賓主俱成"假仙" "The Stranger in the Room." 。美國的更大目標? Trump Jettisons Ukraine on His Way to a Larger Goal。烏克蘭領導國家的合適人選的爭論日益激烈.......紐約時報如何處理TRUMP 總統的新聞等,大分類:令人頭暈目眩的一周(經濟學人主編) The New Yorker 。Trump blocked from imposing sweeping federal funding freeze陶傑提難問題。 Europeans Are Left Wondering Where U.S. Stands on Ukraine and Russia; The Economist兩封面 主編Zanny Minton Beddoes說此期要點:【烏俄談判與台海效應:一名情報主管Alex Younger爵士的觀點】黃哲斌
What Vance did yesterday, in Hollywood terms, is called "The Stranger in the Room." Screenwriters, especially, are well aware of the role of The Stranger in the Room. The Stranger in the Room is anyone in a meeting who is just there "as a friend," someone who has no creative authority on, and no stake in, the project being discussed, anyone in the room who is a last-minute addition. Sometimes it's a 20-something intern, sometimes it's an executive from a sister office, sometimes it's someone from marketing, sometimes it's an older, more experienced producer who's lending a hand for a day.
Example: I was once pitching a legacy reboot project to a legendary producer, a real lion of the industry. His 22-year-old daughter was also in the room. She interrupted my pitch to say "Right, but we don't want, like, any conflict in the movie."
The purpose of The Stranger in the Room is to destroy the project. The Stranger in the Room is the one who, after the writer and producer and director have all agreed on the direction of the story, says "How will that play in China?" or "This sounds a lot like [movie X]" or "But isn't this movie really about love?"
The Stranger in the Room is always, always there at the behest of the most powerful person in the room. Whether the Stranger understands it or not, they are acting on the behalf of the studio, and it is the studio's natural desire to say "no," because no one has ever gotten fired for saying "no," and Hollywood executives, more than anything else, spend their entire careers terrified they're going to lose their jobs for saying "yes."
But they don't want to be disliked by creatives, so instead of saying "no," they bring in a friend, either a protege or an ally from another department, or just grab someone from the hallway, a producer on another project, and ask them to sit in on the meeting. They don't know what they're looking for, they hear a hundred pitches a day, they don't know what, if anything, will please their bosses, so they bring in an ally to get another viewpoint, any viewpoint, on the project, so that they can then say "no" without looking like an asshole. Instead, they can say "Yes, that's a good point, we have to keep in mind the China market," or "Yeah, this DOES sound a lot like [movie X] now that I hear it out loud," or "Yeah, what about love? We're forgetting all about love, why isn't your action movie pitch really about love?"
And then, suddenly, the balance in the room shifts. Suddenly, a collaboration, a negotiation as it were, becomes an argument. Where, just moments earlier, everyone was agreeing on how awesome the project sounded, now, suddenly, the creatives are on one side and the suits are on the other, and the meeting becomes a power struggle, one the creatives can only lose, because the suits have the money and the creatives only have the art.
So, in Hollywood terms, Zelenskyy was the writer/director/producer, Trump was studio executive terrified of losing his job, and Vance was the disinterested ally brought in to bring up some random point that would turn the negotiation into an argument that the writer/director/producer cannot possibly win. I'll leave it up to you to figure out who studio head is.
Behind the Collision: Trump Jettisons Ukraine on His Way to a Larger Goal
The shock of Friday’s disaster has left much of political Kyiv in stunned silence. There is now a growing debate about whether Volodymyr Zelensky is still the right person to lead the country https://econ.trib.al/UYoZfjg
“It was one thing to anticipate this prolonged political moment; it has been, these past weeks, quite another to live it,” David Remnick writes. “Each day is its own fresh hell, bringing ever more outrageous news from an autocrat who revels in his contempt for the government he leads, for the foreign allies who deserve our support, and for the Constitution he is sworn to uphold.”
In record time, Donald Trump has brought shame and disorder to the country. He has set out to fire countless civil servants, punish his adversaries, and threaten the press. He has cast aside essential climate actions, humiliated undocumented immigrants and trans men and women, coddled dictators, and unnerved allies. He has empowered extremists distinguished principally by their conspiracy thinking, sycophancy, and incompetence.
In the Oval Office on Friday, Trump nakedly sided with Russian aggression, berating the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, for failing to show him sufficient gratitude and respect and for “gambling with World War Three.” “Zelensky is a hero of historic scale, brave beyond measure; Trump’s behavior was disgraceful,” Remnick writes. “He and his Vice-President, J. D. Vance, deliberately tried to intimidate Zelensky with all the finesse of a couple of small-time hoods. The incident was both shocking and inevitable, all in line with the over-all temper of Trump’s Presidency—the threats, the firings, the multiple DOGE fiascoes, the proposal to cleanse the Gaza Strip of two million Palestinians.”
“Is this really what Trump’s supporters voted for? How does the decimation of American values, institutions, and commitments bring down the price of eggs?” Read our editor’s reflections on the start of Donald Trump’s shameful second term: https://www.newyorker.com/....../03/10/trumps-disgrace......
A US judge extended an order blocking President Donald Trump's administration from instituting a sweeping freeze on trillions of dollars in federal spending by pausing grants, loans and other financial support.
