Puffarticle

She may have constructed a magical wizarding world, but J.K. Rowling wants to bring you back down to earth.

In a powerful speech made at the 2016 PEN Literary Awards Gala on Monday night, Rowling called out presidential candidate Donald Trump for intolerance and hateful speech.

"I find almost everything that Mr. Trump says objectionable," Rowling said. "I consider him offensive and bigoted."

But Rowling's speech wasn't so much a take down of Trump as much as it was a lambast against those who would silence him.

"But he has my full support to come to my country and be offensive and bigoted there," addressing a petition started to ban Donald Trump from entering the UK.
Rowling then clarified, "If my offended feelings can constitute a travel ban on Donald Trump, I have no moral grounds on which to argue that those offended by feminism or the fight for transgender rights or universal suffrage should not oppress campaigners for those causes. If you seek the removal of freedoms from an opponent simply on the grounds that they have offended you, you have crossed a line to stand along tyrants who imprison, torture and kill on exactly the same justification."

Rowling concluded her speech by invoking the words of Tal al-Mallohi, an 18-year-old Syrian blogger imprisoned for her writing.

"'All you and I have to do is respect each other, tolerate the views of your opponents coolly and patiently. While listening to them, do not think to respond without listening to all opposing opinions.'"

Rowling's speech was not the first time in the night that the evening veered toward politics.

"We have a presidential candidate who deploys insults and unapologetic lies to consolidate his power," said PEN President Andrew Solomon during the gala's opening speech. "We face a larger political establishment that has deliberated escalated xenophobia, frightening everyone so much that many Americans won't leave their country nor rise to welcome those who knock on our door."

And earlier in the year, at the PEN Literary Awards Ceremony, Brooklyn Poet Laureate Tina Chang remarked, "Taking my [family] background into consideration, we would be most unpopular with certain presidential candidates...I think we need fewer walls and more book awards." 

While Chang did not call out Trump by name at the ceremony, she did clarify at a reception afterward, "I think we all knew who I was talking about."

Rowling's own remarks were delivered during her acceptance speech for the 2016 PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award, an annual award conferred to a critically acclaimed author whose work embodies PEN's mission to oppose repression in any form and champion the best of humanity. Past winners have included playwright Tom Stoppard, Salman Rushdie and Phillip Roth.

You can watch Rowling's speech here and check out the full text of the speech below.

Firstly, I want like to say thank you very, very much for this huge honor, given as it is by an organization that I have admired very, very deeply for many, many years. It’s also been an absolute privilege to share the stage tonight with your previous honorees. PEN’s campaigns on behalf of imprisoned writers are essential and inspirational, though it is sad to reflect needed your defense of writers continues to be today.

Speaking personally, I have very little to complain about, where my freedom of expression is concerned. I was once confronted by a Christian fundamentalist in a toy shop here in New York. I had no idea the phrase, “I’m praying for you” could sound so intimidating. A bomb threat was once made to a store where I was appearing. The premise was searched, nothing was found, the event went ahead. And the Harry Potter books have figured frequently on lists of the most banned. But as such lists feature many of my favorite writers, I’ve always been flattered to be included. 

Of course, I can afford to take these things lightly, protected as I am by citizenship of a liberal nation where freedom of expression is a fundamental right. My critics are at liberty to claim that I’m trying to convert children to Satanism. And I am free to explain human nature and morality. Or to say, “You’re an idiot,” depending on which side of the bed I got out of that day.

However, I’ve never taken these freedoms for granted. In my twenties, I worked for Amnesty International where I learned how exactly how high a price people across the world have paid and continue to pay for freedoms that we in the west sometimes take for granted. In fact, I worry that we maybe in danger of allowing their erosion though sheer complacency. 

The tides of populism and nationalism currently sweeping many developed countries have been accompanied by demands that unwelcome or inconvenient voices be removed from public discourse. Mainstream media has become a term of abuse in some quarters. It seems that unless a commentator or television channel or newspaper reflects exactly the complainers worldview, it must be guilty of bias or corruption.

Intolerance of alternative viewpoints is spreading to places that make me, a moderate and a liberal, must uncomfortable. Only last year we saw an online petition to ban Donald trump from entry into the UK. It garnered half a million signatures. Now, I find almost everything that Mr. Trump says objectionable. I consider him offensive and bigoted. But he has my full support to come to my country and be offensive and bigoted there.

