PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

BERAMAL

Rasanya, semua telinga akrab dengan dalil ini. Sebab dia sering diucapkan dalam pembuka nasehat, sebagai kalimat pujian. Bahkan para pemula yang ingin belajar nasehat, tentu menghafal mati dalil ini. Memang keren dalilnya. Paten redaksionalnya. Dan juga sering diulas para penyampai, jika menerangkan bab pengamalan. Karena memang begitulah adanya. Bagi pemerhati keriuh-rendahan beramal, tentu tidak akan melewatkan dalil – dalil ini.

Di dalam KitabNya Allah berfirman; Dan diserukan kepada mereka: “Itulah surga yang diwariskan kepadamu, disebabkan apa yang dahulu kamu kerjakan.” (QS. Al-A’raf [7] : 43). Ayat semisal terdapat juga dalam QS. Az-Zukhruf [43] : 72)
“Masuklah kamu ke dalam surga itu disebabkan apa yang telah kamu amalkan”. (QS. An-Nahl [16] : 32)
“Dan masing-masing orang memperoleh derajat-derajat (seimbang) dengan apa yang dikerjakannya. Dan Tuhanmu tidak lengah dari apa yang mereka kerjakan.” (Al-‘An’am 132)
Dalil – dalil di atas, jelas menunjukkan pentingnya beramal dalam ibadah. Sebab dengannya orang bisa memperoleh tinggi – rendahnya derajat di surga. Oleh karena itu, tak salah orang memperbanyak amal untuk kehidupan di sana kelak. Yang perlu diingat adalah serentetan dalil – dalil di bawah ini. Bukan menakut-nakuti. Demikian banyaknya setidaknya membuat kita berjaga – jaga. Kadang malah bisa membuat kontra produktif, jika tidak arif dan bijaksana dalam memahaminya. Sebab kelihatan saling bertentangan antara satu dan lainnya. Jangankan orang macam saya, dulu para sahabat pun dibuat bingung karenanya.
Sesungguhnya Abu Hurairah berkata, ia mendengar Rasulullah SAW bersabda, “Amal seseorang tidak akan memasukkan seseorang ke dalam surga.” “Engkau juga tidak wahai Rasulullah?”, tanya beberapa sahabat. Beliau menjawab, “Aku pun tidak. Kecuali jika Allah menyelimuti pada (amalan)ku dengan kefadholan dan rahmat.” (Rowahu Bukhary – Jilid 1)
Shahih al-Bukhari kitab ar-riqaq bab al-qashd wal-mudawamah ‘alal-’amal no. 6463, 6464, 6467, juga menyebutkan walau dengan redaksi yang agak berbeda.
“Amal tidak akan bisa menyelamatkan seseorang di antara kalian.” Mereka bertanya: “Tidak pula Engkau wahai Rasulullah SAW?” Beliau menjawab: “Ya, saya pun tidak, kecuali Allah menganugerahkan rahmat kepadaku. Tepatlah kalian, mendekatlah, beribadahlah di waktu pagi, sore, dan sedikit dari malam, beramallah yang pertengahan, yang pertengahan, kalian pasti akan sampai.”
“Tepatlah kalian, mendekatlah, dan ketahuilah bahwasanya amal tidak akan memasukkan seseorang ke dalam surga. Sesungguhnya amal yang paling dicintai Allah itu adalah yang paling sering diamalkan walaupun sedikit.”
“Tepatlah kalian, mendekatlah, dan bergembiralah, karena sesungguhnya amal tidak akan memasukkan seseorang ke dalam surga.” Para shahabat bertanya: “Termasuk juga anda wahai Rasulullah?” Beliau menjawab: “Ya, termasuk juga saya, kecuali jika Allah menganugerahkan ampunan dan rahmat kepadaku.”
Saddidu, asal katanya sadad; ketepatan, sesuatu yang tepat. Maknanya menurut Ibn Hajar, shawab; benar. Artinya, beramallah dengan tepat, benar, mengikuti sunnah dan penuh keikhlasan.
Qaribu yang bermakna ‘mendekatlah’ maknanya ada dua; pertama, jangan menjauhi amal seluruhnya ketika tidak mampu, dan kedua, jangan berlebihan dalam beramal sehingga merasa kelelahan dan bosan. Itu berarti ambillah pertengahan dalam beramal. Ketika malas tiba, bertahan dengan tidak meninggalkan amal seluruhnya, beramallah sedekat- dekatnya, tidak mampu 100% (sadad) beramallah 90% (qarib), dan ketika semangat tiba, beramal dengan tidak berlebihan karena akan menyebabkan kelelahan dan kejenuhan.
Ughdu artinya berpergianlah di waktu pagi, ruhu artinya berpergianlah di waktu sore, dan ad-duljah artinya berpergian di waktu malam. Kata ad-duljah disertai dengan kata syai` (syai` minad-duljah; sedikit/sesaat di waktu malam) karena memang berpergian di waktu malam cukup sulit. Menurut Ibn Hajar, ini seolah-olah isyarat agar shaum di sepanjang hari dari sejak pagi sampai sore, dan shalat tahajjud di sebagian malam. Walaupun, menurutnya, bisa juga diperluas untuk ibadah-ibadah lainnya. Ibadah dalam hal ini diibaratkan dengan berpergian/perjalanan karena memang seorang ‘abid (yang beribadah) itu ibarat seseorang yang sedang berpergian dan menempuh perjalanan menuju surga.
Al-qashda maknanya pertengahan. Dijelaskan dalam riwayat lain sebagai amal yang rutin dikerjakan (dawam) walaupun sedikit-sedikit.
Taghammada diambil dari kata ghimd yang berarti sarung pedang. Taghammada berarti menyarungkan, atau dengan kata lain menutup (satr). Jika dilekatkan dengan kata rahmat dan ampunan, berarti menganugerahkan sepenuhnya (semua penjelasan dalam syarah mufradat ini disadur dari Fath al-Bari kitab ar-riqaq bab al-qashd wal-mudawamah ‘alal-’amal).
Sementara itu, Shahih Muslim kitab shifat al-qiyamah wal-jannah wan-nar bab lan yadkhula ahadun al-jannah bi ‘amalihi no. 7289-7302, tidak hanya disebut tidak akan masuk surga saja, melainkan ditegaskan juga tidak akan selamat dari neraka.
“Amal tidak akan memasukkan seseorang di antara kalian ke surga dan tidak pula menyelamatkannya dari neraka. Demikian juga saya, kecuali dengan rahmat Allah SWT”.
Dulu, pertama kali mendengar hadits ini, saya kaget. Kok begitu ya? Alhamdulillah Allah paring kefahaman. Salah satunya lewat cerita sederhana kisah ahli ibadah dari Bani Israil. Diceritakan ada seorang hamba yang tekun dan rajin beribadah selama 500 tahun. Dia hidup menyendiri di sebuah gunung, tak pernah berbuat dosa sedikitpun. Hari – harinya diisi ibadah dan ibadah, tak lain. Dan kala meninggalnya pun dalam keadaan sedang bersujud. Akhirnya di hari Qiyamat Allah membangkitkan dia dan memasukkannya ke surga. Allah berfirman; “Dengan rahmatku, masuklah kamu ke surge.” Mendengar perkataan tersebut si hamba protes. “Ya Allah, bukankah karena amalanku?”
Allah menjawab; “Karena rohmatku.”
Hamba; “Tidak. Ini semua karena amalanku selama 500 tahun.”
Allah menjawab; “Baiklah. Sekarang akan saya buktikan.” Kemudian Allah memperlihatkan timbangan amal si hamba. Semua amalan si hamba ditempatkan di sisi timbangan dan nikmat – nikmat Allah di sisi satunya lagi. Hasilnya, amalan hamba selama 500 tahun itu tak menggeser sedikit pun nikmat dan anugerah Allah yang diberikan kepadanya. Akhirnya, si hamba sadar dan memahami bahwa sebab masuknya dia ke surga adalah karena rohmat Allah.
Cerita ini semakin meneguhkan nasehat klasik bahwa sebenarnya kita beribadah ini cuma modal dengkul. Semuanya atas peparing Allah. Jadi gak boleh sombong –membanggakan amal - dan gak boleh bengong - tidak dilandasi niat karena Allah.
Selanjutnya saya memetik beberapa nash terkait akan situasi ini. Yaitu adanya lipatan amalan yang diberikan Allah kepada setiap amal baik hambaNya. Sedangkan untuk amal jelek, Allah tidak menulis kecuali seperti apa adanya. Walhasanatu biasyri amtsaliha – dan satu kebaikan itu dengan sepuluh semisalnya. Atau seperti yang tersebut di dalam surat Albaqoroh laksana sebiji padi yang menumbuhkan tujuh tangkai dan setiap tangkai berbuah 100 bulir padi alias 700 kali lipatan. Atau dalam atsar – atsar puasa, dimana disebutkan bahwa pahala amal anak adam itu dilipatkan ila masyaa Allah. Inilah pemahaman lebih lanjut arti  redaksi Kecuali jika Allah menyelimuti pada (amalan)ku dengan kefadholan dan rahmat. Ada lipatan sebagai bentuk kefadhalan Allah dan nikmat dan anugerah Allah – sebagai rahmat, sehingga kita bisa beramal meraih surga setinggi – tingginya. Maka, tak heran ketika kita masuk - keluar masjid pun dituntun dengan doa untuk mengingatkan akan rahmat dan fadhilah Allah ini dalam setiap jengkal langkah kita dalam beramal.
Nah, satu lagi yang “membanggakan” adalah hadits - hadits tersebut di atas memang jarang dikumandangkan. Hanya sesaat – sesaat saja dan oleh orang – orang tertentu saja. Namun, barangkali ketemu, semoga sedikit tulisan ini bermanfaat bagi yang membacanya. Tak lebih.

