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# Adam Sandler doesn’t need your respect. But he’s getting it anyway.
Adam Sandler will be honored by the Kennedy Center with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. (Erik Carter for The Washington Post)
## In a rare sit-down interview, the former SNL star and comedy icon reflects on his career as he receives the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
PITTSBURGH — During every Adam Sandler stand-up show, he straps on his electric guitar and sings a song. Unlike the bite-size ditties he’s peppered through the set about selfies or baggy shorts, this one concerns his late, great “Saturday Night Live” buddy, Chris Farley.
It is a perfect tribute. Sandler, singing softly as he strums in G, captures the complicated beauty of Farley as clips of his most memorable high jinks play on a giant screen behind him. The crowd roars as he references Farley’s electrifying SNL turns as a Chippendales dancer and a motivational speaker “living in a van down by the river.” There is a hush as Sandler slips into the bridge, a peek into his friend’s vulnerability.
*I saw him in the office, crying with his headphones on*
*Listening to a KC and the Sunshine Band song*
*I said, “Buddy, how the hell is that making you so sad?”*
*Then he laughed and said, “Just thinking about my dad”*
Sandler first performed “Farley” in 2015 during a guest spot at Carnegie Hall, a show that inspired him to return to doing stand-up tours. And he played it when he hosted SNL in 2019, choking up visibly.
“Only Sandler could do that,” says Dana Carvey, an SNL star when the younger comedian arrived in 1990. “That’s another gear that Adam has. He’ll be really, really silly. But he’s not afraid to go for sentimentality and earnestness.”
The song, with its mix of low- and highbrow, the profane and poetic, could serve as a four-minute-and-22-second window into why the comedian and actor is being recognized with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. And it’s why his friends are glad that, at 56, he’s finally getting his due. All of which may sound strange for someone whose films — generational comedies that include “Happy Gilmore,” “The Wedding Singer” and “Grown Ups” — have earned more than $3 billion at the box office. But for Sandler, popularity and praise have rarely come hand in hand.
That has changed some in recent years. Sandler’s dramatic acting performances in 2017’s “The Meyerowitz Stories,” last year’s basketball drama “Hustle” and especially 2019’s “Uncut Gems” brought unlikely (and ultimately fruitless) Oscar buzz. His 2019 stand-up special “100% Fresh” and 2020’s throwback comedy “Hubie Halloween” confirmed why he’s been packing movie theaters and arenas since the Clinton administration. The Twain puts Sandler in the company of such figures as Eddie Murphy, Carol Burnett and Steve Martin.
And the timing is perfect, says his old boss, Lorne Michaels, himself a recipient of the prize from the Kennedy Center in 2004.
“The nature of comedy is you get the audience, you get the money,” says Michaels, SNL’s creator and executive producer. “Respect is the last thing you get.”
###
‘Completely new and fresh’
Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions headquarters is in a small building in Pacific Palisades, not far from where he lives with his wife, Jackie, and their daughters, Sadie, 16, and Sunny, 14.
On a recent Friday afternoon, the bearded Sandler enters the room with a slight limp courtesy of hip replacement surgery he had in the fall. A few days earlier, he was in Boston, helping Sadie look at colleges. The next day he’ll go to the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards with his daughters who will watch him receive the King of Comedy Award and submit to the inevitable sliming. (Sandler is the first person to receive the top comedy honors from Nickelodeon and the Kennedy Center, let alone receive them in the same month.)
Sandler typically doesn’t do interviews like this. He will go on podcasts with buds, sit on the couch on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” or answer goofy questions on “Entertainment Tonight” (“Who would be at *your* murder mystery party?”) but this — a three-hour drill-down about his career — is not his thing. He can tell you exactly why.
Flash back to 1995 in the SNL offices. Al Franken, the veteran writer and future senator, confronts Sandler and tells him that nobody appreciated his quotes in that TV Guide story. Huh? Sandler checks and sees that the magazine ran a quote from him complaining that “the writing sucks” on the show.
“I go, ‘I never f---in’ said that. I never would say that,’” he remembers now. “So I called the writer. I said, ‘Why did you say I said that?’ And he kind of didn’t want to talk to me. I should have taped the conversation.”
Then, a few months later, came the New York magazine article titled “[Comedy Isn’t Funny](https://nymag.com/arts/tv/features/47548/).” Michaels gave Chris Smith, a writer with the magazine, unfettered access to Studio 8H for weeks. The resulting article mashed the writer’s disgust for the show with anonymous quotes attacking its cast. The harshest mockery was reserved for the boyishly sensitive Farley.
“He came and fake buddied up with us,” says David Spade, who was also in the cast. “We let him in on all these meetings and dinners, and he wrote a s---ty piece to get himself notoriety.”
Asked about his article today, Smith says SNL “was not a happy place at the time.”
By then, Sandler had starred in “Billy Madison,” an instant entry into the teenage canon that debuted at No. 1 at the box office. It also got terrible reviews. *Terrible* reviews*.* It was one of the last times Sandler read what the critics had to say, good or bad.
“When ‘Billy Madison’ came out and I realized I’m going to be in the newspaper, that was a big deal,” he says. “When I was a kid, if I got a couple of hits in baseball and was [in the Union Leader](https://www.unionleader.com/sports/concord-outlasts-goffstown-for-state-little-league-title/article_8b8a6919-f218-5669-beff-61b3b0043e7d.html) — Adam Sandler, you know, shortstop got a single and a double — I got excited. And then I read a couple reviews and I was like, ‘Woof, that hurts.’ I thought they would have a good time with it like I did. And then ‘Happy Gilmore’ was getting trashed and my friends were getting all riled up, and I just said, ‘No, I don’t need to read that stuff.’”
Ultimately, Sandler would respond. Just not to the critics.
“I decided I wanted to talk through what I like to do,” he says. “I like to do my stand-up. I like to do my movies. I was just happy doing that.”
Sandler grew up in Manchester, N.H., the youngest of Judy and Stanley’s four children. They were supportive parents. Judy praised his singing, and the boy would sometimes entertain her by crooning Johnny Mathis from the back seat. Stanley, an electrical contractor, coached his sports teams and bought him an electric guitar at the age of 12. Sandler still takes that Strat out onstage. He named his character in 2022’s “Hustle” after Stanley, who died in 2003.
Growing up, Sandler played basketball for the local Jewish community center team and guitar in bands called Messiah, Spectrum and Storm. He also fell in love with comedy, listening to Steve Martin and Cheech & Chong records, watching “Caddyshack” and “Animal House,” and seeing Eddie Murphy on SNL.
He headed to New York University in 1984 to study acting and was setting up his room in Brittany Hall when Tim Herlihy walked in. Sandler told Herlihy he wanted to be a comedian. Herlihy told Sandler he wanted to study economics and get rich. That first weekend, though, he handed Sandler a few jokes he had scribbled down for him. He’s been a regular writing partner since, from 1995’s “Billy Madison” to “Hubie Halloween.” Elsewhere in the dorm, they met a business major, Jack Giarraputo, and his roommate, Frank Coraci, who was studying film. Another NYU acting student, Allen Covert, also joined the crew. All remain essential partners with the exception of Giarraputo, who left the business in 2014 to spend more time with his family.
Sandler did his first stand-up at 17 at an open mic in Boston. He didn’t realize you had to write material and remembers riffing about his family. At NYU, he became a club regular. At first, he struggled and sometimes even turned on the crowd, until some older comics told him yelling at the audience wasn’t a great strategy.
What he had going for him, even before he had great material, still works for him onstage. There is a natural ease and a likability. He will chuckle as he tells a joke, as if you’re playing pool or getting a burger and your buddy has a funny story to tell you.
“It’s not an affectation,” says Herlihy. “It’s the way his mind works. When he’s laughing, it’s like, ‘Oh, this is a good part.’ Like this guy who lived it can’t even get through it without laughing.”
“As a young person,” adds director Judd Apatow, who roomed with Sandler after NYU but before SNL, “everybody that encountered him thought, ‘This guy is going to be a gigantic star.’ Because he was making us so happy when we hung around with him.”
That personality captured Doug Herzog, then an MTV executive who would later launch “The Daily Show” and “South Park.” In 1987, Herzog had gone to a club to see another act as he scouted for MTV’s “Remote Control” game show. He ended up hiring Sandler, who was still living in his dorm.
“I’m waiting and this kid jumps onstage — sneakers, old-school sweatpants, end-of-the-’80s ratty T-shirt, backwards baseball hat,” says Herzog. “I would say an idiosyncratic kind of vibe and tone. You’re also, like, in the heyday of the Beastie Boys and I was like, ‘Oh, he kind of looks like a Beastie Boy and he’s funny and he’s charming.’”
Sandler’s biggest break came two years later. He and Chris Rock auditioned for SNL with a group of comics. Michaels remembers there were others in the room who were more versatile. But nobody as original.
“Most people audition in the style of things that have already been on the show,” Michaels says. “But what I’m looking for is something that makes you laugh because you haven’t seen it yet. Both of them had that. Adam was truly funny but in a style that was completely new and fresh.”
###
Friction at SNL
In 2019, Sandler returned to host SNL for the first time and centered his monologue on how much he loved being a cast member. Then he mentioned a question his daughter had asked. “If it was the greatest, Dad, then why did you leave?”
As the piano kicked in, Sandler began a ballad: “I was fired.”
Which is not exactly true. But Sandler’s SNL run, from 1990 to 1995, would see two factions emerge inside 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Those who got it and those who didn’t. Executives were known to lodge complaints about his work. And within the cliquey cast and writers room, there was also a split.
“At read-through, Adam would do an \[Weekend\] Update piece, like where he was a travel guide and the joke would be that he was just not doing what a travel guide is supposed to be doing,” says Robert Smigel, a writer on the show for eight years. “But he was delivering the information with a blissful idiot’s enthusiasm. And it was incredibly funny. And I just remember me and Conan \[O’Brien\] and the nerds — Greg Daniels and \[Bob\] Odenkirk — giggling uncontrollably in one corner of this room. This room that otherwise had a black cloud hanging over it.”
Jim Downey, the legendary writer who had worked with John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray, decided early on that Sandler was the closest thing SNL ever had to Jerry Lewis. Those wacky voices, the off-kilter characters. He could also sing, bringing his acoustic guitar onto Weekend Update to do his irresistible tributes to Thanksgiving and Hanukkah (“O.J. Simpson, not a Jew. But guess who is? Hall of Famer Rod Carew — he converted.”) As Downey watched the split, between appreciators and disparagers**,** he developed a term to describe Sandler’s critics. *Half-brights*.
“Ordinary people had no problem with him, and really smart people had no problem,” says Downey. “But there was this group in the middle who would just take great offense at this kind of thing. They thought it was self-indulgent and infantile. And the thing about Adam was: … Most performers — it’s very important that they be respected as intelligent and often more intelligent than they really are. Adam was a guy who did not care if you thought he was smart and, in fact, went out of the way to obscure the fact that he is, I’d daresay, a lot more intelligent than 90 percent of the performers I’ve worked with.”
Sandler’s greatest bits were deceivingly multidimensional. “The Herlihy Boy,” named after his college roommate, was a commercial you would never see. A needy, potentially sociopathic man-child pleads to housesit (“Pleeeeeze … it would mean so much to me if you just let me water your plants”) or walk your grandmother across the street. Every minute or so, the camera pulls back to show Chris Farley as an exasperated older relative who wants you to give the damn kid a break while screaming, pleading and generally Farleying at full blast.
“To me, that was a rhythm piece,” says Sandler. “I’m going to calmly talk, Farley’s going to go f---ing bananas. Camera will zoom back in — calm energy — then widen to a sick man screaming. I knew that had a comedy rhythm to it. I learned that from SNL. I learned what made me laugh. Like [Dan Aykroyd on ‘Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute.’](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jphfMd4_LCs) That rhythm influenced me.”
Sandler’s most famous character may have been Canteen Boy, a voice and persona he would adapt for his hugely successful 1998 film, “The Waterboy,” and bring back nearly 25 years later for “Hubie Halloween.” Canteen Boy is a misfit — always dressed in Boy Scout attire with a baby-talk voice — who is universally mocked but still exudes a boastful pride.
“It wasn’t like a single joke that escalates,” says Smigel. “It was a conversation between a somewhat strange guy and a couple of other people who were perceived as normal. And the other guys are just kind of smirking and making ... comments that they think are going over his head, but they’re not. And the weird guy doesn’t want to let them know that they’re hurting him. So he’s acting like they’re going over his head, for his own dignity’s sake. So that’s a lot going on in a ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch.”
Canteen Boy, like so many of his ideas, was polarizing. But it was, in a way, a microcosm of Sandler’s time on SNL — the smug, self-assured grown-ups looking down on the goofy kid who was much smarter than they realized.
“Somebody like Franken is like, ‘Really, Canteen Boy?’” says Smigel. “And I literally said to Al, ‘It’s the most complex sketch in read-through.’”
Franken wasn’t the only doubter. NBC’s executives complained, too. Don Ohlmeyer, a network president, targeted Sandler, Farley and Spade. *These guys aren’t funny,* he’d tell Michaels. *I think they are*, Michaels would respond. The execs longed for the past, for Roseanne Roseannadanna or Chevy’s pratfalls. They didn’t understand Sandler singing, “A turkey for me, a turkey for you, let’s eat turkey in a big brown shoe.”
“Whether it’s in painting or in music or in writing, style changes are disruptive,” says Michaels. “And the reaction to Adam on the show, in the world, was growing, but it wasn’t visible in the mainstream because they were all baby boomers.”
“I don’t think I ever met Don Ohlmeyer,” says Sandler. “I shook it off. That’s not what I heard when I walked down the street and some kid talked to me about [Crazy Pickle Arm](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lza3Q57t7YQ). I was going by the response of my New Hampshire friends calling me up, my father telling me his buddy’s kid thought such and such was funny. Or my brother. What he liked. I didn’t take it personally. I didn’t sit there and go, maybe I should change.”
By 1995, he had been at SNL for five seasons when Michaels talked with Sandler’s manager, Sandy Wernick. “Billy Madison” had come out a few months earlier. Wernick told Michaels that Sandler was filming “Happy Gilmore,” in which Sandler played a temperamental failed hockey player who joins the golf tour to save his grandmother from being evicted.
“I said, ‘Listen, I can protect him at the show, at least for now,’” says Michaels. “But they’re so adamant about his not being funny and not being good. So I think — go. He can leave.”
###
Winning audiences
Losing SNL was scary. “Billy Madison” had done well, but it wasn’t exactly “Ghostbusters.” He wondered whether he would keep getting opportunities.
“Maybe the other companies are going to start saying, ‘Don’t hire him because of this. They don’t like him over there. Maybe there’s a reason.’’’ Sandler says. “I was probably just nervous about that, but I didn’t doubt myself.”
By now, Sandler’s NYU team was humming. Herlihy would write with him. Giarraputo would help produce, do marketing, pitch in on jokes. Coraci came on board to direct “The Wedding Singer” and “Waterboy.” He would later do “Click,” “Blended” and “The Ridiculous 6.” Following Sandler’s lead, they focused on the audience, not the critics.
Test screenings would be key.
“Adam would sneak into the back of the theater and he would listen,” says Giarraputo. “As a comedian, it’s like a live audience — which jokes are working. Sometimes, we would have to open up spaces for jokes because they were laughing so hard.”
So when “Billy Madison” came out and was savaged by critics — Herlihy’s 84-year-old grandfather tried to comfort him after a Long Island Newsday writer compared the film to the horrors of Auschwitz — the gang jumped in a car and sneaked into theaters to watch audiences roar.
Ticket sales kept increasing. Home viewing on videotape, then DVD, was huge. “The Waterboy” made $186 million on a $23 million budget. “Big Daddy,” out in 1999, topped $230 million.
“Everybody wants to be loved,” says Tamra Davis, who directed “Billy Madison.” “But sometimes, it’s like when your parents don’t get your music. I kind of saw it as a badge of glory.”
###
Moving beyond comedy
In between his career-defining epics “Magnolia” and “There Will Be Blood,” Paul Thomas Anderson decided to write a movie for Sandler. Anderson loved watching a particular Sandler sketch on SNL, “[The Denise Show](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twIgfEhXvXg),” where Sandler’s scorned ex-boyfriend, Brian, would throw a petulant, self-pitying tantrum. In 2002’s “Punch-Drunk Love,” he cast Sandler as pent-up lonely man Barry Egan opposite Emily Watson, and Sandler was the unexpected recipient of critical praise.
He then branched out into more romantic comedies, including “50 First Dates” with Drew Barrymore and “Just Go With It” with Jennifer Aniston.
That made perfect sense to Queen Latifah, who played his wife in last year’s “Hustle” and remembers laughing at him on SNL.
“I love ‘50 First Dates,’” she says. “Adam knows how to play the romantic comedy, and I think a lot of it is because this is a guy I would like to meet. This is a guy that would make me laugh. This is a guy who’s sweet. This is a guy who has real feelings and gets pissed off.”
Sandler’s dramatic side returned in Apatow’s “Funny People,” the 2009 film in which he played a darker, Rodney Dangerfield-ish version of a comic, and in 2017, when Noah Baumbach wrote a part for him as a musical and sweetly underappreciated house-dad opposite Dustin Hoffman’s narcissistic, insecure patriarch in “Meyerowitz.” Then came 2019’s “Uncut Gems,” a film by Josh and Benny Safdie. They had grown up with Sandler’s comedy albums from the 1990s. They spent years recruiting him to play the deeply flawed Howard Ratner, a jewelry dealer with a gambling addiction and a dissolving marriage.
“There’s this rage and this deep sweetness to him,” says Josh Safdie. “And he’s the only person who could have expressed what made Howard lovable for us.”
That range has also impressed his co-stars.
Jennifer Aniston, who has made three movies with Sandler, including the new Netflix adventure comedy “Murder Mystery 2,” remembers watching Sandler rhyme “deli” with “Arthur Fonzarelli” when he did “The Chanukah Song.”
“I mean, you couldn’t keep a straight face,” she says. “And personally, I think ‘\[You Don’t Mess With the\] Zohan’ is one of the funniest movies and then he has ‘Uncut Gems.’ It’s very rare for actors to be able to hit it out of the park in every genre.”
“I don’t know how he gets there. I have no idea,” says Eric Bogosian, who was [portrayed by Sandler on SNL](https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/wfpas-monsters-of-monologue-94/2872689) in 1994, and who acted alongside him in “Uncut Gems” 25 years later. “But he does drop into a very centered place and speaks from a kind of authenticity when you watch his scenes.”
Sandler does not look for dramatic roles. He says his wife ultimately convinced him he was right for “Uncut Gems” after he expressed apprehension about the role.
“When I see him like that,” says Jackie in an email, “I let him know why I think he would be great at that specific part and why I think his fans would like to see him be that character. Because people coming up on the street and telling him how much one of his movies meant to them, that’s what drives him.”
Sandler can also take a different approach on a project he’s hired for as an actor than one under Happy Madison Productions. He focuses on his part, not punching up the script or talking through shots or casting. One thing he doesn’t take these roles on for is to show something to his critics.
“But I do think he’s trying to prove something to himself,” says Dustin Hoffman.
“Adam does compete — with himself,” writes Jackie. “He wants to come up with something new that he hasn’t done before.”
In “The Meyerowitz Stories,” Hoffman says, there were times when Sandler would seem unsure of his performance and the older actor would find himself reassuring him.
“What I think he does that is similar to what I try to do is that you think a lot about what you’re to do with this so-called character,” says Hoffman. “And then when you get there, forget it all. What sticks is what then comes out. He’s very alive in the moment and not preplanned.”
Sandler’s material may have changed, but his personality has not. His primary mission is to make you laugh. Whether onstage or in his office, he will talk about his excitement over a project — that “Hustle” is the first Happy Madison production that wasn’t a comedy — but there will never be any whining about not getting an Oscar nomination for “Uncut Gems” or “Meyerowitz.”
“He’s not looking for pats on the back,” says Spade, who remains a close friend. “He’s already won.”
When Sandler was a kid, he just wanted to make it like Rodney, Eddie or Aykroyd. And he did. Then he got to do the roles James Caan or Robert Duvall could pull off. And then he got married and suddenly he had a family. He’ll celebrate his 20th anniversary with Jackie this summer, and more than anyone else she’s the one who counsels, pushes, advises him on what to do. With what roles to take and with the girls and their birthday parties, bat mitzvahs and college tours. At 56, he is both the king of comedy and the dad with every intention of taking off 10 pounds.
Back onstage in Pittsburgh, “Farley” comes late in the gig, but it’s not the finale. Instead, Sandler tells the crowd he loves them and says the next one is for Jackie. And then he’s strumming a familiar tune, “Grow Old With You” from “The Wedding Singer,” only this time he’s not sporting a mullet and Billy Idol isn’t there to offer vocal and moral support. The verses have been changed to match his real life.
*… Now when I get chubby*
*We do the couples cleanse*
*You tell me I should have been nominated*
*For “Hustle” and “Uncut Gems”*
*I said, “I’ll stick with the Kids’ Choice Awards*
*As I grow old with you”*
They are cheering now, with their “Happy Gilmore” hockey jerseys, their memories of Opera Man and that Hanukkah song, and Sandler, from the stage, turns the final line in his song back to the crowd.
*Thanks for growing old — with me.*
The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor ceremony will air at 8 p.m. March 26 on CNN.
The other evening, I was over at my friends’ place and we were comparing notes on our seventh-graders. Like in New York City, seventh grade in Montreal marks the traditional start of solo commuting on public transit. My friends’ kid has had some [trouble adapting](https://www.thecut.com/2022/09/the-dread-of-watching-your-kid-start-school.html) to the logistics of getting around alone. For a while, a parent would ride the bus with him, but he wanted to be more independent. He switches buses on the way to school, and that was the tricky part that needed practicing.
So for a week of [morning commutes](https://www.thecut.com/2015/03/11-facts-about-your-soul-sucking-commute.html), his stepdad tailed the bus on his bike, pedaling the snowy Montreal streets to make sure his stepson got off where he was supposed to. One morning, the kid missed his stop, and my friend had to race the bus, ditch his bike at the next stop, and rush on to get him. But now he’s riding alone every morning, a seventh-grader making his way.
As my kids get older, I am learning how labor-intensive it is to teach them to be independent, and I’m beginning to think that we have the helicopter-parent/hands-off-parent binary all wrong. Maybe helicopter parenting is a form of neglect, one that might even be comparable in its harmfulness to the kind of neglect that forces kids to grow up by their own wits. The crisis of teen [mental health](https://www.thecut.com/2022/02/stress-toys-for-kids.html) in the wake of COVID can be explained in all sorts of ways, but a common denominator is that many teenagers feel that they have[no control over their lives](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/why-are-kids-so-sad.html), which is distressing for any human. When you teach a kid to be safely independent, you give them some of that control. Denying a kid that opportunity is cruelty disguised as parental virtue – it’s beyond fucked up and dark, when you really think about it.
I also wonder if we misunderstand some of the motivations for helicopter parenting. We assume it’s an anxiety response, and I’m sure that explains a lot of it, but it’s also the path of least resistance. I’m not one to call people out for being lazy — in Montreal, we prefer to call it “*l’art de vivre*” — but I might have to make an exception here.
“Sometimes it’s harder to parent your kids to become independent than it is to helicopter — it can be exhausting, and it can be time-consuming,” said Dr. Gail Saltz, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and host of the[*How Can I Help?*](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-how-can-i-help-with-dr-ga-76281118/)podcast from iHeartRadio. As counterintuitive as it may seem, letting kids make mistakes, and being there to support (and clean up after) them, can be more work than doing everything yourself. “Your kid will leave the house with their shoes on the wrong feet, and you’ll think,*The teacher’s going to see this; what will they think?*” said Dr. Saltz. But the teacher has seen it all, and the kid will realize their feet hurt and figure out that they need to switch their shoes. “Little kids need little tasks,” said Dr. Saltz — like putting on shoes, brushing their own teeth.
Many parents instinctively intervene in these simple tasks, but it sets a precedent that can be hard to break later on. It takes a long-term oceanic presence of mind to teach kids independence. It’s not a set of tasks but an entire orientation that has to be maintained over the course of years. Repetition, correction, being available to help if something goes wrong — this is what teaching kids independence requires of us.
“Parents who are very involved, wanting to know what their child is doing in the world — that is often considered part of helicopter parenting, but that isn’t necessarily a problem,” said Saltz. “Being involved is distinct from wanting to help a child make all of their decisions. The problem is ‘I will help you do all the things. I will get involved in your conflicts. I will not let you make any mistakes.’” According to Saltz, even parents of young children should avoid approaching parenting as a troubleshooting exercise. Children become accustomed to this degree of parental involvement. The more time parents spend clearing the path for their offspring, the harder it is for children to adapt to facing obstacles on their own.
For parents who can afford to throw money at their problems by[hiring nannies and Ubers to shuttle their kids all over town](https://www.curbed.com/2023/02/upper-east-side-parents-axiety-teens-crime-covid.html), being overprotective is probably as much about expediency as it is about actual worry. It’s more convenient to outsource and schedule than to take the time and mental space to help kids handle anything semi-autonomously. But by failing to take the time to teach our kids to navigate a neighborhood (or load a dishwasher, for that matter), we’re prioritizing our own convenience over the long-term benefits for our kids.
Helicopter parenting is also a way of protecting yourself from the judgment of other parents. In fact, its specter can loom even larger than actual threats to children’s safety. The off-piste vigilance of strangers can make an otherwise safe, ordinary situation spiral into conflict and defensiveness.
