Word.

We need a snazzy lit crit term for “misreading something in an unthinkingly PC way.”

No duh it’s ironic. It’s clearly about white people being afraid that China is going to rule the U.S. How on God’s green earth are people—including people who get paid to write (who presumably have a better-than-average understanding of literature)—not getting this? It boggles the mind.

Or the poem invites debate. Trilling isn’t exactly a moron, ya know.

Thank you. Dude is entitled to his feelings. And he is hitting a nerve, even in the uber politically correct readership of the NYer. Go ahead and point out irony can still be racist, fine. But message still works on that nerve. And others. And that’s a good thing. Let the debate begin.

i am confused by the world too, but i’m a middle-aged white lesbian who thinks clouds are one of the few things that make the world less confusing for me.