The Washington Post National Weekly - November 18, 2018

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POLITICS POLITICS

Fla. races crawlcrawl toward finishfinish Fla. races toward

BY BETH REINHARD,BY SEAN SULLIVAN, BETH REINHARD, SEAN SULLIVAN, AMY GARDNER ANDALMY ORIG RARDNER OZSA AND LORI ROZSA

Also going to a handAlso recount the race for goingisto a hand recount is the race for state agriculture commissioner.

Democrat state agriculture commissioner. Democrat Nikki Fried, a medical advocatemarijuana advocate in Lauderhill, Fla. in Lauderhill, Fla. Nikkimarijuana Fried, a medical who also promised who to tighten that agency’s also promised to tighten that agency’s processing of concealed weapons permits, weapons permits, on DeSantis emergedonfrom a machine processing of concealed DeSantis emerged from a machine holds a lead of 5,307 votes over of Republican recount this past week all but certain holds a lead 5,307 votes over Republican recount this past week all but certain Matt Caldwell. to become Florida’sto next governor Matt Caldwell. become Florida’s next governor The path to this new stage recount while Gov. Rick Scott (R) maintained The pathoftothe this new stage of the recount while Gov. Rick Scott (R) maintained was rocky, as mechanical errors the errors plagued the a narrow lead in the state’s closely was rocky, asplagued mechanical a narrow lead inwatched the state’s closely watched machine tally in several largetally counties, con-large counties, conSenate race even asSenate that contest goes a contest goes to a machine in several race even as tothat tentious legal disputes raisedlegal questions about manual count. tentious disputes raised questions about manual count. the path forward, and and Nelson The Senate battle, inThe which Scottbattle, is seeking the the pathScott forward, and the Scott and Nelson Senate in which Scott is seeking campaigns traded attacks. to unseat Sen. Bill Nelson (D),Sen. enters phase (D), enters a phase campaigns traded attacks. to unseat BillaNelson Undergirding the fight has been athe steady reminiscent of the reminiscent state’s 2000 of presidential Undergirding fight has been a steady the state’s 2000 presidential stream of attacks, claims andofcounterclaims recount — in whichrecount local elections officials stream attacks, claims—and counterclaims — — in which local elections officials some led by Trump, wholedhasbyaccused will examine tens ofwill thousands oftens ballots that some Trump, the who has accused the examine of thousands of ballots that Democrats and theDemocrats top elections official inelections official in may not have been filled tallied and the top may out not or have beencorrectfilled out or tallied correctBUTCH DILL/ASSOCIATED PRESS Democratic Broward County of fraud. ly to assess voters’ intentions.

BUTCHheavily DILL/ASSOCIATED PRESS heavily Democratic Broward County of fraud. ly to assess voters’ intentions.

“An honest no longer The process was triggered because Ron DeSantis appears to have won “Anishonest votepossible count is no longer possible The process wasScott’s triggeredRep. because Scott’s (R) Rep. Ron DeSantis (R) appears to have won vote count — ballots massively — infected,” Trump tweeted lead — 12,603 votes out than 8 million thethan race8for Florida governor after a recount. ballots massively infected,” Trump tweeted leadof—more 12,603 votes out of more million the race for Florida governor after a recount. last week. cast — remained within 0.25 percent legal last week. cast the — remained within the 0.25 percent legal The scrutinyinof the state’s elections system the congressman was an underdog in was an threshold for a manual recount, mustrecount, The scrutiny of the state’s elections system thehe congressman when he underdog threshold for which a manual which must when intensified Thursday when three of the state’s the GOP primary and headlined two rallies in be completed by noon intensified Thursday when three of the state’s the GOP primary and headlined two rallies in beSunday. completed by noon Sunday. biggest counties — Broward, Palm Beach and Florida in thefor campaign’s closing That narrow marginThat appeared toomargin much for biggest counties — Broward, Palm Beach and Florida in thedays. campaign’s closing days. narrow appeared too much Hillsborough — failed to get new counts to to theget new counts to the aligned himself closely withhimself the Nelson to overcome.Nelson Scott called for Nelson to calledDeSantis Hillsborough — failed DeSantis aligned closely with the to overcome.

Scott for Nelson to statehe by was the 3seen p.m. deadline ad in which he was bow out as Nelson’s bow attorney expressed state byand the were 3 p.m.required deadline and were required president, airing a TVseen ad in which out as Nelson’s confiattorney president, expressed airing confi- a TV to stick with totals. reading “The Art ofreading the Deal” to Art oneofofthe his Deal” dence that the second courtrecount, to stick with their pre-recount totals.

“The to one of their his pre-recount dencerecount, that theplus second plus court in those Workers counties in sawthose days counties of children, would a strong wouldWorkers cases, would let Nelson overtake saw days of children, andbeasingovernor be in a strong cases, would Scott. let Nelson overtake Scott.and as governor marathon work prove fruitless.work prove fruitless. to help reelection “It’s never been our“It’s view thatbeen thereour wasviewposition marathon position to helpcampaign Trump’s reelection campaign never that there wasTrump’s The Senate recountThe wasSenate expected to bewas expected to be in the country’s swing state. biggest swing state. going to be one silver bullet wassilver goingbullet to that recount in the country’s going to that be one was going tobiggest contentious — as both sides see legal sides see the legal said in a statement thatinhea was change the margin in this race,” Nelson’s contentious — the as both DeSantis said statement that he was change the margin inlead this race,”DeSantis Nelson’s lead rulings layingand the groundwork for athe potentialfocused and to recount attorney, Marc Elias, said onMarc a callElias, rulings laying groundwork for a potentialfocused to ongovernor his transition governor recount attorney, said onona his call transition ly tight presidential ly vote in 2020. invited Gillum“is to meet withGillum him. to meet with him. with reporters. The with handreporters. count, he The added, “is count, tight presidential vote in 2020. invited hand he added, continued to have continued to “Campaigns of ideas must giveofway to must Both what we’ve been seeking along.”

Bothhave Senate campaigns “Campaigns ideas give Senate way tocampaigns whatall we’ve been seeking all along.” stockpile cash to for the costly legal people together to people The big winner of the be daygoverning stockpile cash battles for theand costly legal battles and governing and bringing together Theday bigappeared winner oftothe appeared and to bebringing staffing in the recount.

Scott’s campaign an-Scott’s campaign ansecure Florida’s With the campaign DeSantis, whose lead over Democrat Andrew staffing in the recount. secure Florida’s future. With the campaign DeSantis, whose lead over Democrat Andrew future. nounced Thursday that it had raised more now over, that’s where allover, of my focuswhere will be,” Gillum, the mayor Gillum, of Tallahassee, remained nounced Thursday that it had raised more now that’s all of my focus will be,” the mayor of Tallahassee, remained than $1.4 million than for its DeSantis said.His wide enough to avoid a manual $1.4recount millionefforts. for its recount efforts.

DeSantis said. wide enoughrecount. to avoidHis a manual recount.

