Jennifer Senior
@JenSeniorNY
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Currently: Staff writer @theatlantic . Formerly: Columnist @nytopinion ; daily book critic @nytimes . Author of All Joy and No Fun and On Grief. Wife, mom, etc.
New York
Joined May 2013
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This is the story of what followed—and what I learned about love, grief, and the stories we all need. 8/8
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Notable: Joe Biden has twice tonight admitted he made mistakes.
I want a president who does that.
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We now live in an alternate-universe season of The Apprentice, in which a new guy gets fired each week for sexual harassment. Except the host.
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What's breaking my heart right now is Ford's desperate and quite earnest desire to please.
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Still marveling at the irony that Trump, out of office, was hoarding documents he was famous for never reading while *in* office.
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I cannot believe what Trump is doing to my city. If my column could cry, it would.
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Interesting: The overwhelming majority of former White House staffers have now publicly said that the election *wasn’t* stolen. Whereas the overwhelming majority of Republican members of Congress still say it was.
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I'm just astonished by how blunt Hillary was in her interview with me yesterday. She's genuinely afraid—as I am, as so many of us are–that this country will descend into minority rule.
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Hey,
@jack
: Is there a reason why esteemed epidemiologists and contagion experts and virologists like
@NAChristakis
,
@mlipsitch
,
@trvrb
, and
@florian_krammer
aren't verified, while verified kooks are still spreading misinformation? They're indispensable voices right now. Thanks.
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Imagine his surprise when someone explains that on average we all have one testicle.
Interesting that ActBlue raised an average donation of $30.38.
This would imply people are donating in uneven numbers, including pennies, which would be odd. OR it would indicate untraceable foreign donations and an exchange rate translation, which would be illegal.
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I too had doubts about Biden, certain that on Nov 6, I'd be on a flight bound for another hemisphere, squinting back at the smoking ruins of democracy, praying I wouldn’t turn into a pillar of salt. But the SOTU showed he's still the king of "the connect":
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So … I just did a long feature for the Atlantic about friendship in midlife. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while now. Published online today. 1/8
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So, I just did an essay for the upcoming issue of the Atlantic about how old we are in our heads.
I personally am obsessed with this question. If you ask someone “How old are you in your head?” they almost immediately grasp what you mean. 1/6
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Thread about my cover story today in
@Theatlantic
:
My brother's roommate, Bobby McIlvaine, was killed on 9/11. They'd lived together since college. Bobby was 26 years old. 1/8
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Jeff (Bobby's brother) and Jen (Bobby's almost-fiancée) seeing each other last night for the first time in 20 years.
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"President Trump, hellbent on re-election, is focused on massaging numbers and silencing bearers of bad news. That’s what autocrats do. And it’s endangering lives."
Want proof? Look at all the folks wheeling
@s
at me about how
#Covid2019
is just a flu.
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But hey, I write about all this stuff! What it takes to maintain friendships. What made some of mine unravel. (This piece is quite personal.) Because friends! They’re fabulous! And part of my aging plan. We should assign them higher priority, I think. 8/8
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Dare I say it? Have we finally reached the Trump tipping point? [Insert sound of me knocking on wood here.] My column:
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"Trump's advisors are desperately attempting to create a safe space for our president, when the president should be creating a safer nation for all of us." My column on the dire consequences of sending a narcissistic personality to the White House:
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Gotta love New York. I was in the local supermarket when the earthquake happened, and the manager, who immediately got on the phone to talk to his wife, shouted out to the whole store, “They felt it in Bay Ridge!”
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Can we discuss long Covid for a sec? I know: You're over it. I was too, until I got it. I'd now like to talk...etiquette. In the Atlantic today, I offer a civilian’s guide to navigating the sensitivities of the furious, frustrated, irritable millions of us who are suffering...1/8
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Whole generations of adults were lost to institutionalization. They were warehoused, hidden away, forgotten. So many of us colluded in their erasure.
This piece is my small attempt to un-erase one of them. 8/8
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This is truly Marie Antoinette refurbishing Versailles.
