Nellie Bowles On Ditching Wokeness

She details her travails at the New York Times with candor and good humor.

Nellie is a writer and reporter. She has worked for many mainstream publications, most notably the NYT covering Silicon Valley. Now she is teamed up with her wife, Bari Weiss, to run The Free Press — a media company they launched on Substack in 2021. Nellie’s weekly news roundup, TGIF, is smart and hilarious, and so is her new book, Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches From the Wrong Side of History.

You can listen right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on the scourge of Slack, and questioning whether trans is immutable — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: Nellie growing up in SF with divorced parents; her mother the writer and stockbroker; her dad the entrepreneur; Nellie the tomboy who ran the gay-straight alliance to find a girlfriend; reading conservatives (Paglia, Rand, Coulter) as a liberal teen; working at the SF Chronicle; the NYT full of “intense, ambitious people on a political mission”; James Bennet; Dean Baquet and the “racial reckoning”; the 1619 Project; Donald McNeil; the MSM ignoring antifa; Joe Kahn taking a stand; NPR refusing to cover Hunter’s laptop; lab-leak theory; disinfo as a “useful cudgel”; CHAZ/CHOP in Seattle; Prager U; the Shitty Media Men list; Jordan Peterson and “enforced monogamy”; James Damore; a NYT editor calling Bari “a fucking Nazi”; Nellie falling in love with her; losing friends over their relationship; Nellie being very pregnant right now; male role models for the kids of lesbians; marriage equality; the queer left’s opposition to marriage; when the straights culturally appropriate “queer”; Ptown and Dina Martina; the importance of Pride for small towns; taking my mum to a parade; the US being way behind Europe on trans kids; the profound effects of hormones; the “the science is settled” campaign by GLAAD; detransitioners; Jan 6 and Stop the Steal; right-wing pressure on courts and Congress due to Trump; RFK Jr’s candidacy; the woke blackout on humor; Elon Musk; the mainstreaming of masks and violent rhetoric after Oct 7; Nellie converting to Judaism; and how her book is “not about heroism.”

Coming up: Lionel Shriver on her new novel, Tim Shipman on the UK elections, Elizabeth Corey on Oakeshott, Erick Erickson on the left’s spiritual crisis, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy on animal cruelty, Van Jones, and Stephen Fry! Send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Last week’s episode with George Will was a big hit. A fan writes:

Having waited a few months for your George Will interview, I am pleased to report it was worth the wait. The man is brilliant. His command of the English language knows very few equals, and his understanding of the American experience is phenomenal, near boundless. I read his book, The Conservative Sensibility, when it was initially released, and I intend to do so again! Thank you for having this extraordinary man on your podcast.

Another writes, “I wanted to send a quick note to thank you for the fantastic pod with George Will! Enjoy your summer on the Cape.” Here’s a clip on the mission creep of the executive branch:

Another fan on the “fascinating conversation with Will”:

I especially enjoyed the exchange on industrial policy, but I wish you had challenged Will a bit more. Yes, people did say that Mussolini made the trains on time, but if you read any historical account of that period, it was a complete lie. The economy deteriorated under Il Duce and crony capitalism was rampant.

To be sure, that is the main risk associated with embracing industrial policy. But what would Will say about a country like South Korea, which experienced one of the fastest and most dramatic quantum leaps in living standards in human history after it implemented an industrial policy? Likewise with much of the rest of East Asia and, indeed, China as well? Many of our existing economic pathologies come precisely from the kind of market fundamentalism Will embraces. A debate along those lines would have been very worthwhile.

I should have pushed back more aggressively. But I’m a bit conflicted on this. I share Will’s worry about industrial policy, but I think there’s a rationale for one with respect to materials and industry vital for national security, reliable domestic supply chains, and high-end chip factories. I think the government can play a small role here.

Here’s another listener who agrees I was too weak:

It was so refreshing to hear Will’s lucid defense of classically liberal Republicanism, and of the “churn” of energetic capitalist societies, and of Reaganism, and of bold leadership delivered with a smile.

