Most people have caught up to the brave new world of 2023, but Perry worries that nostalgia is keeping Biden from facing the sad fact of our broken politics: “I’m sure when Biden dreamed of being president decades ago that he saw himself negotiating peace treaties and signing sweeping legislation, not casting the other party as being dominated by antidemocratic radicals.”
Alas, look around — it’s what the moment calls for, Perry writes.
Jen Rubin backs him up with a piece on the aftershocks of Tennessee state GOP legislators’ expulsion of two (young, Black) Democratic colleagues this month. She describes “MAGA forces’ attack on democracy” as a frantic effort to “hold back the tide of social change.”
Biden clearly needs to get wise to this crisis and act accordingly, writes Perry; he, of course, has suggestions.
The tricky thing is, as conservative columnist Gary Abernathy’s piece reveals, is that Biden acting on this crisis will also inflame the emergency the other, oh, half of the country sees when they look at our politics. “By singling out the modern GOP,” Gary writes. “the real objective appears to be demonizing patriotic Americans.”
Chaser: Columnist Molly Roberts looked at the Discord leaker (who Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene praised!). She writes that he shows what happens when nothing is taken seriously on the internet.
Listen to women — especially about periods
When biological anthropology professor Kate Clancy noticed weirdness with her period after her first coronavirus vaccine, she set out for answers. Working with her former student, Katie Lee, she put out a survey asking whether other women had encountered a similar phenomenon.
But, Clancy writes, the coverage of their work mostly cast them as “ridiculous ladies doing ridiculous research.”
Well, you know who else was maligned as a ridiculous lady doing ridiculous research? Marie Curie, probably!
As with the mother of radiation, Clancy and Lee’s ideas turned out to be right: more than 165,000 people responded to their survey, keen to share stories of unusual periods. Eventually, the National Institutes of Health funded research into the question, and subsequent studies showed that the vaccine could indeed mess with menstrual cycles.
Let the episode be a lesson to the medical establishment, Clancy writes: Enough of “menstruating people being questioned, mistrusted or ignored when they report their lived experiences.”
At more than twice the proportion of nonfederal workers who want to go at least mostly remote (33 percent), federal workers are going to be more than twice as disappointed in the Editorial Board’s opinion that their desire is simply unsustainable.
All it takes is a walk through downtown D.C. to see how ghostly the place has become because of remote work. There are productivity concerns, too — especially because it’s unclear how, exactly, that is measured.
The Board doesn’t want to play bad cop, though; it calls for flexibility on agencies’ parts. However, it wants to see flexibility from workers, too.
I guess Fox News listens to columnist Erik Wemple!
Now, reports say it has done just that.
Which of Erik’s three reasons not to see the case to its bitter end swayed Fox News? My money is on his argument that the network could find itself in long-term trouble even if it wins.
Erik explained how a victory could get progressives on board with weakening libel protections for media outlets — which is something some conservatives have been advocating for a while. Just not, you know, the conservatives at Fox News.
Chaser: Sign up to get email notifications every time Erik publishes a piece so you don’t miss any of his follow-ups on the case.
- Contributing columnist Ruy Teixeira explains how Ron DeSantis could peel off enough key demographics to beat Biden in 2024.
- Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s excuses for his financial irregularities fail the laugh test, columnist Eugene Robinson writes.
- Critic Christian Lorentzen celebrates the life of the literary world’s “little magazines” — and mourns their death.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
Biden may be stuck there, but
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
