men accused of violent crimes and misconduct before him, Rittenhouse appealed with his tears not merely to the 12 fellow citizens who will decide his fate, but also to certain white members of the American public who too often see emotion like that and imagine only the faces of their sons — not any born to mothers who look like mine.
There is evidence that Rittenhouse conspicuously aligned himself with the “blue lives matter” crowd, so it’s worth considering his sobbing within the context of the toxic and limited view of manhood that remains so popular in America, particularly among the modern political right. Some compared Rittenhouse to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s reaction when questioned during his confirmation hearings about Christine Blasey Ford’s credible allegations of sexual assault. Wednesday’s display from Rittenhouse bore some similarities to Kavanaugh’s sanctimonious anger, which he often dotted with cracks in his voice. As I wrote at the time, the future Supreme Court justice took advantage of the leeway that his gender and privilege affords to him, and Rittenhouse did the same.
It is a particular privilege to be considered a “boy” after you’ve become an adult — and when you’ve made decisions like Rittenhouse’s. In Rittenhouse’s case, he was generously characterized by the New York Times as someone “who has idolized law enforcement since he was young” and went to Kenosha “with at least one mission: to play the role of police officer and medic.” The prosecution noted a number of his lies Wednesday, including false claims to the press about being an EMT. Part of the discomfort as we watched him emote, to say nothing of the suspicion, may be that we’re generally unfamiliar with seeing boys and men exhibit emotion in such a public way. Vulnerability and common conceptions of manhood, especially among conservatives, have not traditionally been bedfellows.
However, Rittenhouse’s emotion on the stand should be an indictment of his behavior, not an excuse for it. By law, he was too young to have the weapon he used to kill. He told the court that the reason he picked the AR-15-style rifle, as opposed to a handgun, is he thought “it looked cool.”
Legal experts I spoke with judged Rittenhouse’s testimony to be a positive for him, because the defense must have it both ways: While admitting to the facts of the shootings, they must show that Rittenhouse was the good guy that night, and that he feared for his life. If Rittenhouse provoked the conflict and shooting with his actions, he has no credible claim to self- defense. But if he can convince the jury that, as he told the court, it was either him or them, perhaps he created sufficient reasonable doubt. Time will tell.
American jurisprudence has bigger problems than Kyle Rittenhouse. This trial, however, is shining light on a few. Our legal system tends to treat young white men like him as sob stories rather than cautionary tales, especially if they exhibit anything approximating fear or remorse. The resentment and accusation of melodramatics is due in part to the reasonable presumption that another 17-year-old who isn’t white, committing the same act, wouldn’t receive the same sympathy. They wouldn’t be able to be caught in false statements — such as Rittenhouse’s claim on the night of the killing that Rosenbaum was armed when he allegedly threatened Rittenhouse prior to the shooting (Rosenbaum wasn’t) — and have any expectation that tears could secure their acquittal.
Rittenhouse’s victims were all white men, making them somewhat of an exception in American jurisprudence. Typically, such prejudgment is saved for people of color, and is handed out by law enforcement. If people of color even survive encounters with law enforcement and live to see the inside of a courtroom for the chance to be wrongfully convicted or disproportionately sentenced, it feels like a small miracle.
The self-styled militia patrolling the city that night were, by several accounts, mostly white men, yet another example of the unequally enforced protections of the Second Amendment. It isn’t that they didn’t have the right to do so, though Rittenhouse technically was too young(among the charges he faces is possessing a dangerous weapon under the age of 18).
Is it reasonable to think that a Black person similarly outfitted with a weapon of war during a civil rights protest in Kenosha would not have been arrested or potentially harmed by the police swarming the streets? If that person shot someone, would they be able to use the defense so many police officers use when killing Black and brown people — that they feared for their life? Tears on the stand didn’t work for the Exonerated Five in New York City back in 1989. Would they work for anyone who looked like us?
This speaks to much of the negative reaction to Rittenhouse’s display on the stand Wednesday. It isn’t simply that a killer cried about his own fear, rather than the lives he took. It represented the exercise of entitlement, the enduring perception of the youth of white men and boys who commit illegal acts.
Racial favoritism remains one of the many cancers afflicting our jurisprudence. By the late summer of 2020, there were fewer children incarcerated in the United States than at any point since the 1980s — but then a survey, released in March by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, revealed that even during a pandemic, the racial disparity in youth detention grew even wider, with white children in 30 states being released at a rate 17 percent higher than Black youths.
“America’s mistreatment of Black children is chronic and casual,” NYU law professor emerita Kim Taylor-Thompson wrote in May. “The ‘Black person as criminal’ stereotype, which equates dangerousness with skin color, has demonstrated remarkable resilience over time. It persists even in light of conflicting data.”
Kyle Rittenhouse can’t reverse that stereotype by himself, even if he’s convicted. It isn’t bad if Rittenhouse receives a fair trial. Everyone should. That’s the point. However, it’s the exploitation of the leeway too often given to young white defendants that makes people resentful, and rightfully so.
The manner in which Rittenhouse has been granted grace is astounding, but not necessarily bad. But Jacob Blake is paralyzed today, in part, because he didn’t receive the benefit of the doubt from a police officer that Rittenhouse has received from a legion of supporters (with even a judge seeming to tip the scales in his favor). If all lives truly mattered, that wouldn’t be the case.
