Mamdani wants to limit New York City’s gifted and talented program
Of course he does. Of course he does.
This is a recurrent dream of the left, and de Blasio shared it. After all, one can’t have smart kids getting special treatment; they must be sacrificed to the average. It reminds me of the educational equivalent of this observation of Thatcher’s in the economic realm:
I used the word “limit” in the title of the post, rather than “end.” It’s hard to understand exactly what Mamdani is proposing; I can virtually guarantee he’d like to end the whole thing, but as best I can tell he seems to be saying it should start in third grade rather than kindergarten:
Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral opponents ridiculed his plan to phase out the city’s gifted program for public school kindergartners.
Mamdani, the New York City Democratic mayoral nominee, would embrace former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2021 plan to phase out the gifted program for elementary schools if elected this November, according to The New York Times. …
Adams has expanded the elementary Gifted & Talented program during his tenure, a reversal of de Blasio’s plan to phase out the program and stop testing 4-year-olds.
“The era of judging 4-year-olds based on a single test is over,” de Blasio proclaimed at the time, likening the gifted program to “the segregation of students if they’re labeled as ‘gifted.’” …
But Mamdani told The New York Times that he would renew de Blasio’s plan, which sought to eliminate the Gifted & Talented test, opting for a universal test in second grade.
Adams is out of the race, but he has an opinion:
But Adams rejected [Mamdani’s] notion in a statement on Thursday, arguing it “gave thousands of Black and Brown kids a real shot to excel.”
New York City doesn’t have all that many white children in the public schools anymore. Here’s the demographic breakdown:
The student body at the schools served by New York City Public Schools is 14.2% white, 23.8% Black, 16% Asian or Asian/Pacific Islander, 41.5% Hispanic/Latino, 1.2% American Indian or Alaska Native, and 0.4% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. In addition, 2.8% of students are two or more races …
My guess is that there’s a high proportion of Asian students in those gifted and talented classes. Can’t have them excelling.
Oh, and Mamdani himself went to the Bronx High School of Science, a public exam school in the Bronx for the gifted and talented in science. Before that, he went to the Bank Street School, an expensive private school.
… [Mamdani is the] son of a tenured Columbia professor and an Oscar-nominated filmmaker.
In 2016, he told the oral history podcast “Encompassed – Bronx Science Stories” that, in eighth grade, while he was deciding which tony private school would have the pleasure of his enrollment for the next four years, he sat for the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test on a whim.
He had developed “a small idea of maybe Stuyvesant” — an even more selective and prestigious public high school than Bronx Science. “And then, when I didn’t get in, I was like, ‘Nah, I ain’t going to public school.’ ”
Among the many private schools Mamdani visited that fall, he slummed a trip to Bronx Science [a public school], and found himself impressed because “when I walked in there was a jazz band playing and students just killing it and that hadn’t happened at any of the private schools, and the jazz band wasn’t all white, which was also different from all the private schools I had visited.”
I’d love to see him debate the brilliant Thatcher, otherwise known as “the grocer’s daughter.” Alas, that’s not to be.
A personal note: I attended New York City public schools from kindergarten through twelfth grade. In those days, the gifted and talented program was called the program for intellectually gifted children; apparently they didn’t care all that much about “talented.” The gifted program saved me from constant boredom, and although it had its flaws it was fairly rigorous and we learned a lot. I didn’t like school, but without that program it would have been far far worse. Gifted children need desperately to be challenged, and we need to at least try to help gifted children reach their full potential.
What Palestinians and trans people have in common
Several people in one of yesterday’s threads mentioned this essay by Eve Barlow. When I read it, I was struck by her explanation of why so many trans activists seem to be pro-Palestinian – when most Palestinians would hate their guts and if they moved to Gaza they wouldn’t be long for this world. It’s more than a red-green alliance between leftists and jihadists, something that’s been in evidence since 1979 in Iran, when the two groups united to overthrow the Shah and then the jihadists executed the leftists in short order. No, this trans-jihadist alliance is even stranger.