Nelson’s estimatescampaign that it raised refused to Gillum concede,refused saying toin concede, a victory is set to be certified Nelson’s estimates that it raised sayingcampaign in a victory early is set this to beweek. certified earlyGillum this week. $2.5 million. statement that “there are tens of thousands oftensabout DeSantis’s ascent would represent a major statement that “there are of thousands of nabout $2.5 million. n DeSantis’s ascent would represent a major voteshandpicked that have yet tovotes be counted.” victory for Presidentvictory Trump,for who handpicked ©The Washington Post that have yet to be counted.”

President Trump, who ©The Washington Post

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OPINIONS

SNL apology was a small victory for civil discourse DAN CRENSHAW a former Navy SEAL, is a Republican representative-elect from Texas.

The past couple of weeks have been unusual for me, to say the least. After a year of hard campaigning for Congress in Texas and gradually entering the public sphere, I was hit by a sudden, blinding spotlight. But I have no complaints — it wasn’t as bad as some other challenges I’ve faced, like a sudden, blinding IED explosion. (See what I did there?

“Saturday Night Live” has created a comedic monster.)

On the Nov. 3 show, SNL’s Pete Davidson mocked my appearance — “he lost his eye in war . . . or whatever,” Davidson said, referring to the eye patch I wear. His line about my looking like a “hit man in a porno movie” was significantly less infuriating, albeit a little strange. I woke up the Sunday morning after the show to hundreds of texts about what Davidson had said. A lot of America wasn’t happy. People thought some lines still shouldn’t be crossed.

I agreed. But I also could not help but note that this was another chapter in a phenomenon that has taken complete control of the national discourse: outrage culture. It seems like every not-socarefully-worded public misstep must be punished to the fullest extent, replete with soapbox lectures and demands for apologies. Anyone who doesn’t show the expected level of outrage will be labeled a coward or an apologist for bad behavior.

I get the feeling that regular, hard-working, generally unoffended Americans sigh with exhaustion — daily.

Was I really outraged by SNL? Really offended? Or did I just think the comment about losing my eye was offensive? There is a difference, after all. I have been literally shot at before, and I wasn’t outraged. Why start now?

So I didn’t demand an

apology and I didn’t call for anyone to be fired. That doesn’t mean the “war . . . or whatever” line was acceptable, but I didn’t have to fan the flames of outrage, either. When SNL reached out with an apology and an offer to be on the show, I wasn’t fully sold on the idea. It was going to be Veterans Day weekend, after all, and I had events with veterans planned. I asked if another weekend might work. No, they said, precisely because it was Veterans Day, it would be the right time to send the right message. They assured me that we could use the opportunity to send a message of unity, forgiveness and appreciation for veterans. And to make fun of Pete Davidson, of course.

And that’s what we did. I was happy with how it worked out.

But now what? Does it suddenly mean that the left and right will get along and live in utopian harmony? Maybe Saturday’s show made a tiny step in that direction, but I’m not naive. As a country, we still have a lot of work to do. We need to agree on some basic rules for civil discourse.

There are many ideas that we will never agree on. The left and the right have different ways of approaching governance, based on contrasting philosophies. But many of the ultimate goals — economic prosperity, better health care and education, etc.

WILL HEATH/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Rep.-elect Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.), left, with Pete Davidson during “Weekend Update” on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” on Nov. 10.

— are the same. We just don’t share the same vision of how to achieve them.

How, then, do we live together in this world of differing ideas? For starters, let’s agree that the ideas are fair game. If you think my idea is awful, you should say as much.

But there is a difference between attacking an idea and attacking the person behind that idea. Labeling someone as an “-ist” who believes in an “ism” because of the person’s policy preference is just a shortcut to playground-style

If you think my idea is awful, you should say as much. But there is a difference between attacking an idea and attacking the person behind that idea.

name-calling, cloaked in political terminology. It’s also generally a good indication that the attacker doesn’t have a solid argument and needs a way to end debate before it has even begun.

Similarly, people too often attack not just an idea but also the supposed intent behind an idea. That raises the emotional level of the debate and might seem like it strengthens the attacker’s side, but it’s a terrible way to make a point. Assuming the worst about your opponents’ intentions has the effect of demonizing their ideas, removing the need for sound counter-reasoning and factbased argument. That’s not a good environment for the exchange of ideas.

Veterans heading to Congress follow a big legacy When all else fails, try asking for forgiveness, or granting it.

On that Saturday, Pete Davidson and SNL made amends. I had some fun. Everyone generally agreed that a veteran’s wounds aren’t fair game for comedy.

Maybe now we should all try to work toward restoring civility to public debate. n

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BY LOWE

Pat Tillman and patriotism MARIE TILLMAN is the founder and chief executive of Mac & Mia, and co-founder and board chair of the Pat Tillman Foundation. She is the author of “The Letter: My Journey Through Love, Loss, and Life.” This was written for The Washington Post.

I often think about what legacy means, and I’ve learned something important about it in the 14 years since my first husband, Pat Tillman, was killed in Afghanistan. The way all of us live our lives is important to how we are remembered; but when you’re an icon, which Pat became, your legacy has to be guarded. An icon’s life and image enter the public domain, and people often try to co-opt it to suit their own needs.

Since last year, I’ve watched from the background as professional athletes have taken a knee to draw attention to injustice and racial inequality in the United States. Pat was in the military, so many people want to attach a brand of blind allegiance to him and use him to argue that kneeling during the national anthem is unpatriotic.

Pat was also against the Iraq War, so many others want to use him to argue against American involvement in overseas wars.

His essence is bent to fit an agenda.

Pat’s life has become symbolic, but he was a fleshand-blood man, and there was nothing about him that fit into a neat category. He was an athlete who didn’t really pay much attention to sports. He was outspoken and opinionated, but

a convincing argument could change his views. His nuanced thinking was what I loved most about Pat — that he could love his country so much that he would sacrifice his life to protect it, but also so much that he could challenge it.

I’ve been asked to comment countless times on what Pat would have thought about the National Football League protests, but I’ve always declined. Over the years, I’ve become used to people wanting to know what he would have thought about something in the news, or assign a way of thinking to him based on what they know about who he was at 27. They want to freeze him in time.

I find it ironic because Pat was always known as a free thinker who was constantly

BY KEVIN SIERS FOR THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER

growing. He was very different when we got together at 16 from who he was at 27, and he would have been different, too, at 42.

We should be able to respect his willingness to sacrifice for what he believed in without looking at it through the lens of today’s divisive political climate. So while I still refuse to speak for Pat, I will speak as a widow, a wife, a mother, an American and, yes, a patriot.

I think that patriotism is complex, like Pat himself. It is not blind or unquestioning. And it’s a fool’s errand to argue over who’s allowed to claim sacrifice.

Many of the kneeling athletes say they are protesting as American patriots who want the nation to be better than it is.

When I look around at the vitriol aimed at them for expressing their beliefs, and at the compulsion to simplify complicated issues to pit people on opposing sides, I want to kneel, too. Because I believe we are at our best as Americans when we engage in constructive dialogue around our differences with the goal of understanding one another.

