Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 96

A Brief History of Cheating at the Olympics

The ancient Olympic Games didn’t travel from city to city as they do now. Starting in 776 B.C., the Olympics were held quadrennially in Olympia, the sanctuary city of Zeus. Statues of the god were everywhere, and one in particular, a bronze icon holding two thunderbolts, was named “Zeus the Oath Giver.” Before competing, athletes from as far away as modern-day Spain and the Black Sea stood before this icon and swore an oath to the god of thunder vowing they would follow the regulations of the Olympics and play fair.

Today’s games have something similar, though it’s not not exactly an oath, and certainly not made while holding a strip of wild-boar meat—as was custom in ancient Greece. Today the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has a code of ethics, of which the first article asks athletes to compete with a “respect for the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.”

In short, don’t cheat.

But that instruction isn’t always followed despite the public disgrace that accompanies it—nor was it followed 3,000 years ago when the Olympics began. While the manner of cheating has evolved in that time, the human desire to cheat has not. Ancient Olympians were no more or less moral than humans are today. The evidence of this quite literally begins with the Olympic Games, as part of its creation myth.

Olympia was named for Mount Olympus, the mythical home of the gods. The most prominent building in Olympia held one of the ancient wonders of the world, an enormous statue of Zeus, made of gold and ivory. Just outside this building was a less-staggering set of statues that told a story of a king, his daughter, a handsome suitor, and a scheme.

The ancient king Oenomaos Oenomaus had been warned the man who married his daughter would kill him. To ensure his own survival, Oenomaos, who had the world’s fastest horses, decreed any man who wished to wed his daughter must first beat him in a chariot race. For a long time, he was safe. As quickly as suitors lined up to wed his daughter, Oenomaos outraced them, and, according to some versions of the story, beheaded them and nailed the heads to his home. That was, until Pelops, a handsome young man intent on marrying Oenomaos’ daughter, came along. Unlike the other suitors, Pelops’s plan involved more than swift horses. He bribed a man to swap out the linchpin on Oenomaos’s chariot with one made of wax.

A series of statues in Olympia were believed to depict the moment before this race began, when both father and suitor stood on either side of Zeus and swore an oath to play fairly. Of course, when the race heated up, the wax pin broke, Oenomaos fell from the chariot, and died. Pelops won his bride.

For this, the southern region of Greece, the one that includes Olympia, took Pelops’ name (it still bears it). Pelops founded the Olympic Games to commemorate his triumph, and so every four years Greek men competed to prove who was best, swearing to Zeus they would not cheat. It might be high hypocrisy, but the ancient Greeks were perhaps a bit more practical when it came to their acknowledgment of human nature. Their gods, at least, reflected this. Greek mythology is full of jealousy, greed, trickery, and deceit. Not that they accepted this as part of the Olympics, or encouraged it. In fact, they built statues to shame these cheaters.

On the road to Olympia, competitors walked past a line of statues, also of Zeus, except they called these “Zanes.” Each statue had a small plaque that chastised competitors accused of misconduct. The Greeks built the first of these statues after the 98th Olympiad, dedicated to the boxer Eupolus of Thessaly, who bribed his opponents to let him win. The Olympic officials of the day fined Eupolus, as well as those who accepted the bribes, and the payment built six Zanes. The first statue’s plaque reminded athletes the Olympics were meant to judge “swiftness of foot and strength of body,” not an athlete’s purse. The other statues called out his coconspirators, and the final statue warned the coming competitors against deceiving the gods and disgracing the sacred games as these men had done. It is a wonder, wrote Pausanias, the ancient Greek traveler, geographer, and writer, that “man has so little respect for the god of Olympia as to take or give a bribe.”

Yet disrespect was in no short supply. The Greeks built many Zanes, enough to line the path leading to Olympia, because plenty of athletes cheated. They bribed other competitors, they bribed the fathers of competitors, they bribed officials, they competed in secret after their city-state was banned, they pretended to be from city-states they were not.