I am excited to share the progress of the Tennis Pavillion at
@WhiteHouse
. Thank you to the talented team for their hard work and dedication.
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When a pathological CEO gets fired, he torches the company. When a pathological president gets fired, he torches democracy. My column about what Trump's personality disorder has ultimately wrought:
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We’re in that home stretch before bedtime, when the kid has one meltdown after another until he passes out.
Apparently there was some drama while President Trump was taping his 60 Minutes interview today. He abruptly ended his solo interview after around 45 minutes & did not return for a scheduled walk & talk he was supposed to tape with Pence,
@abdallahcnn
and I are told by sources.
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I have a joke about pi, but it’s a little irrational.
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The idea that docs and nurses are surreptitiously stealing masks, rather than going through them like peanuts to save the sick and the dying, is conspiracy-mongering at its most irresponsible and demented. And the president just implied it on national television.
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Anyway, if you’re as beguiled by this subject as I am, you can read about it here: 6/6
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Her distinction that they weren't laughing *at* her; they were laughing with each other—that's the kind of emotional specificity that makes her testimony so powerful. She took the time to make the distinction between being mocked and being used.
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"We can’t see the African Americans dying of covid inside our hospitals, but we can see George Floyd cruelly singled out for asphyxiation in the street. His death is a symbol of the obscene inequality and racial hostility of this moment." My column:
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Most interesting to me: The second Rogan’s guest learned that *Trump* said it, he was like, “Meh, he messed up his words.” (And Rogan had the same rxn, shrugging, “He fucked up.”) Suddenly it’s not a sign of mental incompetence; it’s just an everyday-fallible oopsy.
MUST-WATCH:
@joerogan
says people regret voting for Biden and labels him mentally incompetent for talking about “airports during the revolutionary war” — then fact-checks himself… and slowly realizes TRUMP SAID IT. Whoopsy!🤦🏻♂️
More:
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What's astonishing about this State of the Union is how *interactive* it is. Biden is actually *engaging* with his hecklers, nudging and challenging and gently razzing them.
He still believes that those who disagree should talk to each other.
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Cognitively trying to process this.
Yes I read this. Found it striking. And haunting. What happens in just one family.
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My attempt to explain why, 33 years after his first presidential run, this is at long last Biden's moment. His weaknesses finally became his strengths:
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Still can’t get over that Paul McCartney, possibly the world’s most eligible 26-year-old bachelor, choose a woman with a six-year-old daughter and cheerfully dove right into the role of stepdad, then dad.
How I love this.
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A thread about my latest story for
@TheAtlantic
, September’s cover. It’s online today and by far the most personal thing I’ve ever written. 1/8
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So glad that whole replacing-the-US-Attorney thing worked out.
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I have wanted to tell this story for 14 years. Today, I finally did.
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*Millions* of others also think about doing business in China?
I, for one, have never thought about doing business in China.
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Carmen Ayala, the extraordinary woman who cared for my aunt, died two days after my cover story about Adele went to press. Rather than add an italicized coda to the piece online, I wrote a separate obit for her. Like my aunt, she deserves to be celebrated.
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Vice President Mike Pence may speak about a “whole-of-government approach” to this pandemic, but what we truly have is a government of holes. My column this week about the dire consequences of a hollowed-out administration:
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In my story, I then go on to tell a seriously unfiltered anecdote. But you get the idea. The point is: Be gentle with us. Don’t judge; don’t pity. Something gets all of us, eventually. You can read more here: 8/8
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Been buzzing through news and opinion stories today, and everywhere I turn, there seems to be a reference to a piece by
@propublica
. Can we just pause to applaud the work this org is doing? An unambiguous force for public good.
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That press conference of Trump’s last night was positively chilling. Republicans: Now really is the time to step up. My col:
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This goes beyond alternative facts. She's now telling us that the police officers who'd been brutalized and dehumanized had alternative feelings.
She's utterly invalidating their experience. Gaslighting has become the GOP's new way of life.
