Mike Case | Vox

The movie Independence Day teaches us that victory is more important than principles

2019-02-27T22:08:23-05:00

David Levinson freaks out about recycling. | 20th Century Fox

The hostile alien intruders in the film Independence Day caught the world by surprise, arriving like a well-coordinated swarm of locusts to wipe out humanity and take all our natural resources. It was only through grit, ingenuity, and overwhelming patriotism that America could figure out how to defeat the enemy and lead the world in a 4th of July counter offensive to bring the bastards down.

Marine pilot and wannabe astronaut Captain Steven Hiller (Will Smith) might have been the flashy star of the film, punching aliens in the face and delivering back-to-back one-liners. But in the end, it was the flannel-clad, environmentalist hipster hippie and American hero David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) who really made victory possible.

David is a very ’90s hippie, and the movie isn’t always sure if it should play, for instance, his environmentalism as a joke. But he’s also the smartest guy around. He was the one who realized that if we could just hack the alien mothership from the inside, we could finally score a direct hit with a nuke and end the invasion for good. And all it took was abandoning all of his principles!

The film makes clear that this plan wasn’t easy for Levinson to endorse. He spent hours lambasting the President for using nuclear weapons over American soil, and pleaded that they not be deployed again. But David was able to set aside his deep partisanship and see the bigger picture. The world was being overrun, and the only way to save it was to accept — embrace, even — his deepest fears.

The version of this American classic with which we’re all familiar ends with well-placed nukes, a fighter pilot President, and a Mac Powerbook 5300. But uploading a nasty virus to scramble the computers of our highly advanced adversaries wasn’t the only plan that do-gooder Levinson had cooked up. David looked into the abyss during that last overnight drinking binge, and he saw many roads to victory — all paved with the corpses of his dearest causes.

The hippie causes America needs to renounce to defend itself from future alien invasions are:

1) Environmentalism

“Maybe if we screw this planet up enough, they won’t want it any more!”

Racking his brain as an MIT educated TV repairman, Levinson’s true passion is in saving the environment from the sloppy, inconsiderate actions of the human race. He chides his father for using styrofoam cups, righteously pulls recyclable cans from the trash bins at work, and bikes his way around New York City.

But after all that time harassing his fellow man for minor infractions against the Mother Earth, it only takes one night of drinking (and the threat of annihilation) for Levinson to realize humanity’s gotta do what humanity’s gotta do to survive, and if that means trashing the planet, then so be it.

Blowing up the alien mothership was all well and good at the time. But what guarantee do we have that there aren’t more giant alien motherships out there just waiting for the right holiday to strike again? Luckily, completing humanity’s crusade against nature was easier than expected. Total victory against the invaders meant city-sized shipwrecks outside of all the world’s major cities. Massive scrap heaps, unidentifiable leakages, and probably a whole load of carbon emissions from those downed ships means Earth ain’t what it used to be, and no one’s going to take any interest in it again.

Nobody wants this gross planet.

2) Anti-smoking campaigns

“I could get used to this.”

First of all, tar-filled smoke could have totally ruined the the fragile space-technology of the aliens, and Dr. Okun made it clear that the aliens’ bodies are just as frail (and presumably susceptible to carcinogens) as ours. Even if we couldn’t come up with an

effective way to weaponize tobacco smoke, cigars play a far more important role in humanity’s salvation: they’re cool.

Despite all efforts to prove the contrary, smoking is badass and instills confidence in America’s heroes. Saving those stogies until the fat lady sang inspired confidence in the fighter pilots and tech nerds who delivered us from certain doom. We’ll need that confidence if we are ever called to defend our corroded space rock again, so light up and strike a cool pose.

3) Reining in the NSA and government intelligence agencies

“You knew then!”

We could have been prepared! An alien scout ship crash landed in New Mexico, and through top secret government research we learned a great deal about the aliens and their technology. But because a squeamish American public and reactionaries like David could never appreciate the benefits of clandestine operations, our intelligence community was hamstrung and operating beyond the knowledge of even the President.

We won’t make that mistake again. In the world of Independence Day, only one solution is clear: elevate the NSA to a cabinet-level agency. And give it spacecraft.