This mind-set is where change happens, progress is made and bridges are built. I believe that in our hearts we are all the same: We all want our

children to be healthy and safe and to have opportunities. We may have significant differences in how we think we should get there, but divisive rhetoric will only deepen the chasm and make us forget all that we share.

Pat lived his life with passion and respected this quality in others, once writing that, “to err on the side of passion is human and right and the only way I’ll live.” Pat was also deeply curious, constantly reading to learn more, and always striving to understand why someone felt or acted the way he or she did.

After reading Jon Krakauer’s “Under the Banner of Heaven,” for instance, about Mormon fundamentalists, he called a Mormon cousin to engage in a discussion with him. He was always looking to understand views or perspectives different from his own.

I can’t say how Pat would have felt about race in the United States today or kneeling during the national anthem. But I can say that he would have engaged in thoughtful and respectful discourse, never shying away from the nuance, never taking the easy way, and looking, always, for a conversation instead of a fight. n

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Critics deride penalties in Saudi case B Y K AREN D E Y OUNG AND K AREEM F AHIM

T

he Trump administration and Saudi Arabia each took steps this past week to punish those they said were involved in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but U.S. lawmakers and other critics said the moves did not go far enough.

Many in Congress have accused the administration of placing its desire to maintain close relations with Saudi Arabia — particularly with its senior leadership — above a serious response to the Khashoggi case and the war in Yemen, where U.S.-aided Saudi airstrikes have killed thousands of civilians and caused widespread starvation.

A sweeping proposal to increase congressional oversight and suspend U.S. weapons sales to the Saudis was introduced Thursday by a bipartisan group of senior senators.

That measure followed sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department on 17 Saudis who Secretary Steven Mnuchin said “targeted and brutally killed a journalist who resided and worked in the United States.”

“The government of Saudi Arabia must take appropriate steps to end any targeting of political dissidents or journalists,” Mnuchin said in a statement.

Just hours earlier in Riyadh, the public prosecutor released a report saying 11 Saudi citizens had been indicted in the crime, which took place when Khashoggi visited the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. It said authorities would seek the death penalty against five of those charged.

Providing a new description of the killing — which the Saudis initially denied took place and later said was the result of a fistfight — the prosecutor said Khashoggi was given a lethal injection by Saudi agents who had orders only to bring him to Saudi Arabia through persuasion or, if necessary, with force. His body was then dismembered, carried out of the consulate and disposed of by a

OSMAN ORSAL/REUTERS

After journalist’s killing, U.S. and Saudi Arabia mete out punishments, but many are unsatisfied Turkish contact, the prosecutor said. He offered no indication of where Khashoggi’s remains could be found.

Neither the administration nor the Saudis implicated Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom Turkey has indirectly accused of ordering Khashoggi’s death, or others in the senior Saudi leadership. The extent to which the sanctions and indictment lists overlapped was unclear, because the Saudis did not provide names.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the sanctions were “significant” but that he hopes for more action.

Corker said he has asked for a “high-level meeting” with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and CIA Director Gina Haspel “to share with us exactly what is happening with the U.S. response to Saudi Arabia”

on Yemen and Khashoggi.

“It’s very important for them to be forthcoming given the heightened level of concern and increasing demand for action here in the Senate,” Corker said in a statement.

Several other lawmakers issued similar statements. “I am disturbed that following repeated Saudi lies about what happened to Jamal, the administration appears to be following the Saudi playbook of blaming mid-level officials and exonerating its leadership,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) derided the sanctions, saying on Twitter that “these individuals might lose their heads, do you think they care” about sanctions? “We are pretending to do something and doing NOTHING,” Paul tweeted.

Khashoggi, who feared for his safety in Saudi Arabia and relocated to Virginia last year, was a

A demonstrator holds a poster with a picture of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi outside the Saudi Consulate last month in Istanbul. Khashoggi was slain in the consulate on Oct. 2.

contributing columnist for The Washington Post and a critic of some of Mohammed’s policies.

In a statement, Post publisher Fred Ryan said: “In announcing actions against ‘those responsible’ for Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, the Saudi and U.S. governments are asking the world to take their word for it that this settles the matter. From the start, the Saudi ‘investigation’ has been an effort to shield those ultimately responsible for this heinous crime when there is every reason to believe that it was authorized at the highest levels of the Saudi government.”

Imposed under the Global Magnitsky Act, which empowers the United States to sanction human rights abusers abroad, the sanctions freeze any assets of the designated Saudis that are under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibit Americans from dealings with the 17.

The most senior person sanctioned was Saud al-Qahtani, a former top aide to the crown prince.

Treasury also named Mohammad al-Otaibi, the Saudi consul general in Istanbul, in whose diplomatic mission Khashoggi was killed; and Maher Mutreb, described as a Qahtani “subordinate.” Mutreb, a security official who is frequently seen at the side of the crown prince, was photographed entering and leaving the consulate on the day of the killing. The department named 14 others, saying only that they were “members of an operations team” who had a role in Khashoggi’s death.

“Our action today is an important step in responding to Khashoggi’s killing,” Pompeo said.

“The State Department will continue to seek all relevant facts, consult Congress, and work with other nations to hold accountable those involved in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.”

A U.S. official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the 17 were only an “initial tranche” of people held responsible for Khashoggi’s death, and that the U.S. investigation remained “a work in progress.” n ©The Washington Post

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Disaster response shaded red or blue

BY M ATT V ISER AND S EUNG M IN

K IM

D

ays after Hurricane Florence rammed into the North Carolina coast, President Trump was on his way to comfort those who lost homes or loved ones. He met with the state’s Democratic governor; he sat for a briefing; he paused to ask residents in New Bern: “Hi, everybody, how’s your house?”

When Hurricane Harvey pummeled Texas last year, he traveled to Houston, and when Hurricane Michael hit Florida and Georgia last month, he and the first lady quickly went to the Gulf Coast.

But as California has convulsed in tragedy — a mass shooting and an outbreak of wildfires that included the deadliest in the state’s history — the president initially not only offered little comfort but also heaped on criticism. He blamed the forest fires on “gross mismanagement,” threatened to withhold federal payments and instructed officials there: “Get Smart!”

The disparity in the responses to red states and blue states is one that continues to exacerbate the nation’s partisan complexion, injected even into natural disasters.

A president who prizes and craves loyalty more than any other attribute, Trump has divided states into ones that voted for him and the ones that didn’t, and found that last group wanting. In California, that has meant state officials have had to fight not only killer fires but also the combustible rhetoric coming from the Oval Office.

“There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor,” Trump tweeted on Nov. 10, as fires consumed portions of the state in the north and the south. “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”

Not until 14 hours later did he express sympathy for the victims.