The Olympics had a brief hiatus—about 2,000 years—and at the inaugural modern Olympic Games, in 1896, held in Athens, humans were back at it. In the marathon event, a Greek runner rode a portion of the race on a carriage. But perhaps the funniest modern-day Olympic cheating scandal came in 1904, in St. Louis, Missouri. It was 90 degrees and humid, and by all accounts the marathoners were ill-prepared and miserable. Fred Lorz, the U.S. American bricklayer and marathon runner, beat out two barefoot men from the Tsuana (or Tswana) tribe of South Africa, a Cuban who showed up in long pants, and a host of other competitors. Lorz not only beat them all, he beat the closest marathoner by three-quarters of an hour. President Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter crowned Lorz champion, but a moment later someone in the crowd called foul play. It turned out, Lorz  had ridden part of the marathon in the back of a truck. The gold medal went to another American, Thomas Hicks, who was pale and vomiting at the moment he learned he’d won because his handlers had slipped him a mix of egg white, brandy, and strychnine, used at the time as a stimulant.

Some 30 years later, the German women’s high-jumper Dora Ratjen lost her gold when officials discovered she was really Heinrich Ratjen. And on, and on, the cheating continued. Why do people cheat? Because cheating, like competition, is human nature.

“Cheating has always been part of sports,” Maurice Schweitzer, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who researches deception, told me. “It’s this  idea that we’re ‘in it to win it,’ and we will cut corners or push ourselves really hard, so the Little League World Series has scandals, the Paralympics has scandals.”

Cheating, it seems from recent research, creates its own ecosystem, because winners are more likely to cheat, cheaters are more likely to win, and emotions tied to winning—feelings of superiority, or that you deserve to excel—reinforce cheating behavior. Schweitzer’s work has found cheaters experience a sort of double high: the high of having won, and a high from having duped everyone.

This year, with news the Russian government may have helped its athletes dope in Olympic competition, it seems cheating has progressed to a height never before achieved—at least since the Cold War when Eastern Bloc athletes were accused of using drugs to boost their performances. And because cheating has been so deeply involved in the Olympics since its creation, it’s in keeping with the Olympic motto of pushing limits: Citius, Altius, Fortius. Faster, Higher, Stronger.

What’s Latin for shadier?

The End of Ken Starr's Ties to Baylor Univeristy

NEWS BRIEF Ken Starr, the former Baylor University president and chancellor who was demoted for his mishandling of rampant accusations of sexual assault on campus, will leave his position as a faculty member in the law school.

The news, announced in a Friday statement released by Baylor, severs Starr’s last tie to the Waco, Texas, university. The statement refers to him as Judge Starr, because he once served as a federal judge. In part, it read:

The mutually agreed separation comes with the greatest respect and love Judge Starr has for Baylor and with Baylor’s recognition and appreciation for Judge Starr’s many contributions to Baylor. Baylor wishes Judge Ken Starr well in his future endeavors.

Baylor demoted Starr from president to chancellor on May 26, then he stepped down as chancellor in June. His fall came after allegations of rape and sexual-assault, mainly against football players, surfaced during court trials. One was in 2015, when former football player Sam Ukwuachu was convicted of raping a student. During that trial, the court learned Baylor had investigated claims of rape against Ukwuachu, but had not punished him. Another was during the trial of Tevin Elliot, another football player, accused by at least five women of rape. He was sentenced in 2014 to 20 years. But more than just those two cases, investigators found an environment at the university that discouraged reporting acts of sexual assault, particularly when the alleged offender was on the football team.

An independent investigation, released May 26, found that:

Baylor failed to take appropriate action to respond to reports of sexual assault and dating violence reportedly committed by football players. The choices made by football staff and athletics leadership, in some instances, posed a risk to campus safety and the integrity of the University. In certain instances, including reports of a sexual assault by multiple football players, athletics and football personnel affirmatively chose not to report sexual violence and dating violence to an appropriate administrator outside of athletics. In those instances, football coaches or staff met directly with a complainant and/or a parent of a complainant and did not report the misconduct.

The report said administrators at the university deterred complaints, but it especially singled out Baylor’s football program, which it said carried a “cultural perception” that it was above the rules. Baylor fired the head football coach, Art Briles, in May.  

A First Look Inside Border Patrol's 'Iceboxes'

NEWS BRIEF For years human- and immigrants-rights advocacy groups have accused U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) of holding people who illegally crossed the Southwest border in processing-facility cells that are too small, dirty, and kept so cold the cells have earned the nickname hieleras, or iceboxes.