Will’s comment that many European ethnicities were discriminated against by bourgeois Americans of the early 20th century doesn’t necessarily refute your point that a given society may have a limited capacity to serenely absorb immigrants who code in some sense as “other”, but it serves as a helpful reminder that there is nothing uniquely “foreign” about migrants from Central America or Africa or Asia. So long as American culture continues to broadly promote assimilation (no sure thing, as you point out), we can absorb many, many more migrants.

As something of an aside, I often wonder how much your British upbringing inflects your views on immigration. Whenever you quote Nigel Farage-style, white supremacist talking points — e.g. “I no longer recognize my country” or “I feel like an outsider in my country” — as broadly representative American opinions, I think about how much more diverse the US is than the UK, and how much demographic “churn” there is in so many neighborhoods across the country.

Alas, these growing, thriving urban and suburban precincts are very underrepresented in the Electoral College, which is why I continue to pay some attention to your argument here. Inaccurate as it is, given the demographics of the country, your point probably still matters, since our creaky political structure apportions so much power to a handful of aging Midwestern states. But it doesn’t necessarily reflect the lived experience of the average American.

My frustration with the Electoral College brings me back to Will. Listening to his defense of the American republic, I found myself reveling in nostalgia for the 1980s and wondering what he sees as the roots of our current mess. Does he have any regrets about the policies he advocated for? (He doesn’t seem to.) Does he see any linkages between our wholly unconstrained news environment and campaign laws (enabled by the libertarian legislation he prizes) and the average congressperson’s fear of doing their job? How does he feel about end of the Fairness Doctrine, which has empowered billionaire propagandists like Murdoch and Trump?

I wish you had pressed Will on the roots of the populism he despises. What does he think caused it? (What do you think?) How does he view the origins of the Bush presidency? Does he see any linkage between the hardball GOP politics that actually did steal an election (2000) and the even harder edges of the Trumpist right?

I suppose I should ask him, not you, and perhaps I will — but I’m also interested in your thoughts on the trajectory of American politics from 2000 (when I started college) to our alarming present. The left has overreached — as you remind us constantly — but what about all the ways that the orderly, small-government Republicanism that many pine for enabled the rise of the MAGA right?

Let me end with a note of appreciation. I suspect so many of your listeners cherish your work, as I do, because it is warm and brave and full of rigor. Keep fighting the good fight and thanks for engaging so transparently with your critics.

I explored the roots of the 21st century Republicanism in my 1998 essay “Going Down Screaming” (featured in my collection, Out on a Limb: Selected Writing, 1989–2021). Money quote:

[I]t’s worth remembering that Reagan’s domestic moralism was also of a very different variety than that of today’s conservatives. Rather than sternly criticizing liberal mores, Reagan tended to ignore them, preferring to praise conservative ones, finding in small human examples object lessons of traditional virtue. It was occasionally a goofy moralism, but also a sunny one. Rather than pinpoint moral demons, Reagan would point out moral heroes in the gallery of the Congress during his State of the Union addresses. Whereas conservatives in the 1990s obsessed about Clinton’s draft-dodging, Reagan went to Normandy to eulogize a different kind of ethic. It is a telling contrast. Reagan’s view of America was never bleak, and he was careful to stay away from the front lines of the cultural wars.

A far cry from “American carnage.” Here’s another clip of the George pod, on Ukraine:

On another part of the ranging convo:

The wisdom of George Will’s advocacy for not voting can be evaluated by the results of the 2023 Chicago mayoral election. And the results do not support his assertion that not voting leads to positive results. Voter turnout was 36 percent in the February election, which narrowed the field to two finalists who battled for the 39 percent who turned out for April’s final vote. Brandon Johnson captured 52 percent of that 39 percent, and the Mayor of Twenty Percent was subsequently overwhelmed by the tasks of office, losing control of City Council meetings, placing migrants in unhealthy shelters, proposing to cede the lakefront to the local pro-football team, and spending $30,000 on haircuts.

No movement is rising up to generate much better candidates for what are purportedly our nonpartisan mayoral races. Irrespective of what Thomas Jefferson thinks, I blame Will’s non-voters for giving me less than what I deserve.

