The New Yorker

Today’s Daily Cartoon, by Jimmy Craig. #NewYorkerCartoons https://lnkd.in/eaxpZq6t

A cartoon by Ellis Rosen. #NewYorkerCartoons See all the cartoons from this week’s issue: https://lnkd.in/esSRiVRS

Tuesday’s meeting between J. D. Vance and Tim Walz may prove more consequential than most previous Vice-Presidential debates. Both candidates represent states in the Midwest—Vance as the junior senator from Ohio, and Walz as the governor of Minnesota—a region that is likely to shape the outcome of the election. Vance, who rose to prominence as the author of a best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” has become one of the most unpopular Vice-Presidential nominees in recent American history, and will likely use his combative speaking style to attack Walz, the only member of either major-party ticket with a net favorable rating in Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, according to the New York Times. The discussion will almost certainly address economic issues and the ongoing wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, and Sudan; it will also likely revisit controversial past statements by Vance, including a description of Democratic opponents as “childless cat ladies” and a false accusation that Haitian migrants in Ohio have been eating other people’s cats. Starting at 9 P.M. Eastern Time, you can stream the debate and follow along as the New Yorker staff writers Clare Malone, Vinson Cunningham, and Jessica Winter provide analysis and commentary on our live blog. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gJ8U4ENx

Naomi Fry remembers the fly moment from the last Vice-Presidential debate that transfixed the nation. How long would it keep clinging on? And what if it stayed forever? Read more commentary ahead of tonight’s showdown between J. D. Vance and Tim Walz: https://lnkd.in/gzWvbNJQ

In honor of International Coffee Day, we’re remembering the 19th-century French writer Honoré de Balzac, who supposedly drank 50 cups of coffee per day. What thoughts do this level of caffeine consumption inspire? Some speculations, courtesy of New Yorker Humor: https://lnkd.in/gX_Nm-F7

Today’s Daily Cartoon, by Tom Toro. #NewYorkerCartoons https://lnkd.in/g6xJWdam

As the world population approached four billion in the 1960s, fears of overcrowding and urban decay were rampant. Two new books explore the studies of John B. Calhoun, a scientist who concluded that in cramped conditions a “behavior sink” turned rats against one another, and that overpopulation might similarly make us violence-prone, offspring-abandoning beasts. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gechu_pz

Despite the possibility of a female President, masculinity has swaggered to the center of the 2024 election—a development both parties seem to have embraced. The Trump campaign has revelled in “camp masculinity;” the Harris campaign, meanwhile, has showcased “the nice men of the left.” This stylistic contrast promises to be especially sharp on Tuesday night, when J. D. Vance and Tim Walz meet in New York for the Vice-Presidential debate. And, even more than competing visions of manhood, on view will be two very different ideas of what it means to be a father: a battle of the dads, if you will. In a country given to worshipful talk of Founding Fathers, this is not a new subject on the political stage. But, perhaps, no previous politician has taken up the mantle of Dad in quite the way Tim Walz has. Walz emerged on the political scene as an avatar of football-coaching, social-studies-teaching, father-figure affability, and this appeal helped carry him past arguably more strategic choices to a spot on the Harris ticket. He “embodies a model of nontoxic masculinity the Harris campaign has hoped to represent with such outreach as the ‘White Dudes for Harris’ fund-raising Zoom,” Molly Fischer writes. Meanwhile, the ardor Vance brings to the concept of fatherhood is palpable. In the weeks after Donald Trump selected Vance as his running mate, a cascade of interview clips resurfaced in which Vance disparaged nonparents as “sociopathic,” “deranged,” and “less mentally stable” than their child-rearing peers; his scorn for “childless cat ladies,” in particular, became a meme. Vance’s 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” provides insight into his emotional life: the book’s psychic core is his pain at the absence of a father in his life. “Of all the things I hated about my childhood,” he writes, “nothing compared to the revolving door of father figures.” “If Walz has been cast as America’s freelance dad, Vance is a man perpetually in search of a father,” Fischer writes. Read more about the two Vice-Presidential candidates and their duelling visions of fatherhood: https://lnkd.in/g2Dq4mzm

A cartoon by Lonnie Millsap. #NewYorkerCartoons See all the cartoons from this week’s issue: https://lnkd.in/g9eQ4tiR

“Does this sense of loss of self get better with time? How can I embrace my fate right now?” In Liana Finck’s latest advice column, a dog offers a fellow mother tips on how to find herself amidst her parental duties. https://lnkd.in/gPXPyCmh