The problem has always been that few people besides those held inside and CBP officers have seen the cells. But this week, for the first time, CBP released still images taken from video monitors in the cells. The images, unsealed in a lawsuit brought by the American Immigration Council, The National Immigration Law Center, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, show concrete rooms with no mats or beds, cramped, often with the migrants wrapped in survival blankets that look like sheets of tinfoil, huddled side-by-side as if for warmth. It’s impossible to tell the temperature in the cells, but the images seem to back complaints made for years against the CBP.

Here are a couple of photos, taken from a CBP facility in Tucson:

American Immigration Council

American Immigration Council

These CBP holdings cells are meant to house migrants for short periods, no more than 12 hours, according to a CBP memo cited in the lawsuit, which was filed July 2015 in a Federal District Court in Tucson, Arizona. But a report by the American Immigration Council, which was published Thursday, claims migrants are held for much, much longer. Here’s a graphic from the report, which shows the average stay ranged from 65 hours to 104 hours.

American Immigration Council

The CBP’s parent agency, the Department of Homelands Security (DHS), fought the release of the images, because it said the pictures could help criminals or smugglers track surveillance patterns, or learn how crowded cells were at certain times. The agency also said the pictures, which are snapshots from videos, don’t provide proper context to the situation. CBP has also said agents keep the cells at temperatures between 68 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

The legal fight over how long, and in what conditions, CBP detains migrants is part of a larger battle that involves detentions centers, the places where migrants caught on the Southwest border will stay for weeks, months, in some cases more than a year. It is there the migrant who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally will be processed by DHS, then given an immigration court date. Activists and advocacy groups complain that at almost every stage of an immigrant’s interaction with DHS, or the private contractors they hire to run some of their detention facilities, migrants are treated in ways that violate their human rights, and are kept for periods longer than DHS allows for, and longer than it discloses. DHS maintains that it treats all those detained at the border fairly.

War Dogs Is a Self-Satisfied Testosterone Fest

Maybe the only thing you need to hear about War Dogs, Todd Phillips’s aggressive new comedy about two Miami stoners who became gun-runners and Iraq War profiteers, is the supreme lameness of its intertitles. For every act break, the film cuts to black and flashes a line of text on screen, something provocative like “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead already,” or, “That sounds illegal.” Then, a few minutes later, someone will say that very line, and you can almost smell the self-satisfaction wafting from the screen.

The movie is based on the true story of Efraim Diveroli and David Packouz, two small-time arms dealers who conned their way into a $298 million contract from the Pentagon and were eventually convicted of fraud. In the endless Middle East quagmire that followed the Iraq War, Diveroli and Packouz were venal opportunists, cutting corners to supply arms to the U.S. military and its allies, and eventually getting busted for trying to repackage substandard Chinese bullets for use by Afghan soldiers. Phillips’s film has a chance to satirize a heartlessly corrupt era in American military policy, one that led to the rise of morons like Diveroli and Packouz—to be The Big Short with bullets, if you will. But there’s one big problem: It seems to think its despicable protagonists are worth rooting for.

Well, that’s one of the problems, at least. Packouz, as played by Miles Teller, is a harmless mope, a hardworking grunt who just wants to provide for his pregnant girlfriend Iz (Ana de Armas). Stuck in a dead-end job as a masseuse, he reunites with his high-school buddy Diveroli (Jonah Hill), a glass-eyed lunatic who almost immediately pulls a submachine gun from the trunk of his car and fires it into the air, emitting a demented laugh that sounds like air escaping a balloon. Most people would steer clear of this sort of person, especially one whose fashion sense seems heavily indebted to Al Pacino in Scarface, but with more Hebrew medallions. But Packouz throws his whole lot in with Diveroli, joining his fledgling gun-running business and quickly making a fortune trawling for arms on the internet and shipping them to American soldiers.

Hill has a blast playing Diveroli, bringing all the best tricks he learned working with Martin Scorsese on The Wolf of Wall Street to play an even bigger, more unpredictable sleazebag. He at least imparts a sense of danger: Diveroli is certainly a fool, skirting trade embargoes one minute and offering random women money to sleep with him the next, but you keep waiting for him to snap—for his strangled cackle to turn into a snarl. On the other hand, Teller, who was so promising as a normal young man warped by his mentor in Whiplash, is sleepwalking here, never very troubled by the ethical quicksand he and his partner have wandered into. Teller is so often good at playing the emotional turmoil boiling right under the surface of his characters, but if Packouz is supposed to be an audience surrogate, he’s a bad one, repeatedly lying to his poor, one-dimensional girlfriend and falling for Diveroli’s obvious lies.

