Speaking of Privilege………

In the 1990s, there were a whole series of Wunderkind at The New Republic, Ruth Shalit and Stephen Glass who were later revealed to be fabulists and/or plagiarists.

The fact that the magazine was a disaster under the ownership of racist Marty Peretz, is of little interest today, except for the fact that Ruth Shalit, now Ruth Shalit Barrett, is still getting her stories into prominent publications.

In this case, it was The Atlantic which published an article from her about parents getting their children into fencing to get them into top flight schools.

It turns out that it was (once again)  she made sh%$ up.

Seriously, if you are a white person who went to the Ivy League, you are the equivalent of  a "Made Man" in the Mafia.

It's the only explanation as to why she gets any non-fiction writing now:

The Atlantic on Sunday took the extraordinary step of retracting an article by Ruth Shalit Barrett, who was a rising young political reporter in the 1990s when accusations of plagiarism derailed her career as an associate editor at The New Republic.

“We cannot attest to the trustworthiness and credibility of the author, and therefore we cannot attest to the veracity of the article,” The Atlantic said in an editor’s note that it updated on Sunday night.

The buzzy article, which was published online last month and appears in the magazine’s November print edition, chronicles a world of wealthy parents in the Connecticut suburbs obsessed with prodding their children into niche sports like fencing, crew and squash in hopes of getting them into Ivy League schools.

In the editor’s note, The Atlantic said that its fact-checking department had thoroughly rechecked the article, which was more than 6,000 words, speaking with more than 40 sources and independently corroborating information.

“But we now know that the author misled our fact-checkers, lied to our editors, and is accused of inducing at least one source to lie to our fact-checking department,” the note said. “We believe that these actions fatally undermined the effectiveness of the fact-checking process. It is impossible for us to vouch for the accuracy of this article. This is what necessitates a full retraction. We apologize to our readers.”

The Atlantic, went so far as listing her name as, "Ruth S. Barrett," as the byline, because, after all, she went to Princeton.

I get that Shalit is a talented writer, but why any editor would ever publish her in non-fiction is a marker of just how dysfunctional the current caste system is in the united states.

I may be the, "Worst Writer on the Internet," but I would be a better choice for any reporting, because I don't make sh%$ up. (Though I freely admit that my ideology can seem a bit deranged at times, and this this would necessarily shape my coverage.)