Here’s what Barlow has written:
… [T]rans ideology has not only normalized lying, it has made it socially acceptable – and attempted to make it legally enforceable. Trans activists can change the facts about their identity at whim and people must comply. It figures that some who fight that culture war can also recognize that after Israel was established, there were certain Arabs who “self-ID’d”, if you like, as “Palestinians” post 1948 under the influence of PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and that they have lied for years in order to remove Israel from the map and claim it as their own homeland. The Nakba is a propagandist lie. Every war Israel has fought has been in defense of her security against insurgents. There’s a clear alliance between trans ideologues and pro Pals: a false claim to victimhood and enforced compliance via manipulation and lying.
She is correct in saying “trans activists,” because many trans people are well aware that they haven’t really changed sexes and don’t demand that the world recognize them that way; they just want to quietly live their lives presenting as the opposite sex. But trans activists certainly do make those demands, and many do so even when they obviously look nothing like the sex they claim to be.
Barlow is correct that both Palestinians and trans activists share a denial of truth and history, although one denies a truth and history that is more individual (the sex of a person), and another denies a truth and history that is more national in terms of who they are and who the Israelis are, and who’s been aggressively wishing to obliterate who.
However, you could argue that the Palestinians’ “claim to victimhood” is not utterly false. They are victims of a sort, although not victims of the Jews they blame. They are victims of the propaganda they’ve been fed and the promises their leaders have made, and victims of their leaders’ thievery and willingness to use them as human shields. At this point, of course, many if not most Palestinians are willing victims, having also been taught that Jews are almost literally devils and that it is great to die a martyr if you die in the act of killing them or if your death can be used as propaganda to harm them.
And you might rightly say that many trans people are victims, too – victims of propaganda at a young age, of groomers who are sexually drawn to the idea of convincing kids to mutilate themselves, of drug companies, of unscrupulous doctors and therapists, and of various forms of mental illness such as autism and body dysmorphia.
In other words, as with the Palestinians, they are actually victims of those who pretend to champion them.
Proof that progress is not an illusion
I recently had to buy a spool of blue thread to repair a shirt I have, and so I went to Walmart. I purchased a large spool for $2.44, which I think you’ll agree is a bargain in this day and age.
But what really caught my eye was another spool of blueish thread. This was just as large and even cheaper, selling for $1.94. But what fascinated me was that it was labeled as thread for mending denim. Now, I’ve mended plenty of denim in my time, but I’ve always used blue thread, which is good enough but not completely great for the purpose. But then again, I had never in my life thought, “Oh, if only they made denim thread!” And yet here it was, and I couldn’t resist.
Reader, I purchased it:
I may have to rip some jeans in order to try it out.
Open thread 10/6/2025
The quiz will contain math:
Poetry, and dapper Gerard
I’m finished editing Gerard’s poetry book, and the cover’s being designed as well. What’s left? Printing it and distributing it, and there are decisions to be made about those things, too. Last time a friend did the mailings, but that was a huge task for her and this time I think I’ll farm it out to a company.
Anyway, the point is that I’m close to finished with it. I also believe that fewer people will be interested in a poetry book than in the essay book, simply because fewer people are interested in poetry in general. Do you agree?
I was going through some very old photos on my computer, and found this one of Gerard from around 2008 or so. I took it in an airport parking lot; I think he was leaving for home but from where I don’t know. We went on quite a few trips. My cellphone camera was a rather primitive one compared to today’s, so it’s somewhat blurry. But I’m quite fond of it because it captures Gerard in the first couple of years of when I first knew him. He had left New York City in 2002, after living there for many decades, and he still had his city clothes and looked quite dapper; he used to say that in New York when he lived there, your overcoat was like your car in California in that it was the way you presented yourself to the world.
All those New York clothes were lost in the Paradise fire, of course. But Gerard continued to believe it was a good idea not to look like a slob when you went out.
Anyway, here’s the airport photo:
Have a great weekend!
ADDENDUM:
Commenter “RigelDog” suggested I try using a program to blur the photo’s background. And so I did. Here’s the result:
Once I got going with that, I started playing around with programs that make photos look like artwork, such as this effect called “pastel”:
And this, which is high contrast and looks like an Edward Hopper painting to me:
The Art of the Middle East Deal
Roger L. Simon says pretty much what I’ve been thinking about the current Middle East deal, so I’ll just quote him:
Breaking for the whole world today is the news that Hamas is agreeing to some of President Trump’s 20-point proposal to end the Gaza War, most notably the release of all hostages, living and dead.
