Happy New Year!
London, Asma al-Assad, Sriram Krishnan, and ABBA....
Dear Everyone,
This is the last post of 2024.
I was in the UK this past week with family and friends - and there’s plenty to report.
First, before flying to London, I wrote a deep-dive here about Syria’s former First Lady Asma al-Assad based on an interview with her cousin Abdu al-Dabbagh, whose arrest is also sought in Syria. No coincidence, surely, that various news stories then popped up in England’s Daily Telegraph, quoting anonymous sources saying that Mrs Assad’s leukemia has worsened and she wants to leave Moscow and return to her native country, the UK. Some reports in the Middle East even had her filing for divorce from her husband.
According to al-Dabbagh, whose mother, Saadat, talks to her sister, Sahar, Asma’s mother who is with her in Moscow, it’s all garbage. Propaganda most likely.
1. She isn’t at death’s door. She is in remission. There was a time when her health was so vulnerable that everyone, including her husband, wore Hazmat uniforms so as not to pass on any germs but, as I reported last week, she received a bone-marrow transplant from her son, Hafez in August, and so she is no longer in isolation. She hasn’t been in months. She’s getting better.
2. She isn’t getting divorced. She’s a conservative muslim.
3. She may want to return to England - but Tant Pis, as the French would say. On this, I’m with the British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper (alongside whom I used to work at the Independent newspaper in the early 1990s). Yvette has rightly said there are other things to consider besides Mrs Bashad’s health. War crimes, for instance.
I got a small shock when I read that Indian-American venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan had been appointed as Trump’s advisor on AI policies and that Steve Bannon and the MAGA wing of the Republican party had gone berserk because Sriram, supports H1-B visas (for exceptional immigrants).
In one of life’s weird coincidences, I know Sriram Khrishnan.
He messaged me out of the blue on Facebook in 2014 after the publication of my second book, The Liar’s Ball, saying how much he and his wife had enjoyed the book. He wrote that he’d started following my work when I wrote a blog about the fired CEO of Yahoo, Carol Bartz. He had previously worked at Yahoo.
I had absolutely no idea who he was, but he explained he was in “mobile monetization” at Facebook. I must say I was quite flattered that some random Silicon Valley guy in “mobile monetization” at Facebook would take an interest in my work - and he offered to give me advice on marketing strategies on FB and Instagram. And, so finally, in 2017 we met for coffee at my home office in New York.
What I remember most about the meeting is that he was unlike any tech nerd I’ve ever met or imagined. He was immaculately-dressed in a blazer and button-down. He was urbane, witty, polished, good-looking, charming, well-connected and - again, completely flatteringly, he seemed to know all about me and everything I’d ever written. As you can tell I’m a fan of this man.
I must say, even after our meeting, I remained slightly unsure as to what he did, exactly, at Facebook. Clearly he wasn’t your average “tech” guy. But he gave me game-changing advice as to what I needed to do to market myself on social media. We stayed in touch and he’d wanted me to meet his wife when I was next in San Francisco. I was looking forward to it.
But then Covid hit.
So, my first thought when I read he’d gotten the Trump appointment was: Drat! I really could use more of his marketing tips - and he might now be a bit busy for that…
But my second thought, obviously, was about the controversy around H1-B-visas his appointment started. (Sriram came here on an L visa, but is a huge proponent of the H1-B visa that is big in Silicon Valley. Elon Musk came to the US on an H1-B visa from South Africa. In turn Musk hires many people on H1-B visas to work at Tesla. Bannon views this as stripping jobs from Americans. Musk has said he thinks it’s an essential policy, the only way to overcome “American mediocrity.”)
No surprises for guessing where I (a US immigrant) stand on this. Of course I support visas for those who are going to add value to US society. I completely agree with Elon Musk that it’s what keeps America on top.
I first came to this country over 25 years ago on an I Visa - which is what journalists who work for foreign newspapers come on. Two years later I got a Green card, and in 2017 - a year after Sriram - I took US citizenship, of which I am extraordinarily proud.
