Though you wouldn’t know it from listening to Bernie Sanders talk about his failure to carry Democratic primaries in the Deep South, the average Southern Democratic voter is a middle-aged black woman, writes Jamelle Bouie. “In the popular imagination, Southern Democrats are still ‘good ’ol boys’ and wealthy elites—the Bill Clintons and (for a fictional version) the Frank Underwoods of the world,” Bouie observes. “In reality, those Democrats have long since died or left the party.”
John Fetterman, the mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, who is running as a long-shot candidate for a Senate seat in the state, needs Bernie Sanders’ help to win next Tuesday. So why isn’t Sanders’ assistance forthcoming? Michelle Goldberg wonders. “Sanders often says that his audacious agenda depends on a political revolution, one that would sweep progressives into office behind him,” Goldberg observes. “So far, however, he’s done notably little to make that happen.”
The adorable Justin Trudeau–explains–quantum computing video (covered last week on our dear Slate .com) is a good example of the way social media’s particular appetites have shaped our reality, writes Will Oremus. “The Trudeau story is a perfect, gleaming artifact of a system in which truth is that which gets the most Facebook shares,” Oremus points out, with no small amount of ruefulness.
Turning from the replication crisis in psychology to the parallel situation in biomedicine, Daniel Engber writes that the field of cancer research—the darling of funders like Sean “Napster” Parker and the recipient of much government money—is riddled with problems. While Parker may think researchers are in need of a Silicon Valley management makeover, “recent studies of the research enterprise reveal a more confounding issue, and one that won’t be solved with bigger grants and increasingly disruptive attitudes,” Engber writes. “The deeper problem is that much of cancer research in the lab—maybe even most of it—simply can’t be trusted. The data are corrupt. The findings are unstable. The science doesn’t work.”
Historical analogies and parallels are easily, and commonly, misused, writes historian Linford Fisher on Vox. “People aren’t always sure what to do with history,” Fisher allows. “But the laziest use is to make facile comparisons between then and now, this person and that.”
For fun: There should totally be a Monica Lewinsky TV movie, if only so Matthew McConaughey can be Bill. We humbly put forth some casting ideas, should anyone need them.
For more fun: Arguing that the American press has long featured fluff coverage of the BuzzFeed-watermelon variety, Jack Shafer writes in Politico that the New York Times, for one, presents quite a distinguished record of feline reporting.*
My money’s on the kitten,
Rebecca
*Correction, April 19, 2016: This post originally misspelled Jack Shafer’s last name.
