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1. The previous issue’s wide-roaming interview with comedian Louis C.K., which touched on everything from Donald Trump to feminism to bored masturbation (“In Conversation: Louis C.K.,” June 13–26), delighted many readers. “You know how it is when you read some great writing, or a great interview with a very intelligent, quick-witted person, and you come away from it feeling as if you’ve briefly absorbed some of their energy and you can’t wait to make use of it in your own life and work somehow?” wrote commenter MusicIsLove. “Well …” Many appreciated C.K.’s analogy for the 2016 presidential race, in which he imagines the candidates as pilots competing to fly the plane. “This is the kind of analogy you’d want to save to explain the election to your right-wing family at an argumentative dinner later this year,” wrote Esquire’s Matt Miller. “Sometimes it takes few words, or none at all, for him to cut through the bullshit to find the awkward, painful truth of everyday life.” The New York Times’ Dave Itzkoff agreed, tweeting: “Leave it to Louis C.K., of course, to come up with a perfect analogy for the 2016 race.” Many readers appreciated C.K.’s endorsement of Samantha Bee as “right about everything that [she] talks about.” “One thousand times yes,” tweeted @JAMNPP. “Louis CK heaping praise on Samantha Bee makes me v happy,” tweeted @ConnorFinnegan. The Atlantic’s David Sims summed up the general response succinctly: “Louis CK still has a way with talkin bout the stuff,” he tweeted.
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2. Reeves Wiedeman’s story “The Big Hack” envisions what a massive cyberattack on New York City might look like in real life (June 13–26). Many commenters, particularly those who worked in the information-security sector, thought the article was a much-needed wake-up call. “I work in information security,” said commenter MeInWhySee, “and this article is a great illustration of the kinds of risks we nonchalantly accept and acquire every time we buy some formerly analog device that now does the same thing it used to do, but updates your iPhone 20x/hr … Next time you think you need your washing machine to text you when the rinse cycle is over, remember that the ‘smarter’ our lives get, the more vulnerable we become.” “Having done just a bit of work in IT, I don’t see this as paranoid,” agreed commenter YikYak. “Certain types of systems should not be connected to the internet, and should not run on commonly used consumer operating systems.” Others felt the article was a bit unrealistic. @Ewabbott tweeted: “Remarkable amount of fear mongering here.” Commenter teapotdome thought local governments were already aware of the risks and were properly prepared: “I have been in the room a bunch of times with the IT and preparedness people from all of the city’s major hospitals and hospital systems, and suffice it to say that the scenario that you describe is one they have been working on for years. Not that things wouldn’t get hairy but the staff at these places wouldn’t be running around with no clue what to do while people died all around them.” “I have seen preparations for this at the federal level and it is real,” responded brosbeforehoes. Some commenters had more specific concerns. “If they take control of my Blue Apron app,” tweeted Duggardamnnearkilledher, “my children will STARVE!!!!”
3. “We may be headed toward a future where the labels ‘comedy’ and ‘drama’ and ‘hour’ and ‘half-hour’ no longer tell us anything useful about a show, and we’ll have to think about them, live with them, in order to figure out what they are,” wrote Matt Zoller Seitz in his essay on comedy’s centrality to our current era of television (“How Comedy Usurped Drama As the TV Genre of Our Time,” June 13–26). He even coined a term to describe this new genre—“comedies in theory.” “I used to classify shows as ‘bleak comedies,’ but Matt Zoller Seitz says it best: They’re comedies in theory,” tweeted @�WhereMyWierema. “To my mind,” wrote the National Post’s David Berry, “this seems like a trend that’s half the result of things that are actually happening, and half a change in audience attitude. The explosion of television production, especially in places that have no particular legacy to push against, has led to more shows taking more chances. Traditional formats are being abandoned, and shows are left to live in their own unique spaces with the hope that the relatively small audience that’s needed to keep something on the air will follow. At the same time, there has always been smart, deep comedy, it’s just tended to get short shrift. Plenty of people just want a laugh, and are happy to let the trickier implications of something sail over their heads, or just not bother with something that demands a critical viewing in the first place. I’ve always been an advocate for the ability of comedy to get at the problems of our world in much more intricate ways than drama, and I’m all for more people expecting that out of their comedy. At the same time, though, there is absolutely nothing that gives me more pure joy than comedy that has absolutely nothing more on its mind than pure silliness.” For many, it was
a welcome relief from politics. “Interrupting political grumblings to bring you this great piece from Matt Zoller Seitz on modern TV comedy,” tweeted @David-Cornelius.
Correction: In “What the Girls Writers Know” (June 13–26), Murray Miller was quoted as describing the three-joke structure used on a Seth MacFarlane show. In fact, he was referring to the three-act structure used on some multicamera sitcoms.