Scott Smith

Monday

Peter Wood

Michelle Goldberg and the art of the Big Lie

Lies come in all shapes and sizes, colors, odors, textures and tastes. Some are only little white lies, but more often the accompanying adjective suggests something unpleasant. Damnable lies used to be the most condemned, but today the foulest of all perfidious, incarnadine, silken and sulfurous lies are Big Lies. Thus when New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wants to reassure progressive voters that they can ignore the story about a ninth-grade girl who was raped (i.e. forcibly sodomized) in a girl’s restroom in a Loudoun County, Virginia school, she serves up her diversion under the title “The Right’s Big Lie About a Sexual Assault in Virginia.

big lie

Monday

Nate Hochman

Loudoun County’s vicious mediocrities

For months, widespread parent-led uprisings against school boards have pitted everyday mothers and fathers against powerful political bureaucracies. Skirmishes across the country have revealed the radicalism — and ruthlessness — of the educators and administrators who run the American education system. But none have been as gruesome as that of Scott Smith, the Loudoun County father who became a target of the managerial class that presides over the wealthy northern Virginia suburb.

loudoun