His freedom to speak protects my freedom to call him a bigot. His freedom guarantees mine. Unless we take that absolute position without caveats or apologies, we have set foot upon a road with only one destination. 

If my offended feelings can constitute a travel ban on Donald Trump, I have no moral grounds on which to argue that those offended by feminism or the right for transgender rights or universal suffrage should not oppress campaigners for those causes. If you seek the removal of freedoms from an opponent simply on the grounds that they have offended you, you have crossed a line to stand along tyrants who imprison, torture and kill on exactly the same justification.

I’d like to conclude these remarks by reading you two short passages from the blog of a teenage girl. In 2009, Tal al-Mallohi became one of the youngest prisoners of conscious in the world when she was taken from her home by Syrian security forces. She was 18 years old. Her friends and family had to wait 11 months to find that she had been charged with giving aid to a foreign country. Her parents had been permitted to see her only once. There were fears that she may have been tortured.

This is some of the material that was considered so dangerous and inflammatory that she remains incarcerated:

“'I do not like the words of the poet Rudyard Kipling ‘The East is East and the West is West and never the twain shall meet.’ Instead, I promote the union of the East and West. They meet somewhere. With rational thought, two great souls from here and from there can agree with each other, irrespective of the vast separation of time and space. Oh my brother human, if I disagree with you in thoughts, principles and beliefs, does this deny the fact that we are both human. All you and I have to do is respect each other, tolerate the views of your opponents coolly and patiently. While listening to them, do not think to respond without listening to all opposing opinions.'"

I repeat that beautiful plea for plurality, tolerance and the important of rational discourse in the hope that Tal al-Mallohi will soon be freed. In the meantime, long may PEN continue to fight for her, for the freedoms on which a liberal society rests, on without which no literature can have value. Thank you very much indeed.

His disdain for the press can be traced back to the days when he was a mainstay on the cover of New York City tabloids. At Trump’s 44th birthday party in 1990, Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett, who had been writing muckraking stories on him for over a decade, was arrested and put in jail for defiant trespass.

“If he thinks you’ve done him wrong in a particular kind of way, there are very few limits,” Barrett told BuzzFeed News, describing how, when he first interviewed Trump in the late 1970s, the young mogul warned him that he had caused a reporter to go broke. “I think he was making it up at the time,” Barrett said, though he took it as a veiled threat. (Before the Village Voice ran the series of stories Barrett was working on, Roy Cohn, the infamous former Joseph McCarthy aide whom Trump adopted as his own attorney, wrote a letter to the paper threatening a libel suit.)

Trump’s 1990 birthday party, held in the Crystal Ballroom at Trump’s Castle, one of his three financially declining Atlantic City casinos, was a show of happiness and social clout in the midst of the first major spate of critical media coverage of Trump’s career. As news of his divorce from Ivana, his affair with Marla Maples, and his failure to make scheduled debt payments turned a previously fawning press negative, Trump allowed entertainment reporters to cover the sycophantic festivities. But Barrett was blacklisted.

After being denied entry to the party, Barrett staked out a spot in Trump’s path as he approached the ballroom to ask him directly to let him in. The tycoon ignored the personal appeal and his bodyguard blocked Barrett from getting any closer.

Barrett’s third try was to sneak in, climbing the steps of a nearby stairwell, which he found led to a balcony connected to the ballroom. Thirty seconds later, he recalls, he was in handcuffs, under arrest by a sergeant from the Atlantic City Police Department on a charge of defiant trespass.

Meanwhile, Timothy O’Brien, Barrett’s research assistant for his 1991 book Trump: The Deals and the Downfall, was sitting in the crowd, taking notes on the cultish celebration of Trump. Dressed up in a jacket and tie, O’Brien, now the editor of Bloomberg View, had been standing in the lobby when a waiter offered him a glass of champagne, mistaking him for a casino patron. The staff was eager to fill up the ballroom (which O’Brien said remained ⅓ empty the whole night), so he took the champagne and walked right in.

