Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1018

U.S. and Afghanistan Commit to Taliban Talks, Again

Just a day after a Taliban-claimed attack on the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, both the U.S. and Afghanistan indicated their continued commitment to peace  talks with the organization. 

OnTuesday, President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai held a video conference, during which they "reaffirmed" their commitment to the promised talks. Despite the simultaneous gestures of diplomacy and the militant violence, the leaders believe talks are the best way forward. But if those talks happen, it's not clear when. Or, once they're going, precisely how the Taliban will conduct itself.

The Taliban is, essentially, trying to have it all: as the New York Times explains, their newly-opened Doha office is staffed with former officials from the Taliban's rule of Afghanistan, while fighters on the ground keep up attacks on the country's infrastructure. And on Al Jazeera, Taliban spokesperson  Mohammad Sohail Shaheen more or less confirmed this by saying that they would “simultaneously follow political and military options. Because there is no cease-fire now, they are attacking us, and we are attacking them.”

As the Times notes, there are further contradictions and tensions within the group's ranks: 

"[Taliban leader] Mullah Omar has, for instance, promulgated a code of conduct that among other things warns fighters not to put civilians in harm’s way. Yet their preferred weapons — suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices — are indiscriminate by their nature." 

The theoretical peace talks would be led by Afghanistan. The Tuesday attacks hit the Presidential Palace and the U.S. CIA headquarters in the country. 

       

Rep. Markey Wins Kerry's Senate Seat in MA Special Election

As expected,  Democratic Rep. Ed Markey won the special election in Massachusetts on Tuesday evening to take John Kerry's Senate seat, according to the Associated Press. He beat out Gabriel Gomez, a Republican political newbie and former Navy SEAL. 

With 82 percent of precincts reporting, Markey, who's served nearly four decades in Congress,  had 54.2 percent of the vote. Gomez had 45.5 percent. The Associated Press called the race for Markey a little over an hour after polls closed in the state. Gomez conceded shortly after. With Markey's win, Democrats will keep their 54-46 majority in the Senate. 

"Thank you Massachusetts! I am deeply honored for the opportunity to serve you in the United States Senate." - EM

— Ed Markey (@EdMarkey) June 26, 2013

Markey had some high-profile Democrats on the trail for him, including Vice President Joe Biden, who earlier went a bit total political war on the stakes of the special election. 

While Gomez had an early lead as the votes came in, even Republicans were taking the news cautiously without any city votes in the mix: 

Still nothing from Boston, so ignore the fact that Gomez is "winning" at the moment

— Logan Dobson (@LoganDobson) June 26, 2013

And indeed, once Boston started reporting in, Markey pulled away from Gomez. 

Gomez as Slate noted, is perpetually cast as the "next Scott Brown," based off the fact that he seemed to be another chances for Republicans to take a congressional seat from the notoriously liberal state. But the party hasn't really known what to do with him: he differs from his peers on many social issues, and doesn't quite seem ready to stick to the party line. On the other hand, from a GOP perspective, snagging Kerry's former seat would have been a pretty sweet talking point. 

Meanwhile, in an election that more or less seemed to turn out as expected, some were already reading the tea leaves on the 2014 congressional elections. 

       

Downton Abbey Is Launching a Line of Wines

Downton Abbey plans on entering into Real Housewives territory by giving its name to a licensed wine range. But the wine makers are aiming for a little more highbrow appeal. That's despite the company name of Wines That Rock,  probably best known for making branded wines for the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, and Pink Floyd. 

So would the Crawleys drink this stuff?  The press release is careful the emphasize the old-timey quality of the large French vineyard behind the wine line: Dulong Grand Vins de Bordeaux, claiming that they'll be able to "recreate the rich Bordeaux wines imported by the British aristocracy from France in the early 1900s....[with] grapes grown on the same vines and from the same soil as those from wines in the era depicted in Downton Abbey." 

Downton, at the very least, does make the case for serving a lot of different wines over the course of a dinner. Here's Anna, explaining: 

“Mr. Carson likes to serve two white wines, which you should open and decant just before they eat. A light one for the hors d’oeuvres, then a heavy one with the soup. Keep that going for the fish, and then change to the Claret, which you should really decant now. There’s a pudding wine, and after that whatever they want in the drawing room with their coffee.”

