Can it be? Is this an Angle devoid of a single whisper of He Who Must Not Be Named?
In an excerpt from his book Whistlestop, John Dickerson tells the story of James Callendar, a smearmongering journalist who attacked John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson in his time. “A scoundrel and a drunk, James Callender has long been treated as a historical cur,” Dickerson writes. “But the chaos he unleashed in both parties uncovered the truth that the men of virtue who founded the country were not as virtuous as they pretended, either in their private lives or in the way they carried out their public debates.”
Ben Orlin sees you buying that copy of Oh, the Places You’ll Go! for the graduate in your life and would like to suggest an alternative: I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sellew. “Throughout, Solla Sollew tackles the deep human desire for easy triumph and premature happy endings—the very same desire uncritically indulged by Oh the Places,” Orlin argues. “Solla Sollew goes boldly where Oh the Places is afraid to venture: toward an embrace of struggle.”
Baz Luhrmann’s expensive new Netflix series The Get Down is a maximalist hodgepodge with too many plotlines and characters, Willa Paskin writes. “The Get Down wants to be gritty, but it doesn’t quite know how,” Paskin observes. “It’s like a glistening manicure with the polish laid over flecks of dirt—under a few clear coats, schmutz is indistinguishable from glitter.”
Ahead of Tuesday night’s swim races in Rio de Janeiro, Dan Kois wonders why we can’t let athletes mix up the order in which they swim their individual medleys (“the strategizing and gamesmanship would be so fun!”), and Matt Miller asks why swimmers never use the fish kick (“if done properly, the fastest way for a human to swim”).
For fun: Male gymnasts want to compete topless. LET THEM.
Please let them,
Rebecca