Not yet on the magnate’s radar, nobody questioned O’Brien as he watched the show, observing Trump express gratitude to his father, who briefly joined him onstage, then receive televised birthday messages from Dolly Parton and Elton John. Also featured was Robin Leach, the host of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” who stepped out of a giant replica of Trump’s soon-to-be-bankrupted airline, Trump Shuttle, and a performance from comedian Andrew Dice Clay. Joe Piscopo of Saturday Night Live sang “Happy Birthday” to Donald Trump in the voice of Frank Sinatra.

Years later, O’Brien found himself on the receiving end of Trump’s wrath.

While O’Brien was working on his 2005 book, TrumpNation, Trump bragged that, if he didn’t like the final product, he could always go on TV and claim that the author “loves men” and “loves boys.”

So it was no surprise that, when the book argued that Trump’s net worth was far lower than the $4 billion he personally estimated, placing it at closer to $250 million, Trump lashed out. Trump sent a legal team to film one of O’Brien’s book readings and put people in the audience to ask why the reporter had set out to hurt Trump. O’Brien told BuzzFeed News that one of Trump’s lawyers approached him to say he was a “very good fiction writer.”

In 2006, Trump sued O’Brien for libel. Though O’Brien won, the lawsuit dragged on for years, not ending until a New Jersey judge dismissed the case in 2009.

“I think he fancies himself to be a sort of tough, street-wise guy when in fact he’s really more of a bully than anything else,” O’Brien said. “And I think he thinks of these sort of moments when he has bodyguards or private detectives or lawyers or other tough guys that he can put out on the street to intimidate people, he sees that as a show of force. When he actually just looks sort of silly when he does it.”

On the night of the birthday party, while Trump was basking in the adulation of his celebrity friends, Barrett was in jail, handcuffed to the wall. While he doesn’t remember how big a fine he ultimately paid, he said two things stuck in his mind from the evening. One is the sensation of being handcuffed.

“It depresses you,” he said. “It’s almost this instant very down feeling because somebody else controls your movement. And I think it really does teach you how important our freedoms are, because when you don’t have it even for just a short period of time, it’s very sobering.”

The other is his bloody cellmate, whom he said masturbated for hours on end.

“He never came, that I can tell you” Barrett said. “And he didn’t stop trying.”

MANILA - Presumptive president Rodrigo Duterte will revive debates on the re-imposition of capital punishment to deliver on his campaign promise to fight crime relentlessly, a close ally said Saturday.

Reviving the death penalty in the conservatively Catholic nation "will not be smooth sailing," but it it should be placed on legislators' agenda, said Senator Aquilino Pimentel, president of Duterte's PDP Laban party.

"I'm sure dito sa Duterte administration, babalik tayo sa debate sa re-imposition ng death penalty. Babalik tayo doon. In the meantime, meron tayong existing na batas, i-enforce na lang yun," he told DZMM.

"Wala na kasi natatakot. Under a President Duterte, matakot na sila," he said.

Former president Gloria Arroyo signed a law repealing capital punishment in 2006, just before she flew to the Vatican for an audience with Pope Benedict XVI and as she grappled with waning public support due to an election fraud scandal.

"Hindi po yan smooth sailing," Pimentel said of the possible death penalty discussions.

"Kasi kung magsu-survey ka sa mga senador diyan, hati-hati ang opinyon, wala pong unity diyan sa death penalty. At least, ma-agenda, mapapagusapan," he added.

Duterte has vowed a "bloody war" against criminals, particularly drug dealers, as he sought to bring to the entire country the anti-crime drive that he said, made Davao attractive to investors.

The tough-talking mayor will also seek a review of juvenile delinquency laws and push for the death penalty for drug-related crimes, Pimentel said.

Duterte will crack the whip on high-profile detainees who have turned their jail cells into extravagant dwellings, the senator said.

"Ang nangayri sa atin, the jailer has lost control of his or her jail," he said.

Successive raids on the national penitentiary since late 2014 have revealed that inmates have built bars and recording studios in jail. Some were even found to have been keeping inflatable sex dolls.

