"To me, you express your age the way you express it. Look at Bob Dylan..."

"'Rough and Rowdy Ways' felt so bitchy and cool, whereas when he was young he was being such a little poet."

Said Jack Antonoff, quoted in "Jack Antonoff, pop music’s production king, on Taylor Swift, his new album and the genre that’s 'about to blow'" (LA Times).

How about you, in your age? Have you attained bitchy coolness, perhaps not at the Bob Dylan level, but somehow, in your own way, your rough and rowdy way? And think back, when you were young, were you such a little poet? Even Bob Dylan was a little poet, as Antonoff has it. But he was such a little poet — "such" suggesting a large dimension, even as "little" is small. We know what Antonoff means.

"New Yorker Festival Pulls Steve Bannon as Headliner Following High-Profile Dropouts."

The NYT reports.

The New Yorker dropped Bannon after John Mulaney, Judd Apatow, Jack Antonoff, and Jim Carrey all dropped out. And according to the editor David Remnick, "even New Yorker staff members had expressed discomfort" at including Bannon. Remnick also said, "The reaction on social media was critical and a lot of the dismay and anger was directed at me and my decision to engage him."

Jeez, the editor of The New Yorker is sensitive to "dismay and anger" that's directed at him personally? Stand up to it! "I don’t want well-meaning readers and staff members to think that I’ve ignored their concerns." What about the concerns of your readers who now think you're cowardly and lame? I'm a long-time subscriber to The New Yorker, and I think you're lame.

I think you've ignored my concerns, and I'd like to think your magazine challenges readers and isn't just about paying attention to our "concerns."

Bannon's response is, of course, much more appealing:

“The reason for my acceptance was simple: I would be facing one of the most fearless journalists of his generation,” Mr. Bannon said in a statement to The New York Times. “In what I would call a defining moment, David Remnick showed he was gutless when confronted by the howling online mob.” 

Remnick walked right into that.

ALSO: The article quotes Mulaney: "I’m out. I genuinely support public intellectual debate, and have paid to see people speak with whom I strongly disagree. But this isn’t James Baldwin vs William F Buckley.” And Antonoff: “respectfully that’s a full no for me and normalization of white supremacy.”

By the way, who are John Mulaney and Jack Antonoff? I think I might be familiar with Antonoff as the ex-boyfriend of Lena Dunham. Ah, yes:

Antonoff and Dunham remained together until January 2018, with representatives of both announcing their separation as "amicable".

In June 2014, Antonoff said he was "desperate" for kids, explaining:

It just seems like the most fun thing in the world. I've never met people who have kids who haven't looked me in the eye and been like, "It's the greatest thing that's ever happened." ... I think it's biological. I'm 30. I'm not that young, right? I'm not, like, 24 or 22. I'm no longer in the phase of my life where I talk about everything as in the future. Like, I'm in the future.

IN THE COMMENTS: mccullough said:

Remnick was an idiot to invite Bannon in the first place. He was a fool if he didn’t know this all would happen.

Was Remnick an idiot? For one brief shining moment he believed that The New Yorker audience wants breadth and challenge. And some of us really do. But I guess he was an idiot not to see the game several moves ahead. Now, here he is, in the future, looking narrow and weak.