Question Time With Marc Ambinder

The Obsession With Biblical Literalism

Carmine Grimaldi

A Christian theme park in Kentucky brings the ancient to life through a life-sized reconstruction of Noah’s Ark—but not without dipping into fiction.

Of all the biblical episodes, Voltaire thought none required more faith than the story of Noah’s Ark: “The history of the deluge being that of the most miraculous event of which the world ever heard, it must be the height of folly and madness to attempt an explanation of it.” If only he had visited Ark Encounter—a Christian theme park that opened this summer in Kentucky and boasts a “life-sized” reconstruction of Noah’s Ark. Seemingly impossible details have been fanatically researched and naturalistically explained by Answers in Genesis (AiG), a literalist Christian organization that’s also responsible for the nearby Creation Museum. With roughly 40 percent of Americans believing in creationism, the park shouldn’t be dismissed as mere Christian kitsch. Rather, it represents a recent and powerful trend in evangelical thought, a kind of fundamentalist realism. To visit the park is to see how conservative Christianity of the 21st century finds strength not simply in miracles, scripture and sermon, but in timber, mannequins, blueprints, and feasibility studies.

The Management Myth

Matthew Stewart

Most of management theory is inane, writes our correspondent, the founder of a consulting firm. If you want to succeed in business, don’t get an M.B.A. Study philosophy instead

During the seven years that I worked as a management consultant, I spent a lot of time trying to look older than I was. I became pretty good at furrowing my brow and putting on somber expressions. Those who saw through my disguise assumed I made up for my youth with a fabulous education in management. They were wrong about that. I don’t have an M.B.A. I have a doctoral degree in philosophy—nineteenth-century German philosophy, to be precise. Before I took a job telling managers of large corporations things that they arguably should have known already, my work experience was limited to part-time gigs tutoring surly undergraduates in the ways of Hegel and Nietzsche and to a handful of summer jobs, mostly in the less appetizing ends of the fast-food industry.

Chicago's Inescapable Segregation

Melinda D. Anderson

The racial separation that permeates nearly every aspect of life in the Windy City is inexcusable.

Chicago is a city with a rich black heritage. And the South Side, fondly dubbed the “heart of black America,” is where much of the city’s cherished history emanates. Comprising a mix of poverty-stricken, working-class, and upper-income black residents, the South Side can lay claim to the country’s first black woman senator, the nation’s first black president, and various black elites. Chicago also holds the inglorious distinction of being one of the country’s most segregated cities. This is also the South Side’s legacy—and it encompasses its public schools.

With the return of Chicago public-school students to school just two weeks away, nearly 1,000 teachers and support staff received layoff notices earlier this month. Among the schools hardest hit: the South Side’s Bradwell School of Excellence and Harlan Community Academy, an elementary school and high school, respectively, with staff cuts in the double digits. The most recent layoffs continue an alarming pattern of racial inequality that was documented following Chicago’s mass school closings in 2013. As reported by The American Prospect, “While black students were 40 percent of Chicago’s school district population … they made up 88 percent of those affected by the [public-school] closures.”

The stain of segregation bleeds into the most basic elements of black lives—from housing and health to food equality and educational opportunity—and no area exemplifies this like the neighborhoods that make up the South Side of Chicago. Natalie Y. Moore, a South Side native and public-radio journalist who covers the region, explores the systems and sentiments that keep Chicago segregation intact in The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation, a newly published combination of personal memoir and historical narrative. She recently shared some thoughts and reflections on her hometown. The interview that follows has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

A Black Trump Supporter Weighs In

James Fallows

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Last night, in chapter #81 of the Trump Time Capsule series, I argued that Donald Trump’s recent “outreach” to black voters amounted to talking about African Americans as a problem group, rather than to them as part of the “us” of America.

Reader Jamie Douglas, who is black, writes in to disagree. I am leaving in some of the complimentary things he says about non-Trump articles I’ve written, because they provide context for what he doesn’t like in my recent political coverage. After his message I’ll summarize why I see things differently.

Over to Jamie Douglas:

I’ve read many of the articles you published about the new China. I lived in Sichuan and Guizhou for several years (from about 2000-2005) and your articles, I felt, focused on things that Americans really needed to understand about where China was and is headed. Other journalists spent way too much time in Beijing writing about the machinations of the Communist party, and in doing so, they missed the real story.

I’m not writing today about anything related to China. Rather, what concerns me is your coverage of Donald Trump. I’m a black American from New York. My parents immigrated to Brooklyn from Grenada in the 1960s. And I wholeheartedly support the Trump campaign.

You’ve made it clear that you think Trump would be a disaster and that he has to be stopped. Trump inspires strong feelings, and from what I knew of you, I would have been shocked had you not been strongly opposed to his campaign.

I’m surprised, though, by how willing you are to do the easy thing and focus on Trump’s many gaffes, his off-putting braggadocio, and his very nontraditional tactics. There is a bigger story here and I’m still waiting for a journalist of your stature to address it. I believe that someone capable of writing something as honest and introspective as, “What Did You Do In the Class War, Daddy?” is very much able to produce a similar piece honestly analyzing Trump’s appeal and the visceral dislike that you and your colleagues in the media feel for him.

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Why the Debate Over Nate Parker Is So Complex

Morgan Jerkins

The discussion over how to parse the filmmaker in light of a sexual-assault trial 17 years ago is particularly difficult for black women.

