Good afternoon! My colleagues are packing up Slate’s New York office as I write this, and I am sitting here amid the crates and boxes and hazardous dust to bring you the smartest and most illuminating reads of the week.
From Slate
—Michelle Goldberg finds it “easy to sympathize with Heidi Cruz’s misery, and not just because Ted Cruz is her husband.”
—America’s Greatest Trump Understander, Jamelle Bouie, explains why the Donald is unlikely to win many votes from white working-class Democrats.
—It’s hard to argue that something everyone hates is actually wonderful—but that’s what Leon Neyfakh does for New York Times Styles section trend pieces.
—Justin Peters reminds us that Garry Shandling, who died Thursday, made one of the great sitcoms of all time.
—Why are Duke fans so mad at Slate executive editor Josh Levin?
Not from Slate
“Writing a History of Angry Young Men and Women” by Supriya Nair, Mint
Nair’s superb interview of Sunil Khilnani, one of the pre-eminent historians of India, is a window into how to think about Indian history. It also raises endlessly interesting questions about the duties of historians and how scholarship changes the way we think about the past. —Isaac Chotiner, contributor
“Q&A: David Axelrod on Why Marco Rubio Wasn’t Barack Obama 2.0” by Tim Alberta, National Review
David Axelrod is one of the only talking heads on cable news whose insight I look forward to hearing. But because CNN insists on giving airtime to commentators whose only credential is that they are Trump supporters and can complete a sentence, Axelrod is rarely afforded the running room his experience and expertise command. So it was a pleasure to read this fantastic post-mortem of Marco Rubio’s failures of performance and strategy. Credit, too, to Alberta, who demonstrated how much better the Q-and-A format is when the questioner has done his homework. —John Swansburg, deputy editor
Also: Nora Caplan-Bricker wants you to read Rebecca Solnit on how gentrification affects policing. Justin Peters recommends Evan Ratliff’s “really, really great series” about a drug kingpin turned government informant. And Dan Kois had a terrible idea.
Very Short Q-and-A
This week’s Very Short Q-and-A is with assistant interactives editor Andrew Kahn.
Slate Plus: This week your job has you making a video game for the first time. What’s it like?
Andrew Kahn: It’s fun! It’s hard. Whenever I make progress, I want to waste more time playing the game, which makes it hard to make progress. And I tend to get enamored of little details and minigames, just because I made them and they work. It’s like I’m a cat making a tiny bell. It’s very easy to get distracted.
And the game is a simulation of a serious, sad situation in which bad things happen to people. That makes it hard to strike the right tone. It aims to be wild satire and sober explication at the same time, with a dash of mystery.
The relation of the game to reality is sort of like the relationship of the media to Trump or any dangerous figure. When you make fun of him, do you hurt him, or do you just make him seem less threatening? When you make a game out of something sad, are you providing a valuable virtual educational experience to people, or are you suggesting that there’s an element of fun to something that’s actually deeply depressing?
Look out for Andrew’s game on Slate next week. And thank you for your Slate Plus membership! We’ll be back next week from Brooklyn, where our content will be lovingly handmade by mustachioed hipsters—just like now, really, only with a shorter commute. See you then!
Gabriel Roth
Editorial director, Slate Plus