The Angle

The Angle: Too Many Medals? Edition

Slate’s daily newsletter on baby talk, the bad-ratings Olympics, and how the Democrats are failing Obamacare.

Dancers perform during the closing ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, in Rio de Janeiro, on August 21, 2016.

LUIS ACOSTA/AFP/Getty Images

Obamacare needs help, Jim Newell writes, and Democrats appear unready to give it. “The Affordable Care Act, for all its advances, is due for the sort of legislative maintenance that most major laws require after implementation,” Newell argues. But, in this case, “the legislators who are supposed to do the redressing seem less than eager to return to the front where not long ago they’d declared victory.”

Writing from flooded-out Baton Rouge, Zack Kopplin is furious about the way the rest of the country seems to shrug and dismiss Louisiana’s troubles. “Because we, as a country, have collectively endangered our future by overusing fossil fuels, that doesn’t mean Louisiana has sacrificed its right to exist and its people should leave,” Kopplin writes. “Climate change could sink all of our major coastal cities, but Louisiana is being held to a different standard, because we’ve already been hit with so many disasters. We’ve suffered so much that people are tired of hearing about us.”

The games in Rio are over. While Americans won many more medals than any other country, to judge by NBC’s ratings, very few Americans were watching them do it. What should the network do to fix this? “NBC should invest more time in second-tier sports,” Justin Peters, a big fan of fringey contests in fencing, cycling, and shooting, argues. “To make its multibillion-dollar investment in broadcast rights worthwhile, it’s going to need to transform less-popular events into popular ones.”

Should you repeat your child’s cute speech mistakes back to her? What if they’re really, really cute? Melinda Wenner Moyer investigates, and finds that the practice does little harm—so long as you keep on talking, so the kid can learn the intricacies of language. “Language is hard, and your kids will need ample time to master it,” Moyer writes. “Don’t ignore red flags, but don’t stress if they have age-appropriate trouble. Talk to them a lot and enjoy their cutest mistakes.”

For fun: Slatesters try to write their own children’s books…in an hour. A panel of experts tolerantly judges the results.

Hold onto those day jobs,

Rebecca