So unsurprisingly, the drinking-friendly show featuring lavish, wine-filled dinner scenes has inspired some previous investigation into the beverage tastes of early 20th century British aristocrats. And while the U.S. and Canadian audiences for the Downton wine may assume a certain inherent prestige in French wine, Claret, or red Bordeaux, was still recovering in reputation (thought not necessarily quality) from a grape vine blight that hit the region hard in the late 19th century. Even by the 1920's, the market for French wine was still unstable thanks in part to overproduction of cheap wine. Some have suggested that actual Downton dinner parties would have featured Champagne, or German white wines, instead, as all were much more fashionable at the time. 

       

Why We Forgive Misspelled Emails if They're 'Sent From My iPhone'

Soon after Apple's iPhone went on sale six years ago this week, you probably started spotting hastily-written emails appended by the words "Sent from my iPhone." And then, a bit later, you spotted a lot more. Of course, the iPhone was not the first email-enabled smartphone to attach such a message to outgoing emails. So did various Treo handsets (remember those?) and BlackBerry phones, pre- and post-iPhone. The iPhone's instant success, and its default signature, simply made the practice far more prevalent. Alongside this trend, a different but related one emerged: the iPhone's stock signature, at first deemed a louche emblem of status, became a built-in forgiveness clause. Please don't judge me for any typos or spelling errors, "Sent from my iPhone" suggested. I am very busy. That's according to a chart published on Tuesday by the author Clive Thompson, who drew data from a 2012 Stanford study on the perceived credibility of misspelled emails sent with (and without) a "Sent from my iPhone" signature:

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Thompson comments on the findings of the study, which asked a group of Stanford students to assess the credibility of emails, some of which had the signature, others of which did not:

When the message had correct spelling, grammar and punctuation, the sender was rated as being very credible — and there was little difference between whether the email seemed to have been composed on a computer or a phone. But when the message had errors in it, things changed: Students attributed higher credibility to the person who’d written the lousy message on a phone.

For these results, Thompson credits "linguistic code-switching" — whereby people speak differently among friends, family, and coworkers — and theorizes that the prevalence of AutoCorrect software has, paradoxically, made misplaced words and punctuation more acceptable in digital communication. (But no less funny.)

Indeed, the sociological implications of email signatures go fairly deep, according to others who have studied the subject. In 2006, for example, the technologist Michael Silberman argued that the signature suggested a particular affection for the email's recipient. "If we're responding to you from our phone or BlackBerry, it generally means that we're going out of our way to respond under some inconvenient circumstances," he wrote. "It's not like we took our phone to the cafe to catch up on email. We're risking our life to respond to you while walking, eating, drinking, traveling, or juggling. You can thank us later."

Photo by Chukcha via Shutterstock

       

If British Money Would Stop Looking So Sexist, Jane Austen Would Be on It

Single men in possession of good fortunes will likely have yet another reason to stockpile their £10 notes: the retiring governor of the Bank of England said that Jane Austen is "quietly waiting in the wings" to become the latest historical figure displayed on UK currency, Jennifer Rankin of The Guardian reported.

The news arrives as the Bank of England is being threatened with legal action for their decision to phase out the only notes currently featuring a woman. The Observer's Elizabeth Walsh reported back in May that solicitors for "feminist campaigner" Caroline Criado-Perez "have written to the Bank accusing it of failing in its duties to eliminate gender discrimination under the Equality Act." The retiring governor, Sir Mervyn King, had announced that Winston Churchill was going to replace Elizabeth Fry, a prison reformer, on the £5 note. Others have also written to the bank with suggestions including Mary Wollenstonecraft and Ada Lovelace, according to the BBC. 

Though Austen would presumably replace Charles Darwin, Criado-Perez is still not content. "He is still talking in conditionals and I am afraid that is just not good enough," she told The Guardian. "It is not good enough in terms of the demands of the campaign and it is also not good enough according to the Equality Act ... which, as we have been saying all along, is about needing to know that the decision-making process is fair and equitable." 

The Churchill notes will begin appearing in 2015-16, King said per the BBC, but "it will not be the case that Elizabeth Fry disappears." Austen would only be the third woman to appear on the banknotes—the Queen and Fry being the other two. Historical figures first started appearing in 1970. 

       

Unmasking Ryan Lizza's Mystery Fundraiser

Update: Responding to our Twitter boast that we found his man, Lizza says, "Nope." See full update below.