Another listener looks ahead:

I am so excited that you will be hosting Lionel Shriver. Her writing is marvelous and sometimes devastating. I have read all of her books, most of them repeatedly. Her prose is of different type, but I rank her with Ali Smith and others. (By the way, if you have not read Louise Welch’s books — particularly The Cutting Room — you are missing out.) I had the privilege of meeting and hearing Lionel Shriver at the Edinburgh Book Festival on several occasions. So thank you for inviting her on!

We just recorded a lovely conversation with Lionel this week and will air it soon.

Next up, a few readers dissent over my latest column, “How Elites Have Empowered the Far Right”:

You wrote: “if you care about the issue [illegal immigration] at all, as more and more Americans do, then Trump is the obvious choice this fall.”

Do you remember your naturalization ceremony? I remember mine. It was in 2018. I was so happy and proud to become an American. The judge who administered the oath spoke to us movingly of how in America no one is above the law, and how Benjamin Franklin had said we have a republic, if we can keep it. I said to myself, “Yes! I want to keep it!”

And now you tell us that Trump — the would-be arsonist of American democracy — is the “obvious choice” because of immigrants. Forgive the profanity, but what the actual flying fuck?

Think of what you are saying! If Trump wins, he will staff his government with his clueless lackeys, prosecute his political opponents, crater the economy, cut taxes for the rich, install more conservative justices (who may go on to overturn Obergefell, for all you know), alienate our allies, let Putin eat Ukraine, let Netanyahu massacre Gazan civilians, and destroy any chance of preventing the worst effects of climate change. But he’ll be really, really, super-duper-awesome at preventing more illegal immigrants from coming here, so he’s the obvious choice? Really?!?

And please dispense with the indignant, “Oh don’t misunderstand me; I don’t want Trump to win; I have said so clearly!” No, you bloody haven’t. You have an extraordinarily frustrating way of giving with one hand and taking with the other; of writing “Trump is unfit and unworthy” one week, and then the next, “Trump is the obvious choice because Biden is [old][woke][senile][too lax on immigrants].” I’m sorry, the nerdy intellectual in me hates typing these words, but this is no time for both-sideism.

Also, while you’re playing your “vox populi vox Dei” card, kindly note that the average American’s biggest concern is the economy and high prices — which Trump is going to make worse, not better. (See this hilarious piece by Jeff Maurer.)

Furthermore, Americans’ dislike for illegal immigration, while understandable, runs headlong into a perennial problem with any electorate (not just American): wanting all the benefits of something without any costs or trade-offs. Do you remember that fun story from a while back where Georgia got serious about deporting illegal immigrants and there weren’t enough farm workers to gather the harvest, and then crops rotted in the fields? The same Americans who scream bloody murder about “the illegals” are going to sign up in droves to pick strawberries and slaughter chickens, right? Right.

Of course, we should solve this problem by having more temporary legal guest workers, but that would require nuanced policymaking. And Trump does nuance like I do the ballet — which is to say, “laughably badly.”

Now that I have unleashed my anger and my first f-word in a Dish dissent, I want to tell you that I agree with you on the merits: immigration is good; it’s the lifeblood of this country; and it should be legal and controlled. Thank you so much for writing these words and setting my mind at ease, because I must tell you, when I read the words “restricting immigration is absolutely critical to defending liberal democracy,” the echoes of “we must stop filthy immigrants from polluting the pure blood of the Herrenvolk/Real Americans™” were just a touch too loud for my liking. Thank you for confirming that you are not that kind of person.

I’m not going to vote for or support Trump. But he’s been right on mass migration and Biden has been disastrously wrong. If that is your defining issue, it’s not a close call. (And to be clear, for me, it is not the only issue I’m concerned with. Climate change, liberal democracy, and the rule of law take precedence.)

Another worries that I am becoming that kind of person:

Thanks for an always provocative discussion on immigration. I did not think I would agree with George Will about much, and I was surprised by his open take on immigration. After the previous week’s talk with Noah Smith, I wonder if their arguments had any impact on your own thoughts on the issue?

