Harper's Magazine February 2022

JOHN R. MACARTHUR, PRESIDENT AND PUBLISHER Editor CHRISTOPHER BEHA Acting Editor MATTHEW SHERRILL Managing Editor STEPHANIE MCFEETERS Senior Editors JOANNA BIGGS, CHRISTOPHER CARROLL, TIMOTHY FARRINGTON, JOE KLOC, KATHERINE RYDER, WILL STEPHENSON Art Director KATHRYN HUMPHRIES Editor Emeritus LEWIS H. LAPHAM Washington Editor ANDREW COCKBURN Poetry Editor BEN LERNER Web Editor VIOLET LUCCA Associate Editors ELIZABETH BRYANT, ELENA SAAVEDRA BUCKLEY Deputy Art Director ALYSSA ORTEGA COPPELMAN Assistant Editors WILL AUGEROT, MEGAN EVERSHED, ALEX KONG, CHARLIE LEE, LEON PAN Production Manager and Designer STEPHANIE CUENCA Editorial Interns EMMA BAKER, MARLENE KHAMIS, MAX SALTMAN Art Intern MARCELA ROYO Contributing Editors ANDREW J. BACEVICH, KEVIN BAKER, TOM BISSELL, JOSHUA COHEN, JOHN CROWLEY, WES ENZINNA, TANYA GOLD, GARY GREENBERG, JACK HITT, EDWARD HOAGLAND, SCOTT HORTON, FREDERICK KAUFMAN, GARRET KEIZER, MARK KINGWELL, WALTER KIRN, RAFIL KROLL-ZAIDI, RICHARD MANNING, CLANCY MARTIN, DUNCAN MURRELL, RACHEL NOLAN, VINCE PASSARO, JAMES POGUE, FRANCINE PROSE, ELLEN ROSENBUSH, JEFF SHARLET, CHRISTINE SMALLWOOD, ZADIE SMITH, REBECCA SOLNIT, MATTHEW STEVENSON, BARRETT SWANSON, JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN Contributing Artists LISA…

Bavarian Rhapsody I don’t think Lauren Oyler was quite fair in accusing W. G. Sebald of excising all evidence of modernity [“Desperately Seeking Sebald,” Review, December], particularly when she lays “denialism about the existence of McDonald’s” at his door. Sebald’s narrators do mention McDonald’s, and not only in Austerlitz, as Oyler observes. There is a carton of McDonald’s fries ordered at a “brightly lit counter” in The Rings of Saturn. While it’s true that ordering those fries did make the narrator feel “like a criminal wanted worldwide,” Sebald can hardly be accused of refusing to acknowledge the existence of McDonald’s. Every era has its artifacts, and I think it is part of Sebald’s method to demonstrate their arbitrary nature, not to privilege those of the past over the present. Readers are, of course,…

One of the few clear goods to have emerged from the social and political turmoil of the past decade is a collapse of faith in public opinion polls. Last fall’s off-year elections were not as disastrous for the industry as the three presidential contests that preceded them, but they still represented another blow to pollster prestige. The former governor and Democratic superhack Terry McAuliffe lost a Virginia gubernatorial race in which most outlets had shown him narrowly but consistently ahead, while in solidly blue New Jersey the Democratic incumbent, Governor Phil Murphy, barely squeaked out a win after many had predicted a huge margin of victory. The latter race led the director of Jersey’s own Monmouth University Polling Institute—one of the nation’s most widely respected surveyors—to apologize. “The growing perception that…

The everyday life of the segregation era is not much discussed outside academia. More attention is given to large events—court decisions, laws, protests—and to the heroism of the movement, the horror of extraordinary racist militants, lynchings, bombings, and the murders of civil-rights activists. Missing from these discussions is a sense of how the segregationist regime was held together, what practical purposes it served. It is identified with abstractions like prejudice, bigotry, racism, and an eternal white supremacy—which tell us nothing about how the order operated, how its official and unofficial protocols organized people’s lives. What those without intimate knowledge of the regime are left with is a vague sense of the bad old days when bigots and bigotry reigned. That impression obscures the most basic truth of the white-supremacist South: it…

CAROL OFF: Mayor Puckett, the voters have spoken. Do you have any regrets about your giant chicken? JIM PUCKETT: No ma’am, none whatsoever. My giant chicken has done exactly what I wanted it to do. OFF: You spent $300,000 and you just got defeated. Why is it a success? PUCKETT: Because we’ve been on the front page of the Wall Street Journal twice. I’ve been in newspapers across the country, from New York to San Francisco to China to India. We’ve got a great little town and this chicken has garnered us worldwide recognition. Now, the voters obviously don’t see the importance of that. You might not like everything that I do, but you’re never going to say I sat around and didn’t do anything. OFF: Okay, so you mention the Wall Street Journal,…

Those on board a yacht become a part of the ocean’s ecosystem, and they are perfectly positioned to assist in the fight to protect our warming earth. Here are five ways yacht-owning families can help our oceans heal: 1. Young yachting families can use their time at sea to bear witness to how the ocean is changing. Photographing marine life and accumulating ocean plastics is not just something adults can do. It is an activity for children too. 2. By ferrying scientists to and from remote locations, yachting families can take a hands-on approach to ocean conservation. By working with scientists at sea, children can develop a love of climate protection. 3. Families can sponsor and track their own sea creatures. “My whale is called Luke!” laughs Dr. Vienna Eleuteri. “I adopted him…