From the nineteen-fifties until a few years before she died destitute in 2009, Vivian Maier took at least 150,000 pictures, mostly in Chicago, and showed them to nobody.
For decades, she supported herself as a nanny in the wealthy enclaves of the city. But her real work was roaming the streets with her camera (often with her young charges in tow), capturing images of sublime spontaneity, wit, and compositional savvy.
Maier’s covert work might have languished in obscurity if not for the chance acquisition, in 2007, of a cache of negatives, prints, contact sheets, and unprocessed rolls of film, all seized from a storage locker because she fell behind on the rent.
When John Maloof, a Chicago real-estate agent, bought the material, everything about Maier’s identity was a mystery except for her name. It was only when he ran across her death notice, two years later, that her story began to unfold.
Now Maier has earned her place alongside Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Lisette Model, Garry Winogrand, as a as a giant of American street photography.
I am calling bullshit on the supposed beef between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump.
They want the country to buy a breakup story, but this feels like foreplay for a power play. It feels like two performers who know how to rile a crowd in red. That is the reek here. Not betrayal. Ambition.
Greene has built her career inside Trump’s gravitational field. She took his anger and pumped it full of caffeine. She took his cadence and upped it to a fourth grade level.
She stood behind him at rallies like a backup singer who wanted the solo. Trump gave her oxygen, ans she turned that oxygen into fire. They fed each other. They understood each other. They used each other.
That kind of relationship does not detonate. It mutates.
Even Democrats, who should know better, have softened on their view of her. I suggest they read the children’s story about the frog and the scorpion.
Greene sees the future. She sees Trump getting older. She sees an entire base already daydreaming about the next avatar of their rage (and panic over his replacement when Father Time does his job).
Who would be the next successor for rabid conservatives? Matt Gates and his male colleagues are too Epstein adjacent to be a viable candidate today. And any lawmakers with an ounce of respect or talent already require ventilators.
She wants to be the new avatar here. She wants the throne when he dies or steps aside. Ambition this raw burns through steel.
So she makes her move. She storms off from Congress. She gives her martyr speech. She tells the base she fought the good fight and the suits could not handle her. Outsiders win the future. Insiders get buried in committees.
Trump plays his part. He calls her a traitor. He swats her away like a blonde gnat and treats her like a disloyal understudy. All while keeping her relevant — and Epstein on back burners and buried ink.
He knows the show. He wrote most of it.
Look at the evidence. They sat together at a Washington Commanders game not long ago. They were side by side, chatting, laughing, and waving to the booing crowds.
On another occasion, Trump was asked if their relationship could ever be mended. He replied that you never can tell; he likes everybody. Sure. Just ask Ivana, buried at the first tee of one of his golf courses.
That is not the posture of enemies. That is the posture of two people who know exactly where the other stands.Trump gets distance from actual scandal; Greene gets the birth of a solo identity.
Greene wants the role that comes after Trump. She wants to be the next great shit-talker who fills arenas and breaks news cycles. Trump shaped a culture that rewards the loudest fighter. She aims for the title.
Succession in politics works like succession in crime families. You create distance, tension, and the illusion of independence. You stay loyal enough to keep the family intact.
Only this time the throne sits on cable news instead of a battlefield or New York street corner. The rules stay the same. The fight stays the same. The appetite stays the same.
Greene and Trump want the world to believe they are locked in war. I see two performers working the same crowd with the same tricks. I see ambition wearing fake bruises. I see a setup for a handoff.
Greene is not trying to take Trump down. She is trying to take his seat when he nods.
