The Oberlin Culture War of 2016 Finally Comes to an End

Plus, The Gang of Ten and the Challenge of Bipartisan Budgeting

Apr 08, 2022

CHARLIE SYKES: Mitch McConnell and the Banality of Amorality.
JVL: Holy War. 🔐
SONNY BUNCH: A Night With Chris Pine, How One Indie Film Studio Has Survived Decades of Change, and 'Morbius' Sucks (and Not Just Blood).

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DANIEL McGRAW: The Oberlin Culture War of 2016 Finally Comes to an End.

In Ohio libel law there is an addendum that allows a party “aiding and abetting” a libel to themselves be exposed. (About half of the fifty states have some version of this provision in their code.) So under Ohio law, one need not be the publisher or originator of a defaming message in order to be held responsible for it.
The second part—proving both intent and what the Oberlin College knew in terms of the veracity of the claims—is the heavier burden.
But the lawyers for Gibson’s uncovered emails and phone messages between administrators which supplied the proof to meet this burden.
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McConnell calling out Trump for January 6 had nothing to do with morals. Also on the weekend podcast: Republicans are corruptly aiding Trump’s latest failed business, and widening their campaign to demonize gay people. Plus, Tim Miller and Charlie Sykes have book recs!

Eric Edelman joins to discuss war crimes, defense spending, and Putinists abroad and at home.

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Did you miss TNB? Catch up here.

CATHY YOUNG: Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Russian Fascist Buffoon Whose Shtick Stuck, Dead at 75.

Here is a weird personal story: I very briefly met Zhirinovsky in April 1990, on my first trip back to Moscow since my family had left for America a decade earlier. It was the very start of Zhirinovsky’s career. He was one of the speakers at some sort of symposium I attended (I believe it was on drug legalization, of all things), and he mentioned that he was the founder of something called the Liberal Democratic Party of the USSR. That sounded intriguing, and after the symposium I approached him and asked if I could interview him. I assume he had not yet developed his later infamous habit of making crude sexual remarks to female journalists; he handed me his card, sounding brusque but businesslike, and told me to call him. In the next couple of days, I asked several people I knew who were active in grassroots glasnost-era politics if they had heard of this Zhirinovsky guy, only to be invariably told not to mess with him since he and his party were very definitely a KGB project. The first one or two I shrugged off as “KGB under the bed” paranoia of which, understandably, there was a good deal in activist Moscow; but the verdict seemed unanimous enough that I decided to shelve the interview. The card, for all I know, is still around somewhere among my Moscow mementos. A couple of years later on another trip to Moscow, I went to a Zhirinovsky press conference, from which I remember only that at some point he boasted about his sexual prowess as a sign of his general vigor. By then, his act was already notorious.

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JAMES C. CAPRETTA: The Gang of Ten and the Challenge of Bipartisan Budgeting.

The need to shake up the status quo is obvious. Washington careens from one budget-related crisis to another, with many of the problems self-inflicted. It has been years since the government operated under a multi-year fiscal plan. Caps on appropriated spending—a feature of the process for most of three decades—have expired, and neither party is calling for their return. Discretionary spending for 2023 and beyond is thus completely up for grabs and likely to be decided without regard to larger debt or deficit goals. Further, many important tax and spending provisions are scheduled to expire in the coming years, including the tax rates adopted in 2017 and expanded subsidies for health insurance enrollment enacted in 2021.
Pressure to extend both, fully or partially, will be immense but hard to achieve outside of a bipartisan negotiation.

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