Fearful and overprotective strangers can even feel like a threat — especially to parents of color, whose kids are[more likely to be seen as “loitering”](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0264275120312336?casa_token=6qz1J4Z9VjMAAAAA:PTBXjf2Ve5QiMoMdv-GBTzxJYSrVW_X4GnCyZBiNaYTaTVtXt-_gkcJuWPE1HtNien4qCGfmmSZz)when they’re out in the world. We’ve all read the nightmare stories of mothers having their children put into foster care because their poverty was mistaken for neglect. Many of us have had our own brushes with a stranger on a rampage of carefulness, and it’s enough to make you think twice about letting your kids be independent at a young age.
When my kids were 5 and 2, I was doing fieldwork for my master’s thesis on the weekends while working full time during the week. (Notice how I instinctively position myself as hardworking and overextended so you’ll think I’m a good person worthy of sympathy.) One Sunday in March, I had to conduct an interview at a Tim Hortons, and since my husband was working, I brought the kids. I left them in the car, listening to music they liked — I could see them through the window from where I sat conducting my interview. Wouldn’t you know it, another woman clocked them too. I saw her standing by my car reaching for her phone, and I knew right away It Was Happening. I excused myself from the interview to run outside. She was on the verge of calling the cops, she said, because someone could come grab the kids at any moment. (It’s amazing how abduction by strangers is such a persistent fear among so many parents, when 99 percent of abductors are known to the child they take.) We exchanged words — I instinctively, Canadianly apologized, which I have regretted ever since — and she left.
I’ve thought about that woman for years. She had two teenage daughters with her, who witnessed the whole exchange. No doubt, as they drove away she reiterated to them that she would never have been so negligent with them when they were young. She was demonstrating fitness to them, responsibility, moral fortitude. But nothing had actually happened — no one had been in danger, and no one was saved. Sometimes, I think that as the world becomes increasingly complex and overfull of information, confused people seek out opportunities to feel like they have some idea of what’s going on. The vulnerability of children, as a concept, is not confusing. And that’s how we have found ourselves in a situation where childrenare overpoliced by strangers in public and parents consider it their duty to protect their kids from obstacles real and imagined.
We really owe it to ourselves and to our kids not to let our style be cramped by the threat of overzealous idiots on the hunt for opportunities to create order in their world. My kids have always been a bit more on the loose than average, and I’ve long harbored a shameful worry: If anything ever happened to them while roaming the neighborhood alone, not only would it be horrible for our family, but it would prove the anxious side right — and I would hate to have to live that down.
It doesn’t take only energy and attention to teach your kids to navigate independence safely. It takes a certain willingness to accept that someone out there might think you’re a bad parent. Allowing imagined judgment to cloud our decision making is like letting an internet comments section make our choices for us. Helicopter parenting is the manifestation of overlapping anxieties about the hazards of the world and about the opinions of other people. It’s also a product of the narcissistic delusion that our children’s (inevitable, developmentally necessary) failures are our own.
This newsletter has never been about giving advice, and I’m not about to start now, but I do have one request to make of all you city-dwelling readers. Next time you see a kid you know walking down the street by themselves, don’t ask them where their parents are. Ask them where they’re headed.
- [Are New Dads OK?](https://www.thecut.com/2023/03/how-can-new-fathers-support-each-other.html)
- [Cup of Jo’s Joanna Goddard Opens Up About Her Divorce](https://www.thecut.com/2023/02/cup-of-jo-joanna-goddard-divorce-parenting-interview.html)
- [What If You Just Didn’t Clean That Up?](https://www.thecut.com/2023/02/embracing-mess-vs-cleanliness.html)
# How an FBI agent stained an NCAA basketball corruption probe
The FBI agents arrived in Las Vegas with $135,000 and a plan.
They took over a sprawling penthouse at the Cosmopolitan, filled the in-room safe with government cash and stocked the wet bar with alcohol. Hidden cameras — including one installed near a crystal-encrusted wall in the living room — recorded visitors.
In the heart of a city known for heists and hangovers, the four agents were running an undercover operation as part of their probe into college basketball corruption that investigators code-named Ballerz.
One of the agents was posing as a deep-pocketed businessman wanting to bribe coaches to persuade their players to retain a particular sports management company when they turned professional. He distributed more than $40,000 in cash to a procession of coaches invited to the penthouse. The sting concluded at a poolside cabana on a blistering afternoon in July 2017 with a final envelope of cash passed to one last coach.
After that transaction, the lead case agent, Scott Carpenter, joined the undercover operative and the two other agents in eating and drinking their way through the $1,500 food and beverage minimum to rent the cabana.
Carpenter had consumed nearly a fifth of vodka and at least six beers by the time he returned to the penthouse to shower and change clothes before a night out.
He grabbed $10,000 in undercover cash from the penthouse safe, then headed to a high-limit lounge at the casino next door. What happened next would ultimately stain the investigation like a cocktail spilled on a white tablecloth.
Reporter Nathan Fenno recounts a lesser known scandal behind the FBI investigation into college basketball corruption — one that involved the lead case agent finding himself on the wrong side of the law after a wild weekend in Vegas.
The investigation was hailed as a watershed moment in men’s college basketball. But in an extensive reassessment, The Times examined thousands of pages of court testimony, intercepted phone calls, text messages, emails and performance reviews. The records provide a detailed look inside the high-profile investigation, led by a veteran FBI agent whose conduct on a vodka-soaked day in Las Vegas landed him on the wrong side of the law.
Ballerz was the top priority for the New York FBI’s public corruption squad for almost a year, according to Carpenter’s performance review in 2017, and included two undercover agents, operations in at least eight states, dozens of grand jury subpoenas and thousands of wiretapped phone calls.
The performance review and other court records offer new details about the lead case agent’s role and provide the most comprehensive account to date of the FBI’s handling of an investigation that, for all its hype, focused on lesser-known coaches and middlemen, most of them Black.
The weight of the federal government crashed down on college basketball at a livestreamed news conference in Manhattan when authorities unveiled the investigation in September 2017. The assistant director in charge of the New York FBI office warned potential cheaters that “we have your playbook.”
FBI agents, some with weapons drawn, had [arrested 10 men](https://www.latimes.com/94717652-132.html), including assistant coaches from USC, Arizona, Auburn and Oklahoma State. Prosecutors alleged that the coaches took bribes and, in a related scheme, that Adidas representatives funneled money to lure players to colleges the company sponsored.
Major universities and shoe companies were deluged with subpoenas. Coaches retained attorneys, even if they hadn’t been charged, and rumors swirled about the government’s next target in its crusade to clean up the sport.
Carpenter’s performance review said the “takedown has already had a major national impact and … is likely to continue to have major impact.” Prosecutors characterized the effort in a court filing as “arguably the biggest and most significant federal investigation and prosecution of corruption in college athletics.”
But almost six years later, the operation that was supposed to expose college basketball’s “dark underbelly” didn’t transform the sport. No head coaches or administrators were charged. There wasn’t a public outcry.
Instead, the meandering government effort seemed at times like an investigation searching for a crime, marshaling vast resources to ultimately round up an assortment of low-level figures for alleged wrongdoing — particularly the coach bribery scheme — that people involved in the sport said wasn’t a common practice until the FBI started handing out envelopes of cash.
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“This was a massive waste of time on everybody’s part,” said Jonathan Bradley Augustine, a former Florida youth basketball coach who was among those charged, though the charges were later dismissed. “It was a sexy case. This was big news. It was everywhere. … A lot of money wasted. A lot of people’s lives turned upside down.”
Scott Carpenter was the lead FBI agent on the undercover operation investigating corruption in men’s college basketball.
(Clay Rodery / For The Times)
> “He had started to become reliant on vodka. Whenever I saw him, he either had a drink or I could smell it on his breath. I didn’t connect this to bigger mental health issues or the symptoms of PTSD that I learned about later.”
— Frank Carpenter
The saga started more than a decade ago with a Pittsburgh financial advisor and two ill-fated movie projects.
Louis Martin Blazer III, whose clients included professional athletes, had pumped money into two minor films. “A Resurrection,” which was about a youngster who thinks his brother is returning from the dead, earned just $10,730 at the box office. The other movie, “Mafia,” went straight to DVD with the tagline: “He crossed the wrong cop.”
To bankroll the investments along with funding a music management company, the Securities and Exchange Commission later alleged, Blazer misappropriated $2.3 million from five clients between 2010 and 2012, forging documents, making “Ponzi-like payments” to hide the theft, faking a client’s signature and lying to investigators.
Seeking leniency, Blazer met with federal prosecutors and the SEC in New York in June 2014. He came clean about the fraud — and volunteered details about an unrelated scheme prosecutors didn’t know about in which he had paid about two dozen college athletes to use his financial services firm when they turned professional. This could have rendered the players ineligible under NCAA rules and left their schools vulnerable to sanctions.
That fall, prosecutors put Blazer to work as [a cooperating witness](https://www.latimes.com/sports/usc/story/2020-01-31/key-informant-cooperating-ncaas-probe-into-college-basketball-corruption) posing as a financial advisor trying to sign up college athletes as clients. He traveled the country to meet with agents, coaches, athletes and their family members, while recording conversations.
Blazer’s undercover operation had stalled by the time the FBI took over in November 2016, though the bureau saw “major unrealized potential” in the case, according to Carpenter’s performance review. Carpenter was transferred from the Eurasian organized crime squad to take over as the lead case agent on the basketball probe.
Scott Carpenter received a “successful” rating on his performance review and was mostly lauded for his work as the lead FBI agent on the investigation into college basketball corruption.
(Illustration by Los Angeles Times; Documents from court exhibits)
Raised in New Jersey as the son of a municipal judge and lawyer, Carpenter graduated from Wake Forest in the top of his ROTC class and served in Iraq as an officer with the 82nd Airborne. Carpenter’s annual officer evaluation in 2008 described his performance during 15 months in Baghdad as “absolutely phenomenal” with an “ability to turn chaos into order.” He left the Army that year as a captain, lived on the family’s sailboat and joined the FBI.
But signs of trouble began to emerge.
“He had started to become reliant on vodka,” his father, Frank Carpenter, would later write in a [letter filed in court](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/a9/50/97a3adc14dcaa700d2286618c3c6/42-carpenterfatherlettertocourt.pdf). “Whenever I saw him, he either had a drink or I could smell it on his breath. I still did not connect this to bigger mental health issues or the symptoms of PTSD that I learned about later.”
A court filing blamed his heavy drinking on the emotional toll from the lengthy deployment in Iraq and an improvised explosive device destroying the Humvee behind his vehicle.
At work, however, the complexities of the basketball probe appeared to be an ideal match for the skills of Scott Carpenter, who had worked on the high-profile investigation into global soccer corruption. His [performance review](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/bb/2e/eb59129c4c0083b75f31fd854e76/8-carpenterperformancereview.pdf) said Blazer had previously been “unsuccessful in developing evidence,” but became “highly productive” under Carpenter’s direction.
Without Carpenter, the performance review said, “it is likely there would have been minimal if any investigative results.”
Jeff D’Angelo had money and wanted to invest it in a sports management company. The exact source of his wealth wasn’t clear. Real estate? Restaurants? Family? Wherever it came from, he talked like someone who orchestrated major deals.
The thirty-something slicked back his hair, liked to mention he served in the military and had the thick biceps of a workout fiend.
One person who met D’Angelo described him as a “mix between a hedge fund baby and Jersey Shore Italian.”
In fact, “D’Angelo” was a pseudonym. He was an undercover FBI agent. Carpenter served as D’Angelo’s handler. The lead case agent’s performance review lauded the work, saying that the undercover agent “had the resources and guidance to significantly expand this investigation” thanks to Carpenter.
In mid-May 2017, D’Angelo was introduced at a Manhattan restaurant to Christian Dawkins, an ambitious 24-year-old attempting to start a sports management firm.
“If it makes sense ... I’ll invest,” D’Angelo said. “I would put down some capital.”
Christian Dawkins launched his sports management company with the help of a $185,000 loan from an investor called Jeff D’Angelo, who was really an undercover FBI agent.
(Clay Rodery / For The Times)
Dawkins had grown up in Saginaw, Mich., the son of a basketball coach and middle school principal, and hoped to become a sports agent or college coach. As a teenager, he started a high school basketball scouting service called “Best of the Best” and peddled it to college coaches for $600 a year. He was a relentless self-promoter, mentioning himself in prospect updates, adding inches to his true height and listing himself among “standout campers” at a clinic run by his father.
After the 2009 death of his younger brother Dorian from a heart ailment while playing basketball, Dawkins helped start a youth travel team named Dorian’s Pride. He created an event company called Living Out Your Dreams — LOYD for short — named himself chief executive and organized basketball camps.
Just shy of 21, Dawkins joined a Cleveland financial advisory firm working with NBA players. He later moved to New Jersey-based ASM Sports, recruiting clients for the powerhouse sports agency.
Dawkins continued to pursue the goal of leading his own sports management company. He connected with Blazer through a bespoke suit maker with deep links to professional basketball. Dawkins outlined his ambition in an email to Blazer and another associate in April 2016 that, like secret recordings of their meetings, ended up in the hands of authorities: “I want to have my own support system, and I want to be able to facilitate things on my own, independent of ASM. ... I just have to have the resources to continue.”
After the SEC accused Blazer of defrauding professional athletes in a news release the following month, Blazer testified that Dawkins “didn’t want to be around” him for almost a year.
In the meantime, Dawkins paid players and their families to retain ASM, according to his court testimony and exhibits, used two phones to stay in touch with some of the biggest names in the sport and relaxed in the green room at the NBA draft as players waited to be selected. When an associate joked in a text message that Dawkins seemed to be everywhere, he responded with apparent pride, “But never seen.”
On a windy afternoon in June 2017, Dawkins boarded a large yacht moored at the North Cove Marina in Manhattan’s Battery Park.
He expected to finalize the launch of his sports management company. In reality, the gathering was a setup. Everything was recorded. Among those in attendance were Blazer and D’Angelo, who introduced Dawkins to a wealthy friend named Jill Bailey. She was another undercover FBI agent.
In the [agreement signed](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/09/5a/526c75a646d0ac007890acfbda28/9-loydinccontract.pdf) that day, D’Angelo pledged to lend $185,000 to the company in exchange for a minority stake. Dawkins got 50% of the firm called Loyd Inc. and would be president. The company didn’t have a licensed NBA player agent, formal structure or even an office. D’Angelo — whose name was misspelled in the contract — handed out $25,000 in cash for the company’s start-up expenses.
In June 2017, Christian Dawkins, second from right with arms folded, boarded a two-story yacht in Manhattan expecting to finalize the launch of his sports management company. In reality, the gathering was a setup. (U.S. Justice Department)
D’Angelo wanted to pay college coaches to direct their players to use the new company when they became professionals, saying if the firm had “X amount of coaches that are on board with our business plan ... that’s just that many more kids we’re gonna have access to essentially every month.” Dawkins was skeptical. If the investor insisted on paying coaches, he argued, only “elite level dudes” should get money. Still, Dawkins offered to introduce D’Angelo to several coaches the following month when they flooded Las Vegas for a huge youth basketball tournament.
In the days and weeks that followed, Dawkins complained to associates in recorded conversations that bribing coaches was nonsensical. The best players usually spent less than a year on campus before leaving and had limited time with coaches. Parents, close relatives, youth coaches or middlemen, like Dawkins, exerted the real influence in the daily lives of many top-level players.
A system built around the NCAA’s ban on paying players and their families was lucrative for everyone but the people on the court. The NCAA brought in $761 million from the March Madness tournament in 2017. Multinational shoe companies paid universities to wear their gear. Top head coaches earned $4 million or more a year. It all helped to nurture a thriving underground economy with bidding wars for top players to attend universities, retain agents, sign with financial advisors.
The distribution of aboveboard money reflected only part of the power imbalance. While 81% of Division I athletic directors and 70% of men’s basketball head coaches were white in 2017, 56% of their players were Black. If the 47% of assistant coaches who were Black had a prayer of landing a head coaching job — or remaining employed — they needed to land top-level players.
The four college assistant coaches charged in Ballerz — and eight of the 10 initial defendants, including Dawkins — are Black. The four Black coaches all worked for white head coaches.
“When you’re a Black assistant coach, man, you’ve got the world on your shoulders,” said Merl Code, a former college basketball player who worked for Adidas and Nike and became a target of the sting. “If you don’t get kids, then you don’t keep your job. But if you don’t do what’s necessary to get kids, you’re not going to be successful, and what’s necessary to get the kids is to help the family.”
> “We’re just going to take these fools’ money.”
— Merl Code
In conversations with D’Angelo, who is white, Dawkins maintained that paying coaches to influence their athletes wasn’t “the end-all be-all.”
“I’m more powerful,” Dawkins told him, “than any coach you’re going to meet.”
The dispute came to a head during another recorded phone call a few weeks after the yacht meeting.
“If you just want to be Santa Claus and just give people money, well f—, let’s just take that money and just go to the strip club and just buy hookers,” Dawkins told D’Angelo. “But just to pay guys just for the sake of paying a guy just because he’s at a school, that doesn’t make common sense to me.”
D’Angelo wasn’t swayed. The investigation was built around ensnaring coaches.
“Here, here, here, here’s the model,” D’Angelo stammered.
He had the money, he said. They would pay coaches.
“I respect that ... you don’t think that’s the best approach, but that’s what I’m doing,” D’Angelo said in the call. “That’s just what it’s going to be.”
Afterward, Dawkins vented to Code in a wiretapped phone call that throwing cash at a slew of coaches meant spending lots of money for no discernible purpose.
“We’re just going to take these fools’ money,” Code said.
“Exactly,” Dawkins replied. “Because it doesn’t make sense. ... I’ve tried to explain to them multiple f— times. This is not the way you wanna go.”
Christian Dawkins set up a sports management company and boasted to potential investors of his relationships with prominent college basketball coaches. In reality, the biggest investor in his firm was an undercover FBI agent.
(Illustration by Los Angeles Times; Photo by Seth Wenig / Associated Press; Documents from court exhibits)
During a call with an associate in early July, Dawkins wondered aloud if he should find someone to pay back the money D’Angelo had invested in Loyd and end their relationship. The investor’s odd requests, like wanting to meet players and their parents, unnerved Dawkins. He wondered why D’Angelo cared so much.
“People are gonna think that honestly they’re being set up,” Dawkins said in the recorded call.
But he still wanted D’Angelo’s cash. A few days after the call, Dawkins and Code faced a problem. Prosecutors alleged they had agreed to help funnel cash from an Adidas company employee to the family of a touted high school prospect who had agreed to play for an Adidas-sponsored university. An installment had been delayed. D’Angelo agreed to provide a loan of $25,000.
The payment came at a critical point in the investigation, according to Carpenter’s [performance review](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/bb/2e/eb59129c4c0083b75f31fd854e76/8-carpenterperformancereview.pdf). He pushed for it to preserve D’Angelo’s “bona fides as a high roller” and “set in motion events which would widely expand the case from addressing bribery by NCAA coaches to incorporating the illegal conduct of officials at a major international sportswear company.”
As the Las Vegas trip approached, Code and Dawkins brainstormed which coaches could meet D’Angelo, but Code’s unease about the investor was growing.
“I’m looking up Jeff D’Angelo and I can’t find nothing on him,” Code told Dawkins in a phone call on July 24, 2017, “and that s— is really concerning to me.”
Carpenter flew to Las Vegas on July 27, 2017, accompanied by a supervisor, junior agent and the undercover operative — and having “serious misgivings” about whether he had enough personnel to run the operation.
Over three days, D’Angelo, Dawkins and Blazer met with 11 coaches — 10 college assistants and one youth coach, all in town for the youth tournament — at the Cosmopolitan. The trendy hotel that advertised “Just the right amount of wrong” seemed to be the ideal setting.
Tony Bland, in a white shirt, was among the college coaches who met with Jeff D’Angelo and Christian Dawkins in the penthouse suite at the Cosmopolitan. (U.S. Justice Department)
Augustine, the Florida youth coach, recalled that Blazer fixed him a vodka water when he stopped by the penthouse on the first night. The opulent surroundings staggered the coach. His players were jammed into rooms at a budget-friendly hotel. The penthouse appeared to be a different world. Black marble and dark wood. Enough seating — bar stools, couches, easy chairs — for a full team. Master bathrooms that rivaled the size of some hotel rooms. A huge balcony. Quirky art around every corner, like the enormous photo of a golden-hued woman dancing underwater in a swirl of purple fabric.
Augustine received an envelope from D’Angelo stuffed with $12,700, according to the complaint. The next day, Augustine said he deposited much of the cash at a nearby bank and, since his players had flown to Las Vegas on one-way tickets, used some of the windfall to pay their way home. Augustine said he used the remainder to pay down debt he had accumulated while running the team. (He was later charged with four felonies, but all counts were dropped.)
The hidden agendas at play in the penthouse seemed tailor-made for Sin City. D’Angelo distributed envelopes of bribe money as cameras recorded each transaction. But Dawkins later claimed he had arranged for three of the coaches to give him their would-be bribe money so he could run the company his way.
Dawkins pleaded with Preston Murphy, then a Creighton University assistant coach and longtime family friend, to meet with D’Angelo in the penthouse, saying he would be forced to move in with his parents if the financial backers didn’t support him, according to Murphy’s attorney.
“I needed him to basically help me, you know, continue to get funding,” Dawkins testified.
Former Creighton assistant coach Preston Murphy, left, was caught up in the investigation but was never charged. Former USC assistant coach Tony Bland, right, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery and was sentenced to probation for admitting to receiving $4,100.
(Associated Press)
NCAA investigators said in reports that Murphy and TCU assistant coach Corey Barker knew before their meetings in the penthouse on July 28 that they would be paid and had agreed to give all of the money to Dawkins. Prosecutors alleged Murphy and Barker each received $6,000 from D’Angelo. Murphy handed the cash over to Dawkins in a bathroom off the main casino floor, while Barker did the same near the hotel’s valet parking stand, according to accounts they gave to the NCAA. The same day, Dawkins deposited $5,000 in cash into the Loyd bank account. (Neither Barker nor Murphy was charged.)
Shortly after midnight on July 29, Tony Bland, a USC assistant coach, sank into a couch in the penthouse. He had arrived from L.A. that afternoon and looked tired. The conversation sounded like the others — boasts about influence over college players, banter about prospects with a shot at the NBA.
“I have some guys that I bring in that I can just say, this is what you’re f— doing,” Bland said. “And there’s other guys who we’ll have to work a little harder for, but we’ll still have a heavy influence on what they do.”
Hidden-camera footage shows Dawkins, not Bland, pick up an envelope of cash from the coffee table. The federal criminal complaint alleged Bland — making more than $300,000 a year at USC — got the $13,000 in the envelope. But bank records show Dawkins deposited $8,900 at an ATM later that day. Bland eventually pleaded guilty to receiving $4,100, the difference between the $13,000 and the deposit.
Dawkins testified that the actual amount Bland received was less because he only gave Bland “between $1,000 and $2,000” to spend at a bachelor party that night.
For the final undercover meeting, the FBI team had rented a poolside cabana at the Cosmopolitan. Afterwards, the agents decided to use the cabana for themselves when they learned the $1,500 they paid for the space was actually a food and beverage minimum, according to a [court filing](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/c7/8f/40d69cf541069242c47743d52cbb/carpenterpresentencingmemo.pdf).
“Despite the obstacles, all of the undercover meetings were very successful,” Carpenter’s attorney wrote in a court filing. “At the same time, there is no doubt that the intensity, anxiety, elation and exhaustion of the weekend’s activities left Mr. Carpenter in an even more precarious position.”
After showering and changing clothes in the penthouse following the alcohol-filled afternoon at the cabana, the four FBI agents walked next door to the Bellagio Hotel and Casino and ended up at a high-limit lounge.
Carpenter bought $10,000 in gambling chips with the government cash he had taken from the penthouse safe and started playing blackjack. The three other agents — including Carpenter’s supervisor — watched him gamble from an adjacent bar and took turns visiting, according to court testimony and a [filing by his attorney](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/c7/8f/40d69cf541069242c47743d52cbb/carpenterpresentencingmemo.pdf), as Carpenter gulped free drinks and lost.
“They at least had to have a decent idea it was undercover FBI money and nobody took the keys to the car,” Carpenter’s attorney Paul Fishman said in court.
The lead FBI agent lost $13,500 in government cash while gambling in Las Vegas.
(Clay Rodery / For The Times)
Carpenter churned through the $10,000, then pressed the undercover agent — D’Angelo — for additional government cash. He handed it over.
According to [a court filing](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/c9/31/94688de447b5a30af7a49286f87a/gov-uscourts-nvd-154467-3-0-1.pdf), Carpenter played for two to three hours, placed an average bet of $721 and, by the time he walked away, had lost $13,500.
As the alcohol wore off in the early hours of July 30, Carpenter paced around the penthouse. According to a document [read in court](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/7e/9c/c2e40c004f1dbe86c8bab5080dc7/carpentersentencingtranscript.pdf), one of the agents told an investigator that Carpenter was brainstorming how to make it right and asked if they could say the gambling was part of the operation. The agent refused.
The undercover agent alleged that the four agents met early that morning and “there was a discussion ... to just take care of it,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Daniel Schiess said in court. The supervisor and junior agent, Schiess said, “hotly contest” that such a meeting occurred.
In a court filing, Carpenter’s attorney wrote that his client “vehemently disagrees” that he “intended in any way to conceal his conduct or evade responsibility.”
After returning to New York and taking a scheduled day off, Schiess said, Carpenter met with his supervisor about the missing money and, afterward, told the undercover agent and the junior agent he was going to try to pay it back and asked if they could split the cost. The other agents and Carpenter’s supervisor who was in Las Vegas aren’t identified in court records.
