On Friday, Hillary Clinton gave a very rare press conference, at the joint convention of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. It was not great, Jeremy Stahl writes. “A number of Clinton’s answers revealed why she doesn’t hold press conferences more: Her answers to both difficult and easy questions were often evasive, excessively legalistic, and frustrating to watch,” Stahl observes.
Don’t pay too much attention to the ups and downs of post-convention polls, beg statistician Andrew Gelman and economist David Rothschild. The two carried out surveys via Xbox during the 2012 election, and found that among the day-to-day results they were able to procure using this method, the number of people who felt like responding influenced the results much more than any change in “actual voter intention.”
Things would go a lot better for everyone if the Olympics were just held in the same host city, winter and summer, forever and ever, amen. Jonathan Fischer knows this will never happen, but his vote is for Vancouver anyway. “It would have to be a place with the right climate. It would have to be a place that could afford it,” Fischer writes. “It should possess something of an international flavor. It should have a proven track record. It should be located in a democratic country but not a hegemonic one. It should be Vancouver.”
Comparing the relative fame of the pretty-good pole vaulter Allison Stokke, who is extremely attractive, and the phenomenonal pole vaulter Jenn Suhr, who is a normal-looking human female, Katy Waldman finds herself saddened. “It’s annoying that Suhr doesn’t get more attention, maddening that we inhabit a planet that showers additional dividends on genetically affluent people, and dismaying that the cultural status quo identifies women as sex objects first and human beings second,” Waldman writes.
Some overinvested fans of the DC Universe are petitioning to have the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes shut down, because of its negative rating of the movie Suicide Squad. This latest twist in the fans versus critics battle is very telling, writes Sam Adams. “There are innumerable places on the web for fans with a pre-existing love of the comic books to talk to each other about Suicide Squad, but that’s not good enough,” Adams argues. “The ‘Crush the Tomato’ faction wants to live in a world where other opinions don’t exist, or at least they don’t have to hear about them.”
For fun: Boy, this teaser trailer for Christopher Nolan’s summer 2017 movie about the Dunkirk evacuation sure is thrilling.
My nerves are all a-jangle,
Rebecca