With No Buy-in From Egypt or Jordan, Trump Appears to Back Away From His Gaza Plan
Earlier this month, the president said he favored taking control of Gaza and displacing the Palestinian population of the devastated seaside enclave. But Egypt and Jordan flatly rejected cooperating.
Europeans Are Left Wondering Where U.S. Stands on Ukraine and Russia
In public, Secretary of State Marco Rubio signaled a rapprochement with Moscow. In private, he tried to reassure European leaders that U.S. policy wasn’t changing.
You’re reading the Opinion Today newsletter. Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world.
Like last Saturday, Times Opinion is using today’s newsletter to stay on top of President Trump’s moves, putting a spotlight on where Americans can’t afford to turn away from.
Where America Stands: Trump smeared the founding fathers in Week 5 by declaring himself “king” — of the United States? The world? His narcissism knows no bounds — as he grasped for godlike power to pronounce congestion pricing “dead” in Manhattan. Calling himself “king” denigrates every American who has fought and died for democracy, but Trump sees those heroes as “losers” anyway. Of course, he doesn’t have a king’s power, but his efforts to remake America pay no heed to the rule of law.
What Mattered Most This Week: Ukraine. Trump sent mixed messages, which he sees as core to his deal making, but make no mistake about his pro-Putin posture. Trump accused Ukraine of launching the war and called its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a dictator — both lies — while squeezing Kyiv for an earth minerals deal and a cease-fire in the war with Russia. Now, it’s worth keeping in mind, Trump is not alone in disliking Zelensky; the Biden White House deeply mistrusted him too. But Trump approaches Ukraine with a dangerous moral relativism: He doesn’t care about good and evil, as he showed Friday when he said he was “tired” of hearing about Putin’s war crimes. Trump cares about strength and leverage. “He has no cards,” he said of Zelensky. Trump sees the world as his casino and all that matters is your cards.
Worth reading: My colleagues Bret Stephens and M. Gessen went deep on Ukraine, Putin, Trump and Europe in this round table, and the Times Opinion editorial board weighed in today on Ukraine. Susan Glasser of The New Yorker has a good piece on Trump’s “Putinization of America,” and The Wall Street Journal had strong reporting about the implications for NATO.
The Most Important Long Game in Washington: Elon Musk. He and his youthful goon squad are running amok across federal agencies, with more layoffs hitting disaster relief programs, the Interior Department and the I.R.S. Americans want competence from their government, not chaos; Musk may enjoy breaking things, but the laws of political gravity suggest Republicans will pay the price.
Worth reading: A Politico story about Republican lawmakers’ panic over the DOGE firing spree even as they cheer it in public; a Washington Post story along similar lines but about executive officials; and this Journal story about how X is effectively cashing in on Musk’s position. My colleague Zeynep Tufekci had a great column Friday on the digital clues to what Musk is up to.
The Most Important Development Below the Radar: The Trump administration’s intervention on behalf of Andrew Tate. Trump’s moral relativism goes into overdrive when it comes to defending male predators.
Watching Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: The health and human services secretary said “nothing” is off limits in his new plans to scrutinize childhood vaccine schedules, psychiatric medications and other public health issues. Every senator who confirmed Kennedy while harboring private doubts about him are now officially on the hook for the future of children’s health.
I have been a journalist for three decades and in that time I’ve experienced very few weeks as head-spinning as this one. The 9/11 attacks, certain moments in the global financial crisis and the early stages of the covid pandemic are some of the rare instances where the world seemed to change fundamentally in a matter of days. To those of us in Europe the geopolitical shifts of this week seem similarly monumental. President Donald Trump appears to be abandoning Ukraine, turning his back on the transatlantic alliance that has endured since the second world war, and buying wholesale into Vladimir Putin’s talking points.
At last weekend’s Munich Security Conference, where America’s public tone towards its European allies shifted towards outright hostility, I felt as if I had a front-row seat as history was being made. Events since then have moved quickly on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe, there has been panic as the continent’s leaders contemplate that the country which created the NATO alliance now seems prepared to smash it.
In America, meanwhile, as Mr Trump completes the first month of his presidency, he continues apace to push the boundaries of his own power. To reflect these momentous events we, very unusually, have two different covers this week that feature Mr Trump.
In Europe our designers have placed Mr Trump at the head of a long, Putinesque table, conferring with Russia’s president. You will notice the empty seats—this is where someone like Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, might have been sitting had he not been shut out of initial talks by Mr Trump. A war of words between the pair is escalating. Under Mr Trump, Ukraine is being betrayed, Russia is being rehabilitated and America can no longer be counted on to come to Europe’s aid in wartime. The implications for Europe’s security are grave, but, as our leader argues, they have yet to sink in with the continent’s leaders and people.
Our cover elsewhere features Mr Trump bedecked with a crown. Since returning to office he has made his base exultant and left his opponents reeling. The president says he is clearing out waste, fraud and abuse. His opponents warn he is frogmarching the country into a constitutional crisis, or even a Trumpian autocracy. Our leader and accompanying Briefing assess Mr Trump’s first month with calm fact-based analysis and a careful look at history. The president is entitled to set new goals for the bureaucracy. Mr Trump is hardly the first man in the Oval Office with maximalist ambitions. And he is still far from overturning America’s constitutional order. But the way Mr Trump is going about his goals—at times with wanton cruelty—is dangerous and wrong. And Mr Trump, being who he is, will contemplate any extreme. Get ready for a titanic struggle.
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