Oleh: Faizunal Abdillah

Sumber:Al'Quran & Al'Hadist/LDII

Editor:Liwon Maulana (galipat)

Minyak ikan terbukti ampuh cegah otak mengecil

Selama ini minyak ikan sudah diketahui baik untuk kesehatan otak. Namun penelitian terbaru yang dipublikasikan Januari 2014 kemarin telah mengungkap bahwa minyak ikan tak hanya menyehatkan otak saja tetapi juga mencegah terjadinya penciutan volume otak.

Ketika usia bertambah, volume otak biasanya akan menciut. Namun penciutan otak juga bisa menandakan penyakit yang berkaitan dengan kesehatan mental, atau penyakit otak seperti Alzheimer dan lainnya. Dengan begitu hasil penelitian ini telah menunjukkan harapan bahwa minyak ikan bisa mencegah penciutan otak terkait penyakit tersebut.

Hasil ini didapatkan peneliti setelah melakukan penelitian selama delapan tahun. Mereka juga melakukan scan MRI pada 1.111 wanita yang sudah lanjut usia. Selain itu peneliti juga mengukur jumlah asam lemak omega-3 pada sel darah merah mereka. Setelah delapan tahun, peneliti kemudian mengukur volume otak partisipan yang sudah berusia 78 tahun.

Mereka menemukan bahwa wanita yang telah memiliki tingkat omega-3 tinggi juga memiliki volume otak yang lebih besar setelah delapan tahun. Tingkat asam lemak omega-3 yang tinggi bisa didapatkan melalui diet atau suplemen. Efeknya dalam beberapa waktu bisa mencegah kematian beberapa sel otak yang disebabkan usia, ungkap ketua peneliti James V Pottala.

Selain itu, penelitian lain juga menunjukkan bahwa mengonsumsi banyak asam lemak omega tiga berkaitan dengan volume hippocampus otak yang lebih besar hingga 2,7 persen. Bagian otak tersebut berkaitan dengan kemampuan seseorang mengingat.

Asam lemak omega-3 banyak didapatkan dari minyak ikan. Jadi jangan ragu untuk dapat mengonsumsi suplemen atau minyak ikan untuk memenuhi asupan omega-3 dan mencegah penciutan pada otak Anda.

