Lindsey Graham’s Demise Begins With This Man

When a young, Black, Yale-educated Democrat emerged as a genuine threat to take Strom Thurmond's old Senate seat, the incumbent's many detractors took notice—and forked over piles of cash. But will it be enough in ruby-red South Carolina?

A Lot of People Want Lindsey Graham Retired. Jaime Harrison Thinks He's the Man to Do It. Around the town of Orangeburg, in the Midlands of South Carolina, the days had retractable fangs, like the copperheads in the woods and the water moccasins in the river. The fangs came out at night, gleaming in the moonlight through the canopies of Spanish moss. Jaime Harrison heard the story from his grandmother Jimmie Lou, who, with his grandfather Willie, helped raise him. Jimmie Lou told him about what it was like when she was coming up in and around Orangeburg, where the family home was, and where the fangs of the night were ever present, and where nocturnal menace was as general as the still, humid air. "It was a fear that I'd never seen in my grandma's eyes before," said Harrison, forty-four, a Democrat running to take Lindsey Graham's seat in the United States Senate. "She told me about this time when she was a little girl. She was playing in the house with her sisters and brothers, and all of a sudden her mom told them all to come to the one room in the middle and to shush, be quiet. She said she had never saw her mom that serious before. "She said they sat there, and it was only probably a few minutes, but it felt like hours. And afterward she asked her, 'Mom, what was wrong?' And her mom said the KKK was marching down the street with their torches, and she huddled them together. It was a pain that I saw in my grandma. It's that type of thing that is passed on from generation to generation. When I hear stories about the Orangeburg massacre—that's a pain that Black folks have been living with for generations." On February 8, 1968, three Black students from South Carolina State University, one of two historically Black colleges in Orangeburg, were gunned down by state highway patrolmen for the crime of trying to desegregate a local bowling alley. The unarmed students had lit a bonfire on the edge of campus, and the police opened fire in the darkness. Twenty-eight people were wounded, including Cleveland Sellers, the father of future South Carolina state legislator and CNN pundit Bakari Sellers. Nine of the sixty-six patrolmen on the scene were brought to trial. All were acquitted. Only Cleveland Sellers went to prison, for "participating in a riot" outside the bowling alley. (He was pardoned a quarter century later.) This is South Carolina, after all, the home office of American sedition, the place where secession was born. "Here is where treason began," declared a Union soldier under William Tecumseh Sherman, as his Army of the Tennessee prepared to march on the state, "and by God, here is where it shall end." Of course, the fight did not end. It just changed form. To provide for the maintenance of white supremacy, one side exchanged Confederate gray for Klan white and turned away from armed revolt and back toward working within the institutions of government. To impress upon Black citizens the iron reality of this new old order, they put up statues of their fallen leaders and ran up the bygone battle flag at the state capitol. And at night, the riders with their torches came, and people huddled in their kitchens, hushed their children, and hoped that the shadows would pass on by. Read the Full Story Buck Mason's Bandana Is a Does-It-All Accessory That Really Delivers—Especially Now We've talked a lot about the appeal of the bandana recently, particularly vis-à-vis menswear's broader appreciation for that most American of archetypes, the cowboy. And amid the CDC's ongoing recommendation that people across the country wear some sort of cloth face covering in public whenever possible, the bandana, an iconic mainstay of Western style has—rightfully or not—roared back into fashion. Here it's crucial to note that recent research indicates actual masks are still, to no one's surprise, by far the most effective covering when it comes to stopping the spread of the virus. Wearing a bandana as a face mask is ill-advised, though certainly better than nothing. (Seriously, if it's bandana or nothing, go with the bandana.) As a makeshift headband, maybe to keep those newly-long lockdown tresses in check, or, hell, worn as a neckerchief to accent any outfit that needs a little added oomph, a bandana couldn't be a better play. And Buck Mason's version of the style, made from an organic cotton milled in Japan, has just enough personality to set you apart from the rest of the pack.  Read the Full Story As We All Turn to 'Comfort' Booze, Craft Distilleries Are Fighting for Survival Here's a depressing thought, at a time when we really don't need any more depressing thoughts: We could be barreling towards a big-box booze future. Dire predictions abound that only chain restaurants and monolithic brands—the Applebee's and Targets—will make it through this pandemic as independent restaurants flail. Similarly, it's safe to say the dominant corporate distilleries like Jim Beam, Wild Turkey, and Jack Daniel's, all of which produce high quality and affordable whiskey, will survive just fine. Alongside the big guys, though, there are around two-thousand craft distilleries in the U.S. making any and every type of alcohol you can imagine—bourbon, single malt, rye, rum, gin, vodka, even malört, for some reason—that bring much-needed, small-batch diversity to liquor stores. Wouldn't you rather drink in a world where you can go choose between a young peated bourbon distilled in Brooklyn, an amaro made in the Rocky Mountains using local botanicals, and some good old Kentucky whiskey? As Jonah Flicker reports, this just might not be an option a year from now. Read the Full Story Conservative Scumbags Are Terrified of Billie Eilish. They Should Be.  It would be phenomenally stupid to ignore the power Billie Eilish has in reaching her own generation. But as we saw this week after Eilish's performance at the Democratic National Convention, many conservatives, unsurprisingly, are that stupid. A day after Joe Biden was formally nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate, Eilish took the screen at the DNC to urge people to vote Donald Trump out of office. She then performed her new song, "my future"—a track that speaks to the hope her generation has for when we get out of this dark time in American history. It's somber, powerful, and beautiful. Republicans didn't see it that way, as the response to Eilish's performance on Twitter made clear. Many of them—as they tend to do—see the easy target of calling out someone who looks different. They see the fodder of a culture war. They see Hollywood elites. But this is isn't the same as Robert DeNiro calling Trump a f*cking idiot. This is a young woman who actually has the clout among a key demographic—one that if mobilized could help turn the tide of this election. Matt Miller explains why the frightened response to Eilish's performance is warranted. Read the Full Story The 19 Best Flannel Shirts to Buy Now and Wear Until They Disintegrate The flannel's wide-ranging appeal speaks to the timeless nature of its design. There really is one for everyone, from your grungy younger brother, who prefers his long and slouchy, to your deeply disappointed dad, who prefers his sturdy and substantial enough to stand up to the residual debris it'll encounter as an accessory to any grisly household chores. The truth is, the flannel is eternal—so Avidan Grossman picked out 19 you can buy now, and grow old with.  Read the Full Story How Ryan Gosling Got His Old Fashioned Exactly Right in Crazy Stupid Love Hollywood usually gets cocktails wrong. Suave detective Nick Charles in 1934's The Thin Man—probably the drinking-est movie of all time—is first seen instructing bartenders to shake a Martini, a shudder-inducing moment for Martini purists, who think the drink should be stirred. James Bond is no better in his many cinematic requests of "shaken-not-stirred" vodka Martinis. And let's not even talk about all the foolishness Tom Cruise gets up to in Cocktail. But at least one film got the Old Fashioned amazingly right. It was, strangely, the madcap 2011 romantic comedy Crazy Stupid Love, in which Ryan Gosling plays a slick womanizer and Emma Stone his latest focus. Robert Simonson got the inside story from the man who taught Gosling how to get it right, Eric Alperin.  Read the Full Story   Follow Us     Unsubscribe  Privacy Notice   esquire.com ©2020 Hearst Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Hearst Email Privacy, 300 W 57th St., Fl. 19 (sta 1-1), New York, NY 10019