> “Carpenter appeared to have displayed poor judgment in some of his operational security practices and behavior ...”
— FBI performance review
Two days later, Carpenter was transferred from the public corruption squad and college basketball investigation. He checked into an inpatient alcohol treatment program the following week, according to [a court filing](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/c7/8f/40d69cf541069242c47743d52cbb/carpenterpresentencingmemo.pdf).
D’Angelo was also pulled from the case. He told Dawkins in a phone call Aug. 8 that he was traveling to care for his ailing mother in Italy.
Carpenter’s performance review from 2017 devoted one paragraph to the incident: “Carpenter appeared to have displayed poor judgment in some of his operational security practices and behavior … (he) did not immediately or in a timely manner report events constituting potential misuse of funds to his chain of command.”
Nevertheless, the review rated Carpenter’s overall performance as “successful.”
Heavy footsteps woke Bland almost two months later in Tampa, Fla., early on the morning of Sept. 26. Someone pounded on the door of his hotel room. The USC assistant coach had stayed out late the night before to celebrate the commitment of a recruit to play for the school. Bland got out of bed and opened the door. A team of FBI agents with weapons drawn burst into the room. One of them twisted his right arm behind his back — the arm still doesn’t feel right today, Bland said — and shoved him against a wall. Bland told them they had the wrong man.
Around the same time, Code answered the door at his home in Greer, S.C., in his underwear. He counted at least 20 FBI agents, some brandishing pistols and assault-style rifles, and 15 vehicles lined up on his block.
Four NCAA assistant coaches were charged after the investigation.
(Clay Rodery / For The Times)
Augustine, the Florida youth coach, had planned to meet Dawkins that morning at a New York hotel. He checked his phone on the walk over and found scores of tweets mentioning him, then scrolled through the criminal complaint against him while standing in Times Square. He thought it was some kind of elaborate, twisted joke. Then the FBI called and, a half-hour later, arrested him.
Similar scenes played out across the country. At the news conference in Manhattan the same day, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York alleged the defendants had circled “blue chip prospects like coyotes.”
The four college assistant coaches who were charged lost their jobs. Augustine resigned from the youth team and swept floors in his father-in-law’s warehouse to make ends meet.
Carpenter kept his badge, service weapon and security clearance after returning from the alcohol treatment program. But he was exiled to a facilities squad to help manage a remodeling project at the FBI office in New York.
Judges in the two Ballerz trials barred defense attorneys from questioning witnesses about alleged misconduct by agents during the Las Vegas trip. One of the judges ruled that it “did not occur while the agents were conducting investigative activities” and was “irrelevant to this case.”
Though Carpenter and the agents posing as D’Angelo and Bailey were subpoenaed, they didn’t testify. In the first trial, Code, Dawkins and a former Adidas employee were convicted of using payments to steer players to attend three universities sponsored by the sportswear giant. Then Code and Dawkins were found guilty during the second trial, which focused on the alleged scheme to bribe coaches to persuade their players to use the sports management company that the undercover agent had helped finance.
The investigation led to 10 men being convicted of felonies at trial or by taking plea deals. Five were sentenced to prison. Dawkins got the longest combined term — 18 months and a day.
After Dawkins’ sentencing, prosecutors released a statement warning that the outcome “should make crystal clear to other members of the basketball underground exposed during the various prosecutions brought by this Office that bribery is still a crime, even if the recipient is a college basketball coach, and one that will result in \[a\] term of incarceration.”
Merl Code, left, a former college basketball player who worked for Adidas and Nike and became a target of the FBI’s investigation, served five months and nine days in prison. Book Richardson, right, a former University of Arizona assistant men’s basketball coach, was sentenced to three months.
(Photos by Bebeto Matthews and Larry Neumeister / Associated Press)
Bland had been placed on administrative leave by USC after being arrested, then was terminated about four months later. He [pleaded guilty in 2019 to a felony](https://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-tony-bland-guilty-20190102-story.html), conspiracy to commit bribery, and was sentenced to probation for admitting to receiving $4,100. Prosecutors argued that USC faced “significant potential penalties from the NCAA” because of his conduct, echoing claims they made in sentencing memorandums for other defendants.
The cases were built around the theory that universities were the victims. Prosecutors argued the schools had been deceived into issuing scholarships to athletes who would be ineligible under NCAA rules barring payments to players or their families. They also argued the schools had been exposed to penalties from the organization for other rule-breaking, including a prohibition on coaches and other employees benefiting from introducing athletes to agents, financial advisors or their representatives.
In a victim impact statement filed in court, USC said the school, “its student athletes, and college athletics as a whole have suffered greatly because of what Mr. Bland and his co-conspirators did.” The school’s statement came at a time when USC was already reeling from its involvement in the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal and allegations that a campus gynecologist had sexually abused hundreds of students.
In the years since Ballerz became public, several universities have been sanctioned by the NCAA in connection with the investigation, but the penalties have largely been lighter than the “significant” punishments prosecutors warned about in sentencing memorandums for the defendants. USC, for example, received two years of probation and was fined $5,000 plus 1% of the men’s basketball budget.
More significantly, some long-standing NCAA rules have shifted. College athletes can now profit from their name, image and likeness, [known as NIL](https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2022-06-27/nil-what-is-next-name-likeness-image-college-high-school). Last year, Adidas unveiled a nationwide NIL program for athletes at schools sponsored by the sportswear giant.
Jay Bilas, a former Duke basketball player who is an attorney and ESPN television analyst, called the investigation a waste of time and resources.
“It seemed like bringing in the National Guard to deal with jaywalkers,” Bilas said. “It damaged people’s lives over nothing. ... At the end of the day, all it did is make a lot of noise without a lot of result.”
The FBI declined to comment for this story.
Blazer, who originally told prosecutors he could expose college sports corruption, pleaded guilty to five charges — for misappropriating money from five clients and paying college football players to retain his financial advisory firm — and was sentenced to one year of probation in February 2020. He admitted misappropriating $2.35 million from clients — much more than all the bribes combined in Ballerz.
Today, Bland coaches basketball at St. Bernard High School in Playa del Rey. He said he loves working with young players, but is eager to return to coaching in college when a three-year penalty imposed by the NCAA as punishment for the bribe expires in April 2024.
He struggles to sleep in hotel rooms, his heart pounds if there’s an unexpected noise in a hallway, and he can’t get past the allegations against the lead case agent in Las Vegas.
“It’s like, OK, \[the FBI\] can mess up ... and still run you over,” Bland said. “It doesn’t even matter.”
Code wrote a book about college basketball’s underbelly called “Black Market” before serving five months and nine days in prison.
“If anyone thinks that there is such a thing as a clean big-time program, they need to wake up and smell the donkey s—,” he wrote in the book.
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[Book Richardson](https://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-book-richardson-arizona-plea-20190107-story.html), a former University of Arizona assistant coach, was sentenced to three months in prison in the case. He now makes $3,000 a month working with youth basketball players in New York. He has kidney disease and sometimes struggles with the person he sees in the mirror. He said he contemplated suicide on two occasions in the years following his arrest — once when he put a pistol in his mouth but was interrupted by a phone call from a friend.
“Your mind starts messing with you, man,” Richardson said. “‘Maybe I am the scum of the earth. Maybe I am the worst coach ever. I threw my life away for $20,000. I should be dead.’”
Carpenter was transferred to a counterintelligence squad in October 2020, the same month he and his wife bought a home listed at 3,200 square feet with a swimming pool in suburban New Jersey. In a letter from his wife later filed in court, she wrote that the couple had assumed Carpenter’s construction assignment had been the extent of his punishment.
On Dec. 13, 2021, the Supreme Court denied the final appeal related to the Ballerz investigation. Four days later, Carpenter [signed an agreement](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/c9/31/94688de447b5a30af7a49286f87a/gov-uscourts-nvd-154467-3-0-1.pdf) to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of conversion of government money for gambling away the $13,500. The agreement and his presentencing memo detail the events surrounding his misconduct in Las Vegas. The FBI suspended Carpenter after he pleaded guilty, then terminated him in May.
In the criminal case against Scott Carpenter, his father wrote a letter to the judge asking for leniency, saying his son suffered from PTSD symptoms after his military service in Iraq.
(Illustration by Los Angeles Times; Documents from court exhibits)
Steve Haney, the attorney for Dawkins, learned about Carpenter’s plea in a news release and moved for a new trial for his client. But a judge rejected the motion, finding the “misconduct did not concern the defendants.”
Last August, Carpenter returned to Las Vegas to be sentenced. He was contrite during brief remarks at the hearing: “Five years ago, I made a terrible and stupid mistake. ... While there isn’t an excuse for what I did, there’s an explanation: The combination of job stress, alcohol and lingering issues from my military service.”
Fishman, Carpenter’s attorney, characterized the blackjack episode as an isolated error in an otherwise exemplary life. He told U.S. District Judge Gloria M. Navarro that Carpenter returned from Iraq “not quite right” and has been “hellbent” on righting his wrong. The judge interjected during Fishman’s argument that his client had not been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Navarro told Carpenter he had “already received a lot of lenience.” He wasn’t immediately fired, hadn’t been arrested, kept being paid — he and his wife reported an income of $411,000 on their 2020 tax return, the judge said — and wasn’t even on pretrial supervision, something the judge couldn’t recall for a defendant in her courtroom. She sentenced him to three months of home confinement and ordered him to repay the government money. Carpenter declined to comment.
The status of the three FBI agents who accompanied him to Las Vegas is unclear.
Former FBI Special Agent Scott Carpenter, right, leaves a federal courthouse in Las Vegas in August after being sentenced for gambling away $13,500 in government money.
(Bizuayehu Tesfaye / Las Vegas Review-Journal)
The Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, which investigated the Las Vegas misconduct along with the U.S. attorney’s office in Nevada, has declined to comment on the case and refused to turn over any records in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, saying to do so could interfere with enforcement proceedings.
Meanwhile, Dawkins is serving his sentence at a low-security federal prison in North Carolina and is scheduled for release in May.
Before reporting to prison, Dawkins founded another company. Unlike the ill-fated venture backed by undercover FBI agents, Par-Lay Sports and Entertainment has a veteran management team that includes his defense attorney. A teenage phenom named Scoot Henderson, projected to be the second overall pick in June’s NBA draft, is one of the firm’s clients.
The draft will be held in Brooklyn, N.Y., some three miles from the courthouse where Dawkins’ life was upended and the room where the FBI boasted they had the “playbook” for college basketball corruption. Dawkins, his attorney said, is expected to attend.
Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Fox News/Getty Images
Shortly after Donald Trump lost the presidential election, two of his lawyers, [Rudy Giuliani](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/06/rudy-giuliani-insists-hes-not-a-drunk-again.html) and [Sidney Powell](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/11/report-trump-lawyer-sidney-powell-even-crazy-than-you-think.html), convened a [deranged press conference](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/giuliani-trump-legal-team-melt-down-in-insane-presser.html) proclaiming that Trump had “clearly won by a landslide” but that he had been the victim of an elaborate conspiracy. It involved a then-obscure election-technology company named Dominion Voting Systems, which they accused of stealing votes from Trump and flipping them to Joe Biden through the use of an algorithm that had originally been created at the behest of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Giuliani and Powell had already been peddling [this false nonsense](https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/19/politics/giuliani-trump-legal-team-press-briefing-fact-check/index.html) all over conservative media, including in appearances on Fox News, but the news conference was apparently too much even for Rupert Murdoch.
“Really crazy stuff. And damaging,” the network’s owner wrote, as he watched the appearance, in one of many highly entertaining internal communications that have become public recently thanks to [the lawsuit filed by Dominion against Fox](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/03/all-the-texts-fox-news-didnt-want-you-to-read.html) over the network’s allegedly defamatory coverage of the company following the 2020 election. [One network executive](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/12/raj-shah-fox-trump/) who was also watching wrote separately to someone, “This sounds SO FUCKING CRAZY btw.” The day before, star host Tucker Carlson told his prime-time colleague Laura Ingraham, “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.” None of this, however, prevented Powell and Giuliani from appearing on the network in the subsequent weeks saying the same transparently absurd things to Fox News’ audience.
Thanks in large part to the messages, there is a palpable sense that Dominion’s lawsuit might do serious and irreversible damage to the network — an undeniably significant force in American media and politics, the [top-rated](https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2022/12/15/fox-news-dominates-yearly-cable-ratings-for-seventh-consecutive-year/?sh=3f06e75144dc) cable television network in the country, and home to some of the most influential voices in conservative politics. And most informed analysts I spoke with believe that the company has a good chance of prevailing if they go to trial. But getting from here to there is not easy.
In order for Dominion to win and recover actual damages, the company needs to establish that Fox News broadcast false statements about the company that negatively affected the company’s business. Defamation cases, however, are notoriously hard to win against media companies thanks to broad protections provided by the First Amendment and Supreme Court decisions, which require plaintiffs to prove that the defendant acted with “[actual malice.”](https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/376/254/#tab-opinion-1944787) In [this case](https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/CVR/76-A), that means that Dominion has to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that the people responsible for broadcasting the statements either knew that they were false or acted with “reckless disregard” as to the falsity of the claims, even if the statements were technically made by guests rather than hosts. Dominion appears to have amassed a significant amount of evidence on this score, including, most notably, internal communications from [on-air personalities](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/02/25/business/media/fox-news-dominion-tucker-carlson.html), producers, and executives expressing doubts in real time about the claims being made by Powell and Giuliani.
The case is currently scheduled to go to trial [next month](https://www.wsj.com/articles/fox-news-defamation-case-tests-reach-of-press-protections-7a97d094), but the parties have recently been briefing competing motions for “[summary judgment](https://casetext.com/rule/delaware-court-rules/delaware-civil-rules-governing-the-court-of-common-pleas/judgment/rule-56-summary-judgment),” asking the presiding judge to rule in their favor based on what they claim are undisputed facts gathered in the course of discovery — in Dominion’s case, the mountain of texts and emails that they have obtained from Fox News. The filings are designed to present and frame those facts in the best possible light for the moving party — a crucially important point that seems to have been lost on the many members of the media who have been treating the filings by Dominion as the forensic product of disinterested fact-gathering and reporting, which they most certainly are not.
Dominion claims, for instance, that Fox News defamed the company “continually” and over “a months-long timeframe,” which sounds terrible but is dubious even by Dominion’s own account. The company is focused on a set of factual assertions presented to viewers largely through interviews with Giuliani and Powell in which they repeated the same false claims from their November 2020 press conference but with no real pushback from the hosts, who, on Dominion’s account, essentially let them say whatever they wanted while also tacitly endorsing the theories by refusing to correct or contextualize the false claims that they were peddling. Fox counters that they were merely covering inherently newsworthy allegations made on behalf of the sitting president.
Altogether, Dominion has singled out 20 episodes of alleged defamation, but with one exception, they all occurred during a roughly month-long period from mid-November to mid-December 2021, mostly on shows hosted by Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro. The temporal outlier is [an interview](https://www.thedailybeast.com/mypillow-guy-peddles-crazy-twitter-conspiracies-in-tucker-interview) that Carlson conducted with MyPillow CEO [Mike Lindell](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/how-mypillows-mike-lindell-bankrolled-election-denial.html) in late January 2021 (after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol), during which Lindell briefly claimed to have evidence of fraud by Dominion. Three of the 20 alleged episodes of defamation during this period are not actually on-air segments but [tweets from Dobbs](https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2023/2/22/23610701/lou-dobbs-fox-news-dominion-voting-system-defamation-lawsuit-2020-election-jacob-sullum-column).
This was a sliver of Fox News’ output during the period, but by the standards of a case like this, Dominion has identified an unusually large number of allegedly defamatory statements. “If you look at the average defamation case, it’s one instance,” [Rebecca Tushnet](https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/rebecca-tushnet/), a professor at Harvard Law School, told me. “A classic defamation case against a news organization is a single report, and they get yelled at, and at least they pause while they investigate. That doesn’t appear to be the trajectory here.” In its defense, Fox News has stressed that the vast majority of its coverage is not at issue, but as [Mary-Rose Papandrea](https://law.unc.edu/people/mary-rose-papandrea/), who teaches law at the University of North Carolina, put it, “It doesn’t really matter \[if\] the rest of your coverage was great” or that the rest of the programing “did not contain defamatory material.” In many cases, she continued, “there’s one sentence that’s defamatory, and plaintiffs recover on that basis alone.”
One of the most intriguing aspects of Dominion’s lawsuit is the breadth of the company’s position on who was responsible for the statements at issue. The long list includes not just the hosts and show-level producers but people at the highest levels of the network, including CEO Suzanne Scott and president Jay Wallace. Dominion has also pointed the finger at Rupert Murdoch, the chair of parent company Fox Corporation, as well as his son Lachlan, who serves as Fox Corporation’s CEO. Dominion argues that these people all knew that the claims about the company were false and that they could easily have put a stop to the alleged defamation even though they did not necessarily manage the particular segments or shows at issue. Strictly speaking, Dominion can win its case without showing that any of these executives themselves acted with actual malice, but at least as an atmospheric matter, evidence of responsibility for the allegedly defamatory statements at the highest levels of the network is undeniably helpful to the company’s case: It supports the theory that the defamation was intentional on the part of Fox, that there was a business motive behind it, and that it could easily have been stopped.
Dominion’s position is unusually aggressive but, under the circumstances, far from frivolous given the exceptional facts. “We don’t have great examples to draw on when the theory of the case is that \[the defendant\] institutionally wanted to advance \[a particular\] narrative,” [RonNell Anderson Jones](https://faculty.utah.edu/u6007959-RONNELL_ANDERSEN_JONES/hm/index.hml), a former reporter and editor who is now a law professor at the University of Utah, told me. (Like other specialists in media law who spoke with me, Jones found it particularly relevant that Dominion had obtained evidence that Fox News had a business motive for the alleged defamation — to avoid [losing viewers to NewsMax](https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/business/fox-news-dominion-lies/index.html).) It has strenuously contested the relevance of the evidence involving the Murdochs given their relatively limited role in Fox News’ on-air content, but like other analysts, Jones described this to me as an “open, litigable question” under the law — meaning that Fox News may very well lose that fight before the presiding judge. If so, that would mean that both men could be forced to take the stand at the trial, which would make a finding of liability even more embarrassing and potentially costly for the network.
Fox News has other arguments in its arsenal, though there are conspicuous weaknesses that are detectable even on paper. The network maintains, for instance, that Bartiromo, who [still hosts](https://twitter.com/MariaBartiromo?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) shows on both Fox News and Fox Business, “testified under oath that she is uncertain about what happened in the election even to this day” and quotes her as saying in a deposition that “I still have not seen a comprehensive investigation as to what took place, and that is why there are still questions about this election.” It likewise argues that Dobbs, who [was let go](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/02/fox-business-cancels-lou-dobbs.html) shortly after Trump left office, “believed at the time (and still believes today) that ‘the election was stolen,’” and that “he did not (and still does not) know ‘what happened with the electronic voting companies in that election.’”
This is perfectly fine evidence to cite in opposition to Dominion’s motion for summary judgment, because it would seem to create a dispute between the parties on the crucial factual question of whether the hosts acted with actual malice, but defeating Dominion at this juncture will simply keep the case on track for a jury trial. At that point it will be odd, to put it mildly, for a nominal news network to ask a jury to believe that some of its hosts — people whose job is supposed to include being reasonably intelligent and informed — are, in effect, grossly incompetent. An even-worse legal scenario for Fox News, particularly since Dominion is seeking punitive damages, is that jurors will conclude that these people are lying even to this day.
Much of the Fox News defense comes down to arguing that the network was entitled to air the allegations made by Trump and his lawyers because they were inherently newsworthy, but although there are [persuasive arguments](https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/column-dominion-v-fox-disputed-legal-theory-has-sweeping-implications-2023-03-07/) for a limited reporting privilege along these lines, the case does not present a particularly compelling vehicle for it. Fox News criticizes Dominion for not having “the courage of its own convictions” and suing “CNN, MSNBC, CSPAN, or any of the myriad outlets that covered the President’s allegations against it,” and they similarly question the fact that Dominion did not “sue Fox News for all of its shows that reported the President’s allegations about Dominion, or even for every show on which Giuliani or Powell recounted them.” Fox News’s actual point is to demonstrate that even Dominion believes that the allegations were worthy of some news coverage. But if anyone seriously thinks about it for more than a few seconds, the argument also underscores Dominion’s position that the Fox News segments at issue were outside the bounds of responsible coverage.
The whole thing adds up to a bizarre defense for a purported news organization to present to a jury — a point that Dominion’s lawyers are likely to hammer at trial. In Fox News’ telling, the hosts — the ones most responsible for the relevant segments, at least — sound like credulous and incompetent dummies. The line producers appear to be lazy, ineffectual, or both. And the executives seem to have no ability or responsibility to intervene or stop anything from happening on air, even if it concerns the most important news story in the country. This is essentially what you are left with after you make your way through all of Fox’s arguments, and though it is coherent — in the sense that you could conclude that nobody at the network acted with actual malice if you believe all of this — it is also very hard to swallow as a factual matter, and it falls far short of what the public deserves from real news outlets.
As a result of all this, most informed analysts believe that Dominion has presented the more compelling case so far, that the case will proceed to trial, and that Dominion has a good chance of prevailing when that happens. Papandrea, for instance, argued that the company has presented “an overwhelming case for actual malice, especially in light of all the testimony that came out in discovery.” Anderson cautioned that we “are working in a relatively shallow pool of comparative examples” but told me that “most folks in the field who follow this agree that Dominion has gathered one of the strongest cases that we have seen in a major media libel suit.” Tushnet was slightly more circumspect — offering that “in American litigation, anything can happen and frequently does” but that Dominion has outlined what “seems to me a quite strong case to go to a jury.”
It is very possible that Fox holds this view as well — and that it is counting on a much lower damages award than the $1.6 billion that Dominion has sought. The calculation of financial damages in corporate litigation is extremely important, for obvious reasons, but it is also a notorious morass of pseudo-economic gibberish, as I can attest from my own experience in the area working on damages analyses in the private sector on behalf of both corporate plaintiffs and defendants. Dominion is principally seeking to recover nearly $1 billion for “the ultimate destruction of its enterprise value” as a result of the alleged defamation or, in the alternative, an award for “lost profits,” which would be much lower. The basis for Dominion’s topline damages calculation is [far from clear](https://www.reuters.com/legal/is-dominion-voting-case-against-fox-news-worth-much-16-billion-2023-03-10/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=Daily-Docket&utm_term=031023) at this point, but it is worthy of serious skepticism for a variety of reasons — including that it seems to presuppose that a jury will accept the (highly debatable) proposition that the segments and tweets at issue effectively destroyed the company, that these sorts of damages estimates are often revealed to be tenuous once they are fully tested and examined in court, and that lawyers are keenly aware that even an aggressive figure that is ultimately rejected by jurors and courts can exert a valuable [anchoring effect](https://nysba.org/events/anchoring-how-it-impacts-jury-verdicts-negotiations-what-counsel-can-do) on the final outcome as long as the initial number is not too crazy.
The public and political significance of the case could, however, complicate matters for Fox News. In almost every discussion that I have had with other analysts about the case, they have at one point or another noted — correctly — that there is a considerable risk that jurors will be so angered by Fox News’ conduct that they might use a large damages award to send a message or to underscore the network’s moral blameworthiness. “This could be one of those cases where a really big number comes down, said [Jeffrey Pyle](https://princelobel.com/professional/jeffrey-j-pyle/), a litigator who specializes in media law.
Despite the generally favorable reception that Dominion’s lawsuit has so far received, the company has a long way to go before actually recovering a significant sum of money. The presiding judge is holding a hearing on the pending summary motions [next week](https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/column-dominion-v-fox-disputed-legal-theory-has-sweeping-implications-2023-03-07/), and although a complete victory by Fox News seems highly unlikely, it is possible that the judge could narrow Dominion’s case or make it harder to admit into evidence some of [the internal communications](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/03/all-the-texts-fox-news-didnt-want-you-to-read.html) that have attracted so much media attention. Even if Dominion proceeds to win at trial and obtain a significant jury award, you can expect Fox to mount a considerable post-trial litigation effort at both the trial and appellate court levels to throw out the verdict or significantly reduce the number — a process that could take years to resolve. At the moment, neither party looks interested in settling out of court.
In the meantime, while the parties are hurtling toward trial and Fox News’ mainstream competitors are covering the case with [barely concealed](https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/01/media/dominion-fox-misconduct-news-reliable-sources/index.html) Schadenfreude, there is little reason to expect Dominion’s case to topple the network. So far as I can tell, no one familiar with Fox and the Murdochs’ actual financial condition seriously questions whether the network would be able to pay a large judgment and continue operating (with [or without](https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/02/media/fox-news-suzanne-scott-reliable-sources/index.html) the current executive leadership team remaining in place), through some combination of cash on hand at Fox, a loan against future revenues, or an infusion of additional funds from the Murdochs (who are witnesses but not named defendants). The ratings are [still good](https://www.thewrap.com/fox-news-viewership-steady-dominion-lawsuit/), and this is [not the first](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/04/sources-fox-news-has-decided-bill-oreilly-has-to-go.html) major scandal that has [engulfed the network](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/09/how-fox-news-women-took-down-roger-ailes.html) — or even [the most recent one](https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3888709-tucker-carlsons-jan-6-footage-sparks-bipartisan-outrage/).