PELAJAR DITANGKAP POLISI

Satuan reserse unit Perlindungan Perempuan dan Anak (PPA) Polresta Depok, telah berhasil menangkap FR yang berusia 17 tahun , atas dugaan menganiaya mantan kekasihnya, MUM yang berusia 16 tahun , karena tidak mau diputus hubungan. Keduanya juga merupakan pelajar di salah satu sekolah yang sama di Jagakarsa, Jakarta Selatan. Kisah tragis yang telah dialami oleh korban, terungkap setelah menceritakan segala perbuatan mantan kekasihnya tersebut ke keluarganya. Berdasarkan dari keterangan dari adik korban, Salwa, kakaknya tersebut telah mengalami luka memar disekujur tubuh akibat dari perlakuan penganiayaan oleh FR. Keduanya juga pernah menjalin kasih asmara, namun tidak bertahan lama, lantaran sikap FR yang suka melakukan kekerasan terhadap kakaknya. “Motif pelaku memukul kakaknya diduga karena motif jalinan asmara,”ujarnya. Akibatnya, lanjut Salwa, warga Pancoranmas itu luka memar di tangan dan kaki. Selain itu berdasarkan informasi dari teman sekolah korban, kakaknya tersebut juga pernah diancam dengan menggunakan pisau kater pemotong kertas. “Kakak saya acapkali menerima pukulan,” jelasnya. Luka fisik yang harus diterima remaja tersebut, juga telah membuat kakaknya mengalami gangguan mental. Hal itu telah terlihat dengan merosotnya nilai di sekolah. “Belakang hari ini, nilai kakak merosot dratis. Dikhawatirkan ada kaitannya dari dampak penyiksaan dan ancaman pelaku,”ungkapnya. Wakapolresta Depok, AKBP Irwan Anwar juga mengatakan membenarkan ada penangkapan pelaku akibat kekerasan yang telah dilakukan pelaku ke korban. “Anggota penyidik masih mendalami kasusnya, dan mencari motif sesungguhnya dibalik aksi pelaku,”ungkapnya. Kasusnya, ujar Irwan, sedang ditangani oleh Unit Perlindungan Perempuan dan Anak (PPA) Polres Depok. “Kami juga masih perlu memeriksa lagi. Sementara ini, kasusnya terus dikembangkan,” tandas Irwan. Kasus yang telah dialami FR dengan MUM mirip dengan kisah badai asmara antara yang menimpa Ade Sara Angelina Suroto,18, mahasiswi Bunda Mulya yang tewas dihabisi mantan pacarnya sendiri, Ahmad Imam Al Hafitd, 19, bersama kekasihnya, Assyifa Ramadani, 18. Bedanya dalam kasus ini, korban tidak sampai tewas. > PELAJAR DITANGKAP POLISI

WANITA HAMIL DIHABISI SUAMI

saco-indonesia.com, Motif pembunuhan wanita hamil ternyata karena telah dibakar oleh api cemburu. Pelakunya seperti diduga semula adalah suami korban yang dibantu oleh dua temannya. Selain telah meghabisi Desi, ketiga pelaku tersebut juga melukai Fatonah.

Diberitakan sebelumnya, peristiwa itu telah terjadi di rumah orangtua korban Kampung Rawa Bebek RT 10/11. Kelurahan Kota Baru, Bekasi Barat, Minggu(26/1) malam lalu.

Desi Hayatun Nupus yang berusia 20 tahun , tewas dengan luka tusuk muka leher dan kepala, sedangkan ibunya yang sempat melerai keributan itu ( Ny Fatoyah,45,) telah terkena sabetan senjata tajam di punggungnya, Jasad ibu muda dikirim ke RS Polri Kramatjati, sedangkan Ny Fatoyah telah dilarikan ke RS Ananda.

Tersangka Erik yang berusia 30 tahun , kabur dengan menggunakan mobil Daihatsu Sirion warna silver bersama dua temannya. Petugas Polsek Bekasi Barat juga masih terus mencari pelaku.

Menurut Ny Fatoyah menantunya itu cemburu kepada Desi dan selalu mengungkit-ungkit dengan mengatakan kalau sudah janda punya satu anak dan sama orang yang belum tahu identitasnya.

Bahkan sang suami juga kerap meganiaya Desi saat mereka tinggal di apartemen di bilangan Pulogadung, Jakarta Timur.

Tak tahan akan dengan penganiayaan dan kecemburuan suami, akhirnya Desi telah memutuskan untuk pulang ke rumah ibunya Ny Fatoyah di bilangan Rawa Bebek. Di sana Desi juga sempat bekerja di sebuah kafe.

Namun Minggu malam, naas telah menimpa janda yang sedang mengandung ini. Erik bersama dua temannya datang ke rumah Ny Fatoyah. Mereka telah menghabisi nyawa sang istri dengan menggunakan senjata tajam, sementara Ny Fatoyah yang berniat untuk melerai malah kena sabetan senjata tajam .

Sementara Delita,2, anak Ny Desi dari suami pertama hanya bisa menangis.Warga yang telah mendengar teriakan minta tolong tak sanggup untuk menangkap pelaku yang kabur pakai mobil dan mengayun-ayunkan senjata tajam.

Kapolsek Bekasi Barat Kompol Jasalmon Sihombing juga mengatakan pelaku 3 orang dan pihaknya juga masih melakukan pengejaran. Jasad Ny Desi setelah diotopsi di RS Polri dikebumikan di pemakaman Kampung Rawa Bebek

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

Bila Anda Membersihkan Rumah Sama dengan Berolahraga Satu Jam di Pusat Kebugaran!

Saco-Indonesia.com - Semuanya tidak ada kata sia-sia dari upaya Anda merapikan dan membersihkan rumah, sekecil apapun upaya itu. Meskipun suatu saat rumah Anda akan kembali kotor atau berantakan, ternyata kegiatan membersihkan rumah membuat tubuh sehat dan bugar.

Kontributor apartmenttherapy.com, Alysha Findley mengatakan, hasil studi mengungkapkan bahwa pekerjaan rumah mampu memberikan hasil serupa dengan menghabiskan satu jam berolah raga di pusat kebugaran. Sementara hasil studi lain mengungkapkan, mengubah perspektif Anda mengenai pekerjaan rumah mampu membuat Anda lebih fokus mengerjakannya, dan lebih banyak membakar kalori.

Penelitian tersebut melibatkan satu kelompok yang terdiri dari 84 pekerja hotel. Setengah dari kelompok tersebut diberi tahu bahwa beberapa bagian otot mereka akan terbentuk dan mereka akan membakar beberapa ratus kalori dengan hanya mengerjakan pekerjaan rumah. Setengahnya lagi tidak diberi tahun.

Hasilnya, kelompok yang diberi tahu ternyata memiliki berat badan, tekanan darah, lemak tubuh, rasio pinggang-ke-pinggul, dan indeks massa tubuh lebih rendah. Jadi, tunggu apa lagi, berikut ini beberapa kegiatan dan jumlah kalori yang bisa Anda "bakar"!

Menurut hasil studi yang dipublikasikan dalam apartmenttherapy.com, Calorie Lab, dan dailymail.co.uk, kegiatan membersihkan rumah terdiri dari beberapa jenis. Menyapu, mengepel, membersihkan lampu, dan berbagai kegiatan lainnya, masing-masing mampu membakar sejumlah kalori di tubuh Anda. Misalnya, Anda melakukan kegiatan seperti menyedot debu atau menyapu lantai. Rata-rata, Anda bisa membakar hingga 240 kalori perjam. Anda bisa mendengarkan musik dan gerakkan tubuh Anda sembari melakukan kegiatan ini. Hasil studi mengatakan, orang yang mendengarkan musik akan melakukan kegiatannya dengan lebih cepat.

