The Quiet Radicalism of the Year-End List
In a year in which time itself has seemed to shift, all those “Best of 2017” articles suggest much more than critics’ tastes.
This summer, in reaction to the latest news cycle that had been packed with news of President Trump, CNN that attempted to summarize the administration’s recent—and many—doings. “Trump, in the last four weeks,” the anchor Brooke Baldwin said—at this point she took a big breath to prepare for all the things she was about to list for her viewers—“fires his chief strategist, fires his chief of staff, hires a new one, hires a new communications director, fires him, hires a new one, his fourth in seven months … ” The segment continued on like that for more than two minutes, update after update, reminder after reminder, the list of it all scrolling next to Baldwin on a split screen as she read: not a contextualization of presidential activities
