Top Chef’s contributions to the reality show genre don’t come from exciting cliff-hangers or the evil machinations of those who would only win by cheating: the ingredients that make it work best are good chefs cooking food that looks pretty and makes you want to eat it. Occasionally, there’s a key rivalry or a chef Read More
So, I’m guest blogging at Feministe right now and, in my first post, I pointed out how annoyed I get about the sexual double-standard when we talk about kids exploring their sexuality for the first time. When boys start to masturbate, it’s just natural; when girls do it, it must be a sign of abuse. Read More
PostBourgie: The Podcast #8: N-word, Please! In this week’s podcast, Monica, Joel and Jamelle discuss the way people misunderstand culture and poverty, “emerging adulthood,” and Dr. Laura’s hilarisad use of the n-word on her radio show. Key Links: A Daily Dish reader blames the disparate life outcomes between blacks and whites on a dysfunctional culture, Read More
(Something like this, but you know. Not wack.) All, you may have noticed some of us are busy with our day jobs and new babies and posting a lot less here. As much as we hate that, PB has never really put food in our tummies. To pick up some of the slack — and Read More
The story lines of rejection this week are two-fold. The first describes Pete Campbell’s inability to reject his father-in-law’s business, partly because he worked really hard to get the account and partly because his wife’s dad ruins her surprise that she’s pregnant. But that’s a minor hitch soon overcome, Pete uses it to leverage even Read More
[cross-posted from TAPPED] From ColorLines comes this excellent video, and accompanying story, of what it feels like to be stopped and frisked by police in Brownsville, Brooklyn. That neighborhood, along with nearby neighborhoods of Crown Heights and East New York, are some of the “Impact Zones” flooded with police officers to address the sorts of Read More
Last year, G.D. and I disagreed on how the Drapers judged the quality of their marriage. He called it objectively bad and thought both viewed getting out as a blessing. But I thought the Drapers, or at least Don, wouldn’t necessarily have thought of marriage in the same way we would today. For Don, marriage Read More
[cross-posted from TAPPED] Ross Douthat spent his precious column real estate Monday on the plight of poor, white Christians from red states who suffer disproportionately, he says, from elite-college admissions policies that favor lower-income black and Hispanic students over them. He borrows liberally from a blog post by Russell K. Nieli on Minding the Campus, Read More
(x-posted from TAPPED) The New York Times has a great story about police officers using the stop, question, and frisk tactic in Brownsville, Brooklyn — one of the many areas designated an “impact zone” under commissioner Ray Kelly. Those zones are flooded with police officers, often new recruits, who reinforce small quality-of-life crimes like having Read More
(Spoilers.) After much prodding from G.D., I finally watched Avatar: The Last Airbender well before the disappointing reviews of the film based on the Nickelodeon series came out. If I hadn’t known what a phenomenally good cartoon it was from the start, I definitely would have figured it out by Chapter 12 of the first Read More
