It’s Mother’s Day this Sunday, and so the myth of the Ideal Mother returns along with the flowers and the cards and the brunches and the phone calls. But as Elizabeth Weiss writes in the New Yorker, if we were serious about Mother’s Day and the problems mothers face, we wouldn’t turn to viral videos about how tough their job is. We’d actually do something about issues like maternity (and paternity) leave and the high cost of quality day care. Also, if you want a truly heartfelt tribute to moms, check out Kevin Durant’s Most Valuable Player acceptance speech.
The opportunism of exploiting Benghazi in one more committee hearing. Via the Daily Beast.
Unless you believe, as Peggy Noonan writes, that Benghazi is worse than Iran Contra. From behind the Wall Street Journal firewall.
Thanks Obamacare! It didn’t wreck the economy and it’s slashing federal spending. Just like the Republicans who helped design the law told you it would, America! The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget: “The Congressional Budget Office reports that spending on federal health care programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act’s exchange subsidies) is being revised downward by $900 billion, or 0.4 percent of GDP, cumulatively from 2011 through 2021, just since their March 2011 projections.”
David Brooks: Africa actually isn’t this lawless place where terrible things are bound to happen. Via the New York Times.
Who’s the biggest winner by the adoption of the Common Core? Franz Kafka. Who else? Via Vox.
Conventional wisdom alert: The midterm electorate isn’t that different after all. Via fivethirtyeight.com
Ta-Nehisi Coates writes that Bill Clinton was racialized, too. Via the Atlantic.
[ Photo of his mom by David Saddler. ]
