Today is Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday.

His is the definition of a life well lived. I’m reminded of the time I made the pilgrimage to Plains, Georgia, the former president’s hometown to attend his church, where he continued to teach Sunday School well into his 90s.

It was January 17, 2016, and, like most Sundays, there was a crowd. People from all over the country showed up to catch a glimpse of the man, and my girlfriend at the time and I were among those wandering nervously through the parking lot to stand in line for a chance to get into the main sanctuary.

Based on the sheer number of people who make the visit, getting into the actual sanctuary is no guarantee. Maranatha Baptist Church had long ago figured out how to deal with the crowds, and it was set up with an overflow area where those unlucky enough to be late to the line would be sent to watch a live video feed of the sermon, which was preceded by remarks from President Carter.

The line crawled along, and at some point, we began getting instructions from a no-nonsense woman named Miss Jan. She laid down the law for those in attendance, reminding us that while the trip might be a touristy, bucket list item to cross off for us, it was a regular Sunday for them, a day of worship. She would stand for no disruptions in that sacred space, and she’d clearly seen enough visitors not to worry what you thought about her demeanor.

We got to talking with her before we took our seats in the overflow area, and she warmed to us immediately. I think she probably enjoyed our Southern drawls. We were getting ready to resign ourselves to having just missed out on the sanctuary when she called us forward and granted us entry; she’d found room for us.

True to form, President Carter greeted the sanctuary, knowing full well that its packed seats were there to see him and that many of us had come great distances for the privilege. He went around the room, asking for visitors to call out the states from which they were visiting. I can’t remember if we called out “Mississippi,” or if someone else beat us to it.

After the service, we joined the long line once again, because as was their custom, President Carter and his beloved Rosalynn would take a seat and welcome all who wished to have a picture made.

Miss Jan found us once again, and we thanked her for helping us inside. She confessed to liking us, especially me and what she called my “bedroom eyes,” and shared a laugh before she told us it was nice to meet us and left us.

After we got our photos, we found our way to a lunch spot she’d recommended to us, and a healthy helping of Southern cooking, we paid our bill (and Miss Jan’s as well) and explored a little more of Plains.

The town itself, along with that down-to-earth experience at the church, is emblematic of Carter’s appeal. He came across as an everyman. His presidency was before my time, and it was only ever spoken of by my dad as a regrettable thing—the presidency that, despite voting for him twice as he’d been raised to do, pushed him into the arms of the Republicans. During my lifetime, Carter’s was a name associated with good deeds. His dedication to Habitat for Humanity was legendary, and I thought of him on builds in Knoxville during law school. His commitment to human rights was steadfast, and in contrast to the war-time posturing of the Bush administration of my formative years, it reminded me that American strength can take on many looks. Same for the Christian faith, for which he was a steadfast advocate. Those same years of Bush II are highly associated with his brand of compassionate conservatism influenced by his Christian faith, and it was easy to see evangelical power growing to the point where it eclipsed most other views of the faith. Those same trends have continued right off the tracks, as countless conservative evangelicals would charge the gates of hell with a water pistol in the name of Donald Trump.

But President Carter’s was a brand of Christianity that kept its view on what life and political policies might prioritize if they were truly concerned with the biblical teachings of Jesus. As things in both the country and many churches moved far away from that, it’s a testament to President Carter’s character that he stood firm. He remembered what he’d been taught at a young age. He remembered where he’d come from. He took both with him into the wider world of Washington, D.C. and international politics, and he came home to Plains, unchanged and undeterred. If any of them deserve to see 100 years young, it’s Jimmy Carter. Happy birthday, Mr. President.

