'WITH A FULL ARENA AUDIENCE!'

Everyone knows the bottom half of a doctor is meaningless. They can be naked from the waist down, but if they’ve got a white coat and a stethoscope draped around their neck, you’d probably trust them to operate on you.It’s almost as if wearing a snowy overcoat gives a person medical superpowers, and strange as it may sound, that might actually be kinda true. According to a study published in 2012, people tend to display superior sustained attention when performing tasks if they’ve got a lab coat on.Funnily enough, this effect was only observed when the jackets were specifically designated as doctors’ coats. Participants who were led to believe that the garbs belonged to painters displayed no such improvements in performance, leading the study authors to coin the term “enclothed cognition” in order to describe how professional attire affects our ability to perform tasks.Yet why did doctors start wearing lab coats in the first place? While it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where and when the trend began, it seems that white coats started to become increasingly common among medical professionals around the end of the nineteenth century. It was at this time that our appreciation of the importance of microbial contamination began to increase, so the introduction of white coats may have helped to symbolize cleanliness and purity within healthcare settings.As time wore on, the classic attire became more and more synonymous with doctors and scientists, to the point that patients began to respond to the sight of a properly dressed physician. A study conducted in 2017, for instance, found that more than half of US hospital attendees care about what their doctor wore, with more than a third saying the clothing of their caregiver influenced their overall satisfaction with treatment.Unsurprisingly, the white coat was identified as the most highly-rated item of doctor clothing, although this varied depending on patients’ age and the type of doctor.Over in the UK, meanwhile, a 1991 survey of medical practitioners indicated that the most common reason for wearing a white coat was that it enabled easy identification by colleagues and patients. Other motivations included the ability to carry items in the coat’s pockets and “emphasizing doctor status”.However, in 2007, the British government introduced a contentious “bare below the elbow” policy, requiring all doctors to have exposed forearms in an attempt to limit the spread of pathogens clinging to the clothing of healthcare providers. The long-sleeved white coat was therefore effectively outlawed and has since disappeared in UK hospitals.Yet not all doctors are happy with this development, especially given the lack of solid evidence linking in-hospital infections with medics’ clothing. Some doctors have therefore  been highly critical of the government’s decision, demanding that the white coat be allowed to make a comeback.

Early Friday morning, CNN tried to claim that conservative outrage that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif was allowed to fight in the women’s tournament at the Olympics despite previously failing a gender test was a bunch of fake news stirred up by Vladimir Putin hacks. Later that night, during Laura Coates Live, The Atlantic’s Jemele Hill added another charge: racism, especially racism against black women, despite the fact that Khelif is Arab, not black. Coates agreed with her colleagues’ take that much of the controversy is built around misinformation, “And to be clear, this is not a transgender woman. This is a woman who is being used as a poster child to try to convey some other culture war. And the fact that she is being used in that way is something that is just so unbelievable to so many people.”     Yes, some people have wrongly labeled the boxer from Algeria, of all places, transgender, but so what? There is no right to be an Olympic boxer. If Khelif has an unfair advantage over the competition due to some rare condition, it is more than fair to ask if she should be allowed to compete. However, Coates didn’t want a nuanced conversation about that. Instead, she wondered, “And you have to wonder, why is it such a polarizing issue? Why is it so hard to believe that someone could be an exceptional athlete and a woman?” For people like Hill, the answer is always race: Well, it's not – we're going to peel back some layers. Let's peel them all back. Because there are some commonalities here, and it's the commonalities that women of color face who are athletes. Always constantly having their physique, their appearance compared to men. We saw this with Serena Williams throughout her career, because she's strong, she's powerful. Unlike other tennis players that she played against or were part of her era, she had one of the most powerful serves, if not the most, that you had seen in tennis. And constantly, she had to face caricatures and stereotypes that she was a man. So, these are very specific attacks that are often directed at women of color, especially black women. Hill then tried to change the topic by declaring that Khelif’s critics are hypocrites because they haven’t spent as much time condemning the Netherlands for having a convicted child rapist on their beach volleyball team, but, to be fair, CNN hadn’t exactly covered that either. Wrapping up, Hill declared, “The things that are damaging women's sports and are damaging participation are lack of investment, lack of resources, and lack of media coverage. Those are the things that hurt women's sports. It is not the presence of trans women. And using trans women as a weapon in what is a broader issue about women's sports is frankly disgusting.” Coates brought the segment to a close by agreeing, “And of course, using her as a boogeyman to convey all of those things. And you know, when you said what you said, if you want to protect women and daughters, she is a woman, she is somebody's daughter, and she is a woman in sports. It conjures up that old statement, ‘ain't I a woman?’ Jemele Hill, thank you so much.” What if one believes that child rapists and people who fail gender tests should not be allowed to compete? Here is a transcript for the August 2 show: CNN Laura Coates Live 8/2/2024 11:44 PM ET LAURA COATES: And to be clear, this is not a transgender woman. This is a woman who is being used – JEMELE HILL: No. This is a – COATES: – as a poster child to try to convey some other culture war. And the fact that she is being used in that way is something that is just so unbelievable to so many people. And you know what? We've been here before, in a way. I mean, when I heard about this, it brought to mind the South African runner, Caster Semenya. And obviously these are distinct scenarios, but the idea of competitive advantage, if you've just read her guest essay in the New York Times from last year, it is unbelievably compelling, and it's reignited a lot of debate about fairness in women's sports. And you have to wonder, why is it such a polarizing issue? Why is it so hard to believe that someone could be an exceptional athlete and a woman? HILL: Well, it's not – we're going to peel back some layers. Let's peel them all back. Because there are some commonalities here, and it's the commonalities that women of color face who are athletes. Always constantly having their physique, their appearance compared to men. We saw this with Serena Williams throughout her career, because she's strong, she's powerful. Unlike other tennis players that she played against or were part of her era, she had one of the most powerful serves, if not the most, that you had seen in tennis. And constantly, she had to face caricatures and stereotypes that she was a man. So, these are very specific attacks that are often directed at women of color, especially black women. And then beyond all that, I heard a whole lot of people who were ready to be loud and wrong about this, chime in, using women against other women, saying, we need to protect our daughters. We need to protect women's sports. Meanwhile, the Dutch, they have a volleyball player, who was a convicted rapist, convicted of raping a 12-year-old who was playing at the Olympics. I didn't see any of those same people with those “protect our daughters,” “protect women and girls in sports.” And often when it comes to issues of equity, when we're talking about financial investment, when we're talking about giving female athletes and women's sports appropriate media coverage, where's that “protect women's sports” crowd then? Where's Donald Trump's tweets about protecting women and protecting women's sports when we're talking about how women are under-invested in when it comes to sports? The things that are damaging women's sports and are damaging participation are lack of investment, lack of resources, and lack of media coverage. Those are the things that hurt women's sports. It is not the presence of trans women. And using trans women as a weapon in what is a broader issue about women's sports is frankly disgusting. COATES: And of course, using her as a boogeyman to convey all of those things. And you know, when you said what you said, if you want to protect women and daughters, she is a woman, she is somebody's daughter, and she is a woman in sports. It conjures up that old statement, “ain't I a woman?” Jemele Hill, thank you so much.

