on group chats, rachel zegler, and following the rules
There’s a certain indignity to existence at the moment. I don't mean that lightly, not at all; I'm just finding it increasingly difficult to maintain any semblance of cool when it comes to the gradual degrading of—everything, honestly.
Take, for instance, the Signal group chat leak: Mike Waltz, national security adviser, accidentally adding The Atlantic's editor-in-chief to his little bombing planning committee. Yes, it's bad. Yes, it displays a staggering level of incompetence from the Trump administration. Yes, Waltz et al are trying to pass off the sizable security breach as some sort of conspiracy theory and not a natural consequence of personal stupidity and hubris.
It's not that I don't care about this. I get it. It's important. It is yet another example of the bumbling ineptitude. (Here's an archive link of the leaked plans btw.) But there's a sort of gleeful fascination with the theater of it all that I'm finding disturbing.
The fact is, most people seem to believe that Waltz and the rest of the Houthi PC small group (I get it, the jokes make themselves) made a mistake not by planning, executing, and emoji-celebrating the strikes that would go on to collapse buildings and kill dozens of Yemenis, but solely by adding Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat and unwittingly exposing the plans to the rest of us.
And I know that many people have become immunized to these kinds of strikes, but the whole of the outrage being directed at the leak and not the contents of said leak is breaking my mind a little. It’s like we decided that this was something we were allowed to be angry and incredulous about because it does not abide by the rules.
I realize we are a nation held in Robert’s Rules orderly clutches, but there’s nothing saying we can’t at least seek an escape route.
I’ll be honest: relying on non-compliance as the principal, and very shaky, foundation of our collective righteous indignation fills me with a sense of deep dread. Because it's not enough. Rules change, and easily, and then what are we left with?
Don't we owe it to ourselves to demand more than mere conformity and politesse?
Which brings me, and let’s just roll with this transition, to Rachel Zegler. Because over the last few days, Disney and the trade papers have been trying to convince us that Zegler, Snow White star and objectively an angel here on earth, is not a #teamplayer because, say it with me: she did not play by the rules.
(I actually wrote about Zegler back in August 2023, when people got mad at her for participating in the actors’ strike. No one can be normal about her.)
It’s actually a wild little story.
Last August, she tweeted "and always remember, free palestine" on a thread thanking supporters for their enthusiasm over the Snow White trailer. This apparently caused an absolute ruckus behind the scenes, prompting producer Marc Platt to "fl[y] to New York to speak directly with her."1 I wonder if he did the same when Zegler was the object of racist comments for daring to be a Latina actress cast as Snow White.
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