4) Separation of church and state

It wasn’t just Captain Hiller’s swagger and the mind-opening inspiration of a good binge that led Levinson to his genius plan to defeat the aliens. Julius Levinson, David’s father, hadn’t spoken to God in years at the time of the crisis, something he confesses just before David comes up with his master plan. Yet later, he pulls together a group of refugees for a prayer session. Can we be sure David’s plan was divinely inspired? No, but why risk it? Boom, prayer in schools. It’s the only thing holding back the aliens. Well, that and the raw charisma of Bill Pullman at his finest.

What it’s like to write jokes for President Obama

2019-02-27T06:25:45-05:00

Cody Keenan (then a White House speechwriter, now director of speechwriting) dresses up as a pirate for a 2009 White House Correspondents' Dinner gag. | Pete Souza/The White House

For President Obama’s speechwriters, senior advisors, and other people who work in the West Wing, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is one of the toughest work weekends of the year. Writing for the WHCD means prepping the leader of the free world for the country’s biggest stand-up act.

It’s not as if the president is only allowed to be funny once a year, of course. President Obama has slow jammed the news with Jimmy Fallon, practiced his cringe humor with Zach Galifianakis, and joked about his greying hair more times since taking office than all other presidents before him. (We’re still verifying that last number.) But the WHCD is different than Obama’s other humorous public appearances.

Jeff Nussbaum, partner at the speechwriting firm West Wing Writers and a founder of The Humor Cabinet, says the secret to the WHCD’s popularity is that it’s the closest most of us will ever get to having a drink with the president. While appearances on late-night shows are staged policy pitches, and only the most elite Washingtonians will ever see invitations to the Gridiron Club or the Alfalfa Club, any American can watch the president bust some chops at the WHCD.

“Traditionally in Washington, the rooms in which Presidents told jokes were very exclusive and very private,” Nussbaum said. “With the Correspondents’ Dinner, you feel like when you’re in the room or, when you’re watching on TV, that you’re being let into what it feels like when people are breaking tension in the Oval Office or the Situation Room or the Roosevelt Room.”

Why tell jokes?

Nussbaum, who has written for Al Gore, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, and Vice President Biden, explained that humor allows the president — or any political leader — to shed the weight of formality that comes with the office: “My unfunny philosophy on humor as a general matter is that it’s a means of characterizing yourself. A politician who is willing to tell a joke is someone people are willing to spend time with. Someone willing to tell a self-deprecating joke is someone who isn’t as pompous.”

Jon Lovett, a former Obama speechwriter, shared the sentiment. “When there’s a great joke in a speech it can travel further, help more, than any litany of policies or great defense or argument. It cuts through that. It says, ‘Look, we’re on the same page, we think this is crazy.’ It says, ‘Look, we understand this in the same way’ — to the point we can laugh at it.”

Lovett recalled that while writing the 2011 State of the Union, he had to fight to keep a decidedly tame joke about government bureaucracy in the speech. “It wasn’t the best joke in the world, but it wasn’t the worst either. When we were editing the speech, I remember one department thought we were mocking the other. It was that kind of fight, but we decided it was worth the risk. We said, ‘No, we’re just poking fun at government bureaucracy, and that’s the point of the section and the point of the whole speech.’ We fought to keep it in and the president delivered the line:”

Then there’s my favorite example. The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they’re in freshwater, but the Commerce Department handles them when they’re in saltwater. I hear it gets even more complicated once they’re smoked.

The next day, NPR asked listeners to describe the speech in three words, then created a word cloud of their responses. “Salmon” dominated that graphic. Lovett is still pleased. “To those listeners, the State of the Union ended up being a speech about salmon with a few asides about jobs and the economy,” he said. “It just demonstrates how much a joke can stick.”

Presidents have been making jokes to that end for decades. Nussbaum pointed out that in President Kennedy’s 1962 “moonshot” speech at Rice University, one of the most famous lines is punctuated with a joke mocking the university’s football team:

But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…”

(The University of Texas was undefeated and Rice was winless at that point in the year. The two teams went on to tie a month later.)

Humor also allows a politician to stick a dagger in opponents in a way that would be considered mean-spirited if not done with a smile, but there are limits. When humor is wielded as a weapon, especially by someone with as much clout as the president, it can be easy for a joke to go too far. Masking a jab with laughter is a delicate art — one that President Obama has had to learn the hard way.

