Christian Turner

You meet Washington at a very Chinese time in its life – the capital is preparing for the state visit of Xi Jinping, as the Chinese president blows off the UN General Assembly and heads for talks with President Trump next week instead. His visit will include a state dinner, where invitees include a number of business leaders who operate in China. Cockburn understands that Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia are on the guestlist. Presumably Altman will be trying to bend Xi’s ear on that AI slowdown to which he’s ever so committed. Huang, meanwhile, took a call from Trump onstage at a conference this week, where the President called AI concerns a “hoax” and Huang pledged, “We’re going to make sure that everybody wins in the AI race in America.

“Are you gay?” a tall young man in a cowboy hat asked Cockburn, under his breath. Your correspondent was hovering in the foyer of the American Airlines Center, looking up the RNC schedule on his phone. “Excuse me?” Cockburn said. “Are you gay?” the young man asked again. “Am I gay?! No,” said Cockburn. “Oh,” the young man said, a touch disappointed. “Seemed like you might be gay.” Cockburn had never read too much into the viral internet chatter that accompanies large conservative conferences, about the surge in activity on homosexual hookup apps. This interaction in Dallas gave him pause for thought. Perhaps there was something to the rumors about that one bathroom in the AAC.

The House of Medici patronized Michelangelo, Botticelli and da Vinci. The House of Obama patronized Nicola Green: the artist wife of David Lammy, who served as deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom until Monday. From August 2008 to January 2009, Green was offered, according to her website, “unprecedented artistic access to President Obama’s monumental campaign,” the fruit of which was In Seven Days…, a portfolio of seven abstract paintings of the new president, released in 2010. Cockburn’s favorite is “Day Six, Sacrifice/Embrace,” which shows the head and hands of the 44th president, splayed on a sky-blue field.