Stories people don't like to cover

For years, the stories about Bill Cosby's apparent, ahem, predilections have been hiding in plain sight. No one really wanted to talk about it, but now it's all out there and his career is in ruins.

For years, Jonathan Gruber was telling his pals in the know how smart he was, littering the internet with tales of how his big brain and super spreadsheets fooled the masses. A lot of people still don't want to talk about it, but it's all out there and his career, while not in ruins, isn't going so well:

North Carolina’s state auditor on Thursday terminated a contract with Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economics professor and health-care expert whose comments on the Affordable Care Act have generated fury among conservatives.

Auditor Beth Wood (D) had hired Gruber to analyze the state’s Community Care of North Carolina program, which provides managed care to the poor and disabled. Gov. Pat McCrory (R) and state lawmakers involved in reforming the state’s Medicaid system were studying whether to include the Community Care program in the reformed system.

Why do that? According to the linked report, it was because those darned conservatives were angry:

The month before he was hired, Gruber had appeared at a health-care policy conference in Pennsylvania, where he credited “the stupidity of the American voter” with helping pass the Affordable Care Act. Unnoticed until this month, the comments — and others in which Gruber glibly insults voters and taxpayers — exploded on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, Fox News and conservative Web sites.

Of course, conservatives knew all along that the Affordable Care Act was a disaster and voted accordingly. This was more of a cartoon villain doing a monologue:

No capes, Mr. Gruber. No capes.