Joe Biden leaves the beach near his home in Delaware on July 8. (Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty)
As I was struggling to find dramatic news to write about this week, it dawned on me that I should blame Joe Biden.
For the first time in years, this feels like a normal summer. In the collective buzz, we are speculating about a mysterious baggie of cocaine in the White House, whether Musk and Zuckerberg will actually fight in a cage, if we’ve seen the bottom of Bud Light’s drop in sales, and the dating and texting habits of Jonah Hill (poor fucker). The buzziest story about Biden this week is that he sometimes loses his temper with staffers. Staggering news. Kamala, meanwhile, is preoccupied with the “inequity” of airplane bathrooms. The huge media campaigns behind the summer blockbusters, Barbie and Oppenheimer, are meeting little resistance, even as future movies and TV are on hold, thanks to the woman from The Nanny.
In real news, inflation has now retreated to an annual three percent, surprising even the economic optimists, and far better than many other Western countries. Wages in the US have grown faster than inflation for four straight months. A gallon of gas costs 30 percent less than it did last summer. Unemployment is again touching historic lows, as the US growth machine surpasses everyone else. The dreaded recession hasn’t arrived.
There are weeks when we don’t even have to think about the president at all. Biden was off to a NATO summit, where the alliance, revitalized beyond anyone’s forecast, added a new member, and maintained remarkable unity in resisting the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The changes that are happening under the surface — a strategic decoupling from China, especially on semiconductors, a rapid rebuilding of American factories, accelerating advances in non-carbon energy — are structural and, so far, relatively quiet.
Yes, the Supreme Court moved the country away from affirmative action, but this was a long time coming and far from a surprise. And the public seems to have absorbed the change. A big majority of Americans, across all major demographics, oppose using race as a factor in college admissions anyway. Even the border has become calmer, if only because the Biden administration has effectively allowed everyone in through calmer, legal channels.
Two huge, destabilizing abnormalities have been removed from the body politic: Trump and Covid. We no longer scan the web each morning to find a new Trump outrage, another deranged rant, an international embarrassment, or another petty, random abuse of power. We no longer have to absorb the stream of lies that came out of that little mouth in that vast orange face.
Yes, we have a president who is occasionally a Botoxed Abraham Simpson, mangling his words, walking off television sets, wandering around with an empty, vacant gaze on his face. But what a relief not to have one’s sanity, composure and mood assaulted hourly by the most powerful man in the country. Trump is still mouthing off, of course. And his postings on Truth Social are at new levels of derangement and rage. But for a brief, blessed period, we don’t have to think of him all the time.
And with the final end of Covid, we’re traveling again; taking holidays; seeing old friends and family, catching up after that strange, lost interlude of plague, when years of our lives suddenly seemed to evaporate into a time warp. In this little resort town I live in each summer, the old rituals are back with some punch: the crowds at the daily tea-dance, the daily trek to the beaches, the late-night drunken shenanigans. Yes, the weather on our carbon-soaked planet is insane, but technology could still surprise us — even something as simple as white paint.
So let’s enjoy this summer, and offer a small measure of gratitude to Joe Biden for making it as familiar and as quiet as it used to be. After five summers of Trump overlapping with three summers of plague, let’s take a moment and appreciate it. It won’t last. Next summer, we will be in the throes of an election, with the madman back to haunt our dreams. And who knows what a truly desperate Putin might do.
But now? An interlude, a throwback, a pause. In the old Fleet Street, they called these dog days of summer the “silly season” — when dumb, little stories got huge coverage, the middle classes watched Wimbledon, and the interns did most of the work. It’s a dismissive turn of phrase, but it’s the kind of thing that only really exists in a free society, where politics is kept at a distance, and private life can have its moment in the sun.
For all his faults, we have Biden to thank for this normalcy. Maybe next fall, we will remember, and vote to keep it.
(Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: a conversation with Jean Twenge about the mess of Gen Z; an update on sex changes for kids and the emotional blackmail of invoking suicide; a ton of reader dissents over my disappointment with Obama in his post-presidency; five notable quotes from the slow news week; 21 pieces we enjoyed reading on Substack; a callipygian Mental Health Break that was obviously picked by Chris; before-and-after views of a window in Denver; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
This month is our annual renewal period, and our emailed nudge to free subscribers got a lot of Dish love. From a new paid subscriber:
Thanks to you and Chris for everything. The Dish is a wonderful conversation, and we need it.