The greater threat, at least as a strictly commercial matter, may be the rift that the litigation appears to have deepened between the network and Trump, who still [holds considerable sway](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/03/2024-polls-show-desantis-cant-easily-knock-out-trump.html) among conservatives. He [lashed out](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64806437) at Rupert Murdoch in response to the testimony disclosed in recent filings, and though the network was [ultimately integral](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/05/why-rupert-murdoch-decided-to-support-trump.html) to Trump’s election in 2016, that alliance of convenience [appears to be](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/03/fox-news-is-reportedly-shadowbanning-donald-trump.html) in considerable doubt headed into the 2024 primary season. In the end, the risk to Fox News if Trump turns decisively against the network in response to developments in the litigation may be larger than that directly posed by the case itself.
Take it from Carlson. According to a text message disclosed in the litigation, the host privately told a colleague just days before the siege of the Capitol that “I hate him passionately,” and he went on to offer an astute but now-ominous assessment. “What he’s good at is destroying things,” Carlson observed. “He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”
Almost five years ago, I wrote a story for the Cut titled “[What It’s Like to Be Black and in Fashion](https://www.thecut.com/2018/08/what-its-really-like-to-be-black-and-work-in-fashion.html).” More than 100 Black fashion-industry professionals, from assistants to executives, described a field that frequently proclaimed itself “progressive” while doing very little to make fashion genuinely inclusive.
One of the people I spoke with was image architect Law Roach. As Hollywood’s most powerful stylist, Roach has been a creative director for the biggest names in the industry — [Zendaya](https://www.thecut.com/2023/02/zendayas-return-to-the-red-carpet-left-us-speechless.html), Céline Dion, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, [Anne Hathaway](https://www.thecut.com/2022/09/anne-hathaway-devil-wears-prada-remake.html), Ariana Grande, and Anya Taylor-Joy, to name a few. He is one of the first Black stylists to work with A-list talent, and his background couldn’t be further from his peers: He grew up on the South Side of Chicago as the oldest of five siblings and was on his own by the time he was 14, returning shopping carts for the quarter deposits just to have enough to eat. Shopping for himself at thrift stores started his love affair with fashion, which grew into the now-defunct Deliciously Vintage boutique in Chicago, a hub for celebrities hunting for archival designer clothes. Law eventually moved to Los Angeles to pursue styling, where he was introduced to the then-14-year-old Zendaya, his first major client.
Roach [recently won a CFDA](https://www.thecut.com/2022/11/kim-kardashian-cher-and-lenny-kravitz-at-the-cfdas.html) for his work, and he seemed to be at the top of his game. Then, this past weekend, just after the [Oscars](https://www.thecut.com/2023/03/oscars-red-carpet-2023-dresses.html), one of the busiest times for a top-tier stylist, Law posted on [Instagram](https://www.thecut.com/2023/03/zendayas-stylist-law-roach-announces-that-he-is-retiring.html) a stamp graphic of one word: “Retired.” The caption read, in part, “The politics, the lies, and false narratives finally got me.” Roach sat down with the Cut to talk about what the politics look like from the inside and what the future holds for him now that he is, as he says, “free.”
**Lindsay Peoples: Okay, so let’s get into it: First, are you retiring?**
I am definitely, 100,000 percent retiring. Nobody can say what’s forever and what will happen, but at this moment, and in my mind, I’m definitely retiring from *celebrity* styling. I’m not retiring from fashion, because I love it so much. But styling, in the way that I’ve been of service to other people, I’m retiring from that.
**You’re just coming off dressing some of the biggest celebrities at the** **Vanity Fair****Oscar Party. You also won the CFDA Award for Best Stylist. You’re at the top of your game right now — so why do this now?**
Isn’t it always best to leave when you’re on the top? \[*Laughs*.\] I think the real reason is that it’s been building for a while because, you know, I looked up one day and honestly realized that I’m not happy.
I haven’t been happy, honestly, in a really long time. And the culmination of everything that’s been happening in my career these last few days kind of just pushed me over the edge. And it’s just like, *You know what? I’ve done everything.* I’m very grateful that I’ve been able to move and climb in this industry the way I have. But I can’t say that I didn’t do that without suffering. And I think as Black people in this country, it’s embedded in us to suffer, right? We feel like to be successful, we have to suffer. You suffer through things to get to the other side. You know, you suffer through Earth to get to heaven. You know what I mean?
And I think that’s just in our DNA as African Americans, and I’ve been suffering for years, and I woke up, and when I made that post — and shit, it’s like it’s been so long ago, but it was literally the day before yesterday? Monday? I made that post because I felt like I couldn’t breathe and me releasing that and letting the world know that I’m done with this was the first time that whole week that I really felt like I took a breath, a deep breath.
I don’t wanna suffer no more. I don’t wanna be unhappy. I don’t wanna be at the beck and call of people and their teams. I wanna take some time and figure out, you know, how to live.
**What was going through your mind when you put up that Instagram post?**
You know, last week, for us, Oscars Week and building up to *the Vanity Fair Oscar Party*, is some of the most stressful times in the world. And I’ve always been a stylist that did multiple clients, so I’m trying to prepare for multiple clients that week. And I had a lot of pressure because of Meg \[Thee Stallion\] — it was her first time coming back and anybody seeing her since the trial. And so that was a lot of pressure, you know, because I wanted to make her feel secure and comfortable and make her feel and look as perfect as possible so that she can have the strength to do what she had to do.
So that morning I got a call from one of my clients, and it was her, her publicist, and somebody from a brand that I’m supposed to do project with, and I found myself on the phone with these three women, and I felt like I was defending myself because the one woman from the brand was like, “Oh, he’s not communicating, and you’re not gonna have a dress,” and all these things. And it was just a lot of things that were not true.
And that’s how we lose clients as stylists — somebody from a brand will say something to the publicist, then the publicist will say something to the client, and then, it’s this thing. I thought I had a really strong relationship with this client, and I thought that she knew that my goal always is to *protect* my clients.
And at that moment I just didn’t feel like I was being protected, because there’s no one who can ever say that they’ve worked with me that I didn’t pull my whole heart and soul into them or that I left them hanging and they didn’t have a dress. It’s never happened. No one can ever say that about me. And I was like, “Okay, yeah. Whatever, we’ll do whatever. We’ll work it out.” And then I got off the phone, and I was like, *I’m literally depleted from the day before*. I’m an extreme empath, and I give everything to the point, after that night, I could barely finish a sentence. I had given so much.
That call was very early the very next day after \[the Oscars\]. And the client was one of the clients that I dressed that night. And it’s just like, I got off the phone and I felt like I’m *still* fighting. I’m still fighting. I’m still defending myself. And one thing people who work with me also know is I don’t like to be managed or feel like I’m being chastised. You know what I mean? That just doesn’t work for me or my personality and especially when I feel like I’m giving so much.
And I’m doing the job, I’m getting paid to do the job, and that’s the real of it. But the care and the love that goes in me to do my job, I just feel like I should sometimes be a little bit more taken care of, if that makes sense.
**Yeah. So after your Instagram post, did people reach out to you? Did your clients reach out to you? What have the past couple days been like?**
I’ve gotten so much love. And I think some people, you know, they want what they want, they wondered like, “Well, what does this mean for … me?” Like it means you have to get another stylist. It’s really weird ’cause people are like, “Oh, it’s PR stunt.” Or, “He’s just throwing a tantrum.” And it’s like, *No, I’m not.* This is real. Again, I don’t wanna suffer anymore. I don’t wanna suffer.
**I know you personally, and I know that you’ve talked a lot about how your upbringing is so different from most people in fashion — as a child, you went to bed hungry. You’ve always worked so hard. I think that there’s a lot of trauma that we, as Black people, deal with, but specifically Black people in fashion have to push through that people just don’t understand why you work the way you work. How has that played into this feeling of you still feeling like you’re suffering?**
I was having dinner with some other stylists, and they were like, “You don’t have to work like that. Why do you work like that? Why do you put yourself through that?” And I was just like, “Well, if you’ve never experienced what it feels like to be a child and to go to bed and cry because you’re still hungry ‘cause there’s just nothing else, you will never understand the reason why I work that way.”
I’m really a street kid, right? My mother was addicted to drugs and alcohol, and I was the oldest of five, and she decided one day to take my brothers and sisters and to leave me, right? And so I literally lived in an abandoned house. She also told me when she left me, “Well, if you don’t work, you don’t eat.” And so when you tell a 13, 14-year-old that, you know, that means you have to do whatever you have to do to survive and to eat.
And so that mentality never left me. I literally survived from the kindness of other people and being a hustler, and like going to the supermarket and pushing the cart back and keeping the quarter or helping people put their groceries in the car — you know what I mean? So I’ve always, always, had that feeling of, *You have to figure it out. You have to work. You have to work. You have to work.* I know a lot of people have this, that feeling of *It could be all over tomorrow, so get as much as you can today.* And so that’s why people also say, “Well, you could just do Zendaya and be successful,” but for me, that wasn’t enough. And then, I also had that burden of showing people like I’m not a one-trick pony.
**You said in your Instagram post that you were tired of the lies and false narratives. What did you mean by that?**
I end up having a real connection with the client, and it very quickly becomes a thing where they trust me and understand me and we have this relationship. And that’s not the way it goes, especially in Hollywood. You have the gatekeepers, right? You have the person that’s in between you and the client, and all the scheduling, and you have to talk to this person to talk to this person. And I think what happens is a lot of times, they become intimidated by the relationships I’m able to have with the clients personally.
And so what happens is it becomes a thing like I just don’t hear from the client anymore. Or I’m booked for jobs and then, all of a sudden, I’m released.
And then I’ll bump into the talent at a party or an event or whatever, and I’m always like, “Hey, what happened? I haven’t heard from you.” And they’re like, “Oh, yeah. Yeah, you know, I know my team reached out a few times, but you were busy. Our schedules didn’t match up.” Or, you know, “The whoever said that you were way too expensive,” and it’s always that.
It’s always the narrative of, “Oh, he’s never gonna treat you the way he treats [Zendaya](https://www.thecut.com/2021/02/law-roach-on-zendayas-timeless-malcolm-and-marie-costumes.html). You’re gonna get what she doesn’t want.” And that’s not true, because none of my clients ever look the same. Like, I don’t use edits.
I don’t walk around with suitcases of edits that Zendaya didn’t want and offer ’em to other people. It’s always those narratives, and I’ve lost a bunch of clients that I really care for and really wanted to work with because of the gatekeepers.
**How did you even get into fashion, and what was that experience like?**
When I talk about being from the streets and kinda hustling my way — what happened was, out of necessity, I started to go and shop at the thrift store because it was something that was familiar for me from my childhood. And I just kinda made my way back, and so I just started buying stuff and collecting stuff, and one day I had it all in the trunk of my car, and one of my friends, one of my girlfriends, she was like, “Oh, my God, that bag.” She was like, “Oh, what are you gonna do with that? Can I buy it from you?” And so that turned into me going to the thrift store, changing a hem or cinching the waist of a dress — you know, I’ve always hung with a lot of beautiful women and having ’em all come in. We had these little parties … So that got me into selling vintage.
And then eventually I had a brick-and-mortar store in Chicago. And then the stylist thing started to happen, and then Rachel Zoe came around, that show came around, and I was just like, “I want, I wanna be, I want *that*.” And so that’s how, when I came to Hollywood, that was the goal: to be able to go sit front row at fashion shows and to know the designers. And I remember one episode, \[Rachel Zoe\] went back to say hello to Mr. Armani, and I just thought that was … I’m like, *I want that life.* I want that career.
**From point A to point B, when a publicist calls you, what is that like? What is the wrangle like?**
So sometimes what happens is a talent will just DM me: “Hey, would you work with me? Can we talk about working?” I started working with this client and she had this really big movie coming out and she said, “You know, I wanna be a fashion girl. I want to take risks, and there’s nobody else that I want to work with but you.”
And I was like, “Okay.” So I took a meeting with her. And we sit down, we are having coffee. And she said, “I wanna tell you something.” She was like, “My agency, I told them exactly what I just told you. I told my PR, I told my agency …” And they gave her a list of five people and I wasn’t on that list. And this is an agency that I’ve worked with, an agent actually that I’ve worked with, with other clients. And they said, “These are the five people that if you really want to have a career in fashion, you have to work with one of these five people.” And you can assume what those five people look like.
And so she said, “I’m new. I don’t know any better. So I take their advice, and I picked one of the five people.” And she said that it was the worst experience that she had ever had in her life. She said she was doing a press day, they sent clothes, the clothes weren’t altered. Somebody else’s stylist has to help safety-pin her clothes. And she was like, “I wasn’t a priority to her. I just wasn’t a priority to her. And it made me feel so bad that it made me almost not want a stylist. And I kept saying your name, and they kept ignoring me. So I just reached out to you myself.” So that happens a lot. And then the other way, the more traditional route, is that the agent, they’ll reach out to my agent, and we’ll go that way and try to make sure it happens. But I’m also really honest with people when I work with them for the first time. I say, “We can actually fall in love and create magic or it’s not gonna work.”
If it’s somebody new, I start by looking at every single thing they’ve ever worn in their career. So I literally go Google, Instagram, and what I’m trying to do is trying to have some connection with who I think they are. And then after that, the process is finding the right clothes. Finding the clothes that I think will help tell that story. And then the very first time that you fit with me, I have rails and rails and rails of clothes. And so what I ask every person to do is to go through every single piece and pull out everything that they love, but also pull out everything they hate.
Because showing me what you hate and dislike helps me build in my mind and helps me to be able to look at clothes from your perspective. That helps me edit moving forward. So the next time you come, there could be ten dresses, but every one of those dresses will work because I’ve pulled them and I’ve found them based on my perception of who you are and what you’ve shown me and my research.
My work is spiritual to me. And I know people are gonna be like, “Oh, that’s so bullshit.” But no, like, if you talk to anybody who ever worked with me, they say, “Oh, you have to let him dream about it.” If it’s three dresses, they’ll say, “Call me in the morning because I know you gonna dream about it.” Because it’s so in my spirit and my soul that I’ll not only see the dress, I see the finished look. I see the hair and makeup. I even can see the press the day after.
**I do wanna bring out something since we’re talking about the press — Priyanka Chopra Jonas. And specifically, there was a quote in** [**People**](https://people.com/health/priyanka-chopra-jonas-reveals-she-was-body-shamed-for-not-being-sample-size/) **the other day where she said, “I’ve been told many things that are difficult to hear. In my job the pressure is so intense, you can’t really show the chinks in your armor. Someone told me yesterday that I wasn’t sample sized. I was hurt and disgusted with my family, and I cried to my husband and my team, and I felt really bad about the fact that I’m not sample size and that that’s a problem apparently, that most of us are not a sample size, which is a two.” You obviously now have worked with her for the past couple of years. What is it like, though, when you read things like that?**
It was a little bit hurtful in a way that it ended up in the press, you know? Because that wasn’t the real conversation. I’ve never had that conversation with her, ever. So again, it is her gatekeepers, how they presented what I said to her to make her feel that way. And if that made her feel bad, that wasn’t — it was taken out of context.
But I’m sure it was taken outta context to get her to be like, “Oh, okay, I’m not working with him no more. He’s insensitive to my body.” Which I’m like, “How is that possible? I’ve been dressing you for literally pre-pandemic, and it’s been nothing but great things.
**Did you feel like her agents were trying to make you look bad?**
I think sometimes what it is with them is that they have an agenda and I need to be the bad guy because I’m the one who’s dealing with the clothes and the body. Like, I need to be the one who says, you know — and I’m not talking about her. I’m just talking about in general, like, I need to be the one to say, “Oh, you know, be careful because, you know, the pictures aren’t as beautiful because you coming across, you know, a little thicker than you used to be.” It is, like, so they’ll say that to me or have a discussion with me but then take it back as if I was the lead in the discussion. And I’m not saying that’s exactly what happened, but that’s what feels like happened to me.
But I was really surprised that — I love Priyanka. When you are around her, there’s only so many women in this industry that have that thing. I’m constantly inspired by women, and she has this thing that’s very Old Hollywood, Sophia Loren — it drives me crazy. She has a twinkle, she has a wiggle, and I *love* her, like, even as a person.
**You’re also one of the few stylists who dress a lot of celebrities who aren’t sample size.**
My whole career. When I dressed Anne Hathaway, she had just had a baby. She wasn’t sample size. When I was with Tiffany Haddish, Tiffany Haddish would fluctuate all the time. And when she would fluctuate, she understood that she wasn’t sample size and she would buy her clothes. So I’ve always, always, dressed people that weren’t sample size. I was literally, when Lizzo got her deal, I was one of Lizzo’s first stylists. Like, I’ve never shied away and said that everybody I have to work with has to be tall and a size zero. So that was hurtful.
**I mean, obviously, your hustle has been a grind. But we often talk about nepotism in the industry, so what was that like for you to be able to actually hustle and get clients versus seeing other people get clients and get booked in your early days without much effort?**
Well, I think I was able to do it my own way, and I also had someone that we had made a promise to each other that we would do everything in our power to elevate each other, and that’s Zendaya. The way that we came into the industry, nobody wanted to touch either one of us. Like nobody wanted to lend me clothes. Nobody wanted to dress her ’cause, at that time, Disney girls wasn’t considered real actresses. So we pinkie swore to each other that I would do my part. She would do her part. And we would do it together. And I think that allowed me to circumvent all the other ways that people become successful, the nepotism. I’ve never assisted, never interned; I kinda fought my way and hustled my way. I think the famous story is that I will only put Zendaya in clothes that other people had worn because, at that time, the weeklies were like a big thing — who wore it best? And I figured out it’s about press. It’s about whoever gets the most press gets the dress. And so I just kept figuring it out, you know? I just kept using everything I learned on the streets to figure it out. But the nepotism, especially on the Hollywood side, it’s so strong because these stylists, these white female stylists, they grew up with these white publicists and agents. And they went to summer camp and you know what I mean? It’s this network that I was able to penetrate.
If we use the Oscars as an example, right? So every year, the industry knows the girls that’s gonna have a movie that’s gonna be in the running, right? Those girls, when they come in, like especially when it’s their first film and they’re new or whatever, they come and they’re automatically introduced to one of the ten. To be a stylist at my level, you have to be able to work with one of those type of girls. That doesn’t happen for Black stylists. You could look at the landscape, and you can look and see the Black stylists that were able to reach a certain height, it’s because of Black talent.
That’s why it hurts me so, so bad, when I see a Black talent work with a white stylist, it’s because they have everything else. Like, all we have is you, for the most part. And those women have everything else and everybody else. I always say it’s like two bookstores next to each other, and they have the exact same books, but you choose to go to the bookstore that’s owned by the white person.
We cannot elevate and expand without the Black talent. I was able to do it because one, the way I work, I think, is different. And the way I see my job is different … and also because of music. Because Ariana Grande gave me a shot when I was very green. But music is different from Hollywood; it’s not a lot of that nepotism, or racism, or the good ol’ girls club — like, Ari gave me a shot and then Celine Dion called me and changed my fucking life.
So the industry had no other choice but to respect me and to let me in, because I had did it a different type of way. I’m super-grateful to Ariana Grande. I’m super-grateful to Jesse J. It’s like, these women … I was *green*. Like, I was so green, and they literally trusted me and gave me a shot. And then Zendaya becoming who she is, so I had the best of both worlds, actually.
Like, look at everybody who was nominated and all that, and see who the stylist was, and then go back and look last year, and see everybody who was nominated, who the stylist was. It’s the same group. It’s the same group of women.
**I mean there is Zendaya, there is Anya Taylor-Joy, Ariana Grande, Hunter Schafer, Kerry Washington, Celine Dion, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Anne Hathaway. I’m missing a lot of people, but I’m naming a lot of people because you’ve completely changed the narrative. And you’ve changed their careers, you’ve changed what people think about fashion and styling, and I don’t think that people also understand just how, at the very granular level, how difficult your job is and that it’s not just pulling a look.**
**What does it look like, start to finish, and paint a picture for me of how it looks as you’re consulting on more than just what they’re wearing?**
When I started working with Anne Hathaway, I was the first Black stylist that was working with A-list white talent. And it was a big deal. It was a big deal in the community of Black stylists. I think what it did was show the industry that we are just as talented and that we can do talent other than Black girls. That was a really important moment in my career, and it was a really important moment for other people’s careers. ’Cause it just wasn’t happening. It just absolutely wasn’t happening, and you know, I didn’t dress Anne at the beginning; I dressed Anne when Anne is *Anne*. Anne is Oscar-winning, like, Anne is a *movie star*.
And so what that did was gave other people hope that, and other stylists, that they can do it, too. And I think we saw Jason Bolden go on and style Angelina Jolie — see, people don’t understand, like, it’s a pack of us. A very small pack of us. And every time we have a win, one of us has a win, it’s a win for everybody else. Because at the end of the day, everybody wants the most successful career, and the most diverse career that they can have, right?
And everybody wants the opportunities, and unfortunately, you get more opportunities when you get to the place where you’re dressing white women. Just like everything else in this country, right? You’re validated.
Even my career, I’m validated by white Establishments. I’ve never been — well, I won’t say never — but I’ve never been invited to the BET Awards. I’ve never been given an award by *Essence*, or NAACP … I wasn’t even invited to NAACP. \[*Laughs*.\] With all that with Zendaya, like, I’ve never been invited. I’ve never been celebrated by my own people. It doesn’t matter until you’re validated by the white Establishment. And I’ve been lucky to get that validation, but it would mean so much more to me, to be validated and appreciated from my own people.
**But what does that look like, specifically when you’re working with these big A-list people, because it’s not just picking out a look for this premiere. You’re consulting on so much, so what does that look like, overall?**
I own my look. It’s called the gestalt theory. It says the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And I have to control the whole, right? Because, again, it comes from my vision and my dreams, and I see it, right? And so, I have to see it in real life, the way I see it in my mind. So it’s exhausting, and it’s exhausting if you have a client in London, and it’s, you know, four, three a.m. in L.A., and you have to be up and be alert and talk to hair and makeup about the look, and make sure that the earring is right, and all that. People say, “Well, you don’t have to do all that.” I was like, “I do, because that’s my crazy, right? And it’s also my vice.” Like, I don’t do drugs, I don’t party, I don’t have a boyfriend, I don’t have a dog, I don’t have any kids, like. It’s literally all that I have.
**But you also consult so much on image, overall. It’s not just the specific of clothing. It’s also career.**
It’s a story. I have to be able to create a narrative. I’m just a storyteller, honestly, Lindsay. At the end of the day, I am a storyteller, and I use the clothes, as the words, to get across the narrative, get across the story. I want you to feel like you’re Dorothy Dandridge in the way you touch your hair, and the way you bevel, you know what I mean? I do all of that. I’m really close to my clients; yes, we do talk about career moves and brands and that type of stuff. But then, that’s another thing that the gatekeepers don’t like. They don’t like that. That I’m gonna make this amount of money for consulting about the whole thing. So, yeah, they don’t like that.
**There’s been a lot of speculation as to gatekeepers in general. I know the Vuitton video has been circulating a ton. I was there, but I didn’t even see you there. But I saw the video of you and Zendaya coming up to the front row. What actually happened?**
So we left on time, but I don’t know if our driver went the wrong way, but we got stuck in traffic. Also the way we came in, it was a long walk actually to get your seat. It was a long walk. So it was a lot of anxiety, because Zendaya is really respectful and she doesn’t like people to have to wait on her, and so it was just anxiety. So the Vuitton team was like shuffling us as fast as possible to the seats. And so what happened was — we have to remember that we just came from a house where she was the only face, the only ambassador. Even for years, like, I’m always used to sitting next to her. And so, in my mind, my seat was next to her. So when I got there and it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t a problem, but there was nobody to tell me where my actual seat was. And so the seat behind her, when you see her turn around and touch the seat, it wasn’t her telling me to sit there, it was her telling me like, “That’s Darnell’s seat,” which is her assistant. I’m not gonna sit in Darnell’s seat. So then where does he go? And so I was standing there — I was really just kind of confused. And remember, we had just made a mad dash to get there, so it’s anxiety, like, you sweating. I got this suit on, the hair, and we hot, you know, I was trying to make it. And so that’s what this thing was, because I’m programmed. I’m coming from a house where I know where my seat is, right? It’s right next to her, and it’s always right next to her, because that’s part of our relationship and our interaction, seeing the clothes together. And you know, the little cues, and little such, like, that’s the look. You know, and so when that didn’t happen, it just … And somebody was like, “Law, you have to sit,” and I was like, “I don’t know where I’m sitting.” That became really tough, because it made people think that Zendaya wasn’t taking care of me and wasn’t making sure I was taken care of. And then it became this thing with Delphine Arnault. I was like, *Where did that come from?* And so, now I have a beef with LVMH, and there’s no beef with LVMH. Delphine and the Arnault family have been so kind to me. Like, even after the show, we went to the after-party. I had a whole conversation with her and congratulated her on her move to Dior. She sent me a beautiful bag, and it’s like, there’s no beef. And I also think that played into it, because everybody thinks that I have this beef. That I’m just beefing with LVMH for what people think. Which is crazy. But this beef from the Anya Taylor-Joy thing. And me kind of standing up for myself against Dior … ?
**And what were you standing up for yourself against Dior for?**
I collaborated with Dior on a couple of dresses for Anya. And when the looks came out, there was no credit to the stylist. People have to understand when we do customs for clients, there’s a process, right? It’s a back-and-forth. It’s a collaboration between the designer, the atelier, and us, right? Because we are the liaison between them for the client, and to make sure they are happy, because we know what they want, more than the house does. I had worked really hard on looks for Anya. And so it came out, and it was just like, “Oh, you know, this took 40 hours, and this fabric, and all that, and this design,” and they show the sketch and all that. And I felt a certain type of way, and not just for myself. Don’t erase me. Don’t erase my contribution to this look and to this dress. Don’t erase all the phone calls, emails, and text messages, and going back and forth, and me working to make sure that my client is happy. Don’t erase that. And when I did do that, I got so many DMs from other stylists, like, “Thank you for doing that, because they did the same thing to me.” Or, ‘They’ve been doing the same thing to me for years.’ And my biggest thing, and anybody who knows me knows, I don’t mind being the first, or taking a hit from something, to make sure that people don’t have to go through the same things. And when I say people, I mean, Black people.