Earlier today, the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza got to witness something most reporters don't: a member of Congress hard at work at their second job, fundraising. Lizza tweeted the series of calls, but declined to name the politician. We decided to try and figure it out.

"I now understand the case for public financing of congressional elections," Lizza concluded, after the multiple-hour marathon of calls. Over the course of his tweets (which we've listed at the bottom of this article), Lizza not only shared the words of the elected official — "I'm running for reelection and running around with my hand out for help already. I know that sounds crazy." — but also a smattering of clues about his or her identity.

Some things we don't know. We don't know the person's gender, though at least one person responding to Lizza assumed it was a man. We also don't know the chamber in which the Congressmember serves, though we can make some guesses about that.

What we do know:

The politician is a Democrat. It is his or her first term. He or she is in a tough race. He or she is already facing ads against reelection. He or she estimates that "over three million" will be needed for the race.

Let the hunt begin.

Step 1. Identify the chamber.

It seems very likely that the person is a member of the House. For one thing, most people don't refer to senators as "members of Congress," though it happens. For another, a senator up for reelection in 2014 was elected in 2008, and normally wouldn't be referred to as a "freshman," as Lizza did. But the best indicator is that dollar amount. Three million is far from an exorbitant amount of money for a Senate race; in fact, you can't get a Senate seat anywhere for that dough. Even freshman Congressmember Mark Begich, up for reelection in 2014, needed $6 million to win his seat in Alaska.

So we're looking at the House.

Step 2. Identify the freshmen Democrats.

That part is easy. Our friends at Wikipedia keep a list. Turns out that there are 47 first-term Democrats in the House.

Step 3. Identify who's in a close race.

This one is pretty easy, too. The Cook Political Report is generally considered the go-to source for information on Congressional races, identifying them by the likelihood of a party's victory. The ranking looks at voter registration and vote history and assigns each congressional district a ranking on the following scale: solidly Democratic, likely Democratic, lean Democratic, toss-up, lean Republican, likely Republican, solidly Republican.

We figured out the likelihood for each of the 47 races, and limited the options to those Democrats in "toss-up" or "lean Democratic" districts. (There were none in "lean Republican" districts.) We ended up with the following twelve possibilities.

Ann Kirkpatrick, Arizona 1 (Toss-up) Raul Ruiz, California 36 (Toss-up) Patrick Murphy, Florida 18 (Toss-up) Joe Garcia, Florida 26 (Toss-up) Brad Schneider, Illinois 10 (Toss-up) Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire 1 (Toss-up) Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona 9 (Lean D) Scott Peters, California 52 (Lean D) Ami Bera, California 7 (Lean D) William Enyart, Illinois 12 (Lean D) Sean Patrick Maloney, New York 18 (Lean D) Pete Gallego, Texas 23 (Lean D) Step 4. Identify how much each race cost.

In Lizza's tweets, we learn not only how much the politician has to raise, but his or her attitude about it.

"They told me I have to raise over three million! It is ugly. I don't think we'll have a change until we have the majority."

— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) June 25, 2013

(Note: It was only after we re-read this tweet that we realized that the "majority" comment above ruled out the Senate. Oh well.)

In other words: three million is more than the politician had to raise last time. Here's how much each one's race cost in 2012, in descending order.

Patrick Murphy, $4.7 million Scott Peters, $4.3 million Ami Bera, $3.6 million Brad Schneider, $3 million Sean Patrick Maloney, $2.2 million Kyrsten Sinema, $2.1 million Ann Kirkpatrick, $1.9 million Raul Ruiz, $1.9 million Pete Gallego, $1.8 million Carol Shea-Porter, $1.6 million Joe Garcia, $1.4 million William Enyart, $1.1 million

We can eliminate Murphy, Peters, Bera, and Schneider, since that's what they had to raise last time. And we can probably drop Shea-Porter through Enyart. A 100 percent increase seems unlikely over two years.

And so we're left with five options, bolded above and appearing in the rank of likelihood.

Step 5. Who is already facing ads?

We'll start with Maloney. Is he facing ads?

[image error]Well, yeah. Newsday reports:

Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney has only been in office a few months, but Republicans already are targeting the freshman lawmaker in negative TV ads and on the Internet, setting the stage for next year's election.

Sinema, however, doesn't appear to be under similar attack.

Which, for us, settles it. Somewhere in DC (but not at the Capitol), Ryan Lizza was sitting near Sean Maloney of New York as the congressman was scrambling to raise the $3 million he needed in order to win reelection.

