Ari Shapiro: The Honorable Mensch
metroweekly.comDo I contradict myself?Very well then I contradict myself,(I am large, I contain multitudes.)There is something of another queer American in these lines.
His name is Ari Shapiro. Certainly you’ve heard his velvety voice across your National Public Radio airwaves as he hosts All Things Considered, or perhaps during one of his prior radio posts as NPR’s London correspondent, or covering the White House.
There’s plenty from which to choose.Then again, maybe his journalism career is alien to you, but his Pink Martini accompaniments are in steady rotation on your playlists.Multitudes.Shapiro himself lays out the contradiction in his new memoir, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening, on page 46. (Because, of course, he’s also a New York Times bestselling author.)“I can see now that I contain both of these archetypes, wrestling like fraternal twins in utero,” he writes, contrasting the “golden boy” with the queer anti-institutionalist. “Sometimes I’m a secret agent faggot behind enemy lines; other times I just want to impress your parents.”Whatever it is Shapiro happens to be doing, whichever identity he is expressing, he does it so earnestly and honestly that it nearly presents as artifice.
Scratch the surface, however, and it’s still Ari Shapiro, it seems. The deeper you go, the more endearing he becomes. A little taste of cattiness further into Best Strangers — “She was younger than he was, blond, and didn’t stop talking the entire train ride….
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