Last summer, I went to Newfoundland, Canada, for my honeymoon. (It's a long story why). During every brief conversation with friendly strangers, when the inevitable came up, we butted in quickly to say, "We didn't vote for him!" I hate to say those were simpler times, but those were simpler times. Today, in Canada and lots of other places, there might not be any excuse sufficient to preserve your reputation if you're from the US of A. Charles P. Pierce, Esquire's political columnist, is similarly worried about how America is perceived right now. Read his thoughts below. —Chris Hatler, deputy editor |
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When talking with a new friend from Ireland, I was dismayed to discover just how far America's reputation has fallen. After this week's news, it all makes sense.
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I spent a happy Saint's Day on Tuesday having a few jars at my local with a new friend named Dennis O'Connor, a good Kerryman who's lived over here for some time. We talked awhile about international sport, especially about how Ireland had been hosed out of the Six Nations rugby championship by England, dammit, who folded like a cheap suit and handed the win to France on a late penalty kick. We suspected the fine hand of Edward Carson, or Lord Trevelyan, or Cromwell, working the refs from the bowels of hell.
The only time I saw Dennis get angry was when, somehow, the government of the United States came up in casual conversation. This included the World Baseball Classic, in which Venezuela was playing a U.S. team chock-full of MAGA-curious dumbasses who seemed to think they were playing ball on Omaha Beach. The intensity of my new friend's contempt for this government surprised even me. If we've incurred the dislike of Irish émigrés on St. Patrick's Day, we've passed a point of unpopularity that I thought we'd never come near. |
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In 1990, the writer Donald R. Katz offered this prediction in the pages of Esquire:
"Within the next few years many of us will plug in the morning newspaper. By virtue of powerful communications technology and nifty artificial-intelligence techniques, we will be able to gaze into a single viewing device that will offer text, photographs, animation, and film clips. The news will be your news, about your business, your teams. Your morning electronic mail—for what is mail but personalized news—will even come up on the same screen."
The accuracy of his prediction is almost shocking. Katz, who founded Audible in 1995, envisioned the iPhone and the apps that would populate it nearly two decades before its invention. He understood not only the technology behind such devices but also their utility. The one thing he didn't foresee was our addiction to them. |
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Across the country, in basements, church halls, hotel conference rooms, and TikTok live streams, men are connecting through metal chassis and plastic wheels. The cars are toys, technically, but they're also replicas of objects that, in real life, signal independence, power, and control. They ask to be handled, raced, and worn down. Or, just as insistently, to be preserved. Sealed in plastic and cardboard. Untouched and motion deferred. From the outside, it might read like arrested development or simple nostalgia. But to the men who collect, race, and play with them, it's much, much more than that. |
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