Probably. Update: Or perhaps not. As indicated above, Lizza says we're wrong.

Nope RT @pbump: I figured out who @RyanLizza was watching make fundraising calls. http://t.co/sQeaYEBifD

— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) June 25, 2013

And he's apparently not bluffing. A reporter for the New York Observer actually reached out to Maloney's office.

Comm. Director for Maloney said he wasn't making the calls in an email exchange just now. (cc @pbump, @RyanLizza) pic.twitter.com/zJN8CZD5hc

— Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) June 25, 2013

All of which of course re-raises the question. We've reverted to our second-best guess, not specified above. Lizza has indicated he won't entertain any more guesses, so we're now content in the knowledge that we're almost certainly right.

[View the story "The Mystery Fundraiser" on Storify]

       

Is Walter White Going to Die?

[image error]The final eight episodes of AMC's bleak but brilliant descent into hell, Breaking Bad, begin on August 11, and the network has just released an innnteresting poster teasing the end. Our meth-makin', drug-dealin' antihero Walter White stands with that trademark scowl on his face, hands balled into fists, a blaring white sun burning behind him. And in big letters it says REMEMBER MY NAME. What could that mean? Is the light heaven? Is Walter going to die? Is that why we have to remember his name? Though, if he was going to die, wouldn't he be staring into the light, not looking the opposite direction? Maybe he's telling us to remember his name because he's going to kill us and he wants us to tell the Devil he's on his way when we get there. Or maybe he's going to jail. Something has to happen to Walter, some kind of comeuppance for all his increasingly terrible deeds, right? He can't just saunter off into the sunset with his lady on his arm and a suitcase full of cash-money. That wouldn't be fair to, like, the universe. So it's dead or jail. Jail or dead. Which is it? Why are we remembering his name?? Where are you going, Walter White? Where are you taking us. [Entertainment Weekly]

Alert your teen! Alert your teen! Or alert your damn self if you are A) a teen (why are you reading this? Go outside! It's summer!) or B) like teen things. Y'see, some new Divergent production photos have been released. That's the big Y.A. adaptation starring Shailene Woodley and Kate Winslet, among others. It's based on a book series about a future Chicago where everything's all effed up and people are divided into societal groups based on character traits. (They all have terrible names like Candor and Abnegation, but I've already whined about that enough.) We've seen one or two pics before, but this is a veritable treasure trove. There's Tris with a gun, and a Ferris wheel, and various hunks, and, my favorite, Maggie Q measuring Shailene Woodley's head. Does Maggie Q play a phrenologist in this movie? Has phrenology regained popularity in dystopian Chicago? Mr. Burns will be so happy. Anyway, that pic is down below and the others are past the link. Enjoy! And then go outside, teens. The summer will be over before you know it. [The Hollywood Reporter]

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Oh, wait, sorry teens. One more thing. Here is a new trailer for the One Direction concert movie/documentary One Direction: This Is Us. You'll probably want to watch it while salty Cheetos tears pour down your face and then get so excited that you throw your computer out the window, screaming the whole time, so happy to see Harry at his bakery and Zayn's mom getting a house and whatever else is going on in this thing. I don't know because I didn't finish it. How could I after I threw my computer out the window. So, watch this, ditch the beep-boop out the window, and go do donuts in the abandoned mall parking lot or buy some weed from Billy's step-cousin or go make out under the boysenberry bush or whatever it is you want to spend your summer doing. Just get away from the damn computer.

Here is a very strange trailer for very strange Terry Gilliam's very strange movie The Zero Theorem, starring the very strange Christoph Waltz. Very strange Tilda Swinton makes a very strange cameo. It looks very strange! Not much to say about it beyond that. Apparently Matt Damon has a cameo too, but he's not very strange, so they didn't see fit to include him.

       

Who's in Snowden's Secret Hacker Cabal and What Will They Do with New Leaks?

When you're being chased around the world by the CIA and seeking asylum in Ecuador, or Cuba, or Venezuela by way of China and Russia (even if Putin swears you're still holed up at the airport), it's important to have a really good back-up plan. It now sounds like Edward Snowden has a really good back-up plan: Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald told The Daily Beast on Tuesday that Snowden gave encrypted "archives" to "many different people around the world" in case anything happens to him.