JUBILANT crowds waved Russian flags; homecoming pilots were given fresh-baked bread by women in traditional dress. Judging by the pictures on television, Vladimir Putin won a famous victory in Syria this week. After his unexpected declaration that the campaign is over, Mr Putin is claiming credit for a ceasefire and the start of peace talks. He has shown off his forces and, heedless of civilian lives, saved the regime of his ally, Bashar al-Assad (though Mr Assad himself may yet prove dispensable). He has “weaponised” refugees by scattering Syrians among his foes in the European Union. And he has outmanoeuvred Barack Obama, who has consistently failed to grasp the enormity of the Syrian civil war and the threat it poses to America’s allies in the Middle East and Europe.

Look closer, however, and Russia’s victory rings hollow. Islamic State (IS) remains. The peace is brittle. Even optimists doubt that diplomacy in Geneva will prosper (see article). Most important, Mr Putin has exhausted an important tool of propaganda. As our briefing explains, Russia’s president has generated stirring images of war to persuade his anxious citizens that their ailing country is once again a great power, first in Ukraine and recently over the skies of Aleppo. The big question for the West is where he will stage his next drama.

Mr Putin’s Russia is more fragile than he pretends. The economy is failing. The rise in oil prices after 2000, when Mr Putin first became president, provided $1.1 trillion of windfall export revenues for him to spend as he wished. But oil prices are three-quarters down from their peak. Russian belts have tightened further because of sanctions imposed after Mr Putin attacked Ukraine. Living standards have fallen for the past two years and are falling still. The average salary in January 2014 was $850 a month; a year later it was $450.

Mr Putin was losing legitimacy even before the economy shrivelled. Many Russians took to the streets in the winter of 2011-12 to demand that their country become a modern state with contested elections. Mr Putin responded by annexing Crimea and vowing to restore Russian greatness after the Soviet collapse—“the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century, he called it. Part of his plan has been to modernise the armed forces, with a $720 billion weapons-renewal programme in 2010; part to use the media to turn Russia into a fortress against a hostile West; and part to intervene abroad.

With action in Ukraine and Syria, he has made it appear that Russia is the equal—and rival—of America. That is not only popular among ordinary Russians but also contains a serious message. Mr Putin fears that Russia, in its weakened state, could be vulnerable to what he sees as America’s impulse to subvert regimes using the language of universal democracy. In both Ukraine and Syria, he believes, America recklessly encouraged the overthrow of governments without being able to contain the chaos that followed. He intervened partly because he fears that the revolutions there must be seen to fail—or Russia itself could one day suffer a revolution of its own.

So far his plans have worked. Beguiled by a pro-Kremlin broadcast media, ordinary Russians have been willing to trade material comfort for national pride. Mr Putin’s popularity ratings remain above 80%, far higher than most Western leaders’. But the narcotic of adventurism soon wears off. Since last October, the share of voters who feel the country is heading in the right direction has fallen from 61% to 51%. Russians tired of Ukraine; now Syria has peaked. Sooner or later, the cameras will crave action. Ukrainians are petrified once again.

What does this mean for the West? So far America, at least, has misunderstood Mr Putin’s aims. In the autumn Mr Obama predicted that Syria would be a Russian “quagmire”. Speaking to the Atlantic recently, he argued that Russia’s repeated resort to force is a sign of weakness. That is true, but not (as Mr Obama suggests) because it shows that Mr Putin cannot achieve his foreign-policy goals by persuasion. For him, military action is an end in itself. He needs footage of warplanes to fill his news bulletins. There will be no quagmire in Syria because the Kremlin is not in the business of nation-building.

Mr Obama thinks Russia should be left to its inevitable decline. Like a naughty child, Mr Putin is rewarded by American attentiveness, he believes. Yet, Syria shows how, when Mr Obama stands back in the hope that regional leaders will stop free-riding on American power and work together for the collective good, the vacuum is filled by disrupters like Iran and IS, and by Russia in its search for the next source of propaganda.

So the West needs to be prepared. It is welcome that America is strengthening its forces in Europe. NATO’s European members should show similar mettle by putting troops in the Baltic states—which will require a change of heart in countries, such as Italy, that see any display of resolve as needlessly provoking Russia. If there is trouble, NATO and the EU will need to respond immediately to show that Russia cannot prise open the collective-security guarantee that lies at the heart of NATO.