California officials responded

AMANDA MYERS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Trump heaped criticism on California as state faced twin tragedies by pointing out that the latest fires have not started in forests but in suburban areas, fueled by scrub grasses and chaparral dried by the state’s long-standing drought, and driven by blowtorch winds. Moreover, the vast majority of forest land in California is owned and controlled not by the state but by the federal government, under Trump’s control.

“Forestry management in this country is something we should debate; it’s something we should talk about,” said Michael Brown, who served as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency during the George W. Bush administration. “But in the middle of the fire? That’s not the time to debate it; that’s not the time to make the point.

“It detracted from what firefighters and California and other

governors — red states and blue states — are doing to help protect California.”

White House officials did not respond when asked why Trump often appears to be more publicly critical of Democratic areas that suffer natural disasters, compared with more conservative states.

On Monday night, Trump announced he had agreed to sign the major federal disaster declaration that California officials had requested 24 hours earlier.

“Wanted to respond quickly in order to alleviate some of the incredible suffering going on,” he tweeted. “I am with you all the way.”

On Thursday, the White House said Trump would visit victims of the wildfires on Saturday.

Since he took office, Trump has made 111 trips to 26 states that he

A wildfire plume from a recent flareup near Lake Sherwood, Calif., is visible Tuesday from Thousand Oaks, which recently experienced a mass shooting.

carried in 2016, while traveling 47 times to 10 states that he lost, according to figures compiled by Mark Knoller of CBS News.

Six of those visits have been to areas hit by natural disasters. In 2017, Trump traveled to Texas twice after Hurricane Harvey, and once each to Puerto Rico, severely damaged by Hurricane Maria, and a post-Irma Florida. This year, Trump has made two hurricanerelated trips: to the Carolinas after Hurricane Florence, and to Florida and Georgia post-Hurricane Michael.

Prior to this weekend’s planned trip, Trump had been to California once since taking office, to survey prototypes of the wall he wants to build along the southern border.

In addition to his visits, Trump’s remarks represent another way in which he has treated less-friendly

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POLITICS in the separations of thousands of children from their parents.

Many children remain separated, and Cummings’s oversight panel intends to probe the lapses that occurred, both in how it is that children are still in government custody as well as reports that children were mistreated while in government care.

Health care Democrats made health care, and specifically protections for people with preexisting conditions, a cornerstone of their midterm campaign platform. Now Nadler wants to launch an investigation into the Trump administration’s decision not to defend the Affordable Care Act against a lawsuit that, if successful, would bring down the entire law.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos The Education and Workforce Committee under Democratic control are going to demand more answers from DeVos, who has largely avoided oversight of her work at the Education Department. Inside Higher Ed called her “one of the biggest losers of the midterm elections,” explaining: “Democrats will focus on decisions by DeVos on two major higher education rules. She’s proposed a more restrictive overhaul of the borrower-defense rule, which allows defrauded students to seek loan forgiveness, and a repeal of the gainful-employment rule, which holds higher ed programs accountable for graduating students with debt they can’t repay.”

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who will take over the House Natural Resources Committee, wants to investigate Zinke “on his personal conduct and management decisions,” including arranging meetings with multiple billionaires and taking 66 days of personal leave during his first year and a half on the job.

“This is our check and balance, our constitutional obligation and our jurisdiction,” Grijalva said.

“Us exercising our oversight and accountability responsibilities is not asking for a war with the administration.” n ©The Washington Post

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White House aide picks fight with first lady — and loses

BY A NNE G EARAN, J OSH D AWSEY AND E MILY H EIL

and Melania Trump and her staff continued for weeks after the trip, with the first lady privately arguing that the NSC’s No. 2 transoceanic personnel official was a corrosive influence in the White House and should be crisis that engulfed the dismissed. But national security National Security Counadviser John Bolton rebuffed the cil last week is partly first lady and protected his depurooted in a bureaucratic dispute ty, prompting the first lady’s over the seating arrangements spokeswoman, Stephanie Graboard first lady Melania Trump’s isham, to issue an extraordinary plane to Africa last month during statement to reporters Tuesday effectively calling for Ricardel’s firing.

“It is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House,” Grisham said of Ricardel in the statement.

After an uncomfortable day of limbo, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders announced Wednesday evening that Ricardel was leaving the White House.

The first lady’s decision to publicly advocate for the ouster of a senior member of her husband’s staff shows a new REUTERS CAROLYN KASTER/ASSOCIATED PRESS willingness on her part to weigh in on White House operMelania Trump, left, ations and marks a change from her maiden solo trip abroad. and deputy national earlier in the Trump administraAs the East Wing prepared the security adviser Mira tion, when she repeatedly played flight manifest for the trip, depuRicardel clashed down her role as an adviser to the ty national security adviser Mira over seating president.

Ricardel became angry that seats arrangements on the It also comes as the president were assigned to a larger-thanfirst lady’s flight to is mulling personnel changes, usual security entourage and a Africa last month. including possibly ousting Chief small press corps with none for of Staff John F. Kelly and firing Ricardel or another NSC staffer, Homeland Security Secretary according to current U.S. officials Kirstjen Nielsen. and others familiar with the trip Anita McBride, who was chief and its aftermath. of staff to first lady Laura Bush, Policy experts from the NSC says Melania Trump’s move was a and State Department were addramatic show of power. vised to fly separately and to meet “If anyone had questions about the first lady’s party on the her willingness to exert her influground, a practice the State Deence, they got their answer,” she partment had often used, but Ricardel objected strenuously, said.

Ricardel’s dismissal also serves those people said. She threatened as a rebuke of Bolton, known for to revoke NSC resources associathis sharp elbows and ability to ed with the trip, meaning no navigate internal tensions, who policy staff would advise the first refused for weeks to fire his lady during her visits to Ghana, handpicked deputy and worked Kenya, Malawi and Egypt. in the past day to protect her.

Bad blood between Ricardel

A

Melania Trump and Ricardel have never met, according to people familiar with each of them. But the first lady viewed the conservative operative, who was among the most senior women in the West Wing, as a toxic influence in the White House, to the point that she spoke to Trump about Ricardel after the Africa trip and authorized others to spread the word that Ricardel had overstepped the mark, several people familiar with recent events said.

A senior White House official said the first lady believed Ricardel was spreading false rumors about her office, including a misleading story that aides had arranged a $10,000 hotel stay in Egypt. Other White House aides said Ricardel belittled underlings, shouted at professional staff and was the most disliked aide in the West Wing.

In past administrations, first ladies exerted similar or greater influence, but always behind the scenes. The most famous modern example is Nancy Reagan engineering the ouster of chief of staff Donald T. Regan, who had made the dire mistake of hanging up on her. While Nancy Reagan’s fingerprints were all over the firing, there were no statements from her office to that effect.

Martha Washington, historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony noted, once wrote that she felt like a “state prisoner” because of protocol rules and a schedule set in part by her husband’s chief adviser, Tobias Lear. And there was no love lost between Mary Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln’s chief counselors, John Hay and John Nicolay, who referred to her as “the hellcat” behind her back.