Of course, the NSA leaker knew something would happen to him, before WikiLeaks and the rest of the world got involved. He spent weeks parsing over more files than have come out, Greenwald has said previously, and held back stuff he and the journalists he entrusted didn't think was right for the leaking. But it appears that no matter if he's killed, jailed, extradited, or aprehended — and no matter that investigators "know how many documents he downloaded and what server he took them from" — Snowden has chosen a select group of people to protect the information.

The unknown members of Snowden's cabal don't have the passwords, so they can't just open the archives to see what else he's been hiding, be they completely new leaks or withheld parts of previous disclosures. But there are apparently measures in place to insure the passwords meet the archives if things get that far. "If anything happens at all to Edward Snowden, he told me he has arranged for them to get access to the full archives," Greenwald said. Welp.

This all jibes with what Snowden told the world during his online Q&A session with The Guardian when he teased how future leaks may come out. "All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me," he said. "Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped." So Snowden, who's had at least one more leak about the UK's equivalent of the NSA surface since that Q&A and has quite also famously gone into international hiding, seems to have handed over thumb drives or encrypted files to friends or trusted partners — new or old, we don't know — now empowered with even more secret documents. He's always promised that new leaks would arrive as a slow drip, and apparently the pipe cannot and will not be fixed. But this all begs a very important question: Who has the back-up files? Let's take a few guesses. 

Snowden's life has changed dramatically over the last few weeks, obviously. His plan for asylum has changed. He has new, exciting, fugitive friends in high places helping him hop from country to country without a passport. But there are a few likely associates, and less so:

Glenn Greenwald

Probably the most likely collaborator. He was the first journalist who published Snowden's secrets. But, on the other hand, almost two weeks ago — as he was surfacing again in local Hong Kong papers with information about the U.S. hacking into China — Greenwald told The Atlantic Wire's Philip Bump that he didn't know if Snowden had a back-up plan with more leaks ready to go. "I have no idea if he has a contingency plan to protect himself — he might — but everything I've heard from him has been opposed to gratuitous disclosures," he told the Wire. Things change, apparently. 

Snowden's girlfriend

Probably not. She (allegedly) had no idea what Snowden was planning, so it seems unlikely he would leave her with a mystery file she couldn't open. But Snowden has misled us in the past. For instance: his plan to fly to Havana. Anything is possible. 

His post-high school website buddies

Again, probably not. He's 30 years old now. We all move on after high school.

Chinese journalists

Possibly. He's already leaking things regularly to The South China Morning Post, so it would make sense if he left some documents behind in Hong Kong before flying into Moscow. But the most obvious suspects holding onto Snowden's secrets... 

WikiLeaks

Winner winner chicken dinner! Whether or not he was working with them before he went into hiding the first time, and whether he ditched the files off his person when he made a run for it, it's safe to say that WikiLeaks would know what to do with encrypted codes and how to protect government secrets for a big, well-timed document dump. Julian Assange and Co. seem to have a huge amount of sway over the former government contractor who leaked secret government documents, they convinced him to forgo Iceland for Ecuador, they flew him from Hong Kong to Russia, and they're speaking for him in public, too. WikiLeaks inserted themselves into this story and it's as much about them now as it is about Snowden — or, heaven forbid, the more important conversation about modern intelligence, privacy, and terrorism. Snowden went all-in on Assange, and it would be foolish to believe Assange's advisor and Snowden travel buddy Sarah Harrison weren't at least aware of the rest of the batch of Snowden's secrets that he obtained at Booz Allen and beyond. 

He's got other buddies, surely — the lawyer in Hong Kong, the countless acquaintances who popped up on TV in the days following his unmasking — but somewhere out there, someone else has the keys. Stay tuned.

       

Will the New 'Encyclopedia Brown' Movie Franchise Totally Ruin Your Nostalgia?

[image error]If a successful movie adaptation of Donald J. Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown series—which first debuted in 1963—was going to be made, its legion of fans would probably assume that would've already happened. But it hasn't, and now Warner Bros. is going to try to turn Brown into a full-on moneymaking franchise now that Sobol has passed away. The mid-transition studio is currently in "final negotiations" to acquire rights to the 28 books chock full of garage-based investigation, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and in an effort to hook your children, Warners and a legacy producer who fought with the author might destroy your own childhood memories.