The biggest test will be Ukraine—a focus of Russian attention and also the country most like Russia itself. If Ukraine can become a successful European state, it will show Russians that they have a path to liberal democracy. If, by contrast, Ukraine becomes a failed state, it will strengthen the Kremlin’s argument that Russia belongs to its own “orthodox” culture and that liberal democracy has nothing to teach it.

Alas, America and the EU have Kiev fatigue. Instead of doing everything in their power to help Ukraine, they expect Ukrainian politicians to prove that they are capable of reform on their own. That is a mistake. They should be offering financial help and technical advice. They should help root out corruption. And they should be patient.

Eventually, deep Russian decline will limit its aggression. For the time being, however, a nuclear-armed Mr Putin is bent on imposing himself in the old Soviet sphere of influence. In Mr Obama’s last year as president, Mr Putin, fresh from Syrian success, could yet test the West one more time.

Could John Kasich be single-handedly destroying a political party?

Either by helping Donald Trump win the Republican nomination or by dragging the party into an ugly contested convention, Kasich seems to be causing a lot of trouble.

Serious presidential candidates normally leave the race when they no longer have a chance to win. This is an important part of how the nomination system functions. If losers drop out, then voters in subsequent states -- voters who might not follow politics enough to know which candidates are serious contenders and which aren't -- won’t waste their voters on the also-rans.

Winnowing is how most nomination fights are decided: Eventually, only one candidate, the winner, remains. That’s important too, because (as we’re learning now) the national conventions aren’t really well-equipped to function as decision-making bodies. Decisions are supposed to be made in the primaries and caucuses.

For a nomination season that has seemed chaotic at times, winnowing has – with this one exception – proceeded exactly as one would expect. Fears that super-PACs or social media or whatever else would disrupt the normal functioning of the system proved mostly unfounded. Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio: All of them proved capable of raising plenty of money, but none of them survived defeats at the polls.

Except for John Kasich.

The Ohio governor chose to campaign as a moderate, despite having at least as conservative a record as previous GOP candidates such as John McCain and Mitt Romney, or as Chris Christie and Jeb Bush in the current cycle. Kasich instead campaigned as if he were Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor who ran in 2012: by emphasizing his differences with conservative orthodoxy, instead of papering them over.

Kasich then chose to skip Iowa and focus on New Hampshire. This strategy has never produced a nominee since the Iowa caucuses became the first contest back in 1972. Candidates don't have to win in Iowa, but they do have to compete there.

After Iowa, there has never been a point where he should have remained in the race:

-- In New Hampshire, his 16 percent was disappointing: second place, but well behind Donald Trump, and only matching the 17 percent Huntsman won in 2016.

-- South Carolina (8 percent of the vote) and then Nevada (4 percent) were wipeouts. 

-- On Super Tuesday, he lost one state he campaigned in – Vermont – and was clobbered in the other, Massachusetts. Meanwhile, he won less than 10 percent of the vote in the other nine states. 

-- He targeted Michigan on March 8 and managed to finish third there, while ignoring (and losing) several other states in the first half of the month. 

-- Even on March 15, when he won in his own Ohio, he failed to impress overall, placing a distant third in Illinois and worse in the other three states.

Yet Kasich's choice to stay in the race has mattered. There’s a decent argument that he single-handedly destroyed Marco Rubio, who almost certainly would have had many more delegates if Kasich had dropped out when it made sense to.

And his current campaign makes no sense at all. Kasich inexplicably declined to debate Ted Cruz on March 21 after Donald Trump dropped out of that debate, thus costing both candidates a decent-sized opportunity to impress voters.

Even weirder is his decision to campaign in Utah before that state’s caucuses on March 22. Utah has a 50 percent winner-take-all trigger, and is thought to be a good Cruz state. If Kasich wants a contested convention, he needs Cruz to get that 50 percent and win all of Utah's delegates, thereby locking out Trump. The Ohio governor has other states where he should be devoting his limited resources.

It’s as if his campaign strategist was a Magic 8 Ball.

If only Cruz and Trump remained, it’s possible Trump would just win. Cruz hasn’t shown the ability to win the votes of anyone but the most conservative Republicans, and perhaps he can’t. Theoretically, Kasich and Cruz could coordinate their efforts to focus on each candidate’s strengths (even given that Kasich’s strengths are still largely theoretical at this point). But apparently neither of these would-be Trump stoppers plays any better with others than does the man they’re chasing.