Ten Worth Your Time

1. While reading Claire Dederer’s book, Monster: A Fan’s Dilemma, which is in no small part a text about cancel culture, I separately came across this Chicago Magazine piece about a school that found out its long-serving and widely beloved janitor was, in a previous life, a member of the Nazi SS and a guard at Gross-Rosen, a forced-labor concentration camp. It’s a great story, well told in its own right, but as a sort of unofficial companion piece to what I was already reading, it became an interesting example of reckoning with monstrous acts and the concept of cancellation. To say it was a different time is to put it mildly.
2. Continuing with the theme of Nazi atrocities, this Atlantic piece by Chris Heath on a secret everyday diary of a man who lived just down the road from sustained large-scale Nazi killings which they seemed to think were secret. From the dek to the story: “As the Nazis performed executions deep in the Lithuanian woods, one local man took detailed, dispassionate notes. He was unwittingly creating one of the most unusual documents in history.”
3. Atrocities continue, and that’s kind of the point of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book, The Message. A long profile in New York magazine talks to the writer as he recounts how he became so obsessed with the plight of the Palestinians, which makes up one of the three long essays of the book.
4. Tonight the vice presidential candidates will face off in a debate, and it feels like a fair time to remind folks of Project 2025 (and how JD Vance authored a foreword to Project 2025’s creator Kevin Roberts’s new book). As for Project 2025’s contents, here’s a roundup from NiemanLab of what its supporters have in mind for just the world of journalism.
5. Speaking of journalism, maybe you’ve heard about the journalism scandal setting New York media circles on fire? I’m talking, of course, about New York magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi’s inappropriate relationship with source and profile subject, RFK Jr. Here’s one of the first fully reported stories on exactly what went down, as best we know it, from Vanity Fair. When it comes to why it all matters, this line is perhaps the strongest distillation: “Even if the relationship did not influence her journalism, in a highly volatile election year just the appearance of bias is damaging. They fear the scandal compromises the trust that the magazine’s readers have in the publication.”
6. More journalism news, this one from ESPN as it chronicles the struggles faced by a Pulitzer-winning reporter at the nonprofit Mississippi Today now in the crosshairs of a lawsuit only tangentially connected to her explosive reporting that uncovered welfare fraud that involved the governor and former NFL star Brett Favre. The lawsuit is demanding that she give up her confidential sources or face potential jail time (or more likely staggering fines). The best part of the story is how ESPN got Mark Fainaru-Wada, who’d also faced a lawsuit demanding he turn over sources and potential jail time during his reporting on the baseball steroids scandal, to write it.
7. I learned from this great Bitter Southerner feature on the grassroots groups opposing the book bans in Florida, that my state of Missouri is third in the nation with 333 books banned. It’s a sad thought to realize that forces threaten the public library, a place I drive by daily and one that’s never not bustling with life and activity.
8. The type of politics that led to the Florida book bans was exactly the same type that was running wild in Wyoming when I was living there and reporting on it. Our the nonsense from protests in our libraries even ended up on an episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (see about 22 minutes into this video). And this feature from WyoFile describes how this political movement took hold and how it sustains itself today.
9. The New Yorker’s Critics at Large podcast recently did an episode on depictions of finance in popular culture. It was spurred by the HBO hit show Industry, which just concluded a great third season on Sunday. But it looks at other depictions as well, including Wall Street, The Big Short, and even how finance culture has trickled into social media like TikTok.
10. The Critics at Large episode dovetailed nicely with the third segment in the always excellent Political Gabfest podcast from Slate. They discuss the professionalization of college, and the conversation turns to jobs in finance and how colleges are encouraging these types of careers.

More From Me

Over on my blog, I’ve been writing about various topics of interest to me.

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Culture Diary

Here’s a collection of what I’ve been consuming in the past week.

The legend for my list was stolen from Steven Soderbergh, where ALL CAPS represents a movie, Sentence Case is a TV show, ALL CAPS ITALICS is a short film, Italics is a book, and bold is a live performance or show. A number in parentheses after a TV show highlights how many episodes I watched. An asterisk after an entry means it’s a rewatch. The source of the movie or show, whether streaming service, physical media, or in theaters, is shown in parentheses as well.

9/23: M.A.S.H. (Criterion Channel); Industry, S3 (Max); COP (Criterion Channel)

9/24: Only Murders in the Building, S4 (Hulu); DAYS OF HEAVEN (Criterion Channel)

9/25: ABSENCE OF MALICE (Criterion Channel); MY COUSIN VINNY (Criterion Channel); NIGHT MOVES (Criterion Channel); Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, S11 (Max)

9/26: MEGALOPOLIS (theater)

9/27: Survivor, S47 (Paramount+); WOLFS (AppleTV+)

9/28: Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, Claire Dederer

9/29: Industry, S3 (Max)