Welcome back to The Weekend Press! Today, the Metropolitan Opera has reimagined the forlorn lover in “Carmen” as an ICE agent, and Liel Leibovitz is not happy about it; Sascha Seinfeld writes an ode to the dearly departed app that taught her what a meme is. And more! But first. . .
Imagine a world in which you could spend all day watching television, drinking gin and tonics, and ignoring the phone when it rings because someone else will pick it up. In which you don’t have to fight for anything, or work very hard, or try to charm someone into going on a date with you. Sounds pretty good, right?
Wrong, says Rod Dreher. A world with no struggle, no hardship, no effort is not a world worth living in. That was the lesson of Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, published in 1932, and it’s the lesson of its modern-day ancestor, the Apple TV show Pluribus.
Written by Vince Gilligan, who gave us Breaking Bad, the show imagines what it would be like to live in a very high-tech, very relaxing dystopia, in which nobody disagrees or offends, because everyone is living a life of endless ease. The protagonist is a woman who resists—who’s fighting for the right to be miserable, and annoyed, and passionate, and free.
You’ll root for her, says Rod. In a wonderfully enlightening essay, he explains why Pluribus—which gives us everything we want, then reminds us that “to be human is not to be perfect”—is essential viewing for anyone currently living a comfortable life.
Nevin Shapiro was at the heart of one of the biggest scandals in the history of college football. In 2010, the self-described “king of Miami” was found to have spent millions of dodgily acquired dollars on booze, ladies, and favors for the young athletes who powered his beloved University of Miami college football team. This was long before the 2021 Supreme Court decision that ruled college athletes could profit from their hard work. With the University of Miami set to play in the championship game on Monday, Joe Nocera decided to catch up with Shapiro—who went to prison for his suspect business dealings before his sentence was commuted by former president Joe Biden just over a year ago. “My story is bigger than ‘The Wolf of Wall Street,’” Shapiro told Joe. Read the piece, and see for yourself.
When Liel Leibovitz took his 12-year-old son to see “Carmen,” he was expecting to be transported to “a world of music and beauty and pleasure.” Instead, he found that the director had set the classic opera in a gun factory guarded by ICE agents. Do not miss his hilarious review, in which he grumbles about the “dreary and doctrinaire zealots who’ve seized the means of artistic production.”
Suzanne is 74 and happy: She lives in Baltimore, near two beloved daughters and four beloved grandchildren. But she also has a dream: to spend the last years of her life in Israel. She asked Abigail Shrier: “Should my last effort be to embed a lasting bond with my grandchildren, or should it be to be in the place that allows my soul to sing?” Her letter reminded our advice columnist of an old Jewish joke. . . .
How long do you need to tell an incredible joke? Six seconds, says Sascha Seinfeld. That was the time limit on the micro-video-sharing platform Vine, which for five years dominated the lives of Gen Z until it died on this day, in 2017—but not before it forever reshaped how we understand internet virality. Read Sascha’s ode to the dearly departed app in this week’s Second Thought. She’s also got thoughts on the true star of last week’s Golden Globes ceremony.
If you’re lucky enough to make it to your 70s, you’ll probably be doing so without parental guidance. But what if you still had your mom around when you start to consider your own mortality? David Margolick has been fortunate enough to find out. He’s 74 and his mom is 102. In this week’s Ancient Wisdom, he reflects on how she keeps him feeling younger than his years.
After this week’s news that the “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams had died, Coleman Hughes wrote an excellent essay about how Adams made him a better thinker. We also ran a great excerpt of a new book by Baptist pastor Ryan P. Burge about why his churches keep closing. Catch up on both—plus the latest column from Arthur Brooks:
How should you spend your weekend? We asked our producer Isaac Grafstein for his recommendations . . .
📚 Read . . . I somehow made it this far in life without ever reading Catch-22, but I finally picked it up recently and was transfixed. With global tensions mounting, Joseph Heller’s classic satire about the absurdity of war is the perfect novel for this moment—and it’s also very funny. If your attention span has been hopelessly degraded by the internet, listen to this podcast about the book instead.
💆♂️Buy . . . After a proper dose of postwar disillusionment, it’s time for some self-care. I recently tried out a scalp spa. Have you ever seen the crusty, Parmesan-like skin on your head under a microscope? Neither had I. But that’s what happens in a scalp spa. I know it doesn’t sound relaxing, but I promise that it’s very satisfying to get the flakes scrubbed away and then look under the microscope again, at your squeaky clean scalp, like a pressure-washed driveway or freshly Zamboni’d ice. It’s also good for hair growth.
🍳 Eat . . . Peking duck. There is nothing better. If you’ve never had it, I strongly suggest organizing a group dinner immediately and demolishing one. Fair warning, though: This dish may inspire a sudden and powerful urge to renounce your American citizenship and move to Beijing forever.
Behold, a still from the beautifully shot “Pluribus,” which Rod Dreher recommends in today’s Weekend Press:
That’s all, folks! Enjoy the weekend.
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In Dreher’s fantasy, “the protagonist is a woman who resists—who’s fighting for the right to be miserable, and annoyed…”
Sounds the women at an anti-ICE riot
Why would ICE agents be guarding a gun factory? I guess if you're determined to put out leftist propaganda disguised as art,
a coherent story doesn't really matter.