If I might add some fuel to that fire, I would recommend a series of books examining the actions of the far right since WWII. The one I am reading right now, Doublespeak: The Rhetoric of the Far Right Since 1945, is a series of essays edited by Matthew Feldman and Paul Jackson. It traces the emergence of the new far right from the ashes of the Nazi era, when speaking of “biological racial purity” was no longer fashionable; and so “cultural purity” became the lingua franca of the re-emergent, pre-war fascist parties of Britain, France, Hungary and others (including the USA); and anti-immigrant sentiment became another cover for racism.

The essays also discuss other pre-war tropes — e.g. International Jewish Bankers, exemplified by the Rothschilds, morphed into George Soros, who now plays that role. And since one could not openly blame the Jews for everything, it was no longer allowed, and “Zionists” took over that role. Islam has also become a convenient target for these groups — and continues the idea that we (the good, white Christian West) are being threatened by these sinister forces.

As you can likely discern, I find that your way of talking about the impact of immigration — the need to preserve cultural consistency that you see as threatened by foreign invasions — is perilously close to the rhetoric examined in that series of essays. I know I’m being probably more than a bit presumptuous, but given your broad following, and the impact you have on many people, I would hope that a discussion with Smith and Will might temper your views a bit.

None of this analysis mentions the fact of massive increases in migration, a record percentage of the country as foreign born, and the global migration crisis that Biden just apparently found out about. When you subject a country to a nearly unprecedented and largely illegal demographic influx, you will get a reaction. Dismissing that reaction as racist doesn’t help solve the problem.

I think a more moderate form of immigration and more orderly, legal process would defuse this. It is not deplorable to want your own country to have enforceable borders. And yes, cultural coherence does matter — and pacing immigration right can become the best of both worlds. Instead we have chaos and too often anyone who wants to stop it is called a white supremacist. Enough.

Another dissent on my column:

A great interview with George Will (in which the subject of immigration came up extensively) and, as always, a great column — except, perhaps, for the last two sentences: “Our elites … still don’t get it.” Don’t they? That would entail them not having seen a single recent poll or having gone to even one town hall. Or is it that the pull of massive donations from the business community (for elected Republicans) and from Hispanic-rights groups (for elected Democrats) and the prospect of a near-endless supply of future voters (for progressive activists) is so powerful that they have no intention of ever curbing mass immigration until it hurts their own political ambitions?

As a member of the Republican base for over a generation, I can assure you that our Senators and presidential candidates are divided into two camps: those who pretend to agree with us on immigration and then tell us to fuck off when they actually get in power, and those who are upfront about telling us to fuck off. And while every prominent elected Democrat and influential progressive will wax poetically about the struggles of poor Americans, they almost all embrace mass immigration of low-skilled workers, which is the ultimate “luxury belief.”

One of the few prominent politicians who spoke about the devastating consequences of mass immigration was noted far-right nativist Bill Clinton, who sounded like a much more articulate Trump in his 1995 State of the Union:

While I appreciate your willingness to be associated with us knuckle-dragging rubes on this issue, I think it is worth making more of a distinction between low-skilled and high-skilled immigration. While polls are now showing a majority of even Hispanics supporting the mass deportation of illegal immigrants, large majorities of Americans support increased high-skilled immigration — including 71 percent of Trump supporters.

It is mass, low-skilled immigration (both legal and illegal), on the other hand, that is crushing small communities, overrunning public schools and hospitals, eating up jobs, and driving down wages for vast numbers of the most vulnerable Americans. I almost fell out of my chair when I first saw an article on CNN, of all places, that reported a sharp decline in average IQ scores over the last few generations. The article assiduously avoids mention of the “I-word,” and the causes are obviously numerous and intertwined, but it’s not a coincidence that countries that don’t have our absurd immigration policies (like Japan or South Korea) haven’t had a decrease.

We remain the most sought-after destination for potential immigrants all over the world. We could be taking in only the most skilled and entrepreneurial immigrants, who would inject rocket fuel into the economy by starting businesses and coming up with a new innovations.

