It’s the last Friday of the month, which usually means Pretty Good Links, but something happened this week that I haven’t been able to shake out of my head, so I’m writing about it instead. If you aren’t terminally online and/or have no interest in The National, I’ll probably lose you, so feel free to skip it. You’ve been forewarned.
The National is a band I enjoy very much, to the point that I now call them my favorite. I can still remember the first time the snare intro to “Apartment Story” snapped me to attention. I’ve listened to the band for going on 15 years, I own many of their albums in physical and/or digital form, and I’ve seen them perform in person. I look forward to each of their new releases. I’ve been amused to watch their permeation into the broader popular culture, thanks to guitarist Aaron Dessner’s work with Taylor Swift on her last few albums. I have been a bit underwhelmed by their latest offering, which mostly lacks the punchiness and innovation of Bryan Devendorf’s usually excellent percussion. But I was still excited to see them play in D.C. this week. They put on a very good show, which may well be the last I get to see before I become a sad dad myself.
Neal Katyal is an attorney who lives in Washington, D.C. and appears frequently as a guest on the ostensibly liberal echo chamber programming of MSNBC. He does so largely due to his presence regularly arguing before the Supreme Court. While he presents as an anti-Trump champion, and sometimes argues on behalf of the types of clients you’d therefore expect, he also, uh, sometimes does not. Specifically, he argued on behalf of large corporations accused of involvement in child trafficking. And, most recently, celebrated his 50th case in front of the high court…in which he argued that a 94-year-old grandmother who had her condo seized because of $2,300 in unpaid taxes had no standing to sue to get it back, a line of reasoning that produced a rare, bipartisan consensus against him, in the form of a 9-0 ruling that came down this week.
On Tuesday night — the first night of the two shows The National played in D.C. this week, and the night before I went — lead singer Matt Berninger took a moment to mention Katyal, who was publicly at the show, by name, “for the things he’s been doing at the Supreme Court,” then dedicate a song to him. That song was “This Isn’t Helping.” The song is about the end of a relationship, but features the following lyrics:
The reaction on Twitter to this news was swift and, seemingly, universal. This was a rock band blasting one of their own fans, putting him on notice for his professional choices, or at the very least demanding better of him. Even people who aren’t fans of The National were seemingly handing it to them for delivering an epic and deserved burn.
On Wednesday night, both Katyal and I were in attendance, albeit about as far away from each other as two people at The Anthem could be. I was all the way at the top, in my usual perch; Katyal was, apparently, backstage. He again tweeted effusively about the band, both leading up to and after they once again called him out by name. Again mentioning his work at the Supreme Court, Berninger this time dedicated “Mr. November,” both a bitter anthem deriding John Kerry’s failure to win the 2004 presidential election and, evidently, Katyal’s favorite song.
One of two things appeared to be happening here. The National appeared to be, for the second night in a row, using the subtext of their own songs to spit roast one of their biggest fans. Or…they appeared to be honoring him, displaying a wild self-ownership and lack of awareness of just exactly what this fan of the notoriously progressive band (“Fake Empire” was literally turned into an Obama campaign ad) has really been spending his time doing recently at the Supreme Court.
I do not know Katyal by anything other than his work and the small bits of his public persona that drift across my feed or my TV screen (we only watch cable news on election nights). But based on his recent actions, it seems that he is a believer in protecting our deeply broken establishment, blind to the realities of high court that has been systematically and purposefully hijacked by reactionary ideologues over the course of a generation-long campaign, and unwilling or unable to reckon with the very real downstream impacts of all of that. To honor someone like that publicly and earnestly is to defend all these same principles.
I considered reaching out to the band’s PR contacts to try to get an answer as to exactly the spirit in which the dedications were delivered, but the truth is, I don’t want one. I didn’t write any of this for the band’s sake, or to try to rain on Katyal’s celebration of the legal system’s moral relativism. I wrote it for myself, in reverence of the few hours when it seemed like my favorite band was expressing solidarity against self-servance through the platform they have to do so, followed by the horrifying, creeping doubt that, actually, they’re probably just as blind to and happy to benefit from the system that’s likewise made them rich and famous. Sometimes it’s better to just hope for the best and not to concern yourself too much with minutiae beyond your control.
After all, the system only dreams in total darkness, right? I can’t explain it any other way.