dressed in layers, smiling in the eyes
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Jumpstack! This time, we’re putting things together by taking them apart: scandals, societies, and smiles. Let’s jump in!
What’s past is prologue
I was invited to preview the first episode of The Gravy Train, a new podcast that drops today.
This narrative on the Rob Ford mayoralty is hosted by Jordan Heath-Rawlings, who takes us deep into the chaos therein without judgement, but with an anthropological eye for detail.
The Gravy Train doesn’t come to bury RoFo, nor to praise him, but to search for how we were oblivious to the fact that he was not a singular aberration: he was the vanguard of a new power in politics that would manifest globally.
Assembling an oral history through Toronto city councillors and journalists, Heath-Rawlings draws a surprising and fascinating picture of the man, pinpointing the strategies Ford took to ingratiate himself to the citizens of the city while upending norms in council.
I only started my Twitter account to vent about Rob Ford. So, while I have clear opinions about the podcast’s subject, it was a refreshing review of the era that’s now arm’s-length in the past.
We may know how the story ends, yet it still creates a suspense around a question: do we truly know how it began?
(You can access the podcast series at thegravytrainpodcast.com.)
Respect for taxpayers
Monica Potts delves into the municipal politics in Clinton, Arkansas and finds, within her hometown, a sentiment shared with our own Ford Nation: a deep suspicion of taxes and a dismissal of government infrastructure, mainly in those who did not recover as well from the Great Recession as others did.
As she explores the story of a town that was outraged at the concept of a librarian making more than $20 an hour, she finds a shared attitude of “we don’t need it and we don’t want it,” even when there’s evidence to the contrary:
It makes me wonder if appeals from Democratic candidates still hoping to win Trump voters over by offering them more federal services will work. Many of the Democratic front-runners have released plans that call for more federal tax investment in rural infrastructure. Mr. Widener told me he had watched some of the Democratic debates, and his reaction was that everything the candidates proposed was “going to cost me money.”
As we watch Canada’s federal election results come in next Monday, it will be prudent to watch where the votes of our country’s similar thinkers will go.
Put on a happy face
I had no idea about the history of the smile, or that there was a history of the smile at all—or that it was a history filled with creepy experiments—until I spotted this link:
I also didn’t know that smiling was interpreted differently around the globe, as explained in the revealing article by Zaria Gorvett:
In many parts of the world, this change of etiquette never happened. One common Russian proverb translates as ‘smiling with no reason is a sign of stupidity’, while a government leaflet on working in Norway warns that you’ve been in the country too long if you assume smiling strangers are drunk, insane or American.
This may also explain why that old adage of smiling your way into a good mood never actually worked out.
Achievement unlocked
The Jumpstack now has 500 subscribers! I understand this is a milestone, but I’m just marvelling that enough people have allowed my newsletter into their inboxes to form a union. Thank you so much for your interest and support, and I’ll see you next week!
— Jump