All in all, Trump couldn’t have asked for a better opponent.

A few short blocks from the White House, our new film Dear President Obama: The Clean Energy Revolution is Now (directed by Jon Bowermaster, narrated and produced by Mark Ruffalo) will premiere this week at National Geographic’s headquarters as part of the 24th Annual Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital.

At issue: President Obama’s environmental tenure and legacy, which has included both substantial steps forward and backward. He enacted the automobile fuel efficiency standard, has invested in renewable energy like solar and wind, has taken a strong stance against climate deniers and saw through the Paris climate agreement. At the same time, he oversaw a massive expansion of oil and natural gas drilling, much of it by more and more dangerous and extreme methods, chiefly fracking.

Dear President Obama addresses these contradictions, but more importantly it gives voice to some of the many Americans who have become the non-consenting victims of the president’s “all of the above” energy policy that has so often meant everything belowground, no matter the costs of extraction. In many cases that has meant poisoned drinking water, polluted air, sick families, and communities torn apart. More than 17 million Americans now live within one mile of an oil or gas well, and more still are affected by associated infrastructure such as pipelines, air-pollutant spewing compressor stations and bomb trains.

Most importantly, the film is about the future. It serves as a call to President Obama, in the remainder of his term, to help the Americans who have been harmed, and to get us on a swift path to the clean energy future starting today.

There’s still a lot President Obama can do before he leaves the White House in January. He can finally meet in person with Americans, who have been harmed by oil and gas drilling and fracking, and hear their stories firsthand. He can direct his EPA to investigate the many cases of reported water contamination across this country with the same emergency powers that EPA used in investigating Flint, Michigan. And he can stop all drilling on federal lands, which would prevent harm and do a great deal to truly address climate change by keeping fossil fuels in the ground as climate scientists agree we must.

Ultimately the standard for environmental leadership at this crucial juncture in time is whether the challenge we face is met and whether people are protected. We no longer have time for stepping-stones, and many people ill-affected by extreme fossil fuel extraction are already bearing the tragic costs of inaction and half measures. Countless have been impacted by severe storms, droughts, floods, and fires wrought by climate change, while others living near drilling consistently cite headaches, nausea, asthma and breathing problems, rashes, and nosebleeds, symptoms which only get worse as time goes by.

The United States could lead the world by committing to a clean energy economy. Fossil fuels are the dirty energy of the past. They are on the way out, and everyone knows it. We have the ability to build the renewable energy future now, powered by wind, water, and the sun — a better future for the country, with the added benefit of energy security, jobs and savings for all Americans. The question is how long we allow the special interests of the fossil fuel industry to hold us hostage to a dirty past, and how many more people will be harmed.

Dear President Obama calls for a vision, a plan, and bold leadership to create the clean energy future. It’s a message to President Obama, but also to all elected leaders and the next president.

The film is also continuing to build the powerful grassroots movement that can counter the money and influence of the fossil fuel industry. The movement is the catalyst for change, providing the political backup to make the clean energy transition a real possibility. We’ve seen the growing movement accomplish incredible things, and we’ve seen President Obama respond and change policy positions, as a leader should. We hope it’s President Obama’s back that we can have.

Following the premiere in Washington, D.C., the film will tour across the United States this spring and summer. Advocates at the screenings will organize participants to ask President Obama to use his executive powers to stop drilling and fracking and help those who have already been harmed on his watch. They will organize around local fights to stop oil and gas drilling and its dangerous infrastructure, and to promote clean energy. Advocates will also recruit for a major rally and march outside of the Democratic National Convention on July 24 in Philadelphia, the March for a Clean Energy Revolution — demanding an end to dirty fossil fuels and a quick and just transition to 100 percent renewable energy.

The open question is what President Obama will do during his final months in office: continue listening to the special interests of big oil and gas corporations or act boldly to meet the challenge of our time?

Mark Ruffalo is an actor, director, and advisory board member of Americans Against Fracking.

Jon Bowermaster is a writer, filmmaker, six-time grantee of the National Geographic Expeditions Council, and producer at Oceans 8 Films.