Does this mean genuine peace or a hudna?
That is indeed the question.
More:
Hudna is an Arabic term for “calm” or “quiet.” But as our sometime friends at Grok point out, “In contemporary politics, it’s notably used by groups like Hamas to describe extended ceasefires in conflicts, such as the Israeli-Palestinian one, as a tactical pause rather than a permanent peace.”
That’s a polite definition. I’ve seen hudna defined as a deliberate deception designed to lull the enemy into complacency, especially in times of great danger, as Hamas is in at this moment from an impending Israeli attack that President Trump would have given his imprimatur.
Yes, but then again, Israel’s first goal is to get the hostages back. After that, if the Palestinians fail to live up to the terms …
More from Simon:
That strategy is to make everybody feel good for now in the hopes that it will continue to pay off and grow, so that Hamas can be maneuvered. It’s the Art of the Middle East Deal. …
We shall see what transpires. That is what President Trump, beneath all his hosannas, was saying subtextually. This is a test. And I suspect, if Hamas fails, he is prepared to act.
Who is the naive one here? I don’t think it’s either party. That is, I don’t think it’s any of the many parties, because other Middle Eastern countries are involved in this deal. As far as I can tell, dhimmi Western Europe is not.
And will the hostages actually be returned? I’m not optimistic even on that, but I could be wrong and I hope I’m wrong.
Claiming to be trans isn’t exactly a Get Out of Jail Free card, but it’s close enough: the case of Nicholas “Sophie” Roske, would-be assassin
If you want to kill a SCOTUS justice, and get close enough to be charged with attempting to kill or kidnap a SCOTUS justice and have to plead guilty, it’s worth your while (if you’re a man, that is) to claim to be a woman.
That’s what would-be SCOTUS assassin Nicholas Roske did. To refresh your memory, he was the man (yes, man) who was arrested in 2022 outside of Justice Kavanaugh’s house by federal marshals who were there guarding it.
This was after the Dobbs draft had been leaked, but before the official decision was handed down. Roske’s goal was to kill three of the conservative justices on the Court, allowing Biden or Biden’s autopen to nominate leftist justices in their place and therefore change the course of SCOTUS history and decisions. You might call his plan an insurrection of sorts, and he did more than just write about it or talk about it. He did turn himself in, but apparently only because those marshals were there.
Prosecutors wanted him to get thirty years. Instead, he got eight – far fewer than many of the J6 defendants got. But it’s the reason for his lenient sentence that is so infuriating:
In a more than hour-long speech justifying the light sentence, [Judge] Boardman said “Ms. Roske came out to herself as transgender in 2020 but kept it secret. Ms. Roske’s sister came out as gay two years prior but Ms. Roske saw that their parents struggled to reconcile her sexuality with their religious beliefs.”
“I am heartened that this terrible infraction has helped the Roske family… accept their daughter for who she is,” Judge Boardman said. …
Boardman said “Any prison time is punishment for her. The length doesn’t need to be particularly long… unduly harsh conditions make a difference, too.” The judge continued, “She will be imprisoned in a male facility even though she is a transgender prisoner, pursuant to an executive order from the president. Before the executive order, that wasn’t the case.”
Gotta be sure to get those pronouns right. Roske, by the way, is not just a biological man; he looks like a man, sounds like a man, and has all the equipment of a man. It’s only because of Trump’s order that he will be incarcerated in a men’s facility, which the Biden-appointed judge apparently considers akin to cruel and unusual punishment.
Note that the judge was appointed by Biden. That is significant, because not only is she obviously on the left, but it was in order to get judges such as Boardman appointed to SCOTUS that Koske had planned to assassinate Kavanaugh et al. in the first place. Perhaps if he’d succeeded, Boardman would have been a SCOTUS candidate. She’s certainly seems to be no Trump lover:
Earlier in the hearing, Boardman lashed out at prosecutors and President Donald Trump, saying “Let’s not hide the fact that President Trump issued an executive order saying transgender inmates would be assigned to prisons with their biological sex.” The prosecutor replied that there was an injunction holding up much of the enforcement of that executive order, and the judge later state[d] that Roske could, in fact, get hormone replacement in prison, at least while the injunction was in effect.