To solve big and complex problems, politicians who lack the stomach to pursue sweeping structural reforms all too often settle on small-potatoes proposals that are too clever by half. Such proposals usually involve complex schemes — often opaque but “supported” by crunchy data — and avoid root causes assiduously. The politicians advocating them benefit from seeming to be engaged actively in solving the problem, and their inevitable failures usually cost less politically than hazarding to enact more daring and apt solutions. This dynamic has cropped up repeatedly in American housing policy, in cities floundering amid high rental prices.The small potato that local policymakers dug up this time is the notion that regulating away short-term rentals — i.e., services such as Airbnb — will prompt landlords to pivot their units to long-term rentals. This increase in supply will lower prices. Or so the theory goes.Prosecuting a new and innovative market entrant like Airbnb has an ease and a simplicity that pursuing true reform — like a zoning overhaul — lacks.Crushing STRs has, unsurprisingly, failed to solve urban housing crunches. Anti-STR policies have proven to function primarily as inconveniences to would-be travelers and unjust obstacles to property owners earning (often much-needed) income.Such policy has been attempted at scale — at the largest scale. In January 2022, New York City kneecapped short-term rentals, enacting onerous regulations that excised 70% of the city’s Airbnb listings (some 15,000 listings) in the month prior to its enforcement date. To lawmakers’ dismay, these units did not re-enter the market as standard rentable housing. According to Wired, research suggests that post-regulation, many short-term Airbnbs remained Airbnbs, extending their rental to 30 days or longer to remain legally compliant. The city’s efforts did essentially nothing to ease its affordability crisis.Most Airbnb-operating landlords prefer to avoid the hassles that plague traditional full-time landlords. Tony Lindsay, president of the New York Homeowners Alliance Corp, told Wired that “more than 95 percent of [his] group’s members say they have no intention of becoming long-term landlords,” in Wired’s words.And while roughly 75% pivoted to offer longer-term services, thousands of landlords simply quit, forgoing Airbnb-generated income entirely.The New York City hospitality industry’s … shall we say … hospitality to local politicians suggests that lawmakers harbored concerns for somebody other than the average citizen or property owner. As the New York Times primly put it, “The Hotel Trades Council, a powerful force in local politics and ally of Mayor Eric Adams, has long fought the expansion of the platforms.”Sure enough, the hotels have benefitted. “Hotel occupancy rates in New York have been slightly up year over year, by 4 percent in January and 3.4 percent through February 24,” Wired reported.Other benefits have accrued to non-New Yorkers. Wired in March noted that “Jersey City has seen demand [for STRs] rise 77 percent year over year as of mid-February … while in Weehawken and Hoboken, demand has increased 45 and 32 percent, respectively.”The Big Apple imposed chaos for very little return. In sum, according to the Harvard Business Review, “Airbnb contributed to about 1% of aggregate rent growth.” This in a city whose average monthly rent in 2021 surpassed $1,800. Moreover, Airbnb’s meager price impacts centered not in low-income neighborhoods — where shortages and high prices can do the most harm — but “in touristy, centrally located areas where higher-income residents live.”Politicians’ innate tendency to solve system problems through myopic, scapegoating, donor-driven, politically convenient, property-rights-violative policies likely will never disappear. Prosecuting a new and innovative market entrant like Airbnb has an ease and a simplicity that pursuing true reform — like a zoning overhaul — lacks.But politicians who choose the easy path over the right path deserve accountability after their policies inevitably go wrong.

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