This episode is being released to subscribers on October 7, 2024, one year to the day after Hamas’s brutal attacks against Israeli civilians. We should not forget those who were killed and injured, nor those whom Hamas still holds hostage. Their families and their nation deserve a chance to mourn their losses and to pray for the return of those still with us. In this episode, John and I don’t address October 7 directly, but it forms the background to a large portion of this episode, which concerns, among other things, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book, The Message.
No one was more surprised than me to find myself, first, blown away by the prose and, second, in sympathy with Coates’s perspective on the situation of the Palestinians. But then, one can have it all: anguish for both Israeli and Palestinian victims of what is now threatening to become a full-blown regional war, anguish at the world and regional powers that kill and abet the killing of thousands upon thousands with no end in sight, and anguish at the outrage one receives from deviating even one iota from the “correct” (correct by whose lights?) position on the conflict.
So John and I talk about the shrug-inducing, likely inconsequential vice-presidential debate. We talk about the federal charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. We talk about Penn’s unjust punishment of Amy Wax. But I’m not so naive as to think those topics will generate the kind of response that our discussion of Coates will—I’ve already heard from those who’ve watched my post-show recording session. But the conversation isn’t over. John and I discuss The Message here, and we’ll do so again after John actually reads the book. I’m not done talking and thinking about this.
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1:12 The Vance-Walz debate
4:28 Glenn: Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book is brilliant
13:16 John and Coates’s ancient beef
15:31 Coates’s “blistering” critique of Zionism
18:22 Ground News ad
20:39 Do you have to solve the problem of “apartheid” in order to criticize it?
33:10 Glenn’s reappraisal of Coates (and John’s bemusement)
34:53 ACTA ad 36:39 Will the race card play for Eric Adams?
42:31 What has Eric Adams accomplished?
43:57 Why John defends Amy Wax
49:17 Glenn: Amy Wax gets to have her opinion
Recorded October 5, 2024
Links and Readings
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book, The Message
Coleman Hughes’s Free Press review of The Message
Coates’s book, Between the World and Me
Coates’s Atlantic essay, “The Case for Reparations”
Glenn and John’s in-person TGS episode
Andrew Yang’s Newsweek piece, “I Ran against Eric Adams. I Saw This Coming.”
John’s NYT piece, “She Is Outrageous, Demeaning, Dangerous. She Shouldn’t Be Punished.”
Amy Wax’s December 2021 TGS appearance
Wax’s August 2022 TGS appearance
Wax’s March 2024 TGS appearance
Richard Sander’s Stanford Law Review article, “A Systematic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools”
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