The narrative engine of “Away With Words” is the author’s progress through this quirky landscape, from his first anxious appearance at Punderdome right up through his star turn in Austin. The competitions require firing off puns—preferably as part of a comic narrative—on a given or chosen topic, such as vegetables or fine arts, in front of a raucous crowd.
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"Mason's Mohammed Cherkaoui explains Qatar's conflict with its neighbors," News at Mason (June 21, 2017)
Because of the conflict between Qatar and its Persian Gulf neighbors, George Mason University professor Mohammed Cherkaoui has been in demand by media outlets in the United States and abroad. Cherkaoui, a professor of conflict narrative at George Mason’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, has extensively studied and written about Middle Eastern media, politics and society.
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Geoffrey Kabaservice, "The Great Performance of Our Failing President, New York Times (June 9, 2017)
The Comey hearing, then, is unlikely to change their minds. Anything short of blatant evdence [sic] of illegality will simply play into their narrative of the president’s battles against his diabolical enemies.
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During last year’s presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton blamed “state disinvestment” in higher education for soaring tuition and declared her support for “free college.”
While the “disinvestment” narrative is simple and appealing, it collapses under scrutiny.
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Propaganda works—whether in the form of narrative-shaping broadcasts with global reach and cannily adorned with the hallmarks of an objective news network, or as fake news aimed at influencing elections and supporting military campaigns. Countering it and insulating against its effects is the task at hand, and it isn’t an easy one.
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Masha Gessen, "Trump’s Incompetence Won’t Save Our Democracy, New York Times (June 2, 2017)
We imagine the villains of history as cunning strategists, brilliant masterminds of horror. This happens because we learn about them from history books, which weave narratives that retrospectively imbue events with logic, making them seem predetermined. Historians and their readers bring an unavoidable perception bias to the story: If a historical event caused shocking destruction, then the person behind this event must have been a correspondingly giant monster. Terrifying as it is to contemplate the catastrophes of the 20th century, it would be even more frightening to imagine that humanity had stumbled unthinkingly into its darkest moments.
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Callum Borchers, "Sean Spicer returns with a press briefing for the ages," Washington Post (May 30, 2017)
Later in the briefing, [White House spokesman] Spicer said Trump “is frustrated, like I am and so many others, to see stories come out that are patently false, to see narratives that are wrong, to see quote-unquote 'fake news.'”
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Editorial, "Our Disgraceful Exit From the Paris Accord," New York Times (June 1, 2017)
Mr. Trump clings to the same false narrative that congressional Republicans have been peddling for years ...
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Joe Morgenstern, "‘Wonder Woman’ Review: The DC Spectacular We’ve Been Waiting For," Wall Street Journal (June 1, 2017)
The movie can’t avoid all the flaws that afflict the genre. The narrative momentum flags now and then.
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Ivan Krastev, "What the Russian Revolution Can Teach Us About Trump," MAY 31, 2017, New York Times
[With] Communism kaput, many of the popular histories of the Russian Revolution have now focused their attention from the rise of the masses toward espionage narratives that show how the Germans, as Winston Churchill put it, “transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland to Russia.”
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Matthew Nussbaum, "Six things to watch as Trump faces his new reality: Trump is back in the U.S. and back on Twitter — how will he cope with the spreading crises engulfing his presidency?" Politico (05/30/2017):
Trump has been critical of his administration’s press shop, and the reason is clear: week after week, the White House has been unable to drive a message or control the narrative, and instead has been thrust on the defensive. Where blame for this lies, whether in the press office or Trump’s Twitter account or the simple reality of scandal, is open for debate. ...
Part of Trump’s success during the campaign came from his ability to drive media coverage and control the story. The blanket media coverage that so aided him on the campaign has not been helpful in his first few months of governing. ...
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