In the Washington Post, Katha Pollitt handily dismantles Charlotte Allen’s recent piece about dumb broads, “We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?” And the editorial philosophy behind it, too.
And Ben Yagoda, who’s written books about (among other things) both New Yorker history and wily parts of speech and is therefore permanently OK in my book, asks in Slate, “But is it such a terrible thing that so many lying memoirists have been exposed? On the contrary: It’s evidence that the system works.” And he continues (internal link is mine): “In the wake of the Frey and now the Jones scandals, there’s been hand-wringing about the need for fact-checking—or lie-detector tests or something!—at publishing houses. But you’re never going to stop people from making stuff up.”