Laura Ingraham is giving out best performance awards to police officers from today’s hearing
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"His prefrontal cortex — the very part of the brain that controls executive function, anticipating and regulating and decision-making — is entirely offline." My guided tour through Trump's brain:
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When that squawking you hear is the sound of chickens coming home to roost.
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Glad to see that Shake Shack returned its PPP money. Now, how about Potbelly sandwich shop and Ruth's Chris steak houses? These chains dipped their snouts in the trough at this neighborhood bakery's expense. My col:
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If you can’t appreciate how good
@maggieNYT
is—that she has mastered the art of minefield-walking—you’re smoking something.
(Feel free to @ me all you want. I’m 53 and I’ve had long Covid for 13 weeks. I’m many, many exits past giving a damn.)
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Yesterday, the US recorded the most new coronavirus cases it has ever had in a single day, thanks to surges in the South and West. Yet when I wrote this in a March 24 column, I got nothing but trolling for it. Cascades of it. It was relentless.
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“It just sucks when you are fighting with your own head.”
That, Simone Biles, may be one of the most perfect, economical descriptions of anxiety I’ve ever read.
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Ask those separated children whether Rod Rosenstein was just doing his job.
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Interviewed Fauci this morning. My heart goes out to him. Each day, it must feel like he's trying to stand on top of a bowling ball. Throw your weight in any one direction and *boom*. See this exchange from our conversation:
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Congrats to
@gtconway3d
, who came up with the week’s best hyphenate: “Payer-off-of-porn-stars”. Quintuple barreled! As is his gun.
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Tomorrow's headline in NYT: Women To Form Their Own Planet; Leave Dishes In Sink, Bring Laptops
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My column today is a transcription of an inner scream that’s been years in the making.
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I thought I was the only one who’d hit a wall, pandemically speaking. Nope. The data say it’s happening to most of us. Wrote a column about it:
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Then one day you look up and discover that the ambition monkey has fallen off your back; your kids are cheerfully indifferent to your company; your partner may or may not still be by your side.
And what, then, remains?
With any luck, your friends.
EXCEPT: 5/8
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So, this upcoming coronavirus briefing? When I spoke to Dr. Fauci about it this morning, he still didn't know if he was invited to it. "To be honest with you, I don’t know. They haven’t really said who’s going to be there." Our interview:
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You gotta get past the tripwires. There are so many in midlife that bust friendships apart. You lose friends to marriage, to parenthood, to politics. To geography, to success, to failure. (Envy, dear God—it’s the mother of all unspeakables, the lulu of all shames.) 6/8
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Trump's policy is "If we see a problem, we'll test there." Which is basically like offering to use a condom after you’ve gotten a woman pregnant. Why does it take Trump so long to do the right thing? My col:
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I’m 53 in real life but think of myself as 36.
I have theories about this. I share some of them. 4/6
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Also also: Can we talk depression? It’s overwhelming, in my case. Ghastly. Some of it is probably biologically driven, caused by COVID itself. But some of it is the realization that everyone else is leading their lives and I’m not, and I don’t know if I ever will again. 5/8
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Bobby was unusual, dazzling, and endearing in a thousand ways, but one of them was that he was a furious journaler. Kept diaries since he was a teenager. Wanted to be a writer. His family got not one but *two* condolence notes from Toni Morrison, with whom he took a class. 2/8
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Why is this day different from all other days?
Other days we do not even impeach once; today, we’ve impeached twice.
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There is literally no difference between me and J.K. Rowling. We both write for a living. We both wear shoes. We both like cocktails.
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This went viral a few days ago, but I missed it, so I'm posting it for those who need it now—and every day.
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I have no clue what Bannon will say. But these hearings have clearly had more power than anyone in Trumpworld had anticipated. And the specter of prison can be very motivating.
For more about Bannon, see my profile of him in the summer issue. 5/5
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Because I’m middle-aged, I’d been reflecting on my friendships anyway. It’s at this stage that you realize how *very much* you need your friends. 3/8
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The last in a blistering series by
@gtconway3d
, but this time without the satire. A no-holds-barred valediction.
