Why is right-wing media suddenly talking about Hillary Clinton’s health all the time? This is “pure wishful thinking,” Michelle Goldberg writes. “This is the speculation of desperate men hoping for a deus ex machina to save them from a Clinton presidency. That means that on some level, these men are starting to understand that this future is bearing down on them.”
Meryl Streep’s new movie about the abysmal 1940s opera singer Florence Foster Jenkins reminds Carl Wilson of the long history of American fascination with bad vocalists. Wilson wants to know: Why do we love them, when we do? “One of the opportunities that ‘bad’ music can permit us is a mini-liberation from the usual bounds of taste,” Wilson writes. “There is only listening, perhaps in an unusually pure form.”
What’s it like to ghostwrite Nancy Drew books? Heather Schwedel interviews Alice Leonhardt, who did the job for several decades. “The editors were desperately looking for decent writers,” Leonhardt told Schwedel of her time working as a ghostwriter for the series. “They were cranking these out one a month maybe, with the Nancy Drews. They had incredible schedules to meet. So they were looking for decent writers who could write mysteries, which isn’t all that easy, because a lot of the books that I revised and edited for them were pretty terrible.”
This is 73-year-old gymnastics coach Martha Karolyi’s last Olympics. Amid the homages, Jessica Winter writes, let’s not forget the many gymnasts who have reported suffering abuse at the hands of Martha and her husband Bela. “Perhaps some of the harsher methods the Karolyis employed ‘lifted gymnastics,’ ” (as the New York Times put it), Winter writes. “And perhaps some of them could be likened to child abuse.”
Since American swimmer Lilly King beat Russian Yulia Efimova in the 100-meter breaststroke on Monday, King has gone out of her way to heap scorn on her rival’s head, pointing to two previous instances in which Efimova tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. That’s not right, writes Justin Peters. “Efimova’s story is much more complex than King has made it seem,” Peters argues. “Though Efimova has indeed had two positive tests, it’s not at all clear that either of those hits was entirely her own fault.”
For fun: Simone Manuel’s reaction upon winning the 100-meter freestyle on Thursday.
A thing of joy,
Rebecca