As THS Borys Kit explains, the struggle to produce a movie version about Sobol's kid detective Leroy Brown over the years, well, let's just say it hasn't been for lack of trying. In the 80s Warner Bros. tried to get a film together with Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase; names like Ridley Scott, Robert Luketic, and Anthony Hopkins have been connected to the project. There was a 1989 HBO TV series, but that's as far as the Encyclopedia Brown screen legacy goes. In fact, Sobol—who died last year—was not happy about bringing Encyclopedia Brown to the big screen when the idea was raised in 2005. Howard Deutsch, who would go on to produce this year's newfangled attempt, was also on board that time, having controlled the rights since 1979. "The book's author, however, was not pleased about the prospect," Sharon Waxman wrote for the New York Times. "Reached in Miami, Donald J. Sobol, the creator of Encyclopedia Brown, said he knew nothing of plans to bring his books to the big screen and wanted nothing to do with Mr. Deutsch." Deutsch and Sobol had fought over the rights. 

It's an understandably tricky thing to adapt. The books also encourage reader participation in solving those mysteries. That doesn't exactly go hand-in-hand with the distinctly non-participatory venue of a movie. (Unless you're talking futuristic franchises that turn audiences into "players," but that's a ways off.) Mind you, Fox is also trying to adapt the Choose Your Own Adventure franchise. But aside from that, refreshing Encyclopedia Brown means the necessity of playing on nostalgia and also attracting a young audience. That hasn't always worked so well. The 2007 adaptation of Nancy Drew starring Emma Roberts floundered, and the Y.A. market seems to have a constant supply of next big things based on current or soon-to-be popular literature (take, for example, Divergent) as opposed to, you know, the last best thing. But Encylopedia Brown is still pretty great, so here's hoping this one doesn't burn up under the magnifying glass.

       

The Wary Post-Scandal Lives of Anthony Weiner's Women

The New York Times finally published their juicy story detailing the second lives of the women on the receiving end of Anthony Weiner's dirty chats and twitpics, and the juicy details aren't quite as salacious as this tabloid-perfect mayoral race comeback would have you believe: Three of the women have (somehow) become friends through their shared misery, and one is (still) writing a tell-all.

The nearly 1,400-word story, written by the Times veteran political reporter and self-described "inveterate gossip" Michael Barbaro, was inadvertently published two weeks ago. It was then rather scandalously pulled from the Times site — scandalous if only because Weiner's history continues to lend itself to intense speculation and bad punny headlines, no matter how many tabloid-proof quotes Weiner lobs back as he runs from behind for mayor of New York.

But in interviews with three of the five women embroiled in the sexting-and-topless-photo scandal heard 'round Twitter and Washington, and a statement from another, Barbaro, at last, paints the sad picture of their post-scandal lives. Lisa Weiss, a 42-year-old blackjack dealer, gets made fun of by her customers fairly often. Gennette Cordova, a 21-year-old college student when the Weiner scandal broke a little over two years ago, still denies ever sending Weiner anything inappropriate and is now trying to "reclaim her identity" — and Google search results — after receiving that infamous boxer-shorts image. Traci Nobles, a former school teacher (and cheerleading coach), was forced to quite her job after her name was included in so many news reports that her employers at a Young Women's Christian Organization just could not handle. (She's still writing that book we heard about a while back, apparently.)

The one thing those three women will always have, long after Weiner's mayoral bid comes to a conclusion one way or the other (he's trailing in polls and especially with women), is each other:

The shared experience of the women involved has brought several of them together, for a kind of online group therapy. Ms. Weiss said she had discussed Mr. Weiner with both Ms. Nobles and Ms. Cordova.

“We all kind of commiserated,” Ms. Weiss said. “They were all very supportive.”

Whether or not there's some sort of book club involved or just an email chain is still unclear, but that's kind of nice, no? Three women who share a common history of naughty messages with Anthony Wiener — and crumbling social and personal lives thereafter — bond over their shared recovery from illicit accident gone horribly wrong. That's a heartwarming story, in a way. And maybe next month they can go over Nobles' tell-all, I Freinded You (sic on purpose). They'll probably have a lot to say.

It should be noted that the Times published their story today just hours after Buzzfeed's Andrew Kazcynski tried to compile different quotes from the originally published article by sourcing them from Google Reader. But the Times claims there's no direct connection: "Our editors decide when a story is ready for publication. Outside coverage does not play a role in that decision," a Times spokesperson told Politico's Dylan Byers. Either way, this is kid stuff compared to the hard hit Weiner took in the Times last week.