And while we’re at it, here’s some further background on Boardman:
Boardman was born in 1974 in Silver Spring, Maryland, and grew up in Frederick, Maryland. She has been described as being of Palestinian descent on her mother’s side. She graduated summa cum laude from Villanova University in 1996 with a Bachelor of Arts. From 1996 to 1997, Boardman was a Fulbright Scholar in Amman, Jordan. She then attended the University of Virginia School of Law, where she was an editor of the Virginia Law Review.
The Senate vote to confirm her was narrow.
Also:
On August 24, 2023, Boardman denied a request for a preliminary injunction seeking to reinstate a Montgomery County School Board policy that allowed parents to remove their children from lessons involving books featuring LGBTQ characters. Plaintiffs claimed exposure to these books contradicted “their sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage, human sexuality, and gender” and that the lack of an opt-out policy violated their children’s First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. Boardman reasoned that “mere exposure in public school to ideas that contradict religious beliefs does not burden the religious exercise of students or parents”. The Fourth Circuit affirmed her decision by a 2–1 vote on May 14, 2024. On June 27, 2025, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court overturned the ruling, stating that the government burdens parents’ religious exercise when it requires their children to participate in instruction that violates the families’ religious beliefs.
I’d like to know how it was that Boardman was assigned the Koske case. Kavanaugh lived in Maryland at the time (and for all I know he still does), and so of course the offense occurred there. Maryland is deep blue, so perhaps any judge there who might have gotten the case would have had a similar profile.
NOTE: The “I’m a woman!” claim by male defendants and/or prisoners reminds me of the “I’m a woman!” claim by male athletes. It confers obvious benefits. You don’t see biological females claiming to be males in order to do sports, as far as I know, for obvious reasons, even though the female-to-male trans rate is far higher. Same for prisoners. For a woman to claim to be a man in order to get into a male prison (which, prior to Trump’s order, would have been possible) either never happens or is vanishingly rare, again for obvious reasons.
Meet Jay Jones, the charming Democrat candidate for AG in Virginia
Jay Jones, Virginia’s Democratic nominee for attorney general, sent a series of disturbing text messages to a former colleague in 2022, where he suggested the state’s then-House Speaker Todd Gilbert (R) deserved to be shot in the head.
“Three people, two bullets,” read a text from Jones, obtained by The Post from a source.
“Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot,” the former member of the Virginia House of Delegates continued, presenting the recipient of his text with a dark hypothetical.
“Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,” Jones wrote, adding, “Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time.”
This was not some youthful teenage indiscretion. This was three years ago, when Jones was 33 years old, hardly an impulsive child. He was a law school graduate and member of the Virginia House of Delegates.
And Jones didn’t stop there. A Democrat named Joe Johnson had died a few days earlier, and several Republican state legislators praised him. One would think that would sit well with Jones. But apparently not:
“If those guys die before me,” Jones said of the Republicans praising Johnson Jr., “I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves.”
Charming, no? But that’s not the worst. Here’s the worst:
Jones called Coyner during their text exchange and reportedly doubled down, suggesting that he wished Gilbert’s wife could watch her children die, to perhaps change the former House speaker’s political views, according to National Review, citing a source.
“You weren’t trying to understand,” Coyner texted Jones after she reportedly hung up on him. “You were talking about hopping [sic] jennifer Gilbert’s children would die.”
The Democratic AG candidate responded: “Yes, I’ve told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.”
“I mean do I think Todd and Jennifer are evil? And that they’re breeding little fascists? Yes,” Jones continued.
This is evil.
But you know what? This is also terrible [emphasis mine]:
Meanwhile, Jones did not apologize for the texts and accused his GOP opponent, incumbent Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, of “dropping smears,” in his initial statement addressing the controversy.
“Like all people, I’ve sent text messages that I regret and I believe that violent rhetoric has no place in our politics,” Jones said in a statement to the Virginia Scope.
“Let’s be clear about what is happening in the Attorney General race right now: Jason Miyares is dropping smears through Trump-controlled media organizations to assault my character and rescue his desperate campaign,” he added. “This is a strategy that ensures Jason Miyares will continue to be accountable to Donald Trump, not the people of Virginia.”