Pat Nixon, Anthony says, chafed at top White House aides H.R. “Bob” Haldeman and John Erlichman for perceived offenses that included not giving her enough notice before travel and for not taking her ambitious agenda seriously, Anthony said. n ©The Washington Post

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COVER STORY

Quitting Instagram: She’s one of the millions disillusioned with social media.

But she also helped create it.

B Y E LIZABETH D WOSKIN

On the evening of Sept. 26, Bailey Richardson logged in to Instagram for the last time. ¶ “The time has come for me to delete my Instagram,” she wrote to her 20,000 followers, using her white pants as a canvas. “Thanks for all the kindnesses over the years.” ¶ Richardson’s decision isn’t nov­ el: 68 percent of Americans have either quit or taken a break from social media this year, accord­ ing to the Pew Research Center. ¶ But Richardson isn’t a bystander reckoning with the ills of technol­ ogy: She was one of the 13 original employees working at Instagram in 2012 when Facebook bought the viral photo­sharing app for $1 billion.

She and four others from that small group now say

YANA PASKOVA FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

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COVER STORY the sense of intimacy, artistry and discovery that defined early Instagram and led to its success has given way to a celebrity-driven marketplace that is engineered to sap users’ time and attention at the cost of their well-being.

“In the early days, you felt your post was seen by people who cared about you and that you cared about,” said Richardson, who left Instagram in 2014 and later founded a start-up. “That feeling is completely gone for me now.”

The catalyst for Richardson’s decision to quit Instagram came when its co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, unexpectedly announced that they were leaving the company. With their exit, Richardson and other former Instagram employees worried Facebook would squash whatever independent identity the company had managed to retain.

She sent her goodbye to Instagram the next day.

Even in Silicon Valley, where it’s common to hear start-up workers become frustrated with management after an acquisition, the disillusionment of the early Instagram employees is striking: People seldom swear off or criticize the product they built, particularly when it has enjoyed such remarkable success. Instagram reached 1 billion users this year.

The people who worked at social networks long saw the connection and free expression they facilitated as a powerful force for good and evidence of the contribution they were making to society. For them, the public questioning of the role social networks play in democracy and in individual lives, sparked by concerns over privacy and health, is deeply personal.

Three of the early Instagram employees, including Richardson, have deleted it — permanently or periodically, comparing it to a drug that produces a diminishing high. One of the people said he felt a little embarrassed to tell people that he worked there. Two of the other early employees said they used it far less than before.

This shift is part of an existential crisis for Facebook, which has seen a slew of top executives resign this year, including the leaders of its major acquisitions: Oculus, WhatsApp and Instagram. Some people are also aban-

KLMNO WEEKLY

trom continues to champion the service but recently said of his departure: “You don’t leave a job because everything is awesome, right?”

II.

COURTESY OF BAILEY RICHARDSON

doning Facebook: It lost 4 million users in Europe in the last six months and growth has plateaued in the United States.

The Instagram employees, including Richardson, said they hoped their concerns would not be dismissed as nostalgia and would be seen as a call to future entrepreneurs to recognize these pitfalls and build something better.

“There was so much pressure to do things that ‘scaled,’ to use the Silicon Valley buzzword,” said Josh Riedel, the third employee after Systrom and Krieger. “But when you have over a billion users, something gets lost along the way.”

Ian Spalter, Instagram’s head

Bailey Richardson announces her deletion of Instagram through the app’s Stories feature.

of design, said in an interview that experiences on Instagram are subjective — one person’s frustration may be another person’s pleasure — and that the app was not designed to be a timesuck. “We’re not in the game to have you leave Instagram feeling worse off than when you went in,” he said.

One of the departed founders of a company Facebook acquired, WhatsApp’s Brian Acton, has actively encouraged people to delete Facebook, though he is still a proponent and a user of WhatsApp. (He is also funding a rival messaging app.) Other former Facebook executives have expressed regrets about the products they built. Instagram’s Sys-

When Richardson joined Instagram in February 2012, at age 26, the former art history major was drawn to what was then a fastgrowing indie platform for photographers, hipsters and artistictypes who wanted to share interesting or beautiful things they discovered about the world. At that time, Instagram was “a camera that looked out into the world,” said one of the company’s first engineers, “versus a camera that was all about myself, my friends, who I’m with.”

Richardson ran the start-up’s blog as well as the official @instagram account from the company’s offices in San Francisco’s South Park neighborhood. Before there were software algorithms suggesting accounts to follow, Richardson selected featured Instagrammers by hand. For the most devoted users, she organized inperson “Insta-meets” in places as far-flung as Moscow and North Korea.

“We felt like stewards of that passion,” Richardson said.

One of the first people she featured prominently was an early Instagrammer in Spain. The exposure Richardson gave @IsabelitaVirtual, an amateur photographer whose real name is Isabel Martinez, helped Martinez become one of the most popular Instagram users in the country and led to a career in high-end fashion photography.

Both say that type of random connection that resulted in their friendship is hardly possible in the current iteration of Instagram. Too many people to follow, too much showmanship, too many posts flickering by, they say.

“I don’t even see her posts anymore,” Richardson said. Martinez told The Post that while she wouldn’t quit Instagram for professional reasons, the app has in recent years become more anxiety-producing than pleasurable for her.

Even in the early days, Richardson was aware that the app had a dark side. She was one of the first content moderators and spent many days and weekends culling

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KLMNO WEEKLY

COVER STORY

“It feels like we’re all addicted to a drug that doesn’t get us high anymore.”

Bailey Richardson, on why she deleted Instagram

YANA PASKOVA FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

through pornographic and other undesirable images that sprung up as the app grew.

III. A few months after Richardson started her job at Instagram, Systrom announced to the dozen employees that the company had been acquired by Facebook — taking everyone by surprise. The entire team got in a bus and drove about 30 miles south to Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, where Facebook employees broke into applause as they entered the building. CEO Mark Zuckerberg took them into his office, where

he welcomed them excitedly and assured them that they would maintain their own unique identity.

Richardson said she was excited but apprehensive. The details of the acquisition were still murky. Ultimately only Systrom and Krieger walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars; Facebook offered other early employees small signing bonuses and limited Facebook stock grants for staying on. And Facebook had a reputation for alienating users with its privacy scandals, including charges it had settled with the Federal Trade Commission the previous year for sharing people’s personal details

that they thought were private with app developers and the public.

A few months later, the team was officially installed in Menlo Park, where Instagram was given a separate area on campus to work.

Its employees were seen as the cool kids on campus. They had figured out how to make a smartphone-only product go viral, something Facebook was still struggling to accomplish ahead of its impending public offering.

But there were things Facebook wanted to improve about Instagram. Facebook’s growth team — an influential unit whose goal was to identify and imple-

ment measures to acquire users and keep them engaged — came in and picked apart every feature of the app, three of the former employees said.