I always use the Harvard example: Harvard could follow the same mantras that are endlessly repeated about immigration — “we’re a university of students,” and “anybody who wants to come here and work hard benefits us” — so that instead of selecting for 4.0 and 1600-SAT students, it would also admit any C or D student. They don’t do that, of course, because making such a choice when you don’t have to is insane.

Agreed on all fronts. And yes, listen to Bill Clinton. Now think of what we haven’t done since 1995. Another reader looks across the Pond:

This is not really a dissent but rather a question regarding your latest column: what exactly makes Nigel Farage far right? You never explicitly label him as such, but the piece as a whole doesn’t cohere without the notion that you’re labeling Farage as far right.

I don’t know a great deal about UK politics, but I follow it some. American coverage of UK and EU politics is not illuminating because anyone to the right of Tony Blair is labeled far right, and today’s Tories seem to be technocrats who lack technical expertise. US coverage of UK politics is a bit like the hysteria at the height of the Me Too movement, where rape and an awkward (but nonviolent) moment were deemed equal offenses in the eyes of the media. It obscures more than it explains.

I take it that Farage led the Brexit movement to some extent, and that Big Media’s take on Brexit was that it was the product of racism. I also realize that the UK has taken a financial hit due to Brexit (although with Covid in the mix, it’s hard to isolate the Brexit impact). But divorce is typically costly. It seems to me that the better question is: should the UK have entered into a marriage in the first place, rather than whether the divorce made sense? Perhaps once the EU has settled down from its temper tantrum, a good free-trade agreement between the EU and UK can be fashioned.

Anyway, I agree with you on US immigration. We need immigrants, but those folks should be admitted (or students permitted to stay and work) via an orderly, legal process. Biden’s refusal to protect our borders could cost him reelection. (I don’t like any of the candidates. If we must have a very old dude, perhaps James Baker could run things.) But the UK is more of a mess on race than we are, which is quite an achievement. For example, the British police are so terrified of being labeled racist that it allows organized grooming to thrive. (There are perhaps analogous stories in the US.)

So, while you make sense on US immigration, you seem to indulge the tropes of conservatism-equals-racism with regard to the UK. Farage announced in an “overwhelmingly white seaside town.” The horror. Is there an EU-approved list of acceptable announcement sites?

My reader is being too sensitive. On immigration, taxation, and the environment, Farage’s Reform Party is to the right of the Brexit Tories. The latest polls show that there’s a real possibility that the party will get more votes than the Tories on July 4. That’s a staggering reflection of the failure of the Tories to control immigration.

A quick correction of a listener:

You posted an email comment last week stating that Taiwan has no draft. That is incorrect; conscription is currently policy in the Republic of China (Taiwan). As a former resident with Hukou (household registration), I refrained from becoming a citizen because I would have been obligated to fulfill my military service requirement.

Another reader writes:

I watched the full TV spot that you discussed where the D-Day veteran said he felt like a foreigner in his own country:

I actually did not hear it as potential bigotry/racism, but rather as an echo of how I feel now. It used to be that serving in the military and in Congress was honorable and an achievement — no longer. I see students take over the quads of elite universities that I have respected all my life, and spout ill-informed and uneducated chants that are — even if they do not mean to be — anti-semitic. I’m concerned that as a practicing Catholic, I may be characterized as a radical or a potential terrorist — given that FBI Richmond field-office memo. And being a female who watches Title IX rights being stripped away one athletic race at a time, due to a few people, I feel lost too.

These are just some of the developments that I see around me that make me question, “How on earth did we get here?” I am not a reactionary, and indeed, I try very hard to be open to other opinions, read a variety of news sources, and I have lived abroad. The group of friends I have built over the years represent a spectrum of what people would call diverse. Yet, I can’t help but think that we are going beyond common sense and rationality.

I feel like a dinosaur being a practicing Catholic, a woman who works in the asset management industry, and having worked as a congressional intern. I appreciate the insights of the Dish. Your commentaries challenge me to examine why I am thinking the way that I am on a particular issue and consider another viewpoint. But, for some reason, your comment about that veteran struck a chord in me that caused me to finally write to you after all this time reading the Dish.

