Formulating moral arguments: When people try to make a moral argument for or against something, they tend to conflate the notions of “wrongness” and “harmfulness,” Malcolm Gladwell says in short video from his New Yorker festival speech (runtime 05:45). He specifically mentions the case of the Princeton student protests of having their School of Public and International Affairs named after Woodrow Wilson, an “unrepentant racist.” Students there, Gladwell says, were weakening their arguments and undermining their own cause by arguing that the name “harms” them — naming the school after “a guy like that” is just wrong; “it’s wrong for a modern university to celebrate a man who’s as reprehensible as Woodrow Wilson.” Gladwell explains “wrongfulness is not contingent on harmfulness, it [is] irrelevant.”

Using Gladwell’s notion, and in the light of Donald Trump’s deplorable comments glorifying [redacted] assault, we really appreciate Samantha Bee’s takedown of GOP’s officials’ morally inconsistent “response” to the comments. Trump’s comments, she says, “ are not wrong because you have female relatives … Trump’s comments were wrong because women are human. And if you haven’t stood cravenly by while he insulted them for a year you wouldn’t be in the pile of elephant sh*t you’re in today” (runtime 05:32).