WHQR's Sunday Edition is a free weekly newsletter delivered every Sunday morning. You can sign up for Sunday Edition here.
Empty Chairs
I love Thanksgiving — in fact, I think I may like it more than Christmas, Hanukkah, or New Year’s (and I'm no slouch in celebrating those holidays, by the way).
For one thing, Thanksgiving kicks off the holiday season, so even when it’s over, there’s plenty left to look forward to. New Year’s Day can feel like a bittersweet denouement, the Sunday afternoon of the season, with Monday morning perched menacingly on the horizon. Thanksgiving is Friday night. You can go all out, you can stay in wearing pajamas, there’s no wrong way to do it.
For another, the Thanksgiving meal is a great culinary challenge, asking that you do many things simply, well, and harmoniously. If you’ve led your own Turkey Day kitchen brigade (or, even more impressively, done all the cooking yourself), you know how satisfying it is. Also, I don’t know who hurt JD Vance, but I feel sorry for him — turkey, done correctly, is excellent.
More philosophically, Thanksgiving accepts us the way we are. We’re not making overambitious and dubiously-achievable plans to better ourselves – nor are we on the hook for a perfect gift. You show up; that is the gift. “No presents, just presence,” as one friend once put it. Yeah, it sounds a little hippy-dippy, but it’s kinda spot on. Black Friday is a grosser, bleaker story, sure, but on Thanksgiving itself, there’s no pressure, no commercialism, just communion.
Ok, there’s some pressure: Someone will inevitably show up with a new partner or spouse, a trial by fire for them, before an en banc panel of relatives and childhood friends. If that’s you this year, may the court be merciful.
And there’s the insanity of holiday travel, that kind of gauntlet that does, in my opinion, occasionally warrant a Planes, Trains and Automobiles level of profanity. Plus, work doesn’t really stop for Thanksgiving, so many of us end up cramming a five-day work week into two or three days, or try frantically to catch up the following Monday.
For all these reasons and more, Thanksgiving can be messy. If you have a bigger family like mine, there’s often something of a running bet on which relative will crash out, launched by one too many drinks into confession or confrontation. Somewhere, a family will carve into an undercooked turkey or, perhaps worse, burn it to a dried husk. Someone will discover, at perhaps the worst possible moment, a new food allergy.
Lastly, yes, I know, Thanksgiving has a dark side to its history, beneath the phony Pilgrims and Indians class play many of us remember from elementary school. It is, after all, a particularly American holiday, and as with all things American, you take the bad with the good. Many of us give thanks for friends and family, but also for the good fortune of being born at this time, in this place, and in these circumstances — a cosmic stroke of luck, a winning hand that we, and not everyone else, have been dealt. To put a fine point on it: there are indigenous people across the country who spend Thanksgiving in mournful contemplation, a starkly different day than the one I celebrated growing up. I won't take more of a preachy digression than this, but it's worth a moment to consider.
So, like America, Turkey Day can be chaotic and emotionally messy, logistically challenging, tinged with historical suffering – all true. But all that said, on balance, I still love Thanksgiving. Flaws and all, it’s a celebration of gratitude. There are worse reasons for a long weekend.
However, I’ve been aware of ways our increasingly hostile politics have crept deeper into my favorite holiday. It’s always been there: a bigoted uncle, a conspiracist cousin, an out-of-touch grandparent. But something has changed, has been changing, by degree at first and now faster, souring and spreading almost exponentially, it seems.
National divorce is not here, per se, but it seems like we can see there from here in a way we couldn’t before, at least not recently. I know we’ve been here before, as a nation, but this seems like a particularly bad moment.
Many of us have pressed pause, as it were, for a holiday here and there: Just the immediate family for this Christmas, maybe we save ourselves the trouble of I-95 for Thanksgiving, perhaps we just order Chinese this Hanukkah. I’ve done it too, and, believe me, I get it. I felt the relief, knowing there are no incendiary hot-takes on identity politics or foreign policy incoming, no conversational landmines to avoid.
But more and more, I hear about these little breaks becoming moratoriums, cooling-off periods that have frozen solid. There is no such thing as a permanent pause. We have different words for that: the end.
Over the last decade, many of us have self-medicated our way through the rancor and divisiveness of our politics. High at first on jokes and, when that wore off, numbed by irony. Now, the moment feels sobering — and the hangover is here.
In the worst cases, we find ourselves sitting at the table, looking at the empty chair — or chairs — and it feels like a sitcom, stripped of its laugh track and theme music: The garish lighting, the wooden acting, the empty silence after a corny zinger. We’ve forgotten our lines. There’s nothing left to say.
We can’t leave it there forever, though, can we?
Perhaps I'm lucky. My job requires me to hear people out, to find the steelman version of their argument (the best possible presentation, the opposite of a strawman), even when they’re not articulating it well. Being a journalist means understanding people as complex, even self-contradictory creatures, and then listening to them, not fighting them. You work at going into contentious territory with curiosity and good faith. I fail at this, all the time, but I try — and I’ve found it rewarding. I’ve managed some good working relationships, even friendships, with people I disagree with over all kinds of things. I’ve even changed my mind from time to time.
But in those conversations, I’ve heard how hard — how painful — it is for people to break bread with those who would mock, reject, and negate their moral intuitions, their experiences, even their existence. Who the hell am I to lecture people on finding common ground with those who won’t cede an inch, on seeing the humanity in someone who treats them inhumanely, or having civil discourse with those who relish in jeers and taunts?
There is sometimes a good reason — often a deeply painful one — why that chair is empty, why invitations get rejected, ignored, or never even sent. I can’t tell you how to feel, or what to do, about that.