**Even you publicly saying, “Hey, Dior, you need to give me credit,” that takes a lot of bravery.**
It takes a lot of bravery because, again, LVMH is very powerful in this industry. And I have to be okay and have no fear of saying, ‘It’s just not right.’ For award season, we get dresses from houses and we take the dresses apart. We add here, take this, do that. And there should be some appreciation for that, and they should also pay us for that. It’s work. And you should pay us a rate that is attractive and shows your gratitude. We all should be paid for that. Why should we do it for free because it’s this big house? That’s not the way it should work. And the one thing about me, I’ve said this before, I need to know what the rate is. What’s the rate?
**Have you had situations like this with other brands where you felt like they weren’t giving you the respect that you deserve?**
No, I haven’t. I have the most incredible time and working relationship with Pierpaolo Piccioli of Valentino; he has no ego. He is a true talent with no ego. And every time we did something, the first thing would be, “Thank you, Law.” Tagging @luxurylaw; sending text messages and flowers. I never had that with anybody else.
**As Black people in fashion, we have to deal with so many gatekeepers. And it’s frustrating, because the industry says, “We love inclusivity, we love diversity, we love all these things,” but there are so few of us that actually have an understanding of what it’s like behind the scenes. What has your experience been like in trying to get past the gatekeepers, or to do the work that you want to do, regardless of the gatekeepers?**
Some of the gatekeepers don’t care about the clothes. Right? You know, if it’s an agent/manager/publicist, some of them don’t care; they’re like, you know, “We trust you, she trusts you, as long as she’s happy, I don’t care.” But then there are some that want to come to the fitting, and want to have an opinion, and want to pick the dress, or say that that’s not the right dress, and all that, and I don’t work like that. At this point, I’m proven, my work is proven, and if you are a girl that wants to tell a story, or have a huge moment, then you come to me. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows my work, and everybody knows what my work does, and how that impacts someone’s career. Honestly, some people are like, “I don’t care. I’m managing this press tour. I’m setting up these interviews, and you know, I’m making sure all this that is there,” and the other person’s like, “We’re working on a deal,” or whatever; they don’t care about clothes. And I’m not going to the publicist and saying, “Um, did you make sure that she has that interview on the BBC?” Like, I’m not trying to do your job, so don’t try to do mine. And I’m very outspoken to say, “No, you can’t come to the fitting.” You’re not a stylist. I’m not a publicist. So, our jobs shouldn’t overlap in that way. Your job is to let me know the schedule, and my job is to take the schedule and make sure that I have all the clothes, and the client feels beautiful.
This is the worst, and this also happens when I’m working with non-Black talent; it’s this emotion of, “I’m supposed to be grateful,” because I’m dressing the white girl. I’m supposed to be grateful. But I’m like, “No, she’s supposed to be grateful that she’s working with me, because I’m changing her life.” \[*Laughs*.\] I mean that as humbly as possible, but like, it can’t be debated. Like, it can’t be debated. I’m one of the only stylists that really, actually changes, and helps change the trajectory of people’s careers through fashion. It’s a club, these women that have been working with each other for 20 years, and the thing about it is that I won’t say that’s always racism, right? To be really honest with you. People like to work with people they are comfortable with, but if you are a person of privilege, of power, you have to be okay to release that, every now and again. You have to be able to be secure enough to give somebody who doesn’t look like you an opportunity, and that’s what doesn’t happen. They want to work with the same stylists. We get it, right? You’re comfortable, you know the job is gonna get done, but if you are really going to be progressive, and forward thinking, and not be a part of the problem, you have to release some of that power. And that’s the only way that the dynamic and the landscape of what I do is gonna change. Some of these stylists, these white stylists, have to say, “You know what? That’s not for me. This Black girl, who I don’t understand her body, or her hair texture, or all this, it’s not right for me. Let’s give this to someone who’s building, who we know can do the job, and let’s give it to them.” But that’s not the way it works, because it’s a money thing, right? To really be our ally, and to really stand strong to all these things that people have been talking about, you have to release some of that power. You have to make the decision to say, ‘This ain’t for me. This ain’t for me.’ This would be better there.
**What are some of these narratives that you feel like people have perpetuated about you in the industry? Because I know you were saying that, you felt like, specifically, the PR teams are really difficult to work with.**
Not all of them.
**Not all of them. But they can be difficult when you are communicating with talent. What are some of the narratives that you have experienced or you feel like have happened behind the scenes that people don’t realize?**
It’s the — I’m difficult. I’m a diva. I’m my own celebrity, so I’ll never really have time for you. I’m nasty. I’m mean. But again, first of all, my last name is Roach. I’ve always been a very feminine boy, right? Growing up, I’ve always had to defend myself. I’ve always had to fight. So if I feel disrespected in any type of way, I’m ready for a fight. You know? And they don’t understand that, so when that happens: “Oh, he’s — he’s difficult,” or “He’s disrespectful,” or something; it’s like, “No, it’s just my defense mechanism.” If I feel attacked, I’m going to attack back. I’ve never learned the diplomacy of, like, “Oh, just let it go.” It’s like, “No, if I hear you saying something or you’re doing this thing, I’m going to call you and say, ‘Hey, what’s up?’” Like, “What are you doing? Like, no, that’s not true.” And that’s what I was doing on that phone call that kind of pushed me over the edge. Telling this woman, like, “You’re lying to my client.” And this is the way we lose clients. But in this turn of events, it’s the reason why the client lost me. I shouldn’t have to do that. I shouldn’t have to always defend myself.
**What has it been like to try to communicate and defend yourself when you know that your counterparts, other stylists, don’t have to deal with that at all?**
It’s really tough. And it’s like I never feel protected. You know, I mean I have certain clients that it’s like, “Leave him alone.” You know? Like, “Leave him alone. Let him work. He doesn’t work in a traditional sense. Let him be the artist that he is.” And when it’s that, you can always tell. You can look at the work and know who are the clients that let me create, right? And I remember with Celine Dion one day, she pulled me to the side and she said, “If anybody ever tries to stagger you or your creativity, let me know, because I want you to fly.” Same thing with Zendaya. You know, people think that she wears whatever I want. She doesn’t. It’s a collaboration. But if I say, “Zendaya, my spirit says this is the dress,” she’ll say, “This is the dress.” You know, it’s only so many that really give me that. And those are the ones that the work becomes iconic and legendary, and people talk about it, because it’s the synergy that I need, and it’s the ability and the allowance to be able to fly, right? It’s always the best.
**A lot of other stylists don’t have to hustle or work as hard. Financially, what has that been like to fight for your pay equity? To say, “Look, this is what I deserve.” What have you heard about other stylists and what they’re making versus …**
I know the impact that my work has, what this look and the picture means financially and how it equates to marketing dollars and all that. And I know that I bring more to the table when it comes to that than a lot of other people. It’s instinctual that we’re not worth as much. There has been programming in this country that we don’t deserve the same amount or the same pay. But when I’m telling you I’ve heard from a credible source, I’ve seen the deal memo. So I’m not telling you I feel like \[another stylist\] is making more money than me. I’m telling you that I know she’s making more money. And for you to say you don’t believe it. You don’t have to believe it, because I’m showing you the proof. So what your job is as my protector is to go and say, “Hell no. We’re not taking that.”
But that’s this country, right? We are still fighting to show that we are worth just as much or more than them. I mean it’s the same thing we’ve been doing as Black people for the last, what, 300 years? Still trying to make a space for ourselves, still trying to make spaces for people that’s coming behind us. It’s the same thing. It’s just fashion, right? It’s no different than any other industry. It’s no different than the fight of, you know, Black actresses, fighting to make the same amount as their white counterparts. It’s the same thing. It’s like, it’s no different for us, right? I want to advocate down. I don’t want to just advocate for myself. I want to advocate to make sure that when I’m on a set, there’s someone on the production team that’s working that looks like me, or the photo team that’s working that looks like me, or the PAs, or, you know, something. So I don’t have a problem using whatever power or platform I have to advocate not just myself and across the board but down as well. I’m never gonna take the same amount of money as a hair and makeup artist. I don’t do the same job. I shouldn’t have to. When I talk about money and I talk about race, then it’s like, “Oh, he’s greedy.” When you get a real ally at a brand, and it’s happened, it’s happened to me a bunch of times where they’re like, “Oh, well, just to let you know … I’m not trying to be messy, but such and such, such and such, you know, this is what they made. And, you know, Law, we think that you did a better job.”
**What would you say is one of the most racist experiences or things that’s happened to you working on set or in fashion?**
It’s twofold. Early on, I used to be privy to, like, emails where they’re like, “Well, who’s this Black boy?” You know? Stuff like that. When I really first started getting invited to the shows, because I was so excited, I was early. I didn’t know, like, *Oh, this show’s gonna be 30 minutes late.* Like, I’m on time. I’m sitting, I’m waiting, and very excited, very grateful. And the PR person would come and say, “Can I see your ticket?” \[*Laughs*.\] Or somebody would be sitting in the wrong seat, and they automatically come to me and say, “I need you to get out of that seat. That’s not your seat.” And I’m like, “But it is my seat.” And then I’ll say, “Well, why did you pass everybody else to get to me?” Because the Black boy can’t be sitting front row. And you know, the dynamic has changed with that front row over these last few years. It used to be — I mean, it’s still not a lot — it used to be Edward \[Enninfiul, editor of British *Vogue*\]. So when they saw me, I had to be the front-row crasher. Like, I just had to be. I would watch, and I would know what they were doing. I would watch them walk past everybody else. And it still kind of happens. You know, now, the main person will run over and basically be like, “Are you fucking crazy? That’s Law Roach.” You know what I mean? And I’ll just sit there. But yeah, like, for years when I started to go to the shows, especially in Europe. They have a way of making you feel like you’re not supposed to be there.
**Do you feel like you’ve gotten to a point where you feel appreciated?**
I do feel appreciated. And me announcing my retirement has kind of strengthened that for me. My career, I’m happy with what I’ve done. I’m happy with the accomplishments. I’m happy that I have been able to be a reference point of a successful Black man in this industry, in styling. Because I didn’t have a reference point. And people can make the comparison with André \[Leon Tally.\] But it’s really no comparison between my work and my career and what he did. So now, this younger generation and all my fashion babies have a real reference point to say, “Oh, well, Law was able to do that, so I know I can do it.” Because, you know, representation is everything. I was still chasing this white woman’s career and that dream, and now people can say, “Oh, I want to be able to do what Law did.” You know? Yes, I feel appreciated for that. And I have put my livelihood on the line to stand up for myself.
**So what’s gonna happen with all your clients now?**
They’re gonna find a new stylist.
And people will say, “Oh, you not gonna leave Zendaya.” But I don’t have to style Zendaya to be a part of her team and her creativity team, right? So maybe if I choose, you know, not to be her stylist, I can still be her creative director and I can still, you know, manage a stylist or however I choose to do it. I haven’t made a decision. She’s giving me the grace to be able to make that decision because we really have a kinship. Like, you know, we’ve grown up together. And that’s all I ever asked, was for people who I worked so hard for to just give me grace when I need it.
November — not this last year, but the year before that, when my 3-year-old nephew died — I never felt anything like that before. And I think that also has been pushing this retirement, because it kind of made me understand that I had no other priorities than my work, because when he passed away he was 3. I had only been able to see him maybe … I saw him when he was born, I saw him on Christmas, one time, and then I saw him around our birthday. So I had only been able to see him three times in his whole life. Not being able to ever know who he would be, I was on the verge of suicide, honestly. The guilt of not being in his life enough and not really knowing him enough had put me into a really dark depression. And I had never been depressed in my life. So my brain couldn’t really understand what was happening. He died a day before Thanksgiving. So I was on a retainer with a client and his manager, and I’ll never forget this — his manager said, ‘“Oh yeah, but you really didn’t do anything in December.” And I didn’t say anything, but it kind of haunts me that people don’t see me sometimes as human. And that I don’t deserve grace. So it’s been a lot of little things that’s been happening over the last couple of years that have been pushing me towards this decision of retirement. I need to learn how to give myself grace, and I need to learn how to let people know that I am human. Because I’ve been able to be in two or three places at the same time. Like, I’ve mastered that in my own little way. And I need to figure out, you know, how to love me, and how to accept love and how not to suffer.
**We saw you last night walking in the Hugo Boss show. Congratulations. What else do you have coming up? I know the Boss thing was a long time in the works, when people thought it was random.**
People thought it was a PR stunt. I was really releasing that I was retiring so that I could walk in the Boss show. I’m like, “People, you have to understand that’s been four or five months in the making.” They were really kind, and they were like, “Well, you know, if you don’t think you can do it, you know, we understand if you pull out.” And I say, “I’m a Black little gay boy. I’ve been learning how to walk in heels and pumps since I was 6.” \[*Laughs*.\] No, I’m ready for this show.
What was the most beautiful thing about it? It was about me. And I felt like it was about me and I really felt alive last night. Because I didn’t have to go in somebody else’s dressing room and get them dressed. Or make sure that I had everything or my assistant. It was about me as Law, and I felt almost born again, to be honest with you. I was so happy last night. I woke up this morning to get on my flight, and I had forgot what joy felt like. And I’m very grateful to them.
**And now you feel that pressure is lifted.**
I do. I feel, last night and this morning, I just — I feel so free. I feel a freedom that I don’t remember ever feeling. And no matter what, if I come back, which I don’t have plans on coming back —
**So no Met Gala?**
No Met Gala.
**Wow.**
Canceled.
**So what is this next era gonna be like for you? What are you excited about?**
You know, so many other things I want to do. I got a book deal a year ago, and I have not been able to — I have a deadline that’s coming up, really, and I have had no time to work on it at all. It hasn’t been announced yet, but I’ve been made the creative director of a footwear brand. So I’m excited about that. Because now I really get to create in a different type of way. I wanna do more personality-driven stuff, so you might see me doing red-carpet correspondence, because I never had a chance to do it, because how can I be a correspondent when I’ve got 11 people at the Met Gala? I hope people start to see me more as me, as Law, as the person. I want to do more things with Boss. I want to do things and use my personality. I might have a talk show or a podcast or, you know, anything. I just wanna prove to myself that I can do more than be of service to other people.
I feel alive, Lindsay. I know it’s only been a couple days, but I feel alive. And I keep using the word *suffering* because it’s the only word that I can … I don’t have any friends. I don’t have any relationships; everything that could bring me joy has been suppressed because of the work. This persona of, you know, Luxury Law, Law Roach the Stylist, and not realizing that I was miserable. So I just, I just wanna breathe. I wanna fly; I wanna be happy. I wanna figure other things out. I think not doing that job is going to give me the time and an ability to just try some other stuff. And if I fail at everything else, then I fail at everything else. We know I’m a good stylist, so shit. I always got a job.
Video produced by [Dayna’s House](https://daynashouse.com/): Laila Iravani, editor; Shirley Cruz, DP; Nick Parish, lighting; and Christopher Comfort, sound mixing.
Law Roach on Why He Retired From Celebrity Fashion Styling
# Leopards Are Living among People. And That Could Save the Species
Where the wild things are is a shifting concept influenced by culture, upbringing, environs, what we watch on our screens, and, for me, the tussle between my education as a wildlife biologist and my experiences in the field. Taking to heart a [core tenet](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10531-013-0549-6) of conservation science—that wild animals, certainly large carnivores, belong in the wilderness—I began my career in the 1990s by visiting nature reserves in India to study Asiatic lions and clouded leopards. When in the new millennium I stumbled on leopards living in and around villages, I was shocked. “They shouldn't be here!” my training shouted. But there they were, leaping over the metaphysical walls scholars had constructed between nature and humankind as nonchalantly as they strolled past the physical boundaries of protected areas.
Take the first leopard I collared with a GPS tag: a large male that had fallen into a well near Junnar, in the Indian state of Maharashtra, in the summer of 2009. He took refuge on a ledge just above the water, and forest department personnel rescued him by lowering a ladder with a trap cage at the top into the well. It had been a hot day, and the leopard was clearly old and very tired, but even after climbing up into the cage, he remained unruffled. My team—veterinarian Karabi Deka, a local farmer named Ashok Ghule who served as a translator and guide, me (a doctoral student at the time) and some others—made sure he was secure, and Deka shot a tranquilizer dart into him through the cage bars. He didn't even growl. His calm, gentle and elderly demeanor induced us to call him Ajoba, which means “grandfather” in Marathi, the area's local language.
We released Ajoba the same night in a forest 52 kilometers away. Over the next weeks we watched his movements, as revealed by the intermittent signals from his collar, with astonishment and trepidation. Ajoba walked right out of the forest and traveled over farmland, through another wildlife preserve, across an industrial estate full of smoke-belching factories and a four-lane highway, and past a busy train station. After walking 125 kilometers in about a month, he reached Mumbai and settled down near the edge of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), where jungle borders a city of more than 20 million people.
For years the forest department had been assuaging public fear of leopards by capturing them from inhabited areas and releasing them in forests. Ajoba must have been exiled from Mumbai's suburbs and now had simply gone home.
As humans, we believe that only we have agency. But like tens of millions of people in rural India whose forests and fields are being converted to mines, factories, dams and highways, animals must adapt if they are to survive in an increasingly challenging world. The biology of large cats dictates that they roam across tens or hundreds of kilometers to find mates and have cubs; failing such dispersal, inbreeding and, with it, extinction are imminent. It is because these felines [refuse to be confined](https://drive.google.com/file/d/18aY1gCGWh4o7ol53VH14qelwwX5YDnJ_/view) to the 5 percent of India's land surface designated as protected that—alongside 1.4 billion people—the country continues to shelter 23 percent of the planet's carnivore species, including at least half the world's tigers, the only surviving population of Asiatic lions and almost 13,000 leopards.
But they must not cause so much harm that people retaliate. Around the world the primary threat to big cats is humans. According to the Wildlife Protection Society of India, poachers in search of skin, claws or bones, for which there is an illicit market, or villagers angered by the loss of livestock killed almost 5,200 [leopards](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S245229292200039X) in that country between 1994 and 2021. Even so, something about the way much of rural India views wild animals enables thousands of leopards to live in areas with roughly 400 humans per square kilometer. Observing how they do so convinced me that if large carnivores are to survive into the future, it is necessary to change the way the rest of us view them.
This is a story of two highly adaptable species sharing the same space—and a story of hope in these otherwise bleak times for wildlife. Here commonplace notions about large cats being fearsome and bloodthirsty break down. Instead we find wild carnivores and people trying to survive, having their young and living in their societies right next to each other.
Mumbai, a city of more than 20 million people, borders the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) and other green areas in which 50 or so leopards live. Credit:Nayan Khanolkar
## An Eye for an Eye
I've been fascinated with large cats since I first encountered the story of Lord Ayyappa, when I was a little girl. Ayyappa is a Hindu god who, as a child, was ordered to get tiger's milk. He did so, returning on the back of a tigress. The imagery in my picture book was peaceable, full of compassion and understanding, and it seems to have stayed in my head.
In 2001, after getting master's degrees in ecology and evolutionary biology, I found myself living in the Junnar subdistrict, a rural area full of sugarcane fields. I was the mother of a small child. I had followed my then husband, a physicist, to the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope there and planned to devote all my time to raising my daughter. But I became intrigued by reports of large numbers of people in the area being injured or killed by leopards. Between 2001 and 2003 leopards attacked 44 people in Junnar. Some of those assaults may have been accidental, but others were premeditated, as when cats lifted small children who were sleeping outdoors between their parents, killing them so swiftly and stealthily that no one woke up.
It made no sense. Why were there so many leopards in this agricultural landscape, which was bereft of wild herbivores for them to feed on? And why were the animals so aggressive? There were no reports in the conservation literature on large carnivores outside of protected areas, but Maharashtra's forest department was capturing leopards all over the state's rural areas for release into forests. (Leopards are smart, but being cats, they will enter boxes—trap cages.) I received a small grant and put together a team to microchip them. The tags did not transmit signals, but a handheld reader would allow us to identify an individual if it happened to be recaptured. For every leopard, I noted where it was caught and why—and I soon realized they were being moved to jungles not because they'd attacked people but simply because they'd been seen near villages.
In 1972 the Indian government had passed the Wildlife Protection Act, which prohibited the killing of endangered animals. (A tiger or leopard that was proved to habitually prey on people could, however, be shot.) Since the 1980s forest departments in India, held responsible for large wild animals, had been removing leopards from inhabited areas as a way of reducing conflict between leopards and humans. By the mid-2000s it was clear that, at least in Junnar, translocation itself was increasing conflict.
For years Junnar's villagers reported an average of four leopard attacks a year. Then, in February 2001, the local forest department initiated the translocation program. During the following year its staff released 40 leopards caught in the region and elsewhere into two protected areas tens of kilometers away. Attacks on humans near the reserves [more than tripled](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21054526/), to about 15 a year, and the fraction of fatal attacks doubled, to 36 percent. And there were more attacks near the release sites. One leopard caught and tagged in Junnar, and which the forest staff moved to a protected area in Maharashtra's northwest, went on to attack people near its release site. (We realized it was the same cat when it was recaptured, and we scanned its microchip.) It was the first time the region had experienced such attacks, despite leopards having always lived there.
Leopards are very secretive, so we cannot really know how capture and release affects them. What we do know is that stress increases aggression, and moving large cats in captivity from one zoo to another elevates their levels of stress hormones. Home is a biological imperative for cats. And in the few places where wild leopards occasionally show themselves, such as Sri Lanka and Africa, they have social lives, centered on females; it stands to reason that disrupting their relationships compounds the stress of relocation. Moreover, studies in Russia on collared tigers found that when they did attack, they were usually responding to being provoked or injured. In 1988 Asiatic lions preyed on humans for the first time since 1904—after 57 lions were moved from human-dominated areas to Gir National Park, a protected area dedicated to them.
Had the translocated cats learned to see humans as threats? Whatever the reasons may be, when leopards were separated by humans from their homes and families and released in unfamiliar terrain, it was disastrous for the villagers they chanced on.
Veterinarians and others radio collar a leopard to understand its movements and behavior. Credit:Nayan Khanolkar
## Live and Let Live
While traveling around Maharashtra microchipping leopards in the early 2000s, I'd become intrigued by a region of beautiful hills and valleys just north of Junnar. A lot of leopards were being captured in this agricultural area—one female and her cubs were trapped inside a wheat field. There were apparently many leopards in a place with many people, yet there were no attacks. I wanted to understand why.
By then I had been working on leopards with the forest department for four years, and my record persuaded senior wildlife biologists [Ullas Karanth](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/its-global-tiger-day-mdash-how-is-the-effort-to-save-them-going/) and Raman Sukumar to support a doctoral project investigating leopard ecology using tools such as camera traps. When I started work around Akole, a town of 20,000 people, I wasn't even sure there were enough leopards there for us to learn anything meaningful. No scientist had ever reported a leopard from this locale. But the field staff of the forest department showed me the evidence: fresh pugmarks (paw prints) at the side of a field, in courtyards and in school playgrounds; kills hanging in trees; dogs missing or injured; a dead pig here and there. I seemed to be in the right place. But how could I design a camera-trap study in a place where people were everywhere? I was one of the last biologists using film cameras. Every roll was precious, and the cameras might get stolen.
It was a difficult period for my six-year-old daughter, who would cry every time I left for Akole, where I stayed during weekdays. I began by interviewing 200 villagers about their livestock losses and leopard encounters and telling them about my project. At first they were surprised to see a field ecologist, particularly a woman, setting up cameras in sugarcane fields and walking for kilometers to look for leopard signs, but soon they got used to me and would offer me breakfast, lunch or tea when they saw me.
In the early days it was scary to walk in six-foot-high stands of sugarcane and other tall crops where the animals could hide or along dry streambeds with overhanging shrubbery where they might rest. To avoid surprising a leopard, I took to talking to myself if I walked alone; if someone else was there, we chatted.
As I talked to the farmers, my fear just went away. They were regularly interacting with the leopards. A man at a local tea shop recounted, with great amusement, how his wife had thrown dirty water from her home onto the field below and was terrified to hear the growl of a leopard she'd splattered; the leopard simply went on its way. A farmer told me how he'd run out of his house when he heard his cattle bellowing at night and spotted a leopard running off when it could have turned and attacked him. One old lady described holding on to the back legs of her goat while a leopard was trying to pull it away by the front legs. She was alone in a secluded place, and yet the leopard gave up and ran away.
Credit: Daniel P. Huffman; Sources: “*Panthera pardus* (Amended Version of 2019 Assessment),” by A. B. Stein et al., in *The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species*, 2020 (*leopard range data*); “Leopard (*Panthera pardus*) Status, Distribution, and the Research Efforts across Its Range,” by Andrew P. Jacobson et al., in *PeerJ*; May 2016 (*chart reference*); Kontur Population data set (*India human population data*)
In the summer people routinely slept outdoors in the cool air without fear. The few attacks on humans I heard about were accidental, such as when a leopard jumped on a dog on a path and collided with a couple on a passing motorcycle; they all tumbled into a field, and the leopard ran away. In the villages around Akole, no leopard had killed anyone in living memory.