I certainly did not mean to disparage the nostalgic war hero. I deeply sympathize with him. And I sympathize with you too. I was a pioneer of a major social change — marriage equality — and I too am aghast at how fast the cultural change has been even since then, as radicals have coopted and deformed the gay rights movement. I think wanting your country to look and feel recognizable to you in your retirement years as it did when you were a teenager is a completely understandable thing.

A longtime reader shares some sad news:

I wanted to alert you to the passing of the Cato Institute’s David Boaz today. As two gay men who do not identify as progressive, while still being at the forefront of the struggle for equality, you and Boaz have played such an outsized role in the shaping of my political foundations. I’ve been reading you since becoming political cognizant in college, and I had the privilege of interning at Cato when I first moved to DC. I don’t know how much you may have interacted with Boaz, but in my mind you two are linked in a very real way.

Of course, I knew David for decades. He was far more doctrinaire a libertarian than I am, but he was always smart as a whip, generous, kind and principled. We both started a list-serv for non-left gay writers, and it was a wonderful resource for many of us until alas, it too succumbed to trans/queer ideology and I had to quit it. David was one of this gay conservatives who was free of rancor, animus, and cruelty, and who, like the great Jon Rauch, had a temperament we all should envy. His mustache game was also very strong — until chemo robbed him of it. I’ll miss him.

A dog-loving reader has some advice:

I was listening to the pod today, where you said you weren’t able to board an airplane with your pup. I have a hack for you, depending on your willingness to interpret the rules broadly. If you fly American Airlines — which out of DCA is a must — you can certify your dog as a service animal. Folks think you must actually get some sort of certification, but you don’t. You just self-report on a DOT form that you trained Truman as a service animal and AA will give you a service animal ID. My wife and I do this with our 45 lb dog, and we just sit bulkhead in first class. No one gives us an issue!

Truman got even more room on the car ride up:

Speaking of pups, a reader wrote a year ago last August:

In the spring of 2021, you ran a VFYW photo I sent you from Sandwich Bay, Kent, taken in May 2020 during the Covid lockdowns. We had made a clandestine trip to England from mid-May to mid-June, at the height of the lockdowns but before travel restrictions. The airports at both ends were deserted, and on our flight to Heathrow we had about a dozen passengers for company in an enormous Boeing Dreamliner. We lucked into a glorious English spring and took full advantage of it on the Bay.

But I’m reaching out to say how saddened I am for you and Chris that Bowie has died. Your brief message on Tuesday resonated with particular poignancy because I was in Los Angeles with my son David, whose beloved rescue mutt Otto had just had one of his legs amputated due to bone cancer. It was heartening to know that Bowie had managed life well as a triped. It’s more difficult for Otto, who is a month shy of his 11th birthday.

David is now wrestling with what will make Otto happy in the time he has left. There’s no easy way to manage the illness and death of a much-cherished dog, whether it’s the shock of an unexpected cardiac arrest or the slow challenge of cancer. I took comfort from the old Dish thread you linked to, “The Last Lesson We Learn From Our Pets,” especially the great quote from Irving Townsend, paired with the photo of Eddy and Dusty:

“We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own, live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan.”

An update from that reader:

We lost our beloved Otto on the 2nd of February, several days after an ER visit revealed extensive metastasis that would have inflicted much pain and suffering if he had lived. David made the tough decision to euthanize, and thanks to a referral from a friend, entrusted the task to a compassionate vet who came to his apartment. The photo below is David’s last one with Otto, before Dr. Au guided him to a gentle end:

Otto did remarkably well as a triped, and kept his spirits up until the end. David never second-guessed his decision to forego chemo and emphasize Otto’s quality of life.

Even as we’ve all been grieving, David decided earlier this month to adopt another rescue pup, a female this time. He named her Ruby, and he has no idea about her mix: maybe Texas Heeler, a touch of Jack Russell, and perhaps even some Beagle! She has already brought him much happiness:

Truman lifted me out of a low-level depression in the wake of Bowie. Best decision I’ve made in a long time. He’s been a bit under the weather this week, but seems to be recovering now. He’s learning to love the dunes.

See you all next Friday.

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