The What a Horrible, Horrible Week Gabfest
Listen to Slate's show about the Boston Marathon bombing and the ensuing coverage by mainstream and social media. Plus, the defeat of the gun bill.
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On this week’s Slate Political Gabfest, John Dickerson, Emily Bazelon, and David Plotz discuss the bombing of the Boston Marathon and the coverage of the ensuing investigation by mainstream and social media. Plus, the Senate rejects a compromise on background checks, defeating the effort to craft a gun control bill that began after a December school shooting in Newtown, Conn.
Here are some of the links and references mentioned during this week's show:
- Read all of Slate’s continuing coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing.
- Emily discusses how the American response to terrorism has changed since Sept. 11. She also researched why some attacks go unsolved.
- Gabfest intern Jeff Friedrich was in Boston during the attacks and interviewed several people about their experience.
- David refers to Atul Gawande’s writing about systematic approaches and how they may have aided the emergency response in Boston. After the attacks, Gawande also wrote about why Boston’s hospitals were ready.
- David says that there have been “relatively few” terrorist attacks in the United States since Sept. 11. Brad Plumer reports that “the number of terrorist attacks has declined since Sept. 11, although the number of fatal attacks has ticked up of late.”
- Slate’s Will Oremus has been writing about Reddit’s crowdsourced investigation and reporting efforts.
- David notes that the gun bill was blocked by a group of Senators who represent a small minority of the country’s population—the Atlantic Wire has a graphical breakdown of this aspect of the vote.
- The New Republic’s Adam Winkler says that “while the commission acted unusually fast by Washington standards, in effect it served to delay unnecessarily the announcement of proposed reforms.”
- John wrote about why Newtown wasn’t enough.
- After the vote, Gabrielle Giffords opined about the gun lobby’s grip on the Senate.
Emily chatters about a supportive tweet Wellesley College sent new student Katelyn Campbell.
John chatters about the history of the expression, "keep calm and carry on."
David chatters about the crowd’s collective singing of the national anthem at Wednesday night’s Boston Bruins game.
Topic ideas for next week? You can tweet suggestions, links, and questions to @SlateGabfest. The email address for the Political Gabfest is gabfest@slate.com. (Email may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
Podcast production by Mike Vuolo. Links compiled by Jeff Friedrich.