Crossposted from CampusProgress.org With only 19 percent of Americans aware [PDF] that Elena Kagan is the nominee being confirmed to the Supreme Court this week, it’s not a surprise that some are questioning the usefulness of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings. While Newsweek calls the hearings “boring” and “unilluminating,” The New York Times reports Read More
I wrote a post for Ta-Nehisi earlier this week that got a lot of discussion and was even picked up by Andrew Sullivan. I’m excited about it not just because my name was all over the innanets for a day, but because it drew attention to something that people don’t talk about widely enough: street Read More
You guys know I don’t know anything about sports. It’s become something of a running joke among my blogmates. I think I’ve become more and more ignorant of sports as I’ve gotten older because I don’t have anyone around to force me to participate, and I wasn’t conditioned to care on my own. The only Read More
Maureen Dowd writes about boys “drafting” girls. A group of soon-to-be freshmen boys at Landon, an elite private grade school and high school for boys in the wealthy Washington suburb of Montgomery County, Md., was drafting local girls. One team was called “The Southside Slampigs,” and one boy dubbed his team with crude street slang Read More
I’ve a piece in the June issue of The American Prospect on this summer’s Lilith Fair revival: In 1998 and 1999, the festival featured a slightly more diverse lineup both racially and musically. But as the decade came to a close, there was little room in the mainstream for the kind of music Lilith was Read More
We’re having a good discussion in the comments on my earlier post, but a few people took issue with my suggestion that books are expensive, which makes them less accessible for disadvantaged folks. I’d like to add to that something else that occurred to me: the rewards of books are less immediate. So even though Read More
Crossposted from Attackerman. Monica notes that an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, introduced by Sen. Roland Burris (D-IL) will repeal a ban on abortions for servicewomen. The ban, re-instituted by Congress in 1995 (after Clinton rolled it back in 1993), prevents a servicewoman from obtaining an abortion on base, even if she uses Read More
Crossposted from Attackerman. Over at the Chronicle of Higher Education blog, a newly completed, decades-long study shows that children who grew up in a home with 500 or more books stay in school three years longer than kids whose parents only had a few books, and that children whose parents have lots of books are Read More
Via TNC, Denzel says of the ladies who come to watch August Wilson’s Fences: “There are all these women coming to see me, to see this actor they like, and I appreciate that,” he said. “But at some shows, women are carrying on and snickering too much. Like at our Mother’s Day performance. Some audience Read More
