Why Isn’t It a Bigger Deal That Trump Is Being Advised by Sadistic Pervert Roger Ailes?

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The Preserving Optionality Edition

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Opening the Trump Archive

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About Barchester Towers

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Honeysuckle and Schadenfreude

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Why Isn’t It a Bigger Deal That Trump Is Being Advised by Sadistic Pervert Roger Ailes?

In a new New York magazine story, the invaluable Gabriel Sherman gives us fresh details of the depravity of ex-Fox News head Roger Ailes. Sherman quotes a former television producer who says Ailes told her, “If you want to make it in New York City in the TV business, you’re going to have to fuck me, and you’re going to do that with anyone I tell you to.” He reports that Ailes’ longtime executive assistant, Judy Laterza, recruited comely young women for her boss, including an intern who later told the Washington Post that Ailes had propositioned her: “If you sleep with me, you could be a model or a newscaster.” Sherman quotes Karem Alsina, a former Fox makeup artist, describing female anchors coming to see her before private meetings with Ailes: “They would say, ‘I’m going to see Roger, gotta look beautiful!’” One of these anchors, said Alsina, “came back down after a meeting, and the makeup on her nose and chin was gone.”

The Angle: Dankyougene Edition

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto let Donald Trump walk all over him on Wednesday, Enrique Krauze writes. From a Mexican perspective, it was painful to watch the little-liked president conduct himself courteously and rationally with a visitor who would then go home to use the encounter for his own racist purposes. “Peña Nieto should have demanded a public apology for Trump’s insults against Mexico and Mexicans,” Krauze argues. And he should have “publicly expressed his absolute refusal to pay for Trump’s absurd wall.”

What’s the First Night of Parenthood Like?

For this week’s edition of the Mom and Dad Are Fighting Slate Plus bonus segment, hosts Allison Benedikt and Dan Kois are joined by Slatest’s Ben Mathis-Lilley to talk about how they remember their very first nights of parenthood. New papa Ben talks about what it’s like in the hospital on that first night and how he’s since been learning to navigate parenthood. Also, what roles do nurseries play in hospitals? Listen to find out.

What Trump’s Black Church Appearance Is Really About

On Saturday, Donald Trump will visit a black church in Detroit, his first stop at a black venue in this campaign. But he won’t hold a rally or a freewheeling discussion. Instead, he’ll sit down for a question-and-answer session with Bishop Wayne T. Jackson of the church Great Faith Ministries International.

When Is It OK to Shame a Whole Company?

For Friday’s edition of the Political Gabfest Slate Plus bonus segment, hosts Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss the recent controversies surrounding Mylan, a drug company, and its decision to substantially raise the price of the EpiPen. When is it OK to shame a whole company? How should drug prices be regulated? And should schools be required to stock these extremely expensive EpiPens at the cost of other resources?

Long Live The Last Bookstore

When Josh Spencer opened The Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles, he thought it was going to fail within three years due to the declining state of the book industry. That’s why he chose the boldly ironic name. But The Last Bookstore has thrived. In this documentary from Chad Howitt, Welcome to The Last Bookstore, we learn about the successful shop and its owner Spencer, who is a husband, father, and paraplegic.

South Carolina’s Zika Prevention Backfires, Kills 2.5 Million Bees

This week the residents of Dorchester County, South Carolina, tried to ward off Zika using a strong pesticide called Naled. Unfortunately, they accidentally ended up killing about 2.5 million honeybees at one bee farm alone because they sprayed after dawn, instead of at night, when bees are not out and about.

Both Sides of the Border

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How Do Descendants of Slaves Find Their Ancestors?

On Thursday, Georgetown University announced its decision to extend preferential treatment in the admissions process to prospective students descended from enslaved people owned by the university. How will those people be able to prove their family connections? In some ways, the thousands of people with ancestors who either labored on the Maryland plantations that supported the university or were held on the Georgetown campus may have an easier time proving a relationship to their enslaved forebearers than other black Americans typically do. The nonprofit Georgetown Memory Project has hired genealogists to research the lineage of people sold by Georgetown and to reach out to people it identifies as descendants; the university is also putting documents related to the university’s slaveholding history online. Because of the records kept by the Jesuits who ran those plantations, lineages may be less difficult to trace than has often been the case for those black Americans who have tried to uncover their genealogies.

