Live-tweeting has completely revitalized the TV-viewing experience. How did we ever wait 12 to 24 hours to gather at water coolers or to meet our friends over coffee and discuss all our guilty pleasure shows and their salaciousness? Shonda Rhimes shows especially lend themselves to shock-tweeting; she trafficks in big plot twists and embeds her Read More
Cross-posted from Feminist Texican [Reads]. Anyone familiar with either of Junot Díaz’s previous books will remember Yunior, the Dominican kid coming of age in Drown who goes on to become the narrator of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Back for his third starring role Díaz’s work, Yunior is the link connecting most of the stories in This Read More
Grantland’s Andy Greenwald isn’t sold on Jay Pharoah as SNL’s Obama: But I’m still not entirely sold on Jay Pharoah. The guy is a brilliant, otherworldly mimic, but I’m not sure he’s all the way there yet as a performer. Don’t get me wrong — I’m thrilled he’s got the podium with the seal on Read More
By Guest Contributor MK, cross-posted from Prison Culture with permission. On April 19, 1989, a young woman who was jogging through Central Park in New York City was found badly beaten. She had also been raped. I have written briefly about the case before in comparing it to Scottsboro. However, I want to return to Read More
Because yes. Also: Ronald Reagan with an Uzi on a velociraptor. Abe Lincoln with an M-16 on a grizzly. Teddy Roosevelt vs. Sasquatch. Ben Franklin vs. Zeus.
Stories like this are part of a pattern. There’s a telling line that pops up in trend stories — those oft-mocked pieces you see in the New York Times Style section about how there’s a groundswell of well-heeled Upper East Siders taking their pets to doggie yoga or something — that let’s you know that Read More
The latest from Major Lazer. You gon’ get that work: Lisa Wade argues that Obama’s “cling to guns and religion” comments from ’08 are very different in character than Romney’s “47 percent” gaffe. Jill: “The ideological attacks on AIDS scholarship are scary. If the moral arguments against circumcision can stand on their own, then they Read More
Y’all better vote for fucking Obama, OK? For better or for worse, all right? We have a black Muslim in the White House. Now that’s some amazing shit! It means there is hope in this country. And Obama is fighting for gay rights, so support the man, goddamnit. …Oh. (There’s gotta be a Madonna-song-title pun Read More
Cord Jefferson wrote a widely criticized piece for Gawker calling for a reconsideration of how we deal with pedophiles — criticized in large part because it seemed to pussyfoot around actually referring to the rape of children as “rape”. Jennifer Bleyer has a less ham-handed take on that idea over at Slate. “Fred Berlin, the Read More
My blogmate Monica has been banging this drum for a minute, but John Sides looks at some new research that contradicts a bunch of the ideas about the voting habits of working class whites. Sides finds that the white working class is hardly a monolith, and says that studies show that they’re less motivated by Read More