Correction, 6 pm: A previous version of this story stated that Kyle Rittenhouse brought the AR-15-style rifle he used from Illinois. A friend of Rittenhouse’s is alleged to have purchased the gun for him in Wisconsin.
From The Hindu: Sports
Making MotoGP popular my biggest achievement, says Rossi - Rossi started his career in the 125cc category and won a world title in 1997, followed by the 250cc championship in 1999; he moved to the premier class and won seven titles between 2001 and 2009
Rahane to lead India in first Test against New Zealand, all-format stars rested - Vihari dropped as Shreyas back in Test squad
Indian women’s cricket team to tour New Zealand ahead of World Cup next year - The six-match series will begin with the lone T20 on February 9 and end on February 24
F1 title task is as steep as it can be, says Hamilton - The Brazilian round will also be the third and final sprint event of the season, with qualifying on Friday for a 100km race on Saturday that decides the starting grid for Sunday’s main grand prix
Brazil beats Colombia 1-0 to qualify for Qatar World Cup - Sixth-place Uruguay can still total Brazil’s 34 points, but it will face Chile in the last round of qualifying, which makes it mathematically impossible for both of them to overtake the leader
From The Hindu: National News
SC takes up plea on hate speech proliferation - Bench says it will, rather than deal with the case piecemeal, hear what authorities had to say
Former CVC to inaugurate 50-bed hospital on Saturday - Sri Gurudeva Charitable Trust constructed the hospital to serve the poor
Will consider as per law Bhim Army Chief’s plea for common election symbol, Election Commission tells Delhi High Court - Considering EC’s stand, the judge disposed of the petition, observing that the petitioner’s application may be considered by the commission in terms of the Symbols Order and other applicable laws.
Samajwadi Party will form govt in Uttar Pradesh: Akhilesh Yadav - The SP leader said unemployment and inflation are big issues in the country.
Top Maoist leader carrying bounty of ₹1 cr arrested by Jharkhand police - Bose, wanted in several criminal cases, is a senior leader of the outfit’s central committee.
From BBC: Europe
Covid: Dutch set for partial lockdown as infections surge - The measures, due to last three weeks, are expected to cover shops, sport and catering.
Poland border: West condemns Belarus at UN over stranded migrants - EU nations, the US and UK say Belarus is putting migrants’ lives in danger for political purposes.
Poland-Belarus: How social media posts fuelled the migrant crisis - Messages on social media had a key role in a mass move of migrants to the Polish border this week.
Memorial: Russia moves to close major human rights group - The group say that prosecutors have accused it of violating a law on foreign agents.
Aminata Diallo: Paris St-Germain midfielder released by police without charge - Paris St-Germain midfielder Aminata Diallo is released without charge by French police investigating an attack on her PSG team-mate Kheira Hamraoui.
From Ars Technica
Rocket Report: SpinLaunch spins up, Falcon Heavy to return big time in 2022 - “It’s a radically different way to accelerate projectiles and launch vehicles.” - link
Spiders’ movements are tracked by scientists as they weave their webs - Johns Hopkins researchers used night vision and AI tools to reveal shared set of rules. - link
Booking.com was reportedly hacked by a US intel agency but never told customers - Data involving Middle Eastern countries stolen by man working for unknown US agency. - link
Tapeworms found in man’s brain years after he ate feces-tainted food - Neurocysticercosis and a most disturbing way to get tapeworms in your brain. - link
You shall not pinch to zoom: Rittenhouse trial judge disallows basic iPad feature - Judge: iPad pinch-to-zoom could “insert more items” into video of shootings. - link
A Father Notices His Son’s Bedroom Is Spotless, Then Finds An Envelope -
A father passing by his son’s bedroom was astonished to see that his bed was nicely made and everything was picked up. Then he saw an Envelope, propped up prominently on the pillow that was addressed to ‘Dad.’
With the worst premonition he opened the envelope with trembling hands and read the letter.
Dear Dad: It is with great regret and sorrow that I’m writing you. I had to elope with my new girlfriend because I wanted to avoid a scene with Mom and you.
I have been finding real passion with Stacy and she is so nice.
But I knew you would not approve of her because of all her piercing, tattoos, tight motorcycle clothes and the fact that she is much older than I am. But it’s not only the passion…Dad she’s pregnant. Stacy said that we will be very happy.
She owns a trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood for the whole winter. We share a dream of having many more children.
Stacy has opened my eyes to the fact that marijuana doesn’t really hurt anyone.
We’ll be growing it for ourselves and trading it with the other people that live nearby for cocaine and ecstasy.
In the meantime we will pray that science will find a cure for AIDS so Stacy can get better. She deserves it.
Don’t worry Dad. I’m 15 and I know how to take care of myself.
Someday I’m sure that we will be back to visit so that you can get to know your grandchildren. Love, Your Son John
PS. Dad, none of the above is true. I’m over at Tommy’s house.
I Just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than a Report card that’s in my center desk drawer.
A handsome man in a suit approaches a young lady at a bar and asks if he can buy her a drink. “Don’t you have a girlfriend?” she asked. “Guys like you always have girlfriends.” -
He looked downcast, “No, sadly we broke up just over a month ago.”
“Oh I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, “OK then, I’ll have a white wine please.”
One glass of wine led to a second. A few drinks later after a kiss and a cuddle they headed off back to her place and made passionate love.
While he was putting his clothes back on she said, “So, you’re good looking, a nice guy and amazing in bed. Can I ask why on earth you split with your girlfriend?”
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Michael Tullberg/Getty Images