Menggosok lantai bahkan bisa membuat Anda membakar 325 kalori per jam. Gosoklah lantai sembari berlutut dan kerahkan tenaga Anda.

Naik-turun tangga pun mampu membakar hingga 250 kalori per jam. Namun, sekali lagi, tanamkan di otak Anda bahwa ketika melakukan berbagai hal ini, Anda tengah berolah raga dan bukan melakukan pekerjaan rumah pada umumnya.

Menjaga anak yang tengah bermain, mengikuti permainannya dengan ikut berlari-lari, menggendong, dan mengangkatnya tinggi-tinggi sepuluh kali juga mampu membakar hingga 205 kalori per jam.

Kegiatan memasak mampu membakar 150 kalori per jam. Namun, usahakan Anda memotong, mencacah, mengulek, menumbuk, dan mencampurkan berbagai bahan masakan dengan tangan Anda sendiri. Minimalisir penggunaan alat elektronik untuk hasil lebih maksimal.

Mencuci baju mampu membuat Anda kehilangan 260 kalori per jam. Pastikan Anda menaruh keranjang cucian di lantai agar Anda terus-menerus membungkuk. Sementara itu, mencuci piring pun mampu membuat Anda kehilangan 200 kalori per jam.

Data lebih detil bahkan disediakan oleh Calorie Lab. Menurut Calorie Lab, kegiatan lain, seperti menyajikan makanan (102 kalori/jam), memberi makan binatang peliharaan (102 kalori/jam), membawa belanjaan (442 kalori/jam), menyetrika (88 kalori/jam), membereskan tempat tidur (68 kalori/jam), memindahkan perabot (340 kalori/jam), menyiram tanaman (102 kalori/jam), bahkan merawat orang tua Anda yang sudah sepuh pun mampu membuat Anda kehilangan hingga 204 kalori per jam.

Nah, Anda pilih yang mana?

Baltimore Residents Away From Turmoil Consider Their Role

BALTIMORE — In the afternoons, the streets of Locust Point are clean and nearly silent. In front of the rowhouses, potted plants rest next to steps of brick or concrete. There is a shopping center nearby with restaurants, and a grocery store filled with fresh foods.

And the National Guard and the police are largely absent. So, too, residents say, are worries about what happened a few miles away on April 27 when, in a space of hours, parts of this city became riot zones.

“They’re not our reality,” Ashley Fowler, 30, said on Monday at the restaurant where she works. “They’re not what we’re living right now. We live in, not to be racist, white America.”

As Baltimore considers its way forward after the violent unrest brought by the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died of injuries he suffered while in police custody, residents in its predominantly white neighborhoods acknowledge that they are sometimes struggling to understand what beyond Mr. Gray’s death spurred the turmoil here. For many, the poverty and troubled schools of gritty West Baltimore are distant troubles, glimpsed only when they pass through the area on their way somewhere else.

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And so neighborhoods of Baltimore are facing altogether different reckonings after Mr. Gray’s death. In mostly black communities like Sandtown-Winchester, where some of the most destructive rioting played out last week, residents are hoping businesses will reopen and that the police will change their strategies. But in mostly white areas like Canton and Locust Point, some residents wonder what role, if any, they should play in reimagining stretches of Baltimore where they do not live.

“Most of the people are kind of at a loss as to what they’re supposed to do,” said Dr. Richard Lamb, a dentist who has practiced in the same Locust Point office for nearly 39 years. “I listen to the news reports. I listen to the clergymen. I listen to the facts of the rampant unemployment and the lack of opportunities in the area. Listen, I pay my taxes. Exactly what can I do?”

And in Canton, where the restaurants have clever names like Nacho Mama’s and Holy Crepe Bakery and Café, Sara Bahr said solutions seemed out of reach for a proudly liberal city.

“I can only imagine how frustrated they must be,” said Ms. Bahr, 36, a nurse who was out with her 3-year-old daughter, Sally. “I just wish I knew how to solve poverty. I don’t know what to do to make it better.”

The day of unrest and the overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations that followed led to hundreds of arrests, often for violations of the curfew imposed on the city for five consecutive nights while National Guard soldiers patrolled the streets. Although there were isolated instances of trouble in Canton, the neighborhood association said on its website, many parts of southeast Baltimore were physically untouched by the tumult.

Tensions in the city bubbled anew on Monday after reports that the police had wounded a black man in Northwest Baltimore. The authorities denied those reports and sent officers to talk with the crowds that gathered while other officers clutching shields blocked traffic at Pennsylvania and West North Avenues.

Lt. Col. Melvin Russell, a community police officer, said officers had stopped a man suspected of carrying a handgun and that “one of those rounds was spent.”

Colonel Russell said officers had not opened fire, “so we couldn’t have shot him.”

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The colonel said the man had not been injured but was taken to a hospital as a precaution. Nearby, many people stood in disbelief, despite the efforts by the authorities to quash reports they described as “unfounded.”

Monday’s episode was a brief moment in a larger drama that has yielded anger and confusion. Although many people said they were familiar with accounts of the police harassing or intimidating residents, many in Canton and Locust Point said they had never experienced it themselves. When they watched the unrest, which many protesters said was fueled by feelings that they lived only on Baltimore’s margins, even those like Ms. Bahr who were pained by what they saw said they could scarcely comprehend the emotions associated with it.

But others, like Lambi Vasilakopoulos, who runs a casual restaurant in Canton, said they were incensed by what unfolded last week.

“What happened wasn’t called for. Protests are one thing; looting is another thing,” he said, adding, “We’re very frustrated because we’re the ones who are going to pay for this.”

There were pockets of optimism, though, that Baltimore would enter a period of reconciliation.

“I’m just hoping for peace,” Natalie Boies, 53, said in front of the Locust Point home where she has lived for 50 years. “Learn to love each other; be patient with each other; find justice; and care.”

A skeptical Mr. Vasilakopoulos predicted tensions would worsen.

“It cannot be fixed,” he said. “It’s going to get worse. Why? Because people don’t obey the laws. They don’t want to obey them.”

But there were few fears that the violence that plagued West Baltimore last week would play out on these relaxed streets. The authorities, Ms. Fowler said, would make sure of that.

“They kept us safe here,” she said. “I didn’t feel uncomfortable when I was in my house three blocks away from here. I knew I was going to be O.K. because I knew they weren’t going to let anyone come and loot our properties or our businesses or burn our cars.”

