After Bill Clinton’s campaign trail gaffe last week, Jamelle Bouie looks back at the passage of Clinton’s 1994 crime bill, writing that Clinton’s claim the bill was supported by black activists at the time is correct—“self-serving,” but correct. “We can’t lose sight of the fact that the crime bill did real damage to countless communities, harming people it was supposed help,” Bouie argues. “But we also can’t turn this into a simple morality play of good guys and bad ones. With the crime bill, there is a real gap between good intentions and actual consequences that is worth considering, not as an excuse or a defense, but as a lesson.”
“The United States, contra to our belief that we don’t enjoy a state-sponsored religion, actually has quite a robust one,” writes Helaine Olin in a pan of Melissa McCarthy’s terrible new movie The Boss. “It’s the Church of Self Help, and the harder times get, the better it does.” And Jeff Sharlet writes about Trump as preacher of the prosperity gospel in a feature in the New York Times magazine: “The ethos of the prosperity gospel is the key to Trump’s power to persuade people that his victories can be theirs—that the greatness of Trump is the means of making America great again.”
How has the exclusion of lab mice and rats from the 50-year-old Animal Welfare Act affected the many rodent lives ended in the name of science each year? Daniel Engber investigates why the pain suffered by rats and mice used in experiments is so little understood, even as more charismatic species like dogs, cats, rabbits, and monkeys have benefited from efforts to make those experiments more humane.
The new Starz show The Girlfriend Experience, based on a Steven Soderbergh movie about a high-end escort, is “at once undeniably hot and utterly unsettling,” writes Willa Paskin, who makes an intriguing comparison between Girlfriend and the critically acclaimed Mr. Robot. “The show is provocative, sexually and mentally; it’s alluring and sordid, arousing and disturbing, a unique viewing experience.”
For Fun: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has called himself a “buff lesbian”—more than once! More than twice! It’s kind of a bullying thing to say, Christina Cauterucci writes, but adds: “If wearing a fanny pack and comfortable jeans makes someone a lesbian, who’d ever want to be straight?”
A fine point,
Rebecca
