Donald Trump’s supposed outreach effort to black voters is actually a dog whistle for white racists, Jamelle Bouie writes. In a Monday speech invoking inner-city communities, “Trump didn’t describe life for black Americans as much as he described a white supremacist fantasy in which blacks live miserable, brutish, and nearly subhuman lives in cities dominated by feckless Democrats,” Bouie argues.
Could a secret cadre of college-educated voters who are just too ashamed to tell pollsters they’re Trump supporters narrow the gap on Election Day, as the candidate’s new campaign manager Kellyanne Conway has recently proposed? “Conway is not entirely off in her reading of the public polls,” Jim Newell writes, “but unless her internal numbers are far more substantial than anything the public surveys show, it doesn’t come close to patching up the massive political problem she breezily identifies while discussing polling methodology.”
Add insulin to the list of life-saving drugs getting more and more expensive for Americans to buy. Jordan Weissmann writes that the recent hike in insulin prices is especially upsetting because “it specifically affects patients who are likely to have trouble affording meds … Faced with high costs, many patients seem to be skipping or rationing shots of a hormone they are required to take multiple times a day in order to stay alive, keep from going blind, or lose a foot to amputation.”
Why is it so clearly offensive for Good Morning America host Amy Robach to say colored person on air, when person of color is accepted terminology? Linguist John H. McWhorter explains that it’s all about context: “The reason ‘colored people’ is offensive without being a term of abuse is that it reminds many people of times when we were, whatever we were being called, abused.”
For fun: Cartoonist Lynda Barry recalls her first encounter with her character Marlys.
The! Greatest! Of!
Rebecca