François Michelin, Head of Tire Company, Dies at 88

Under Mr. Michelin’s leadership, which ended when he left the company in 2002, the Michelin Group became the world’s biggest tire maker, establishing a big presence in the United States and other major markets overseas.

From T Magazine: Street Lit’s Power Couple

THE WRITERS ASHLEY AND JAQUAVIS COLEMAN know the value of a good curtain-raiser. The couple have co-authored dozens of novels, and they like to start them with a bang: a headlong action sequence, a blast of violence or sex that rocks readers back on their heels. But the Colemans concede they would be hard-pressed to dream up anything more gripping than their own real-life opening scene.

In the summer of 2001, JaQuavis Coleman was a 16-year-old foster child in Flint, Mich., the former auto-manufacturing mecca that had devolved, in the wake of General Motors’ plant closures, into one of the country’s most dangerous cities, with a decimated economy and a violent crime rate more than three times the national average. When JaQuavis was 8, social services had removed him from his mother’s home. He spent years bouncing between foster families. At 16, JaQuavis was also a businessman: a crack dealer with a network of street-corner peddlers in his employ.

One day that summer, JaQuavis met a fellow dealer in a parking lot on Flint’s west side. He was there to make a bulk sale of a quarter-brick, or “nine-piece” — a nine-ounce parcel of cocaine, with a street value of about $11,000. In the middle of the transaction, JaQuavis heard the telltale chirp of a walkie-talkie. His customer, he now realized, was an undercover policeman. JaQuavis jumped into his car and spun out onto the road, with two unmarked police cars in pursuit. He didn’t want to get into a high-speed chase, so he whipped his car into a church parking lot and made a run for it, darting into an alleyway behind a row of small houses, where he tossed the quarter-brick into some bushes. When JaQuavis reached the small residential street on the other side of the houses, he was greeted by the police, who handcuffed him and went to search behind the houses where, they told him, they were certain he had ditched the drugs. JaQuavis had been dealing since he was 12, had amassed more than $100,000 and had never been arrested. Now, he thought: It’s over.

But when the police looked in the bushes, they couldn’t find any cocaine. They interrogated JaQuavis, who denied having ever possessed or sold drugs. They combed the backyard alley some more. After an hour of fruitless efforts, the police were forced to unlock the handcuffs and release their suspect.

JaQuavis was baffled by the turn of events until the next day, when he received a phone call. The previous afternoon, a 15-year-old girl had been sitting in her home on the west side of Flint when she heard sirens. She looked out of the window of her bedroom, and watched a young man throw a package in the bushes behind her house. She recognized him. He was a high school classmate — a handsome, charismatic boy whom she had admired from afar. The girl crept outside and grabbed the bundle, which she hid in her basement. “I have something that belongs to you,” Ashley Snell told JaQuavis Coleman when she reached him by phone. “You wanna come over here and pick it up?”

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In the Colemans’ first novel, “Dirty Money” (2005), they told a version of this story. The outline was the same: the drug deal gone bad, the dope chucked in the bushes, the fateful phone call. To the extent that the authors took poetic license, it was to tone down the meet-cute improbability of the true-life events. In “Dirty Money,” the girl, Anari, and the crack dealer, Maurice, circle each other warily for a year or so before coupling up. But the facts of Ashley and JaQuavis’s romance outstripped pulp fiction. They fell in love more or less at first sight, moved into their own apartment while still in high school and were married in 2008. “We were together from the day we met,” Ashley says. “I don’t think we’ve spent more than a week apart in total over the past 14 years.”

That partnership turned out to be creative and entrepreneurial as well as romantic. Over the past decade, the Colemans have published nearly 50 books, sometimes as solo writers, sometimes under pseudonyms, but usually as collaborators with a byline that has become a trusted brand: “Ashley & JaQuavis.” They are marquee stars of urban fiction, or street lit, a genre whose inner-city settings and lurid mix of crime, sex and sensationalism have earned it comparisons to gangsta rap. The emergence of street lit is one of the big stories in recent American publishing, a juggernaut that has generated huge sales by catering to a readership — young, black and, for the most part, female — that historically has been ill-served by the book business. But the genre is also widely maligned. Street lit is subject to a kind of triple snobbery: scorned by literati who look down on genre fiction generally, ignored by a white publishing establishment that remains largely indifferent to black books and disparaged by African-American intellectuals for poor writing, coarse values and trafficking in racial stereotypes.

But if a certain kind of cultural prestige is shut off to the Colemans, they have reaped other rewards. They’ve built a large and loyal fan base, which gobbles up the new Ashley & JaQuavis titles that arrive every few months. Many of those books are sold at street-corner stands and other off-the-grid venues in African-American neighborhoods, a literary gray market that doesn’t register a blip on best-seller tallies. Yet the Colemans’ most popular series now regularly crack the trade fiction best-seller lists of The New York Times and Publishers Weekly. For years, the pair had no literary agent; they sold hundreds of thousands of books without banking a penny in royalties. Still, they have earned millions of dollars, almost exclusively from cash-for-manuscript deals negotiated directly with independent publishing houses. In short, though little known outside of the world of urban fiction, the Colemans are one of America’s most successful literary couples, a distinction they’ve achieved, they insist, because of their work’s gritty authenticity and their devotion to a primal literary virtue: the power of the ripping yarn.

“When you read our books, you’re gonna realize: ‘Ashley & JaQuavis are storytellers,’ ” says Ashley. “Our tales will get your heart pounding.”

THE COLEMANS’ HOME BASE — the cottage from which they operate their cottage industry — is a spacious four-bedroom house in a genteel suburb about 35 miles north of downtown Detroit. The house is plush, but when I visited this past winter, it was sparsely appointed. The couple had just recently moved in, and had only had time to fully furnish the bedroom of their 4-year-old son, Quaye.

In conversation, Ashley and JaQuavis exude both modesty and bravado: gratitude for their good fortune and bootstrappers’ pride in having made their own luck. They talk a lot about their time in the trenches, the years they spent as a drug dealer and “ride-or-die girl” tandem. In Flint they learned to “grind hard.” Writing, they say, is merely a more elevated kind of grind.

“Instead of hitting the block like we used to, we hit the laptops,” says Ashley. “I know what every word is worth. So while I’m writing, I’m like: ‘Okay, there’s a hundred dollars. There’s a thousand dollars. There’s five thousand dollars.’ ”

They maintain a rigorous regimen. They each try to write 5,000 words per day, five days a week. The writers stagger their shifts: JaQuavis goes to bed at 7 p.m. and wakes up early, around 3 or 4 in the morning, to work while his wife and child sleep. Ashley writes during the day, often in libraries or at Starbucks.

