Friday: still no exercise, snow, lots of zoom

Let’s see:

A. had a zoom scavenger hunt (this is all after school, with all its zoom), a trivia night run by Concord Free Public Library. I had Fancy Friday (fun! I remembered to actually send the invites).

I had a delightful call with K. (I feel a little bad; I keep freaking her out with my dark thoughts because I get too comfortable talking to her and just tell her what I am thinking instead of keeping it to myself and my husband, and, occasionally, my sister).

It snowed! So a visit with M., but no walk again.

I did go to Moodz and got my foil and trim; next visit will be after Xmas, and I would not be too surprised — depending on how things go — if maybe things will be buttoned up pretty thoroughly and there might be a bit of a delay.

Ruth Shalit returns for another plagiarism scandal

Apparently this has been going on for a bit. Here is a takedown at WaPo by Erik Wemple; he has been covering this in his blog, maybe?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/30/atlantics-troubled-niche-sports-story/

The story in question is by a woman who has some pretty awful plagiarism/made up quote/ bad journalism history. The story is in the Varsity Blues scandal genre: rich people trying to weasel their kids into elite schools, in this case via niche sports which are asserted — entirely baselessly — as also being dangerous.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1995/09/21/a-diversity-of-opinions/ad8131a5-256a-477e-ae1e-3f811dc2a305/

But the Atlantic piece (at this point in time, it had an absolutely incredible editors’ note on it: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/squash-lacrosse-niche-sports-ivy-league-admissions/616474/) represents an incredible willingness to give someone with a horrifying reputation a second crack at doing what she was so irresponsible doing in the past — and then not checking to make sure she did not repeat offend. Which, of course, she did.

Lots of great crowdsourcing going on via blogs and twitter. There was apparently a profile of Shalit in George magazine in 1996 that is, sadly, not available online that is an amazing psychological takedown. Maybe someone will put it up!

I think the most entertaining part of this story (there are so many! Reminding us all that Andrew Sullivan’s judgment as an editor was always bad, for example, or that Jeffrey Goldberg, like neocons in general, really stinks is another!) is that while it makes a writer look bad when they get insider-jargon-convo wrong in hilarious ways, if the writer is writing fiction but pretending it is actually journalism, it _really really really_ looks bad.