Welcome back to The Weekend Press! Today, Maddy Kearns sits down with America’s most famous bishop—after the Pope, of course. Suzy Weiss on poisoned salads. Coleman Hughes on how to fix sports betting before it’s too late. And more!
But first: “Usha and the baby are happy and healthy.”
So announced the vice president on Sunday, upon the birth of his fourth child. The news was followed up yesterday by a few pictures, posted by his wife, captioned: “Enjoy these attempts at taking a decent family photo with four kids!” In them, Usha Vance is smiling widely, arms wrapped around two of her kids, while her husband holds the baby.
And yet: There are those who insist that Usha Vance can’t possibly be happy. For two years, progressives have claimed she is a hostage in her own marriage—that her smiles are cries for help and her every expression of affection is performance.
Meanwhile, the New York Times bestseller list continues to prominently feature Yesteryear—a novel about an outwardly happy but secretly miserable conservative wife, which Kat Rosenfield memorably described in these pages as “parasocial hate porn for millennial feminists.” As Freya India asks in her piece today: Why are some liberals so desperate to believe women who make traditional choices must be trapped by them?
Having read the vice president’s memoir, Freya has a radical theory: that J.D. Vance both adores his wife and respects her. “The Usha described in the book,” she writes, is not “some sort of doormat or background figure in her husband’s life.”
She also has a radical suggestion: Could the Vances help remind young Americans that a happy marriage isn’t a cage?
Bishop Robert Barron, founder of the Word on Fire media empire and one of the most influential Catholic voices in America, is fine with annoying every end of the political spectrum. For interviewing people who defy Catholic teachings, he’s been called “NOT CHRIST-LIKE” by traditionalists. For advising the Trump administration on religious liberty, he’s been called a right-wing stooge. Over whiskey at a steakhouse in D.C., he told Madeleine Kearns all about his work at the White House, his impressions of the new Pope, the dangers of “dumbed-down” Catholicism—and why he wishes more people would go to confession.
Barely a week goes by without a sports-betting scandal. (The latest involves an Arizona Cardinals executive, suspended by the NFL for allegedly betting on his team’s games.) In his essay today, Coleman Hughes argues that if we’re going to prevent the $167 billion industry from completely corroding the integrity of athletics, we need to do something—and fast. To find out what he’s suggesting, read on.
How can an intelligent person be seduced by communism? And what finally breaks the spell? In this week’s Things Worth Remembering, Gary Saul Morson recommends a largely forgotten 1949 classic, “The God That Failed,” a collection of essays in which six prominent intellectuals who once believed in communism described their disillusionment with it. The parallels to today, he argues, are impossible to ignore.
Second Thought
You could roll your eyes at the hypocrisy of the culture war raging about The Odyssey. (Why get het up about a black Helen if you’re going to accept a face-lifted Anne Hathaway?) But Suzy Weiss is loving it. “Suddenly, my feed is full of debates over the difference between kleos, the Greek concept of glory, and timé, which is honor,” she writes in her latest newsletter—arguing that this is a vast improvement from the movies that usually rule the summer months. “Do you remember the awe and anguish you experienced during Deadpool & Wolverine? Me neither.”
In the latest episode of Second Thought, you can listen to Suzy talk to her co-host, Dan Ahdoot, about loving The Odyssey, worrying about Tom Brady, and whether she’s tempted to buy parasite-infested lettuce for 50 percent off . . .
Knock Knock, It’s Cupid!
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We’ve published plenty of stories worth catching up on this week. Do not miss Peter Savodnik’s gorgeous essay about sending his daughter to sleepaway camp for the first time. Meanwhile, happiness expert Arthur Brooks wrote about why he does something that makes him unhappy. . .
How should you spend the rest of your weekend? We asked our politics editor Mene Ukueberuwa for his recommendations. . .
👂Listen: You won’t regret a trek to Tanglewood—the Boston Symphony’s summer retreat in the Berkshires, which is tranquil and tree-covered, and always feels a little cooler than the day’s weather. For my money, the best upcoming concert is next Friday, headlined by Richard Wagner’s “Prelude and Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde, conducted by an eminent visitor in Esa-Pekka Salonen. Shed a tear, enjoy the breeze, and feel yourself fall in love.
📖Read: Freedom from Fear. If your America 250 reading list didn’t end on July 4, this is one of the best additions you can make. Historian David M. Kennedy tells the conjoined story of the Great Depression and the U.S. experience in World War II. And even though the title is drawn from Franklin Roosevelt’s famous speech, the book doesn’t focus solely on the White House that steered the country through these events. More attention is paid to the tinkerers and tycoons who restarted the economy and the sometimes brilliant, sometimes ordinary sailors and Marines who pushed back the Japanese from island to island.
🥩Eat: Cherry beef bourguignon. My wife and I returned from our honeymoon in France with only a few keepsakes: a mug engraved with an image of Mont-Saint-Michel, and a French-language picture book for the future child we were hoping for. In the end, the most-prized souvenir was a recipe we haven’t stopped making two years after we returned. It was a simple beef bourguignon that we tried at a little restaurant in Paris that was only slightly touristy. Replicate it with a middle-of-the shelf pinot noir that’s fit to expend on cooking and some tart cherries thrown in to cut the savoriness of the meal. Best in cold weather, unfortunately, but irresistible enough that you’ll crave it year round.
3 lbs of cubed stew meat, browned in oil.
1 cup pitted tart cherries to balance the savory sauce
Dry red wine, beef stock, sliced onions, carrots, garlic, and thyme
Sautéed mushrooms and pearl onions
Last but not least, we asked our creative director Clara Grusq to tell us about a beautiful thing she’s been thinking about this week. Her answer: the Boléro. Maurice Ravel’s piece is currently onstage as a ballet at New York City Center, and it sent her back to the moment she first fell in love with it—watching Argentinian dancer Jorge Donn perform Maurice Béjart’s iconic choreography in the 1981 film Les Uns et les Autres. “There is nothing I don’t love about this ballet,” she writes. “The red circle as a stage, the solitary dancer who slowly becomes one with the collective. The relentless, almost militaristic rhythm that builds into a kind of hypnosis. It is one of those rare works of art that truly feels transcendent.”
That’s all, folks! Have a great weekend.
Eat: How odd to have ingredients for a dish (cherry bourguignon but no instructions on how to make it.
Ms. Suzy Weiss is undoubtedly gifted in various journalistic departments and even outside that tainted realm. But she can't obviously tell chalk from cheese when it comes to cinema. Despite the kudos, Mr Nolan is a sloppy film director when it comes both to clear storytelling and cinematographic arrangements. His shots as well as his characters float around like clueless amoebae that never end up fitting together properly. This has been proven film after film, and the dearer these films become, together with an artificially—albeit cleverly—induced buzz eagerly colported by unknowing journalism, the more glaring this artistic and dramatic emptiness is there for all to see.
Since cinema even more than nature abhors a vacuum, please stop entrusting this type of article to people in your immediate vicinity, instead of to genuine cinephiles and professional film critics, because nepotism has no place in cinema—which you probably consider a minor art form at TFP anyway.