It took me a year to set up the first motion-triggered cameras across my 179-square-kilometer study area. I placed them alongside paths humans used where I had found pugmarks and scat. The first shots were of cattle, dogs and posing villagers, such as an old farmer who got down on all fours and crawled past, growling. But soon the real leopards showed up. We used the rosette patterns on their coats to identify the individuals we photographed, and statistical models helped us extrapolate the numbers to estimate how many leopards were going undetected.
The results were fascinating. There were high densities—[five per 100 square kilometers](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0057872)—not just of leopards but also of hyenas, carnivores just as large. And this was in an agricultural landscape with human densities of 357 per square kilometer, by my measurements. For comparison, in Namibia the density of leopards varies from one to four per 100 square kilometers, but the average human density is just three per square kilometer—less than one hundredth of that in Akole. The croplands surrounding the village were also home to jungle cats—small felines that often stole domestic chickens—as well as jackals and foxes. The rare rusty-spotted cat was even breeding there.
A nocturnal visitor is welcome around the home of a Warli Indigenous family. Warli houses often have traditional paintings of leopards or other wildlife inside, depicting a philosophy of coexistence with other creatures. Credit:Nayan Khanolkar
To figure out what the leopards were eating, volunteers and friends helped me collect scat and examine it for undigested remains of hair, claws and hooves. (DNA markers confirmed the scat was indeed from leopards.) To my surprise, leopards in this landscape were eating primarily [dogs](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7103201/) (39 percent of their diet), and overall, domestic animals made up 87 percent of their prey. Interestingly, dogs supplied almost four times more biomass to the leopards' diets than goats did even though goats were seven times more numerous in the area. Farmers confirmed that they lost far fewer livestock to predators than to diseases or accidents, which may have made them more accepting of the loss of the occasional goat.
Never before had such high densities of large carnivores been reported in a populated landscape in India. To the staff of the forest department, it was no surprise, but most of my colleagues in conservation refused to believe the leopards were living there.
## Secretive Lives
If I were to put radio collars on some of the leopards, the GPS signals they transmitted would help us learn more about how they were sharing space with the people of Akole. I was initially reluctant to collar the cats—the stress of the intervention could be disastrous both for the leopards and for the villagers who'd made me feel so welcome—but the deep interest of Maharashtra's chief wildlife warden and my scientific curiosity induced me to try. What we found was remarkable.
The radio signals showed that the cats spent their entire day hiding in small bushes or inside the dense, six-foot-tall sugarcane fields—within pouncing distance of people going about their business, unaware of the leopards lurking nearby. At night, when the rural landscape was devoid of people, it was, from the cats' perspective, just another wild space. The tracking data showed us that this was the leopards' time, when they stalked houses, looking for goats and pets, and prowled garbage dumps hunting for foraging dogs and domestic pigs.
Radhika was captured in 2004 during a spate of leopard attacks in Mumbai, although no one could be sure she was responsible. She died in captivity in 2018. Nowadays camera traps ensure that any leopard that threatens humans is swiftly identified and removed to permanent captivity. Credit:Nayan Khanolkar
We collared a female and a male who turned out to be a mother and her subadult (in human terms, teenage) son. We could see from the signals, transmitting every three hours, that they sometimes met up, fed together on the same carcass and then went their separate ways. When the female had a new litter, there were two nights when she was away and her subadult son stayed with his young siblings—babysitting!
And then one night one little cub fell into a well. The GPS signals showed that the mother paced by the well all night, leaving at dawn for her daytime shelter about 250 meters away in a sugarcane field. The forest department rescued the cub the next day and released it after dark near the well. Within half an hour of the cub's release, the mother was back by the well. A few hours later pugmarks from three cats were spotted together—the mom, her half-grown son and the baby, reunited.
Leopards were not only surviving but raising families in this agricultural landscape—and there was something about the way local people dealt with it that I could not fathom. I'd been trained to see the juxtaposition of large carnivores and people as a situation of imminent conflict. One day, early in my research in Akole, I drove with Ghule kaka (“kaka,” an honorific, means uncle), the farmer I was working with, to interview a woman whose goat had been killed by a leopard. Like a typical wildlife biologist, I asked her what problems she had with leopards. She brusquely replied that a particular leopard routinely came by a path in the hills, passed her house and went “that way.”
Later I asked Ghule kaka what I'd done to annoy her. “These people revere the leopard, and you're asking her what problem her god gives her!” he replied. Nearby was a statue of [Waghoba](http://mesbiodiversity.in/publications/Athreya_et_al_2018_Narratives_of_large_cat_worship_in_India.pdf), a large cat deity that many people in the region have worshipped for at least half a century. I remember a pastoralist whose sheep was taken by a leopard. “The poor leopard had no prey in the forest,” he said. “What else could he eat? So he's taken the sheep, and God will give me more.”
I'd started out as an arrogant young biologist convinced that we can resolve human-wildlife “conflict” only by understanding the animal involved. My experiences in Akole convinced me that it is humans who hold the key, and I soon got a chance to test that theory.
A researcher and a member of the forest department track a radio-collared leopard in the hills of SGNP. Credit:Nayan Khanolkar
## Alley Cat
In 2011 Sanjay Gandhi National Park got a new director, Sunil Limaye, who faced a serious problem: a history of leopard attacks in and around the reserve. At their peak, in June 2004, the cats attacked 12 people, most of them living in slums at the inner edge of the reserve forest. Limaye was familiar with my work in Junnar, and he had an idea about what the problem was. For years the forest department had been releasing leopards trapped around SGNP and elsewhere into the national park in relatively large numbers—15 in 2003. But relocation didn't help: another leopard swiftly took over the vacated territory, and attacks near the release site were likely to increase. Although a lot of forest officers understood this dynamic, the pressure from politicians and the media to remove leopards was immense.
Limaye wanted to start [an initiative](https://sgnp.maharashtra.gov.in/1221/Living-with-Leopards) involving scientists and the citizens and institutions of Mumbai to reduce the leopard conflict, and he wanted me involved. I was busy writing a Ph.D. thesis on the work I had done in Akole, but I couldn't resist the chance to help resolve a terrible situation for leopards and people alike. Plus, my sister had moved to Mumbai around that time, so my daughter could play with her cousin while I worked. Limaye put together a team that included me, several forest officers and Vidya Venkatesh, currently director of the Last Wilderness Foundation. Many of Mumbai's residents regarded the forest as a source of trouble, and our group agreed that mindsets had to change. The surest way to make that happen was to get Mumbaikars involved.
We recruited wildlife enthusiasts who'd long wanted to help protect a nature preserve they loved. They formed an association, Mumbaikars for SGNP, and began a campaign to educate their fellow citizens about the value of the national park as a reservoir of green space and a source of water and oxygen. Local students set up camera traps to count leopards. In 117 square kilometers in SGNP and the Aarey Milk Colony, a nearby scrub forest given over to cattle for milk production, the cameras captured 21 leopards—a very high density. The national park had wild prey, mainly deer, but the leopards were clearly being attracted to the slums by the many feral dogs that were feeding on the garbage strewn around.
We also interviewed people to understand their interactions with leopards. As social geographer Frédéric Landy of the University of Paris has noted [in his work](https://academic.oup.com/hong-kong-scholarship-online/book/18556/chapter-abstract/176697122?redirectedFrom=fulltext), it wasn't the slum dwellers—the people most often attacked—who were calling for leopards to be removed. It was politically empowered upper-class residents of high-rises near the reserve who relished the green view but panicked if a leopard so much as showed up on a security camera. Interestingly, the Warlis and Kohlis, Indigenous peoples who worshipped Waghoba and who had lived in the forest for centuries before Mumbai expanded to surround it, were not afraid of leopards and rarely experienced attacks. They wanted the carnivores there to scare off encroachers and developers.
As the research and the awareness-raising program proceeded, the forest department improved its ability to handle leopard-related emergencies—one being cornered in the urban area, for example. The department also worked with the police to increase their capacity to control mobs that might seek to attack these animals and, perhaps most important, with the municipality to initiate garbage collection in areas around the park frequented by leopards. Once our report came out, we worked with the Mumbai Press Club and other media organizations to advise people about how they could stay safe: keep their surroundings clean, don't let children play outdoors after dark, illuminate unlit environs and move away from a leopard if they spot one. Mumbaikars for SGNP held regular workshops with members of the press, seeking to change their coverage from sensational—some were habitually referring to leopards as “man-eaters”—to informed. In response to one media report that spoke of the dangers to school-going children at the edge of the park, the government started a school bus service there.
At home in an urban landscape, Luna (*right*) relaxes with her cub at the fringes of Mumbai. Credit:Nayan Khanolkar
The outcome was a press and a public much more knowledgeable about and accepting of leopards, and the benefits were tangible. In most years since then, there have been no attacks. Individual leopards did attack people in 2017, 2021 and 2022, but because of the camera traps, which the citizen scientists continue to use, they could immediately be identified, trapped and taken to permanent captivity. Our work in Mumbai showed how important a sensitive press and an aware and mobilized public are in reducing human-carnivore conflict.
## A Shared Landscape
I shouldn't have been surprised that the people of the Indian subcontinent have a deep and complex relationship with the big cats they've shared space with since [prehistory](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/leopard-like-creature-is-oldest-big-cat-yet-found/). But I was schooled in a strict separation of nature from humans that originated in Europe and reached its apotheosis in North America. Cleansing the landscape of all that they found threatening, European settlers all but eradicated wolves and cougars. When British colonizers arrived in India, they shot tens of thousands of tigers and leopards and exterminated the cheetah.
The dominant narrative in conservation continues to focus on large carnivores as predators that will inevitably hurt people or their livestock. In many documentaries about carnivores, the story is one of nature red in tooth and claw. This view presupposes conflict and implies that the only way to deal with large carnivores is to kill or remove them. I believe the contrary: most leopard-human conflict originates with the presupposition of conflict.
Among people, aggression prompts retaliatory aggression, and it might be the same for large cats. In the rare cases when they deliberately attack humans, we need to ask why. A leopard's normal reaction to hearing or seeing people is to run away; how does it get over that fear enough to kill in the rare instances when one does so? Is it because of something we have done to that individual?
We cannot know. But when I look at most sites I visit, the dominant narrative is one of peace rather than conflict. In rural Himachal Pradesh, local people referred to leopards as “Mrig,” meaning “wild animal,” a neutral framing. We found humans and leopards sharing space, trying hard to survive and lead their lives, which were often very difficult to begin with.
Many Indian ecologists are moving toward the idea of coexistence in shared landscapes. Given the deep cultural relationship between humans and big cats in the subcontinent, it is conceivable that if ever the animals return to the ranges they have vanished from, people will accept them.
In December 2011, just as I was starting the work in Mumbai, a speeding vehicle on a nearby highway hit a leopard. An animal lover was driving past. Seeing that the animal was badly injured but still alive, he picked it up—it weighed 75 kilograms (165 pounds)—and put it in the trunk of his car, with his family sitting inside. He drove it to the national park in the hope that the forest department and its veterinarians would save it, but by the time he arrived, an hour later, the leopard had died. Its collar had fallen off, as it was designed to, but the microchip could still be read. It was Ajoba.
I was told people cried when they heard his story. A Marathi director was so inspired by the saga that he made a feature film on Ajoba, teaching millions of his fellow Indians to love leopards. It is this empathy that gives me hope that my daughter and her children will also inhabit a world rich with wild things.
This article was originally published with the title "Living with Leopards" in Scientific American 328, 4, 50-61 (April 2023)
# Striking French workers dispute that they want a right to ‘laziness’
PARIS — Although countries across Western Europe have been convulsed by strikes this winter, French unions have drawn few cries of cross-border solidarity in their fight against a planned increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64, even as they brought parts of their country to a standstill Tuesday.
Commentators elsewhere in Europe have mocked the anger over [“what would seem like a gentle reform”](https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/plus243532513/Frankreich-Ploetzlich-zweifeln-die-Franzosen-ob-die-Rente-wirklich-in-Gefahr-ist.html) anywhere but France — a delusional [“island of the blessed”](https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/retraites-vu-d-allemagne-les-francais-vivent-sur-l-ile-des-bienheureux-09-02-2023-2508033_24.php) where full-time employees get at least five weeks of vacation a year. French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, meanwhile, suggested “laziness” was driving the opposition against the government’s plan.
It may be hard for outsiders to muster sympathy for French workers, with their 35-hour workweeks, their generous lunch breaks and vacation time, and their “right to disconnect” from job-related communication outside working hours. But the French protesters say they are misunderstood. Their furious response to President Emmanuel Macron’s plan, they say, is rooted not in laziness but in the fact that the French are already working hard — too hard, in fact.
“Many unions agree that before considering pension reform, one must first talk about work itself,” said Bruno Palier, a research director at Sciences Po Paris who focuses on European welfare models.
“An American might be surprised to hear it, given that we have paid holidays and a 35-hour workweek in France,” he said, but “when the French work, they work very, very hard.”
French workers march in Paris on March 7 as trade unions stepped up campaigns to curb pension reforms that would increase the retirement age two years. (Video: TWP)
Measured by output per hour, French workers were more productive than their German counterparts — who are often perceived to be obsessed with efficiency — and only slightly less productive than Americans in 2019, [according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.](https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm#:~:text=GDP%20per%20hour%20worked%20is,all%20persons%20engaged%20in%20production.)
France also has some of the highest [levels of burnout](https://www.wilmarschaufeli.nl/publications/Schaufeli/500.pdf) and on-the-job accidents among European workers, which researchers have attributed to a sometimes toxic and hierarchical work culture that limits employees’ growth and engagement. After accounting for differences in purchasing power, Americans earn about 17 percent more than French workers, OECD data shows.
Critics of Macron’s retirement plans have offered a wide range of arguments against the plan to increase the retirement age to 64 by 2030, including that blue-collar workers — who on average die earlier than their white-collar counterparts — will be hit hardest. But frustration with what many here perceive as deteriorating working conditions, Palier said, “is key to understanding the resistance,” too.
After weeks of protests, unions counted over 300 marches across France on Tuesday. The Interior Ministry estimated the number of protesters at 1.28 million, while unions put the figure at 3.5 million.
Many trains and flights were canceled, metro lines remained closed, and more than 35 percent of primary-school teachers participated in the strikes, according to officials. There were some clashes between protesters and authorities in Paris and other cities.
Protests will continue to impact railway traffic and refineries on Wednesday, unions said, raising the possibility of days of nationwide disruptions.
While some in France rushed to gas stations to prepare for possible shortages, most approve of the strikes, polls show.
Annie Sicre, 62, a former translator who participated in a Paris march on Tuesday, said a higher retirement age makes little sense when some French companies have developed a reputation for [pushing out employees in their late 50s](https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2021/03/21/les-entreprises-sans-seniors-une-specificite-francaise_6073958_3234.html).
“Throughout my career, I witnessed work become more intense — and by the time I turned 55, 58, I started to struggle,” she said. After stretches of stress-related sick leave, she spent the final two years of her work life on unemployment benefits, before retiring in January.
What’s ahead of her now, she said, “is another part of life — and everyone has the right to enjoy it. This country isn’t poor.”
A higher retirement age would push many near-pensioners into unemployment or into physically challenging jobs in the gig economy, she said.
Macron, who lost his absolute majority in Parliament last year, has weighed his response to the sustained protests carefully. But he still enraged left-wing critics when he said he hasn’t been able to “spot public anger” over his plans. Macron has maintained that a higher retirement age would reflect rising life expectancy in the country, which has increased by about three years over the past two decades. Many of France’s neighbors have higher retirement ages, though the complexity of Europe’s pension systems makes them difficult to compare.
In an interview last month, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne signaled that there may be some room for compromise on working conditions. Acknowledging that the French “are not happy at work,” she promised to address their dissatisfaction. But Borne and others are going about it the wrong way, left-wing critics say.
In late January, Gabriel Attal, the ambitious budget minister, announced that he would test implementing a four-day workweek. Rather than cutting working hours, however, Attal envisioned spreading the 35 hours over four days instead of five. This would create a workday only slightly longer than the average in the United States, but the idea brought a swift backlash. Rather than putting more pressure on employees, critics said, the government should strive to reduce their burden.
Philippe Askenazy, a French economist, was on a team of U.S.- and France-based researchers that about a decade ago studied the working conditions of cashiers in American and French supermarkets. Perhaps surprisingly, they found that French cashiers had higher targets for the scanning of items and added more value per hour than their American counterparts.
Askenazy attributes the high workload in France to the adoption in 2000 of the 35-hour workweek, which was meant to boost job growth but has in some ways created a paradoxical work environment.
One of the many rules that are supposed to separate work and leisure time is a law that bans workers from eating lunch at their desks. At the same time, though, companies have embraced “high-performance workplace practices and increased the monitoring of workers,” Askenazy said.
Since the introduction of the 35-hour workweek, the French have become less enthusiastic about the importance of their jobs and less proud of their companies, [according to the left-wing](https://www.jean-jaures.org/publication/je-taime-moi-non-plus-les-ambivalences-du-nouveau-rapport-au-travail/) Jean-Jaurès Foundation. Fewer people are interested in management positions, and some have surreptitiously disconnected from work — akin to the [“quiet quitting” trend](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/08/quiet-quitting-quiet-firing-what-to-do/?itid=lk_inline_manual_40) elsewhere.
Palier, the political scientist, points to clusters of work-linked suicides as the most striking sign of the toxic work culture that has emerged in France. In a landmark case last year, an appeals court convicted the former CEO of France’s biggest telecommunications company of “institutional moral harassment” after 19 workers died by suicide.
Whoever wants to make the French appreciate work again, Palier said, will need to confront the toxic aspects and failures “of the relationship with work in France, with management, and the way we’ve tried to construct a strategy of competitiveness.”
French workers march in Paris on March 7 as trade unions stepped up campaigns to curb pension reforms that would increase the retirement age two years. (Video: TWP)
# The Brilliant Inventor Who Made Two of History’s Biggest Mistakes
Credit...Photo illustration by Cristiana Couceiro
It was said that Thomas Midgley Jr. had the finest lawn in America. Golf-club chairmen from across the Midwest would visit his estate on the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio, purely to admire the grounds; the Scott Seed Company eventually put an image of Midgley’s lawn on its letterhead. Midgley cultivated his acres of grass with the same compulsive innovation that characterized his entire career. He installed a wind gauge on the roof that would sound an alarm in his bedroom, alerting him whenever the lawn risked being desiccated by a breeze. Fifty years before the arrival of smart-home devices, Midgley wired up the rotary telephone in his bedroom so that a few spins of the dial would operate the sprinklers.
In the fall of 1940, at age 51, Midgley contracted polio, and the dashing, charismatic inventor soon found himself in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down. At first he took on his disability with the same ingenuity that he applied to maintaining his legendary lawn, analyzing the problem and devising a novel solution to it — in this case, a mechanized harness with pulleys attached to his bed, allowing him to clamber into his wheelchair each morning without assistance. At the time, the contraption seemed emblematic of everything Midgley had stood for in his career as an inventor: determined, innovative thinking that took on a seemingly intractable challenge and somehow found a way around it.
Or at least it seemed like that until the morning of Nov. 2, 1944, when [Midgley was found dead in his bedroom.](https://www.nytimes.com/1944/11/03/archives/thos-midgleydies-noted-chemist-55-inventor-of-ethyl-gasoline-is.html) The public was told he had been accidentally strangled to death by his own invention. Privately, his death was ruled a suicide. Either way, the machine he designed had become the instrument of his death.
Midgley was laid to rest as a brilliant American maverick of the first order. Newspapers ran eulogies recounting the heroic inventions he brought into the world, breakthroughs that advanced two of the most important technological revolutions of the age: automobiles and refrigeration. “The world has lost a truly great citizen in Mr. Midgley’s death,” Orville Wright declared. “I have been proud to call him friend.” But the dark story line of Midgley’s demise — the inventor killed by his own invention! — would take an even darker turn in the decades that followed. While The Times praised him as “one of the nation’s outstanding chemists” in its obituary, today Midgley is best known for the terrible consequences of that chemistry, thanks to the stretch of his career from 1922 to 1928, during which he managed to invent leaded gasoline and also develop the first commercial use of the chlorofluorocarbons that would create a hole in the ozone layer.
Each of these innovations offered a brilliant solution to an urgent technological problem of the era: making automobiles more efficient, producing a safer refrigerant. But each turned out to have deadly secondary effects on a global scale. Indeed, there may be no other single person in history who did as much damage to human health and the planet, all with the best of intentions as an inventor.
What should we make of the disquieting career of Thomas Midgley Jr.? There are material reasons for revisiting his story now, beyond the one accidental rhyme of history: the centennial of leaded gasoline’s first appearance on the market in 1923. That might seem like the distant past, but the truth is we are still living with the consequences of Midgley’s innovations. This year, the United Nations released an encouraging study reporting that the ozone layer was indeed on track to fully recover from the damage caused by Midgley’s chlorofluorocarbons — but not for another 40 years.
The arc of Midgley’s life points to a debate that has intensified in recent years, which can be boiled down to this: As we make decisions today, how much should we worry about consequences that might take decades or centuries to emerge? Will seemingly harmless [G.M.O.s](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/20/magazine/gmos.html) (genetically modified organisms) bring about secondary effects that become visible only to future generations? Will early [research into nanoscale materials](https://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/nanotechnology) ultimately allow terrorists to unleash killer nanobots in urban centers?
Midgley’s innovations — particularly the chlorofluorocarbons — seemed like brilliant ideas at the time, but 50 years taught us otherwise. Pondering Midgley and his legacy forces us to wrestle with the core questions at the heart of “longtermism,” as the debate over long-term thinking has come to be called: What is the right time horizon for anticipating potential threats? Does focusing on speculative futures distract us from the undeniable needs of the present moment? And Midgley’s story poses a crucial question for a culture, like ours, dominated by market-driven invention: How do we best bring new things into the world when we recognize, by definition, that their long-term consequences are unknowable?
**Invention was in Midgley’s blood.** His father was a lifelong tinkerer who made meaningful contributions to the early design of automobile tires. In the 1860s, his maternal grandfather, James Emerson, patented a number of improvements to circular saws and other tools. As a teenager growing up in Columbus, Midgley showed early promise in deploying novel chemical compounds for practical ends, using an extract from the bark of an elm tree as a substitute for human saliva while throwing spitballs on the baseball field. A high school chemistry class inaugurated what would prove to be a lifelong obsession with the periodic table, which then was rapidly being expanded thanks to early-20th-century discoveries in physics and chemistry. For most of his professional career, he carried a copy of the table in his pocket. The spatial arrangement of the elements on the page would help inspire his two most significant ideas.
After graduating from Cornell in 1911 with a degree in mechanical engineering, Midgley moved to Dayton, Ohio — arguably the leading innovation hub in the country at the time. History generally remembers Dayton for the Wright brothers, who sketched out their plans for the Kitty Hawk flight there, but the original attraction that drew inventors to the city was an unlikely one: the cash register, which for the first time enabled store owners to automate the record of transactions — and prevent employee theft. By the time Midgley joined the National Cash Register company in 1911, it had become a powerhouse, selling hundreds of thousands of machines around the world. It was there that Midgley first began hearing stories about [Charles Kettering,](https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/kettering-charles) who devised NCR’s mechanized system for clerks to run credit checks on customers directly from the sales floor, along with the first cash register to run on electric power.
Firms like NCR had begun experimenting with a new organizational unit, the research lab, in the spirit of the polymathic “muckers” whom Thomas Edison had assembled at his plant in Menlo Park, N.J. A few years after joining NCR, Kettering turned his attention to the emerging technology of the automobile, forming his own independent research lab known as Delco, short for Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company, in 1909. There he concocted a device that proved crucial in transforming automobiles from a hobbyist’s pursuit to a mainstream technology: the electric ignition system. (Before Kettering’s breakthrough, automobiles had to be started with an unwieldy — and sometimes dangerous — hand crank, which required significant physical force to operate.) By 1916, Delco had been acquired by the corporation that would become General Motors, where Kettering would go on to work for the rest of his career.
Shortly after the acquisition, Midgley applied for a job in Kettering’s lab and was hired immediately. He was 27; Kettering was 40. After finishing a minor project that commenced before his arrival, Midgley walked into Kettering’s office one day and asked, “What do you want me to do next, Boss?” Kettering wrote after Midgley’s death. “That simple question and the answer to it turned out to be the beginning of a great adventure in the life of a most versatile man.”
The technical riddle Kettering tasked Midgley with solving was one of the few remaining impasses keeping the automobile from mass adoption: engine knock.
As the name implies, for the automobile passenger, engine knock was not just a sound but a bodily sensation. “Driving up a hill made valves rattle, cylinder heads knock, the gearbox vibrate and the engine suddenly lose power,” Sharon Bertsch McGrayne writes in her excellent history of modern chemistry, “Prometheans in the Lab.” The problem was made all the more mysterious by the fact that no one had any idea what was causing it. (“We don’t even know what makes an automobile run,” Kettering admitted at one point.) In a sense, the question that Kettering and Midgley set out to solve was figuring out whether knock was an inevitable secondary effect of a gas-powered engine, or whether it could be engineered out of the system.
To investigate the phenomenon, Midgley devised a miniature camera, optimized for high-speed images. The footage he eventually shot revealed that fuel inside the cylinders was igniting too abruptly, creating a surge of pressure. The unpleasant vibrations passengers were feeling reflected the fundamental fact that energy was being wasted: rattling the bones of the car’s occupants instead of driving the pistons.