They divide the labor in other ways. Chapters are divvied up more or less equally, with tasks assigned according to individual strengths. (JaQuavis typically handles character development. Ashley loves writing murder scenes.) The results are stitched together, with no editorial interference from one author in the other’s text. The real work, they contend, is the brainstorming. The Colemans spend weeks mapping out their plot-driven books — long conversations that turn into elaborate diagrams on dry-erase boards. “JaQuavis and I are so close, it makes the process real easy,” says Ashley. “Sometimes when I’m thinking of something, a plot point, he’ll say it out loud, and I’m like: ‘Wait — did I say that?’ ”

Their collaboration developed by accident, and on the fly. Both were bookish teenagers. Ashley read lots of Judy Blume and John Grisham; JaQuavis liked Shakespeare, Richard Wright and “Atlas Shrugged.” (Their first official date was at a Borders bookstore, where Ashley bought “The Coldest Winter Ever,” the Sister Souljah novel often credited with kick-starting the contemporary street-lit movement.) In 2003, Ashley, then 17, was forced to terminate an ectopic pregnancy. She was bedridden for three weeks, and to provide distraction and boost her spirits, JaQuavis challenged his girlfriend to a writing contest. “She just wasn’t talking. She was laying in bed. I said, ‘You know what? I bet you I could write a better book than you.’ My wife is real competitive. So I said, ‘Yo, all right, $500 bet.’ And I saw her eyes spark, like, ‘What?! You can’t write no better book than me!’ So I wrote about three chapters. She wrote about three chapters. Two days later, we switched.”

The result, hammered out in a few days, would become “Dirty Money.” Two years later, when Ashley and JaQuavis were students at Ferris State University in Western Michigan, they sold the manuscript to Urban Books, a street-lit imprint founded by the best-selling author Carl Weber. At the time, JaQuavis was still making his living selling drugs. When Ashley got the phone call informing her that their book had been bought, she assumed they’d hit it big, and flushed more than $10,000 worth of cocaine down the toilet. Their advance was a mere $4,000.

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Those advances would soon increase, eventually reaching five and six figures. The Colemans built their career, JaQuavis says, in a manner that made sense to him as a veteran dope peddler: by flooding the street with product. From the start, they were prolific, churning out books at a rate of four or five a year. Their novels made their way into stores; the now-defunct chain Waldenbooks, which had stores in urban areas typically bypassed by booksellers, was a major engine of the street-lit market. But Ashley and JaQuavis took advantage of distribution channels established by pioneering urban fiction authors such as Teri Woods and Vickie Stringer, and a network of street-corner tables, magazine stands, corner shops and bodegas. Like rappers who establish their bona fides with gray-market mixtapes, street-lit authors use this system to circumnavigate industry gatekeepers, bringing their work straight to the genre’s core readership. But urban fiction has other aficionados, in less likely places. “Our books are so popular in the prison system,” JaQuavis says. “We’re banned in certain penitentiaries. Inmates fight over the books — there are incidents, you know? I have loved ones in jail, and they’re like: ‘Yo, your books can’t come in here. It’s against the rules.’ ”

The appeal of the Colemans’ work is not hard to fathom. The books are formulaic and taut; they deliver the expected goods efficiently and exuberantly. The titles telegraph the contents: “Diary of a Street Diva,” “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang,” “Murderville.” The novels serve up a stream of explicit sex and violence in a slangy, tangy, profane voice. In Ashley & JaQuavis’s books people don’t get killed: they get “popped,” “laid out,” get their “cap twisted back.” The smut is constant, with emphasis on the earthy, sticky, olfactory particulars. Romance novel clichés — shuddering orgasms, heroic carnal feats, superlative sexual skill sets — are rendered in the Colemans’ punchy patois.

Subtlety, in other words, isn’t Ashley & JaQuavis’s forte. But their books do have a grainy specificity. In “The Cartel” (2008), the first novel in the Colemans’ best-selling saga of a Miami drug syndicate, they catch the sights and smells of a crack workshop in a housing project: the nostril-stinging scent of cocaine and baking soda bubbling on stovetops; the teams of women, stripped naked except for hospital masks so they can’t pilfer the merchandise, “cutting up the cooked coke on the round wood table.” The subject matter is dark, but the Colemans’ tone is not quite noir. Even in the grimmest scenes, the mood is high-spirited, with the writers palpably relishing the lewd and gory details: the bodies writhing in boudoirs and crumpling under volleys of bullets, the geysers of blood and other bodily fluids.

The luridness of street lit has made it a flashpoint, inciting controversy reminiscent of the hip-hop culture wars of the 1980s and ’90s. But the street-lit debate touches deeper historical roots, reviving decades-old arguments in black literary circles about the mandate to uplift the race and present wholesome images of African-Americans. In 1928, W. E. B. Du Bois slammed the “licentiousness” of “Home to Harlem,” Claude McKay’s rollicking novel of Harlem nightlife. McKay’s book, Du Bois wrote, “for the most part nauseates me, and after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath.” Similar sentiments have greeted 21st-century street lit. In a 2006 New York Times Op-Ed essay, the journalist and author Nick Chiles decried “the sexualization and degradation of black fiction.” African-American bookstores, Chiles complained, are “overrun with novels that . . . appeal exclusively to our most prurient natures — as if these nasty books were pairing off back in the stockrooms like little paperback rabbits and churning out even more graphic offspring that make Ralph Ellison books cringe into a dusty corner.”

Copulating paperbacks aside, it’s clear that the street-lit debate is about more than literature, touching on questions of paternalism versus populism, and on middle-class anxieties about the black underclass. “It’s part and parcel of black elites’ efforts to define not only a literary tradition, but a racial politics,” said Kinohi Nishikawa, an assistant professor of English and African-American Studies at Princeton University. “There has always been a sense that because African-Americans’ opportunities to represent themselves are so limited in the first place, any hint of criminality or salaciousness would necessarily be a knock on the entire racial politics. One of the pressing debates about African-American literature today is: If we can’t include writers like Ashley & JaQuavis, to what extent is the foundation of our thinking about black literature faulty? Is it just a literature for elites? Or can it be inclusive, bringing urban fiction under the purview of our umbrella term ‘African-American literature’?”

