Looking at the reaction to a sexual assault case involving four refugee children in Idaho, Michelle Goldberg finds a troubling story of xenophobia in the age of Trump. Goldberg describes how right-wing media blew up a sad story with a “kernel of truth” to it, into a scare tale of “knife-wielding Syrian refugees” on the loose in the heartland.
Chavi Eve Karkowsky, an OB-GYN, has a pet peeve: people who measure the term of pregnancy in months instead of weeks. “Months are a giant misleading disaster when it comes to talking about pregnancy,” Karkowsky writes. “The unit of ‘months’ is so largely inaccurate that it renders most conversations useless for the purposes of medical care.” OK, OK! I’m convinced.
Donald Trump loves Puccini, specifically the aria “Nessun Dorma”; this may not be a coincidence. “The aria itself, and the composer behind it, gave expression to authoritarianism during Italy’s darkest period,” writes Brian Wise. “Trump’s use of it might read as yet more evidence for those who already view the bombastic businessman as a fascist in the making.”
Isaac Chotiner interviewed novelist Jonathan Franzen, who explains (among other things) why he would never write a book about race: “I have thought about it, but—this is an embarrassing confession—I don’t have very many black friends,” Franzen told Chotiner. “I have never been in love with a black woman. I feel like if I had, I might dare.”
On our new pop-up blog about children’s books, Nightlight, Dan Kois reviews Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a new Potter book that has the disadvantage of actually being a script of a play, not written by J.K. Rowling. “As a delivery device for extremely informed Potter fan fiction, it’s adequate,” Kois finds. “As a reading experience, it’s terribly undramatic.”
For fun: Channing Tatum will star in a remake of Splash—as the mermaid.
Bless this world,
Rebecca
