Some Doug truths: Saturday Night Live’s sketch Black Jeopardy, featuring Tom Hanks as a seemingly out-of-place Trump-supporting contestant, offered a surprisingly genius analysis of the political scene in 2016, Jamelle Bouie writes. For all of the commonalities between white working-class and black voters the sketch reveals, it doesn’t shy from showing their differences.
Not again: Dahlia Lithwick looks back at 2000, when Americans were willing to accept the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore, and thinks those days are probably gone—more’s the pity.
Secret sauce: How does Theo Epstein, the executive who helped the Red Sox to their 2004 drought-breaker and has given Chicago Cubs fans hopes of winning their first World Series since 1908, do what he does? Steven Goldman has theories.
Minority report: Everyone loves Black Mirror. Kathryn VanArendonk thinks it’s not so great: “The show’s primary crutch is that it uses thought-provoking and fascinating foundations in order to reach the simplest, most alarmist possible conclusion about a variety of technological innovations.” (Basically, “What if phones but too much?”)
For fun: Was that a home run or a fly ball? Take our quiz.
Boy, I’m really bad at that,
Rebecca