No detail was too small. The team helped fix Instagram’s clunky sign-in process, which was leaking users. It borrowed techniques that had worked on Facebook, like sending users an email alert about their friends’ activities when they hadn’t used the app in a while. They rolled out photo-tagging, much to the frustration of Instagram employees, who felt these features were too associated with Facebook and would fall flat with Instagram’s user base, said four of the employ-

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COVER STORY

COURTESY OF BAILEY RICHARDSON

ees.

The photo-tagging feature triggered “emotional anxiety,” said the early engineer. “It introduced a whole new dynamic.”

Richardson’s team of about six employees, which was focused on managing Instagram’s most passionate power users, was also targeted for change. Facebook told them that in order for the product to scale to a large audience, software tools would need to replace manual processes, Richardson and two former employees said.

Richardson said she was taken aback, “not because of the boldness of it or because of how crappy it made me and my contribution feel, but because of the misunderstanding of what we were trying to do.”

She began making plans to leave and resigned in 2014, along with most of the employees The Post spoke with. By then, the app had more than 200 million users, compared with roughly 30 million at the time of the acquisition.

Three of the original 13 employees are still at Instagram or Facebook, according to Facebook.

Instagram moved to an algorithmic feed in 2016 — prior to that, posts were in chronological order — and software is now doing much of the discovery on behalf of users, feeding them tailored content. The Stories feature, added the same year, introduced a flickering element to Instagram’s design by automatically reloading new stories in a carousel. The result of these changes and others prior to it was increased follower

counts, produced larger social networks with weaker ties, and more time spent in the app.

Richardson, who is a big fan of hedgehogs, found herself looking at many more of them on Instagram. “I clicked on one, but then I get dozens, which is more than my brain can possibly manage,” she said. “It takes all the agency out of it.”

Spalter, the Instagram design chief, pointed out that Instagram’s rapid growth has required the company to build tools that will assist people in finding posts and users. “We have a billion people,” he said. “That means we have content from every weird niche interest, and we have made it easier for you to find things.

That’s also the beauty of having a much larger community.”

Richardson was one of Instagram’s first employees. After learning that the founders were resigning, she and another former employee decided to delete the app.

KLMNO WEEKLY

Instagram is aware that its software was offering up too much celebrity content and content from people with large followings at the expense of posts from people who users know personally, according to Spalter, who joined Instagram in 2015. The company has rejiggered the software to adjust the balance, he said.

“Managing that balance is critical to Instagram’s future. . . . If you feed gets overrun with celebrities, you won’t feel comfortable sharing content with your friends anymore,” he said. “I get how, in the early days, when you’re connecting with everyone, that’s very special. We’re at a different phase of development at this point, and it’s a different world in that way.

But it’s still a place where people connect.”

He added that Instagram released tools in August to help people manage the time they spend on the app.

Richardson says that content on Instagram is now “too eager for your attention.” Before, “you had to make an effort to find someone, and that meant something to you and to the people you found. Today I’m amazed by how little honor each piece of content is given.”

After leaving Instagram, Richardson traveled around the world, meeting Instagram users whom she had connected with online. She eventually settled in New York City, where she founded a start-up called People & Company, where she helps nonprofits and businesses, including Nike, find ways to connect with their audiences online.

She says she wasn’t thinking actively about Instagram until late September, when news broke that its founders were resigning — once again taking most of their employees by surprise.

Richardson was flooded with memories. She remembered first meeting Martinez, and all that had changed since. She called up a friend from her Instagram days, and they concluded that Instagram no longer had value in their lives. Together, they decided to quit. She composed her last post while sitting in her car.

“It feels like we’re all addicted to a drug that doesn’t get us high anymore,” she said of the decision. “So I wanted to make space for something that really does.” n ©The Washington Post

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KLMNO WEEKLY

FIVE MYTHS

Cable news BY

N ICOLE H EMMER

After a heated exchange between President Trump and CNN reporter Jim Acosta during a post­election news conference two weeks ago, the White House suspended Acosta’s credentials. Acosta and his network have been the administration’s primary targets for more than two years; the president watches hours of cable news daily, and CNN is the network he loves to hate. While far more Americans get their news from broadcast networks and local stations than from cable news, Trump’s devotion to cable has elevated the political importance of those networks, which remain plagued by myths.

MYTH NO. 1 Cable news spawned our pugilistic and polarized politics.

CNN’s “Crossfire,” born in 1982, has been blamed for ruining American politics by reducing news to left-said-rightsaid coverage.

But “Crossfire” was a copy, not an innovation. Long before cable outlets began delivering roundthe-clock coverage, network news programs pioneered leftright roundtables. In 1971, CBS’s “60 Minutes” introduced its “Point/Counterpoint” segment, pitting conservative segregationist James J. Kilpatrick against liberal Nicholas von Hoffman and then Shana Alexander. Other networks soon followed suit, experimenting with political punditry throughout the 1970s.

MYTH NO. 2 Conservatives can’t get enough of Fox News.

The trope holds that conservatives mainline Fox News like a two-pack-a-day smoker inhales cigarettes.

But with viewership on the very best days hitting 2.5 million in prime time, Fox News fans account for only a small fraction of conservatives in the United States. Those on the right are far more likely to tune into talk radio than cable news. Radio ratings work differently from television ratings, but Rush

Limbaugh says he has the equivalent of 10 to 12 million listeners a day (he hits around 14 million per week). And the three broadcast network news shows draw a combined 22 million viewers a night.

JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS

MYTH NO. 3 Fox News drives the Republican Party rightward.

It’s true that Fox makes conservative viewers even more conservative (and more likely to vote Republican). But overall, the outfit is more weather vane than bellwether, responding to the direction of the base and the GOP instead of setting a course for those groups to follow. Take immigration: In 2013, at the urging of Sen. Marco Rubio (RFla.), Fox News hosts gave favorable coverage to the immigration bill that Rubio hoped to push through the Senate. The conservative base resoundingly rejected Fox’s pivot, and hosts such as Sean Hannity quickly scurried to antiimmigration positions.

MYTH NO. 4 MSNBC is the liberal response to Fox. MSNBC, with its blue palette and its starring role for Rachel Maddow, seems awfully like the political opposite of Rupert Murdoch’s empire.

But while Murdoch and Roger Ailes founded Fox News with the intention of establishing a

The White House falsely accused CNN’s Jim Acosta of striking an intern during a testy exchange with President Trump.

conservative network, MSNBC was launched as simply a chattier, more Gen-X version of NBC News. Even after the network “leaned in” and attempted to develop into a Fox News for progressives starting in 2006, it has never played the same role as Fox. That’s partly because the left doesn’t have the same suspicion of “mainstream media” and partly because MSNBC still tries to model balance. Its morning show is anchored by a conservative, former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough. And the network has become whiter and more conservative. Melissa Harris-Perry is out and Al Sharpton was demoted to a weekend slot, while Nicolle Wallace, White House director of communications under George W. Bush, now anchors the 4 p.m. hour.

weaken during the Vietnam War, when reporters dutifully repeated the government’s lies about the trajectory of the conflict. It rebounded during Watergate, but it never returned to its 1950s and 1960s heights, when Walter Cronkite was dubbed the most trusted man in America. In the early 1970s, the share of Americans who said they trusted the media hovered between 68 and 72 percent, according to Gallup polls. By 2016 it had slumped to 32 percent.