During a 2008 primary debate, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton was asked if she was personable enough to beat then-Sen. Obama. Obama interjected, saying: “You’re likeable enough, Hillary.” That one comment, presumably intended as a joke, earned the him more than a little blowback. More recently, at the 2013 Correspondents’ Dinner, Obama said basically the same thing about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, but to much more amicable effect:

Of course, even after I’ve done all this, some folks still don’t think I spend enough time with Congress. “Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?” they ask. Really? Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?

There was certainly more context to why the jab at Clinton earned backlash and the joke at McConnell’s expense was effective. The Clinton comment came after Obama’s stunning victory in Iowa, and at a time when gender was a growing issue on the campaign trail. The comment was widely perceived as condescending and dismissive, and Clinton would go on to win the New Hampshire primary (and 12 percent more votes from women in that contest). But the fact that the McConnell remark was made at the WHCD, where people are more willing to roll with jokes, was no small factor.

A well-executed joke is also an effective way to sweep away ongoing controversy. Early in Obama’s presidency, the backup plane to Air Force One flew low over Manhattan one morning without any warning, so photographers could snap it flying by the Statue of Liberty. The flight terrified people throughout the city — which was all the more infuriating since the purpose was so seemingly trivial. But at the Correspondents’ Dinner shortly thereafter, Obama addressed the incident head on. “Sasha and Malia aren’t here tonight because they’re grounded. You can’t just take Air Force One on a joyride to Manhattan. I don’t care whose kids you are.” With one joke, the issue was settled:

Who writes the jokes?

The president employs a staff of speechwriters and communications specialists year-round to help shape the comments he makes during nearly every public appearance. In a few high-stakes instances — namely the State of the Union and Inaugural addresses — outside writers will be consulted. The WHCD has risen to that level of importance.

In recent years the president’s team has started to look beyond their inner circle for good jokes, receiving input from comedians, friends, advisors, TV writers, and various media personalities. Increasingly, submissions are coming in unsolicited. Lovett, on the Obama team for three years, said: “It’s not so much about balancing inside the White House with outside voices as much as it is drawing on as many talented people as you can. Some administrations have handled it in different ways. Some relied entirely on outside help. We [the Obama White House] had a good mix of jokes coming from outside and in.”

The crack team of humorists that come on board to write jokes are less often Bruno Gianelli-esque hired muscle and more frequently old friends of the in-house talent. Regardless of their origins, the job of the outsiders, as Nussbaum explains it, is to set the mood and put everything on the table in the name of laughs.

“When you come in, you’re explicitly asking for the dispensation to be the one who won’t get yelled at for crossing the line. Sometimes the only way to know where the line is of what a president will or won’t say is by seeing it in the rearview mirror. You want to be open to everything in the brainstorm: every topic, proper or improper.”

But according to Lovett, Obama himself is often the one looking to get closer to the line. “It’s one of the reasons he succeeds at these dinners. He’s not afraid to push. But he knows there’s also another side. If you tell a clunker, there’s a way a bad joke is especially jarring. It says, ‘I thought you’d find this funny, but you didn’t because I didn’t understand you in this moment.'”

And there’s the rub. The dinner may be the closest you get to having a drink out with the president. The tricky part for him and his writers is making the hang-out fun.

Mike Case is the product chief of staff for Vox Media. He knows a thing or two about White House wordsmithing from his two years as director of presidential writers for President Obama.

The mystery on new podcast Serial would be much less mysterious with smartphones

2019-03-02T12:56:33-05:00

Highschoolers have more ways to communicate than ever. | (KritKritina Lee Knief/Moment Mobile/Getty)

The first few episodes of Serial, a new spinoff podcast from the creators of the beloved radio broadcast This American Life, hooks fans with the same aesthetic and poise that make its predecessor a cultural mainstay. But while Ira Glass and the team on This American Life tell new stories with different themes each week, Serial is dedicated to unravelling a single, overarching plot over the course of many episodes. It feels more akin to the high production value dramas now popular on cable television than an NPR broadcast, especially since the first story investigates the suspicious murder of a Maryland teenager.

Sarah Koenig, the show’s host and former producer of This American Life, first learned about the case more than a year ago. Before taping began, her research suggested that the true story of this murder was more complicated than the version presented at trial. Unsatisfied with the official account, Koenig guides listeners through a set of interviews, phone calls, and new evidence uncovered in her quest to shed light on a real life murder mystery.