For some of us, perhaps the empty chair becomes a cenotaph, a memorial without the closure of death and burial, a marker for someone who will never sit with us again. And in some cases, perhaps we say, "good riddance."
But maybe it can mean something different: a placeholder, a rain check, a promise to try again next year. That is my hope, anyway.
Editor's notes
End of the David Era
Back in 2004, Ben David was elected to the office of District Attorney for New Hanover and Pender counties, and served for twenty years. For much of that time, starting in 2010, his twin brother Jon has served as district attorney for Bladen, Brunswick, and Columbus counties. Collectively and collaboratively, the two Davids were responsible for over half a million people. Critics would say, from time to time, that was too much power for one family — but that didn’t seem to shake either’s grip on, or commitment to, their respective offices. It is, after all, easier to make regional policy when you’re going to see your counterpart at family supper.
The David brothers shared features, mannerisms, and expressions (both have responded, “living the dream” more times than I can count when asked how things were going). And, while Ben is a Democrat and Jon a Republican, there seemed to be fairly little daylight between them when it came to how they ran their offices. I spent more time on the East side of the Cape Fear River, and got to know Ben better than Jon, but it was occasionally eerie to see them in the same place at the same time. (Jon, at one point, grew his facial hair in, which I heard people refer to as the ‘evil Spock beard,’ but I was grateful to be able to tell them apart.)
Last year, Ben announced his retirement, and this week, Jon announced he would not run for another term next year, endorsing Assistant District Attorney Jenna Earley. That means come next November, the David family era will come to an end — at least when it comes to elected office. I’ll be surprised if I don’t see a freshly engraved shingle put out in front of a new office late next year: David & David, PLLC.
If I had all the free time in the world, I’d do a book on the two. Their careers certainly warrant it: there have been criticisms and scandals, but also impressive track records of public service. But for now, this notice will have to do — and maybe we’ll get them back in the studio together, as we did back in 2017).
Allegations Update
This week, I got plenty of questions about new allegations levied against a prosecutor working in the New Hanover and Pender District Attorney’s office. The amended complaint was quickly sealed (within hours), but not before journalists and other curious residents downloaded copies.
I won’t retread everything I wrote about the case last week, but in short, the plaintiffs allege that prosecutor Ashton Herring had admitted a racial bias against Asians and, in this case, overzealously prosecuted a male student of Asian descent and later inappropriately worked to help ensure he would be considered ineligible to play high school sports. The decision was complicated because the student had taken a plea deal, a conditional discharge without admitting guilt (a.k.a. an Alford plea); the DA’s office argued he should essentially be treated as if he had a felony conviction until the conditional period was up, at which point, if the student obeyed the conditions of the plea deal, the conviction would be dismissed and expunged. The plaintiffs strongly dispute this interpretation.
The most damning of the new evidence, on the face of it, are text messages Herring sent to a school official, writing that she “might have gone overboard,” followed by “but that was fun.” (You can read the latest at WECT, here.)
The lawsuit presents this in a negative light — and that might be warranted. But I have also heard on background that those texts referred to legal research Herring did while gathering information and case law to help the school district navigate the student’s complicated legal status (which was not as cut and dry as a straight-up conviction or dismissal with prejudice). Is that an appropriate level of solemnity, given the seriousness of the task at hand? Maybe not. But is it evidence of bias and misconduct? I don’t know if anyone can make that call yet.
Some of this will be resolved, I hope, by a public records request for all of Herring’s communication with the school district. While family names will be redacted, I hope the full set of communication will provide more context. (How long it takes NHCS to provide these records, given their notable backlog of outstanding requests, remains to be seen.)
It would also help if the District Attorney’s office were able to file a formal response — but despite the allegations made against Herring, the office is not a named party in the lawsuit (which is technically against the school district and the state athletic association). Neither is Herring, for that matter. Attorney General Jeff Jackson’s office, which represents state employees (i.e., DAs and prosecutors), has not so far seen it necessary to intervene. I’ll be making a call on Monday to ask why; given the public’s trust in the DA’s office is being challenged by these allegations, it seems unwise to allow them to go unanswered.
As I understand it, the plaintiff’s attorney, Gary Shipman, could also file a motion for relief based on the claims against Herring, which would also allow the DA’s office to respond. But Shipman told me he doesn’t think the burden of dealing with allegations of bias should fall on the young man at the center of all this.
As I wrote last week, this all remains as clear as mud, but I’m glad readers like you are continuing to ask for more information — because that’s what it will take to figure out what the hell is going on here.
Filing Period Flurry
Monday kicks off the three-week political frenzy that is the filing period for local and state offices. While some candidates have already made their intentions known, I’m sure there will be some surprises (old faces we haven’t seen in a minute, new faces with interesting stories, and so on).
While December is otherwise a fairly sleepy news month for local politics (other than the jockeying for board chair positions), it’s a busy time for journalists. As each name shows up on the Board of Elections list of candidates, we get to work running down backgrounds: past public service, criminal charges, civil suits, financial entanglements, notable relationships, and more. Are they who they say they are? And, just as importantly, is there anything they've been conspicuously silent about?
No, not every past indiscretion makes the cut. Speeding ticket from 2005? Not relevant. Credit card debt that took a few years to resolve? Who amongst us. Recent DUI or assault charge? Probably worth asking about. There’s a lot of grey area here, but we try to be transparent with the candidates and the audience about why we think something is important enough to report on.
It’s worth remembering that it was a small but plucky local paper on Long Island, the North Shore Leader, that broke the story of George Santos' lies and fabrications before his 2022 election. It’s sad that larger outlets didn’t pick up the story until it was too late, but you can’t blame the North Shore Leader — they did their job. In that spirit, we’ll be doing ours.