It’s hard to know where to begin with that sort of response from Jones. It reads like satire, but unfortunately it’s not.
Actually, all people have not sent texts that they regret. I can’t recall any of that sort that I’ve sent, for starters. Or received. But yes, it’s pretty common. But what’s not common is the content of the texts Jones sent – except among sociopaths. Or perhaps Democrats who have decided Republicans are literally Nazis.
And forgive me if I can’t quite believe that Jones actually thinks that “violent rhetoric has no place in our politics.” It is such a ridiculous, ludicrous, mind-bogglingly and obviously false sentiment from someone who sent the texts he did for the reason he said he did. It’s not just the Big Lie, it’s the Giant Lie.
And then he plays the victim card. Of course he does. It’s his opponent who’s at fault, who is “dropping smears” – in other words, telling the truth about the vile things Jones said. And it’s being done in “Trump-controlled media organizations” – that is, the National Review, which broke the story. That this is a “Trump-controlled” organization is actually a humorous characterization of that outlet to anyone on the right who’s the least bit familiar with it. But Jones isn’t addressing anyone on the right – he’s addressing Democrats.
And there we get to a sad reality: many, probably most, of them will vote for him nevertheless. Apparently he initially thought this was a nothingburger, a perfectly ordinary way for a prospective attorney general to speak: to want to kill a fellow legislator of the opposing party, and to kill that person’s children.
And I suppose at this point it has become rather ordinary. That’s the atmosphere in which these assassination attempts and assassinations are taking place.
I think I can safely say that only in recent years could a person say something like this and not have to drop out of the race at the insistence of his own party. It’s a measure of the degradation of our society that this hasn’t happened yet to Jones. But I guess Jones did get some flak from his party (or at least fell in the polls), because after that first statement he suddenly seemed contrite and issued an actual apology:
“I take full responsibility for my actions, and I want to issue my deepest apology to Speaker Gilbert and his family. Reading back those words made me sick to my stomach. I am embarrassed, ashamed and sorry,” Jones wrote.
“I have reached out to Speaker Gilbert to apologize directly to him, his wife Jennifer and their children. I cannot take back what I said; I can only take full accountability and offer my sincere apology,” he added.
My guess is that what he’s really sorry about is that the texts were exposed. Those extremely vicious sentiments didn’t come out of nowhere.
Oh, and this:
On Wednesday, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that Jones was busted for reckless driving in 2022 – when he was caught driving 116 mph down a Virginia interstate – but avoided jail time by completing 500 hours of community service with his own political action committee.
His own PAC. That’s novel.
You cannot, cannot, cannot, make this stuff up.
NOTE: From the comments at the article, this is well put:
Since when to adults do this? Just what kind of people live this way, talk this way, and pretend that this is somehow normal? When did this become acceptable to the point where people actually text this stuff? …
This is not a man I would vote for regardless of his political affiliation. And no, an apology would not do. Good men simply do not think this way.
Open thread 10/4/2025
Hamas’response to Trump’s plan
Make of this what you will:
Hamas said that it would release all of the hostages in an effort to re-enter negotiations, in a Friday statement. Hamas officials later told international media that it would likely take longer than the 72 hours outlined in the US proposal to release them. …
Hamas gave mediators its response to US President Donald Trump’s plan for ending the Gaza war earlier Friday evening and promised that it would approve transferring the power of the Gaza Strip over to a Palestinian governing body that would be elected “based on Palestinian national consensus and with Arab and Islamic support.”
Marzouk promised the handover of power would come with the transfer of weapons from Hamas to the future Palestinian rulers.
My reaction is this: saying they will release the hostages is a way to encourage the Israeli left to blame Netanyahu for not wanting to release the hostages, if and when the deal falls through. “See, Hamas was willing, and Netanyahu wouldn’t agree!” would be the left’s cry.
Completing any actual deal would depend on the rest of the story; the hostages would just be the beginning. What would this “Palestinian governing body” be? Same old same old, under a different name? It’s not as though the Palestinians are eager to elect some “live and let live” Israel-tolerant group.
Time will tell. But Hamas’ statement is also a delaying tactic, because Trump had given them a Sunday deadline.
