Michelle Goldberg sees very little but tragedy in the fall of Anthony Weiner, whose wife, Huma Abedin, announced Monday that she will be separating from him in the wake of the former congressman’s latest sexting leak. “We’re watching a lonely man undone by his inability to resist the furtive gratifications he finds on the internet, even as people on the internet laugh and laugh,” Goldberg writes.
Could Donald Trump win the election without a hint of a conventional ground game, relying, instead, on mass media to rally voters? Sasha Issenberg, author of The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns, tells Isaac Chotiner he doubts it:
If you’re trying to mobilize nonvoters, giving them more information about the candidates or the parties or the issues or the consequences of the election doesn’t dramatically affect their likelihood of voting. Voting is a habit. Nonvoting is also a habit. The things that turn nonvoters into voters tend to be things that change the social dynamic around voting. They’re often in their way rather intimate. Somebody from your neighborhood coming up and having a real conversation with you.
The simple act of smiling will make you happier! This has been firm psychological knowledge (not to mention common conventional wisdom) for decades, but new attempts at replicating the underlying studies that gave us that knowledge are failing, Daniel Engber writes.
Gene Wilder is dead at 83, and comedians and actors such as James Urbaniak, Billy Eichner, and Mel Brooks are singing his praises on Twitter. “Blazing Saddles, Willy Wonka, are CLINICS on comic acting,” Rob Lowe wrote. “Sad to hear of his passing.”
The Night Of—one of the most critically acclaimed shows of the summer—had its finale Sunday night, and Sam Adams found the season’s last episode just as ambitious and unsatisfying as the show itself. (Confused about what even happened? Adams also offers this FAQ. Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers. Obviously.)
For fun: Beyoncé kills it in her VMAs performance; Beyoncé surprises Chance the Rapper backstage, to charming effect.
“This is my life!”
Rebecca