Anytime Phillips brushes up against a horrifying reality, he pulls back.

Phillips, who has directed several outrageous comedies (Road Trip, Old School, Due Date, and The Hangover series), seems enamored by the “true story” he’s telling, even though much of the film is a fabrication (a jaunt through Iraq’s “Triangle of Death” is entirely invented). He’s also clearly delighted by the fact that his anti-heroes are Jewish, finally overcoming some oft-mentioned, obvious stereotypes about being nerds in high school by obnoxiously firing guns and dressing like Miami gangsters. Philips is especially happy to let Packouz off the hook as a well-meaning patsy who got screwed over by the mercurial Diveroli. That’d be an easier storyline to swallow if Diveroli  weren’t such an obvious huckster from the start; it’s galling that Phillips thinks his viewers can stomach almost two hours of Packouz running guns and then forgive him by the end.

War Dogs was always going to be an unapologetically bro-y testosterone fest on some level, but it could’ve offered incisive commentary, too. Just a decade ago, the war in Iraq saw the government practically handing its keys over to people like Packouz and Diveroli just to stay ahead of enemy combatants. When Bradley Cooper shows up midway through the film as an older, even more ethically compromised arms dealer who goes into business with the boys, there’s a brief feeling that War Dogs is finally going to acknowledge the dark heart of its unbelievable true story. But anytime Phillips brushes up against a horrifying reality, he pulls back, focusing on the lead characters rather than the nastier (and more interesting) circumstances that made them such successes. At best, War Dogs is a missed creative opportunity; at its worst, it’s a quasi-celebration of two vile schemers, one that ignores the brutality of the world they capitalized on.

A Proposal to Ban the Veil in Germany

NEWS BRIEF  German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said Friday the face veil, or burqa, worn by some Muslim women “doesn’t fit in with our open society” and called for the garment to be banned. It’s unclear if such a ban would permitted under Germany’s constitution, however, and de Maiziere suggested as much in remarks a day earlier.

“We reject the full veil—not just the burka but the other forms of full veil where only the eyes are visible,” he said Friday, in remarks reported by the BBC. “It doesn’t fit in with our open society. Showing the face is a constituent element for our communication, the way we live, our social cohesion. That is why we call on everyone to show their face.”

Germany already has bans in place for face coverings at demonstrations, such as protests, that conceal someone’s identity. But the proposal offered by conservative members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling bloc would prevent anyone from wearing partial face coverings in public educational institutions, public offices or while driving.

Calls for a ban on veils follow recent attacks in Europe, including in Germany , that have been claimed by the Islamic State.

The Potential Zika Threat to Adult Brain Cells

NEWS BRIEF Zika is understood to pose the greatest threat to pregnant women and their fetuses, which can be born with severe brain defects if infected with the mosquito-borne virus. But new research suggests Zika may damage adult brains, too, giving scientists another thread to follow in their attempts to understand the virus as the number of infections continues to rise in South America, the Caribbean, and elsewhere.

U.S. researchers have found evidence that a certain kind of brain cell present in newborns that remains in some amounts in adulthood can be susceptible to Zika infection, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Cell Stem Cell. The cells, known as neural progenitor cells, are the stem cells of the brain; in newborns, they specialize into the different types of cells that build a complex brain, and in adults, they help replace and replenish damaged neurons. Neural progenitor cells are believed to play a role in learning and memory in the adult brain—and to be, somehow, resistant to Zika.

In the study, researchers from The Rockefeller University in New York and the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology in California mimicked the spread of Zika infection in the brains of mice. They found the virus could target the rodents’ neural progenitor cells, which could result in cell death and impaired brain functioning. The findings are preliminary and have not been observed in humans, but they suggest the Zika virus may be more complicated than scientists understand now.

“[Zika is] a complex disease—it’s catastrophic for early brain development, yet the majority of adults who are infected with Zika rarely show detectable symptoms,” said Sujan Shresta, a professor at the La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology, in a statement Thursday. “Its effect on the adult brain may be more subtle, and now we know what to look for.”

The researchers say a healthy brain could fight off potential effects of Zika that are yet to be fully understood, but people with weakened immune systems may be vulnerable.