Ian Andre Roberts: Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus
I assume you’ve followed at least some of the story of Ian Andre Roberts, the Des Moines school superintendent who turns out to have been an illegal alien wanted for gun violations. The initial question was, why didn’t the people who hired him do enough of a background check to discover that he was not only an illegal alien, but he was on deportation orders due to the gun violations?
It turns out that’s not all they didn’t discover:
More universities have denied claims from Des Moines Public Schools’ former superintendent about his education and accomplishments, raising questions about how thoroughly Iowa’s largest school district vetted his application.
For years, former Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Ian Roberts, 54, had claimed he completed programs and was honored at several universities, including Morgan State University and MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Roberts had long stated that he received a doctorate in urban educational leadership from Morgan State University in July 2007.
Morgan State confirmed to the Des Moines Register, part of the USA TODAY Network, on Sept. 30 that Roberts did not obtain a degree from the school, despite attending from the fall of 2002 through the spring of 2007. An MIT spokesperson later told the Register that the school does not have records of Roberts attending.
Did the school district do any vetting of this guy at all, even the most basic? Perhaps his demographics checked too many boxes. He turns out to have been the great pretender.
His Wiki seems to have been updated:
Ian Andre Roberts is an educator who was Des Moines Independent Community School District system superintendent from 2023 until 2025 and an athlete who ran in the 2000 Olympics for Guyana.
In September 2025, Roberts was detained by ICE, who stated that they acted on an order of removal issued in May 2024. The Department of Homeland Security further termed him a “criminal alien” and a public safety threat. His detention spurred a protest outside the Des Moines federal courthouse, and subsequently garnered both national and international media attention.
Here’s an article that goes into his credentials – both fake and real – in some detail.
There’s also this:
Roberts spent over 20 years bouncing around the nation’s education system, holding top posts from coast to coast, but also proved controversial.
“He ruined our district for three years,” a former colleague in the state told The Post. “He was very smooth, affable, but the overarching feeling you got from him was smoke and mirrors, mystique.” …
He is also rumored to have been caught having sex with a female co-worker on school property in his previous role as a superintendent in rural Pennsylvania, a post he held from 2020 to 2023.
Former colleagues claimed to The Post that Roberts was a sketchy figure and pathological liar. They said they felt he was hired because of his diversity, equity and inclusion bona fides — and claimed that once on the job, he did little work.
“He was a player. He liked the women,” a source who knew Roberts, who asked not to be named, told The Post.
Another source expressed concern to the school board in Pennsylvania that Roberts might not be a legal resident based on casual comments he had made — but their concern was ignored, they said.
Hindsight is 20/20. But I assume the existence of such complaints would be on record.
There’s also this:
Roberts was superintendent of Millcreek Township schools near Erie, Pa., for three years.
During that time, the school district was inundated by lawsuits — and forced to pay out over $400,000 in sex discrimination settlements — claiming Roberts promoted less qualified women over more deserving men.
Town gossip claimed Roberts hightailed it out of Millcreek after he was caught having sex with a female co-worker on school property — although this could not be verified by The Post. …
Even so, while Roberts publicly claims to have a wife, his former co-worker told The Post they had never met or seen her and wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t exist. Another person who knew Roberts said Roberts didn’t hide the fact he was actively on the wife hunt for immigration reasons. …
More shockingly, it was revealed this week that Roberts has an active Democratic voter registration in Maryland, prompting congressional Republicans to demand answers from the Maryland Board of Elections about “gaping holes” in the state’s election integrity systems, according to Fox News.
Before moving to small-town Pennsylvania, Roberts held a cushy, high-power job as chief schools officer for Aspire Public Schools in Oakland, Calif., was a superintendent for public schools in St. Louis, Mo., and was a principal at high schools in Washington, DC, and Baltimore.
Nice. So there’s some sort of voter fraud, too?
One thing that seems true in Roberts’ resume, however – at least, according to a photo at the link – is that he really was a runner for Guyana in the 2000 Olympics.
The title of this post is a legal maxim that means, “False in one thing, false in all things.” The saying isn’t literally true in Roberts’ case – a certain amount of his story pans out. But the maxim is way too close to being correct. Roberts clearly had certain skills that allowed him to fool many people, when combined with his stellar DEI bona fides.