At first, it seemed as though Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation couldn’t have come at a better time. In the wake of #OscarsSoWhite activism and the rapid expansion of the Black Lives Matter movement, a film about Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion that examined the history and power of black liberation seemed to be just the story America needed to see. When Fox Searchlight purchased the global rights to the movie at the Sundance Film Festival for $17.5 million—a new record for the event—Parker’s ascendancy seemed unstoppable. Excitement rose among black filmgoers for the film’s October release, while Parker seemed like a significant new presence in both the film and activism worlds. Unfortunately, the promise of both him and his movie appears now to be too good to be true.

A Russian Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber based at Iran's Hamadan air base, drops bombs in the Syrian province of Deir ez-Zor. — Reuters

Why Russia Stopped Using an Iranian Airbase to Bomb Targets in Syria

Krishnadev Calamur

Iran called last week’s announcement “ungentlemanly” and said Monday the fighter jets were no longer taking off from Hamadan.

Updated at 10:24 a.m. ET

NEWS BRIEF We told you last week about an announcement from Russia’s defense ministry, marking a new phase in Moscow’s involvement in the Syrian civil war: Tu-22M3 bombers and Su-34 fighters took off from Iran’s Hamadan airbase to strike ISIS targets inside Syria.

The Iranians apparently were not pleased with the publicity surrounding the announcement—with the country’s foreign minister calling the disclosure “kind of show-off and ungentlemanly.” Later Monday, Bahram Ghasemi, the foreign ministry spokesman, said the use of the airbase was temporary. Russia’s mission, he said, “is finished, for now,” adding Russia “has no base in Iran.”

Russia said the fighter planes based at Hamadan had returned to Russia.

Why Hyper-Masculine Women Are Scary, but Fish-Like Men Aren't

Olga Khazan

Most elite athletes are unusual in some way. So why does Caster Semenya alarm spectators more than Michael Phelps?

The South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya will compete in the women’s 800-meter final this Saturday in Rio de Janeiro, and she’s favored to win. Her potential victory is already being described as a “dilemma.”

At best, her detractors will give the credit for her win to the 25-year-old's body chemistry rather than her skill. It might even prompt international sporting agencies to once again rethink what it means to be a female athlete.

No one is accusing Semenya of using illicit substances. Quite the opposite: Some have suggested she should be taking drugs in order to bring her hormone levels more closely in line with those of average women.

Semenya was raised and identifies as female. But according to a leaked medical test, Semenya’s testosterone levels are three times as high as those of most women, and she has internal testes instead of ovaries.

The Problem With Vows to 'Defeat' the Islamic State

Stephen Biddle and Jacob Shapiro

What happens after Raqqa falls?

In recent weeks, ISIS has suffered territorial losses on multiple fronts, including in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. The organization may look nearer to defeat than at any time in the past two years, but there is still a great deal of fighting to be done before the group is destroyed, or more likely beaten back to an underground terrorist organization as it was in 2009. In a previous post, we argued that truly defeating the ISIS threat would be more expensive than most now recognize, and beyond what most Americans would be willing to pay, leaving containment as the only viable option. Ambassador James Jeffrey disagrees.

In particular, he argues that the United States and its allies should reinforce today’s U.S. force of roughly 5,000 soldiers with another 10,000 troops, order them to lead a conventional ground offensive against ISIS, and loosen the rules of engagement for ground fighting and air strikes to tolerate more civilian casualties. With these policies, Jeffrey argues, ISIS can be defeated promptly. Once Raqqa falls, the real U.S. mission is complete in his view. He doesn’t say what those 15,000 soldiers should do then, but he’s opposed to a costly stabilization mission and implies that U.S. troops should instead go home and avoid further commitment.

Hillary Clinton's Latest Email Scapegoat: Colin Powell

David A. Graham

The Democratic presidential nominee has reportedly said privately that the former secretary of state encouraged her to use a personal address for State Department business.

Hillary Clinton has struggled for months to find a satisfactory explanation for why she chose to use a private email server and a personal email address while she was secretary of state, a choice that FBI Director James Comey described as resulting in “extremely careless” handling of classified information. Publicly, none of her excuses have met with much success.

Privately, however, Clinton seems to have found one scapegoat: former Secretary of State Colin Powell. It has long been known that Powell used a private email address at Foggy Bottom, and Clinton told FBI investigators that Powell recommended she do the same, according to a New York Times report on Friday:

The account is included in the notes the Federal Bureau of Investigation handed over to Congress on Tuesday, relaying in detail the three-and-a-half-hour interview with Mrs. Clinton in early July that led to the decision by James B. Comey, the bureau’s director, not to pursue criminal charges against her.

Separately, in a 2009 email exchange that also emerged during the F.B.I. questioning, Mrs. Clinton, who had already decided to use private email, asked Mr. Powell about his email practices when he was the nation’s top diplomat under George W. Bush, according to a person with direct knowledge of Mr. Powell’s appearance in the documents, who would not speak for attribution.

Thank Heavens for Email Clichés

Julie Beck

Overused phrases—“I hope you’re well,” “Best,” etc.—are more valuable than they seem.

I delete 95 percent of the PR emails I get within seconds of opening them. I couldn’t possibly read them all thoroughly—let alone reply to them all—and still get any work done, but sometimes I do feel bad, because the senders clearly spent so much time writing them.

A PR person’s job, really, is just to send people information about whatever they’re promoting. But there’s unfortunately another expectation—whether it’s explicit or implicit, I don’t know, not having worked at a PR firm—which is to perform friendliness and personalize the emails. So before the press release, there’s a lot of throat-clearing. If it’s near a holiday, it’s “How was your holiday?” Or perhaps it’s “I loved your recent story about X—I particularly loved this part. Since you’re interested in X, perhaps you’d be interested in Y?” (Where Y is the thing being promoted, and in all likelihood has no relation to X.)