Yo Plus! Crazy week. Let’s get right to it.
Craziest story this week: Hundreds of Russian elites have been caught plagiarizing their doctoral dissertations—and a network of activists is hunting for them. “Duma member Igor Igoshin allegedly earned his economics degree by turning someone else’s paper on the Russian chocolate industry into a thesis on meat,” Leon Neyfakh writes. “The dissertation replaced every mention of ‘chocolate’ with ‘beef,’ ‘dark chocolate’ with ‘home-grown beef,’ and ‘white chocolate’ with ‘imported beef.’ ”
Second-craziest, probably: Taylor Swift has a surprising number of neo-Nazis amongst her fans who celebrate her “Aryan spirit” and (alleged, non-existent, totally made up) “Aryan agenda.” But where do they stand on Pop Taylor vs. Country Taylor? (I’m Power-Ballad Taylor all the way—I doubt she’ll ever top “All Too Well.” God, I just started listening to check the link and now there are tears streaming down my face. He can’t get rid of that scarf.)
Extremely crazy by any absolute standards but not especially crazy by Trump campaign standards: Who should be Trump’s running mate? Why not Newt Gingrich!
Not crazy, just caught up in the idealism of youth with potentially tragic consequences: Like Darby Saxbe, I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and spent the next eight years regretting it. So it was satisfying, in a bitter and rueful way, to read her letter to Bernie Sanders supporters who, she fears, are on the verge of making the same mistake. As Jamelle Bouie points out, a Trump presidency is still a long shot, but Saxbe’s piece gave me a shudder of déjà vu.
100 percent sane: This tweet from Kevin Roose reminded me of Dahlia Lithwick’s classic Theory of Muppet Types.
Not from Slate
“The Big Uneasy” by Nathan Heller, New Yorker
Heller’s piece about the PC–gone-haywire on the campus of Oberlin College, my alma mater, is the most distressing thing I’ve read in a while (apart, of course, from coverage of the election). Political activism in my day (class of ’76) was about engaging with the world, not wailing “Me me me.” Today’s protesters—a small group, I’m told, but one that seems to have intimidated much of the faculty—are engaged not in critical leftism but coddled narcissism. —Fred Kaplan, War Stories columnist
“Love in the Time of Climate Change: Grizzlies and Polar Bears Are Now Mating” by Adam Popescu, Washington Post
This was both depressing and a bit whimsical: The idea of a new species in the wild is kind of magical, but the reason it’s coming into being is less so. —Ava Lubell, general manager
“Could We Just Lose the Adverb (Already)?” by Christian Lorentzen, New York
It’s hard to write about usage without sounding like a pedant. But this essay on adverbs is at once crotchety, intellectually honest, and generous-hearted. I read it eagerly. —Julia Turner, editor in chief
Also: Megan Wiegand enjoyed “The Fierce Triumph of Loneliness,” Helena Fitzgerald’s essay about living alone as a women. Mike Pesca looked back at all of the books he’s discussed on The Gist and made this list of his favorites. Felix Salmon’s assessment of Peter Thiel’s “weapons-grade attacks on America’s free press” should terrify you. And Will Saletan says, “This, folks, is what you can do with a half-hour of a politician’s time.”
Very Short Q-and-A
This week’s personal question is addressed to senior editor Laura Bennett, whose great story about Dancing with the Stars casting director and image-rehab specialist Deena Katz ran this week.
Slate Plus: What made you want to write about Dancing with the Stars? Are you a fan?
Laura Bennett: I … am not a fan! I do not think I had watched a full episode before I started researching for this piece. But I have always been interested in the cringey spectacle of celebrity redemption campaigns, whether it’s Lance Armstrong crying next to Oprah or Bieber’s Purpose tour or that crazy Anthony Weiner spread in People with his wife and baby right before he got caught sexting again. I love that stuff.
So what drew me to Dancing with the Stars was the way it reels in such unlikely contestants: Paula Deen, Tom DeLay, etc. As a reporter I know how hard it is to get moderately famous people to do anything—let alone when they’re enmeshed in a scandal. And yet this show somehow gets them to put on Lycra catsuits and tango.
Slate Plus: You managed to get a lot of them to talk …
Bennett: It was quite a wrangling challenge. I started with a few C- and D-listers who had little incentive to not talk to me. That was useful because they dished about how the show works and what makes Katz such a wizard. Then I found one friendly celebrity agent who opened up her Rolodex.
I was most excited about Marla Maples: I had to email with her agent for weeks to convince her that I wasn’t going to ask about, like, having sex with Donald Trump. Also my ears are still ringing from the time I picked up the phone and heard a very enthusiastic voice boom: “Laura Bennett? Jerry Springer!!” He is a total charm machine.
Thanks, Laura! And thank you for your Slate Plus membership, which makes our journalism possible. See you next week!
Gabriel Roth
Editorial director, Slate Plus