The central question she’s trying to answer is pretty simple: where was Adnan Syed, the man convicted of Hae Min Lee’s murder, for the 21 minutes after school when the crime occurred? Koenig wrestles with conflicting police reports, inconsistent stories from people claiming to have seen Adnan in that time, and some awfully technical yet inconclusive phone records. For now (we’re up to episode six as of this writing) that’s all we have to work with as we follow the week-to-week investigations.

The staff of Serial. (Meredith Heuer)

While the presentation of Serial is modern — this is also a podcast, not a public radio show — the murder occurred in 1999, so the setting pulls us back in time almost 15 years. But what if this whole plot unfolded in 2014? It turns out a whole lot can change in 15 years, especially with technology. In fact, it’s easy to imagine a dramatically different trial, not to mention a totally different episodic crime podcast.

Consider:

Far more high schoolers now own cell phones

According to a Pew study in 2013, 78 percent of teens 12-17 owned a cell phone of their own. Almost half of them owned smart phones.

In the case followed in Serial, we’re told Adnan had recently purchased a cell phone to facilitate the murder. The call logs Koenig combs over involve that cell phone, land lines, pagers, and even possibly a pay phone. The logs show 34 calls made to and from Adnan’s phone the day of the murder. Many of them happen during a long stretch of time Adnan is sharing the phone with someone else. Imagine how many more calls could or would have been made if most of the students at Adnan and Hae’s school had cell phones of their own. And it wouldn’t even be just calls just to Adnan that would be informative, but also calls between friends on the periphery of the case, too.

No one makes phone calls anymore

But forget the phone calls. Who makes phone calls anymore? In 2014, all of the coordinating that happened would have probably happened via text message. Another Pew study found that 63 percent of teens text every day, with the median texting teen sending 60 messages every day. Each individual text would be timestamped, and conversations would happen over several minutes or even hours, providing a clearer timeline. The content of the actual exchanges would be available, too, removing most doubt about what each conversation was about.

Every phone has a camera

Okay, but forget texts, too. Imagine the photos that could have been taken in the halls after class, at the library, at practice — anywhere that afternoon. It’s pretty hard to argue with photos (which all have their own meta data). Just one snap of Adnan at track practice, at the library, or anywhere he said he was during those 21 minutes, and this whole thing could be settled. Maybe.

Apps and location services

Photos are great, but even better are publicly shared, GPS-tagged posts of those photos on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. But almost every social interaction could log a location that would be far more accurate and reliable than cell tower pings (the source of much doubt in the fifth episode). And according to Pew, 81 percent of teens are using at least one social network.

Koenig says early in the first episode, “This search sometimes feels undignified on my part, I’ve had to ask about teenagers’ sex lives, notes they passed in class, their drug habits, their relationships with their parents.” But how much of that can they possibly remember in any detail or with any accuracy? I can remember all the awful band T-shirts I wore in high school and what I was doing the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, but give me a fairly random date and ask me what I was doing at a specific time that day? Forget it.

That’s true of trying to remember events from just a few years ago, too. But all the apps, photos, and social networks used by high schoolers these days make it easier than ever to retrace their steps. They can scroll back through their text logs and photo galleries on their phones, or search through their Facebook feeds. And now with Throwback Thursday and apps like Timehop, nostalgia for those kinds of details is even trendy.

While there are so many more ways that teenagers can communicate — and be tracked — with their smartphones, it doesn’t necessarily mean that this investigation would be easier in 2014. All this new data comes with new complications. Texts and photos can be deleted by both sender and recipient. While call and SMS records can be obtained by warrant, more and more communicating by teens is done over not just social networks, but services like iMessage, Snapchat and WhatsApp. And most of the useful information from those exchanges is held closely by a variety of tech companies who are increasingly resistant to sharing anything with law enforcement agencies, much less reporters — especially after the semi-recent NSA domestic spying scandals.

It’s hard to say how much of this information law enforcement or Koenig could get their hands on. Privacy laws are still catching up with the pace of technology (Koenig tells us that Adnan’s case was the first to ever present cell tower pings as evidence in Maryland court, even). And even if the legal side were straightforward, there’s no guarantee that all the additional ways Adnan could have been tracked in 2014 would have produced any new, useful evidence. All it guarantees is there would be a lot more technical fodder for the hit podcast to untangle.