Welcome back to the Weekend Press! Today, Niall Ferguson will make you love soccer. Kat Rosenfield on the cowardice of Olivia Rodrigo. River Page has two drinks with Trump’s tourism tsar. Will Rahn on Steven Spielberg’s new alien epic. And more!
But first: Josh Code reports from Christian Men’s Camp.
When I first saw a promotional reel for 252 The Weekend, a retreat organized by the New Jersey megachurch Transform, I almost mistook it for a trailer for a new season of Survivor: dramatic music, stone-faced men staring into fire, men carrying logs, men climbing over walls and crawling under netting. And I wondered: Is this actually about getting in touch with God—or is it just a chance for dudes to be dudes?
There’s much talk that a religious revival is happening in America, especially within Gen Z, but some have questioned whether the newly holy are authentically interested in God, or just superficially attracted to the ever-multiplying influencers and apps and podcasts that are springing up to make Christianity hot again. Does packaging religion to appeal to a certain set of people make it any less meaningful?
That’s the question I set out to answer last weekend, at 252, which I attended alongside 580 men, most of whom were from suburban New Jersey—where a man can’t exactly roam a ranch on horseback or even pump his own gas. They were locksmiths, electricians, landscapers, jujitsu fighters, auto parts sales associates. They were also, it turned out, men who hadn’t cried in years, had never heard their fathers say they were proud of them, and had no idea how much they needed a weekend like this.
Together they danced, sang, prayed, and competed in a field day for grown-ups. One boy’s name was engraved on a sword. Men kept saying “iron sharpens iron.” A couple of them got baptized in iron tubs, but the Holy Spirit was often hard to discern. Nevertheless, there was something profound about it all. Because the obstacle course, the bench press, the sheer testosterone of it all, gave the men permission to be vulnerable. After all, it’s okay to cry when you’ve just benched your own body weight 28 times. —Josh Code
Niall Ferguson: The World Cup Looks Like a Fiesta of Nationalism. Don’t Be Fooled. |
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The World Cup has just kicked off on American soil, and some of us may be asking ourselves: What do Europeans see in soccer? Our resident Scotsman, Niall Ferguson, explains in this week’s Things Worth Remembering. “We do not go to football to munch on hot dogs,” he writes. “We do not watch football to experience pleasure. We go to suffer.” To illustrate his point, he recalls Nick Hornby’s “Fever Pitch,” a memoir that makes the definitive case for the beautiful game. | | |
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Two Drinks with. . . Trump’s Tourism Czar |
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“People around the world have been continually bombarded with this narrative that America is unwelcoming. That America is unsafe. That America is superexpensive. It’s total and utter bullshit.” So says Nick Adams, the first-ever “special presidential envoy for American tourism, exceptionalism, and values.’” The Australian-born media personality met River Page for two drinks in Washington, D.C., this week—and explained why the World Cup’s going to be “amazing,” why his nomination to be ambassador to Malaysia fell through, and why Trump gave him the job of “being the brand ambassador for the United States.” | | |
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Olivia Rodrigo Murdered Her Love Songs |
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If you have a Gen-Z girl in your life, you’ll know that her messiah—Olivia Rodrigo—just released a new album. It was, Rodrigo admitted, supposed to be about a loving relationship, but when that relationship fell apart, she rewrote it to be about how the romance was doomed from the start. This, writes our culture critic Kat Rosenfield, is “an almost shocking act of cowardice,” from an artist known for unflinchingly sharing the messiest of teenage emotions. By editing her feelings like an Instagram caption, Rodrigo is erasing her past happiness from the record and affirming her generation’s idea that love isn’t real. | | |
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Steven Spielberg’s ‘Disclosure Day’ Is a Dud |
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As the Trump administration drip-feeds us UFO files—the third batch of which landed Friday—the likelihood that we have extraterrestrial neighbours in this universe feels greater than ever. So Steven Spielberg’s alien movie has arguably landed at the perfect time. But the movie we got, argues Will Rahn, isn’t really about aliens at all. Instead, it’s proof of what happens when a world-renowned director gets tripped up by his own fame. “Some have theorized over the decades that Spielberg is a certain sort of idiot savant: that he lives entirely in his own head,” Will writes. “Disclosure Day lends fresh support to this hypothesis.” Don’t miss his review. | | |
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