The Making of Donald Trump

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The “Make Mexico Great Again” Edition

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Zika Originated in Africa. Why Are We So Sure It’s Harmless There?

When Congress returns from its August recess, it will confront the growing consequences of its inaction on Zika: Since it adjourned in July, more than three dozen cases of locally acquired Zika infection have been reported in Florida. (That brings the total number of confirmed cases in the United States and its territories to nearly 17,000, with most cases in Puerto Rico). The federal government has yet to dedicate any new funds to fighting the virus—no money for prevention, no money for research, no money toward international relief. As of now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has spent $200 million of the $222 million it had borrowed from other programs to respond to Zika. In the context of ongoing debates about the amount and source of new funding, one proposal that the House of Representatives’ Committee on Appropriations will consider would offset the costs of an emergency Zika appropriations bill by cutting $107 million previously dedicated to rebuilding health systems across West Africa in the wake of the recent Ebola epidemic.

Mom and Dad Are Answering Questions

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Paddling for Pride

As the paddles slice the water and propel an outrigger canoe onward in this video, it doesn’t take much imagination to feel like you’re there. You’re watching the Red Bull Wa’a, an outrigger team plying their trade off their native Hawaii to practice for Red Bull Heavy Water, which the drink company tells Slate via email is “arguably the most intense stand-up paddling event in the world.”

Turkey’s Incursion Into Syria Is the Last Thing We Needed

In what will likely rank among the less fruitful sideshows of the G-20 summit in China this weekend, President Obama will meet one on one with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and discuss recent tensions—to put it mildly—between their two governments.

What White Catholics Owe Black Americans

Two years ago, Ta-Nehisi Coates reignited long-standing debates around reparations. His case for reparations details the moral and material debts Americans have accrued from centuries of profiting off of systemic racism. The country will never be whole, Coates argues, until Americans reckon with the fact that “America begins in black plunder and white democracy, two features that are not contradictory but complementary.” Reparations, in this formulation, involve a recognition of the nation’s complicity in past and present oppression as well as concrete actions to rectify those historic wrongs, to pay down those debts.

Slate News Quiz

Welcome to Slate’s weekly news quiz. It’s Friday, which means it’s time to test your knowledge on the week’s news events. Your host, Ray Hamel, has concocted questions on news topics ranging from politics to business, from culture to sports to science.

How Herschel Happened

You’ve seen them around; you can’t help but see them around. On street corners, in crowded subway cars, at a sun-drenched café table. In the past few years, bags from Herschel Supply Co. have turned up all over, inviting you and everyone you know to walk that razor’s edge between trendy and rugged. Since the company’s founding in 2009, the Herschel backpack has grown into a global phenomenon, glimpsed wherever hipsters dare to tread.

The “Is That As Far As I Get?” Edition

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Corrections

In a Sept. 1 Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait misstated that a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded on a test stand. It exploded on the launch pad.

What Could Democrats Get in Return for President Trump’s Dumb Wall?

Donald Trump is the wall, and the wall is Donald Trump. It is the organizing principle of his campaign, his monument to victory. He speaks of it as if it were the God of the Old Testament, true and righteous altogether. It is to be an “impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful Southern border wall,” as Trump put it Wednesday night in his speech, the first plank of what at this moment he is calling his immigration plan. It is the lodestar of his campaign. Whatever softening he undergoes from now until Election Day, his base won’t care so long as he doesn’t waver on the wall. “We’re getting a wall,” Ann Coulter said last week, when Trump appeared to be waffling. “We’re definitely getting a wall. That’s the one thing we know about a Trump presidency.” If Trump becomes president, his top priority will be the wall. He has to get it. He will do anything.