Image
Starting in 1923, leaded gasoline — marketed under the brand name Ethyl — helped eliminate engine knock, fueling the rise of 20th-century car culture and exposing billions of people worldwide to dangerous levels of lead.Credit...Wisconsin Historical Society, via Getty Images
The footage at least gave the problem some specificity: How do you make the fuel combust more efficiently? In the early days, Midgley was groping in the dark; his training was as a mechanical engineer, after all, not as a chemist. One of his first lines of inquiry came from a bizarre suggestion from Kettering — that perhaps the color red could somehow improve the fuel’s combustion. Kettering had long been impressed by the way that leaves of the trailing arbutus plant could turn red even when covered by a layer of snow, somehow capturing the energy of the sun’s rays more effectively than other plants. Perhaps adding a red dye to the fuel would solve the problem of knock, Kettering suggested. So Midgley used iodine to dye the fuel red, and it did seem to have some mild antiknock properties. Ultimately he realized that it was the iodine itself, not its color, that was the active agent in subduing the knock. It wasn’t a solution per se, but it suggested something important nonetheless: that the ultimate solution would come from chemistry, not from engineering.
The search for that solution would ultimately last five years. Kettering later said that Midgley and his team tested 33,000 different compounds. For most of that period, they meandered in a random walk through the periodic table, adding elements to the fuel to see if they did anything to mitigate engine knock. “Most of them had no more effect than spitting in the Great Lakes,” Midgley recalled years later.
The first material advance came via a newspaper article that Kettering stumbled across, reporting the discovery of a new “universal solvent” in the form of the compound selenium oxychloride. When added to the fuel, the compound produced mixed results: Knock was reduced considerably, but the new fuel eroded spark plugs almost on contact. Midgley kept searching, systematically plowing through a new version of the periodic table that had recently been introduced, identifying promising clusters of elements, effectively teaching himself industrial chemistry on the fly. He soon discovered that the further you moved toward the heavy metals clustered together on the table, the more the engine knock dissipated. Soon the random walk through the elements became a beeline to what was, at the time, the heaviest metal of them all: lead.
In December 1921, Midgley’s team in Dayton concocted enough of the compound tetraethyl lead to do a test run with a kerosene-powered engine suffering from a serious case of engine knock. A single teaspoon of tetraethyl lead silenced the knock completely. Further tests revealed that you could subdue engine knock with a shockingly small supplement of lead; they ultimately settled on a lead-to-gasoline ratio of 1-to-1,300. The effects on engine performance were profound. Automobiles running on leaded gasoline could take on steep inclines without hesitation; drivers could accelerate to overtake a slower vehicle on a two-lane road without worrying about their engine being seized with knock while in the wrong lane.
Kettering branded the new fuel Ethyl, and in February 1923 it was first offered for sale at a gas station in downtown Dayton. By 1924, General Motors, the DuPont Corporation and Standard Oil had started a joint venture called the Ethyl Corporation to produce the gasoline at scale, with Kettering and Midgley appointed as executives. Henry Ford’s assembly-line production of the original Model T in 1908 is usually credited as the point of origin for the American love affair with the automobile, but the introduction of high-octane Ethyl gasoline was instrumental as well. Over the course of the 1920s, the number of registered vehicles in the United States tripled. By the end of the decade, Americans owned close to 80 percent of all the automobiles in the world, increasingly powered by the miraculous new fuel that Thomas Midgley concocted in his lab.
**A few years after the triumph of Ethyl,** Kettering and Midgley turned to another revolutionary technology, soon to be as ubiquitous in American culture as the automobile: electric refrigeration. Generating heat through artificial means had a long and illustrious history, from the mastery of fire to the steam engine to the electric stove. But no one had approached the problem of keeping things cold with technological solutions until the late 1800s. For most of the 19th century, if you wanted to refrigerate something, you bought ice that had been carved out of a frozen lake in a northern latitude during the winter and shipped to some warmer part of the world. (Ice was a major export item for American commerce during that period, with frozen lake ice from New England shipped as far as Brazil and India.) But by the end of the century, scientists and entrepreneurs began to experiment with artificial cold. [Willis Carrier designed the first air-conditioning system](https://www.williscarrier.com/weathermakers/1876-1902/) for a printing house in Brooklyn in 1902; the first electric-powered home refrigerators appeared a decade later. In 1918, two years after Midgley started working for Kettering, General Motors acquired a home-refrigerator start-up and gave it a brand name that lives on to this day: Frigidaire.
But as with the automobile in the engine-knock era, the new consumer technology of refrigeration was being held back by what was effectively a problem of chemistry. Creating artificial cold required some kind of gas to be used as a refrigerant, but all the available compounds in use were prone to catastrophic failure. During the 1893 [World’s Fair in Chicago, an industrial-scale ice-manufacturing plant exploded,](https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-flashback-worlds-fair-1893-fire-columbian-exposition-0729-20180718-story.html) killing 16 people, when the ammonia it was using as a refrigerant ignited. Another popular refrigerant, methyl chloride, had been implicated in dozens of deaths around the country, the victims of accidental leaks. Frigidaire’s products relied on sulfur dioxide, a toxic gas that could cause nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and damage to the lungs.
With newspaper headlines denouncing the “death gas ice boxes” and a growing number of legislators exploring the idea of banning home refrigerators outright, Kettering turned to Midgley to come up with a solution. One day in 1928, as Midgley later recalled, “I was in the laboratory and called Kettering in Detroit about something of minor importance. After we’d finished this discussion, he said: ‘Midge, the refrigeration industry needs a new refrigerant if they ever expect to get anywhere.’” Kettering announced that he was dispatching a Frigidaire engineer to visit Midge in the lab the next day to brief him on the challenge.
Once again, Midgley turned to his nonstandard periodic table, this time using a technique he had come to call the “fox hunt,” which proved to be far more efficient than the random walk he employed in the engine-knock investigation. He began with the observation that most elements that remained gaseous at low temperatures — a key for refrigeration — were located on the right side of the table, including elements like sulfur and chlorine that were already in use. That first step narrowed the search considerably. Midgley then eliminated a number of neighboring elements out of hand for either being too volatile or having a suboptimal boiling point.
Then he found the one element not yet being used in commercial refrigerants: fluorine. Midgley knew that fluorine on its own was highly toxic — its primary industrial use was as an insecticide — but he hoped to combine the gas with some other element to make it safer. Within a matter of hours, Midgley and his team hit upon the idea of mixing fluorine with chlorine and carbon, developing a class of compound that would come to be called chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs for short. Subsequent tests revealed — as [Kettering would put it years later in his eulogy for Midgley](http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/midgley-thomas.pdf) — that their compound was “highly stable, noninflammable and altogether without harmful effects on man or animals.” Shortly after, General Motors entered into a partnership with DuPont to manufacture the compound at scale. By 1932 they had registered a new trademark for the miracle gas: Freon.
> ## We live under the gathering storm of modern history’s most momentous unintended consequence: carbon-based climate change.
Freon arrived just in the nick of time for the refrigeration industry. In July 1929, a methyl-chloride leak of [“ice machine gas” in Chicago killed 15 people](https://www.nytimes.com/1929/07/02/archives/ice-machine-gas-kills-15-in-chicago-leaks-in-refrigeration-plants.html), raising even more concerns about the safety of existing refrigerants. Ever the showman, Midgley performed an act worthy of a vaudeville magician onstage at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in 1930, inhaling a cloud of the gas and then exhaling to blow out a candle — thus demonstrating Freon’s nontoxicity and its nonflammability. Frigidaire leaned hard into the safety angle in the advertising for its new Freon-powered refrigerator line, announcing that the “Pursuit of Health and Safety Led to the Discovery of Freon.” By 1935, eight million refrigerators using Freon had been sold, and Willis Carrier had employed the gas to create a new home air-conditioning unit called the “atmospheric cabinet.” Artificial cold was well on its way to becoming a central part of the American dream.
Soon, Midgley’s miracle gas would find a new use in consumer goods — one that ultimately became even more dangerous to the environment than its use as a refrigerant. In 1941, two chemists at the Department of Agriculture, one of whom formerly worked for DuPont, invented a device to disperse insecticide in a fine mist, using a variation of Midgley’s original concoction called Freon-12 as the aerosol propellant. After malaria deaths contributed to the fall of the Philippines in 1942, the U.S. military ramped up production of “bug bombs” to protect troops from insect-borne diseases, ultimately giving birth to an entire aerosol industry, which used Freon to disperse everything from DDT to hair spray. The new utility seemed, at the time, to be yet another example of “better living through chemistry,” as DuPont’s corporate slogan put it. “A double delight is dichlorodifluoromethane, with its thirteen consonants and ten vowels,” The Times wrote. “It brings death to disease-carrying insects and provides cool comfort to man when July and August suns bake city pavements. This wonder gas is popularly known as Freon 12.”
**Two innovations — Ethyl and Freon,** conjured by one man presiding over a single laboratory during a span of roughly 10 years. Combined, the two products generated billions of dollars in revenue for the companies that manufactured them and provided countless ordinary consumers with new technology that improved the quality of their lives. In the case of Freon, the gas enabled another technology (refrigeration) that offered meaningful improvements to consumers in the form of food safety. And yet each product, in the end, turned out to be dangerous on an almost unimaginable scale.
The history of any major technological or industrial advance is inevitably shadowed by a less predictable history of unintended consequences and secondary effects — what economists sometimes call “externalities.” Sometimes those consequences are innocuous ones, or even beneficial. Gutenberg invents the printing press, and literacy rates rise, which causes a significant part of the reading public to require spectacles for the first time, which creates a surge of investment in lens-making across Europe, which leads to the invention of the telescope and the microscope. Oftentimes the secondary effects seem to belong to an entirely different sphere of society. When Willis Carrier hit upon the idea of air-conditioning, the technology was primarily intended for industrial use: ensuring cool, dry air for factories that required low-humidity environments. But once air-conditioning entered the home — thanks in part to Freon’s radical leap forward in safety — it touched off one of the largest migrations in the history of the United States, enabling the rise of metropolitan areas like Phoenix and Las Vegas that barely existed when Carrier first started tinkering with the idea in the early 1900s.
Sometimes the unintended consequence comes about when consumers use an invention in a surprising way. Edison famously thought his phonograph, which he sometimes called “the talking machine,” would primarily be used to take dictation, allowing the masses to send albums of recorded letters through the postal system; that is, he thought he was disrupting *mail*, not music. But then later innovators, like the Pathé brothers in France and Emile Berliner in the United States, discovered a much larger audience willing to pay for musical recordings made on descendants of Edison’s original invention. In other cases, the original innovation comes into the world disguised as a plaything, smuggling in some captivating new idea in the service of fun that spawns a host of imitators in more upscale fields, the way the animatronic dolls of the mid-1700s inspired Jacquard to invent the first “programmable” loom and Charles Babbage to invent the first machine that fit the modern definition of a computer, setting the stage for the revolution in programmable technology that would transform the 21st century in countless ways.
We live under the gathering storm of modern history’s most momentous unintended consequence, one that Midgley and Kettering also had a hand in: carbon-based climate change. Imagine the vast sweep of inventors whose ideas started the Industrial Revolution, all the entrepreneurs and scientists and hobbyists who had a hand in bringing it about. Line up a thousand of them and ask them all what they had been hoping to do with their work. Not one would say that their intent had been to deposit enough carbon in the atmosphere to create a greenhouse effect that trapped heat at the surface of the planet. And yet here we are.
Ethyl and Freon belonged to the same general class of secondary effect: innovations whose unintended consequences stem from some kind of waste byproduct that they emit. But the potential health threats of Ethyl were visible in the 1920s, unlike, say, the long-term effects of atmospheric carbon buildup in the early days of the Industrial Revolution. The dark truth about Ethyl is that everyone involved in its creation had seen incontrovertible evidence that tetraethyl lead was shockingly harmful to humans. Midgley himself experienced firsthand the dangers of lead poisoning, thanks to his work in Dayton developing Ethyl in the lab. In early 1923, Midgley cited health reasons in declining an invitation to a gathering of the American Chemical Society, where he was supposed to receive an honor for his latest discovery. “After about a year’s work in organic lead,” he wrote to the organization, “I find that my lungs have been affected and that it is necessary to drop all work and get a large supply of fresh air.” In a jaunty note to a friend at the time, Midgley wrote: “The cure for said ailment is not only extremely simple but quite delightful. It means to pack up, climb a train and search for a suitable golf course in the state named Florida.”
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Freon, invented in 1928 as a refrigerant, helped turn Frigidaire into a household name. Decades later, scientists realized that Freon and other chlorofluorocarbons were creating a dangerous hole in the ozone layer.Credit...Archive Photos/Getty Images
Midgley did in fact recover from his bout with lead poisoning, but other early participants in the Ethyl business were not so lucky. Days after the first mass-production site for tetraethyl lead opened at DuPont’s Deepwater facility in New Jersey, Midgley and Kettering found themselves responsible for one of the most horrifying chapters in the history of industrial-age atrocities. On the eastern banks of the Delaware River, not far from DuPont’s headquarters in Wilmington, the Deepwater facility already had a long history of industrial accidents, including a series of deadly explosions in its original operational role of manufacturing gunpowder. But as soon as it began producing Ethyl at scale, the factory turned into a madhouse. “Eight workers in the DuPont tetraethyl gas plant at Deep Water, near Penns Grove, N.J., have died in delirium from tetraethyl lead poisoning in 18 months and 300 others have been stricken,” The Times would later write in an investigative report. “One of the early symptoms is a hallucination of winged insects. The victim pauses, perhaps while at work or in a rational conversation, gazes intently at space and snatches at something not there.” Eventually, the victims would descend into violent, self-destructive insanity. One worker threw himself off a ferry in a suicide attempt; another jumped from a hospital window. Many had to be placed in straitjackets or strapped to their beds as they convulsed in abject terror. Before work was halted at the plant, the hallucinations of swarming insects became so widespread that the five-story building where Ethyl was produced was called the [“house of butterflies.”](https://www.pittmed.health.pitt.edu/story/houses-butterflies)
Perhaps the most damning evidence against Midgley and Kettering lies in the fact that both men were well aware that at least one potential alternative to tetraethyl lead existed: ethanol, which had many of the same antiknock properties as lead. But as Jamie Lincoln Kitman notes in “The Secret History of Lead”: “GM couldn’t dictate an infrastructure that could supply ethanol in the volumes that might be required. Equally troubling, any idiot with a still could make it at home, and in those days, many did.” On the face of it, ethyl alcohol would have seemed the far safer option, given what was known about lead as a poison and the unfolding tragedies at Deepwater and other plants. But you couldn’t *patent* alcohol.
In May 1925, the surgeon general formed a committee to investigate the health hazards of Ethyl, and a public hearing was held. Kettering and other industry figures spoke, squaring off against a cadre of physicians and scholars. The following January, the committee officially found that there was no conclusive evidence of risk to the general public in the use of leaded gasoline. Within weeks, the factories were back online, and within a decade, Ethyl was included in 90 percent of all gasoline sold in America.
The first real clue of leaded gasoline’s true environmental impact came out of one of the 20th century’s most fabled accidental discoveries. In the late 1940s, the geochemist [Clair Patterson embarked on an ambitious project with colleagues at the University of Chicago](https://mag.uchicago.edu/science-medicine/immeasurable#) to establish a more accurate account of Earth’s true age, which at that point was generally considered to be just over three billion years. Patterson’s approach analyzed the small amounts of uranium contained in the mineral zircon. Zircon in its initial state is free of lead, but uranium produces lead at a steady rate as it decays. Patterson assumed that measuring the ratios of various lead isotopes in a given sample of zircon would give him a precise age for the zircon, an important first step in his quest to calculate the true age of Earth itself. But Patterson quickly found that the measurements were almost impossible to make — because there was far too much ambient lead in the atmosphere to get an accurate reading.
Eventually, after a move to the California Institute of Technology several years later, Patterson built an elaborate “clean room,” where he was able to make enough uncontaminated measurements to prove that Earth was a billion years older than previously thought. But his battle with lead contamination in the lab also sent him on a parallel journey, to document the enormous quantities of lead that had settled over every corner of the planet in the modern era. Analyzing ice-core samples from Greenland, he found that lead concentration had increased fourfold over the first two centuries of industrialization. The short-term trends were even more alarming: In the 35 years that had passed since Ethyl gasoline became the standard, lead concentrations in polar ice cores had risen by 350 percent. Other investigators, like the Philadelphia doctor Herbert Needleman, published studies in the 1970s suggesting that even [low levels of lead exposure could cause significant cognitive defects in young childre](https://www.apa.org/topics/environment-population/lead-exposure-child-development)n, including lowered I.Q. scores and behavioral disorders.
Patterson and Needleman were pilloried for their findings by the automobile and lead industries, but as the scientific evidence began to pile up, a consensus finally emerged that leaded gasoline had turned out to be one of the most harmful pollutants of the 20th century, one that proved to be especially concentrated in urban areas. Globally, the phaseout of leaded gasoline that began in the 1970s is estimated to have saved 1.2 million lives a year. As [Achim Steiner of the United Nations noted](https://news.un.org/en/story/2011/10/393292-phase-out-leaded-petrol-brings-huge-health-and-cost-benefits-un-backed-study), “The elimination of leaded petrol is an immense achievement on par with the global elimination of major deadly diseases.”
**The realization that** CFCs were harming the environment began the same way the understanding of lead’s impact began: with a new technology for measurement, namely a contraption known as an electron-capture detector. Invented in the late 1950s by James Lovelock — a British scientist who would gain fame more than a decade later by formulating the “Gaia hypothesis” — this device could measure minute concentrations of gases in the atmosphere with far more precision than had yet been possible. In some of his early observations with the device, Lovelock discovered a surprisingly large quantity of CFCs, with more of them circulating in the atmosphere above the Northern Hemisphere than above the Southern.
Lovelock’s findings piqued the interest of the chemists Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina, who made two alarming discoveries in the mid-1970s: first, the fact that CFCs had no natural “sinks” on Earth where the chemical could be dissolved, which meant that all CFCs emitted through human activity would eventually settle in the upper atmosphere; and second, the fact that at those high altitudes, the intense ultraviolet light from the sun would cause them to finally break down, releasing chlorine that did substantial damage to the ozone layer. Shortly after Rowland and Molina published their work, evidence emerged that ozone levels were depleted in the stratosphere above the South Pole; a daring high-altitude flight overseen by the atmospheric chemist Susan Solomon eventually proved that the “hole” in the ozone layer had been caused by the human-created CFCs that Thomas Midgley concocted in his lab more than 50 years earlier.
As with the fight over leaded gasoline, the industries involved in CFC production resisted efforts to reduce the presence of the gas in the atmosphere, but by the late 1980s, the evidence of potential harm had grown undeniable. (Unlike in the current debate over global warming, no mainstream political constituency emerged to challenge this consensus, other than the industry players who had a financial stake in continued CFC production.) In September 1987, representatives of 24 nations signed the [Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer,](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/science/the-montreal-protocol-a-little-treaty-that-could.html) establishing a timetable for the world to phase out production and consumption of CFCs, almost 60 years after Kettering told Midgley to figure out a solution to the refrigerant problem. It took a small team just a few days in a lab to address Kettering’s problem, but it took a global collaboration of scientists, corporations and politicians to repair the damage that their creation inadvertently unleashed on the world.
Based on Rowland’s original research in the 1970s, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that continued CFC production at the same rate would destroy 50 percent of the ozone layer by 2050. About a decade ago, an international team of climate scientists created a computer model to simulate what would have happened if the Montreal Protocol had not been put into effect. The results were even more disturbing than previously forecast: By 2065, nearly two-thirds of the ozone layer would have disappeared. In mid-latitude cities like Washington and Paris, just five minutes of exposure to the sun would have been enough to give you sunburn. Skin-cancer rates would have skyrocketed. A 2021 study by scientists at Lancaster University looked at the impact that continued CFC production would have had on plant life. The additional UV radiation would have greatly diminished the absorption of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, creating an additional 0.8 degrees Celsius of global warming, on top of the increased temperature caused by fossil-fuel use.
In his 2020 book on existential risk, “The Precipice,” the Oxford philosopher Toby Ord tells the story of a concern, initially raised by the physicist Edward Teller in the months leading up to the first detonation of a nuclear device, that the fission reaction in the bomb might also ignite a fusion reaction in the surrounding nitrogen in Earth’s atmosphere, thus “engulfing the Earth in flame … and \[destroying\] not just humanity, but all complex life on Earth.” Teller’s concerns touched off a vigorous debate among the Manhattan Project scientists about the likelihood of an unintended atmospheric chain reaction. Ultimately, they decided that the world-engulfing firestorm was not likely to happen, and the Trinity Test went ahead as planned at 5:29 a.m. local time on the morning of July 16, 1945. Teller’s fears proved to be unfounded, and in the hundreds of nuclear detonations since, no apocalyptic atmospheric chain reactions have been unleashed. “Physicists with a greater understanding of nuclear fusion and with computers to aid their calculations have confirmed that it is indeed impossible,” Ord writes. “And yet, there *had* been a kind of risk.”
Ord dates the genesis of what he calls the Precipice — the age of existential risk — to that July morning in 1945. But you could make the argument that a better origin point might well be that afternoon in 1928, when Thomas Midgley Jr. and his team fox-hunted their way across the periodic table to the development of chlorofluorocarbons. Teller, after all, was wrong about his imagined chain-reaction apocalypse. But CFCs actually did produce a chain reaction in the atmosphere, one that left unabated might well have transformed life on Earth as we know it. Whether Freon was “altogether without harmful effects on man or animals,” as Kettering once claimed, depended on the time scale you used. On the scale of years and decades, it most likely saved many lives: keeping food from spoiling, allowing vaccines to be stored and transported safely, reducing malaria deaths. On the scale of a century, though, it posed a significant threat to humanity itself.
Indeed, it is reasonable to see CFCs as a forerunner of the kind of threat we will most likely face in the coming decades, as it becomes increasingly possible for individuals or small groups to create new scientific advances — through chemistry or biotechnology or materials science — setting off unintended consequences that reverberate on a global scale. The dominant models of technological apocalypse in the 20th century were variations on the Manhattan Project: industrial-scale, government-controlled weapons of mass destruction, designed from the outset to kill in large numbers. But in the 21st century, the existential threats may well come from innovators working in Midgley’s mode, creating new dangers through the seemingly innocuous act of addressing consumer needs, only this time using CRISPR, or nanobots, or some new breakthrough no one has thought of yet.
**All of which** makes it essential to ask the question: Was it possible for Midgley (and Kettering) to have swerved away from the precipice and not have unleashed such destructive forces into the world? And have we built new defenses since then that are sufficient to prevent some 21st-century Midgley from inflicting equivalent damage on the planet, or worse? The answers to those questions turn out to be very different, depending on whether the innovation in question is Ethyl or Freon. Leaded gasoline, which in the end did far more harm to human health than CFCs, was actually a more manageable and preventable class of threat. What should keep us up at night is the modern-day equivalent of CFCs.
In the end, leaded gasoline was a mistake of epic proportions, but it was also a preventable mistake. The rise of Ethyl was an old story: a private company’s reaping profits from a new innovation while socializing the costs of its unintended consequences and overriding the objections at the time through sheer commercial might. It was well established that lead was a health hazard; that the manufacture of Ethyl itself could have devastating effects on the human body and brain; that automobiles running on Ethyl were emitting some trace of lead into the atmosphere. The only question was whether those trace amounts could cause health problems on their own.
> ## The question of leaded gasoline’s health risks to the general public was a known unknown. The health risk posed by Freon was a more mercurial beast: an unknown unknown.
Since the surgeon general’s hearing in 1926, we have invented a vast array of tools and institutions to explore precisely these kinds of questions before a new compound goes on the market. We have produced remarkably sophisticated systems to model and anticipate the long-term consequences of chemical compounds on both the environment and individual health. We have devised analytic and statistical tools — like randomized controlled trials — that can detect subtle causal connections between a potential pollutant or toxic chemical and adverse health outcomes. We have created institutions, like the Environmental Protection Agency, that try to keep 21st-century Ethyls out of the marketplace. We have laws like the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 that are supposed to ensure that new compounds undergo testing and risk assessment before they can be brought to market. Despite their limitations, all of these things — the regulatory institutions, the risk-management tools — should be understood as innovations in their own right, ones that are rarely celebrated the way consumer breakthroughs like Ethyl or Freon are. There are no ad campaigns promising “better living through deliberation and oversight,” even though that is precisely what better laws and institutions can bring us.
The story of Freon offers a more troubling lesson, though. Scientists had observed by the late 19th century that there seemed to be a puzzling cutoff in the spectrum of radiation hitting Earth’s surface, and soon they suspected that ozone gas was somehow responsible for that “missing” radiation. The British meteorologist G.M.B. Dobson undertook the first large-scale measurements of the ozone layer in 1926, just a few years before Kettering and Midgley started exploring the problem of stable refrigerants. Dobson’s investigations took decades to evolve into a comprehensive understanding. (Dobson did all his work from ground-level observations. No human had even visited the upper atmosphere before the Swiss scientist and balloonist Auguste Piccard and his assistant ascended to 52,000 feet in a sealed gondola in 1931.) The full scientific understanding of the ozone layer itself wouldn’t emerge until the 1970s. Unlike with Ethyl, where there was a clear adverse relationship on the table between lead and human health, no one even considered that there might be a link between what was happening in the coils of your kitchen fridge and what was happening 100,000 feet above the South Pole. CFCs began inflicting their harm almost immediately after Freon hit the market, but the science capable of understanding the subtle atmospheric chain reactions behind that harm was still 40 years in the future.
Is it possible that we are doing something today whose long-term unintended consequences will not be *understandable to science* until 2063? That there are far fewer blank spots on the map of understanding is unquestionable. But the blank spots that remain are the ones capturing all the attention. We have already made some daring bets at the edges of our understanding. While building particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider, scientists seriously debated the possibility that activating the accelerator would trigger the creation of tiny black holes that would engulf the entire planet in seconds. It didn’t happen, and there was substantial evidence that it would not happen before they flipped the switch. But still.