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This is one of the many of problems with having a president who’s a malignant narcissist: We haven’t had a glimpse of generosity in four years. He’s normalized moral cynicism.
I wrote it about this for Sunday.
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For starters: Asking “Are you doing any better?”, well-intentioned as it is, doesn’t help. I’m still declining in many crucial respects. People don’t realize that this is a chronic illness, cause unknown, cure unknown, recovery timetable – assuming there is one - unknown. 3/8
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Friends—
My first story for The Atlantic, "What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind," will be published as a book this April, under the title "On Grief." A number of you have told me you'd like to give this essay to loved ones in mourning; you can now pre-order.🙏
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This year, the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, I thought: I wonder if Jen is ready to give that diary back, or at least let the McIlvaines see it. 7/8
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It's a cliche (but true!) that the pandemic has made most of us contemplate our friendships—all those hours in isolation amounted to one long spin of the centrifuge, separating our thickest friendships from the thinnest. BUT 2/8
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Store stuff in the shower, and it’s almost guaranteed to leak [ducks tomatoes].
Cc
@gtconway3d
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This crisis has utterly unhelmed and unmasked Trump. He’s incapable of leading. Truth, decency and self-possession have been in quarantine from the start.
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This was as eloquent a version of my inner scream as I could muster. Trump is, at this point, dangerous. We have not just a public health crisis on our hands, but a crisis of information and legitimacy. We're running without a rudder.
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Fox has been praising his calm, clear-eyed leadership for the last hour. Confirmation bias is as infectious as any virus.
Let this sink in.
During a worldwide pandemic creating ongoing economic shock Trump ACCIDENTALLY ANNOUNCED A BAN OF CARGO SHIPMENTS FROM EUROPE
This is an absolute circus.
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Another phenomenon: I find myself filtering a lot less of what I say these days, because this state of awfulness may be how I spend the rest of my life. I’ve become Bill Murray in the bathtub in Groundhog Day, that toaster oven nestled under his arm. 7/8
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This slugfest is doing no one any favors, I fear, except Trump.
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@WindsorMann
@gtconway3d
Yup. “A soulless man with a broken mind” could be Trump’s epitaph.
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I write A LOT about envy. Oof. When Paul Bloom taught a course about the seven deadly sins at Yale, he said it was the *one* sin his students never boasted about. 7/8
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Yet we seem to have an awfully rough go of locating ourselves in time. The gulf between how old we are and how old we believe ourselves to be can often be measured in light-years—or at least a goodly number of old-fashioned Earth ones. 3/6
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Jen took one look at that diary and realized her name was all over it. Asked if she could keep it. Bobby's father said yes. Big mistake. Bobby's mother badly wanted it. That diary was one last, bittersweet chance to spend time in her son's company again. 4/8
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Though I don't know her personally, I would like to drive to
@MollyJongFast
's house and give her a hug—precisely because she's making hugs a more imminent option for us all.
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Shortly after Bobby died, his father went to his apartment to clear out his belongings. Bobby's soon-to-be-fiancée, Jen, was with him, as were other friends. Bobby's last diary was still sitting on his desk. 3/8
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Move over Ivanka. Now we're all the traumatized children of a pathological narcissist. My latest col:
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So this is how 2020 ends: With a Kickstarter campaign to fund democracy.
Here's the deal: Because President Trump refuses to concede and is delaying the transition, we have to fund it ourselves and need your help.
If you're able, chip in to help fund the Biden-Harris transition.
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Most moving response I got today to my column about holding top Trump officials accountable for family separations.
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There were reasons for all this. There always are. Still, it all ended in terrible anger and sadness. The McIlvaine family never saw Jen again. Helen thought about that diary for years, wondering what was in it. 6/8
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Intrigued to see Bannon's about-face on the J6 committee. When we were last face-to-face (3/30), he was v excited about his latest scheme: "If we execute, it'll be classic honey badger."
His plan had been to subpoena the J6 committee members. Didn't get traction, obvs. 1/5
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