Defenders of street lit note that the genre has a pedigree: a tradition of black pulp fiction that stretches from Chester Himes, the midcentury author of hardboiled Harlem detective stories, to the 1960s and ’70s “ghetto fiction” of Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines, to the current wave of urban fiction authors. Others argue for street lit as a social good, noting that it attracts a large audience that might otherwise never read at all. Scholars like Nishikawa link street lit to recent studies showing increased reading among African-Americans. A 2014 Pew Research Center report found that a greater percentage of black Americans are book readers than whites or Latinos.

For their part, the Colemans place their work in the broader black literary tradition. “You have Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, James Baldwin — all of these traditional black writers, who wrote about the struggles of racism, injustice, inequality,” says Ashley. “We’re writing about the struggle as it happens now. It’s just a different struggle. I’m telling my story. I’m telling the struggle of a black girl from Flint, Michigan, who grew up on welfare.”

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Perhaps there is a high-minded case to be made for street lit. But the virtues of Ashley & JaQuavis’s work are more basic. Their novels do lack literary polish. The writing is not graceful; there are passages of clunky exposition and sex scenes that induce guffaws and eye rolls. But the pleasure quotient is high. The books flaunt a garish brand of feminism, with women characters cast not just as vixens, but also as gangsters — cold-blooded killers, “murder mamas.” The stories are exceptionally well-plotted. “The Cartel” opens by introducing its hero, the crime boss Carter Diamond; on page 9, a gunshot spatters Diamond’s brain across the interior of a police cruiser. The book then flashes back seven years and begins to hurtle forward again — a bullet train, whizzing readers through shifting alliances, romantic entanglements and betrayals, kidnappings, shootouts with Haitian and Dominican gangsters, and a cliffhanger closing scene that leaves the novel’s heroine tied to a chair in a basement, gruesomely tortured to the edge of death. Ashley & JaQuavis’s books are not Ralph Ellison, certainly, but they build up quite a head of steam. They move.

The Colemans are moving themselves these days. They recently signed a deal with St. Martin’s Press, which will bring out the next installment in the “Cartel” series as well as new solo series by both writers. The St. Martin’s deal is both lucrative and legitimizing — a validation of Ashley and JaQuavis’s work by one of publishing’s most venerable houses. The Colemans’ ambitions have grown, as well. A recent trilogy, “Murderville,” tackles human trafficking and the blood-diamond industry in West Africa, with storylines that sweep from Sierra Leone to Mexico to Los Angeles. Increasingly, Ashley & JaQuavis are leaning on research — traveling to far-flung settings and hitting the books in the libraries — and spending less time mining their own rough-and-tumble past.

But Flint remains a source of inspiration. One evening not long ago, JaQuavis led me on a tour of his hometown: a popular roadside bar; the parking lot where he met the undercover cop for the ill-fated drug deal; Ashley’s old house, the site of his almost-arrest. He took me to a ramshackle vehicle repair shop on Flint’s west side, where he worked as a kid, washing cars. He showed me a bathroom at the rear of the garage, where, at age 12, he sneaked away to inspect the first “boulder” of crack that he ever sold. A spray-painted sign on the garage wall, which JaQuavis remembered from his time at the car wash, offered words of warning:

WHAT EVERY YOUNG MAN SHOULD KNOW
ABOUT USING A GUN:
MURDER . . . 30 Years
ARMED ROBBERY . . . 15 Years
ASSAULT . . . 15 Years
RAPE . . . 20 Years
POSSESSION . . . 5 Years
JACKING . . . 20 YEARS

“We still love Flint, Michigan,” JaQuavis says. “It’s so seedy, so treacherous. But there’s some heart in this city. This is where it all started, selling books out the box. In the days when we would get those little $40,000 advances, they’d send us a couple boxes of books for free. We would hit the streets to sell our books, right out of the car trunk. It was a hustle. It still is.”

One old neighborhood asset that the Colemans have not shaken off is swagger. “My wife is the best female writer in the game,” JaQuavis told me. “I believe I’m the best male writer in the game. I’m sleeping next to the best writer in the world. And she’s doing the same.”

Dave Goldberg, Head of Web Survey Company and Half of a Silicon Valley Power Couple, Dies at 47

By VINDU GOEL and QUENTIN HARDY

Mr. Goldberg was a serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist who was married to Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook.

Dave Goldberg Was Lifelong Women’s Advocate

Review: ‘Frontline’ Looks at Missteps During the Ebola Outbreak

y NEIL GENZLINGER

Frontline

Frontline An installment of this PBS program looks at the effects of Ebola on Liberia and other countries, as well as the origins of the outbreak.

The program traces the outbreak to its origin, thought to be a tree full of bats in Guinea.

Harvey R. Miller, Renowned Bankruptcy Lawyer, Dies at 82

Mr. Miller, of the firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges, represented companies including Lehman Brothers, General Motors and American Airlines, and mentored many of the top Chapter 11 practitioners today.

Mike Phillips, Half of Kentucky’s ‘Twin Towers’ of Basketball, Dies at 59

The 6-foot-10 Phillips played alongside the 6-11 Rick Robey on the Wildcats team that won the 1978 N.C.A.A. men’s basketball title.

Dan Walker, 92, Dies; Illinois Governor and Later a U.S. Prisoner

As governor, Mr. Walker alienated Republicans and his fellow Democrats, particularly the Democratic powerhouse Richard J. Daley, the mayor of Chicago.

Betsy von Furstenberg, Baroness and Versatile Actress, Dies at 83

Ms. von Furstenberg made her debut in the movies and on the Broadway stage in the early 1950s as a teenager and later reinvented herself as a television actress, writer and philanthropist.

Jean Nidetch, 91, Dies; Pounds Came Off, and Weight Watchers Was Born

A 214-pound Queens housewife struggled with a lifelong addiction to food until she shed 72 pounds and became the public face of the worldwide weight-control empire Weight Watchers.

Calvin Peete, 71, a Racial Pioneer on the PGA Tour, Is Dead

With 12 tournament victories in his career, Mr. Peete was the most successful black professional golfer before Tiger Woods.

Sid Tepper Dies at 96; Delivered ‘Red Roses for a Blue Lady’ and Other Songs

Mr. Tepper was not a musical child and had no formal training, but he grew up to write both lyrics and tunes, trading off duties with the other member of the team, Roy C. Bennett.

G.O.P. Hopefuls Now Aiming to Woo the Middle Class

WASHINGTON — The last three men to win the Republican nomination have been the prosperous son of a president (George W. Bush), a senator who could not recall how many homes his family owned (John McCain of Arizona; it was seven) and a private equity executive worth an estimated $200 million (Mitt Romney).