While I cannot speak for the tech community, I can, on a good day, count on possibly the lowest rung of a ladder of British-born journalists who have been lucky enough to have prominent careers in US media. (To name a handful: Sir Mark Thompson, Tina Brown, Joanna Coles, Gillian Tett, Emma Tucker, John Micklethwait, Katty Kay, Keith Poole, Will Lewis, James Goldston…)
None of us, I don’t think, came here with the intent to take a job away from a more deserving US born person. We came here precisely because of the allure of American media. It’s size, scope, influence and talent.
We wanted to try our luck in the land of opportunity, of risk and reward, and, yes, meritocracy - because our own countries didn’t have that advantage.
It’s my personal belief that I would not have had the enervating, exhilarating career I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy had I stayed in the UK. Why? Partly, of course, because of its much smaller size. But chiefly because I think the Brits cling to the past to the point that it slows them from moving into the future with any nimbleness.
Sometimes the adherence to the old ways is fabulous.
I certainly felt grateful for centuries of tradition as I sat, with my sons, blessedly, for 90 minutes in the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, on Christmas Eve, listening in person to the magnificent service of nine lessons and carols being broadcast by the BBC live to 370 million people around the world.
I also felt that way, when upon landing at London Heathrow, I deplaned and explained urgently to the British Airways steward at the jetway, that, mid-flight, my son who was sitting in a window seat behind me had dropped his cell-phone down a vent that was inexplicably open.
“How old is he?” asked one of the stewardesses, clearly imagining a clumsy toddler. “He’s 21,” I said. There was a moment’s silence.
But instead of issuing judgement, a nice British maintenance crew member appeared with a tool kit. “The phone must have fallen down to the lower cargo hold,” he said.
By now my son’s lip was trembling.
“Oh well,” I said matter-of-factly, pretending it wasn’t 10pm on the Sunday of a holiday weekend… “Any chance you could have a look in the cargo hold?”
(I wouldn’t have been so naive as to try this at JFK. But we were not at JFK.)
The guy disappeared into the darkness of the Heathrow tarmac. Ten minutes later he was back, phone - in tact - in his hand.
I told my ecstatic, incredulous son, that sometimes you have to Thank God For The Brits and their good manners.
On the other hand…
Some of the old-fashioned prints depicting “British humor” on the walls of some of my relatives would, I realized during this trip, cause major offense if transported to the other side of the Atlantic. Think old white men staring at young women’s bottoms, while their wives look on furiously.
But I still get a good laugh at one in my dad’s loo entitled “shooting practice’. A man, dressed in his outdoor shooting gear and carrying his rifle is standing alongside his dog shivering under a cold shower… In my experience that is exactly what “shooting” in the British countryside is like. A great reason to live in urbane New York, instead…
Last month’s British Tatler magazine, also sitting in the “loo” boasts the new 200 eligible singles in England. I had a quick flick through and discovered I knew a vast number of them - or to be more accurate - I know their parents. In other words, society hasn’t shifted much, if at all, in 30 years.
Then there’s the ingrained absurd habit of turning the heating off at night, to the point that the “Americans” as my children and I are labelled, slept, with all their clothes on. “In New York we turn the heating up at night, because that’s when the temperature drops,” I explained to deaf ears at breakfast. No one wanted to know.
And yet it was a fabulous holiday week. London’s Christmas lights put New York’s to shame. And I highly recommend the Abba: Voyage concert to anyone of a certain age. Buy tickets to stand and go berserk in the “mosh pit.” You’ll feel ten or twenty years younger.
How comforting is it that, now in their 70s, the Swedish pop group has united and recorded a whole new album. They may not be physically on stage, but their spirit is in the amazingly life-like holograms.
I’ve been humming one of the new songs…“I’m fired up. Don’t shut me down!” goes the chorus.
An appropriate sentiment, I think, to close this year with and look forward to 2025 - all cylinders blazing.
Thank you for sticking with me over this year. I am very grateful for you. And I am very, very excited about 2025. Rarely have I felt so “fired up” about what’s around the corner and grateful to be writing.
So stand by for what’s to come!
Meanwhile, I wish you all - on both sides of the Atlantic - a very Happy New Year!
Vicky so enjoyable thank you for what you do so well....
wishing the best new year.
Great reporting and great writing, as always! Happy New Year!