What I'm Reading
What I'm Reading
August 30: Five reads that piqued my interest this week
Kamala and Walz: Vague to the point of vacuous
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz sat down for their much anticipated first interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.
There was no real damage as a result of the interview but there was not a great deal of substance either.
Harris appeared well prepared to deflect the obvious questions on gender and race and wisely avoided saying anything that would expose her to an identity politics campaign.
She also gave a strong and clear response to why she had changed her mind on fracking, something she says she now supports despite previously saying she would ban it. (Fracking is a key issue in the must-win state of Pennsylvania).
But this interview did nothing to jettison fears that she is light on substance and strong on feels.
Bret Stephens says Harris was ‘vague to the point of vacuous’ and her running mate was even worse.
A bigger weakness in the interview was the presence of Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz.
Though the Minnesota governor delivered a fine speech at the Democratic National Convention (brightly enhanced by his cheering son, Gus), he was transparently evasive in answering Bash’s questions about his misstatement about his military service, false claims about a DUI arrest and misleading statements about his family’s fertility treatments.
If there are other lies or untruths in Walz’s record, the campaign ought to get ahead of them now.
As for Bash, she is an intelligent and insistent reporter who isn’t afraid to ask follow-up questions when she gets flighty answers.
But there was too much fluff in this interview to lay to rest doubts about Harris’ readiness for the highest office.
Starmer and Reeves - the blunders are on the board
As I wrote earlier this week, it is my belief that there will be little public patience for UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s high-taxing agenda, based on the pretext that everything is so much worse than they could have imagined.
Labour is not getting a honeymoon as such. Sure, there is widespread relief that the Tory psychodrama is over and while people are open to Starmer and certainly want the government to succeed, there’s no wave of enthusiasm or love for Labour.
Things will get worse, Starmer warned this week, but the question is whether they ever get better for Labour if the pain is simply too great for the already-struggling to bear.
Aditya Chakrabortty picks up on this theme.
The electorate is paying more for less.
Game over. These are the 10-ton facts of British government after the pandemic, after the banking crash, now the era of free money and cheap energy is over – and on those, Starmer is barely different from Sunak.
Labour committed itself to plans that imply spending cuts of about £20bn every year – beyond the £22bn of savings for which Reeves has spent this summer scratching around.
This was no oversight, no unforced error: it was core to Starmer’s plan for winning, by robbing critics of their chance to snipe about a ‘debt bombshell’ and the like.
A great election strategy, a dire platform for government.
The blunders are all on the board.
Violence against foreigners in China
I found this piece exploring the links between state propaganda against foreigners and foreign countries and increasing knife attacks on foreigners in China super insightful.
This article examines xenophobia in China and how the Chinese are finally feeling compelled to do something about hate speech online to prevent anti-foreigner sentiment (regularly stoked by the CCP) from turning into physical and often fatal violence.
As a foreigner you are seen as transient guests with one foot in your home country, no matter how long you have lived in China.
Society expects you to keep your head down, display model behaviour and never stop proving you ‘respect China’, while being given no stake in the country or sense of belonging.
You risk being personally blamed if your country has any kind of geopolitical spat with China, or ‘hurts the feelings of the Chinese people’, as state propaganda will put it.
If you get into any sort of accident or dispute with a local, you may well find yourself assumed guilty until proven innocent.
Some blame foreigners in China for the xenophobia they encounter, claiming they attract hostility with their entitlement and insensitivity.
I have certainly seen quite a few expats behave like total idiots in my time, just like I have seen plenty of others behave as decently as they could.
But China’s xenophobia does not seem to be contingent on the actions of actual foreigners in China, especially since this latter group are few in number, and they have no impact on the lives of most Chinese.
It is, rather, an attitude with deep roots in the country’s educational system, politics, history and culture, a topic I could write about for hours.
Albanese faces revolt over trans census question
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been forced into a backdown over including a question on sexuality in the next census.
Six of his own MPs demanded he allow a question whereby respondents would identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual. Albanese caved, despite the Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers saying just 24 hours prior that the government had not wanted to include the question, fearing it would be ‘divisive’ — i.e. a culture war.
For this reason, the question won’t include a trans category, to the anger of equality groups, the Greens and the same government MPs, meaning the PM may end up pleasing no one, all the while underlining the internal chaos within his government not just on the issue but how it’s decision-making processes.
Also fascinating, is that the opposition leader Peter Dutton has also tried to walk both sides of the road on this issue.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who earlier in the week described the questions as a ‘woke agenda’ and said the existing questions had ‘stood us well as a country,’ on Friday said he was ‘fine’ with new questions if the government mounted an argument, but said Mr Albanese was ‘all over the shop’.
‘One day he says to the group of people he's meeting with that he's going to change the questions in the census... The next day he says that he's not going to do that. Now he says that he is going to do that.
‘We've got a weak prime minister who doesn't know what he believes in, he tells different audiences different things and then of course he tries to reconcile it.’
The Years, a wonderfully, confronting feminist journey
A bit of a cheat again this week as it’s something I’ve been to see as opposed to what I’ve been reading but I cannot recommend this play enough.
I saw The Years this week at The Almeida Theatre in Islington.
I nearly squealed out loud when I arrived and realised Gina McKee (who plays Irene in one of my all-time period dramas The Forsythe Saga) was starring.
The entire cast was excellent as they brought Annie Ernaux’s memoir to life in, often in graphic, detail.
Frankly, I never expected to see Gina McKee enthusiastically humping Romola Garai, fully clothed, on an office chair, while shouting about an idea for a book.
But this turns out to be one of the least startling aspects of Eline Arbo’s enthralling stage adaptation of Nobel Laureate Annie Ernaux’s 2008 novel, which filters seven decades of world history through a French, female lens and a fictionalised version of her own life.
With minor reservations, I absolutely loved this.
There’s much here that’s still unusual in theatre. A female perspective. Frank depictions of masturbation and abortion – the former hilarious, the latter harrowing.
A narrative that embraces geopolitics, social change, technological advance and the arc of a life from infancy to grandmotherhood.
It is all performed by an astonishing, all-female ensemble, ranging in age from 70s to 20s: Deborah Findlay, McKee, Garai, Anjli Mohindra and impressive newcomer Harmony Rose-Bremner.
And that’s my list for this week.
This week I joined Times Radio on Sunday to digest the week that was and reviewed the papers on Moncole on Wednesday.
Please do send me anything that’s caught your eye. A lot of your suggestions make it into these lists and I’m grateful for your feedback and input. Someone asked me this week if I actually read all these pieces and books. The answer is yes! I am a very fast reader and always have been, although I have noticed my ability to read books is a lot slower as an adult with social media than it was as a child with little else to do!
Some of you have started to offer me copies of your books etc. Please email me at latika@latikambourke.com for a forwarding address for hard copies.
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