“In more subtle cases, the virus could theoretically impact long-term memory or risk of depression, but tools do not exist to test the long-term effects of Zika on adult stem cell populations,” said Joseph Gleeson, the head of Rockefeller’s Laboratory of Pediatric Brain Disease.

There is currently no vaccine for Zika, which sickens 1 in 5 people who become infected from the bite of the Aedes mosquito, the virus’s prime carrier. The virus has been shown to cause microcephaly, a condition in newborns that causes them to be born with abnormally small heads and neurological defects. Scientists are still trying to figure out how Zika spreads from the site of a mosquito bite on a pregnant woman to her womb. The virus has also been linked to Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune disorder in adults that affects the nervous system.

One Massachusetts Town's Rejection of a Muslim Cemetery

NEWS BRIEF Massachusetts will investigate whether a town in the state violated a Muslim group’s civil rights when it rejected plans to build a Muslim cemetery, U.S. federal officials said Thursday.

U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said the investigation seeks to determine if town officials in Dudley, Massachusetts, infringed on the civil liberties of the Islamic Society of Greater Worcester when they rejected the group’s request in November to establish a Muslim cemetery on 55 acres of farmland owned by the society.

“All Americans have the right to worship and to bury their loved ones in accordance with their religious beliefs, free from discrimination,”Ortiz said in a statement. “We are opening this investigation to assess whether there have been violations of federal civil rights laws in connection with the request to establish an Islamic cemetery in Dudley.”

The group filed a lawsuit against the town last month after town officials rejected the plan, citing traffic and environment issues. In a town meeting in February, residents voiced concern over Islamic burial practices, arguing that traditional Muslim burials—which avoid embalming—could lead to groundwater contamination. Others cited issues related to vandalism, traffic, and noise, with one resident reportedly likening the Islamic call to prayer—often played at mosques—to “crazy music.”

Dudley town officials said the town’s zoning practices are not discriminatory.

“The Dudley Board of Selectmen welcomes this investigation as an opportunity to show that the Town's zoning and land use practices do not violate any religious rights of the Islamic Society, nor do such practices discriminate against any assembly or institution on the basis of religion or religious denomination,” town officials said in a statement.

Proposals for the establishment of mosques have been met with similar resistance. Last month, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the Bensalem Township in Pennsylvania after its town officials rejected a bid by a Muslim congregation to construct a mosque, alleging that the town lacked justification. Also in July, the Islamic Center of Fredericksburg in Virginia faced pushback from city officials over plans to construct a new mosque.

The Changing U.S. Story on Sending $400 Million to Iran

NEWS BRIEF In early August, The Wall Street Journal delivered a fascinating scoop: At the same time that Iran released four American hostages in January, the U.S. arranged to deliver $400 million in cash to Iran.

Almost immediately, the agreement was described as a ransom payment. Donald Trump insisted he had watched footage of the cash being unloaded in Iran, which could not have been true because no such footage was available. The Obama administration, through the State Department, offered two defenses.

The first was that the money belonged to Iran in the first place. Prior to the overthrow of the shah, Iran’s government had sent money to purchase fighter jets, but before the sale could be completed, he was overthrown. Even after American hostages had been released, there was no chance the U.S. would send the planes, but it also never returned the money. In that sense, the money was really a hostage exchange: human hostages for monetary hostages. In addition, the State Department said that because Iran was cut off from the international banking system (thanks in large part to American sanctions), it wasn’t like the U.S. could just wire the money.

Second, the U.S. suggested that despite appearances, including the suspiciously simultaneous transfer and the secrecy with which it had been conducted, there was really nothing more than weird coincidence at play. State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement:

As we’ve made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim at the Hague Tribunal were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home. Not only were the two negotiations separate, they were conducted by different teams on each side, including, in the case of the Hague claims, by technical experts involved in these negotiations for many years.

He also tweeted:

Reports of link between prisoner release & payment to Iran are completely false. @POTUS statement from Jan: https://t.co/5yuzGxD14s

— John Kirby (@statedeptspox) August 3, 2016

It’s now clear those statements were not wholly accurate. Even if the negotiations were conducted separately, the timing was not a coincidence. Thursday morning, Jay Solomon and Carol Lee, the Journal writers behind the original scoop, reported:

New details of the $400 million U.S. payment to Iran earlier this year depict a tightly scripted exchange specifically timed to the release of several American prisoners held in Iran.