That loss of faith was driven not by cable news but by a wholesale ideological attack from the right, which argued that the supposedly objective media was secretly liberal, and a smaller but still important critique from the left of the capitalist and conservative nature of news production. n

MYTH NO. 5 Cable news is why Americans lost trust in journalism.

Trust in journalism began to

Hemmer, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, is a co-editor of the Washington Post’s Made by History section.

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KLMNO WEEKLY

BOOKS

In Vietnam, three decades of su≠ering N ONFICTION

l

REVIEWED BY

P IERRE A SSELIN

M VIETNAM An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975

By Max Hastings Harper.

857 pp. $37.50

President Richard Nixon and adviser Henry Kissinger pursued too-costly strategies in Vietnam, says Max Hastings.

ax Hastings’s “Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 19451975” reads like a gripping work of fiction.

The story line is as fluid as it is riveting, and the main characters are finely delineated. Part political, part social and part oral history, the book advances that events unfolding in Vietnam after World War II constituted predominantly an Asian tragedy “upon which a US nightmare was overlaid.” Consistent with that theme, Hastings endeavors to relate the Vietnamese perspective, underscoring the roles played by leaders and combatants from both North and South. The suffering and losses endured by civilians are vividly illustrated, humanizing them to a degree few accounts have.

A former foreign correspondent who covered the Vietnam War and went on to become a prolific and award-winning chronicler of the two world wars, Hastings offers compelling interpretations.

America’s war in Vietnam was largely Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s progeny. Impatient for aggressive action in Vietnam, the secretary misled and even lied to his boss as he relentlessly called for committing U.S. ground forces in the South and bombing the North. Other senior officials dissented, but President Lyndon Johnson ignored them.

To Hastings, American shortcomings in Vietnam were not a result of Johnson’s failure to call up the reserves, though that contributed to a precipitous decline in U.S. combat performance and morale by the late 1960s. Neither were they the fault of the U.S. commander in Vietnam, Gen. William Westmoreland. The United States failed because the strategy devised by the White House was predicated on false premises about the domino theory and Asian communism.

President John Kennedy’s decision to support the coup against South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963 was

ASSOCIATED PRESS

particularly debilitating, dealing as it did a crippling, “irretrievable” blow to America’s moral standing in the region. The communist Tet Offensive of 1968, whose repercussions in the United States effectively invalidated major battlefield victories, sealed the fate of the Americans and their allies.

Thereafter, “the outcome that was no longer plausible was North Vietnam’s defeat.”

Hastings finds abhorrent the abject refusal of President Richard Nixon and national security adviser Henry Kissinger to recognize the latter reality. Unnecessarily sacrificing 21,000 additional American lives and countless more Vietnamese ones to serve military and diplomatic initiatives that benefited nothing except Nixon’s political interests was criminal, he alleges.

Hastings rightly identifies veteran revolutionary fighter Le Duan, and not the more eminent Ho Chi Minh, as North Vietnam’s paramount leader during the American war. But then Hastings falls into the trap of essentialism,

egregiously reducing Hanoi policymakers to narrow, ugly caricatures bordering on travesties. Savagery was their principal weapon and cruelty their most defining quality, he opines. Fear of the regime, Hastings suggests, was the average Notherner’s only motivation, a proposition so hyperbolic as to be preposterous.

The assessment of Southern leaders and combatants is no less galling. According to Hastings, they were as inept as Northerners were cruel. Diem was prone to “follies and cruelties” and utterly oblivious to the needs and wants of his people, “a dead donkey if there ever was one.”

Such reductionist generalizations fly in the face of the latest, archive-based scholarship on the Saigon regime and its soldiers, airmen and marines. In fact, a critical flaw of the book is its failure to seriously engage the ever-expanding documentary record on the Vietnam wars.

As all this suggests, Hastings opted to sacrifice scholarly rigor for the sake of sensationalist re-

telling. Gratuitously graphic descriptions of massacres and other atrocities permeate the narrative, as do references to eviscerations, beheadings, live burials, corpse mutilations and stonings (!).

Hastings leaves his readers with the impression that the 30-year tragedy endured by the Vietnamese after 1945 was largely self-inflicted. Neither Hanoi nor Saigon deserved to win, he asserts, and it was the misfortune of innocent people to “fall into the hands of cruel and incompetent governments.” Luckily for them, Hastings insists, after losing the war militarily, the Americans won the peace economically and culturally.

Possibly, that is par for the course for such a “primitive” Asian land — a pejorative he uses more than once. But that is doubtful. The United States and other foreign powers should not be so easily exonerated for the agony the Vietnamese had to bear. n Asselin is the author of “Vietnam’s American War: A History. This was written for The Washington Post.

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KLMNO WEEKLY

APPRECIATION

Stan Lee: A Marvel to behold BY

M ICHAEL C AVNA

T

here was a lot more to being comics’s greatest showman ever than just showing up, convention after convention, show after show.

And to the man who long wore that mantle, with great power came great adaptability.

Stan Lee — his very nom de toon was invented so Stanley Lieber could save his real name for novels — seemed utterly born for the role of attracting an audience. The ability to detect just what the masses wanted appeared to come as naturally to him as Peter Parker’s “Spidey sense” — a character and superpower that Lee himself co-created with Steve Ditko, who died in June.

And just like that, within five months, Spider-Man has lost both of his creative parents. Stan Lee died this past Monday in Los Angeles, at age 95 — but the towering and profitable Marvel Comics legacy he birthed nearly 60 years ago will long outlive him.

Shortly before World War II, Lee was an office-boy teenager at the Marvel precursor Timely Comics, trying to crack his way into the industry, hired by a relative, publisher Martin Goodman, and the company’s editor, Captain America co-creator Joe Simon.

Over the next two decades, Lee progressed from writing comics to becoming the company’s top editor. The penny-pinching company was on hard times when Goodman told Lee to create a superhero team the way the rival DC had.

Lee was tired of writing according to industry formulas and cliches, however; he had his own ideas about what made for compelling storytelling.

“I told my wife, Joanie, ‘I’m going to quit,’” Lee told me in his Beverly Hills office in 2011. “But she said: ‘Why not write it the way you want to write it? If it doesn’t work, the worst that’s going to happen is that they’ll fire you. And you want to quit anyway.’ ” Lee then recounted how he eschewed the typical sidekicks and secret identities and invulnerable personas to create his bickering Fantastic Four. “I tried having he-

REED SAXON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The storyteller was comics’s greatest ambassador, and the world became his soapbox roes [Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Girl] in love and getting married,” he said. “And the teenager was a brother [the Human Torch] who didn’t particularly want to be a superhero.”

Lee paused, leaning toward me while peering through his tinted glasses, and then purred with satisfaction: “It was the turning point of my life.”