Another replies, “I am also a beagle parent, and I’ve attached my Tina to the email”:
Another dog parent:
Of course you may call me a Dishhead! (I’ve been one since the early 2000s). I do have a paid subscription to the Dish, but under a cryptic Hide My Email name, mainly because I made a (itsy bitsy) substack that I was too paranoid to put my real name on, which messed up my original subscription with you.
Bowie is so adorable. Here’s my sweet Lennon:
I want to thank the Dish for teaching me so many things. One is the nature of maleness, especially the effect of testosterone. Understanding more about men, even if the truths aren’t what I want to hear, has been essential to evolving more compassion for men — my brothers, my father, the men I work with, and love. That newer, wiser understanding — without letting men off the hook for the things men sometimes do — eases my heart.
The second thing I have been learning from the Dish is how to think without being too tribal. It’s a big ask! Thinking through my point of view is hard work, and I confess that sometimes the best I can do is simply spot where I “have a sense,” or where some counterpoint feels troubling. But it’s better than not thinking at all.
A Live Boy Or A Dead Girl?
That’s the question many sex reassignment doctors pose to parents of a child with gender dysphoria. Will you change the kid’s sex or wait till she kills himself? It’s one or the other.
When you think about it, it’s an extraordinary question, the kind of blackmail you might expect from a mafia boss and not a pediatrician. And you’d assume — because these are medical professionals, after all — that such a huge claim would have a mountain of strong evidence behind it.
(Paid subscribers can read the whole piece here, which includes a few big updates on the medical establishment.)
New On The Dishcast: Jean Twenge
Jean Twenge is a writer and researcher who focuses on generational differences. She’s a psychology professor at San Diego State University and the author of seven books, most notably iGen. Her new one is Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents. Our conversation focused mainly on how fucked up Gen Z is, and why.
Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on why Gen Zers are safer but feel more traumatized than ever, and why teens are having much less sex. That link also takes you to commentary on a few recent episodes, plus a ton of reader debate over my disappointment in Obama’s post-presidency.
Browse the Dishcast archive for another conversation you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Matt Lewis on ruling-class elites, Lee Fang on the tensions within the left, Josh Barro on the Biden administration, and Michael Moynihan on general kibitzing. Please send any guest recs and pod dissent to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
While I do enjoy a good rehash of the best things Obama has said in past speeches, I would find it impolitic of him to suddenly take a fierce stand against the “woke” cultural movement — one that already appears to have outlived its welcome in many left-leaning circles outside of Twitter. As an elder statesman, it behooves him to let the movement carry on with or without his personal seal of approval while also breathing MILD scorn on the opposition. This is No Drama Obama we’re talking about.
And it could be far worse; Obama could pull a Jon Stewart who, desperate to once again be the darling of youth-leftists everywhere, abandoned the principled and well-thought-out arguments that drew us to him in the first place in favor of the incomprehensible, resentment-soaked, self-negating, self-righteousness of the Twitter Left.
That’s a good counter-point. But a little consistency would be lovely nonetheless. Read more dissents about Obama here, and many more here. Follow more Dish discussion on the Notes site here (or the “Notes” tab in the Substack app).
This is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about 20 of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers subjects such as the trajectory of inflation, the first over-the-counter Pill, and “bonus hole” — oy. Below are a few examples:
Seth Moskowitz traces the history of Asian-Americans turning to the GOP, largely over crime. The murder of immigrants is often ignored by the left and right.
You can also browse all the substacks we follow and read on a regular basis here — a combination of our favorite writers and new ones we’re checking out. It’s a blogroll of sorts. If you have any recommendations for “In the ‘Stacks,” especially ones from emerging writers, please let us know: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think it’s located? Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The deadline for entries is Wednesday night at midnight (PST). The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two annual Dish subscriptions. If you are not a subscriber, please indicate that status in your entry and we will give you a free month subscription if we select your entry for the contest results (example here if you’re new to the contest). Happy sleuthing!
The results for this week’s window are coming in a separate email to paid subscribers later today. A tidbit from last week’s results:
So many signs are visible, but they require technology that only exists in the movies:
I kept hollering at my screen, “Computer, Enhance!” — but nothing happened. One sign seems to say “thBlurrySmthg Massage.” I’ve searched so many massage parlors in Vietnam that I fear the targeted web advertising I will now have to endure!