As the scenario planners put it, the question of leaded gasoline’s health risks to the general public was a *known unknown*. We knew there was a legitimate question that needed answering, but big industry just steamrollered over the whole investigation for almost half a century. The health risk posed by Freon was a more mercurial beast: an *unknown unknown*. There was no way of answering the question — are CFCs bad for the health of the planet? — in 1928, and no real hint that it was even a question worth asking. Have we gotten better at imagining those unimaginable threats? It seems possible, maybe even likely, that we have, thanks to a loose network of developments: science fiction, scenario planning, environmental movements and, recently, the so-called longtermists, among them Toby Ord. But blank spots on the map of understanding are blank spots. It’s hard to see past them.
This is where the time-horizon question becomes essential. The longtermists get a lot of grief for focusing on distant sci-fi futures — and ignoring our present-day suffering — but from a certain angle, you can interpret the Midgley story as rebuttal to those critics. Saturating our inner cities with toxic levels of ambient lead for more than half a century was a terrible idea, and if we had been thinking about that decades-long time horizon back in 1923, we might have been able to make another choice — perhaps embracing ethanol instead of Ethyl. And the results of that longtermism would have had a clear progressive bias. The positive impact on low-income, marginalized communities would have been far greater than the impact on affluent entrepreneurs tending to their lawns in the suburbs. If you gave a present-day environmental activist a time machine and granted them one change to the 20th century, it’s hard to imagine a more consequential intervention than shutting down Thomas Midgley’s lab in 1920.
But the Freon story suggests a different argument. There was no use expanding our time horizon in evaluating the potential impact of CFCs, because we simply didn’t have the conceptual tools to do those calculations. Given the acceleration of technology since Midgley’s day, it’s a waste of resources to try to imagine where we will be 50 years from now, much less 100. The future is simply too unpredictable, or it involves variables that are not yet visible to us. You can have the best of intentions, running your long-term scenarios, trying to imagine all the unintended secondary effects. But on some level, you’ve doomed yourself to chasing ghosts.
**The acceleration of** technology casts another ominous shadow on Midgley’s legacy. Much has been made of his status as a [“one-man environmental disaster,”](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431290-800-inventor-hero-was-a-oneman-environmental-disaster/) as The New Scientist has called him. But in actuality, his ideas needed an enormous support system — industrial corporations, the United States military — to amplify them into world-changing forces. Kettering and Midgley were operating in a world governed by linear processes. You had to do a lot of work to produce your innovation at scale, if you were lucky enough to invent something worth scaling. But much of the industrial science now exploring the boundaries of those blank spots — synthetic biology, nanotech, gene editing — involves a different kind of technology: things that make copies of themselves. Today the cutting-edge science of fighting malaria is not aerosol spray cans; it’s “gene drive” technology that uses [CRISPR to alter the genetics of mosquitoes](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/magazine/gene-drive-mosquitoes.html), allowing human-engineered gene sequences to spread through the population — either reducing the insects’ ability to spread malaria or driving them into extinction. The giant industrial plants of Midgley’s age are giving way to nanofactories and biotech labs where the new breakthroughs are not so much manufactured as they are grown. A recent essay in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimated that there are probably more than 100 people now with the [skills and technology to single-handedly reconstruct an organism like the smallpox virus,](https://thebulletin.org/2022/11/how-a-deliberate-pandemic-could-crush-societies-and-what-to-do-about-it/) Variola major, perhaps the greatest killer in human history.
It is telling that the two moments when we stood on the very edge of Toby Ord’s “precipice” in the 20th century involved chain reactions: the fusion reaction set off by the Trinity Test and the chain reaction set off by CFCs in the ozone layer. But self-replicating organisms (or technologies) pose a different order of risk — exponential risk, not linear — whether they are viruses engineered by gain-of-function research to be more lethal, venturing into the wild through a lab leak or a deliberate act of terrorism, or a runaway nanofactory producing microscopic machines for some admirable purpose that escapes the control of its creator.
In his 2015 book, “A Dangerous Master: How to Keep Technology From Slipping Beyond Our Control,” Wendell Wallach talks about the class of unsettling near-term technologies that generally fit under the umbrella of “playing God”: cloning, gene editing, “curing” death, creating synthetic life-forms. There is something unnervingly godlike in the sheer scale of the impact that Thomas Midgley Jr. had on our environment, but the truth is that his innovations required immense infrastructure, all those Ethyl and Freon factories and gas stations and aerosol cans, to actually bring about that long-term destruction. But today, in an age of artificial replicators, it is much easier to imagine a next-generation Midgley playing God in the lab — with good or evil intent — and dispatching his creations with that most ancient of commands: *Go forth, and multiply.*
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**Steven Johnson** is the author, most recently, of “Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer.” He also writes the newsletter Adjacent Possible. **Cristiana Couceiro** is an illustrator and a designer in Portugal. She is known for her retro-inspired collages.
Lance Reddick was an actor of such precision, both physical and emotional, that every little adjustment made in character was a purposeful piece of a coherent whole. Over decades of work in TV, film, and voice acting, Reddick cultivated a certain persona: the perfectly postured, sonorously voiced authority figure; a man of dignity, morality, and some rigidity; the guy to whom others turned when difficult decisions needed to be made. As Thomas Wayne, one of the superhero genre’s most beloved dads, in *Batman Unburied*; as Los Angeles city councilman Irvin Irving, aggressive and uncompromising, on *Bosch*; as double versions of the rule-following, then rule-bending, Homeland Security agent Phillip Broyles on *Fringe*. But Reddick was as magnetic when upholding that image of frosty vehemence and hard-staring loyalty as when carving fissures within it, or when flat-out disrupting audience expectations by distorting his gravitas into something goofier, more light-footed than straight-backed.
An actor who moved fluidly between comedy and drama, Reddick felt like a gift wherever he appeared, from video games like the *Destiny* franchise (which he also played, posting clips of himself on social media) to celebrity-rattling sketch-comedy experiments like *The Eric Andre Show*. ([Reddick was gamely unflappable in the face of Andre’s weirdness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5urkfdMUXo&ab_channel=AdultSwim).) He could play it straight for unanticipated humor, using a somber deadpan to [deliver a line as silly](https://twitter.com/tj_mackey432/status/1301253486391316480) as “They figured out that the source of the goo is you,” in a *Tim & Eric’s Bedtime Stories* sketch about a septic tank full of semen. He could go big, [declaring with a smile](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRgqrsXhxog), “Now, we all know there’s no God,” to a room of cowed employees in the Comedy Central series *Corporate*. He could humanize any character with little notes of mortal concerns: pushing up his glasses before entering a shoot-out as the buttoned-up [Continental concierge Charon](https://www.vulture.com/2021/12/lance-reddick-answers-every-question-we-have-about-john-wick.html) in the *John Wick* films; [squinting in confusion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-6AEF7mmyc&ab_channel=SceneGenie) at a waitress limiting the number of “unlimited” breadsticks his clone can order in the [*Resident Evil* reboot](https://www.vulture.com/article/resident-evil-netflix-series-review.html). He radiated masculine grace and self-assured integrity, a sense that his agility and allegiance were always an asset to whomever was [lucky enough to count him on their side](https://www.vulture.com/2023/03/lance-reddick-death-tributes.html).
Yet among all of this work — and there were decades of work, more than 100 credits on his filmography, plus [an array of still-unreleased projects](https://deadline.com/2023/03/lance-reddick-dead-john-wick-chapter-4-ballerina-percy-jackson-film-tv-projects-1235303708/) — the role that gave Reddick the most freedom to wield his many performative gifts was Cedric Daniels, Baltimore police lieutenant turned police commissioner turned defense attorney, in HBO’s [*The Wire*](https://www.vulture.com/2012/03/drama-derby-finals-the-wire-vs-the-sopranos.html). Reddick had other, longer-running television projects, like the aforementioned *Bosch* and *Fringe*, but Daniels was his most defining role. The character is a narrative nexus, connecting *The Wire*’s police, politicians, lawyers, and bureaucrats not through his mistakes, but through his reliability, expertly conveyed by Reddick’s steady presence and clear gaze amid all that pressure. Reddick grew up in Baltimore, and he returned to the city for David Simon’s series, appearing in premiere “The Target,” in finale “-30-,” and in every single episode in between. That’s [60 total installments](https://www.vulture.com/article/the-wire-best-episodes-ranked.html) in which he evolved Daniels from a chain-of-command-following hard-ass to one of the series’ most consistently principled figures.
*The Wire* argued many things (that the world is never black-and-white, but all gray; that systems decay from the inside out; that the economic hardships disintegrating the American working class are irreversible), and its characters were all compromised in some way. Daniels wasn’t unblemished; as early as the first season, *The Wire* alludes to an incident in his past in the Eastern District that made him the target of an FBI investigation. But what Reddick communicated through those minute modifications in gaze, timber, cadence, and body language was the interiority of a man who long ago decided to be better than he once was, and who would try, as much as he could, to model that behavior both for himself and the officers in his charge. And when another character tried to tell Daniels that all that effort was for naught? That meant we got to see him lose his temper, and Reddick was great at that.
Consider one of his [most memed lines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VokJcUh4qw4): “This is bullshit,” first uttered in season-one episode “The Wire.” Daniels has been assigned to lead a special-detail investigation into Baltimore city drug dealer Avon Barksdale. Midway through the season, Daniels is pulled into a meeting with his higher-ups, who want him to quickly wrap up the ever-sprawling investigation and get a conviction on a few isolated crimes so they can “go home like good old-fashioned cops and pound some Budweiser.” Reddick’s reaction here is a master class in incrementalism, a glimpse into his acute understanding of how far Daniels could be pushed in the name of hierarchy before losing his cool. First he looks away from his superior, and quirks his mouth in bemused irritation. Then, that sculpted jaw turns back to his subject, his eyes side-long and scornful. The pause he takes after “this” is emphatic; the rush between “is” and “bullshit” an acceleration of disgust. There are many [vulgar moments](https://www.vulture.com/2018/02/the-wire-oral-history-fuck-scene.html) that [became iconic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UXJZgOiVAI) in *The Wire*, but “This is bullshit” was a glimpse into what Daniels stood for, an ideological constitution that Reddick conveyed with sharp-edged righteousness.
The camera stays on Reddick for that line, because *The Wire* knew that if Daniels had a punchy line or monologue, the camera should *always* stay on Reddick to capture the choices he would make in service of a moment. The series turned early and often to Daniels as a contrast to its more impetuous, foolhardy characters, and these scenes, which usually were just Reddick and another actor in conversation, allowed his grasp of Daniels to shine. In second episode “The Detail,” Reddick controls Daniels’s range of reactions — indignant fury to cool abhorrence — as he questions his officers about their attack on the residents of a housing project. The twitch in his jaw as he coaches one of them into a lie of self-preservation gives away his revulsion at using the system to protect a man who blinded a teen. As with “This is bullshit,” Reddick was adroit at knowing when to take a beat or when to sprint, when to make eye contact or when to look away, to exude his seething frustration with the status quo.
When Reddick stood up and buttoned his jacket, a smooth movement that amplified his graceful height, you knew Daniels was fed up with being taken for a fool. When he pulled out the slow blink and head shake, you knew Daniels was going to say something the other person didn’t want to hear but needed to. Reddick was particularly skilled at delivering insults with barbed venom, and more than once his exasperations felt like a mouthpiece for the series’ writers on the societal ills they were addressing: “You’d rather live in shit than let the world see you work a shovel” to the city’s police commissioner; “If a fucking serial killer can’t bring back more than a couple of detectives, what the hell does it matter that you have a fresh phone number?” to a homicide detective requesting more resources. Those lines hit as hard as they do not only because Reddick was never melodramatic or overwrought, but also because he allowed a sense of sly humor, and a winking charm, to peek out from behind Daniels’s surface austerity.
Sometimes, Daniels’s sardonicism came from the same moral code that guided his policing, and Reddick’s physical touches provided enjoyable friction between his character and the criminals he was chasing. In “One Arrest,” he lets a small-time crook and trafficker explain how he would rob a house before introducing himself, with a broad grin and extended hand, as “Cedric Daniels, but I mostly go by ‘Lieutenant.’” In a meeting with Davis, his wide eyes and guileless “Good” in response to the state senator’s insistence that he’s not involved with drugs are wonderfully, mockingly facetious. Even without dialogue, Reddick’s reaction shots were visual gold: his serpentine expression when a racist colleague tells Daniels to put aside “the black-white thing”; his assessing look of amusement at watching the men in his unit struggle to get a desk through a doorway; and his grimly droll response to the traitorous Jimmy McNulty getting into the elevator with him in the series finale. The tightness of Reddick’s face, and his clipped delivery of “To be continued” to the shamed McNulty, assure us he’ll keep his promise of retribution.
In the years since *The Wire* aired, police-related scandals in Baltimore (including the one that inspired [Simon’s and George Pelecanos’s](https://www.vulture.com/article/david-simon-george-pelecanos-we-own-this-city-finale-interview.html) latest collaboration, [*We Own This City*](https://www.vulture.com/article/we-own-this-city-review.html)) have raised questions about the impact of [“good police”](https://www.vulture.com/article/we-own-this-city-finale-speech-analysis.html) like the one Reddick inhabited for five seasons. But what that argument overlooks is that Daniels was a figure driven not by a romanticized belief that cops are always right, but a hard-earned knowledge that they aren’t, and Reddick walked that line with poise and empathy. *The Wire* gave Reddick the time to figure out everything that made Daniels tick and the space to share his humanity, the weariness in his voice when he worried that if you “bend too far, you’re already broken,” the gentle guidance to an advice-seeking subordinate that if “you show them it’s about the work, it’ll be about the work.” A character actor whose screen presence was inimitable and who gave *The Wire* the core of decency it needed, Reddick showed us who he was through his work, too.
# Why Joe Biden’s Honeymoon With Progressives Is Coming to an End
## Expect a lot more Democratic infighting.
One of the most historically unusual aspects of the Biden administration has been the harmonious relations between the president and progressive activists. [Historically](https://nymag.com/news/politics/liberals-jonathan-chait-2011-11/), progressives generally spend most of their time complaining about Democratic presidents, both because they are temperamentally prone to negativity and because they believe in the tactical value of holding presidents’ feet to the fire. President Biden has enjoyed unusually warm support from the left. But that may be coming to an end.
Reporters have [detected](https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/17/biden-republicans-2024-election-strategy-00087562?nname=playbook&nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&nrid=0000016b-1b31-d193-a5fb-7b7b684e0000&nlid=630318) a pattern in three of the administration’s recent moves. Biden is declining to block a bill in Congress overriding a liberalization of the D.C. criminal code, angering both advocates of D.C. sovereignty and anti-police activists. He approved a plan to allow ConocoPhillips to drill oil in Alaska. And he is signaling an intent to reinstate family detention along the southern border in order to deter migrants.
Another perhaps even more significant sign comes from Biden’s budget proposal, which lacks a health-care public option and lower eligibility for Medicare. Of course, with a Republican House, Biden’s budget is merely a messaging vehicle, but the absence of these items signals a retreat in even his idealized ambitions.
It’s possible these assorted facts have occurred due to a series of independent events, with no connection to each other. But what I think is happening is part of a broader pattern that we will recognize as an ideological turning point of sorts.
Beginning in the second term of the Obama administration, the progressive movement — which barely existed in unified form before Barack Obama took office — gained coherence and influence within the party. Its overriding political strategy was that Democrats could and should adopt more forcefully progressive ideas, and that doing so would have no political cost. Indeed, many progressives believed these positions would help the party by mobilizing turnout among non-white voters.
Obama’s reelection created a buoyant belief among progressives (which I then shared) that a [new majority coalition](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2012/11/has-the-emerging-democratic-majority-emerged.html) of minorities and college-educated whites had finally emerged. In 2016, Hillary Clinton ran on a platform that was, both in rhetoric and in substance, considerably to the left of what President Obama had run on four years earlier. That fact was largely obscured both during and after the election, in part because her main challenger had run even farther left.
And so the party continued moving left during the Trump era. Even though the 2018 midterm elections saw the party’s House caucus move right — because its new members were largely moderates from battleground districts — both the mainstream media and the conservative media decided, for different reasons, to focus on the small number of left-wing Democrats who had won in deep-blue districts. Figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who briefly occupied an outsize role in political coverage, were presumed to embody the party’s future.
That assumption drove media coverage of the Democratic presidential primary. Reporters and candidates alike treated attention and praise from progressive activists as a key metric of success. Analysts praised the “policy arms race” in which Democrats kept racing to outflank each other with bigger and bolder plans.
In reality, the party’s voters had not moved as far left as either the press or most of the candidates assumed. This disconnect led to dynamics like [Elizabeth Warren](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/elizabeth-warren-book-persist-campaign-memoir-2020.html) scooping up media coverage and endorsements from progressive activists without gaining any headway among the voters those activists purported to represent.
Joe Biden won the primary in large part because he had opted out of the race to the left. And yet the assumption of progressive ascendancy remained so deeply ingrained that most Democrats assumed he had won despite, rather than because of, his moderation. After winning the nomination, Biden confounded the normal practice of moving to the center and instead adopted a “unity platform” in conjunction with the candidates he defeated, taking positions to the left of those he had campaigned and won on.
This was the pre-condition for the alliance between Biden and the progressive movement. Both believed Biden was putting himself in position to enact historic change [on the scale of the New Deal](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/joe-biden-presidential-plans.html). And polls, which showed him poised to win by close to double digits, indicated Biden stood to benefit from and exploit his bold platform.
The basic assumption survived Biden’s surprisingly narrow victory. Yes, Democrats had fared worse than they expected, but Biden did not abandon the platform he had run on. He still confronted a deep economic crisis and pressed his domestic reforms as far as he could, until the party’s fiscally conservative wing forced him to settle for a rump version of Build Back Better.
The alliance between Biden and the progressives still held firm during this period of retrenchment. Biden was pushing to the left on economic policy and making clear the limits to his ambitions lay elsewhere (mostly figures like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema). Progressives believed Biden was an effective messenger for their movement because he was old, white, male, and nonthreatening — and that his persona freed them from having to make substantive policy concessions.
The mutual assumption that Biden would support the progressive policy agenda, and that progressives would in turn withhold criticism from him, appears to be coming apart. The dissolution of this alliance, if it is indeed happening, is in its early stages. Possibly this will come to be seen as just a brief period of turbulence in the middle of a smooth ride.
The reason I believe recent events portend a change is that a series of underlying conditions that permitted the alliance between progressives and Biden is changing. Here are the four I have in mind.
**Personnel**. Biden’s departed chief of staff, Ron Klain, attended fastidiously to progressive groups, making them not only feel valued but possess real influence. His successor, Jeffrey Zients, keeps much more distant relations with the professional left, which greeted his elevation by calling him a “[corporate stooge](https://prospect.org/power/2023-01-27-myth-of-jeffrey-zients/).”
Progressives have treated the transition from Klain to Zients as the main cause of Biden’s moderate turn. And while it probably had a role, I believe underlying conditions played a more important role — it’s less that Biden is moving to the center because he replaced Klain with Zients, than he replaced Klain with Zients because he had to move to the center.
**Political conditions**. The 2022 midterm elections gave more support to the value of winning the political center than it did to the strategy of base mobilization. The Democrats who overperformed most dramatically tended to be ones like Elissa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger, who emphasized messages of bipartisanship and distanced themselves from their party’s left wing. Even Democrats who had somewhat more congenial ties with the left, like John Fetterman and Raphael Warnock, made cultural appeals to the center and renounced unpopular progressive ideas like defunding the police.
The winning formula involved persuading small numbers of cross-pressured voters, rather than mobilizing turnout among the base. Indeed, in Georgia, a state that progressives had once held up as a laboratory of base-driven victory, Democrats prevailed by [flipping](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/08/upshot/georgia-voter-turnout-republicans.html) Republican voters, not by winning the turnout war.
More broadly, the political landscape during Biden’s first two years has been dominated by the concerns of voters over crime and gasoline prices. Attending to those concerns has forced Democrats to take positions at odds with the goals of their own base.
**Policy needs**. The deepest substantive break between Biden and progressives is likely to center on climate policy. In part, this is because the biggest area of overlap between Biden’s goals and those of the left — increasing subsidies for green energy — has been accomplished. With that off the table, what remains to be settled are matters that divide the administration from the progressive movement.
One of those is gasoline prices. This is a change that began under Klain, who recognized the outsize role voters place on the cost of filling up their tanks. The progressive climate agenda of keeping fossil fuels in the ground is a plan that requires putting upward pressure on gasoline prices — that is the mechanism through which blocking fossil-fuel infrastructure advances the goal of decarbonization. Biden initially supported that strategy, but he has come around to believing that he can’t keep gas prices low and still block drilling.
Biden still supports a rapid transition to green energy, even as he tries to keep energy prices low in the short term. But that transition plan, too, puts him at odds with the left. Centrist and liberal analysts have formed a new consensus that the biggest impediment to the green-energy transition is not a lack of funding, as many previously believed, but the [regulatory barriers](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/09/why-are-environmental-activists-trying-to-stop-green-energy.html) to building new infrastructure.
A great many Democrats now believe the only way to actually deploy the green- energy funds that Biden wrung out of Congress is to overhaul the permitting process — even if that means allowing [fossil-fuel infrastructure](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/12/manchin-permitting-reform-progressives-pipeline-climate.html) to be built as well. But the climate movement remains largely attached to a keep-it-in-the-ground strategy that directly opposes any permitting reforms. Indeed, climate-justice activists want to give local groups even more tools to [block new infrastructure development](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/the-climate-justice-movement-is-bad-for-climate-and-justice.html).
Progressives joined with conservatives to block permitting reform in the last Congress. (Progressives want to make permitting even harder; conservatives believed they would have more leverage after the elections.) Now, Biden may have the chance to strike a deal with Republicans to reform the permitting process. Doing so will open a breach with the movement.
**Economic conditions**. A key foundation to Biden’s expansive domestic agenda was a long period of low inflation and interest rates and economic slack. Deficit hawks had lost the argument within the party because there was no cost to red ink. The government could simply borrow as much money as it wanted, and investors would lend it to them for very little cost.
Meanwhile, the great recession had left a legacy of chronically slack labor markets and stagnant wages. The economy had just begun to approach full employment when the pandemic struck in 2020. The overriding economic imperative was to get back to full employment as fast as possible, even if it meant running high deficits.
The stubborn return of inflation has flipped this dynamic. Whereas before almost any new spending could be seen as a good thing — more demand would coax more people back into the workforce and lift their pay — those effects are now harmful. Democrats are suddenly faced with an imperative to cool off economic demand rather than fuel it. That means they now need to consider trade-offs that, until recently, they could ignore.
Biden’s budget is one indication of this fiscal retreat. He is still proposing new taxes on the wealthy, as before. But now he is framing those levies as a way to maintain existing Medicare benefits, rather than finding a stream to create new benefits. This still gives him a politically advantageous message, but he has retreated to a less ambitious posture.
In the short run, relations between Biden and the progressives remain placid. His only primary opponent, Marianne Williamson, is a kook no one takes seriously. Progressive reservations remain subdued. But if I am right about this, the long honeymoon between Biden and the progressive movement has already ended, and days of angry infighting lay ahead.
Why Biden’s Honeymoon With Progressives Is Coming to an End
Désolé de vous aviir envoyé mes notes prises au fil de l’eau. La lecture de ce chapitre est passionant et plutot très bien documenté. Comme je l’ai mis dans mes notes, je suis moins convaincu par le passage sur les 3 piliers du commandement aux pages 19 à 22.
Sinon, je vous mets les quelques fautes de frappe que j’ai pu trouver:
- Page 5, fin du dernier paragraphe, mot manquant: soixante**ans**après
- Page 17, fin du premier paragraphe, mot manquant: il ne devait être **???** d’imposer un régime végétarien
- Page 26, dernier paragraphe, deuxieme phrase, faute de frappe: **toute** la nuit
• Place the green peppers on your grill and turn occasionally every 3 to 4 minutes until each side is scorched (lightly burned) and tender.
 
• Remove the green peppers from the grill and set aside to cool.
 
• Meanwhile, peel, deseed, and roughly chop the tomatoes into 1, 5 cm (1 inch) pieces.
 
• Once the green peppers have reached room temperature, peel and deseed and chop them into 1,5 cm (1 inch) pieces.
 
• In a large casserole or a deep skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-low heat and add the chopped tomatoes, garlic, spices, herbs, salt and sugar. Cover with a lid for 10 minutes until the tomatoes have softened. Stir occasionally.
 
• Uncover, add the chopped green peppers and mix all the ingredients together. Leave to simmer gently for 10 minutes until all the liquids evaporate.
 
• Enjoy warm or cold, as a side or a filling in a tasty sandwich!
•Remove 3 vertical strips of skin from each aubergine. Discard the vertical strips and cut the aubergines in large cubes. *Removing a few stripes of the skin allows the zaalouk to be softerwhen prepared, feel free to leave them if desired.*
 
•In a medium sized pan, heat the olive oil and add all the ingredients (except the lemon wedges).Cover with a lid over medium-low heat until the vegetables are soft, about 25 minutes. Stir occasionally to make sure the vegetables don't stick to the pan.
 
• Uncover, mash the vegetables (with a potato masher or the back of a wooden spoon) and leave over medium heat until all the liquids evaporate. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt if necessary. Serve warm or at room temperature, as a side, a dip or a spread with a squeeze if lemon juice, if desired.
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iOS
2 years ago