It was also the turning point of the comics industry. The Fantastic Four debuted 57 years ago this month, and Lee and his stable of remarkable talent, including the legendary Jack Kirby, spent the next years creating the X-Men and Iron Man, the Black Panther and Thor and the Incredible Hulk — a cinematic universe that would gross more than $17 billion worldwide for Marvel Studios, and billions more for such other studios as Fox and Sony.

Lee told me that the key to all this success was that he began to listen to himself — to what fasci-

nated him about fairy tales and classic novels alike, from Grimm to “Great Expectations.” Lee was drawn to the strength we find in ourselves at the height of human frailty.

That universal appeal to our vulnerabilities — at the height of tumultuous times and generational change in the United States in the 1960s — helped Marvel’s creations become embraced and embedded in mainstream culture.

And as their popularity grew, Lee grew from his duties as writer-editor to his role as promoter and ringmaster.

“He was the huckster that comics needed — he was the showman,” novelist and “Sandman” writer Neil Gaiman told me after Lee’s death was announced. “He was also an effective writer. When you look at the [Marvel] comics by other people who weren’t Stan, you realized how efficient and effective he was.”

Part of Lee’s promotional gen-

Stan Lee poses in his office in California with a figure of Spider-Man, one of his beloved Marvel creations. “He was the huckster that comics needed — he was the showman,” says novelist and “Sandman” writer Neil Gaiman.

ius was making Marvel readers feel like a club, with such comicbook features as Stan’s Soapbox — Lee’s column that, in his trademark dramatic verbiage, spoke directly to readers as true “believers.” “He made you feel like part of a fantastical team, and his enthusiasm never dipped below whatever enthusiasm you would need to power a volcano,” Gaiman said.

And that high-powered passion only recently began to fade.

The first time I saw Lee in person, at Comic-Con in 2009, he was walking briskly toward a secondfloor escalator at San Diego’s Convention Center. As he descended downward, dressed all in bright white and cream tones, hundreds of people began to chant his name with increasing volume: “Stan!

Stan! STAN!” Lee beamed like a king, waved to his adoring throngs and then disappeared around a corner like a comic-book apparition.

And then two years later, I sat with Lee in his office near Rodeo Drive. When a photographer asked for an elevated shot, Lee assumed it was he who should scale the chair; with a leopard-like spring, Lee was soon standing nine feet high, forever ready to leap into his role at nearly 89.

For nearly a decade, whenever I emailed Lee, he would — true to his ambassador’s role — reply back within several hours, no matter the hour, no matter where he was in the world. So when he once went incommunicado for weeks, I was concerned.

Then, suddenly, came the humorous reply: “Mike—just had a pacemaker put in—now I am Iron Man.” For six decades, he was our comics Iron Man and showman. He got the credit for so much because he had a voice like no other, and the spotlight seemed to warm to him instead of the other way around.

Now, “Stan is gone, and it really is the end of an era,” Gaiman said.

“Ditko and Kirby and Stan — there’s this wonderful thing that Stan and the guys did in the ‘60s, and it feels like it’s come to an end.

“He was the last great showman — we haven’t had one since.” n ©The Washington Post

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ENTREPRENEURSHIP

KLMNO WEEKLY

How a hobby turns into a business After analyzing data of 400,000 knitters, researcher finds that courage is key

Anne Mizoguchi, left, and Cheray Bowis, center, help Barbara Bergen pick out yarn Tuesday at Looped Yarn Works in D.C., where colorful skeins line the shelves.

BY

A NDREW V AN D AM

W

hen she visited Ravelry.com, a patternsharing and socialmedia website known as the “Facebook of knitting,” MIT PhD candidate Hyejun Kim realized she was watching the journey from hobbyist to entrepreneur happen in real time. With data.

“It’s impossible not to study this,” she thought.

Kim’s resulting analysis sheds light on the hard-to-measure early stages of entrepreneurship, and the social and economic forces that cause someone to flip the switch from “fun” to “profit.”

She analyzed almost 100 interviews and 403,168 profiles of knitters and crocheters. She found that even on one of the Internet’s great niche social networks, offline encouragement and feedback helped most talented hobbyists recognize their ability and take the first steps toward monetizing it. Success on the Internet was propelled by real-life interactions.

Kim, who tried to knit but never got the hang of it, calculates that about 96 percent of Ravelry’s users are women. In a time when online side hustles and gigs are proliferating, her work helps us understand the forces that encourage skilled women to step off the sidelines and participate.

Many entrepreneurs emerge from a pool of dedicated hobbyists, but it’s hard to study that transition. You’d have to meticulously track years of activities, interests and output of every person who participates in a hobby.

Remarkably, Ravelry’s design encourages their users to do almost exactly that.

The 8 million-plus people who have signed up for Ravelry since 2007 represent a diverse crosssection of the world’s knitters.

According to the site, Ravelry makes most of its money through “yarn-related advertising.”

Together those knitters have built the kind of detailed, longrunning data set that prior generations of economists could only dream of. They post the projects

LEXEY SWALL FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

they complete, the patterns and yarn they use, and the real-world groups they join. They even link their accounts to personal storefronts where they sell patterns to other users.

“For knitters it is great to keep records,” Kim said. “For researchers, it is great to observe every knitting activity of every knitter.”

To better understand what transforms pattern users into pattern sellers, Kim reviewed 99 interviews with knitters on a niche newsletter and three blogs. The most common answer, by far, was that they’d been encouraged by people they knew, such as husbands and friends. Many had already been modifying patterns and designing their own yarn gnomes and cat costumes, but until they heard from others, they lacked the confidence to step out on their own.

“For many entrepreneurs, I think the biggest personal challenge is believing in yourself — that what you are creating is

something that is desired and valued by others,” designer Luise O’Neill told the Patternfish newsletter in 2015.

Kim’s analysis of data on 403,168 individual knitters from 2007 to 2014 backs this up. People who joined a s group to craft socially were 25 percent more likely than otherwise identical knitters to take the plunge into entrepreneurship. This is true even when correcting for geography, experience, skill level and productivity.

The transformation begins immediately, implying that knitters realized their talent soon after meeting their peers, comparing their work and receiving feedback and encouragement.

Kim found the effect was strongest among those who were already the most skilled knitters.

That suggests that in many cases social networks such as stitch n’ bitch groups create entrepreneurs by encouraging those with the most talent, rather than edu-

cating those who lag behind.

University of Virginia economist Eric Chyn called Kim’s approach creative and effective. “It’s very compelling evidence using new data,” he said.

“It tells us something about the way in which peers matter,” said Chyn. He was not involved in Kim’s research but has studied similar social effects in different contexts.

Chyn said Kim’s analysis suggested your peers may influence you in ways academics may not typically consider. It’s often believed your social connections can propel you into entrepreneurship by providing information and resources that enable you to start a new business.

Women tended to be skilled stitchers and pattern designers before they joined their groups.

But the offline social network of the gatherings gave the knitters something they didn’t have before: confidence. n ©The Washington Post

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SUNDAY, November 18, 2018

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