They didn’t have any official confirmation, but later Thursday afternoon, the State Department admitted to the Associated Press that the payment was contingent on Iran freeing the prisoners. While Kirby again argued that the negotiations had been separate, even if the handoff was not, it’s very hard to read his statement that “reports of a link … are completely false” as honest.

Why is the Obama administration changing its story? The obvious culprit is politics. Obama and aides seemed frustrated by the argument, common among opponents of the nuclear deal with Iran, that the agreement entailed the United States “giving” $150 billion to Iran. That, too, was money that Iran already possessed, but which had been frozen thanks to sanctions restrictions. Faced with the danger that the further $400 million would be demagogued, the State Department instead chose to offer an explanation that didn’t pass a straight-face test. The cash delivery may not have been ransom in the strict sense—it isn’t that the U.S. was giving Iran money, but that it was returning money that was rightfully owed to it—but the claim that it was coincidental with the hostage release never seemed especially plausible. The surprise is that the administration thought it could get away with it.

A Storm Over Sexism in Stand-Up Comedy

Perhaps the biggest misconception held by many stand-up comedians is that their profession somehow makes them experts on matters unrelated to writing and telling jokes. This certainly seemed to be the case for Kurt Metzger, a stand-up comic and writer for Comedy Central’s Inside Amy Schumer, who recently posted repetitive Facebook screeds about rape, criticizing the way women report being the victim of a crime. Metzger’s social-media tirades inevitably drew negative pushback against Schumer, his boss, who decried his actions online.

Metzger was specifically reacting to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre banning a comic from its clubs after multiple women alleged he had sexually assaulted and harassed them, leading the UCB to conduct an internal probe. For many observers it simply looked like another terrible instance of abuse, though one that opened up further debate on how to handle rape and sexual-assault allegations in the community. But for Metzger, the ban was either a terrible miscarriage of justice or a punishment lacking in severity: His frenzied Facebook commentary cut both ways, at times lecturing on the exact manner in which victims should report crimes, with seemingly no care for context. On one hand, it feels unhelpful to further amplify these rants—but they also lay bare the sexism that so often goes hand in hand with a comic “telling it like it is.”

Metzger was, of course, remarking on an issue within the comedy community. But his comments quickly strayed into a far more general realm, lambasting women for not going to the police to deal with the issue, and mocking the UCB for banning someone based on an internal probe. He began his Facebook posts by saying the women who registered their complaints should have gone to the cops first, comparing the actual investigation to a “lynch mob.” He then said they were “adding to the problem” by not going to the police, called them “the whitest women alive” (for some reason), and claimed the accused rapist had “a potential sweet lawsuit” on his hands. Metzger also demanded the anonymous complaints be made public, then eventually backtracked by saying he was attacking the “social media mob” around the case, not the victims themselves.

Metzger isn’t a widely known name, but with more than 27,000 followers on Twitter and appearances on shows like Last Comic Standing and Red Eye, he’s an up-and-coming presence, one who appeared in almost every episode of Louis C.K.’s acclaimed drama Horace & Pete this year. His biggest gig was as a writer on the staff of the avowedly feminist Comedy Central sketch show Inside Amy Schumer, where he’s worked since its first episode. Metzger, a three-time Emmy nominee for writing, has come under fire for disturbing online behavior before, but this latest incident drew so much attention that Schumer, in the middle of a book tour, was forced to respond on Twitter.

She initially went about blocking people for petitioning her about the issue, before saying she was “saddened and disappointed” with Metzger, then adding that he was “not a writer” on her show (a confusing remark, since he was credited on every episode). She then muddied things further by saying, “We aren’t making the show anymore. There are no writers for it,” before clarifying that the show was just on hiatus.

#InsideAmySchumer is not cancelled. @ComedyCentral has provided us with a wonderful home and we couldn't be happier there. I am just touring

— Amy Schumer (@amyschumer) August 18, 2016

Doing Standup and focusing on writing more for the next year at least. We are slated for a season 5 but not in the foreseeable future.

— Amy Schumer (@amyschumer) August 18, 2016

Metzger had worn his association with the show as a badge of honor, telling female critics he had gotten “a raise” from the network after a previous sexist incident. So Schumer’s rejection of his remarks matter as an example to the comedy community she’s actively trying to make more inclusive. Metzger’s instant hostility toward the UCB’s handling of multiple rape accusations, and his questioning of the women who spoke up, only contributes to a culture of victim-blaming. His only defense was one comedians often lean back on: that he has the right to speak out about whatever he wants.