The candidates hoping to be the party’s nominee in 2016 are trying to create a very different set of associations. On Sunday, Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, joined the presidential field.

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida praises his parents, a bartender and a Kmart stock clerk, as he urges audiences not to forget “the workers in our hotel kitchens, the landscaping crews in our neighborhoods, the late-night janitorial staff that clean our offices.”

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a preacher’s son, posts on Twitter about his ham-and-cheese sandwiches and boasts of his coupon-clipping frugality. His $1 Kohl’s sweater has become a campaign celebrity in its own right.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky laments the existence of “two Americas,” borrowing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s phrase to describe economically and racially troubled communities like Ferguson, Mo., and Detroit.

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“Some say, ‘But Democrats care more about the poor,’ ” Mr. Paul likes to say. “If that’s true, why is black unemployment still twice white unemployment? Why has household income declined by $3,500 over the past six years?”

We are in the midst of the Empathy Primary — the rhetorical battleground shaping the Republican presidential field of 2016.

Harmed by the perception that they favor the wealthy at the expense of middle-of-the-road Americans, the party’s contenders are each trying their hardest to get across what the elder George Bush once inelegantly told recession-battered voters in 1992: “Message: I care.”

Their ability to do so — less bluntly, more sincerely — could prove decisive in an election year when power, privilege and family connections will loom large for both parties.

Questions of understanding and compassion cost Republicans in the last election. Mr. Romney, who memorably dismissed the “47 percent” of Americans as freeloaders, lost to President Obama by 63 percentage points among voters who cast their ballots for the candidate who “cares about people like me,” according to exit polls.

And a Pew poll from February showed that people still believe Republicans are indifferent to working Americans: 54 percent said the Republican Party does not care about the middle class.

That taint of callousness explains why Senator Ted Cruz of Texas declared last week that Republicans “are and should be the party of the 47 percent” — and why another son of a president, Jeb Bush, has made economic opportunity the centerpiece of his message.

With his pedigree and considerable wealth — since he left the Florida governor’s office almost a decade ago he has earned millions of dollars sitting on corporate boards and advising banks — Mr. Bush probably has the most complicated task making the argument to voters that he understands their concerns.

On a visit last week to Puerto Rico, Mr. Bush sounded every bit the populist, railing against “elites” who have stifled economic growth and innovation. In the kind of economy he envisions leading, he said: “We wouldn’t have the middle being squeezed. People in poverty would have a chance to rise up. And the social strains that exist — because the haves and have-nots is the big debate in our country today — would subside.”

Continue reading the main story

 

Who Is Running for President (and Who’s Not)?

Republicans’ emphasis on poorer and working-class Americans now represents a shift from the party’s longstanding focus on business owners and “job creators” as the drivers of economic opportunity.

This is intentional, Republican operatives said.

In the last presidential election, Republicans rushed to defend business owners against what they saw as hostility by Democrats to successful, wealthy entrepreneurs.

“Part of what you had was a reaction to the Democrats’ dehumanization of business owners: ‘Oh, you think you started your plumbing company? No you didn’t,’ ” said Grover Norquist, the conservative activist and president of Americans for Tax Reform.

But now, Mr. Norquist said, Republicans should move past that. “Focus on the people in the room who know someone who couldn’t get a job, or a promotion, or a raise because taxes are too high or regulations eat up companies’ time,” he said. “The rich guy can take care of himself.”

Democrats argue that the public will ultimately see through such an approach because Republican positions like opposing a minimum-wage increase and giving private banks a larger role in student loans would hurt working Americans.

“If Republican candidates are just repeating the same tired policies, I’m not sure that smiling while saying it is going to be enough,” said Guy Cecil, a Democratic strategist who is joining a “super PAC” working on behalf of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Republicans have already attacked Mrs. Clinton over the wealth and power she and her husband have accumulated, caricaturing her as an out-of-touch multimillionaire who earns hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech and has not driven a car since 1996.

Mr. Walker hit this theme recently on Fox News, pointing to Mrs. Clinton’s lucrative book deals and her multiple residences. “This is not someone who is connected with everyday Americans,” he said. His own net worth, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is less than a half-million dollars; Mr. Walker also owes tens of thousands of dollars on his credit cards.

But showing off a cheap sweater or boasting of a bootstraps family background not only helps draw a contrast with Mrs. Clinton’s latter-day affluence, it is also an implicit argument against Mr. Bush.

Mr. Walker, who featured a 1998 Saturn with more than 100,000 miles on the odometer in a 2010 campaign ad during his first run for governor, likes to talk about flipping burgers at McDonald’s as a young person. His mother, he has said, grew up on a farm with no indoor plumbing until she was in high school.

Mr. Rubio, among the least wealthy members of the Senate, with an estimated net worth of around a half-million dollars, uses his working-class upbringing as evidence of the “exceptionalism” of America, “where even the son of a bartender and a maid can have the same dreams and the same future as those who come from power and privilege.”

Mr. Cruz alludes to his family’s dysfunction — his parents, he says, were heavy drinkers — and recounts his father’s tale of fleeing Cuba with $100 sewn into his underwear.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey notes that his father paid his way through college working nights at an ice cream plant.

But sometimes the attempts at projecting authenticity can seem forced. Mr. Christie recently found himself on the defensive after telling a New Hampshire audience, “I don’t consider myself a wealthy man.” Tax returns showed that he and his wife, a longtime Wall Street executive, earned nearly $700,000 in 2013.

The story of success against the odds is a political classic, even if it is one the Republican Party has not been able to tell for a long time. Ronald Reagan liked to say that while he had not been born on the wrong side of the tracks, he could always hear the whistle. Richard Nixon was fond of reminding voters how he was born in a house his father had built.

“Probably the idea that is most attractive to an average voter, and an idea that both Republicans and Democrats try to craft into their messages, is this idea that you can rise from nothing,” said Charles C. W. Cooke, a writer for National Review.

There is a certain delight Republicans take in turning that message to their advantage now.

“That’s what Obama did with Hillary,” Mr. Cooke said. “He acknowledged it openly: ‘This is ridiculous. Look at me, this one-term senator with dark skin and all of America’s unsolved racial problems, running against the wife of the last Democratic president.”

Take the Money and Run

The career criminals in genre novels don’t have money problems. If they need some, they just go out and steal it. But such financial transactions can backfire, which is what happened back in 2004 when the Texas gang in Michael

William Pfaff, Critic of American Foreign Policy, Dies at 86

Mr. Pfaff was an international affairs columnist and author who found Washington’s intervention in world affairs often misguided.