Reading List: January 7, 2017

Saturday brings a quartet of odd and awful men.

First up is 55 year-old comedian Dan Nainan, who has been lying about his age for years. Nainan pretends to be 20 years younger, despite the fact that he is obviously 55, because… well, it’s not entirely clear, despite the best efforts of The Daily Beast’s Ben Collins.

Millennial millionaire Dan Nainan is 55 years old. He doesn’t really even look 35. If you Google Dan Nainan, it will say his age: 55 years old. There’s even a website called ComedianDanNainanIsOver50YearsOldAndHisFollowersAreFake.com. Last week, one of the world’s most successful international comedians, Russell Peters, called him a “sociopath that is a 55yr old man child” on Twitter. Nainan used to open for him.

It is not a well-kept secret.

So why is he telling every journalist he can find that he’s something else? And why hasn’t anybody told them?

Next up is Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald, a pathological liar who used to be seen as a cautionary tale but now, somehow, is a hero to the Trump-opposing liberal crowd. Alex Nichols, at The Outline, warns us on what giving Eichenwald a platform means in the long term.

Eichenwald’s political beliefs are no more stable than his sense of journalistic ethics. At Vanity Fair, he adopted a particularly myopic form of liberalism that demanded unconditional loyalty to the Democratic party. Despite his rebranding as a strident partisan voice, his political allegiances were unclear until a few years ago. What did this guy believe, and did he really believe it? As a finance reporter, he was discouraged by the Times from letting his personal biases color his writing, but his continued highlighting of Medicare fraudduring a time of widespread cuts to the social safety net seems to suggest a conservative streak. Although he frequently lashes out at third-party voters on Twitter and continues to blame Ralph Nader for the election of George W. Bush in 2000, he admitted on Twitter to voting for Bush himself (although he later revised this to say he almost voted for Bush in 2000 but ended up voting for him in 2004). Without a conversion narrative to explain his sudden change of heart, one has to assume one of two things: either he foresaw Obama’s historical victory and decided to jump on the bandwagon for the sake of his career, or he saw a common thread between the Bush and Obama administrations that allowed him to switch loyalties without compromising his strongest held beliefs.

Of course, there are worse people. Like Milo Yiannopoulos, the neo-Nazi hero of the 21st century’s white supremacist movement. Publisher Simon and Schuster just gave Yiannopoulos a six figure book deal — so Adam Morgan says at The Guardian that his publication The Chicago Review of Books will not review Simon and Schuster publications for 2017.

Some writers, editors and publicists have pointed out that our decision isn’t fair to hundreds of other Simon & Schuster authors who had nothing to do with the publisher’s decision to sign Yiannopoulos. I agree. It’s unfair. Simon & Schuster will publish some wonderful books in 2017 through imprints I admire, such as 37 Ink, Salaam Reads and Touchstone. But I strongly believe the literary community must hold the publisher accountable.

Why? Because rhetoric like his — which targets racial, religious and cultural minorities — invites discrimination. It arguably encourages people such as Omar Mateen and Dylann Roof to think of entire groups of people as less than human. And in his 2012 book The Harm in Hate Speech, legal philosopher Jeremy Waldron writes that hate speech sends a clear message to its victims: “Don’t be fooled into thinking you are welcome here.”

Finally, Bikram Choudhury, the founder of “Hot Yoga,” was found guilty of wrongfully dismissing Minakshi Jafa-Bodden, the former head of his legal team, after she began investigating allegations of his sexual misconduct. As Shahana Yasmin reports in Vagabomb, Choudhury’s defense that women accusing him of rape were “trash” and that one drop of his sperm was worth $1 million was not enough to convince the court of his innocence. Now he’s lost everything.

Jafa-Bodden joined the company as head of Choudhury’s legal team in 2011, leaving behind a career in international litigation. Speaking to The Mail, she said, “Bikram is no longer the boss of Bikram Yoga. I am. I’ve been to hell and back, but the jury has spoken. Bikram has tried to conceal assets and has fled America, but justice will be done.” She has been awarded $6.4 million by the Los Angeles superior court, and with legal costs, the amount goes up to nearly $6.7 million. Jafa-Bodden will receive all 700 franchised Bikram yoga studios all over the world, as well as Choudhury’s fleet of 43 luxury cars, which includes 13 Rolls-Royces, eight Bentleys, and three Ferraris.

Some endings are happy endings.