That is, of course, true; but the “social-media mob,” as he puts it, is equally entitled to angrily repudiate his ideas. Metzger’s apparent entitlement is derived from the microphone he holds in front of his mouth at every stand-up show, and the far larger platform social media offers. Why else would he see the value in posting, “What you want to establish is WORSE than actual rape,” when discussing the UCB’s efforts to deal with a wave of sexual-assault allegations? That sort of free-associative philosophizing can just about stand up to the scrutiny of a drunken comedy-club audience, but not much more.

Still, what is a stand-up routine if not a practiced bit of free-associative philosophizing? It’s perhaps why comedians are often reluctant to police each other’s words, even off the stage, and maybe why Schumer seems so reluctant to deal with Metzger’s outburst. “His words are not mine,” she tweeted, begging fans to stop asking her about him. (Metzger later claimed he had encouraged Schumer to speak out on the issue, and that she’d told him she planned to keep silent.) But there are some signs of a positive shift. The self-contained comedy world has largely come together mock or condemn Metzger’s behavior, recognizing it as exactly the kind of mindset that has for so long kept stand-up from reflecting the makeup of the world around it.

“Guys, stop telling women to shut up about it or policing their behavior by criticizing how they are voicing their anger or frustration,” said Jordan Carlos, a stand-up who wrote for the recently canceled Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, in a Facebook post. “How hard is it to get behind the notion that a woman should feel safe in the comedy community? Is there an assumption that she shouldn’t?” he asked. Until recently, the answer to this question was an unfortunate yes. The ongoing backlash to Metzger shows that something might be changing, even if a handful of outspoken individuals wish it wouldn’t.

The Maiden Voyage of the World's Longest Aircraft

NEWS BRIEF The world’s longest aircraft—larger than a Boeing 747 and as long as eight double-decker British buses—took flight late Wednesday night.

The aircraft is called the Airlander 10, and it’s part plane, part helicopter, and part dirigible, aka blimp. It measures 302 feet long and cruises at a comfortable 90 miles per hour, or almost one-seventh the speed of a regular passenger plane.

The hodgepodge aircraft, built by the British company Hybrid Air Vehicles, took flight for 30 minutes in a rural airfield in Bedfordshire, England. Here it is in action:

Have you ever seen anything like it?!



The Airlander 10 with Yeovil's @avoptics​ technology has made its 1st flight! pic.twitter.com/t2BFIv9LMw

— BBC Somerset (@bbcsomerset) August 18, 2016

The plane has been compared to a giant football, and, most notably, to a “flying bum.” Two helium-filled hulls help lift the plane, and the craft can carry more than 22,000 pounds of cargo and stay suspended for weeks. It was originally funded by the U.S. military to fly spy and delivery missions above battlefields in Afghanistan. And at under $40 million to build, the Airlander 10 costs one-tenth the price of the superjumbo Airbus A380. It is that price point, combined with the fact that it burns just a fifth of the fuel as commercial aircraft, that its manufacturer hopes will attract buyers. So far, however, it has attracted mostly relentless mocking for its resemblance to a derriere.

The U.S. military initially invested $300 million in the project, but pulled out in 2013. Hybrid Air Vehicles had been paid $100 million by the U.S. to develop the plane, and bought it back for a steal at $300,000. To finish the design, the company crowdsourced funding. One of its more famous investors is Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer for the metal band Iron Maiden. Dickinson rationalized his investment this way: “I’m not expecting to get my money back any time soon, I just want to be part of it. Being a rock person, I could put it up my nose, or buy a million Rolls Royces and drive them into swimming pools, or I could do something useful.”

Dickinson said he decided to invest after he met the man behind its design, the late inventor Roger Munk, who is believed to have been inspired to build the Airlander 10 by another famous inventor, Barnes Wallis, who drew it on the back of a napkin as the two sat in a pub.

Hybrid Air Vehicles hopes to build 100 more of the airships within five years to serve as tourist cruises, cargo transport, and floating wireless-internet hotspots. The Airlander 10 may very well signal a new dawn for the dirigible, which has never quite recovered from that disaster in 1937.