New York magazine has published an incredibly disturbing story (paywalled, but see below) about U.S. Sen John Fetterman, the hoodie-wearing Pennsylvania Democrat who was elected in 2022 while recovering from a serious stroke.
Reporter Ben Terris portrays Fetterman as suffering from what sounds like serious mental-health issues. We knew about his struggles with depression, but this goes much deeper than that, veering into what at times seems like a disconnection from reality, compounded by a refusal to take his medications.
Adding to its power is that much of the story is based on the on-the-record comments of Fetterman’s former chief of staff, Adam Jentleson, as well as a 1,600-word email that Jentleson wrote to Fetterman’s doctor. “I believed in John’s ability to work through struggles that lots of Americans share,” he told Terris. “He’s not locked into a downward trajectory; he could get back in treatment at any time, and for a long time I held out hope that he would. But it’s just been too long now, and things keep getting worse.”
This is an important piece of journalism, but unfortunately it’s locked behind a paywall. So I’m going to tell you something you may or may not know: There’s a service that lets people save paywalled articles at publications they subscribe to so that others can read them for free. It’s at archive.is. You can search by keywords or URL. That’s how I found the Fetterman article.
I’m going to be a hypocrite and tell you that I’m uncomfortable sharing free links from archive.is, but that I’m not adverse at telling you how you can do it yourself. So if you want to read the Fetterman story, you know what to do.