Monday
I was at high school during the first Iraq war, when rolling news was a relatively new thing. It was wild to turn on the TV and see a correspondent in a flak jacket, filming the bombing of Baghdad through his hotel window, or standing in front of a chain-link fence by a runway, trying to fill in airtime like it was regular TV.
That was 1991. By the time of the second Gulf war, we were used to live footage from war zones, and nearly 20 years after that – and a decade after the Arab spring – we’ve become accustomed to the role played by social media in armed conflict. On Monday, as Russian troops lined up on the border with Ukraine, the coverage was dissonant in what felt like new ways. Aerial footage of the Russian army looked like throwback visuals from the second world war – the difference being that if you happened upon these images via your social media feeds they were accompanied down the righthand column by a stream of broken hearts, sparkling hearts and disappointed face emojis.
In principle, an account called @funny_vidz posting “stay strong Ukraine” alongside a flexed biceps emoji is no more pathetic than any amount of slightly better-dressed commentary. Nonetheless, the presentation was jarring, as was the White House statement on Monday informing us that a Russian invasion could happen “at any time”. Popping up as a news alert on one’s phone, it had about it the vibe of a five-minute reminder on a dental appointment or your next Zoom meeting. Heads up, guys, war’s on!
Of course, the fact I’m remarking on this at all is completely in line with tradition. The debate around rolling news 20 years ago could be cut and pasted straight into discussions about TikTok coverage of war in Ukraine. Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, went for the full first world war reach in 2003 in a speech that might be dusted off and reused every time. “Had the public been able to see live coverage from the first world war trenches, I wonder for how long the governments of Asquith and Lloyd George could have maintained the war effort. Imagine the carnage of the Somme on Sky and BBC News 24.” Imagine, indeed. Big thumbs down, crying face emoji.
Tuesday
A friend has tickets for The Music Man on Broadway, the hottest show since Hamilton. It stars Hugh Jackman as the conman Harold Hill, who, in the execution of a complicated swindle, tries to sweet talk his way into selling band instruments to the children of a small Iowa town. It is a big, overblown musical of a kind I haven’t seen for years and every song – Seventy-Six Trombones, (Ya Got) Trouble, Till There Was You – is a winner. In a packed theatre, as the orchestra swells and the big numbers get under way, it feels like the perfect antidote to two miserable years.
As Marion the librarian, Sutton Foster is sublime, not least in her ability to suspend disbelief in the face of her co-star. Jackman, spry at 53, turns in a busy performance motored less by the demands of the role than by his obvious enthusiasm for being Hugh Jackman. This is no bad thing if you are, indeed, Hugh Jackman, but for everyone else it can get a little wearying.
It hardly matters. The musical, which was written by Meredith Willson in 1957, does that thing all good musicals do, which is to send up America’s hucksterish values while celebrating something pure-hearted behind them. As with the best shows, there’s always something new. I’ve seen The Music Man a million times and never noticed it: as the children’s instruments, ordered by Hill, arrive on stage on the Wells Fargo wagon, my friend leans in to hiss: “If he’s paid for the instruments what exactly is the fraud?”
Wednesday
The Trojan Horse affair, a podcast put out by the New York Times in conjunction with Serial, is an important and shocking investigation into the 2014 claims made in Britain that a Muslim plot was under way to infiltrate Birmingham schools and radicalise the kids. The podcast exposes the allegations as fraudulent, and nails the racist uses to which they were put at the highest levels of government. According to the podcast’s dogged reporting, the letter at the centre of the story appears to be a hoax.
I start listening to the show while tidying up, and am so gripped that I do a more thorough clean of my house than has been done in two years. It’s not just the drama of the investigation. There is something delicious about the application of the gigantic machinery of American journalism to a story that has its roots in a petty local government dispute.
In an early episode, Brian Reed, the American host and reporter, interviews a woman called Bridget, who works for Birmingham city council. Reed is accompanied by his co-host, a journalist from Birmingham called Hamza Syed, but it’s the American who cross-examines Bridget as if she’s Bob Haldeman. Caught in an apparent contradiction, Bridget titters “I’m not psychic”, a tone – defensive sarcasm masquerading as bonhomie – recognisable to anyone familiar with British bureaucracy. The story had huge ramifications nationally, lives were ruined and entire communities were maligned, all of which the podcast definitively uncovers. Still, for pure entertainment, it’s hard to touch US journalism’s finest presenting, with all the portentousness of Watergate, the scoop “mid-level functionary at Birmingham city council seems a bit shifty and underpowered shocker”.
Thursday
I wasn’t going to watch Reacher, the new eight-episode adaptation of Lee Child’s series of novels on Amazon, but then I did and I urge you to follow me. It’s like a warm bath, a return to the pleasures of 80s TV, when heroic fugitives operating under false names fashioned battering rams out of scrap metal to bring down the bad guys and restore justice to small-town America. There are guns and explosions, but not in a gory, Ozark way, and unlike all other bingeable TV at the moment, nothing about Reacher is in italics. He’s just a guy with massive shoulders, bouldering his way through various villains, the purest pleasure of baloney.
Friday
On the walk to school, my children ask for true stories from the news. They like disaster and mayhem, anything involving people getting trapped in or under things, plane crashes, ship wrecks, extreme weather events, plunging elevators and miraculous rescues and escapes. When the news doesn’t deliver, I scramble for material. We’ve done, in summarised form, Romeo and Juliet (“that’s dumb, why didn’t she leave a note?”), Lord of the Flies (big tick), Mutiny on the Bounty, Rabbit Proof Fence, the Mary Celeste and the Bermuda triangle. Occasionally, I abuse their trust and try to sneak in something slightly more educational. “How about Russia’s imminent invasion of Ukraine?” Instantaneous and categorical “no”.