By that point Obama did indeed seem closer to the celebrity class, and more comfortably of celebrity status, than most previous presidential candidates. Will.i.am. had rounded up half of Hollywood to sing along to an Obama speech for a music video called “Yes We Can.”Oprah had given him her first political endorsement ever. And he’d recently toured Europe to great applause. McCain’s ad suggested there was something unseemly in all this human spectacle.

Why, exactly? Celebrities are celebrities, theoretically, because people like them. But Spears and Hilton, the bogeywomen of the McCain ad, embodied the ways that likability can curdle. The ad implied that Obama could turn out to be a Britney or a Paris. In the Britney scenario, he’d crack under pressure. In the Paris scenario, we’d get sick of his shtick. In either case, he’d be exposed as false.

Eight years later, whatever you might think of Obama’s job performance, his celebrity aura hasn’t seemed to hurt him much, if at all. The White House has become a bit hipper than it had been under previous presidents, with a number of young stars from the pop and hip-hop worlds stopping by (as well as a more typical array of venerated literary, musical, and artistic figures). The Obamas, in turn, have acted as performers themselves—slowjamming on Fallon, dancing onEllen, impersonating Kevin Spacey—without triggering major scandal or outsized ridicule. In their engagement with pop culture, the Obamas have created the impression of edginess while also strategically exercising restraint. They’ve harnessed the entertainment-industrial complex without kowtowing to it.

The Obamas make culture work for them, not the other way around.

Never was that clearer than this week, when the White House hosted the cast ofHamilton and the first couple made their debut at the South by Southwest tech and music festivals. As America turns its attention to the election for their successors, we may be witnessing the final push in the Obamas’ cultural front. “This platform is so unique,” Michelle Obama told The Verge for a story about her social-media efforts that published on Monday. “We will never have it again. So we will spend these 12 months on every issue making sure we’re driving to the very end. We figure we want to drop the mic on some of this stuff.”

* * *

Hamilton is the Broadway smash that reinterprets the journey of America’s first treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, as a rollicking rap adventure largely cast with people of color. It’s also perhaps the strongest and most impressive claim Barack Obama can make to influencing pop culture. The first time the playwright Lin Manuel Miranda performed a Hamilton tune in public was at a 2009 White House poetry jam, where he tested out what would become the musical’s title song and opening number.

When introducing a performance from Manuel and other cast members in the East Room on Monday, Obama brought that fact up. He said that while his family is obsessed with Hamilton, Hamilton needed Obama to happen. “Not to take undue credit or anything, this is definitely the room where it happened,” he quipped. It was a classic Obama one-liner: a hip reference used for a dad joke, with the underlying punchline being less about the subject at hand than about Obama’s own power. Hamilton is the biggest musical in the world, but he’s not starstruck. He’s bigger than it. It owes him.

The truth is, they both owe each other some things. Hamilton has frequently been identified as the ultimate “Obama-era” cultural artifact, most substantively in aNew Yorker piece by Adam Gopnik. On one level, there’s the fact that Hamilton’s portrayal of the founding fathers and mothers as black and brown takes on special significance when there’s a black commander-in-chief. “It is President Obama’s point about America’s open-ended and universally available narrative brought to life on stage,” Gopnik wrote.

On another level, Hamilton’s storyline spotlights the kind of oft-thwarted battle for progress—and to marry idealism with pragmatism—that has often agonized Obama’s supporters after hopey-changey 2008. Gopnik argued that Miranda had completed a long-brewing transition in historical interpretation among liberals from aligning themselves with Thomas Jefferson to aligning themselves with Hamilton:

Gopnik suggested that Miranda ended up offering this Obama-friendly message less by design than by intuition. If you look around at the major politically themed works of culture in the past seven years, you often find a similar focus on process, competence, and incremental change for the common good. Steven Spielberg’sLincoln showed one of the most idealized presidents in bargaining mode; Zero Dark Thirty portrayed the defeat of Osama bin Laden as the result of scut work; even the cynical House of Cards has fun imagining a Democratic president murdering ideology in pursuit of concrete policy achievements. It’s not far-fetched to speculate that these are the sorts of works that result when Hollywood watches the charismatic force it helped elect labor unspectacularly, day after day, against gridlock.