Monday

It took two days, but eventually, on Monday, Trump ordered the flag to be lowered at the White House, out of respect for the late John McCain. It was like Diana and the flag at Buckingham Palace all over again, except Trump didn’t have the excuse of royal protocol.

As the week wore on, it also became apparent that a portion of the Republican senator’s last weeks on earth had been devoted to thinking about how best he might posthumously defeat his adversary. Not only was Trump not invited to the funeral, but McCain chose, as one of his pallbearers, a Russian dissident who had stood up to Putin and issued final remarks that were clearly a rebuke – “we weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence ...” – to the man in the White House.

Not even Trump could hate-tweet at a dead man whose coffin, draped in the flag, was due to lie in state in the US Capitol on Friday, but it boggles the mind to imagine what he must be have been saying, and where the untweeted rage impulse will go. Time to stock up on bottled water and flashlight batteries, again.



Tuesday

A bad day for Jeremy Corbyn in the US media, with an op-ed in the New York Times condemning him for antisemitism, and a drive-by hit in the New Yorker, embedded deep in a profile of Glenn Greenwald (who insists there is nothing amiss in Corbyn’s positions and that anyone who says otherwise is peddling in “guilt-by-association trash”) and somehow all the more damning for its un-Greenwald-esque mildness: “It would be truer to say that Corbyn’s record provides some evidence of antisemitism, and that supporting him requires a response to that.”

Corbyn is not particularly well known in New York, but the antisemitism debate around him plays more widely to assumptions about the roots of English irony, and the various biases known, to anyone with the slightest knowledge of the literary history therein to have flourished there.

It’s a shame, given that Corbyn might otherwise have found allies within the surging Democratic Socialists in New York. But by American lights he seems cut from a very different cloth, simultaneously mousy and offensive in ways that will seem, in the US, to be failings that are peculiarly British.

Wednesday

Trump’s richest and most publicly despised member of the cabinet, Betsy DeVos, who – before she became Education secretary – had zero experience working in the public school sector and lots of experience being a billionaire, is setting her sights on campus sexual misconduct protocols, with new policies, reported mid-week, aimed at increasing the rights of students accused of sexual assault and reducing institutions’ liability.

This is a response, clearly, to the debate around the lower standards of proof and lack of due process entailed in US campus investigations into sexual assault, which have for a long time been seen to fail students on both sides of any particular complaint. So-called Title IX investigations, which if upheld carry no criminal penalties but can end a student’s career, are in need of an overhaul, and since it is a complicated, sensitive area fraught with difficulty, this week’s policy development was bad news: DeVos is almost certainly one of the last people on earth who should be managing it.

Thursday

“I’m not an Albany insider like Governor Cuomo,” said Cynthia Nixon on Wednesday night, “but experience doesn’t mean that much if you’re not actually good at governing.” It was the actor turned politician’s first ever political debate, which on Thursday morning was widely judged a success. Nixon, who is standing against Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for this year’s New York gubernatorial race, was nervy and well-informed. Governor Cuomo was as louche as a lounge-singer, smirking through much of the debate and occasionally getting riled enough to frown extra folds into his deeply tanned skin.

Until her politician’s persona is better developed, it is hard to suspend disbelief and entirely buy Nixon as a person not acting, or rather, as a person with a superpower they are choosing not to use. Cuomo is a ham and Nixon is not, but it was still possible, on occasion, to see in the flash of her smile a sudden throwback to her other career.

She is supported by the Democratic Socialists and, in response to a question from the audience, said – apparently off the cuff – that she would forego her governor’s salary if she won. Cuomo, meanwhile, tried to nail her for hypocrisy, referring to an S corporation, a tax “loophole”, through which he said she had (legally) sheltered some income.

This comes in the wake of the pair’s battle of the tax returns: Nixon made $1.3m in 2017, adjusting down after deductions to $619,799, a figure that included residuals for Sex and the City, in comparison to Cuomo’s $212,776, ensuring that neither can run on salt-of-the-earth credentials and that both constantly accuse each other of being “corporate democrats”. Still, the Atlantic called it for Nixon, saying she had Cuomo “scrambling to the left,” while the New Republic called her a “political neophyte” who had “shaken up the status quo”. She’s behind in the polls – but so was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Friday

A trip to Central Park was briefly delayed by a sign at the 67th street entrance informing visitors to stay alert for “raccoons suffering from distemper”. Since June, 26 raccoons have died in city parks, two of which have tested positive for canine distemper virus. Symptoms of distemper in raccoons include wandering aimlessly, suffering spasms and exhibiting signs of aggression. Clearly someone should check on the raccoons of DC, with a particular focus on the trees standing outside the West Wing.

Digested week, digested:

Transcend your tribe.